Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 28, 1993 TAG: 9309280264
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Carole Cramer wants to alter tobacco leaves so they produce a human protein that will help people with hereditary diseases.
And Duane Berry, another dabbler in genetic engineering, wants to develop better microbes to clean up oil spills, toxic dumps, pesticide runoff and other environmental messes.
One problem all three Virginia Tech professors face, along with other researchers in the state, is lack of money in the Old Dominion to turn their ideas into products.
Instead, such scientific breakthroughs are plucked from Virginia's laboratories to be developed and marketed - at great profit and prestige - from other states, said Tracy Wilkins, director of Tech's Center for Biotechnology.
"Virginia is way behind in this," Wilkins said during a daylong conference called "Southwest Virginia Biotechnology Showcase."
The conference drew about 150 people - mostly faculty and students from Tech and a handful of lawyers, investment bankers and others involved in the business end of biotechnology.
It takes an average of half a million dollars for a biotech firm to get off the ground, said Wilkins, who has started two of his own companies at Tech's Corporate Research Center.
Investment capital is scarce.
And, unlike in Boston, Maryland, and the ever-enviable Research Triangle in North Carolina, there are few big corporate sponsors located in Virginia to support the growing industry.
Instead, Wilkins said, pharmaceutical companies and others buy the research from Virginia universities and take it to their out-of-state headquarters to develop, manufacture and market.
Nonetheless, genetic engineers are forging ahead, trying to carve a name for Virginia on the national and international scientific scene.
Tech soon will break ground for a $9 million building - funded mostly through federal grants - to house the center, which now resides in part of the biochemistry department. While Tech will lean toward agricultural research, Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond will build its own biotech center to focus on human medicine.
Already, there are half a dozen young biotech firms at Tech's Corporate Research Center, providing jobs that pay above the regional and state average, Wilkins said.
"We're the best-kept secret on the East Coast, and we'd like to change that," he told the audience. Although he lamented the lack of state-backed funding for startup money, Wilkins said Tech has the brains, the "cutting edge" research that could really pay off.
Carole Cramer is vice president of CropTech Inc., which opened at Tech's research center in December. "We took the plunge," she said.
The company is developing a technique to inject genetically engineered human proteins into tobacco, where the proteins quickly multiply. The leaves are harvested, ground up and the protein extracted - in a sophisticated machine, to be sure. The plan is to eventually market the technique to different companies.
CropTech, with a grant from the National Institutes of Health, also is working on a therapeutic protein that would be grown in tobacco to treat a specific genetic disorder, but Cramer declined to say more on that.
Duane Berry is assistant professor of crop and soil environmental sciences. His thing is "bioremediation" - using genetically changed micro-organisms that break down petroleum products, pesticides and other toxins.
Eric Wong, assistant professor of animal and poultry science, is tinkering with turkey genes. By delaying the birds' natural instinct to incubate their eggs, Wong said, the technique could yield more eggs. That could mean an additional $3 million a year to the nation's turkey growers, he said.
"Picture what the transgenic bird will look like," said Wong, as he clicked the slide projector to a photo of . . . the Hokie Bird.
These scientists haven't actually created any monsters, or unleashed out-of-control mutants upon the world. But that fear is real among the public, said Mary Ellen Jones, who works at Tech's Center for the Study of Science in Society.
"Jurassic Park" may fuel those fears of biotechnology gone awry, with blood-thirsty dinosaurs roaming the land, but only temporarily, Jones believes. "I think it's going to make genetic engineering a household word."
"Frankenstein" didn't turn us off from using electricity, she said, and "China Syndrome" didn't dampen our research on nuclear power.
Every new scientific endeavor comes with a degree of risk, she said, but the probability of widespread benefit is often much greater. "Scientists are not out there to do crazy things," Jones said.
by CNB