This year FCOED is recognizing and celebrating Frederick County’s innovative businesses. These businesses are making the biggest impact on their industries, workplace, and community — thriving in today’s ever-changing environment. Join us as we get to know our Top 50 Innovative Businesses.
7211 Bank Court
Frederick MD
www.frederickhealth.org/pmg
Frederick Health Precision Medicine & Genetics offers genetic testing to provide patients with a treatment plan as unique as their own DNA. Operating out of our Crestwood location, this service has been offered since 2020, and has expanded to a larger location at Frederick Health Village.
Each of us has about three billion DNA base pairs and about 25,000 genes. Given the fact that everyone has such unique genes, each individual responds differently to the same medication or treatments. Precision Medicine greatly improves the odds of matching the right medication to the right person. This data is used to inform clinical decision-making and allow providers to prescribe treatments tailored to their patients. It also moves with the patient through their care experience. Frederick Health Precision Medicine and Genetics has been developing this technology for the last several years. They leverage this technology to provide treatment plans for several conditions including cancer, hereditary diseases, and behavioral health conditions. This genomic information improves patient outcomes and results. It is also added to the electronic medical records, traveling with the patients.
4539 Metropolitan Court
Frederick, MD
www.fitci.org
FITCI is Frederick’s business incubator/accelerator. It excels in entrepreneurial growth & training, especially in life science and technology. The nonprofit encourages technological innovation & accelerates development of commercially viable businesses, enhancing local economic vitality since 2004.
FITCI is more than an incubator. In 2016, it refocused on coaching, capital, & connection building. FITCI created intensive mentoring & advisory boards, programming tailored for emerging entrepreneurs, broad networking opportunities, and information systems to ensure equitable access to resources.
FITCI’s 70+ member companies are each innovators in their own right, pushing the limits of biomedical research, agricultural technology, healthcare, product development, and more. They advance global cell/gene therapy, help doctors save limbs, and make emergency rooms safer for healthcare workers and patients. They seek to enrich the soil, preserve the environment, protect crucial infrastructure, and secure blockchain systems. They can do this because they are buoyed by FITCI’s uniquely supportive framework, augmented by dozens of seasoned business and community leaders who volunteer because they share a fierce dedication to making the entrepreneurial journey easier.
(Operated by Leidos Biomedical Research, Inc.)
8560 Progress Drive, PO Box B
Frederick, MD
frederick.cancer.gov
Frederick National Laboratory works to solve the unsolvable in biomedical research to benefit global public health. Since 1972, FNL has supported the National Cancer Institute and National Institutes of Health in cancer, HIV and emerging disease research and as a hub for emerging technologies.
FNL innovates basic research, drug development, scientific processes and biotechnologies. The national lab is tapped for high-risk projects, adapting to address global needs and to develop solutions to its government customers’ challenges.
FNL’s Laboratory Directed Exploratory Research (LDER) program, modeled after programs at U.S. Department of Energy national labs, provides FNL scientists the chance to compete for funding to conduct the research that they believe is important to FNL’s mission but is outside their day-to-day work. In doing so, LDER promotes creative and novel research, including potentially high-risk, high-payoff activities that advance research against cancer and HIV/AIDS or other health challenges. Including the five new projects started the summer of 2022, the program has funded 34 projects since its launch in 2015.
The LDER program has sparked innovations from FNL scientists that respond to demands in biomedical research, such as the creation of a new laboratory fulfilling specialized imaging needs for NCI and external researchers or the invention of an instrument now available for licensing that fills a gap in precision radiation measuring. The program has also enabled studies into anticancer drug discovery, correlations between obesity and lung cancer, key questions regarding the sexual transmission of HIV, and other pressing public health issues.