Maryland?s new Life Sciences Advisory Board represents some of the “best and brightest” in the state, Gov. Martin O?Malley said as he named the board Friday, but among its 15 members, only three represent bioscience businesses and there are no venture capitalists.
Most of the appointees represent the world-famous public and private research institutions that employ half the 60,000 employees who work in the field, including Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland and the National Institutes of Health. Those institutions get $7.2 billion in federal research and development dollars, the highest per capita in the nation.
The new chairman, ThomasWatkins, president of Human Genome Sciences in Rockville, said the board would only be successful “if we reach beyond the individuals on the board. There?s a lot to be done here.”
“Maryland is a great place to grow any business, but particularly a great place to build a bioscience business,” Watkins said. “The task before us is to develop a comprehensive strategic plan to grow the life sciences in Maryland” and make the state more competitive.
“The fact that they are not represented on the board doesn?t mean that we won?t listen to them,” said David Edgerley, secretary of economic and business development.
Many of the ideas developed and patented at Maryland-based research institutions have been commercialized and brought to market by companies in other states.
The state allocated $6 million in biotechnology tax credits for companies in the field this fiscal year, and $5 million of that has already been given out to 20 companies, Edgerley said. “It says to me we need to do more,” Edgerley said. The state has more than 370 bioscience companies.
O?Malley advocated the legislation to create the board earlier this year after meeting with company executives in the field, Watkins said, and that shows the industry is “a strategic priority for Maryland.”
