Wednesday, March 16, 2022

Rockville biotech firms partner to advance biologic product development, manufacturing


Rockville-based Hibiscus BioVentures has partnered with Chinese firm Innoforce to enhance both companies' development of advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs), biologics derived from cells, tissue or genes. Innoforce, which is headquartered in Hangzhou but also has offices in Rockville, uses partnerships as a business model. It opened a new Advanced Cell and Gene Therapy Development Facility in Hangzhou last year, and will cut the ribbon on a new manufacturing facility there this summer.

Hibiscus focuses its efforts on identifying unmet needs of patients to develop novel therapies that are commercially viable. "We are excited to partner with Hibiscus, which brings a highly experienced team and unique model to develop new technolgoies that address important unmet medical needs," Innoforce CEO and co-founder Yuling Li Ph.D. said in a statement this morning. "The partnership will leverage our drug development experience with Hibiscus' pipeline initiatives in alignment with Innoforce's mission to enable global development of novel, advanced biotherapeutics." Hibiscus is located at 2277 Research Boulevard in Rockville.

4 comments:

  1. Cool. Also Miltenyi Biotec is moving its North America HQ to 270. Adding 130 jobs and expanding their current location. I hope North Bethesda ("Rockville," as some insist) is able to attract some interest in the proposed biotech buildings there; it'd be nice to get some of these companies in walkable/transit areas rather than just adding to traffic. Bark Social is cool, but a new R&D facility is cooler.

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    1. Show me one area, in any metropolitan area, where R&D locates in a non-office park, i.e. a downtown or total office area. It doesn't happen due to the zoning and square footage needs.

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    2. "It doesn't happen due to the zoning and square footage needs."

      What on earth are you talking about? What zoning makes P&R's proposed building illegal? You think you know more about construction and zoning than Federal Reality does about their own property?


      "Show me one area, in any metropolitan area, where R&D locates in a non-office park, i.e. a downtown or total office area"

      Uh, you mean like United Therapeutics a few miles away? Congratulations, you played yourself.

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    3. The major reason that most office space is not suitable for laboratories is because of the risk of chemicals entering into the common ventilation system that services the entire building. Laboratories have specialised ventilation & exhaust systems to circumvent the risks. Also the height of certain lab equipment is another obstacle to using ordinary office space. Re-purposing ordinary office into lab space can be costly dependent on the specifics of each building.

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