Business

Discussions around airplane safety have some travelers having second thoughts. Boeing is one of the world’s largest airplane manufacturers. The company has been under intense scrutiny after an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 was forced to make an emergency landing in January when a door plug panel blew out of the side of the plane mid-flight.

I-Mab, a global biotech company exclusively focused on bringing highly differentiated immunotherapies and biologics for cancer treatment, Wednesday announced that as part of its strategy to become a U.S.-based biotech with headquarters in Rockville, its Chinese subsidiaries have entered into definitive agreements with I-Mab Biopharma (Hangzhou) Co., Ltd., an unconsolidated affiliate of the company, and a group of China-based investors to divest the company’s assets and business operations in China.

AstraZeneca is investing $300 million in a state-of-the-art facility in Rockville, the company announced Tuesday. The facility is part of the launch of its life-saving cell therapy platforms in the United States for critical cancer trials and future commercial supply. It is expected to create more than 150 new highly-skilled jobs to initially focus on manufacturing T-cell therapies to enable clinical trials to be conducted around the world.

Ford Motor is rethinking its electric vehicle strategies, including “reassessing” the need for vertical integration of batteries, CEO Jim Farley said Tuesday. The Detroit automaker previously confirmed plans to delay or cut $12 billion in spending on all-electric vehicles, but the comments made Tuesday are the most detailed about Ford’s changing plans for EVs, sales of which are growing at a slower-than-expected rate.

Chase Bank announced Tuesday that it plans to open an additional 50 branches across Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia as part of a major national expansion. The banking giant said that by 2027 it expects to have 190 branches open in the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia region, including one new branch in Baltimore and an additional 10 in the Baltimore metropolitan area.

The Webstaurant Store LLC has executed a long-term lease to use a 1.2 million-square-foot building near Funkstown as a distribution center, according to a news release from MCB Real Estate. Webstaurant expects to have over 700 new jobs at the facility once it’s at full capacity, according to the release and Kristen Durkin, spokesperson for MCB Real Estate. Durkin said the lease is for more than 10 years.

Montgomery County is moving closer to overhauling a land use master plan to spur more development with a greater mix of uses along its I-270 corridor, particularly in an area of Rockville seen as the epicenter of the county’s life sciences industry. The Great Seneca Science Corridor Master Plan, adopted in 2010, aimed to encourage economic growth across 4,300 noncontiguous acres, with a particular focus on a big area dubbed the Life Sciences Center, just west of the City of Rockville.

Thrive Earlier Detection Corp., a startup company based on early cancer testing technology developed at the Johns Hopkins University, was snatched up three years ago and is now planning to move out of Baltimore. Another startup spun from the same revered Hopkins team called Haystack Oncology was bought last year by New Jersey-based giant Quest Diagnostics but plans to stay long term in the city.