Gov. Martin O'Malley, in Baltimore for his "Capital for a Day" promotion, announced that the BioInnovation Center (BIC) at the University of Maryland BioPark would double in size in response to expansions and new leases in the wet-lab facility.
Gliknik, Inc., the first company to locate in the BIC in 2008 and a spinoff of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, will more than double its initial space with the addition of a fourth lab module. Fyodor Biotechnologies, Inc., a Johns Hopkins University spinoff that located in the BioPark at the beginning of the year, is now adding a second lab module. Also, Washington, D.C.-based InstantLabs Medical Diagnostic Corp., and Rockville-based Amplimmune signed leases for lab or office space in the BIC in the past few months.
The expansion will double the square footage of the lab-and-office facility - a component of the six-story, 238,000-square-foot 801 W. Baltimore St. building - to 18,000 square feet. Wexford Science and Technology, the building's Baltimore-based developer, created the BIC specifically for early-stage companies that need wet-lab space within a vibrant life-science cluster and chose to move forward on the $1.5 million expansion.
O'Malley's Capital for a Day event brings his cabinet members into different towns and cities in Maryland. He focused on jobs and the economy during his stop in the BioPark, where about 400 people are employed by more than a dozen bioscience companies and ancillary businesses. Many of the companies are built around discoveries from the scientists and laboratories at UMB or Johns Hopkins University.
