Ex­clu­sive: With back­ing of Ravens own­er, Black­bird launch­es with $100M to boost Bal­ti­more’s biotech scene

A life sci­ences ac­cel­er­a­tor called Black­bird Lab­o­ra­to­ries has $100 mil­lion to spend to turn Bal­ti­more in­to a biotech hub.

Black­bird was found­ed at the start of this year with the back­ing of Bal­ti­more Ravens own­er Steve Bis­ciot­ti’s fam­i­ly foun­da­tion. So far, Black­bird has looked at about 80 to 100 pro­pos­als and fund­ed five pro­grams, Black­bird CEO Matt Trem­blay told End­points News.

Bal­ti­more has had a few no­table biotech suc­cess sto­ries, such as Thrive Ear­li­er De­tec­tion (ac­quired by Ex­act Sci­ences in 2020) and Per­son­al Genome Di­ag­nos­tics (ac­quired by Lab­corp in 2022), but Trem­blay said he hopes to sup­port a “Kendall Square-like phe­nom­e­na.” He’s look­ing to back re­search ideas that ul­ti­mate­ly be­come biotech star­tups based in Bal­ti­more. To­day, many star­tups in the area wind up in sub­urbs like Rockville, MD, which “lose that con­nec­tiv­i­ty” with be­ing di­rect­ly next to a uni­ver­si­ty like Johns Hop­kins, Trem­blay said.

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