SubscribeThough her economic genes were historically linked to tobacco, trees and textiles, the American state of North Carolina has found new ways to express herself in recent decades by cashing in on biotechnology’s wide-ranging innovations.
Biotech is finding a place in everything from biomedical devices to precious endangered medicinal herbs, and medical applications of nanobiotechnology and marine biotechnology.
Recent investments by the North Carolina General Assembly will accelerate research and commercialization in these and other emerging sectors across the state. A $3 million annual commitment to the North Carolina Biotechnology Center’s new Centers of Innovation (COI) program this summer will get that moving.
The COI program will initiate specialized statewide partnerships involving public and private research universities, community colleges, businesses, and government and other non-profit agencies. These entities will collaborate on research and development within targeted industry sectors to yield commercial products, industry growth and new company formation.
Centers of Innovation aren’t research buildings. The money isn’t going into lab equipment, bricks and mortar. Rather, COIs will create and serve technology development links among existing entities to help turn scientific discoveries into even more useful new products and services, and to help businesses overcome challenges in product development, initial production, regulatory approval, marketing and distribution.
COI formation starts with an invitation from the Biotechnology Center to groups developing a viable COI concept. The groups are asked to submit a two-phase grant-funding proposal. Phase I provides a $100,000 planning grant, allowing up to a year for developing an organizational and a business plan. Phase II provides up to $2.5 million to support the COI’s development for the first four years.
The initial COIs are expected to specialize in the state’s most promising biotechnology sectors: nanobiotechnology; marine biotechnology; advanced medical technologies; natural biotechnology and integrative medicine; biofuels and alternative energy; and biotech applications in functional foods.
These targets are a natural outgrowth of the regional office structure established in the last few years by the Biotechnology Center, capitalizing on the state’s diverse mountains-to-coast geography, resources and culture. Each of the regions is already gathering momentum and accelerating biotechnology sectors targeted by the COIs.
For example, the University of North Carolina-Greensboro and North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University have received $5 million in planning money to jointly create a School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering, offering Ph.D. and professional Master’s degrees from a $58 million facility to be opened at the Millennium Campus of the Gateway University Research Park.
Just as the Piedmont Triad area of North Carolina has begun to establish itself as a “nano-brand,” Western North Carolina institutions are branding their natural biotechnology and integrative medicine expertise through the newly established Bent Creek Institute at the North Carolina Arboretum. Coastal North Carolina’s marine biotech focus is obvious in the new MARBIONC program at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington as well as other marine and fisheries research activities taking place at multiple other North Carolina institutions.
As new business opportunities evolve, more Centers of Innovation may also take hold. COIs are North Carolina’s new virtual lighthouses for economic growth, shining a guiding light on new biotechnology developments through the next 25 years and beyond. They will help build on North Carolina’s biotechnology success of the last 25 years.
North Carolina now has more than 400 bioscience companies employing more than 48,000 people, trailing only California and Massachusetts in number of biotechnology companies. Among the companies are small start-ups and major multinational companies including Biogen Idec, Diosynth, Eisai, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Merck, Talecris Biotherapeutics and Wyeth Vaccines.