Montgomery County and Baltimore will co-host Maryland’s first biotechnology hub, Gov. Martin O’Malley announced Monday.
The Maryland Biotechnology Center plans to centralize information about the state’s biotech industry — which includes more than 400 companies and 50 research institutes — in the two new offices.
“It will integrate all of the biotechnology activities within the state and make it possible for people interested in biotechnology to invest in it or to move a company here — and to get the information they need,” said Norma Allewell, a member of the state Life Sciences Advisory Board, which recommended the center to O’Malley. “Equally important, [the center] will help people outside the state who are interested in doing business in the state.”
The center would consolidate services offered by Maryland’s Technology Development Corp. and the Department of Business and Economic Development.
New programs developed by the Life Sciences Advisory Board encouraging entrepreneurship and investment also would be offered, DBED spokeswoman Karen Hood said.
The center’s $4.7 million budget for fiscal 2010 would include biotech programs, grants and event sponsorships, such as the annual BIO International Conference in Atlanta this week, she said.
Unlike the Technology Development Corp. and DBED, Hood said, the center “is really a more strategic focus on biotechnology — focused on growing Maryland’s bio industry.”
Allewell said the site for the Montgomery County offices was not finalized, but she guessed the location would be near Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation in Rockville — because that is where the governor announced the new center at a ceremony Monday morning. She said the center’s Baltimore offices probably would be in the state’s World Trade Center building.
Hood said O’Malley would announce the locations Wednesday.
About two-thirds of the state’s biotechnology companies are in Montgomery County, according to DBED. The county is also home to the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, Montgomery College/Germantown Science and Technology Park, and biotech companies MedImmune, Human Genome Sciences, Gene Logic and United Therapeutics.
