Bioscience boosters consider protein manufacturing facility

There are centers of bioscience-related businesses in San Francisco,
Boston and San Diego. The jobs are high-paying and very resistant to
being moved overseas.
The concept that bioscience can be similarly fostered in Northern
Colorado has motivated a couple of grassroots groups called Fort
Collins BioScience Initiative and BioScience Larimer County.
The main problem facing the groups – at least for now – is that the
entire idea is so new they are starting from scratch.
“We’re trying to see if having a small-scale biomanufacturing
capability can potentially benefit Colorado biotech companies,´ said
Thom Gilligan, the general manager with XY Inc. in Fort Collins and a
member of the Fort Collins BioScience Initiative.
One idea on the table is creation of a plant to commercially
manufacture protein for certain uses in drug testing and development
and the building of space that can be used for laboratories.
“Bioscience” is defined as the application of biological knowledge
and processes to industry, industries such as veterinary science,
animal husbandry and medicine, among others.
The inspiration for the protein manufacturing plant is that such an
operation can help pharmaceutical companies defray the cost of
developing a drug, a very expensive undertaking.
“When you have an idea for a drug, the development is very
expensive,” Gilligan said. “It’s many years and millions of dollars.
You need all kinds of experts. Manufacturing is one little part of
the process. In fact, the amount of protein you need is pretty small.
After that, you’re done. If you only have one drug to test, it
doesn’t make sense to build the facility. The concept that is working
well is that some organizations offer their services to the
pharmaceutical industry.”
Colorado State University has had a similar, very small facility on
its grounds for some time now, supplying protein to researchers,
Gilligan said.
The idea behind building space for labs, Gilligan said, is that bio
laboratories simply can’t move into an old Dairy Queen. The industry
has special needs such as special clean rooms, cryostorage tanks and
fermenters and they share these resources with other bioscience
companies.
“We want to talk to people like developers and see if they can come
up with something that would allow for five or six companies in a
small space and see if it’s worthwhile,” Gilligan said. “This is not
new. It’s been done before in places like Boston, San Francisco, San
Diego.”
It’s just new for here and that is one of the things groups like FCBI
is trying to sort out.
The impetus for the group is the Colorado BioScience Association, a
statewide group that is working to promote bioscience in Colorado and
bring it to the state.
The CBA wrote a plan in March for the state to develop and bring
bioscience here. Groups like the Fort Collins BioScience Initiative
are interested in helping it.
Denise Brown, executive director for the CBA, said there are 200
member organizations behind CBA.
“Fort Collins has this bioscience group that has been meeting for
about six months now,” Brown said, “This group has been meeting
monthly, trying to make everything fit in line with a grander plan
statewide. CSU does have a decent bioscience program and lots of
people are graduating; so the question is, ‘How do we retain the pool
of graduates?’
“Yes, it’s specific but for every bioscientist employed there are a
couple more people who have to support them like lawyers or
accountants, and they’ll need janitors just like everybody else. For
each scientist job there is at least one more nonscientist job that
goes with it. If we can bring a scientist to Fort Collins with this
we can bring more jobs with it.”
Groups like FCBI and BioScience Larimer County are still getting
organized, asking basic questions about the idea of the industry and
relying on people like Kathy Kregel, executive director of the Fort
Collins Business Incubator, to help them with the nuts and bolts of
organizing meetings.
“I think it was in January that we started the Fort Collins
BioScience Initiative because people kept showing up interested in
it,” Kregel said. BioScience Larimer County had 100 people attend a
networking meeting in June.

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