With billions to be made on the back of ill health and notable scandals and cover-ups in its history, it’s fair to say that many see the public face of the pharmaceutical industry as a mask for darker machinations. We rely on the drugs for myriad conditions, but do we trust big pharma?

Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is no stranger to accusations of unethical drug marketing tactics. But recent news coverage has included its support for the AllTrials campaign – which calls for clinical trials to be registered and results to be published – and a package of other initiatives, including a new commitment to end direct payments to doctors (and other key opinion leaders – KOLs) that have been one of the industry’s most powerful marketing tools.

Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University and Stanford University are among six institutions sharing a $540 million grant for cancer research from funds established by late real estate magnate Daniel K. Ludwig.

Each center will receive $90 million in new grants from the fund established in 2006, bringing the total bequest to each institution to $150 million, said Ed McDermott, president and chief executive officer of New York-based Ludwig Cancer Research, in a press conference. Other centers getting money are Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, University of Chicago and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

2013 has been another banner year in seed financing for U.S. tech startups.  In aggregate, 2013 saw $893 million invested across 843 seed VC deals. In fact, 2013 saw the highest amount of seed VC deals since 2009. Seed VC deal activity in 2013 jumped 11% from 2012 levels and a whopping 173% from 2010 as the number of active seed venture investors continued to stay strong.  By way of definition, seed venture capital rounds included in this brief are early stage investments (typically less than $1.5 million) that specifically include the participation of a venture capital and/or corporate venture capital investor (angel rounds were excluded from this analysis).

Ask any investor what they think about Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ  ) , and you'll probably hear that it's a diversified pharma company, a blue-chip stock that pays a hefty dividend, and it's a relatively safe investment for investors looking for exposure to the health-care sector. But you might also hear investors criticize its size. With a market cap of almost $260 billion, Johnson & Johnson is one of the largest companies in the U.S., and it edges out both Merck and Pfizer as the largest pharma company in the Dow. Can a company this massive be nimble and entrepreneurial enough to innovate? Is its size holding back its long-term potential to bring new products to market?

The National Cancer Institute opened NCI Shady Grove next door to the Johns Hopkins Montgomery County Campus buildings. Employees started arriving in late December 2012, two years after the September 2010 groundbreaking ceremony. The move was completed in Spring 2013. Approximately 2,400 NCI employees work at NCI Shady Grove. Coinciding with the arrival of the NCI employees, six new retail shops opened along the parking garage: Shady Grove Cleaners, Freshii, Subway, West Wing Café & Bakery, Blue Fin and Natural Market.

Meanwhile, 11 new companies decided to locate their businesses on campus. These entrepreneurs and researchers focus on health care research and information technology.

Happy New Year! This week’s Top of the List is from our first-ever List of “Largest incubators, accelerators and co-working spaces in Maryland,” ranked by current number of members or tenants.

Here they are, counting back from No. 5:

The disease detectives at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention named the top five global health threats they expect to tackle in 2014:

1. The emergence and spread of new microbes

While it's rare, CDC scientists do come across new diseases each year. In 2013, the new Heartland virus carried by ticks was confirmed in northwest Missouri. Federal health investigators collected samples in the state after two farmers from St. Joseph were sickened by the virus that carried a novel genetic profile.

By Rock Health’s count, 302 investment firms and “notable angels” put money into a digital health startup in 2013. Twenty-seven of them did it three or more times.

That’s a big jump from the eight who did three or more deals in 2012. An influx of digital health exits, final guidance from the FDA on mobile apps, more good opportunities or any number of other factors may have led investors to pony up capital for more of these companies last year.

Most people know what marketing executives do every day. They try to catch people’s attention through email, ads, tweets, and press releases. As for data scientists, well, their work is not nearly as well understood.

That’s been slowly changing this year as companies slowly loosen up about letting their hard-won data scientists talk about their work.

The Montgomery County, MD Department of Economic Development (DED) has invested $75,000 in Brain Sentry, makers of Brain Sentry Impact Sensors™, innovative helmet-mounted devices that alert when an athlete suffers a rapid – and potentially dangerous – acceleration of the head. These sensors, which the company began to produce four months ago, are now being utilized by football, ice hockey and lacrosse teams to help identify players who need to be evaluated for concussion.

The $75,000 Montgomery County DED’s investment (conditional grant) is part of a successful $1,000,000 capital raise for Brain Sentry, with additional funds coming from New York Angels, New Dominion Angels, Hull Street Capital and other private investors. According to the Montgomery County DED the typical amount of assistance – in grant or loan – is $5,000 to $100,000. Priority is given to “high technology companies” and “manufacturing companies” and Brain Sentry fits the bill on both counts. Brain Sentry also meets a third DED criterion as a “private employer providing public benefits.”

A handheld ‘bio pen’ developed in the labs of the University of Wollongong (UOW) will allow surgeons to design customised implants on-site and at the time of surgery.

The BioPen, developed by researchers from the UOW-headquartered Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES), will give surgeons greater control over where the materials are deposited while also reducing the time the patient is in surgery by delivering live cells and growth factors directly to the site of injury, accelerating the regeneration of functional bone and cartilage.

10. Our broken healthcare system defeats even the most empowered patients

Jess Jacobs and Donna Cryer are experts on the healthcare system — professionally and personally.

Jacobs has postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, and describes it best in her own words:

Know someone who drowned from jumping off burning water skis? Well, there’s a new medical billing code for that.

Michael Meistar Been injured in a spacecraft? There’s a new code for that, too.

Roughed up by an Orca whale? It’s on the list.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) officials announced a $1 million dollar prize for innovation in the emerging area of bioelectronics research. The prize will be awarded to the scientists who are first able to solve the challenge of creating a miniaturized, fully implantable device that can read, write, and block the body’s electrical signals to treat disease. It is hoped that finding a solution to this challenge will open and accelerate significant avenues of research in this field. The scientific challenge was developed and agreed by a group of approximately 150 leading scientists from around the world, brought together by GSK’S Bioelectronics R&D unit at a summit earlier this month in New York. Collectively, summit attendees agreed that if they create an implantable wireless device that can record, stimulate and block neural signals to a single organ, it will be a critical factor enabling the onward development of bioelectronic medicines as a future therapeutic reality.

GSK’s Bioelectronics R&D unit is pursuing a relatively new scientific field that could one day result in a new class of medicines that would not be pills or injections but miniaturized, implantable devices. GSK believes that these devices could be programmed to read and correct the electrical signals that pass along the nerves of the body, including irregular or altered impulses that can occur in association with a broad range of diseases. The hope is that through these devices, disorders as diverse as inflammatory bowel disease, arthritis, asthma, hypertension and diabetes could be treated.

A group of heavyweight biotech industry executives, including the former CEO of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc., have formed a new Baltimore biotech company.

Centrexion Corp. has raised a total of $23.4 million since its incorporation in February, according to recent Form D filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In the same way that great advances in our understanding of the human genome sparked new opportunities for biotech companies in the early 2000s, growing knowledge about how microbes in the human body affect health has paved the way for a small class of biotech startups emerging now.

These companies are looking at ways to restore balance to populations of bacteria in and on the body that, when they become disrupted, may promote disease. Although these relationships are still not completely understood, researchers have been studying potential links between the microbiome and metabolic diseases, inflammation and a host of other conditions.

There's a reason why Johns Hopkins University has been named one of the top med schools worldwide and the number one hospital in the U.S. Students at Johns Hopkins are driven and relentless in their pursuit of innovative solutions to every day problems. They tend to be incredibly talented, skilled in their respective fields. Which would explain why the Baltimore school was named one of the top 10 universities with the most creative students by ViewsOnYou this year.

A London-based startup, ViewsOnYou is known for acting as a dating site of sorts for prospective employees and companies hiring. It sets up profiles to help match job seekers with the ideal businesses for them according to their personality type. Taking three components into consideration – energy, interpersonal and intelligence – ViewsOnYou offers a more in-depth connection for both parties.

Every year, Silicon Valley creates new buzzwords to make its startup founders, corporate spokespeople, and “thought leaders” feel like they’re doing something important.

According to linguists, jargon proliferates in Silicon Valley’s tech scene faster than almost anywhere else.

I am a biotech VC, but not a techie. So I don’t follow stem cells, gene therapy, and other similar “blockbuster” technologies in the life sciences. Rather than looking at all the gosh-and-golly stuff going into the biotech pipeline, I wait to see what is coming out of the other end. So far, very little in the most innovative areas.

People are excited about biotech’s IPO window and money flowing into venture funds as reflected in, for example, Bruce Booth’s blog posts. But what he sees as a new day in biotech, I see as the same fundamentals in a new synthetic financial environment manufactured by Ben Bernanke. I applaud Bruce’s optimism. Without people like him and the enthusiasm they bring to the space, biotech would be afflicted by the same anxieties that are paralyzing pharma today.

MedImmune’s Cambridge UK medical technology hothouse will be part of an historic tie-up between the business and the Brazilian government’s ‘Science Without Borders’ programme.

MedImmune, the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca, says that 30 Brazilian post-doctoral fellows will work at its sites in Maryland, California and Cambridge, UK for a period of two years.

Borrowing concepts from 3D printing, scientists in Australia say they’ve come up with a device and a technique that could allow surgeons to precisely deliver live cells and growth factors directly onto damaged bones to help regenerate bone and cartilage.

The “bio pen” holds and dispenses living cell material that’s housed inside a polymer and protected by a second layer of gel material, according to the University of Wollongong. The “ink” is solidified by a low-powered UV light that’s attached to the device, so it can be layered to construct a 3D scaffold in the wound site. From there, it’s expected that the cells will multiply and eventually differentiate into nerve, muscle or bone cells.

Shares of United Therapeutics surged Monday after regulators approved the company's newest treatment for high blood pressure, Orenitram.

A Cowen and Co. analyst called the FDA's move a "surprise" because the FDA had refused to approve the drug twice before and United Therapeutics hasn't reported any additional data from clinical studies.

Listen up, tech entrepreneurs, Accelerate Baltimore is looking for you.

Accelerate Baltimore is running a contest offering $25,000 in seed money and three months of advice and free rent at the Emerging Technology Centers to six startups capable of bringing their product to market with the program’s three months. The winners also get access to potential investors.

If you are interested, you’d better hurry, though, since the contest deadline is Dec. 31. Applications can be found on Accelerate Baltimore’s website www.acceleratebaltimore.com.

San Francisco, we’re coming. Of course, you are ready for the biotech onslaught. The cab drivers, hotel people, cops, security dudes, restaurant and bar staff—you all know the drill come January.

So what about all the healthcare industry capitalists? Are you ready to make the most of this week when all the decision makers and big investors are together in about a five-block radius?

Baltimore health care WellDoc plans to ring up $20 million in new funding.

WellDoc, which develops tools to help patients manage their diabetes, expects to close on the round shortly, co-founder Ryan Sysko said Friday. The latest round will put their total funding at around the $50 million mark.

While the fights and fumbles over the Affordable Care Act dominated headlines in 2013, the year was also heady with advances in biomedicine. In April, President Obama announced an ambitious federal initiative to map the activity of all the neurons in a brain circuit or, ideally, a whole brain. The $100 million Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) project will support neuroscientists, nanotechnologists, and others who propose to develop new technologies that can monitor thousands of neurons simultaneously.

The hope is that such new innovations could help neuroscientists understand the biological origin of cognition and perception and speed the development of treatments for disorders such as autism or post-traumatic stress disorder. There was remarkable progress in the field of neuroscience this year, but researchers still struggle to understand and treat the brain.

HIMSS is working with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, through HHS' Innovator in Residence program, to develop a strategy for nationwide patient data matching.

HIMSS is currently recruiting an innovator in residence to work toward an implementation plan for the near-term deployment of consistent patient data matching, building on the work of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and other healthcare partners.

Former Microsoft executive Kurt DelBene will take over day-to-day responsibility for the smooth running of HealthCare.gov. The government’s insurance marketplace is just recovering from the pain of a bungled launch. Jeff Zients, who is credited for bringing it back on track, is about to start his new job as a director of the National Economic Council.

DelBene has agreed to stay at HealthCare.gov for at least through the first six months of the year. His stint begins Dec. 18.

On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration approved a pill called Orenitram, to treat pulmonary arterial hypertension. It is an oral version of an injected drug called Remodulin, which treats the same disease. According to Mark Schoenebaum at ISI Group, the approval is “an enormous surprise — arguably, one of the top 10 biggest upside surprises in the history of the biotech sector.”

Why? Well, for one thing, Orenitram’s benefit isn’t that compelling. The FDA-approved labeling for the product characterizes the treatment effect as “small.” And the FDA had already rejected it twice, in March and October 2012. It seemed nearly impossible that the medicine would be approved  without additional data. Yet that’s exactly what has happened.

We have the sharks for an all healthcare Shark Tank, now we need the startups. Although someone pointed out on Twitter that Vinod Khosla should be in this group, and it’s true, he should be. So with that addition, what entrepreneurs should be pitching to this group on Friday night?

Deanna, Stephanie, Amanda and I each nominated companies. Here are the criteria:

• Solution must address a need-to-solve problem, not a nice-to-solve 
• CEO or founder must give a good pitch 
• Idea must be relatively understandable for a general audience

Montgomery County’s own Sanaria, a emerging biotech company dedicated to the creation of a Malaria vaccine, was named the Verl Zanders Emerging Business of the Year by the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce.

The award was accepted by CEO Dr. Stephen L. Hoffman during an awards dinner on November 21.

Many medical scientists feel most comfortable at the laboratory bench, developing hypotheses, testing ideas, and running experiments. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH), too, almost exclusively funds this type of hypothesis-driven basic research.

However, bringing a drug, diagnostic tool, or medical device to market requires a lot more than basic research. The problem, scientists say, is that federal funding runs out long before a potential product is ready for investors. “If you've made a discovery with NIH grant money and you want to run some studies in a mouse model, those can be expensive, and it's not the type of study that NIH reviewers typically like. There's this gap in the ability to get money”, says Paul DiCorleto, director of Cleveland Clinic's Lerner Research Institute.

It’s hard to believe that nearly two years after it picked its inaugural class of entrepreneurs to respond to trends in healthcare. Now the health IT accelerator in New York  Blueprint Health is gearing up for class number five.

Looking back on its first graduates, Dr.  Brad Weinberg, who co-founded  the program with Mathew Farkash, noted that seven of the original nine companies are still in business. Five are generating revenue.  Looking at its alumni of 39 companies with which it’s invested, 36 of them are still in operation and 80 percent are turning a profit — a record he would challenge other healthcare accelerators to beat.

GSK announced a $1 million dollar prize for innovation in the emerging area of bioelectronics research. This prize will be awarded to the scientists who are first able to solve the challenge of creating a miniaturised, fully implantable device that can read, write and block the body’s electrical signals to treat disease and it is hoped that after finding a solution to this challenge will open and accelerate significant avenues of research in this field.

The scientific challenge was developed and agreed by a group of approximately 150 leading scientists from around the world, brought together by GSK’S Bioelectronics R&D unit at a summit this week in New York. Collectively, summit attendees agreed that if they create an implantable wireless device that can record, stimulate and block neural signals to a single organ, it will be a critical factor enabling the onward development of bioelectronic medicines as a future therapeutic reality.

This year, conversations about creativity and innovation have been happening all over the world. And while there's still a long way to go, we're excited to see just how many schools and communities are embracing the importance of letting a child’s imagination run wild.

A fantastic example of this is when five-year-old Miles Scott became Batkid in San Francisco-turned-Gotham City this November.