In 2019, Fulton Bank launched a new division aimed at supporting life sciences companies that many financial institutions shied away from historically—young, emerging bioscience and tech companies that offer high risk, high reward investment profiles.
American Gene Technologies recently named Dr. Jeff Boyle as its new Chief Science Officer. Boyle was previously President at Ellume USA where he led the build out of the company’s 180,000 square foot manufacturing facility in Frederick, Maryland that produces the first COVID-19 home self-test to receive an EUA from the FDA.
Digital diagnostics company Ellume, applauds the Biden administration’s action to make its Ellume COVID-19 Home Test (ECHT) available at no cost to Americans who are blind or have low vision through covid.gov/tests. In support of the February 24, 2022, White House announcement on improving at-home test accessibility for individuals with disabilities and older adults, Ellume has worked with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) RADx initiative and the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) to ensure ECHT is accessible to users who are blind or have low vision.
After achieving several important clinical milestones, momentum and excitement has been building for months around the company’s lead pipeline candidate AGT103-T, which is a potential HIV functional cure. In the coming months, the company expects to have the latest data readout for its Phase I trial. AGT103-T is a single-dose HIV gene therapy that could potentially replace antiretroviral therapy (ART) with a functional cure.
With the rise of at-home testing and a recent increase of COVID-19 cases across the United States, public health officials have expressed concern about an undercounting of cases and a lack of data that may hamper America’s pandemic response. Digital diagnostics company Ellume is today highlighting its COVID-19 Home Test’s automatic reporting function that enables test results to be securely shared with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and State Health Departments – allowing for real-time insights into pandemic trends. The resulting data is deidentified and encrypted to protect consumer identity and privacy.
The company that has its roots in Australia has rapidly expanded its presence in Maryland, recently celebrating the grand opening of its 215,000-square-foot production facility in Frederick. Driven by the need to produce its at-home COVID-19 diagnostics device, the site opened less than one year after signing a lease for the space. And now, with the new location open to produce COVID-19 tests, the company is ready to fill numerous positions at the production facility. Ellume will host an on-site career fair at its Frederick facility on April 26 in order to recruit high-quality candidates who are attracted to the company’s mission and culture.
Several biotech companies worked with Frederick to design the Biotech Bootcamp curriculum and interviewed participants after the month-long program, which they will do again this round. Of the 14 students who completed the first Biotech Bootcamp, ten have landed positions at Frederick County biotech companies, including Lonza, Ellume, and Kite Pharma. Some also accepted positions at Rockville-based Meso Scale Diagnostics.
Governor Larry Hogan joined dozens of attendees at Ellume’s grand opening in Frederick on March 31 to welcome the diagnostics manufacturer to Frederick County. Ellume’s 215,000-square-foot production facility on Executive Way has been up and running since February 2022, only ten months after the company signed a lease with Matan Properties.
In 2019, Ellume announced its global partnership with QIAGEN to make testing more accessible by developing a new version of the QuantiFERON test, called QIAreach™ QFT. This technology, which is about half the size of a laptop and battery-operated, combines Ellume’s ultrasensitive digital detection technology with a complete testing workflow that can test up to eight samples simultaneously. Further, it can detect active infections as well as latent infections before progression to illness and further spread. This early detection can allow for the correct measures and treatments to be applied and increase the effectiveness of TB programs.
This year, Maryland continued to prove why it’s becoming one of the strongest biohealth clusters in the country. The state’s commitment to businesses in the life science, pharmaceutical, and biotech industries has continued as both the private and public sectors work to meet the demand for more space. Here are a few of the biggest real estate projects in Maryland in 2021. Some of these projects are still under construction, while others were unveiled this year.
