UW Regents’ Recent Approval of 11-Story Development Marks the Latest Chapter for University of Washington

The University of Washington, founded in 1861 approximately a decade after the founding of Seattle, is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast. Despite its storied history, the University has no intention to rest on its laurels and it continues to break new ground to expand its reach throughout the Emerald City as another recent development – one of several over the last several years – takes shape.

In mid-March, the University of Washington Board of Regents, which supervises, coordinates, manages, and regulates the university, approved the development plan for the first major project in the UW’s newly named Portage Bay Crossing area, which is on the west side of the Seattle campus.

According to a statement released by the University, Wexford Science + Technology LLC will develop and manage an 11-story building totaling about 340,000 rentable square feet of lab, office, collaboration and retail space. The UW’s Clean Energy Institute, Brotman Baty Institute and Institute for Protein Design are also slated to occupy a significant amount of the space.

Integral Molecular doubling its space and headcount in Philadelphia through $10M expansion project

One of the Philadelphia region’s oldest biotechnology companies is doubling its footprint, and its workforce, in the city.

Integral Molecular began construction this week on its new 50,000-square scientific and operational headquarters at One uCity Square that will allow the company to expand to 200 employees over the next few years.

Founded in 2001, Integral Molecular currently has about 100 employees. It last expanded in the University City section of Philadelphia in 2019 when it opened a 26,000-square-foot research site at 3624 Market St.

“We have experienced extraordinary growth while operating under pandemic conditions and are proud of the business challenges that we have overcome,” said Benjamin Doranz, Integral Molecular’s co-founder and CEO. “Despite uncertain times, we have launched technologies that have been instrumental in the fight against Covid-19 and discovered antibodies to combat intractable cancers.”

KaloCyte cofounders Dr. Allan Doctor and Dr. Dipanjan Pan were slated to relocate to Maryland and launch the Center for Blood Oxygen Transport & Hemostasis at the University of Maryland School of Medicine nearly three years ago.

But instead of being forced to choose between leaving behind their biotech startup and forming CBOTH, they made the best of both worlds right in the heart of Baltimore: The St. Louis-founded startup moved into CBOTH as a University of Maryland BioPark affiliate in July 2019.

The BioPark, located on the University of Maryland, Baltimore’s campus, is home to nearly three dozen life sciences companies. Tenants range from early-stage companies to major global firms like BD, Catalent, Illumina, and Pharmaron. Its prime location in Maryland’s biomedical ecosystem made it an ideal new home for KaloCyte, which is developing a critically-needed red blood cell substitute for use when perishable donor blood is not available or in short supply.

“We chose UMB and the BioPark for two main reasons: to have the company co-located with our academic founders to continue our research, and also because of the tremendous resources that the university and region offers that simply were not available in St. Louis,” KaloCyte President and CEO Elaine Haynes said.