Biotech Breakthroughs Bred in New Castle
Published Apr 16, 2006
The Delaware Biotechnology Institute, situated in Newark’s Delaware Technology Park, is a major hub on the East Coast for research and development.
Scientists spending their days frightening plants may sound like the plot for a campy horror flick. Yet in reality, researchers in Newark are doing just that, and their work may someday result in life-saving pharmaceuticals.
That’s the promise of biotechnology, and New Castle County’s cadre of world-class scientists across a variety of disciplines is tapping into that potential.
Defined as the use of living cells or biological molecules to solve problems or make products, biotechnology offers applications and solutions in the pharmaceutical, agricultural and industrial arenas.
“There is a strategic vision of the leadership of Delaware that sees biotech as a future economic and intellectual asset of the state,” says Vidadi Yusibov, executive director of the Fraunhofer USA Center for Molecular Biotechnology. He says the fact that the nonprofit contract research organization is located in Newark is testament to the commitment of officials at all levels to build the intellectual base and infrastructure necessary for New Castle County to be a significant presence on the biotech map.
Among the research projects at the Fraunhofer Center is development of plant-based vaccines to combat anthrax, plague and perhaps other dangerous contagions, including avian flu. That research lured $3.5 million in federal defense funds in early 2006. Another project works toward a diagnostic test to predict juvenile diabetes.
Yusibov says Fraunhofer chose New Castle County’s Delaware Technology Park because of the strategic East Coast location. That’s something David Weir hears in his capacity as the director of the Delaware Biotechnology Institute within the Delaware Technology Park. He explains that New Castle County is situated in a biotechnology corridor that stretches from Washington, D.C., to Boston. “It may be the major biotech corridor in the country and perhaps one of the major ones in the world,” he says.
A unit of the University of Delaware, the institute was founded to take advantage of that prime locale and to promote interdisciplinary and interinstitutional biotech collaboration. This is resulting in research on a variety of fronts, including plant and animal genetics, human health, complex environmental systems and biomaterials.
Weir estimates that the Delaware Biotechnology Institute and the Delaware Technology Park have contributed to the creation of more than 12,000 jobs, the addition of about 35 new companies and the infusion of more than $100 million in new capital investment.
One of those companies is a startup founded in January 2005 called Athena Biotechnologies Inc., where those scientists who like to scare plants are employed. AthenaBio’s chief technology officer, Barry Marrs, says plants that feel threatened excrete protective compounds through their roots, yet scientists know very little about these “antimicrobial” molecules.
Thus researchers at AthenaBio grow plants hydroponically – with their roots in water – and then simulate an attack by, say, an insect or bacteria. “We have a lot of different tricks up our sleeve to do that,” Marrs says. “Then the plant tries to defend itself and secretes a very reproducible, relatively large amount of defense compound, and we collect that.”
AthenaBio already has assembled an impressive library of these molecules, which it is marketing to pharmaceutical and agrichemical companies. “We need new antibiotics, ones that are fundamentally different from those that have been developed before,” he says. “If we can get some of these antibiotics out of plants, that would be important.”
AthenaBio also has an exclusive license to technology allowing its researchers to grow soil bacteria that no one has been able to grow before. “If we can find new soil bacteria, there’s an excellent chance we’d find new drug-like molecules in them,” says Marrs, a former researcher at chemical giants Hercules and DuPont.
At DuPont, spokeswoman Michelle Reardon says biotech research ventures are picking up steam, particularly in the agricultural and industrial arenas.
One example is DuPont’s Sorona, a corn-based polymer that offers softer, more resilient and stain-resistant fabrics. In 2005, Mohawk Industries introduced Smartstrand carpeting made with Sorona.
“All you have to do is give us a polymer,” Reardon says, “and we’ll figure out 20 or 30 different things to do with it in 20 or 30 different markets all over the world.”
Story by Sharon H. Fitzgerald
Photo by Antony Boshier
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