Gaithersburg, MD – A privately held biotechnology company that has raised a total of $63 million in three rounds of venture financing will move later this year to a larger corporate headquarters to accommodate its growth.
Scheer Partners, the leading provider of fully integrated commercial real estate services for the health science industry in the Washington and Baltimore metropolitan areas, announced today that it has represented GlycoMimetics in a new multi-year lease in Gaithersburg.
Come November, GlycoMimetics will occupy 14,500 square feet of laboratory and office space at 401 Professional Drive, a 60,000-square-foot building owned by Pasadena, Calif.-based Alexandria Real Estate Equities whose other tenants include General Research Laboratory and Sirnaomics. GlycoMimetics’ new facility represents an increase from its current 10,500 square feet of space at 101 Orchard Ridge Drive, which is also in Gaithersburg.
Scheer Partners Founder and President Robert Scheer, Senior Vice President Henry Bernstein and Vice President Matt Brady represented GlycoMimetics, which specializes in the design of small-molecule therapeutics that mimic the functions of bioactive carbohydrates. The company’s initial focus is on drugs to treat inflammation, cancer and infectious diseases.
For its new corporate facility, GlycoMimetics kept its search primarily in the Gaithersburg submarket. The space at 401 Professional Drive is a good fit, because it has a heavy concentration of chemical fume hoods and related HVAC capabilities, which is providing substantial savings to GlycoMimetics during its build-out, according to Brady.
“We’re delighted that we were able to help GlycoMimetics locate the space and negotiate their lease at 401 Professional Drive,” Brady says. “This is an extremely promising biotech company with a strong management team and board of directors, impressive scientific expertise and financial backing from well-known venture capital firms.”
In October of 2009, GlycoMimetics announced that it had raised $38 million in its latest round of venture funding, with Genzyme Ventures joining returning investors New Enterprise Associates, the Novartis Venture Fund, Anthem Capital and Alliance Technology Ventures in this round.
GlycoMimetics is using this most recent investment to fund a Phase 2 trial of its lead drug candidate, GMI-1070, in vaso-occlusive crisis of sickle-cell disease, as well as to continue building its pipeline of innovative therapies.