Today’s medicines can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. The story of how two companies set prices for their costly new drugs suggests that the way we determine the value of such treatments will help decide the future of our health-care system.

Phil Magrogan, PMP, SCP4, ITIL Senior Program Manager Leidos

Agile represents a widely adopted set of principles that apply to small scale teams – typically 7 to 9 developers. Several authors have published frameworks, techniques, and methods for applying agile principles to large organizations – over 100 developers. Now that we have a few years of experience in applying agile to large scale organizations it is time to look back at what works and what doesn’t work so that large organizations can leverage good practices and avoid pitfalls performing with agile at scale.

Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca's agreement to sell much of its antibiotics business won't impact operations at MedImmune, its Gaithersburg-based research and development arm, officials confirmed Wednesday.

Before we start, long time readers know, we have no interest in trying to influence your political views or voting allegiance (not that we could). So please don't look for "hidden meanings" or agendas.  If we have something to convey, we will come right out and say it.   

We could have done several SBIR Insiders over the eight weeks, but none of them would have had much value because every time I thought we had something important to report, the story would change and the relevance of the Insider issue would have been moot.

Tans are fading, school is starting, football is about to take over our televisions, and the MCEDC is gearing up.  It’s time to bring you up to date with the current roster of all-stars:

Steve Klasko, president of Thomas Jefferson University and CEO of Jefferson Health, is the author of  We Can Fix Healthcare: The Future Is Now, with Wharton adjunct professor Gregory P. Shea and Michael Hoad. In the book, the authors propose 12 disruptive transformations to the health care industry.

Klasko stopped by the Knowledge@Wharton Show on Sirius XM channel 111 with Nishad Rahman, a medical student at Jefferson, to talk about this changing industry.

In an ongoing effort to improve the experience of doing business in and/or with Montgomery County, County Executive Ike Leggett is inviting the business community to identify opportunities for streamlining and simplifying rules and regulations for businesses, and for improving the County government's services to businesses. Your anonymous and confidential feedback will help us identify areas where change will have a positive impact. Thank you for participating.

Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca's agreement to sell much of its antibiotics business won't impact operations at MedImmune, its Gaithersburg-based research and development arm, officials confirmed Wednesday.

More and more big firms are bringing young talent in-house in the hope that they will bring fresh ideas along with them and infuse new vigor into their companies. German pharma giant Bayer is also following this trend.

Health systems in developed countries face a twofold challenge: ensuring financial sustainability and improving quality. Digitization can help health systems achieve both these objectives and unlock substantial value through lower spending and superior healthcare delivery.

After decades of inconclusive results, researchers backed by Pfizer and Massachusetts General Hospital revealed that they had identified several genetic markers associated with depression earlier this month. It was the largest study of its kind, using data from more than 120,000 people.

Twenty accomplished female life sciences executives will comprise the first ever cohort of Women In Bio’s Boardroom Ready program, the organization announced today. The women will spend five days this fall at George Washington University completing a new executive-level board certification training program to prepare them to join corporate Boards of Directors.

In 2011, a supercomputer won $1 million on Jeopardy! In 2016, that same supercomputer is tackling a challenge quantified not in millions of dollars but in millions of cancer patients.

The goal is to use Watson’s natural language processing to mine the medical literature and a patient’s records to provide treatment advice. And this month the Watson computer system is drastically expanding its reach—from one hospital in Thailand to six in India and a planned 21 more in China.

Supernus announced that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted tentative approval to the supplemental New Drug Application (sNDA) proposing a label expansion for Trokendi XR (topiramate) extended-release capsules to include prophylaxis of migraine headache in adults.

Precision Medicine is gathering pace, driven by leaders from across healthcare, academia, Big Pharma, government, technology innovators and more. In the past year the investment of both time and resources into this exciting new area has grown exponentially with exciting projects and initiatives springing up across the globe.

For the first time Phacilitate has gathered all of these influencers and industry innovators together into the Top 50 Big Data Influencers in Precision Medicine eBook.

Chevy Chase venture fund New Enterprise Associates upped its bet on ThreatQuotient, a Reston-based cybersecurity analytics start-up, in a $12 million investment announced Tuesday.

ThreatQuotient operates a set of data analytics tools for corporate cybersecurity analysts, meant to help sort through the millions of data points that might predict the next hack. The company was founded in 2013 by two technologists working out of AOL’s Fishbowl Labs incubator in Sterling, Va., and chief executive John Czupak joined in late 2015.

The company, which employs more than 300 people at its plant in Ulverston, was praised for its work helping tackle diseases in both the western and developing world.

This list appeared in prestigious American publication Fortune, which has its headquarters in New York City.

The Institute of Human Virology (IHV) at the University of Maryland School of Medicine announced today a $14.4 million grant from the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to tackle a significant scientific global challenge in HIV vaccine research – the inability to produce long-lasting antibodies to protect against HIV infection. The announcement was made today by Robert C. Gallo, MD, The Homer & Martha Gudelsky Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Director, Institute of Human Virology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, and his colleagues George Lewis, PhD, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, Director Division of Vaccine Research, Institute of Human Virology, University of Maryland School of Medicine and Anthony DeVico, PhD, Professor of Medicine, Division of Vaccine Research, Institute of Human Virology, University of Maryland School of Medicine. IHV’s grant collaborators include Guido Silvestri, MD at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center of Emory University and Warner Greene, MD, PhD, of the Gladstone Institute of Virology & Immunology at the University of California at San Francisco.

The Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine received a $14.4 million grant for HIV research.

The grant, awarded by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), will fund research aimed at tackling a significant scientific challenge in HIV vaccine research – the inability to produce long-lasting antibodies to protect against the infection.

New treatments are needed for severe asthmatics who do not respond to standard therapy with inhaled steroids, especially those with a “type 2 low” phenotype, such as individuals with neutrophil-predominant inflammation. This solicitation is for the development and early commercialization of an inhalational formulation of the 5A apolipoprotein A-I (apoA-I) mimetic peptide that can be administered to asthmatic subjects in Phase I clinical trials and subsequently developed into a new treatment for severe asthma.

Proposals will be due October 21, 5 pm and there will be a pre-proposal webinar on August 24, 2 pm (http://bit.ly/FY17ContractsWebinar) for companies who may be interested in applying."

This free event brought to you by BioHealth Innovation is to gather interested small businesses seeking funding from the NCI SBIR grants program.

• Connect with NCI SBIR program managers
• Hear about the current NCI contract solicitation
• Learn about additional support from BioHealth Innovation

When: Wednesday, September 7, 2016 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM

Where:Germantown Innovation Center 27201 Goldenrod Lane Germantown, MD 20876

RSVP: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Attendance is limitied to BioHealth companies. The parking at the GIC can handle 20 non-resident companies labeled in the GIC reserve spaces. Others will be ticketed.

More and more people agree: cybersecurity is in our region’s DNA and can continue to be a boom for greater Washington.

But venture capital is pivotal in providing the accelerant for rapid growth of technology companies, and it I fear that the lack of sufficient risk capital is strangling some promising startups.

Venture capital (VC) financing fuels our future by investing in small, early-stage companies and projects that may be destined to become the next Apple or Google. A new report from Martin Prosperity Institute shows venture capital is highly concentrated by industry. The top five industries (in order) are as follows: software, biotechnology, media and entertainment, medical devices and equipment and information technology services.  According to the report, which uses detailed data from Thomson Reuters, these top five VC industries receive $25 billion in investment—more than three-quarters of the overall pie. If expanded to include the top 10 industries, we can account for more than 90 percent of all VC investment. The report focuses on the intersection of industry and geography for all VC investments.

You came to Hopkins in 2009 and now your contract has been extended through 2024. That’s a long time!

The board invited me to extend my term at Johns Hopkins, and I jumped at the opportunity. My wife and I love Hopkins and Baltimore, and couldn’t be happier knowing that we will be able to spend the next eight years being part of this amazing place, including, of course, strengthening Johns Hopkins’ relationship with Baltimore.

Joe Biden's cancer moonshot might not be as far-fetched as you think.

Why? Because multiple U.S. agencies recently took steps to make the cancer moonshot a reality by further strengthening patent rights.

Thursday September 22, 2016 from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM EDT

Johns Hopkins Montgomery County Campus is also a site for the popular Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. Geared toward retirees, these non-credit classes cover topics including opera, literature, history, politics and more.

The campus is home to approximately 35 research companies and entrepreneurs. Scientists on campus are studying cervical cancer, Alzheimer's disease, cell therapy, proteins and other health issues. Other companies focus on technology, medical devices and consulting services. The Rockville Science Center's administrative offices are located here. Start-up companies, second-stage businesses and more established companies are welcome.

Get Real Health’s InstantPHR® Powers Patient Engagement Tool for Saskatchewan Residents: eHealth Saskatchewan pilot provides 1,000+ residents centralized access to their health records.

Rockville, Maryland-based Get Real Health furthered its mission of empowering patients across the globe by developing a pilot program for eHealth Saskatchewan targeted at improving access to health data for residents of the province, giving patients a real-time view of their overall health.

Illumina Inc. rose as much as 8 percent to its highest level since December after a report that Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. made a $30 billion offer for the rival maker of gene-sequencing equipment.

On the 10th anniversary of a project that redefined the landscape of Kendall Square, developer Alexandria Real Estate Equities is gearing up to transform yet another area into a mecca for the biotech industry.

A new book by Andrea LaFountain, CEO of Mind Field Solutions, looks at the science of patient behavior to answer the questions that big data cannot. LaFountain stopped by the Knowledge@Wharton Show on Sirius XM channel 111 to talk about the book, How Patients Think: A Science-Based Strategy for Patient Engagement and Population Health.

An edited transcript of the conversation follows.

Knowledge@Wharton: In this age of technology and big data, why is there still that disconnect between healthcare providers and patients?

Former University System of Maryland chancellor William "Brit" Kirwan will lead a new commission to make recommendations about funding formulas and innovative strategies used in public education in Maryland.

The Commission on Innovation and Excellence in Education will revisit the equity of the state's K-12 education funding formula, examining the alignment between K-12 education requirements and higher education expectations, Kirwan said. It will also review successful innovations in education nationally and globally. Gov. Larry Hogan and leaders of the General Assembly announced Kirwan's appointment to chair the commission Aug. 9.

In case you haven’t heard, BioBuzz just announced the launch of the BioHive – an Online Community and Collaboration Platform that is now open to general public. The BioHive will help enable all the components in our regional biotech ecosystem to work more efficiently to accelerate innovation, collaboration, workforce and growth opportunities.

Categorized into industry specific networks, the BioHive was built to bring together this region digitally and cultivate relationships that otherwise would not have been created due to company, role, geography, etc.

Please help us by pointing your coworkers and peers to the BioHive tab at http://www.biobuzz.net/ or directly at https://biohive.breezio.com to learn more and register for free today for their own BioHive account.

Working to build a stronger Biotech community has been BioBuzz’s mission for more than six years, so they are very excited to bring to you this great resource – so come join me on the BioHive!

Symbiomix today announced it is accelerating plans for the commercial launch of Solosec™ (secnidazole) oral granules following the presentation of clinical results from the second pivotal trial for the treatment of bacterial vaginosis (BV) with the hiring of Taunia Markvicka, PharmD, MBA, as Chief Commercial Officer. Symbiomix had a significant presence at the Infectious Diseases Society for Obstetrics and Gynecology (IDSOG) Annual Meeting in Annapolis, Maryland this past weekend with both the oral data presentation and sponsorship of a panel discussion on emerging diagnosis and treatment recommendations for BV. In addition, the company announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued conditional acceptance of the proprietary name Solosec™. Solosec™ was previously known as SYM-1219.

The Maryland Life Sciences Advisory Board (LSAB) is developing recommendations to support the continued growth of the BioHealth industry in Maryland. The LSAB Working Group focused on Workforce and Access to Talent is seeking your input for their recommendations.

If you are involved with hiring/training employees, please take five minutes to complete this online survey by next Monday, August 22nd to have your feedback considered by the LSAB Workforce Working Group. (Please forward this survey to your HR manager/others if appropriate.)

Your input is valued. All responses will be kept confidential unless you ask for a member of the LSAB to contact you. If you have any questions or feedback for the other groups (Access to Capital, Technology Transfer, Foundational Support, Convergence of Bio and IT), please email the Maryland Department of Commerce at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Thank you for sharing your time and feedback.