A real estate deal is injecting nearly $20 million into Guilford Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s efforts to develop drugs, including an anesthetic created at Kansas University.

The $19.4 million in proceeds from the sale — under which Guilford sold its corporate headquarters and a research center in Baltimore, then agreed to lease the buildings back — is pumping working capital into Guilford’s drug-development pipeline, the company said.

Among the specific uses for the money, as cited by the company: advancement of Aquavan, an injectible sedative created at KU, developed through Lawrence-based ProQuest Pharmaceuticals and refined during the past four years through a licensing agreement with Guilford.

Guilford announced, earlier this month, that it was acquiring ProQuest in a $7 million stock deal. The deal gives Guilford full ownership of the intellectual property rights to Aquavan, created through research led by professors Val Stella and Gunda Georg in conjunction with KU’s Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Higuchi Biosciences Center.

Aquavan is in advanced clinical trials for use in colonoscopies and other brief diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, and results are expected early next year.

Guilford officials have cited a broad market potential for Aquavan, as more than 50 million such procedures already are conducted each year, and the number is rising as baby boomers age and technological advances allow an increasing range of procedures to be conducted on an outpatient basis.

The real estate deal, also announced this month, allows Guilford to unlock the value of its real estate without having to move.

Guilford sold its buildings to BioMed Realty Trust Inc., a real estate investment trust that buys, owns, leases and manages laboratory and office space for use by tenants that include life science, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.

With the cash purchase of Guilford’s 168,817 square feet of rentable space, BioMed now has 17 properties in its portfolio, with a total of 2.6 million square feet available for rent. Guilford signed a long-term lease for the space.

Terms of the lease were not disclosed.

The Guilford properties represent BioMed’s first foray into Maryland, the country’s No. 5 life-science market, said Matthew McDevitt, the trust’s vice president for acquisitions. The Guilford properties are located near the Bayview campus of Johns Hopkins University.

San Diego-based BioMed targets properties in markets with “established reputations for scientific research,” including San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston and areas of Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey.