Maryland Business

I got a pretty unusual press release in the old inbox the other day from a company calling itself “DNA Live Forever” that claims to have come up with a way to travel in time — by cloning yourself.

In a nutshell, the company’s business model is you send them $120 and a baggie of your nail clippings that will be stored until the technology exists so you can be “regenerated” with your DNA.

And, minus the initial $20 fee and 10 percent of the interest earned, you’ll get that $100 back with decades of interest. Or, rather, your clone in 300 years will get the money.

(For some extra scratch you can also send DNA of your dog or cat and they’ll be regenerated as well whenever you want.)

The company hails from Zephyrhills, Fla. which, according to its website, is a city of 10,833 located northeast of Miami. It is home to Nestle bottled water subsidiary Zephyrhills Water and the Zephyrhills World War II Barracks Museum.

The proprietor of DNA Live Forever is one Max Stevens, according to the press release. He likens the approach to cheating death and setting yourself up for a comfortable life once you come back:

A famous man once remarked that the opinion of history won’t matter because in the future we’ll all be dead. Maybe…maybe not. Why let today’s science dictate your fate? Max Stevens and a growing number of scientists believe you may just want to bank on the future with DNA Live Forever LLC.

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Fairfax County in Virginia has dropped plans to fund a huge medical research center, and that could be great news for Montgomery County.

Montgomery has big plans to build on its Life Sciences Center off of I-270, creating a massive Science City that would compete with the biggest biotech hubs in the country — for more info on the project, check out my story in today’s paper.

According to the Washington Examiner, the county’s exit from the Ignite Institute for Individualized Health project marks the second financier to lose interest in the last few weeks. And that has raised hopes for Montgomery’s efforts to lure the research project to settle in the proposed 20 million square foot development at Science City.

Here’s what the Examiner says happened in Fairfax:

County leaders were considering up to $150 million in revenue bonds for the genomics startup but got cold feet after Inova Health System said it couldn’t drum up$25 million previously pledged for the center.

“Fairfax County was concerned about being left out there by ourselves with a very ambitious project,” Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Sharon Bulova said. “Without a medical partner and without a funding partner, there is no way Fairfax can do it.”

Even with the setbacks, Ignite officials say they remain committed to a headquarters in the Washington area. Ignite President and Chief Executive Officer Dietrich Stephan has said willing partners will fill the void left by the county and Inova.

Montgomery County officials hope Stephan will look elsewhere despite a handful of partnerships already established in the commonwealth.

“I think it opens up the door to renew discussions with them,” said Steven Silverman, director of the Montgomery County Department of Economic Development. “If Inova hadn’t participated in this, there would have been no Fairfax or state of Virginia commitment.”

Ignite says its built on a “collaborative ‘hybrid’ model that includes independent leadership, affiliations with universities and clinical centers of excellence, a non-profit academic component and for-profit accelerators/incubators.” It sounds exactly like what Montgomery and one of its development partners, Johns Hopkins University, are aiming for.

Lots of approvals have to be put in place for the Science City project to move forward, but it will be interesting to see what happens if the expansion gets the green light and Ignite is still looking for funding.

(Belward Farm pictured, a 107-acre farm being developed by JHU for Science City)

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A budding business from the mind of a University of Maryland student is in the running for seed funding from the Dell Social Innovation Competition.

Tseai Energy Unlimited works to empower communities through agriculture. The company develops bioprocessing plants to bring electricity to underdeveloped countries — with a focus on Africa, where many of the countries lack access to reliable and consistent electricity — and boost their economies at the same time.

Trevor Young, a University of Maryland Hillman Entrepreneurs Program student originally from Sierra Leone, established the company in May 2009. He named it after his daughter Tseai, which means sunshine.

Using abundant local crops and employing local farmers, the company installs small-scale agricultural processing plants.  Much of the revenue from the sale of the products goes back into the community through economic development and social services, including a free or low-cost health care clinic and free access to educational courses.

To get the energy piece of the project, Tseai converts waste from the mill into fertilizer and biogas to generate electricity. The first plant will be launched in Sierra Leone, where the company plans to process palm fruit into palm oil, and convert the waste into methane to generate electricity.

Dell whittled down the initial  pool of 700 applicants from 200 universities, and now Tseai is competing with 60 companies for the $50,000 grand prize. Three finalists will be chosen to travel to the University of Texas at Austin in May to present their business plans to the judges. Tseai is up against several other projects looking to bring change to Africa.

Tseai has already won $25,000 in other competitions. It’s also looking to nab winnings as a finalist in the Wake Forest Elevator Competition this weekend, where students get two minutes to make the pitch of their lives.

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The age-old Annapolis debate on stem cell funding is back.

Gov. Martin O’Malley has proposed funding research with $12.4 million in fiscal 2011 — the same amount it ended up getting last year — but with a major budget issue on the state’s hands, legislators are starting to argue over just how much money should be ponied up by the state.

Knowing that stem cell research is always a target that can easily get slashed during the session and in mid-year budget cuts, the Maryland Technology Development Corp., the quasi-public organization in charge of doling out the research grants, hired Baltimore’s Sage Policy Group to determine the impact of the grants on Maryland.

The study found that based on data from 2008, Maryland is already feeling an economic impact from the program, which was launched in 2006.

Up through 2008, $38 million in funding for the research translated into business sales of $71.3 million, 514 direct and indirect jobs and more than $34 million in income at about $64,000 per job. Maryland also benefited from $2.7 million in state and local taxes.

And a larger economic impact could be on the way as the research moves from the lab to the market and becomes more commercialized.

Of course President Obama’s announcement last year that the National Institutes of Health would lift some Bush-era restrictions on funding embryonic stem cell research has raised questions in Annapolis about whether Maryland needs to pump money into funding the research at all.

But the report cautions that a lack of state-level support could mean a shortage of local knowledge, federal dollars and economic impact.

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