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In addition to exploring existing drugs for multiple indications, United Therapeutics (UTHR) has been actively investing in research and development (or R&D) programs involving novel technologies. These are targeted toward pulmonary arterial hypertension (or PAH), cancer, and the orphan disease bronchopulmonary dysplasia (or BPD).

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Submit your proposal today for the “Make Your Medical Device Pitch for Kids!” competition. Up to six prizes totaling $250,000 will be awarded to the winning presentations at the 4th Annual Pediatric Surgical Innovation Symposium in Washington, DC hosted by the Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation at Children’s National Health System.

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RegeneRx Biopharmaceuticals, Inc. (OTCQB: RGRX) ("the Company" or "RegeneRx"), a clinical-stage drug development company focused on tissue protection, repair and regeneration, today announced that it has received notice of Intent to Grant a patent from the European Patent Office for the treatment of patients with MS. The patent covers use of the Company's proprietary molecule Thymosin beta 4 (Tβ4) in a composition for treating or reducing deterioration of, injury or damage to tissue due to MS. The patent expiry is January 13, 2026.

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Maryland is a leader in National Institutes of Health funding for biomedical research and in venture capital investment for bioscience-related companies, according to a recent study from the Biotechnology Innovation Organization.

The bioscience industry employs more than 34,000 people in Maryland, and the average annual wage for a bioscience worker in the United States reached $94,543 in 2014, according to the report.

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The National Creativity Network (NCN) is pleased to announce the winner of the 2016 USA Creative Business Cup – Kitchology of Germantown, MD. Kitchology (www.kitchology.com) is the first company to create an integrated social cooking platform for the estimated 160 million people dealing with special diets and the suppliers who sell to them. It allows consumers to overcome the limitations imposed by food restrictions, and makes it easy for like-minded cooks to find each other. Kitchology applies machine learning to nutrition science, profiling and social curation to help the home cook match and modify recipes to satisfy the challenges of food allergies, intolerances, and special diets.  Kitchology enables meal planning based on ingredients previously used and explored, personalized ingredient substitutions, purchasing with intelligent shopping lists, step-by-step cooking, and fosters influencer relationships.

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Eli Lilly ($LLY) has been doubling down on its efforts to invent new animal vaccines--opening a 48,000-square-foot research facility near its Indianapolis headquarters, for example, that its animal health division, Elanco, will use for R&D. On the production-animal side of the business, Elanco’s bread and butter until now has been cattle and swine products, but the company is looking to expand into a rapidly growing corner of food production where it has had virtually no presence: aquaculture.

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With concerns over a continued Zika outbreak growing, the Food and Drug Administration has given Roche Holdings emergency approval to use one of its Zika blood testing kits.

The approval, which lasts as long as the emergency is ongoing, will allow for testing of the virus through Roche's LightMix Zika rRT-PCR test, which has not been approved by the FDA yet.

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Thomas Luginbill knows what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. He spearheaded the founding of a campus organization when he was an undergraduate, helped start a family-run contracting business and co-created a start-up technology venture while studying for an MBA. This self-described "serial entrepreneur" has been named as director of the College of Southern Maryland's newly formed Entrepreneur and Innovation Institute (EII).

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Johns Hopkins Medicine has launched the Johns Hopkins Wilmer Zika Center, where medical professionals focus on caring for patients with the Zika virus. The center is touted as the first multidisciplinary Zika center in the world.

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While driving and listening to National Public Radio one day, Justin Kao heard about the discovery of a “sweet tooth gene” that makes you more likely to crave sweets. “Oh my God,” thought Kao, who has always loved cookies. “I would pay $5 to know if I had that.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.