KALAMAZOO ? Kalamazoo Valley Community College?s Michigan Technical Education Center has bagged another company that could help make Southwest Michigan a life-science research center ? the Michigan High Throughput Screening Center to accelerate drug discovery for small pharmaceutical companies.
Part of the M-TEC?s network of services operating under the umbrella of its Emerging Technology Center, the new function will be based in 3,000 square feet of space on the upper floor of the east wing. The M-TEC is located in The Groves, the college?s business-education-technology park off of 9th Street and I-94 near KVCC?s Texas Township Campus.
Michael Collins, KVCC?s vice president for college relations, estimated that the venture will cost about $3 million in start-up costs. The financial support will come from private donors and grants. He expects the new center to be in place by next June.
Collins said that the high throughput screening operation based at M-TEC will be initially staffed by three people and will be ?comparable to other centers in the pharmaceutical industry with respect to best practices. We will be offering clients something that other public screening facilities often do not ? direct access to trained experts from the pharmaceutical industry who are highly skilled in the assay-development, screening, and data-interpretation processes.?
He said the board endorsed the project at this time so that those in the drug-discovery field will know that the M-TEC will be in ?the high throughput screening business. Nine months out, they need to know about us so that they can begin developing plans for screening projects and lining up their funding sources and research grants. We are confided that the KVCC center will generate enough revenue to be self-sustaining.?
The screening center will join the KVCC Emerging Technology Center?s inventory of services. It exists to provide business and administrative services to start-up and existing enterprises so they can concentrate on their prime missions of research, science and manufacturing.
?It is designed to be a self-sustaining, not-for-profit, contract research organization,? said James DeHaven, the M-TEC?s executive director. ?It will be in sync with and complementary to what the Southwest Michigan Innovation Center is trying to accomplish in biotechnology and the life sciences.
DeHaven said major pharmaceutical houses have this kind of capability, but rarely allow it to be used by outsiders. He foresees the KVCC center being utilized by small biotechnology firms, by major academic institutions doing research in the life-science field and don?t have such facilities, by government laboratories, by nonprofit organizations, and perhaps even by some of the major companies.
