Pacific Edge Diagnostics Joins HCAR’s Knowledge Community

Company Brings Cancer Detection Kit, Jobs to HCAR

With construction already underway, HCAR is proud to welcome a leading developer of cancer diagnostic and prognostic technology to its Knowledge Community. Traveling 9,000 miles from Dunedin, New Zealand, Pacific Edge Diagnostics, Ltd. plans to use its new facility at HCAR as a sounding board for marketing its bladder cancer detection test, Cxbladder®, to urologists in the United States by the end of the year.

A relationship that began in Europe more than three years ago, Pacific Edge has been working with members of the HCAR team to develop the company’s strategies for gaining visibility in the highly competitive US marketplace.

CEO David Darling spoke of the challenges that arise when relocating to the US and appreciated the role HCAR took in alleviating many concerns. He also assured that the level of interaction and commitment of HCAR’s team members is what made the park a unique place and a smooth transition for Pacific Edge.

“The HCAR team has provided a continuous direct engagement of support to Pacific Edge in nearly all aspects of the company’s US commercialization to date, Darling said. “This included coordination of partners and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to conduct a site selection evaluation, assisting with incorporation and immigration, operational support for all aspects of setting up a US business, facilitation of business development opportunities, recruitment of personnel, assisting with the build of the commercial plan, as well as the design, construction and finance of the facility.”

David added, “The key component for us was the caliber of the business development people at HCAR. Cultivating this relationship wasn’t something that could be done overnight. The HCAR team dedicated their time to help us understand what would be required to enter the marketplace and understood this [decision] was a big move for a small company. They were influential in helping us get all our processes aligned to open our new facility.”

Currently in the design stage, the company will occupy over 11,300 of rentable square feet on the second floor of building one at HCAR and plans to complete construction within six months. The launch of the company’s franchise also calls for approximately 100 people to be newly hired and employed in Pennsylvania over the next three years.

Pacific Edge uses genomics to detect cancer of the bladder. The staff at the new facility plan to partner with local institutions—the Department of Urology, Department of Pathology, and Department of Pharmacology of the Penn State Milton S. Hershey College of Medicine—to seek the tremendous opportunities for R&D collaborations on other developments in biomarker testing throughout the region.

Pacific Edge has identified five biomarkers, or parts of genes that are predictive of cancer. Using a machine that measure the quantity of each biomarker, an analysis is conducted with a proprietary algorithm to determine if the combination of the quantity of the biomarkers indicates cancer or something out of the ordinary that needs further evaluation. This test has been validated by a large international clinical trial soon to be published in a major scientific journal.

For more information on Pacific Edge, please visit www.pacificedge.co.nz

vivoPharm Paves the Way for Drug Candidate Selection

Partnership Brings New Opportunities for the CRO

HCAR tenant, vivoPharm, has only been with us for a few months, but the contract research organization is already making an impression in the US pharmaceutical industry. The company’s new partnership with Experimental Pharmacology and Oncology (EPO), a German-based preclinical pharmacological testing company, has gained international attention for its use of primary patient-derived tumors in preclinical research.

In a recent article published by Outsourcing-Pharma, vivoPharm reported that its research in primary patient-derived tumors is taking drug candidate selection to a “new level” by creating a more advanced method of validating cancer drug candidates.

“Patient-derived tumors can be more predictive for the clinical outcome of novel drug, yet are used in late-stage preclinical development. Therefore, different models are needed and vivoPharm will fill in some of the gaps,” vivoPharm CEO and Managing Director, Ralf Brandt, told the news source.

Not only does the use of these tumors allow for more clinically relevant testing, it creates unprecedented access into a previously untapped market in the US. “This is a model with growing demand and excellent sales prospects,” Brandt added. “We see this as an excellent opportunity to combine our highly specialized and orthotopic models with a new product. By combining these models with the company’s own services, vivoPharm is creating a new standard of quality for preclinical drugs.”

“HCAR is committed to building strong relationships with international research and high technology companies looking to expand into the United States,” said Jack Atchason, Executive Director of HCAR. “vivoPharm is at the forefront at of cancer research and we are proud to have a company of their caliber at the Hershey Center for Applied Research.”

Read the full article at Outsourcing-Pharma.com

Penn State College of Medicine Kicks off Innovation Café Series

Breakfast Event Hosted at HCAR 

Local leaders from the business, sciences and academic community gathered in the unfit lab space of HCAR’s future technology suites to kickoff the inaugural Innovation Café on Wednesday, January 11. Speakers included Dean Paz of Penn State Hershey Medical Center, Dr. Keith Marmer of Penn State’s Office of Technology Development, Steven Tang of the Science Center, Jack Atchason of HCAR and Gavin Robertson and Thomas Lytle of Melanome X Oncology.

The construction site was the perfect setting for the event, symbolizing the growth goals and innovation to come from entrepreneurial, startup companies that will eventually inhabit the space.

“The Innovation Café is an opportunity to take something raw and unrefined,” said Dean Paz of Penn State Hershey Medical Center, referencing the bare drywall surroundings, “and turn it into something we couldn’t imagine—something that’s driving economic development and transcending innovation into improved health and wellbeing.”

As he welcomed guests and spoke of the event’s intentions, Dr. Keith Marmer, the event’s founder and master of ceremonies, told the crowd he hopes the Innovation Cafe will build the basis for a regional innovation hub in the midstate. Over the course of the next year, the Innovation Café will provide a venue for networking and an educational exchange of ideas from influencers in the science and technology community.

The keynote speaker for Café’s first event was Steven Tang of the Science Center in Philadelphia, the oldest and largest urban research park. Steven referenced how the Science Center has enacted similar programs to bridge the research and commercialization gap.

“True innovation spans further than funding to connect startups to collaborative business leaders who can act as advisors to accelerate the rate of technique transfers and lessen what we in the research world know as the valley of death,” Tang said. “We strive for scalable innovation that will extract research from the lab and pump it into the local economy.”

During his remarks, Dr. Marmer said he hopes the collaboration and success of the Science Center can serve as a guidepost as Central Pa maps out its own strategy to work collaboratively and further its own programs to support entrepreneurial start-ups.

Jack Atchason, Executive Director of HCAR, also touched on these intentions when he described the spirit of entrepreneurship as “the capability to deal with an ambiguous environment.” He tailored the final leg of the presentation with high hopes not only for the tenants of the unfit second floor, but the health of Central Pa’s entire innovative energy.

Last to speak were team members Gavin Robertson and Thomas Lytle of the scientific startup Melanome X Oncology. The organization provided a true example of the early-stage companies that could benefit from local awareness effort like the Innovation Café. With four promising compounds that will be vetted against the causes of melanoma, Gavin and Thomas presented their business plan and strategies for finding the support necessary to manage the road ahead to getting their compounds to market.

The next Innovation Café will be held on Monday, March 5 and will feature James C. Greenwood, President and CEO of the Biotechnology Industry Organization as the keynote speaker. To register, please visit: pennstatehershey.org/web/technologydevelopment

Congressman Charles Dent Makes Special Appearance at HCAR

Meet and Greet Hosted at HCAR for Local Business Leaders

Spurred by the recently proposed redistricting in Pa, HCAR hosted a meet and greet with Congressman Charles Dent on Tuesday, January 10 from 2:30 to 4:30 pm to promote the possibilities and future interactions with the Congressman who could become the district’s new representative. Over 50 local leaders in business, academia and government attended the event, which included a personal tour of HCAR’s facility for Congressman Dent.

“In my tour of HCAR, I saw many commonalities in what's taking places here in Central Pa and what's taking place in the Lehigh Valley,” said Dent. “I'm thankful for the opportunity to walk the halls of a major contributor to the region's life science and biotechnology hub.”

Dent has been a major health advocate throughout his political career, signing HIV/AIDS testing policies into law, supporting medical research for a range of ailments, including MPS (Mucopolysaccharidoses), and has also ironically been heavily involved in Melanoma research (a company devoted to the therapy of the cancer served as the innovative example for HCAR’s Innovation Café event this month). In this way, a few of Dent’s advocacies seem to be at home with HCAR’s commitment to encourage high technology research for the growth, transformation and application of better science communities.

Dent concluded the presentation by welcoming the questions and concerns of the guests with an open forum to discuss current issues facing the state, nation and global economy.

"We have huge obstacles ahead of us if we're going to make government programs sustainable overtime. We're at a crossroads in state government where our long term obligations exceed our capacity to pay for them and we're going to have to come together as a nation and figure out a way to deal with these issues."

Dent also extended an open invitation to tour other businesses and meet others working in Central Pa to learn more about the landscape. In speaking of his new commitment to the region, he promised that when not in D.C., he'll be making the trip from home his home in Lehigh Valley to Hershey quite frequently.