Gus G. Sentementes' July 11 article ("What Baltimore's biotech industry needs: an 'anchor'"), addressed some very important requirements for the growth of Baltimore's biotech industry. I agree that Baltimore needs and deserves to have an 'anchor' to help attract biotech companies. However, our goal cannot be how Baltimore can beat Montgomery County, or vice versa.

The competition we need to be looking at in biotech is not Montgomery County versus Baltimore; it is our region versus others throughout the country. We should be focused on how to make our entire region—Baltimore, Montgomery County and everything in between—a national and international leader in life sciences. We must work collectively to expand the opportunities available to all of us by creating a strong environment for starting new companies, training new entrepreneurs, and linking investors with exciting new technologies. The region should be competitive not with each other, but with Cambridge, Mass.; San Francisco; Research Triangle Park, N.C. and other cities across the U.S. and the world that are vying for these very same opportunities and resources.

We have unparalleled assets in our region that must work more closely together. We need to start looking out for each other. We are on the same team after all and we don't want to win a battle only to lose the war.

Mike Knapp, Germantown

The writer is a Montgomery County councilmember