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RESOURCES HERE FOR GROWING BIOTECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY
Published on January 27, 2002
Author: FRED O. WILLIAMS - News Business Reporter
© The Buffalo News Inc.
Cognigen is in the drug development business, but you won't find test tubes or white rats in its Amherst office. Instead, the 85-person company uses computers and high-end mathematical tools to analyze the results of existing clinical trials. By analyzing results of different trials, drugs can gain approval faster and at lower cost.
"There's a whole industry that has grown up around the development of these products," Cognigen president Thaddeus Grasela said. This will be the year that Buffalo and Western New York attempt to leap aboard that industry, hoping to spawn a lot more biotechnology companies like Cognigen. With a $200 million Center for Excellence in Bioinformatics announced for Buffalo's High Street medical campus, business boosters hope that a life science industry will flourish around the new facility. The unlocking of the human genetic code creates new potential for drugs that cure disease and prolong life, industry analysts say. But whether the market for many new drugs will emerge -- and whether Buffalo will be a player in providing them -- will be the big question to be answered in 2002 and beyond. "I think there's certainly a possibility -- you don't know until you try," said Lawrence Southwick Jr., an economist at the University at Buffalo. The bioinformatics center will harness high-end computer power to discover how genes govern processes in the body -- and how diseases throw a wrench into the works. By discovering the shape of proteins that play a role in disease, researchers will be able to tailor compounds that block harmful agents or promote healthy ones. One of the pillars of the center's capability is UB's supercomputer center. Already one of the most powerful academic computing sites, the Center for Computational Research is getting a four-fold increase in processing power, plus expanded data storage technology. Dedicated lines will connect the downtown research campus to the computers at UB's Amherst campus. This year, research will gear up in temporary facilities while planning continues for new labs and computer centers. A master plan for the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus should be complete by May from Chan Krieger & Associates of Cambridge, Mass. The campus will be jointly owned by research institutions. While construction of new facilities won't be complete for two or three years, backers of the research campus stress that it's more about brain power than buildings anyway. The foundation of the idea is world-class research capability at the University of Buffalo, Roswell Park Cancer Institute and the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute Inc. "This community has the assets necessary to make a life-sciences economy reality here," said Angelo M. Fatta, president of Bufflink. The non-profit group is working to bring local industry and capital into the biotech mix to maximize the economic spin-off of biotech research. Drug development work could create 5,000 to 8,000 jobs in the region over the next several years, Bufflink estimates. The Western New York economy does have the seeds of a life science industry, economists say. Employment in health care is 30 percent higher than the national average, while pharmaceuticals and medicine employ 50 percent more than the average, according to an analysis by the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Medical employment in Erie and Niagara counties includes 29,000 health care practitioners and technicians and 14,400 health care support workers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Researchers here have developed the science behind major medical advances. Some, like Wilson Greatbatch's pacemaker technology, grew companies and jobs here. Others, such as tests for prostate cancer, became hit products for companies elsewhere. But Buffalo lacks the presence of a major pharmaceutical company, leaving the question of how it will springboard its growing research capability into private-sector jobs and economic growth. The area faces competition from other regions that are also hoping to foster biotech industry clusters, analyst Richard Seline said, putting the industry-building effort under pressure. Seline, who has performed a study of the region's biotech infrastructure, envisions more companies like Cognigen sprouting up. Fueled by investment capital and entrepreneurial spirit, researchers may found a home-grown biotech industry to commercialize the medical breakthroughs coming from their laboratories. "Similar to the medical device industry, the biotech industry is dominated by small firms," he wrote in a 2000 study, "Prospects for a Bioeconomy." The average biotech firm has 31 employees and annual sales of $4.5 million. More and more, big pharmaceutical manufacturers are using services from small firms to speed drug development and reduce costs, Seline said. But as other cities focus on building their own biotech industry clusters, Buffalo will need to compete. "The window will close for a place like Buffalo in 24 to 36 months," Seline said. e-mail: fwilliams@buffnews.comBILL WIPPERT/Buffalo News
Good Morning: Thaddeus Grasela's company, Cognigen, analyzes the
results of clinical trials for the pharmaceutical industry. "There's a
whole industry that has grown up around the development of these
products."
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