Up County

A joint-venture between Minkoff Development and South Duvall has signed a lease with Hughes Network Systems, LLC (HUGHES) to build a 140,000 square foot build-to-suit project on Montgomery College’s Germantown Campus. The campus currently is home to the Pinkney Innovation Complex for Science and Technology at Montgomery College (PIC MC) with Holy Cross Germantown Hospital as its anchor tenant. Located at 19710 Observation Drive in Germantown, Maryland, adjacent to the Hughes headquarters complex (11717 Exploration Lane), the new high-tech manufacturing building will house production of Hughes satellite broadband and networking equipment. Full press release below:

“This new facility reflects our long-standing commitment to Montgomery County, as a local employer and business leader for more than 50 years and will help Hughes advance our mission of connecting the unconnected around the world with innovative satellite and networking solutions,” said Jim Muir, III, vice president, corporate real estate at Hughes. “We look forward to inviting students from PIC MC to learn and grow with us and continuing to engage with the community where so many of our employees live and work.”

Senseonics Holdings, Inc. (NYSE American: SENS) a medical technology company based in Germantown that focuses on the development and manufacturing of long-term, implantable continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) systems for people with diabetes, announced that Anthem is providing coverage for implantable CGM, which includes the Eversense CGM System. Anthem’s decision will add more than 45 million covered lives for the long-term implantable CGM system to help manage their diabetes. This recent coverage decision adds to the growing number of payers who are writing Eversense into their CGM coverage policies that now benefit approximately 250 million covered lives, as well as paying for the healthcare provider’s time for the in-office sensor insertion. This allows Ascensia Diabetes Care, Senseonics’ global commercial partner, to introduce the Eversense CGM System to more people living with diabetes.

Per the press release: Anthem (now Elevance Health) is the second largest health insurance company in the U.S. and a leading health company dedicated to improving lives and communities, and making healthcare simpler. Through its affiliated companies, Anthem serves people across 14 states, including more than 45 million within its family of health plans. This most recent coverage decision, in addition to Cigna, Aetna, Humana, HCSC Blue Cross Blue Shield and other health insurance providers, demonstrates broad-based coverage across the United States from the majority of commercial payers, enabling their members to access the benefits of the long-term Eversense CGM System.

Deka Biosciences announced that it is breaking ground on a 14,000 square foot office and lab in Germantown which will house a state of the art Research and Development, Process Development, and Manufacturing facility to further develop their novel cytokine therapies. This will be the first facility to house a dual targeted cytokine development lab in the DC/Maryland/Virginia region and the only company in the US developing a therapeutic of its kind. The new headquarters will be located at 20380 Seneca Meadows Parkway in Germantown, Maryland and Deka anticipates the move to be completed in the first quarter of 2023.

Per the press release: “Our new facility will provide us with essential space to expand our research, development and manufacturing efforts, allowing us to continue to successfully develop our Diakine™ therapies, using single use technology to scale both quickly and economically,” Dr. John Mumm, CEO of Deka Biosciences shared. “This is an exciting new chapter for our company and I believe the expansion will provide a work environment that will amplify a strong culture of innovation and collaboration as Deka seeks to deliver on our mission to bring life-changing therapies to patients with cancer and inflammatory diseases.”