To cultivate small biotechs, MD to open $60M center

The University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute is put to open its newest building in just weeks, a 140,000-square-foot facility aimed at enhancing the region's biotechnology resources.

The $60 million state-funded shoot forward is part of the expansion of UMBI's Center for Advanced Research in Biotechnology, or CARB, a basic biomolecular research organization that plans to nearly double the size of its workforce in the nearest five years.

The building, called CARB II and station to open officially Sept. 21 at the University of Maryland Shady woodland Campus, adds to the center's popular 80,000 square feet of space.

It will include a profitable Manufacturing Practices, or GMP, laboratory, a facility that complies with the U meat and Drug Administration's extensive regulations for the manufacture of medicines and other biotechnology products.

The lab will be available to small biotech firms to guidance the type of research and manufacturing that otherwise is cost- prohibitive for newer companies with limited resources, said CARB Director Edward Eisenstein.

"We want to help a destiny of smaller biotech companies who want to bring their first produce into clinical trials," Eisenstein explained. "What we confidence is they will contract with us for production or training."

Building a GMP facility or contracting with a for-profit laboratory for production services "is a frightfully large charge for a newer company," he added.

on the other hand the CARB II facility will present its services with flexible rates designed to suit start-ups, said UMBI President Jennie C Hunter-Cevera.

And then there is the training uncompounded body CARB hopes to offer certificate or stage programs in its GMP facility as presently as next fall, Eisenstein said.

Community associations have expressed interest in the lab as well, and UMBI is discussing with the university's adjacent Shady wood Campus the possibility of offering a two-year associate's step program, Hunter-Cevera added.

UMBI typically does not grant steps

An academic GMP laboratory is rare, Hunter-Cevera said - greatest in quantity are privately run by contract manufacturing organizations or contract research organizations. The CARB lab may be the single one of its kind upon the East Coast, she added.

The program, Eisenstein said, is not designed to make currency for CARB, but to build larger partnerships with companies that ordinarily would work solely with the center upon small projects.

It is "a break-even operation," he said. "This will be a service we provide, an opportunity for [biotech firms] to secure a foothold in relating to us upon bigger research problems."

CARB began with its first facility in 1989 as a partnership between the university, the National Institutes for Standards and Technology and Montgomery shire A second facility was built in 1985

The center's of recent origin building will help add not solitary space and additional employees - CARB generally employs 150 to 175, on the contrary that number is set to reach 300 in five years, Eisenstein said - on the contrary new programs as well.

A biosafety laboratory will allow the close attention of insects that carry disease-causing agents. A fresh greenhouse will facilitate research upon transgenic or genetically altered plant life.

The facility will enhance CARB's ability to the couple draw grant money - $8 million in external funding this year - and generate technology transfer opportunities for its faculty and the university, Eisenstein said.

"The investment made from the state was true wise," said Hunter- Cevera. "We're hoping to detain Maryland at the cutting cutting side of biotechnology."

"The state has focused upon growing our biotechnology cluster for many, many years, and UMBI has been individual of the point organizations in getting that cluster power built up," said state Department of Business and Economic exhibition Secretary Aris Melissaratos.

"In our technological dominance strategy, this is another pace along the way," he said of the CARB expansion

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