County officials celebrated the opening of the new corporate headquarters of Advanced BioScience Laboratories, Inc. and said that Gov. Martin O’Malley’s announcement that ABL will soon have new neighbors from China in the Shady Grove Life Sciences Center is a sign of Montgomery County's strength as a global player in bioscience.

On Friday, County Executive Isiah Leggett joined ABL employees in opening a 72,000-square-foot corporate headquarters that includes manufacturing suites, research labs and space for further expansion.

The new three-story facility at 9800 Medical Center Drive cost more than $12 million to build, according to the ABL, which has more than 100 employees and plans to add another 30 in the next 18 months.

“That is a level of confidence that we like to see in our county,” Leggett (D) said of the company's investment, during remarks to ABL employees on Friday.

ABL develops treatments and conducts research on infectious and immunological diseases. ABL scientists were part of a group of researchers that identified HIV as the cause of AIDS and the company is known for developing the diagnostic test for HIV-1.

The expansion of bioscience firms like ABL could not happen without Montgomery County’s position as home to 19 federal facilities, including the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Food and Drug Administration, Leggett said.

“We value what we see,” Leggett said at Friday’s open house. The county’s laboratory space and innovation centers “all point one way. That is to look at expanding and building companies like ABL. And you have been quite successful.”

O’Malley (D), who is on a 10-day economic development mission to Asia, announced Thursday that Tasly Group, a Chinese biopharmaceutical company, plans to invest $40 million to build a 430,000-square-foot facility in the county’s bioscience hub.

“Tasly coming from China is a continuation of Montgomery County being on the world stage for life sciences,” said Steven A. Silverman, director of the county’s Department of Economic Development.

“We have extraordinary opportunity through the efforts of Johns Hopkins, University of Maryland, [venture capital] funds like [New Enterprise Associates, Inc.] and private sector companies like ABL, Tasly, MedImmune, [Human Genome Sciences], to have us rise to the same ranks as Research Triangle [in North Carolina] and Silicon Valley [in Northern California],” Silverman said.

Three major developments have stoked the county’s bioscience engine in recent years, Silverman said.

First, the opening of a Johns Hopkins University campus in Shady Grove gave Montgomery County the kind of major academic institution that is characteristic of other life sciences hubs.

Second, is the investment of venture capital. The county and the state of Maryland recently put $2.5 million in public dollars toward Gaithersburg biotech startup Zyngenia, Inc. NEA provided another $10 million in capital, the Washington Business Journal reported.

Third, is “recognition worldwide that Washington is the place to be,” Silverman said. “If you’re looking at Washington and the life sciences, you’re coming to Montgomery County."

Another kind of government investment is necessary to provide the backbone for expansion in the Shady Grove Life Sciences Center, Silverman said.

“Roads and transit are going to be the key to job creation," he said. "Without it we can’t expand the life sciences or assist in the private sector creation of jobs. ... You can’t have a Life Sciences Center without the [Corridor Cities Transitway]. That’s the way it’s set up and it should be set up that way.”

Leggett told ABL employees that he is thinking big when it comes to the future, given the company’s work on AIDS research.

“I am convinced that someday, somehow, somewhere right here in Montgomery County that ABL will be celebrating a Nobel Prize,” Leggett said. “That would be the capstone for what you’ve done, because you’ve done so much not just here, but literally around the world.”