Baltimore Business Journal - by Sue Schultz Staff

Two Baltimore-based companies plan to move into space this spring at new biotechnology parks being developed at Johns Hopkins University and University of Maryland, Baltimore.

BioMarker Strategies, an early stage research and development firm working on medical devices and diagnostics products used to test and treat cancer patients, leased 1,000 square-feet of space at the Science + Technology Park at Johns Hopkins in East Baltimore.

BioMarker, with five full- and part-time employees, could hire additional workers after moving to its new lab in June, executives said. The company considered space at all of Baltimore's bioparks before selecting space near Hopkins.

"There is a competitive marketplace for lab space in Baltimore," Scott Allocco, president of BioMarker, said in an interview Thursday. "The health care employee base is also very strong."

BioMarker will join the Johns Hopkins Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Cangen Biotechnologies at the 278,000-square-foot building, which is slated to open by April.

On the city's west side, Gliknik Inc., a Baltimore-based biotechnology firm creating drugs for autoimmune diseases and cancer, signed a lease for 8,500-square-feet of business incubator space and labs at the UM BioPark's second building. The company was spun out of work by Dr. Scott Strome, professor and chairman of the Department of Otorhinolarynogology-Head & Neck Surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. The company could move into the space as early as March.

Gliknik is headed by CEO Dr. David S. Block, the former chief operating officer of Celera Genomics who until recently ran Ruxton Pharmaceuticals, a venture capital-backed company Block launched in 2004.