Date: Mar 09, 2004 Author: Kathleen Miller and Paul Freeman Source: bizjournal
When people talk of the future of Washington state as a potential top-tier biotech center, they probably are not thinking of that industry flourishing among the rolling fields of wheat of Eastern Washington.
Indeed some industry leaders in the Puget Sound area assert that Eastern Washington does not have the critical mix of multiple research institutions, venture capitalists and scientists with an entrepreneurial spirit to even attempt to become a recognized biotech center.
Yet Gene Schreckhise, associate campus dean for Washington State University Tri-Cities campus and chair of the BioProducts Building committee, points out that Richland -- not Seattle -- has the highest number of Ph.D.s per capita. In fact, he says, Richland has the most Ph.D.s per capita of any city in the nation. The research happening on his campus and at other Eastern Washington facilities allows "environmentalist and agriculturists to meet halfway." One example is current research that will turn agricultural waste into value-added products such as plastics.
Further east in Spokane, Hollister-Stier Laboratories LLC has provided a range of contract manufacturing services to support the pharmaceutical, biopharmaceutical and biotechnology industries since 1921. The state's oldest biotech company provides clinical and commercial-scale freeze-drying for leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Nearly one-third of all drugs currently in development require this technology. This year Hollister-Stier, which employs in excess of 250 people, will expand its contract manufacturing services to include syringe filling.
Spokane is also home to the Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute, an economic development agency funded by the state to accelerate the development and growth of technology companies in Eastern Washington. Recently SIRTI received $3 million from the Economic Development Administration, a division of the state Department of Commerce to build a new technology center. SIRTI executive director Patrick Tam says "with the SIRTI technology center we are leveraging this community's expertise in the health sciences. We will design the facility to bring together great minds, working on innovative research and business ideas. This region has great potential to grow more technology-based firms."
SIRTI offers client companies commercialization services like business and marketing advice. Plus, it helps these companies obtain financing and operates a 12,000-square-foot incubator facility with business, research and manufacturing spaces, including fully equipped laboratories. SIRTI has six incubator clients, including Matrical Inc., a technology-development firm specializing in integrated design, manufacturing and marketing solutions for drug-discovery companies.
Genprime, a former SIRTI incubator client, obtained funding and expertise through SIRTI.
Washington State University is another place in Eastern Washington where scientific minds join together to create commercially adaptable agriculture and veterinary science. The university has married its science to agriculture to help the state's wine industry grow great grapes.
Ken Spitzer, associate vice provost for research at WSU, says "biotechnology is a key thrust for the institution."
"Not only has WSU identified its relevant academic programs and centers for this purpose, the university has made construction of six new interconnected research and graduate education buildings the highest priority for new construction over the coming decade," he said.
Each building will measure approximately 105,000 square feet. Construction of the first building, Plant Bioscience, is under way. The second building is the Biotechnology Building with construction starting in 2005. The third is the Agricultural Research Services (USDA) building that will begin construction in 2006. The fourth will be the Veterinary Biomedical building starting in 2007, followed by the fifth building for biological systems building and then another agricultural building. Spitzer says ultimately the university hopes to add 600,000 gross square feet and obtain $370 million for design and construction of these facilities over the next 10 years.
Still Eastern Washington has challenges that even its biotech industry leaders concede will limit the industry's eventual size and scope.
Spitzer says that unlike the UW's impact on Seattle's biotech industry, WSU will probably not create a similar transformation of Pullman into a top-tier biotech center any time soon.
"To be honest," he said. "the city of Pullman has not aggressively sought to attract the biotechnology industry. The university culture dominates this otherwise small college town. While Pullman is very attractive place to live, its location and small size present barriers for new companies. There is no large commercial airport; no resident venture capital, no ready source of entrepreneurial executives, and limited other business services. A company that locates here must find connections to the university and must employ staff who like living in a college town."
Don Lightfoot, who created the nation's first bachelor's degree program in biotech and founded Genprime Inc., a successful Spokane biotech company whose products are deployed in microbiological testing, agrees.
"We're where Seattle was in about 1983," says Don Lightfoot, who now teaches at Eastern Washington University.
Still, the university's research facilities are fostering commercial spinoff companies.
Take Pullman's MetapHoresis, a startup microchemistry partnership founded by a WSU faculty member and another corporation. Using intellectual property developed at WSU, MetapHoresis focuses on creating new technologies and techniques in proteomics, the emerging science of the cellular protein universe.
WSU also affects the local biotech industry through a research-and-technology park the university operates in Pullman. Among its tenants are such companies as Amplicon Express, a molecular biology service firm.
According to Jim Petersen, WSU vice provost for research, "The university is trying to make an impact throughout Eastern Washington." A vehicle for achieving this objective is the WSU Research Foundation, the organization that authorizes transfers of WSU's intellectual property. Through the foundation, whose board members include individuals connected to other key biotech organizations in Eastern Washington, WSU stays linked to these organizations.
Spokane has become a Mecca for clinical trials. According to Louis Rumpler, CEO of Spokane's Intec, a nonprofit economic development association, the Spokane area may be home to as many as 500 clinical trials initiated by the nation's large pharmaceutical companies "Pharma really sees the region as an important place for clinical development," he says.
In part that's because Spokane has Sacred Heart Medical Center and Deaconess Medical Center and an extensive medical community, too.
Southwest of Spokane, in Richland, is Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. One of nine U.S.
Department of Energy multiprogram national laboratories, PNNL is operated by Battelle, employs nearly 4,000 people and delivers breakthrough science and technology to meet critical national needs. For fiscal 2003 its gross payroll was approximately $277 million.
To help local technology firms including biotech companies, PNNL has created a technology assistance program. Under it PNNL loans technology companies, once a year and for free, one of its researchers for a week.
"A number of the companies we've helped have been in the biotech area," says Gary Spanner, PNNL's manager of economic development. He points out that at the Applied Process Engineering Laboratory, a technology business startup center in Richland, "every firm in there has taken advantage of our technology-assistance program in one form or another."
Some local biotech companies benefit from the intellectual capital developed at PNNL in the form of PNNL staff who leave the lab to launch or run these companies. Lura Powell, PNNL's former laboratory director, heads Richland's Advanced Diagnostics Inc., which is developing a new type of breast cancer imaging detection device. Former PNNL staffer Patricia Irving heads Richland's InnovaTek Inc., which creates and develops technologies for environmental safety and sustainable power.
PNNL, in partnership with WSU Tri-Cities, plans to build a major new research-and-education facility on the WSU Tri-Cities campus. To be called the Biological, Science and Engineering Laboratory (BESL), the 69,000-square-foot facility will enable PNNL and WSU to collaborate on bioproducts research and education. This research will focus on methods of converting low-value agricultural byproducts into value-added chemicals for products like plastics, solvents and pharmaceuticals.
The BESL will add a welcome piece of infrastructure to Eastern Washington's biotech community.
Growing this infrastructure, says Tam, increases Eastern Washington's ability to create the kind of biotech propositions that attract funding, a commodity that's sometimes been in short supply.
Growing the infrastructure also helps Eastern Washington attract the high-level managerial talent a vibrant biotech sector needs. "We don't have people that have had the kinds of serial successes that people have had in the Silicon Valley and Seattle," says Tam.
To solve this problem, the Spokane Chamber of Commerce launched a homecoming initiative. The initiative targets people who used to live in the Spokane area, have had successful careers elsewhere and now might be ready to return to their roots and take on a new business challenge.
SIRTI has also been staging a series of quarterly technology showcases designed to tell the outside world about Eastern Washington's biotech resources. So far each one -- there have been six -- has drawn about 250 people. After each SIRTI publishes a guide and sends about 1,000 copies of it around the country. "It's creating a bit of excitement and will add to our ability to attract people to come to Spokane," says Tam.
