As Governor Schewitzer stated, the Montana BioScience Alliance is poised to play a critical role in the promotion and advancement of this critical industry. "The Montana BioScience Alliance was formed to create a strong partnership between universities, biotechnology industries, and hospital and clinical laboratories from all regions of Montana,” said John O’Donnell, President of the Montana BioScience Board of Directors, and Executive Director of TechRanch in Bozeman. Currently the Alliance has 30 members including representatives from bioscience companies, universities, hospitals, and research institutions. The Alliance is the Montana affliate of the national BIO organization.

The alliance’s primary role is to transfer promising technology into the private sector for investment and development, and to cultivate the relationship between the life sciences cluster and state government. The Alliance is already reaping benefits for its members including securing a $50,000 investment from the Economic Development Adminstration to support developing a bioscience cluster. The grant will be used to fund core operations of the alliance during its formative stage and to develop services for Alliance members.

The Montana BioScience Alliance is located on the Downtown Campus of Montana State University Billings, through the generous support of the University.

You can learn more about us at our website.

Attention Montana Biotech Companies!

If your company has a direct interest in the development of our state’s bioscience community, we would like to talk to you about your firm so we can gear up to assist you and companies like yours. We are going to be contacting representatives from bioscience firms throughout Montana and asking a couple of quick questions. So, if you get a call from us please take a few minutes to give us your thoughts. If you would like to get a head start, please email your contact information to the Alliance’s Executive Director, Sharon Peterson, at speterson@msubillings.edu or call her at 406.896.5876 and we will give you a call soon. We will finish this survey by the end of the year, and will feature the findings in the next newsletter.

Michael A. McCue, Chairman and CEO of LigoCyte Pharmaceuticals, Inc., in Bozeman, passed away on August 19th after a courageous battle with cancer.

An inspiration to all who knew him, Mike was an extraordinary man with many talents. He led with incredible commitment, guiding LigoCyte to build a remarkable team and a strong company. Mike was a key member in the team spearheading Montana’s biotechnology industry. Mike worked closely with MSU, TechRanch and Montana’s elected officials to build the infrastructure that will support the Bozeman community, including LigoCyte’s new building, and the state of Montana’s health care industry.

Recognizing Mike’s service to the community, Mike received the 2005 Volunteer of the Year award from TechRanch. An endowed scholarship in the name of Michael A. McCue has been established at Montana State University with the stated goal of providing an annual scholarship to a student that is involved in both science and business.

Mike is, and will always be, deeply missed.

The growth of Montana’s bioscience industry is attracting national attention. The article from which the below was excerpted appeared in Industrialinfo.com.

HOUSTON--April 13, 2005--Montana brings a lot of things to mind, but as a rule, high tech laboratories have not been one of them. All that is changing now, with a spate of multi-million dollar construction projects for labs seeking cures or deterrents for everything from Ebola to serin gas. Amid the wide- open spaces and soaring mountain ranges, today's Montana is the site of some of the world's most advanced biotech research laboratories.

The biggest project currently underway is the expansion at the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) in Hamilton, Montana. One of the oldest federal research sites in the country, the RML, is part of the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) division. The lab began in an abandoned school almost 100 years ago and today is an integral part of the federal government's quest to study the infectious microbes that cause disease in humans and animals.

The Billings Gazette recently featured Montana's growth in the medical research field. This article, authored by Diane Cochran, is from the September 30, 2005 edition.

Despite its small population and rural setting, Montana is a petri dish of opportunity for medical research.

So say researchers who spoke during the Ideas Montana Medicine conference at St. Vincent Healthcare.

"Clinical research is very definitely doable in small towns," said Dr. George Risi, an infectious-disease specialist from Missoula. "This is going to become a larger way we can care for patients in Montana."

Risi, who is in private practice, is one of six infectious-disease specialists in the state. He supplements his clinical income by doing research for pharmaceutical companies. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, his practice was one of 75 sites in the nation to study the smallpox vaccine. Of those 75 sites, Risi's ranked seventh for recruiting people to participate in the study. When a second smallpox vaccine was developed, Risi became one of 10 researchers in the nation to hold clinical trials, and he ranked third for successful recruitment of participants. Now his practice is one of five in the country studying a vaccine for Japanese encephalitis, a virus found in epidemic proportions overseas.

Clinical trials are successful in Montana because the state's residents are anxious to help advance science, said Dr. Patrick Cobb, principal investigator for the Montana Cancer Consortium in Billings.

"Our patients in Montana and northern Wyoming are highly motivated and willing to go along with trials," Cobb said. "Most really important clinical research is not done at UCLA or Sloan Kettering (Cancer Center). It's done in places like Billings. Eighty-five percent of people enrolled in clinical cancer trials are enrolled in community settings."

This year, the Montana Cancer Consortium enrolled 225 people in cancer-treatment trials, more than UCLA and other large research centers. And Montana has more patients enrolled in trials per capita than any other state.

The state is also successful in researching specific diseases and human development.

At McLaughlin Research Institute in Great Falls, scientists are studying how stem cells can be used to treat Alzheimer's disease, what happens when the protective sheaths around the body's nerves are damaged or malformed, and the processes behind prion diseases such as mad cow and scrapie.

McLaughlin is one of the smallest research institutes in the country, said Dr. George Carlson, its director and senior scientist. Yet much of the science behind successful bone marrow, kidney and heart transplants came out of the Montana lab.

Carlson said other states have recognized the value of research centers and are contributing to their financial well-being. Fifteen years ago, the state of Montana gave McLaughlin $2 million to build a new facility, and since then, the lab has brought $35 million in research funds to Great Falls. That's a payoff of $17 for every $1 invested by the state, he said. The state has not given McLaughlin any more money, but Carlson hopes that will change. "Other states have seen the wisdom of investing in (research) infrastructure," he said. "They are competing with one another for researchers."

Montana could compete as well as any other place, said Dr. Marshall Bloom, associate director of Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton. "We have no shortage of people who want to move to Montana," Bloom said. "It's a rare person who comes to do a postdoctoral training with us who doesn't want to stay."

At the end of 2004, LigoCyte Pharmaceuticals moved into their new building in the Advanced Technology Park in Bozeman. The two-story research facility is a 25,000 square foot building including state-of-the-art laboratory space, communication- friendly office suites and room to expand that is currently being leased to a small biotech start-up and MSU. LigoCyte, established in 1998, has committed its expertise in mucosal immunology to the discovery and development of therapeutic drugs and vaccines for the prevention of inflammatory and infectious diseases. The new facility was built with local financing to support the research funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense allowing the company to expand to almost 50 employees.

---

Bacterin Wins Pentagon Contract

Bacterin, located in Belgrade, MT, was awarded $1.4m from the Pentagon to add anti-infective coatings to metal rods and pins medics use to treat arm and leg wounds on the battlefield. These coatings – thin films of a biologically active substance – help the body recognize the device as part of itself and kill or inhibit bacteria and prevent the spread of infection when applied to medical devices such as orthopedic implants or catheters. Medical device companies such as Baxter International have also agreed to use Bacterin’s coatings on their products. (from the July 14, 2005 issue of Fortune magazine)

---

Medical Symposium Attracts International Crowd

The Rocky Mountain Valve Symposium, held in July at Saint Patrick Hospital, attracted about 100 doctors from 28 states and 10 countries. The conference was sponsored by the International Heart Institute of Montana Foundation. One session detailed the “sling” procedure, a pioneering heart surgery done to help heart attack patients. The Bichat Hospital in Paris has done this procedure 29 times, and St. Patrick Hospital has done it five times.

The experimental procedure, first done in Paris, France in 2000, implants a Gore-Tex tube “sling” into the ventricle, where it encircles the papillary muscles and tightens them. Tightening the muscles eliminates mitral valve leakage and fluid in the lungs. (from the July 14, 2005 Missoulian)

---

NIH Awards U of M $9.5 Million Research Grant

The University of Montana’s Center for Structural and Functional Neurosciencehas been awarded a five-year, $9.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to continue its research to understand chemical and molecular processes used by brain cells and how these processes are disrupted by disorders such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, stroke and depression.

The Center is a collaborative effort, housed in UM's College of Health Professions and Biomedical Sciences, and with faculty from UM, Montana State University, and the McLaughlin Research Institute in Great Falls.

(from the Sept. 30, 2005 Missoulian)

---

Corixa Announces Merger, Hamilton Expansion

Corixa Corporation is currently in the process of seeking $46m in funding for the addition of manufacturing capabilities to its Hamilton plant. If the company decides to proceed with the project, the new manufacturing unit would take roughly two years to construct. Corixa currently has a number of products in various stages of development, including late-stage clinical trials. Its focus is on developing vaccine adjuvants - substances that enhance the immune-stimulating properties of an antigen or the pharmacological effect of a drug- and immunology based products that manage human diseases.

On July 12, Corixa Corporation shareholders formally adopted the agreement that Corixa will merge with and into a wholly owned subsidiary of GlaxoSmithKline. Corixa and GlaxoSmithKline announced the signing of the merger agreement in late April. (from www.corixa.com)

---

Big Discovery for RML

Rocky Mountain Laboratories recently determined that tick-borne flaviviruses block interferon using a different protein than mosquito-borne flaviviruses. Flaviviruses cause such diseases as West Nile, yellow fever and Japanese encephalitis. This discovery will allow researchers to better target vaccines and treatments.

(from the October 14, 2005 Missoulian)

November 8 and 9: BioWest 2005 Colorado Convention Center The only conference and trade show dedicated to the BioScience Industry in the Rocky Mountain Region. BioWest 2005 is the place where the biotech and medical device ecosystems in the Rocky Mountain West collide. Join us at BioWest 2005 to discover the companies, discoveries, technologies, services, venture capital opportunities and players in the bioscience industry in Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico. More information on the conference at www.biowestconference.com

November 15: Montana BioScience Alliance regional roundtable meeting in Butte at Resodyn.

Invest Northwest dates for 2006 are set: March 21 -22, 2006.