CBRE says it has arranged a 32,000-sq.-ft. life science lease that brings Hansoh Bio to 1500 Research Boulevard, part of the redeveloped Research Square campus in Rockville, Maryland. The tenant will take the entire second and third floors, combining built-out laboratory and office space with additional lab-ready shell area. CBRE framed the transaction as one of the larger new R&D leases in the Mid-Atlantic over roughly the last two years.
The lease also marks a early win for Research Square, a two-building campus that landlords Altus Realty and Velocis have been repositioning as Class A lab and office space. In a 2022 acquisition announcement, Velocis described the project as a conversion of two buildings totaling 89,640 sq. ft. into a life science campus tailored for the Shady Grove submarket in Montgomery County.
Research Square sits in Montgomery County’s Shady Grove area along the I-270 corridor, a long-running node of the broader Washington, D.C.-Baltimore life sciences cluster. CBRE’s Global Life Sciences Atlas profile for the region estimates more than 75,000 life sciences workers across the Washington, D.C.-Baltimore market, with nearly 35,000 in life science R&D roles.
CBRE also points to the region’s research universities and health systems as major ecosystem supports, naming Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland, and Georgetown University, plus major healthcare institutions and federal agencies including NIH and FDA.
At the city and county level, Rockville economic development materials emphasize how concentrated the sector is locally, stating that more than 120 of Montgomery County’s roughly 400 life sciences companies maintain a Rockville address. For a broader statewide lens, the Maryland Department of Commerce promotes its Life Sciences Directory as a free tool covering more than 1,800 company profiles across subsectors ranging from biotech and medtech to manufacturing and regulatory services.
Nationally, life sciences real estate has been working through a reset after the earlier boom in lab construction and leasing. JLL’s mid-2025 U.S. Life Sciences Property Report (PDF`) says demand fell sharply in early 2025 amid oversupply, and it argues the market would require on the order of 20 to 25 million square feet of net absorption and/or supply reductions to return to equilibrium.
