Another busy day in the news

I was so caught up with some of the news yesterday, that I missed a whole special section of the business pages in the FNP called Progress 2008.

This section contained features on many local companies we’ve covered in the past: Akonni, FiberCell Systems, SAIC-Frederick, SuperArray and Dynport.

As the Opening “Editorial” suggests:

There may be no more exciting industry than biotechnology in these opening years of the 21st Century.

Maryland has more than 350 biotech companies and Frederick is a growing hub for research, home to nearly 40 biotech firms.

Economic development is targeting this low-impact, high-potential area; our educators are gearing to train the next generation of workers for what is anticipated to be a booming sector.

Among the highlights of the feature on SAIC-Frederick called “Cutting Edge”:

• Science Application International Corp., or SAIC, has been a mainstay of Frederick’s biotech research community since 1972 when President Nixon’s declared the “War on Cancer”
• SAIC-Frederick employs about 1,770 people, and operates on the largest single research contract awarded by the Department of Health and Human Services.
• SAIC-Frederick occupies 68 acres and 116 buildings at Fort Detrick
• Working with about 800 employees of the National Cancer Institute, the company operates from basic research and experimental levels, up to clinical trials and vaccine production (in their new facility off Rt 85 adjacent to the Ballenger Creek waste water treatment plant).
• SAIC-Frederick is currently monitoring 300 clinical trials that are under way all around the world, from Africa to Southeast Asia, and in the United States as well
• The company is also managing test locations at 16 hospitals around the country to deliver the latest in cancer care to rural and underserved urban areas
• In a separate article in today’s FNP, the parent of SAIC-Frederick reported revenues for 2007 of $8.94 billion, up 11 percent from the previous fiscal year

Dynamic DynPort: Headquartered just off U.S. 15, the DVC building covers a total of 60,000 square feet in the small business park, paralleling Thomas Johnson Drive. With over 87,000 employees worldwide, according to senior manager of communications April Finnen, “DVC is a world-class provider of solutions for the development of biopharmaceutical products.” More than specializing in vaccines for biological defense, Finnen said more recently DVC has begun to specialize in chemical defense and emerging infectious diseases.

Don’t forget to check out their current openings HERE. Rumor has it that they’re also looking to hire a number of for paid students internships over the summer! The application deadline is Aprill 11th, so you don’t have much time. I also wanted to give the interns from Hood we have working here get a jump on the competition, so I didn’t let the news out earlier.

FiberCell Doing Well: Since I know the owners pretty well, not much I can add. I know that they are busy this week strumming up business in New England (I’ve heard there are a few decent Biotech & academic institutions up there) and then off to the Left Coast for more Business Development. Rumor has it they’re going to get a big order for some systems from one of those Pharmas in NE. I hope they do. All I know is that John needs to be here tomorrow with me to cut open the three HF systems I have running with my MSC which have (hopefully) differentiated into neurons using placental basement membrane extract as a matrix.

SuperArray: The company has become a thriving biotech firm that sells its products worldwide : So successful, rumor has it, that they’re looking at a brand new, larger facility. SuperArray is home to about 65 employees. Although still a small number in comparison to many other companies, SuperArray has no problem finding business. “Sales are increasing. We are making a name for ourselves,” says Heather Fox-Brashears (yet another former Life Tekker). SuperArray experienced an 85 percent increase in revenue from 2005 to 2006.  I hope to be able to use their Stem Cell products pretty soon, pending my results from this weeks FiberCell collaboration.  I had set up some experiments about a year ago, but I was not able to follow through on it so I owe them a visit.

And finally, Quick Draw about Akonni.   They have been in the news so much lately, I don’t know if there is much more to say about them, other than the fact that they’re doing pretty well, leasing more space and expanding.  Here’s something I didn’t know:  The company was founded in Russia in 1988 by Dr. Andrei Mirzabekov, the director of the Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow. The team was brought to the United States in 1995 and the technology’s license was acquired by Akonni in 2002.  They are about 25 people strong, but I look for them to add more pretty soon.

I also wanted to direct you to the North (or is that the West?) with the announcement that Washington County is opening a new incubator in Hagerstown. According to the Herald-Mail, Hagerstown CC “has opened 11 wet labs suitable for biotech research, with $1.3 million from the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development, Maryland Technology Development Corporation and the Washington County Commissioners”.  Sounds like people have caught on to the success of incubators elsewhere in the state.  Now if they start one in Ocean City…..

Tech Awards wrap-up

The Tech Awards last night was a pretty good time. Aside from running into a few people I hadn’t seen in a number of years, I also met a few new people. It’s all about Networking. I was hoping to post a few pictures, but will have to see what I’ve got. I forgot to grab my camera from the house when I left in the morning and made a quick dash into the house over lunch. I ran in the back door, grabbed the camera off the PC in my daughter’s room and right out the front door. Apparently, I left the back gate open and the slider into the back porch open a bit, too. When my wife got home from work she thought someone had broken in. I was just worried about waking up the dogs, because they would have wanted to got outside and get some attention. I didn’t realize until I got to Lynfield and took the camera out that the battery was critically low. Such are the hazards of teenage daughters. I forgot to plug it in last night, so the battery was still drained this morning and I couldn’t download the few pictures I took.

But this is supposed to be a post about the event and not a litany of lame excuses of why I didn’t post any pictures.

I learned that I am a poor prognosticator. The only award winner I guessed correctly was Akonni (Small business of the Year). I was pretty sure about that one, as they’ve made all the right moves. They have a fascinating product, with both military and health care uses, they’ve run the gamut of the various funding organizations and moved into the downtown historic district along Carrol Creek. Plus, they’re growing and hiring people and the new facility is really great.

And so the battle of Frederick last night was won by the IT guys, as both of the other winners were IT companies.

Firm of the year went to Regent Education Incorporated . According to Rick Harris, Executive Director of the Tech Alliance of the Tech Council of Maryland: “This company has revolutionized the way financial aid is analyzed and dispersed in the United States. It has seen growth by more than 300 percent, which is phenomenal, by any standard and their products are truly breakthrough technology. Regent is a model for how to start and grow a business to meet a need.”

Mike Gaver with GTI Federal took the Executive of the Year award. To be honest with you, I am not really sure about the “product” they provide, but can see from their web site that they have contracts with the General Services Administration (GSA), U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC), the State of Maryland, DHS, DOE, Navy, the State Department and the NIH to name a few.

There was a final award give to SAIC-Frederick, Inc.. This was the Technology Leadership Award. A lot of times people forget how big and important SAIC really is to Fort Detrick and the county’s biotech community. For example, here are all of their job openings in Frederick:

At Fort Detrick

Geoffrey Way Vaccine Production Facility

Clinical Monitoring Program on Industry Lane

TJ Drive contracts and Admin

Advanced Technology Program on Toll House

Must run.  Maybe some pictures later..

FITCI Expansion?

There is a nice article in today’s FNP about FITCI. The photo on the FNP web site isn’t very high resolution, but if you read the print version, you can actually see/read the company names on the poster.

I have blogged about FITCI a bunch before, so I won’t belabor the point. It’s nice to see that all the money Frederick County and City are giving to FITCI ($150K per year from County and $50K per year from City) are returning almost three times that amount in terms of jobs and tax revenue. I am glad to be a part of their success. Maybe Mike will even finish the blogterview is sent out to him in November?

HSRL Goes Bowling

    My neighbor here at FITCI, HSRL Pathology, is moving to a former bowling alley in Thurmont.

I heard this was coming, but didn’t know all of the details until reading an article in today’s FNP.  We may be seeing a lot of change at FITCI in the coming months, as fleadling companies prepare to leave the nest.  My own little gig hasn’t grown to more than a single person operation, with a little help from my friends.  With HSRL leaving and BridgePath Scientific, Advanced Product Enterprises and Integrated Biotherapeutics all bursting at the seams, it looks like FITCI will have some space available, soon.

I also wanted to take a minute to welcome Jon from The Regeneration Station to Frederick County!  He is starting with a local company the first of March.  We had the chance to meet and chat when he came out a couple of weeks ago looking for a place to live.
It is nice to see the incubator concept is working and good luck to everyone moving onward and upward!

Lab Space in Mo. Co is Scarce and Getting more Expensive

Which leads to the obvious question:  Why not move to Frederick?

This is according to a report published in the Feb 15th edition of Washington Business Journal.  Here’s the abstract (you’ll need a paid subscription to see the whole thing):

Owners of Washington-area lab space may have to start taking down “vacancy” signs and hiking rents, if the predictions of real estate insiders come true.

After enduring historic rates of empty biotech and lab space, local real estate brokers say the industry is back on a growth path and will require more square footage between now and the end of the decade.

“Before, there was a lag period between mature companies and companies still rising,” said Pete Briskman, a vice president of Texas-based The Staubach Co., who expects developers to build more speculative lab space in the next few years. “We’re seeing that lag being filled now by midstage companies.”

In an end-of-year report that Scheer Partners plans to release this month, the Rockville biotech real estate company projects that life sciences vacancy rates will fall from 8 percent this year to 5 percent next year and as low as 3 percent in 2010, even as rents climb from $27 per square foot to $36 in the same period.

DynPort in the news

I have been procrastinating writing a blog entry about DynPort for a while, but saw an article in the FNP this week that makes another post about DVC almost obligatory.  Aside from their track record of bringing home the bacon in terms of contracting big contracts for vaccine manufacturing management, they made the list of the Top 10 family friendly businesses in Frederick County.

I know quite a few people there, most from my days at Life Technologies (follow this hyperlink to a great article from MdBio  in Sept 2002 about all the businesses the break-up of LTI by Invitrogen created).

I hope to see more of them at the next BioBeers meeting, which I will announce imminently.

And just in case you are wondering, there are plenty of Jobs Posted on their web site, a testament to their success.

California Stem Cell Report

According to the California Stem Cell Report, Novocell and International Stem Cell Corp. are among the first 10 companies seeking grants from California’s $3 billion stem cell agency.

So what do this have to do with Frederick County Biotech? The answer lies with a small group of dedicated scientists who occupy a vintage house and an unassuming lab in a strip mall in Walkersville, Lifeline Cell Technology, a wholly owned subsidiary of International Stem Cell Corp.

According to the blog, International Stem Cell Corp

“..plans to focus first on corneal implants, Krstich said. Last year the company published a scientific journal article showing that it can create corneas from embryonic-like stem cells it created from a process known as parthenogenesis, which involves using an unfertilized egg rather than an embryo.”

I am not sure if they are doing any of this work in Maryland or not, but I would suspect any funding of the Parent company would be beneficial to the Walkersville site. Lets hope they get some money from California and use it to grow their operations in Walkersville!

More State Money for Maryland Biotechs?

According to a report from Comptroller Peter Franchot, and as reported in the GenomeWeb Daily News sister publication BioRegion News:

Concluding that Maryland must step up government support for the life sciences, state Comptroller Peter Franchot has vowed to pursue in the new year a multi-year package of subsidies and other programs expected to catapult the industry into the nation’s top tier of bioclusters.

Sounds like the wheels are churning in Annapolis to continue building momentum with the growth in the Biotechnology sector in the state. The conclusion in a report entitled the “Bioscience Summit“, which I reported in a previous post, prepared by the Sage policy group is that:

“Maryland’s bioscience sector is among the nation’s largest, if not the largest, generating
$29 billion in annual economic output, $11 billion in income and nearly $600 million in
State government taxes. The average job supported directly by the state’s life sciences
industry pays $108,000/annum. Almost one-fifth of bioscience workers hold doctorates
and over half have graduates degrees.”

and continues…

“Over the next decade, Maryland’s biotech sector is poised to become even more globally
pre-eminent. The development of two biotechnology parks in Baltimore City in
conjunction with the massive and expanding life sciences cluster in Maryland’s D.C.
Suburbs may be enough to push Maryland past Massachusetts and California assuming
that Maryland isn’t already number one. Indeed, given its vast institutional presence
(e.g., NIH, FDA, JHU, NIST, Fort Detrick, UMB, UMBI), Maryland may already be
number one in terms of the size of its broadly defined bioscience sector. One would have
to study only California and Massachusetts to confirm this.”

Interestingly, the report also attempts to define what a Biotech company or institution is. From the report:

MdBio, a private non-profit corporation that seeks to advance Maryland’s bioscience
industry takes a more expansive view.4 In its recent report regarding Maryland’s life
sciences industry, MdBio defines bioscience organizations as those involved in the
research, development, or manufacture of:
1. biologically active molecules;
2. devices that employ or affect biological processes;
3. biological information resources; or
4. software designed specifically for biological applications.

This definition clearly supports my bias that Beer qualifies as both a biologically active substance that clearly affects biological processes and should also be considered within the Biotech sector!!

The Saga at the Fort Continues

As reported in the Frederick News Post recently, now the Frederick City gang may get in on the fun and try to block expansion at Ft Detrick.

This is the skinny:

The story so far The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases plans to expand its labs at Fort Detrick, including the biosecurity level-4 spaces where researchers study agents with a high risk of life-threatening disease for which no vaccine or therapy is available.

Expansion opponents have said USAMRIID’s environmental impact statement downplays public safety concerns and didn’t adequately examine whether the lab should be built elsewhere

Fort Detrick officials have said the report complies with the relevant federal laws.

On Nov. 19, dozens of opponents turned out at a public forum to ask the Frederick County Commissioners to seek court review of the EIS. The commissioners discussed the issue briefly on Dec. 20, but postponed any vote until after Fort Detrick’s annual community meeting on Jan. 17. Commissioners President Jan Gardner is the only commissioner who has not publicly stated whether she would support a lawsuit. In December, she appeared skeptical, questioning Commissioners David Gray and Kai Hagen, the board’s two lawsuit supporters, about what they hoped to accomplish.

The negative impact this fruitless effort would have is potentially devastating to the city, the county and everyone involved in Biotech in the area.  The Labs at the Fort already lead the county in employment of Biotechnology & Bio-research related folks.

As I said before, people just don’t understand how minimal the potential risks of the infectious agents pose to the surrounding community.  The perception that there’s a threat of an outbreak is not valid.  The groups going into Fort Detrick will be using some biologically active agents to try to save lives in the event of some outbreak, not to create one.

There is one facility, namely the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, which is off the Northern tip of Long Island, a couple miles off-shore.  This has been a target of all the conspiracy theorists in NYC, holding them responsible of “creating” Lyme disease and West Nile virus, amongst other impossible feats.

We don’t need help from those people here.  What we need are the jobs and opportunities for scientific learning that a facility of the magnitude that has been proposed and is being built at Ft Detrick will present.  It is a competitive advantage and a vital asset for the county, city and state Biotech community moving forward.

We need to do everything in our power to block these boneheads from reaching into our wallets and preventing good things from happening.

Md. Comptroller Peter Franchot Says “We’re #1″

That’s right, Maryland leads the USA in Biotechnology research.

According to an article in The Maryland Daily Record:

“Maryland’s bioscience sector is among the nation’s largest, if not the largest, generating $29 billion in annual economic output, $11 billion in income and nearly $600 million in state government taxes,” said the report by the Sage Policy Group Inc.

Such studies generally do not rank Maryland above more high-profile bioscience hotbeds such as California and the Research Triangle in North Carolina.

But, Franchot said yesterday, those reports undervalue some of Maryland’s key assets, notably major federal agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and various laboratories.

“Traditional rating systems have short-changed the state, because they focus on the private sector,” said Franchot, referring to studies such as the highly regarded Ernst & Young Global Biotechnology Report, which gives weight to the number of large firms operating in a region.

Federal agencies and laboratories such as those at Fort Detrick and Aberdeen Proving Ground “give us a huge competitive advantage,” Franchot said.

It’s nice to hear that all the credit didn’t go to Montgomery County.

UPDATE  12/20:  See this link for a more extensive article in the Gazette published 12/14