Researchers get startup grant at MU

BYLINE: JEAN TARBETT HARDIMAN

The Herald-Dispatch

HUNTINGTON -- It helped in the early stages of Vandalia Research Corp., and it helped Progenesis Technologies get going.

Both are biotechnology companies founded through research at Marshall University, with some help from the West Virginia Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (WVEPSCoR).

And now, Marshall associate professors Eric Blough and Philippe Georgel hope a half million dollar grant from the WVEPSCoR program will give them just enough juice to turn their project into both a commercial enterprise and a way to help folks identify health problems earlier.

Blough and Georgel are co-principal investigators on the grant, which will help them with the development of a Cell Differentiation and Development Center. The focus at the center will be cardiovascular and cancer research.

The research will focus on mechanisms that cause diseases to progress, and how to identify diseases earlier for prevention purposes.

"We wanted to pick areas (in which we have expertise) but also areas important to Appalachia and West Virginia," Blough said. With the state ranking so high in deaths related to cardiovascular disease and various types of cancer, it's an area of research that could benefit people locally, he said.

"We're not trying to solve everything," he said. But the center "will bring new people in and help existing faculty already here. This has potential to generate new jobs in town and, long term, to develop new markers or new diagnostic tests for these diseases."

The project will get $500,000 the first year, and then more grants for five consecutive years, receiving $1 million to $1.2 million over the course of five years, said Jan Taylor, deputy director of the WVEPSCoR program.

Blough's and Georgel's project is one of five that received WVEPSCoR grants this year. The four others are at West Virginia University.

About $2.5 million is going out overall, and with that big of an investment, "the state has expectations of great things," Taylor said. "We understand that it takes a long time to turn intellectual property and research into economic development, but this is the state's way of priming the pump."

The Research Challenge Grant program was developed by the Legislature about five years ago, and WVEPSCoR started to administer it about three years ago, Taylor said. This is the second round that these grants have been given, Taylor said.

The Marshall spin-off Vandalia Research Corp. used its money in developing a company that produces custom DNA sequences and DNA products. It started with a couple of undergraduate students, who were assigned to create a machine that could mass-produce DNA sequences, though at the time they were working with water.

Progenesis Technologies, which was founded by two professors at Marshall and officially launched just last month, produces a biopolymer that could be used in a number of ways. Its possibilities are to preserve water in garden soil, to be used as a thickening agent in cosmetics and food, to be used in cleanup of radioactive material from bombs, or to slow the release of medication, such as insulin for diabetics, into the body.

To receive a grant, projects must be innovative and have potential for economic impact, Taylor said.

"The competition is very stiff," she said. WVEPSCoR sends out proposals for external review. Both the science and the management plans are evaluated, and their possibility for economic impact.

By the end of the fifth year, the researchers should be self-sufficient in running their operation, either by getting grants from elsewhere or from turning their research into a viable business, Taylor said.

WVEPSCoR Advisory Council makes the final decision about who gets a grant, she said.

The Cell Differentiation and Development Center will be located at Marshall's new Robert C. Byrd Biotechnology and Science Center, which opened last year.

"EPSCoR is a wonderful mechanism to develop university infrastructure and science," Blough said. "We're going to be doing what I hope is very important research but also educating undergraduate and graduate students in the area and performing other outreach and educational opportunities. It has many different facets besides the science."