Biotech

When MedImmune Inc. agreed to be purchased by AstraZeneca PLC over the weekend, the state was served notice that it will essentially lose its flagship biotech - the one officials have relied on for years as a selling tool to draw similar businesses. The Gaithersburg company's profits and high-profile products (FluMist and blockbuster treatment Synagis for babies) have led governors to herald it as an industry leader, mayors to praise the jobs it provides and economic development leaders to tout MedImmune as the example all biotechs should follow.

Seeking to allay a key community concern, officials announced last night that they were lifting eligibility restrictions for extra financial aid for homeowners who would be displaced by a proposed East Baltimore biotech park. The announcement of the change was made at the last of four City Council hearings on legislation that would allow the city to seize up to 3,300 properties for the biotech park and hundreds of units of new and renovated housing units around the Johns Hopkins medical complex.

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.

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. -- In this town, Amgen Inc. rules. It's the biggest private employer here. Its 8,300 local employees, known as "Amgenites," make an estimated average annual salary of $162,000. Its sleek corporate headquarters with sweeping views of the Santa Monica Mountains looks more like a college campus, and frequent late afternoon "fermentation parties" offer free beer for all. In this city of nearly 127,000, the biotech giant and its well-heeled work force have kept the area's economy humming.

Facing increased competition for its main product - the HPV Test - and questions about its plans for growth, Gaithersburg's Digene Corp. agreed yesterday to be acquired by a foreign company in a $1.6 billion cash and stock deal designed to boost the local biotech firm's international sales effort and speed technology development. Under the agreement, Netherlands-based Qiagen N.V. would pay $61.25 for Digene shares - up to $880 million - on a first-come, first-served basis. That represents a 37 percent premium over Digene's $44.77 closing price Friday on the Nasdaq.

For Intellitech Inc., yesterday's opening of the MidAtlantic Bio/Med Conference and Exhibition downtown was akin to a debutante attending the annual town ball - and coming away with four marriage proposals. The Westminster company - which over the past year had shifted its business from designing products for others to making machinery for the biotechnology and pharmaceutical markets - wasn't sure what to expect from the trade show visit. Even so, it brought along both versions of its new "I-Fill" in-line filling machines, one priced at $30,000 and the other at $49,500.

MedImmune Inc. announced yesterday that it has started a venture fund to invest in biotechnology companies, a move that promises to push as much as $100 million out MedImmune's doors and into cash-strapped young firms over the next three years. The Gaithersburg biopharmaceutical company has been selectively investing in biotech companies for some time, a practice that gives it an early look at medicines and technologies that could - if successful - become part of its offerings. But MedImmune Ventures Inc., to be headed by MedImmune founder and Chairman Wayne T. Hockmeyer, will formalize the process for reviewing such investments and is likely to increase the pace at which the company is making them.

ReceptorBase Inc., a tiny Baltimore developer of gene databases and software for drug discovery, is putting off plans to hire five people. Publicly traded Guilford Pharmaceuticals Inc., scraping to save cash, laid off 60 last week after deciding to suspend human testing of three of the five new drugs it had in clinical trials. Columbia-based Cylex Inc. is pinching pennies by having employees make some sales brochures for its just-approved immune-function test, rather than hiring an outside firm to do them.

After eight years of struggling to make a success out of MiddleBrook Pharmaceuticals, chief executive and founder Edward M. Rudnic agreed to step down after a management shake-up and a $100 million investment from a private Chicago investment firm. It's the company's latest effort to bring its version of a time-released antibiotic to market. The announcement, made late Tuesday, took a punishing toll on the company's stock, which fell $1.55 - 50.5 percent - yesterday to close at $1.52. Investors had been counting on the ailing Germantown biotech to find a buyer and cash out. Few seemed to expect that MiddleBrook would continue to operate independently, in large part because the company faced such a tough time on its own during the past few years.

In his column on Dow Jones' Marketwatch.com early this week, Nate Pile advised that Martek Biosciences Corp. of Columbia was a good biotech investment on his "list of core stocks." By yesterday, however, the author of Nate's Notes had acknowledged that he might need to take "a step back and kind of re-evaluate." That's because Martek stock plummeted 46 percent yesterday, the largest percentage drop on the Nasdaq stock market, closing at $32.49, down from $60.08 a day earlier. The shares fell after the company announced after the market closed Wednesday that its revenue projections would be off by about $60 million for the rest of the fiscal year, through October.