MedImmune deal is seen as plus for Maryland’s biotech industry

‘‘Clearly, AstraZeneca recognized the value of MedImmune and the workforce of this area where MedImmune has grown up,” Diamond said.

The presence of such a large pharma as London’s AstraZeneca will help attract more venture funding and other pharmaceutical companies to the county, Diamond said, adding there is nothing in the deal that indicates that AstraZeneca will move MedImmune’s operations.

‘‘This brings value to our region,” he said. ‘‘We are excited that we brought another foreign investor into the county. Once they are involved here for a while they will make more investments.”

The purchase ‘‘will do nothing to detract” from the growth of biotech startups, he said, which have been limited in equity funding in recent years.

‘‘I don’t think it will prevent us from growing new biotech companies,” Diamond said. ‘‘We have a series of incubators and many of them will exit the way MedImmune is exiting.”

Linda Powers, managing director of Toucan Capital in Bethesda, looked ahead.

‘‘I know there is a lot of nervousness that they may move out of the region,” Powers said. ‘‘But even if some of the program activity moves out of the region, some of the people will remain in the region and start to build other companies in the region and people at all levels of the company can join second- and third-generation companies after the MedImmune experience.”

Those who see parallels between the MedImmune deal and the acquisition of another bioscience company, Life Technologies of Rockville, by Invitrogen of San Diego in 2000 shouldn’t worry, said Diamond and David W. Edgerley, secretary of the state’s Department of Business and Economic Development and former head of economic development in Montgomery County.

Life Techologies was one of the state’s largest bioscience companies and had just completed its 240,000-square-foot headquarters as a cornerstone of the Life Sciences Center in Montgomery County. At the time, the director of the Tech Council of Maryland’s local chapter had welcomed the Invitrogen deal as a sign of the maturation of the region’s biotech sector.

Initially, Invitrogen announced moving 300 Life Technologies employees to Frederick. But in a little more than a year, about 600 former employees were looking for work. Invitrogen offered many of them transfers to Carlsbad, Calif., but most declined. Invitrogen still has a manufacturing plant in Frederick.

‘‘I wouldn’t draw a parallel from one company acquisition to another,” Edgerley said. ‘‘My experience is that in the range of what can happen we should focus on the upside for Maryland. We are watching it. The investments we have made are protocoled, so that if there is an adverse event the investment should be protected.”