David Petr, who has been hired to guide economic development in Montgomery County, said the county has what it needs to compete against rival Fairfax County: a quality work force.

“The true benefit of doing business here is the quality of talent,” Petr said Tuesday after a meeting with the Montgomery County Council.

Altimmune, Inc., a clinical stage immunotherapeutic company, today announced that Christine Brennan, PhD, Principal at Novartis Venture Fund, has joined its Board of Directors effective immediately. Dr. Brennan replaces Florent Gros from Novartis Venture Fund.

“We are extremely pleased to welcome Dr. Brennan to our Board. She has an impressive background in the biopharmaceutical industry, and her experience and guidance will be invaluable as we continue to advance the clinical development of our three drug candidates,” said Bill Enright, President and Chief Executive Officer of Altimmune. “We would also like to thank Mr. Gros for his service to Altimmune over the past year.”

IDT Biologika, a globally integrated manufacturer of vaccines and biopharmaceuticals, announces today the one-year anniversary celebration of its first U.S. contract manufacturing facility in Rockville, Maryland. The state-of-the-art facility offers custom, end-to-end solutions to support the manufacture of viral and microbial vaccines (live and attenuated), gene and cancer therapies, and therapeutic proteins. IDT commemorates its first anniversary with a special program and tours of its facility for local political leaders and members of the biopharmaceutical industry.

The Gaithersburg research and development arm of AstraZeneca said it would begin filing a new request for Food and Drug Administration approval for its biologics annually starting this year.

Two Maryland-based companies are racing to get a vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) to market--and one just picked up a regulatory boost.

MedImmune, AstraZeneca's ($AZN) biologics research and development arm, announced on Thursday that the FDA is fast-tracking its RSV vaccine, MEDI8897. It joins Novavax ($NVAX), which received FDA fast-track designation for its candidate in November.

GlaxoSmithKline's experimental vaccine to prevent the intensely painful condition known as shingles remained 90 percent effective in people over age 70 even four years after receiving the injection, according to data published on Wednesday.

Crosstown rivals Novartis ($NVS) and Roche ($RHHBY) will be neck and neck for the No. 1 spot in pharma sales till 2022, with Roche ahead by a nose at the finish line, according to a new market analysis. Along the way, a 6.3% annual growth rate industrywide will take global prescription drug sales past the $1 trillion mark.

Alexandria Real Estate (NYSE:ARE) is about as successful a Wall Street story as you'll find. Started in 1994 as what management fondly recalls as a garage startup, the company now is one of the most successful and unique REITs on the market today. What makes the company so special is that Alexandria was the first REIT to focus exclusively on life science and biotechnology clients, specifically in the most prime real estate markets: Boston, San Francisco, New York City, etc.

Former New York mayor and businessman Michael Bloomberg is giving $300 million to the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health to help fight drug addiction, obesity and gun violence.

The next CONNECTpreneur event is September 28 at the Hyatt Regency Bethesda. More info at connectpreneur.org

There’s a 40% discount code just for eBiz Alert subscribers: Enter CODE: MOCO when you register at http://connectpreneursept2016.eventbrite.com.

This event’s Fireside guest is Seth Goldman, Founder and TeaEO, Honest Tea.

The 2016 Steering Committee of the Montgomery County Executive Hispanic Gala (MCEHG) announces that Montgomery County Public Schools Assistant Principal Vilma C. Nájera will be the recipient of the "Educator of the Year" Award to be presented during the gala celebration on September 22, 2016 at The Fillmore Silver Spring.

Ms. Vilma C. Nájera is an Assistant Principal at Springbrook High School and one of the county coordinators for the Minority Scholars Program. Through her work last year at Springbrook, there was an increase in the number of Hispanic males graduating. She also launched the Minority Scholars Program at Springbrook.

The Minority Scholars Program, MSP, is a group of student leaders that focuses on closing the achievement gap at their schools and county wide.

The University of Maryland School of Medicine tested out its first Zika vaccine shots Tuesday, in hopes to further research that could lead to a vaccine used around the world.

The vaccine was developed by the National Institute of Health, which chose three places to test, first in their labs in Bethesda, then at the U of M School of Medicine, and finally at Emery University in Atlanta.

The University of Maryland, College Park and the University of Maryland, Baltimore announced details Tuesday of a joint national security academy.

Officials said the academy, which would be located in College Park, will enable them to expand their current programs in cybersecurity, law, criminology and counterterrorism.

Tech star and billionaire Steve Case has been hammering home one idea for the last few years — that the future of tech and startups rests outside of the traditional Silicon Valley ecosystem and in the fertile plains of America’s heartland.

Now, with less than a month until his fifth “Rise of the Rest” tour, he sees that idea gaining traction.

Digital health technology leader WellDoc announced today it has entered a commercial partnership agreement with LifeScan Inc., one of the Johnson & Johnson Diabetes Care Companies (JJDCC) and a world leader in blood glucose monitoring, to deliver across the United States a best-in-class digital health solution for Type 2 diabetes. The companies will integrate WellDoc’s clinically validated BlueStar® diabetes management platform and mobile application, which is the first digital therapeutic approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for adults who live with Type 2 diabetes, with LifeScan’s OneTouch Verio Flex™ blood glucose monitoring system with built-in Bluetooth® Smart Technology and the OneTouch Reveal digital system. The combined offering will seek to create a comprehensive, data-driven and payer-reimbursed program for Type 2 diabetes management.

GlaxoSmithKline plc (LSE/NYSE: GSK) today announces a series of agreements with Aspen (JSE: APN) aligned with GSK’s strategy of simplification through focusing on core therapeutic areas.

GSK will divest its anaesthesia portfolio to Aspen for £180 million plus milestones of up to £100 million. In addition to this divestment, GSK and Aspen have entered into parallel agreements to terminate their collaboration in Sub-Saharan Africa and for Aspen to exercise its option to acquire GSK’s remaining thrombosis business in certain retained markets.

Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University and the University of Virginia were among the top Washington-area universities making an appearance on U.S. News and World Report's 2017 Best Colleges edition released Tuesday.

$248 million in cash from Sanofi, and the same amount in a capital contribution by Verily (not in cash) have breathed life to a new company — Onduo — where the two equal partners will wage battle with a formidable enemy: diabetes.

Everyone likes to talk about innovation, but how can you stop simply talking about and start driving real innovation in biotech? We looked at some of the most ground-breaking, silo-busting movers and shakers around to bring you the "Top 5 Ways to Innovate in Biote

Innovation. What does it mean to you?

That's a great question — and one that we are setting out to answer in several ways at the Washington Business Journal.

2016 INNOVATION SHOWCASE

Joint Annual Meeting Johns Hopkins Alliance for Science & Technology Development and the University of Maryland, Baltimore Commercial Advisory Board

October 6, 2016 / 7:30 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.

Helping patients means transparency and clarity

Every day, thousands of Americans hear the dreaded “c word” from their doctor. I know the fear and the numbness that sets in with the cancer of a loved one.

What happens next can make the difference between life and death. If there’s a treatment that can help, there’s hope. But for some people, hope is a clinical trial that will ultimately determine whether a new therapy can slow or stop their cancer.

The National Institutes of Health plans to consolidate several locations in suburban Maryland into a pair of adjacent buildings in Bethesda after wrapping up a roughly nine-month search for alternatives in Montgomery and Prince George's counties.

California Life Sciences Institute (CLSI) today announced the appointment of Heather Shane to build and lead the CLSI CARB-X accelerator, which will provide non-dilutive funding, business support and subject matter expertise to companies with innovative antibiotic product candidates. The Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X) is the world’s largest public-private partnership focused on tackling one of the greatest modern threats to public health — antibiotic resistance. CARB-X will commit $50 million during the first year, and at least $350 million over five years, toward preclinical research and development with the aim of accelerating antibiotic product development over the next 25 years. CLSI is the non-profit partner of the California Life Sciences Association (CLSA), and supports the foundations of innovation – workforce development, STEM education and entrepreneurship – that have made California home to the world’s most prominent life sciences ecosystem.

Accenture has announced the creation of the Accenture HealthTech Innovation Challenge, which aims to bring together startup firms and prominent life sciences and health companies to address challenges including access, affordability, transparency and security.

From Mark Suster:

"I recently read a blog post by Beezer Clarkson, Managing Director of Sapphire Ventures about why entrepreneurs should care about from whom their VC funds raise their capital. I spent a bunch of time thinking about this position — especially since Beezer is an investor in Upfront Ventures. There are a lot of things I think entrepreneurs should care about when raising from a VC:"

Tekes – the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation (Tekes) and IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a partnership that will enable Finland to utilize Watson cognitive computing to help doctors improve the health of its citizens, and strengthen and develop the Finnish innovation and business ecosystem in the fields of health and well-being. To facilitate the collaboration, IBM intends to establish a Watson Health Center of Excellence in Finland, the first Nordic Healthcare Competence Center, and the first National Imaging Center of Excellence outside the United States in Finland. These centers are expected to employ 150 people over the next few years.

At first glance, Moderna Therapeutics looks like the most enviable biotech startup in the world. It has smashed fundraising records and teamed up with pharmaceutical giants as it pursues a radical plan to revolutionize medicine by transforming human cells into drug factories.

But the reality is more complicated.

Verily, Alphabet's life sciences group, is investing big in developing technologies for the millions of people worldwide with diabetes.

Verily announced today that it is teaming up with pharmaceutical giant Sanofi to fund and spin out a new venture, Cambridge, Mass.-based Onduo, which is focused on helping clinicians and their patients manage the disease. The companies have tapped a new CEO to lead the startup, trained emergency-medicine physician Joshua Riff, from United Healthcare-owned Optum.

Recently there have been numerous articles and editorials understandably scrutinizing the increases in pricing of EpiPen produced by Mylan, a generic drug company. The strong reaction to the behavior of Mylan and a few other companies is threatening to impede the ability of R&D-focused innovator companies to provide innovative, life-changing new therapies to patients.