COVER STORY

Joseph Army, vice president of TissueLink. Amy Root-Donle photo

The life-sciences industry is a life-saving ministry of local and global companies, with several household names right here in Maine and New Hampshire.

Medical technology and medical device manufacturing are flourishing alongside biotechnology companies. The research and development stretches the big tent of biotechnology, where anything seems possible. Scientists in the region are making high pressure angioplasty balloons, oxygen-carrying hemoglobin solutions, and various cutting-edge proteins.

The market sure took notice in May, when Merck & Co. bought New Hampshire-based GlycoFi Inc. to enhance its biologics research and development. Merck, a world-leading pharmaceutical company, said the $400 million acquisition was due to GlycoFi's expertise in yeast glycoengineering and optimization of biologic drug molecules. The glycoengineering allows the company to make proteins such as monoclonal antibodies with pre-specified and defined human carbohydrate side chains. Essentially, the target is a more effective platform to make therapeutic proteins and vaccines.

The acquisition may help Merck scientists discover, develop and produce novel drugs in many therapeutic areas, such as oncology, as well as vaccines for infectious diseases, said Peter S. Kim, president of Merck Research Laboratories.

That acquisition, and similar revolutionary science at other biotechnology manufacturers, is indicative of the potential in New Hampshire, said Joseph Army, vice president and chief financial officer of the Dover-based TissueLink Medical Inc. Army also pointed to Stryker Biotech, a Lebanon facility that makes proteins to help skeletal tissue repair and bone regeneration.

"It says a lot about New Hampshire," he said.

Another project this year helps brand the Seacoast as a base for biotech. Lonza, "the global life sciences company," broke ground in May to expand its Portsmouth location, a mammalian biopharmaceutical manufacturing facility at Pease International Tradeport. The $300 million investment involves a 330,000 square foot facility designed to house leading-edge biotherapeutics manufacturing technologies.

"The new facility in Portsmouth will further strengthen Lonza's position as the leading supplier to the life-science industry," Stephan Kutzer, head of Lonza Biopharmaceuticals, said in announcing the expansion. "We will be able to offer our customers tailor-made solutions in manufacturing, with cutting-edge fermentation technologies and new throughput-boosting downstream processing." The Lonza expansion will also produce an additional 350 or more jobs, according to the company.

Army, who sits on the New Hampshire Biotech Council's board of directors, says the area's business-friendly environment and tax climate, along with a high quality of life, are attractive to companies regardless of what they manufacture. TissueLink is not a biotech company, per se. It makes single-use surgical devices used to eliminate bleeding during operations.

When TissueLink launched in New Hampshire, in 1999, the rent was significantly lower than similar space in greater Boston or the Route 128 corridor in northern Massachusetts. Army said it was a good business decision, especially considering Boston is an hour away. The company now has about 120 employees.

"Rent does not create value. Engineers create value. Intellectual property creates value," Army said.

The acquisitions, expansions and job creation is pure Bach to Sonia Wallman's ears. Wallman, the director of the New Hampshire Biotechnology Education and Training Center at Pease, said the development shows other biotechnology companies that the region is fertile ground with an available skilled work force. "We are entering a bio-based economy," she said.

As competition heats up for these companies of today and tomorrow, states are devising financial and tax incentives to attract and retain them. Maine and New Hampshire are reaching out and doing what they can to recruit. Paula Newton, president of the New Hampshire Biotechnology Council, suggested the market helps sell the state's opportunities. As she noted in a recent interview, "The tax climate is an incentive in itself."