Johns Hopkins sciences center will focus on drug research

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Apr 14, 2008 by Robbie Whelan

Confetti rained, music played and Maryland's political elite gathered once again Friday, this time on Baltimore's east side, as Johns Hopkins University celebrated the opening of the first research facility at its new Science and Technology park, a $60 million building where science and business will coexist under one roof.

The celebration comes less than two weeks after the University of Maryland, Baltimore feted the groundbreaking of the third building at its West Side BioPark, where many of the same public figures gathered to give similar congratulatory speeches.

Named for a Steubenville, Ohio-born entrepreneur and philanthropist who made his fortune in several trash-hauling companies that he started in the 1960s, the John G. Rangos Life Sciences Building will be home to the Johns Hopkins University Institute of Basic Biomedical Sciences, as well as several private biotech companies.

Tenants include BioMarker Strategies, Cangen Biotechnologies, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Hopkins center. About 50,000 square feet of the building remains unleased.

Much of the research at the 278,000-square-foot Rangos building will focus on developing drugs to treat cancer, liver disease and HIV/AIDS, said Myron "Mike" Weisfeldt, chair of the department of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

"As far as having industry and basic science in the same building, I don't know of any other institution that has it under the same roof," he said. "I think it's a pioneering, a risk-taking exercise."

Weisfeldt said the time it takes to develop and produce new treatments for illnesses is greatly reduced by having scientists and health care industry business people working in close proximity, and "sharing a bathroom."

Forest City Science and Technology, a $10 billion publicly traded real estate company, is the developer of the property, which was financed using federal new market tax credits and investments by Bank of America, M&T Bank and Harbor Bank, which is a tenant in both the Hopkins and University of Maryland biotech complexes.

The building was funded in part by a $10 million gift from Rangos, who sits on the board of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and who manages a foundation that has given extensively to medical institutions, including a diabetes research center at the University of Pittsburgh and the Rangos School of Health Science at Duquesne University.

"Right here in this building will be breakthroughs that will eliminate the tyranny of disease from mankind," Rangos told the audience of about 500.

Johns Hopkins has been working closely with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Forest City and East Baltimore Development Inc., a nonprofit organization that facilitates development in the communities surrounding Johns Hopkins Hospital, to reach out to the nearby communities, which are largely African-American, largely composed of low-income residents, and plagued by drug problems, widespread crime and high rates of infectious diseases such as HIV.

So far, more than 400 families have been displaced by Hopkins' east side development activities, but steps have been taken to build 2,000 units of new mixed-income housing in the community, and the Science and Technology park is expected to generate as many as 6,000 new jobs.

"This is the beginning of the new East Baltimore," said Sen. Barbara Mikulski.

She recalled a recent visit to the corner of North Avenue and Wolfe Street, a prominent intersection in a nearby distressed community.

"I thought to myself, there are only a couple of blocks between North Avenue and Hopkins, but the economic distance is vast," she said.

Gov. Martin O'Malley and Congressman Elijah Cummings, who were also present at last month's UMB BioPark opening, echoed familiar tropes about developing new medicines as "Weapons of Mass Salvation" and making the world a better place for future generations.

Stephen Desiderio, director of the Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences, quoted the epitaph of Christopher Wren, the 17th-century architect of St. Paul's Cathedral in London: "If you need a monument, just look around you."

"The area around here is a testament to progress," Desiderio said.