Biotech

Wearing a white lab coat and focused on handling instruments in a gleaming new classroom, Pauline Samuel couldn't be further away from the world of West Baltimore. Beyond this new lab where she intently studies biotechnology instrumentation techniques, Samuel works nights to support her five children. She still grieves for the two brothers she lost to Baltimore street violence in the past three years. Yet Samuel is also optimistic about her future. She's received financial aid from Baltimore City Community College and she's taking classes at its new Life Sciences Institute, a program based in the University of Maryland's biotechnology research park.

Profectus BioSciences Inc., a Baltimore-based biotechnology company, said Wednesday that it won a $5.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to support the development of a vaccine for a pair of contagious and deadly viruses that the U.S. government has classified as biological and agricultural threats. The viruses are found in other parts of the world. The viruses — Nipah and Hendra — are closely related and cause respiratory and encephalitic disease in humans and animals.

Gus G. Sentementes' July 11 article ("What Baltimore's biotech industry needs: an 'anchor'"), addressed some very important requirements for the growth of Baltimore's biotech industry. I agree that Baltimore needs and deserves to have an 'anchor' to help attract biotech companies. However, our goal cannot be how Baltimore can beat Montgomery County, or vice versa. The competition we need to be looking at in biotech is not Montgomery County versus Baltimore; it is our region versus others throughout the country.

A proposal to speed the approval of new prescription drugs has patient advocates and biotech firms — including many based in Maryland — hoping that Congress will deliver a rare dose of bipartisanship this year. Lawmakers are proposing a 6 percent increase in the fees that pharmaceutical firms pay the Food and Drug Administration to offset the cost of approving new drugs. If the measure is not signed into law by the end of September, the FDA would lose the ability to charge any fees and be forced to lay off 2,000 workers, significantly slowing review times.

RECENT NEWS that Maryland slipped from third to fourth among the nation's biotechnology centers hit hard in a state well positioned to pin a lot of its hopes for economic growth on emerging high-tech industries. But that ranking, by the Ernst & Young accounting firm, was based on the number of biotech firms that have achieved their first round of financing, a measure on which North Carolina moved ahead in the last year. By perhaps more meaningful standards - total revenue, research spending and assets - Maryland remains solidly in third place, behind biotech's giants, San Francisco and Boston.

BALTIMORE STANDS to cash in on the booming commercialization of biotech research with a privately run, $800 million biotech park near the Johns Hopkins medical campus. But even as plans for the proposed park progress, the Brookings Institution warns of the difficulties of achieving the dream. In a report released last week, the think tank identified the Washington-Baltimore region as one of only nine clusters in the nation that are having success with biotech commercialization. Unfortunately, research prowess is not enough in the risky world of biotech business.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Building the proposed east-side biotechnology park may prove to be a watershed event in Baltimore's economic history. Biotech companies have the potential to generate high-quality jobs and create a strong local capital base. Further, they often graduate managers who go on to found successive companies, amplifying the benefit. Alarmingly, though, those involved with the project have articulated a Field of Dreams philosophy: "If you build it, they will come." They believe that once the real estate is developed, biotech companies will flock to East Baltimore in order to bask in the Johns Hopkins' intellectual glow.

THINK ABOUT the importance of this scene: Mayor Martin O'Malley, U.S. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, Del. Hattie N. Harrison and Del. Clarence Davis standing together on a desolate East Baltimore lot, promising to work together to enable a sweeping renaissance in the area. They were smiling. They were hopeful. No need to pinch yourself; this was no dream. The bitter and defeatist political rivalries that have helped keep East Baltimore a slum may finally be waning. All the interested parties have now agreed on the ground rules for the development of Johns Hopkins Medical Center's planned biotech park.

ChekTec Corp. has all the credentials of an up-and-coming biotechnology company: No products, no profits, fewer than 20 employees and a chief executive who answers the phone.But unlike many biotech companies that have lured investors with promises of dramatic new products and profits, ChekTec of Baltimore has kept most of its discoveries quiet until recently."If the company was a slick prospectus and a pile of press releases, I would have walked a long time ago," said Dr. Gary R. Pasternack, who with Dr. Francis P. "Frank" Kuhajda, is responsible for the cutting edge research that provides the company's foundation.

Gov. William Donald Schaefer has agreed to include $2 million in the state's capital budget for design work on a proposed state-owned center where small biotechnology companies could share manufacturing space, sources familiar with the project said.Proponents have said that the proposed center, the total cost of which would be about $22 million, would help Maryland biotechnology companies clear critical hurdles in developing new drugs.Jared Cohon, an administrator of the Johns Hopkins University and a leading backer of the proposal, said the center probably would be at the Bayview Research Campus in East Baltimore or at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County in Catonsville.

Ken Malone and the board members of his startup biotech company gathered in a conference room at the University of Southern Mississippi last October to make a gut-wrenching decision. Ablitech Inc.'s funding was slowly drying up, and it couldn't find new sources in Mississippi. If the company stayed, it would wither away. The only option left for Ablitech, they decided, was for the fledgling company to move. "We called our shareholders together and said, 'Look, if we stay here, we're going to die,'" Malone recalled recently.

The Maryland Industrial Partnerships Program has approved $4.2 million in high-technology and biotechnology grants to 15 area companies. The money will be used on various projects, including the development of drugs to treat breast cancer , staph infections and malaria. Other projects include the creation of a heated flooring system for chicken houses and a plug-in hybrid car. MIPS gives grants to companies with commercially promising technology and products. The companies join with researchers at Maryland's public universities.

The state's biotech tax credits drew more than 180 applications within three minutes of the window opening for the $8 million available this fiscal year, the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development said Thursday. The credits go to investors pumping money into fledgling Maryland biotechnology firms in need of capital. The credits will be handed out on a first-come, first-served basis to those that qualify — thus the rush. Initial credit certifications will be issued within 30 calendar days, DBED said.

In a conference room in downtown Baltimore, F. Blix Winston compared the Food and Drug Administration to a "slow-moving bulldog. " "You don't want to get bitten," Winston, an expert on the federal regulation of medical devices, told a crowd of about 50 entrepreneurs and academics recently. "You don't want to tangle with the FDA," he warned. "The FDA has the power to come in and padlock a company's doors. " Winston's presentation was part of a new approach by Maryland economic development officials to promote the state's life sciences industry.

The Maryland Biotechnology Center said Wednesday that nine companies will receive a total of $1.8 million in grants to help bring their products to market and create new jobs. Each company will receive roughly $200,000 for research and product development. The program, part of the state's Department of Business and Economic Development, is in its second year and is part of Gov. Martin O'Malley's effort to expand the state's biotechnology industry through 2020. The nine companies that received funding are Neuronascent, of Clarksville; Noble Life Sciences, of Rockville; Unither Virology, of Silver Spring; Paragon, of Baltimore; Telcare, of Bethesda; Diogenix, of Gaithersburg; 20/20 GeneSystems, of Rockville; A&G Pharmaceutical, of Columbia; and Plasmonix, of Baltimore.

It's nice — but rare — when shares of both companies rise on the announcement of a corporate takeover. Last month, DSM NV said it would buy Columbia-based Martek Biosciences for $1.1 billion in cash. Not only did Martek stock pop by more than 30 percent, reflecting the premium that Netherlands-based DSM agreed to pay over the shares' pre-announcement price; DSM rose by 4 percent, suggesting that its shareholders see the deal as sensible business and not a quixotic power grab by DSM boss Feike Sijbesma.

William A. Haseltine had a 55-acre, half-billion-dollar compound and a manufacturing plant built for his former biotech company, Human Genome Sciences, despite its having never brought a single product to market. With a facade made entirely of reflective glass, the six-story corporate headquarters juts into the sky almost invisibly. Inside, an atrium-style lobby has a lush garden and a 100-foot-long sculpture that depicts the birth of a protein. The floor is made of fossilized stone tile, and light filters through panels in the ceiling.

Another year, another disappointment for the industry that people keep calling the future of Maryland's economy. Last week, the best hope for one of the state's top biotechnology companies became a bust. Columbia-based Osiris Therapeutics disclosed that Prochymal, its stem-cell therapy for bone-marrow transplant patients, worked no better than a placebo in patient tests. Osiris stock fell by nearly half. The company founded in 1992 has never made money. It lost $150 million the last four years.

While some sectors of Maryland's economy struggle to shake free of the Great Recession, the biotechnology parks adjacent to Baltimore's two top teaching hospitals stubbornly continue to add laboratories, offices and — most importantly for the city — jobs. The gains have been both large and small, and not always along the path or at the pace envisioned when the parks were created. But the growth is unmistakable, fueled by the critical mass of expertise, resources and discoveries at both the Johns Hopkins and University of Maryland Baltimore medical campuses.

Gus G. Sentementes' July 11 article ("What Baltimore's biotech industry needs: an 'anchor'"), addressed some very important requirements for the growth of Baltimore's biotech industry. I agree that Baltimore needs and deserves to have an 'anchor' to help attract biotech companies. However, our goal cannot be how Baltimore can beat Montgomery County, or vice versa. The competition we need to be looking at in biotech is not Montgomery County versus Baltimore; it is our region versus others throughout the country.