The Growing South Texas Bioscience Industry

Building upon the world-renowned successes enjoyed by San Antonio’s bioscience/healthcare community, new collaborative research efforts are emerging in the border region of South Texas
By Lauren Kramer

With strength in numbers and dollars – and a work ethic that emphasizes unity over singular achievement – bioscience in South Texas is an industry well worth watching and set to soar.

The growth of bioscience in our region has occurred stealthily yet steadily over the past five to seven years, say local experts. Part of that success is due the broad bioscience community coming together in a variety of organizations to collectively achieve its ends more efficiently. 
While some are geared towards marketing and publicizing South Texans’ work in bioscience, others are focused on finding funding for new research or developing new bioscience companies.

In San Antonio alone, a robust bioscience/healthcare industry employs about 100,000 people. Together, these workers make up 15 percent of the local workforce. Not surprisingly, the economic impact of bioscience/healthcare is noteworthy: $12.9 billion in 2003, and $14 billion today.

The majority of research conducted in the city is performed near or in the South Texas Medical Center (STMC), a world-class conglomerate of 12 major hospitals, and 45 major research, education and clinical facilities. Last year STMC logged 4.42 million outpatient visits. 

A major STMC component is the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSC-SA), South Texas’ leading research institution and one of the world’s most renowned major health sciences universities. With an operating budget of $500 million, the Center is the primary catalyst for the bioscience/health care industry here, and since its inception in 1959 has impacted the regional economy by $34 billion. UTHSC-SA has six campuses in San Antonio, Laredo, Harlingen and Edinburg.

Mary Pat Moyer, Ph.D., is a veteran in this industry, a woman who was there in its fledgling days and who has been a strong voice in helping it grow. A biomedical scientist and entrepreneur, Moyer founded San Antonio-based INCELL Corporation back in 1993, and serves today as its Chief Science Officer and CEO. The company offers clinical products, research and development for new products and pre-clinical testing services.

These days, her busy schedule includes the development and growth of BIOMAP, an initiative that aims to bring together capabilities of different companies and foster the manufacturing of biological products in a way that allows acceleration from discovery to clinic.
“BIOMAP is seeking to bring together tools from the engineering sector, life science sector and biomedical sector to create a huge, collaborative network of multiple partners,” she explains.

“Think of it as a relay race. We’re working with companies in their early development, but having important discussions during their conceptual phase rather than later.  [Questions are being asked] such as ‘Will this be a product that can be commercialized? And if so, can we prepare the tools and things we need, so that we can go through the process faster later on?’ The hope is that by each of us bringing in our expertise, we can develop a customized strategy of attack.”

One example is BIOMAP’s team effort on developing a new cancer therapy approach for individuals suffering from PMP, a rare colon cancer. The research is being conducted by IN-CELL, Emory University in Georgia, the Naval Medical Research Laboratories, Duke University in North Carolina, and Notre Dame University and R2 Diagnostics in Indiana. “It’s a team effort, and everyone brings something to the team,” says Moyer.

Over the years, she has watched several small startups achieve startling success. “We’re starting to see entrepreneurship replication that comes from companies being bought and sold by people who want to stay here.  That’s translating into some really exciting, cool new companies.”
Ann Stevens, president of BioMed SA, would agree.  Stevens used to work at ILEX, San Antonio’s first publicly listed biotech company, which focused on the development of cancer drugs for its 10 years of existence. “During its short lifespan ILEX got two new leukemia drugs approved by the FDA and on the market, which is phenomenal in that period of time,” she notes.

Typically, getting a new drug approved in the United States can take up to 15 years – 10 if you’re lucky – in a process that is as expensive as it is time consuming. Once the drugs were approved, ILEX became the center of attention for larger drug companies, until December 2004 when it was acquired by Genzyme, the Cambridge, Mass.-based biotech giant.

ILEX’s operations remained in San Antonio, and its management team went on to new endeavors. Mike Dwyer, a top executive at ILEX, founded Azaya Therapeutics, another cancer drug company, while OncoVista, an oncology drug company, was founded by other ex-ILEX executives.

“Our whole industry has been really enriched by the ILEX experience,” says Stevens, who heads BioMed SA. The umbrella group, which promotes the local healthcare and bioscience industry, was established by the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce and former mayor Henry Cisneros in 2005.

“We see our industry as being composed of four pillars of excellence: medical services, biomedical research, health professions education and bioscience firms,” says Stevens. “One of the reasons we’ve created BioMed SA is to try and leverage the strength of all four pillars, bring them together, and make an impact nationally and globally on the whole field of health.”

According to Stevens, San Antonio has had a strong research community for a while. “But they didn’t make a lot of noise, so even locals didn’t know how strong it was until recently,” she says.

One of the city’s unique research assets is the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research. Home of the Southwest National Primate Center and the world’s largest baboon research colony, this foundation operates the country’s only privately owned, maximum containment Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory, run by Dr. Jean Patterson.

“Right now we’re working on a vaccine for Lasso fever, a disease similar to Ebola, and one that affects half a million people a year in West Africa, with a 10 to 15 percent fatality rate,” says Patterson. Her Department of Virology and Immunology has been working on this vaccine for the past four years, and it is now being tested in animals with the hope that it will be available for human use by 2012. “Ours is the only laboratory working on this particular vaccine,” she adds.

Other nationally significant work under study at the BSL-4 lab is a high affinity antibody to the anthrax toxin — basically, a cure to late-stage anthrax. “What kills you is the toxins that the anthrax bacteria releases,” Patterson explains. “We’re working on an antibody that will make the toxin ineffective.”

Work on this antibody began pre-9-11, and the bioscientists are about to start testing it on primates. “This is something that the government might well stockpile in the case of an anthrax attack,” she says. “I could see the antibody being ready in a couple of years.”

Presently the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research is part of a San Antonio consortium working to bring to the city the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, a new, federal BSL-4 lab.

Three local sites — Brooks City-Base, the Southwest Foundation, and the Texas Research Park — are among 14 across the country competing for the proposed $450 million facility. 

San Antonio has an edge because it’s the only one that all ready has an existing BSL-4 lab. That means it’s home to contractors who built the lab, as well as to 51 identified infectious disease researchers.  Many of those individuals work with select agents, or agents that the government has determined are potential biological weapons.

“Getting this lab would put us on the map as far as a center for bioscience,” confesses Patterson. “Actually, we are on the map all ready, but this would be a jewel in the crown.”

A decision on the winning site will be made in 2008, with a completion date scheduled for 2012. The federal lab will have an annual budget of $100 million, and employ up to 300 scientists and staff.

If the bio lab is not located in San Antonio, there are still plenty of other industry projects in the works here to keep the bioscience community busy.  For example, as part of the Base Realignment and Closure process, in 2005 San Antonio was chosen as one of only two main military medical centers in the nation. That action may very well set up the city known as the Home of the Alamo with a new nickname: Home of Military Medicine.

Government plans call for the city’s existing two military hospitals, Brooke Army Medical Center (BMAC) and Wilford Hall Medical Center, to be combined into one military medical center. Slated to be named the San Antonio Military Medical Center, it will be located at BMAC. This will be the only place in the nation for military medical training for all branches of the service.

“It will take 10 years to make this whole vision a reality, but it’s very exciting that San Antonio was chosen,” says Stevens. “These are major, huge developments, and we’re going to be receiving thousands of new people in the next decade to help operate these medical treatment and training centers. Along with all this activity comes a lot of research, because the military is very active in biomedical research. Basically, we’ll be gaining more and more national prominence as a bioscience city.”

That’s important, because the rest of the country has a perception that South Texas is not a world class talent pool or medical facility, says Ramiro Cavazos who, until recently, was director of economic development for the City of San Antonio.

“We’re strong in teaching and providing medical services, but we don’t have what we feel is the number of firms in bioscience or biotechnology that the east and west coasts have. So on a local level, we’re trying to grow the number of private sector firms,” he says.

One initiative the city has set in motion to address this goal is the two-year-old Community Infrastructure and Economic Development Fund. The fund takes one percent of the sales of CPS Energy, which works out to $10 million annually, and puts it into a fund for business attraction, allocated on the basis of energy use.

The University of Texas Health Science Center was the first recipient of funding, receiving $2.1 million to invest in its Medical Arts and Research Center. The University of Texas at San Antonio received $1.6 million for its school of Biology, Science and Engineering.
Cavazos says the city is doing its part to keep bioscience firms in San Antonio by giving them tax abatements and other incentives.

“For example, DPT Laboratories has been in San Antonio for a long time, doing pharmaceutical manufacturing,” he explains. “The city gave them a tax abatement and money to help them build a new facility at Brooks City Base at a time when they were being recruited elsewhere.  They got a 20-year lease at a very favorable rate, and the city gave them money to help with their infrastructure and paving. That’s an example of a local firm that we were successful in growing and keeping in San Antonio.”

No bones about it, bioscience research is a strength in South Texas. That’s why four institutions got together last year to create a collaborative research effort focusing on the border regions of South Texas. Called the Borderplex Health Council, it draws on the respective strengths of the University of Texas Health Science Centers at San Antonio and Houston, and the University of Texas campuses in Brownsville and Pan Am.

“The idea is to bring together scientists and educators from those institutions who will, through a peer review process, apply for seed funding for educational research in  diabetes and obesity epidemics in South Texas, and the nursing workforce shortage,” says Dr. Brian Herman, vice president of research at UTHSC-SA.

The council’s first year budget was $650,000, of which $500,000 has all ready been awarded to various projects. The hope is that the research to which the funding is dedicated will stimulate knowledge generation which will have practical benefit in the South Texas population at large.
“There may also be some economic advantage to South Texas if this knowledge is commercializable,” Herman speculates. For now, though, it’s too early to tell, as funded research has only just begun.

While there are small circles of bioscience activity in other regions of South Texas, they tend to be fairly isolated and largely unknown entities. Calls to various economic development offices in Brownsville, Corpus Christi and McAllen yielded information about the existence of only a few bioscience companies located here and there.

For example, in Corpus Christi, BioFirst Pharmaceuticals has partnered with Del Mar College in applying for a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to create the college’s biotech program. “We’ll find out this summer if we get the grant, and if we do, we’ll share with the college the products we’re manufacturing and help develop the program’s curriculum,” says Michael Reyes, chief financial officer at BioFirst.

Reyes’ company, with 12 employees, was established a year ago as a manufacturer of an active pharmaceutical ingredient for glycopyrrolate, a drug used in the anesthesia stage of surgery. “It causes the body to slow down the production of fluids,” he explains. “We’re now actively selling it throughout the US.”

Reyes said BioFirst is the only company of its kind in Corpus Christi, which has advantages and disadvantages, says Reyes. “The upside is that there’s a great interest in expanding the industry base, as well as the opportunity to partner with the University and College – there’s a lot of excitement around “that. “

Bioscience activity is expected to “take off” in the next few years in McAllen, says McAllen Economic Development Corporation President Keith Patridge. “That’s thanks to the new, $25 million medical research facility at UTPA,” he says. “I would anticipate there will be more research-focused activities in the biomedical area as that starts moving forward.”

McAllen is home to a few companies in the medical field, including Fresenies Medical Care, which manufactures kidney dialysis products, CR Bard, which produces surgical products for open heart surgery, and Unimedical, maker of medical disposable products.

One of the newest faces in town is Medical Safety Technologies, a company that manufactures what it claims is the world’s first safety syringe with a written guarantee against needle stick injury.

“That injury is very common,” says President and CEO Robin Martin, citing a survey in Nursing Journal indicating that 24 percent of nurses had received at least one needle stick injury in the past 12 months.

Martin came up with the idea for this syringe a few years ago, but only recently raised the $1 million he needed to bring the product to market. “The nurses that have seen our syringe have really liked it,” he says.

The first batch of product will be out in June, and MST will begin selling first in Texas and then across the country.

In Brownsville, Serafy Laboratories has found a niche in the creation of external quality control programs for clinical laboratories throughout the United States, and even internationally.

“In the U.S. there’s a requirement for internal and external quality control to be performed at clinical labs three times a year,” explains company CEO Nick Serafy. “We serve as an external auditor of a lab’s performance by shipping samples to the labs and then checking the results that come back. If those results are out of the tolerance zone and the lab fails twice in a row, they’re supposed to stop testing until they’re in compliance.”

Serafy Laboratories has a long history in Brownsville, and was established in 1951 by Nick Serafy, Sr. The main challenge of being located in Brownsville, says the younger Serafy, is finding technical personnel. “We recently opened an office in Houston to take care of that [problem].” Company employees can now work out of the Houston office, and the difficulty of relocating personnel to Brownsville is less of an issue.

Luis Colom, director of the Center for Biomedical Studies at UT Brownsville, hopes that securing quality bioscience talent won’t be a huge issue in the future. “The biggest challenges we face are about how we’re [going] to attract more funding and develop different biotechnology enterprises here in Brownsville,” he says. “Biomedical should play a key role in the development of a region, but it necessitates the creation of a strong research group, and new career and academic opportunities.”

The research segment of the equation is all ready underway with the six-year-old biomedical department at the university, chaired by Colom. In that short time, the department has acquired $12 million in funding from the National Institute of Health and the Department of Defense. It has 400 biology majors and 15 researchers on staff, focusing on health areas of importance to the population of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, specifically diabetes, nutrition and neuroscience.

Colom researches Alzheimer’s Disease, as studies indicate that people of Hispanic origin are affected by this disease earlier than Anglo Saxons. Others in his research team study epilepsy and the link between diabetes and Alzheimer’s.

“We’re the main biomedical group south of San Antonio,” says Colom, adding that there is little biomedical presence in South Texas (San Antonio excluded). “But we’re one of the fastest growing groups,” he insists. “We still need to create good jobs for the people living here. I think we are poised to do that, though it will be a struggle because we are sitting in the poorest or second-poorest county in the nation. Still, it will happen.”