Rich Bendis, CEO and founder of BioHealth Innovation, discusses how the BioHealth Capital Region has grown into a leading US life sciences hub by connecting Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Northern Virginia through a regional, collaborative approach. From supporting early-stage companies with non-dilutive funding and strategic mentoring to helping international firms “soft land” in the US, Bendis highlights BHI’s role in combining world-class science, entrepreneurial expertise, and practical resources to drive innovation and growth.
Can you tell us what led you to found BHI and what unmet need you saw in the ecosystem?
BioHealth Innovation (BHI) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, but we also operate a for-profit subsidiary, holding equity in around 25 early-stage life science companies through our support and services.
The idea for BHI began around 2009–2010. I had worked as a consultant and CEO across multiple US biotech ecosystems and often spoke globally about building vibrant bio clusters and finding early-stage capital. After a talk at the National Academy of Sciences, someone from Johns Hopkins approached me and said, “Rich, what you just described is exactly what we’ve been trying to do in Maryland for years, but we haven’t succeeded. Would you meet with our team?”
I began discussions with Montgomery County, the heart of the region and home to the FDA, NIH, Astra Zeneca, GSK, Amgen, United Therapeutics, and many others. Through a six-month study, interviewing about 90 stakeholders, it became clear that while Maryland had world-leading research and academic institutions, the commercialization of products was a weak spot. Industry and investors were largely disengaged, and government and academia were driving most initiatives.
We realized the region needed an innovation intermediary. It was important to be market-driven rather than lab-driven to connect private sector, industry, investors, and academia. This led to the creation of BioHealth Innovation in 2011. To succeed, we designed BHI to include public-private commitment at the board level, led by private-sector staff and guided by market needs, focusing on bridging the commercialization gap and accelerating products to market.
I initially took on the role of interim president, not intending to stay long-term. But the region’s untapped resources and connectivity potential convinced me to continue. I became CEO in 2012, and more than a decade later, the mission continues. Maryland’s ecosystem has made remarkable progress, rising from sixth or seventh to third among top US biopharma clusters, as defined in the annual rankings by Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News (GEN), excelling in NIH funding, patents, jobs, and wet lab space. The next frontier is attracting more venture capital and creating new VC firms to further fuel the ecosystem’s growth.
What were the key steps in defining and establishing the BioHealth Capital Region as a recognized life sciences cluster?
Originally, the region was narrowly perceived as a five-mile stretch along Interstate 270 in Maryland. Our first step was to broaden that perspective and highlight the ecosystem’s true regional scale. Similar to Silicon Valley, Route 128 in Boston, or the Research Triangle, the BioHealth Capital Region encompassed a wider area of Maryland, Washington D.C., and Northern Virginia. We needed stakeholders to understand that the cluster’s strength lay not in a single corridor, but in the collective capabilities of the entire region.
Another critical challenge was branding. The area was often referred to as “DMV,” which caused confusion, sometimes referencing the Department of Motor Vehicles or ambiguously the states of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. Medimmune/Astra Zeneca convened stakeholders to define a unifying identity: the BioHealth Capital Region. The name reflects the convergence of traditional life sciences with emerging technologies like AI, machine learning, quantum computing, and digital health. “Capital” carries dual meaning: Washington, D.C., as the nation’s capital, and the importance of financial capital to the ecosystem, while “Region” emphasizes collaboration across state and city lines that historically had operated in silos.
From the outset, our vision was to build a truly regional initiative. Although BioHealth Innovation initially focused on Montgomery County and Maryland, industry and state leadership recognized the need for broader collaboration. In response, we strategically expanded our efforts to include Washington, D.C., and Virginia, establishing the foundation for today’s BioHealth Capital Region.
Can you elaborate on the existing financial and investment climate for biotech today? As you mentioned this as an area for growth, how is BHI helping close this gap?
The financing environment for biotech today is multifaceted and challenging. Beyond traditional venture capital, non-dilutive funding plays a critical role, particularly programs like the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. Across federal agencies, SBIR allocates a percentage of their research funding to early-stage seed grants, with NIH’s USD 1.4 billion program being the largest in the US. However, this program faces uncertainty, as reductions in NIH funding could proportionally decrease SBIR budgets. Decision timelines have slowed, and the win rate for Phase I awards has dropped from around 20 percent to closer to 10 percent, constraining early-stage entrepreneurship.
On the equity side, venture capital remains steady overall, but early-stage, preclinical investments have declined. Investors are increasingly focused on companies already in clinical development, where the path to exit is clearer. IPO activity has also been limited, with just six US life science IPOs in the first half of this year versus the 30–40 typically expected, making the early-stage funding environment particularly challenging. While deal flow is picking up, VCs are targeting lower-risk, later-stage opportunities that may deliver modest returns rather than the traditional high multiples.
Globally, strategic partnering and licensing with large pharma, biotech, and medical device companies have become a key mechanism to offset the decline in early-stage VC funding. Upfront licensing fees and collaborations provide companies with non-dilutive or equity capital while mitigating risk, and this activity has remained relatively constant, even increasing slightly.
BioHealth Innovation helps bridge these financing gaps by connecting entrepreneurs with both non-dilutive programs and venture capital, supporting companies through the preclinical and early clinical stages, and facilitating strategic partnerships. By leveraging its deep network across academia, government, and industry, BHI ensures that promising early-stage innovations can advance toward commercialization even in a constrained funding environment.
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