Biotech

Mark A. Vulcan - a tax attorney and CPA - had something of a rock star moment when he rolled into work at the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development's Baltimore offices yesterday morning just before 8. There, crowding in the lobby at 217 E. Redwood St., were more than a dozen slightly bedraggled biotech executives, some of whom had slept on the sidewalk, and all of whom wanted an audience with Vulcan. At 9 a.m., he began accepting applications for a state tax credit program worth up to $250,000 apiece for eligible biotechnology business investors.

After 16 years of guiding MedImmune Inc. from a struggling Gaithersburg biotech to one of the world's most profitable, Chief Executive David M. Mott is stepping down for personal reasons, the company's London-based parent, AstraZeneca PLC, said yesterday. Tony Zook, CEO of AstraZeneca's North American business based in Wilmington, Del., will succeed Mott when he leaves at the end of July. The announcement surprised local biotech representatives, who look to Mott, 42, as a role model in an industry the state considers among its best hopes for economic growth.

In trumpeting his new biotechnology initiative last week, Gov. Martin O'Malley used the word "leverage" eight times to describe the nine-point plan. Clearly, a governor proposing a new, billion-dollar program during a time of fiscal austerity wants Marylanders to see this spending as an investment - one expected to produce a healthy return. He makes a strong case: If figures from the state Department of Business and Economic Development are correct, the state's $1.1 billion commitment will attract an estimated $6.3 billion in federal and private-sector money.

Three days after Gov. Martin O'Malley announced a $1.1 billion initiative for the biotechnology industry, Comptroller Peter Franchot announced yesterday that he would advocate that the state pension fund to invest about $1 billion in life sciences and "green" technology such as renewable energy and environmentally sensitive building materials. Franchot, who is vice chairman of the Maryland State Retirement and Pension System, said he would recommend that about $500 million be invested in the biotechnology industry, particularly in Maryland.

It's as plain as the steely resolve in Gov. Martin O'Malley's eyes that something interesting is about to happen to the Department of Business and Economic Development. The governor didn't tell the department he wanted to overhaul it until just before he said so in a speech last month, according to people familiar with the situation, so O'Malley and DBED Secretary David W. Edgerley haven't been reading from the same PowerPoint plan. The risk is that, like governors before him, O'Malley will turn Business and Economic Development Department into a deal-chasing boiler room for planning ribbon-cutting announcements with out-of-state companies.

CoGenesys Inc., a Rockville biotech spun off from Human Genome Sciences Inc. in 2006, is being sold for $400 million to Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Inc., an Israeli company that specializes in generic drugs, the companies announced yesterday. In a statement, Shlomo Yanai, Teva's president and chief executive officer, said Teva had decided it needed to grow in biopharmaceuticals, and was interested in CoGenesys for its "breadth of technologies and the depth of their team and pipeline."

MedImmune has been able to double the number of potential products in development to 100 since the Maryland biotech was acquired last spring by drug giant AstraZeneca, David M. Mott, MedImmune's president and chief executive officer, said yesterday. Since AstraZeneca agreed to pay $15.6 billion for MedImmune in April, the Gaithersburg biotech has been put in charge of the British firm's biologics units -- Cambridge Antibody Technology in England and a research facility in Hayward, Calif.

United Therapeutics Corp. shares soared more than 35 percent to a six-year high yesterday after the Silver Spring biotech announced that it successfully completed the final trials on a drug developed to treat a debilitating lung disease. United Therapeutics said it plans in the first half of next year to ask the Food and Drug Administration for approval to bring the drug, Viveta, to market. Viveta is an inhaled form of the drug Remodulin, which has been the company's chief moneymaker over the years.

It's hard to hear Drew Greenblatt over the steady - and deafening - ka-chink, ka-chunk of machines snipping steel wire at his factory in Southwest Baltimore. So he turns it up a notch. "That's for Baxter," he hollers, pointing to a giant box full of special-ordered wire baskets ready to be shipped to the drugmaker. Nearby, an employee welds wire for biotech bigwig Amgen Inc. as Greenblatt ticks off a Who's Who list of his other pharmaceutical customers: Pfizer, Roche, Novartis. It is a client roster that is nothing like the one he had when he bought the business - Marlin Steel Wire Products - in 1998 and focused on selling metal baskets to bagel shops for displaying their products.

Donald Gresham is willing to vacate his home of 20 years, but he will never leave East Baltimore, his lifelong neighborhood. "It's where I grew up, where I was educated, where my history is and where I am staying," Gresham told a crowd of nearly 100 gathered yesterday for a housing conference at the East Baltimore Community Resource Center. "I don't plan to go anywhere." But, like many in the crowd, Gresham will have to go somewhere. His two-bedroom rowhouse on Chester Street is slated for demolition.