The state of biomanufacturing: North Carolina pursues an innovative, fast-growing industry that will bring large investments and high-paying jobs.

Drive past a pond or lake in North Carolina in the summertime, and it will likely be lush with Lemna, a small, bright-green plant that lives on the water's surface and grows so fast that it might well be considered the aquatic equivalent of kudzu. Lemna is better known by its common name, duckweed. But whatever you call it, don't call it pond scum, or you'll risk offending the people who revere the plant for its potential ability to produce life-enhancing medicines for the treatment of cancer, hepatitis, blocked arteries, rheumatoid arthritis and other afflictions.

Those people include the more than 50 employees of Biolex Inc., a biotechnology company in Pittsboro that genetically engineers duckweed to make protein-based medicines faster and cheaper.

Duckweed is the fastest-growing known plant, reproduces easily, readily accepts new genes and can produce complex proteins that bacteria and yeast can't easily make, or that mammalian cells can make only at great cost over a long time. These and other traits make duckweed an ideal production system for a range of recombinant proteins, including Biolex's own and those developed by its partners and clients.

Another innovative contract manufacturer of therapeutic proteins is Durham-based KBI BioPharma Inc. KBI uses conventional "stirred-tank" bioreactors to make proteins in microbial and mammalian cells but is developing a more efficient system that uses a patented technology called the centrifugal bioreactor. It allows cells to be immobilized at very high densities without using membranes or other solid support or retention devices. This promises to give KBI's customers more uniform product at a lower cost.

In addition to being innovators in the same business, Biolex and KBI share another common thread: Early on, each company received critical assistance from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center. Biolex received a $100,000 Small Business Research Award from the center in 2001 to demonstrate the production of alpha-interferon in duckweed. Also, through an earlier institutional development grant to North Carolina State University, the center helped the university recruit Dr. Anne-Marie Stomp, the plant molecular biologist who later launched Biolex. Meanwhile, KBI was recruited to North Carolina with the help of a $1 million loan from the center in 2003.

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Why the focus on biomanufacturing? Because biomanufacturing--whether the production of drugs, vaccines, enzymes, amino acids or other biological products--is a fast-growing sector that brings high-paying manufacturing jobs to a state that is losing many of its traditional manufacturing jobs.

With about 50 companies and 20,000 employees engaged in biomanufacturing and the related manufacture of pharmaceuticals, diagnostics and medical devices, North Carolina already is an industry leader. Bringing in more of these companies and jobs is a priority of New Jobs Across North Carolina: A Strategic Plan for Growing the Economy Statewide through Biotechnology, commissioned by Gov. Mike Easley and developed by the Biotechnology Center.

Several initiatives recommended by the strategic plan are under way. The Biotechnology Center and the N.C. Department of Commerce are following a new retention, expansion and attraction plan to bring new biomanufacturing plants to North Carolina and to expand the ones already here. The General Assembly has set up, but not yet funded, the North Carolina Life Sciences Revenue Bond Authority, which would provide loan guarantees to help finance the construction of biomanufacturing plants. And Golden LEAF has invested $60 million of the state's federal tobacco-settlement money in a new statewide program to train workers for biomanufacturing and pharmaceutical-manufacturing jobs.

N.C. State will use its portion of the Golden LEAF money to build the $36 million Biomanufacturing Training and Education Center, scheduled to open in January 2007. Plans call for a 100,000-square-foot plant that will provide experience in a pilot-scale, good-manufacturing-practices environment similar to an industrial setting. North Carolina Central University will receive $19.1 million for the Biomanufacturing Research Institute and Technology Enterprise, set to open in January 2007. It will include a 65,000-square-foot laboratory and classroom building for research, teaching and training at all levels in biotechnology and biomanufacturing. The North Carolina Community College System will receive $9.4 million for BioNetwork, six centers statewide that will train workers in bioprocessing, pharmaceuticals and bio-agriculture and feed students into the N.C. State and NCCU programs for additional training.

The training program is being offered by the North Carolina Biomanufacturing and Pharmaceutical Training Consortium, a partnership of the University of North Carolina system, the North Carolina Community College System, biomanufacturing companies and the Biotechnology Center. The program will address training across all the relevant scientific, technical and engineering disciplines at all levels from certificate or associate degree to Ph.D. The goal is to train 2,000 to 3,000 employees each year.

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In addition to this training initiative, the Biotechnology Center has worked with industry and the North Carolina Community College System to develop the BioWork course for training entry-level bioprocess technicians. "We're determined that North Carolina will have the world's best-trained work force for biomanufacturing," says Dr. Leslie Alexandre, president and CEO of the Biotechnology Center.

KBI BioPharma chose North Carolina over six other states because of its supporting infrastructure for the biosciences, including the Biotechnology Center, excellent research universities and community colleges, specialized construction and engineering companies, available workers and extensive work-force training programs, in addition to its high quality of life. "None of the other six [states] measured up when all of these factors were considered," says Anthony Laughrey, president and CEO of KBI.

In recent years, three other major biopharmaceutical manufacturers--Diosynth RTP Inc., Biogen Idec Inc. and Merck & Co.--have committed to North Carolina, bringing thousands of jobs, both directly and indirectly, and capital investments totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. Other biomanufacturing plants with established operations in North Carolina have expanded. They include Wyeth Vaccines, which operates in Sanford one of the world's largest vaccine plants, and Talecris Biotherapeutics (formerly Bayer), which runs the world's largest blood-fractionation plant in Clayton.

North Carolina Biotechnology Center

15 T.W. Alexander Drive

Research Triangle Park, NC 27709

[phone], www.ncbiotech.org