Published: November 29, 2009 03:29 am      

Cutting edge of medicine

Protea Biosciences first biotechnology company to be formed in state

FAIRMONT — With support from the West Virginia Jobs Investment Trust, Protea Biosciences Inc. is developing exciting technology in Morgantown and providing economic benefits to the state.

President and CEO Steve Turner founded Protea Biosciences in 2001. He said his company was the first biotechnology company to be formed in West Virginia.

“It takes time to develop a biotechnology company. They’re not overnight successes,” he said. “As they grow and develop, they have very long-term unlimited potential because they’re on the cutting edge of medicine. They have very good futures.”

Turner said Protea Biosciences was created specifically to commercialize technology invented by researchers at West Virginia University.

In a lot of big cities, universities develop new biotechnology and companies are established nearby to come up with new products and services from that technology — but that process had never happened in West Virginia, Turner said.

“We’re pioneers in that regard,” he said.

The company’s products are used to help pharmaceutical researchers do a better job identifying proteins that could be disease-causing and in turn develop new pharmaceuticals, Turner said.

Protea Biosciences now manufactures more than 200 products in its 7,000-square-foot Morgantown laboratory, which is located next to the Morgantown airport.

Protea sells its products to medical researchers all over the world, and its sales have grown in the past six months. The company has added 300 new customers, and also doubled its employee base this year to 30 full-time workers, Turner said.

“What a great team of employees we have with the company,” he said. “The majority of our employees are WVU grads. Most of them are born and raised West Virginians. It’s a great thing that they have high-quality careers right here in the state.”

The West Virginia Jobs Investment Trust (WVJIT) recently announced in a press release “that it had concluded a $1.7 million equity and debt financing in Protea Biosciences Inc.”

Protea is receiving this financing from WVJIT for a specific project in which it exclusively licensed a new product from George Washington University, Turner said. This product allows researchers to take a pathology slide and tissue section and very rapidly identify proteins present in the cells without touching the sample directly.

“It’s really next generation technology,” he said.

WVJIT is purchasing stock in Protea Biosciences and will be getting a return on that investment, Turner said. The money will allow Protea to develop the technology that

will be on the market next year, and this capability will in turn create new employment opportunities.

“As the company grows, their investment increases in value, so it’s a win-win partnership,” he said. “They’re investing in new technology that’s exclusively owned by a West Virginia company and using that to generate long-term, quality jobs.”

WVJIT has been active in investing in West Virginia companies since 1992, when the state Legislature created the agency. Before the legislation was established, the state didn’t really have a funding vehicle to support start-up or high-growth companies, said Andy Zulauf, executive director of WVJIT.

“Our mission is to provide equity capital to West Virginia-based companies with the goal of providing a financial return to the taxpayers of West Virginia, as well as stimulating social and economic returns in the form of job creation, job retention, and diversity of our economic base,” Zulauf said.

He said he likes to refer to the agency as a “double bottom line fund,” because it looks for financial returns as well as socioeconomic returns. WVJIT invests in a broad spectrum of companies, such as natural resource-based technologies, energy, direct consumer retail, and the emerging life science biotech segment.

“We like to think that all of our portfolio companies add a lot of value-added benefit, but certainly when you’re dealing with health-related issues, it seems to take on added importance,” Zulauf said.

WVJIT is headquartered in Charleston, but also has a presence in North Central West Virginia with its satellite office in Fairmont. Scott Gannon, investment analyst, runs that satellite location.

WVJIT has been an investor in Protea Biosciences since 2002. The agency saw the work that Turner was doing as an opportunity to create and sustain jobs in the life bioscience sector, which WVU has been a leader in developing in the I-79 Corridor, Zulauf said. He said Steve came up with a business model is which a true partnership exists between WVU and the private sector.

“We want to support the state universities and their commercialization efforts,” Zulauf said.

“As the company has continued to grow and mature, they have additional capital needs, which we have provided financing for in this transaction as well as developing a new line of business that is not only unique to West Virginia but it is an emerging technology in ... protein identification.”

While WVJIT has invested in Protea for several years, what’s unique now is that the company has secured an exclusive license for a state-of-the-art diagnostic instrument, he said.

”We are providing financing for the development of the instrument and future technology,” Zulauf said.

E-mail Jessica Legge Borders at jlegge@timeswv.com.