(Left to right) Nick Hammond, chief technology officer; Ken Malone, CEO; and Srinivas Rapireddy, research scientist, talk in Ablitech Inc.'s new lab. (Kim Hairston, Baltimore Sun / February 15, 2012)

Ken Malone and the board members of his startup biotech company gathered in a conference room at the University of Southern Mississippi last October to make a gut-wrenching decision.

Ablitech Inc.'s funding was slowly drying up, and it couldn't find new sources in Mississippi. If the company stayed, it would wither away.

The only option left for Ablitech, they decided, was for the fledgling company to move.

"We called our shareholders together and said, 'Look, if we stay here, we're going to die,'" Malone recalled recently.

For months, Malone and one of the firm's co-founders scoured the East Coast, from North Carolina to Boston, for a new home. They chose Baltimore.

Ablitech's choice this year was a modest win for the still-growing University of Maryland BioPark on the west side of downtown, where about 500 people work. The company brings only a handful of jobs, and its cancer-stopping technology is years — and millions of dollars — away from animal and human trials, let alone commercialization.

To read the full, original article click on this link: Ablitech: Mississippi biotech startup moves to University of Maryland BioPark - baltimoresun.com