Inmar helps bring pieces together at Winston-Salem research park

Something big is happening in Winston-Salem. Something special, a possible game changer. Something that has the potential not just to help revitalize that city’s downtown area but reinvent it.

I’m talking about the Piedmont Triad Research Park, and before you ask, “what’s new about that?,” let me acknowledge that I recently gained a new appreciation for the significance and unique opportunity it represents, and how the pieces are coming together. And that was before Inmar Inc., the fast-growing technology company, confirmed Tuesday that it plans to relocate to a renovated R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company building in PTRP and bring 900 employees with it.

I had the opportunity last week to tour PTRP’s most recently completed project — Wake Forest Biotech Place. Suffice to say it is an amazing building. The developer basically took an old R.J. Reynolds building and turned it into a beautiful facility now home to several departments of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine as well as a number of private technology companies.

The building is also equipped with state-of-the-art wet labs, classrooms and meeting spaces. The centerpiece, quite literally, is a five-story, glass-roofed atrium, that opens up the place and lets natural light pour in. It’s the kind of stylish, hip but totally functional facility you might expect to find in Boston or Silicon Valley.

More importantly, though, I really got a chance to see how the building fits into the larger puzzle that is PTRP. True enough, Biotech Place, with 242,000 square feet of leasable space, adds to several facilities already in PTRP. But now, especially with Inmar coming in to take over much of the structures composed by Reynolds buildings Nos. 90-3 and 90-1A, one can really start to see a critical mass taking shape. Read more.

BioBiz Partnering Forum is Today!

Don't miss the BioBiz Partnering Forum -- today, 5:30-8:30pm at Wake Forest Biotech Place.

The BioBiz Forum will feature opportunities to form collaborative teams and acquire key resources in: advanced materials; regenerative medicine; healthcare IT; medical devices; and market-driven entrepreneurship. This goal-directed, interactive forum will feature opportunity-driven collective intelligence in action.

Participants will benefit from facilitated introductions and business development discussions catalyzed by: description of specific healthcare problems by clinicians and clinical investigators; overview of strategic business interests of corporate stakeholders; introduction of problem-driven technology innovations by leading researchers; and investor perspectives on the opportunities and challenges of investing in healthcare.

Download a BioBiz flyer for information and registration.

Carolina Liquid Chemistries expands, spins off new company

Phil Shugart moved Carolina Liquid Chemistries from California to Winston-Salem in 2008 and set up shop in the Piedmont Triad Research Park.

Now, four years later, he’s moved his company from a 1,000-square-foot lab space into one nearly 10 times larger in the newly renovated Wake Forest Biotech Place.

Shugart will soon take on even more lab space for a spinoff company, Carolina Immunochemistries LLC, which he just incorporated in May.

Carolina Immunochemistries will make what’s called a homogenous vitamin D essay — in other words, a blood test to measure the amount of vitamin D in the human body. Normally, the test is run on a high-priced, cumbersome piece of equipment, but Shugart is willing to bet that the new company can simplify the test to the point where it can be run on an everyday common chemistry analyzer. Read more.

Tech Council Event Provides Update on Area Research Parks

The Triad’s two research parks are booming, bringing in private companies and creating new jobs, according to panelists speaking Tuesday at the Winston-Salem Chamber’s Technology and Innovation Series, held at Wake Forest Biotech Place in the Piedmont Triad Research Park (PTRP).

Item: The Joint School of Nanotechnology and Nanoengineering at the Gateway University Research Park in Greensboro, which moved into its new building in December, is already running out of space with more students enrolled than expected, according to John Merrill, executive director of the park. The school and Gateway’s two campuses are joint projects of N.C. A&T State University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Item: Wake Forest University School of Medicine, which moved into Biotech Place in renovated R.J. Reynolds buildings in the PTRP earlier this year, is planning to use three more Reynolds buildings nearby, one for the Division of Public Health Sciences, according to Dr. Edward Abraham, dean.

Item: Carolina Liquid Chemistries, which looked at a wet lab launch pad in PTRP and moved in the next day, now has moved its headquarters – and 25 employees – to Biotech Place, said President Phil Shugart. The company makes automated blood chemistry analyzers. One can conduct up to 40 tests from one sample.

The company has a number of machines in development, some aimed at physician offices, some at small hospitals, some at commercial labs. They also are developing a toxicology system that will detect 22 drugs of abuse.

Nancy Johnston, executive director of the Piedmont Triad office of the N.C. Biotechnology Center, said “One of our goals is to grow jobs,” and one of the ways they do that is helping to commercialize new technologies developed at the research parks.

The schools have been concerned about the time that start-up companies spend raising money to keep going. Abraham said Wake Forest is developing an “accelerator” so the companies can focus on technology development rather than raising money.

Now, most inventions are commercialized through licensing to other companies, which often means the innovation, and the jobs it creates, go elsewhere. With the accelerator, it is hoped that most new jobs will stay in Winston-Salem, he said.

Startups on agenda at new Biotech Place

The next big biotech success story for the Triad may be nothing more than a fluid in a professor’s test tube right now. Coaxing a company to life from such a humble beginning is a key part of the business plan of the expanding Piedmont Triad Research Park.

That’s why within the sprawling 242,000-square-foot Wake Forest Biotech Place building, recently renovated by Wexford Science + Technology at a cost of $100 million, is about 15,000 square feet set aside as low-cost space for startups and young companies that could grow into major park tenants.

Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, chief sponsor of the PTRP, is the biggest tenant of that building, and Dan Cramer, Wexford’s executive vice president overseeing Biotech Place, said attracting mature corporate users is also an important part of its plan.

“But the incubation of small startups and entrepreneurs — people that might spring off from the university or just want to be near the energy of others like them — is a big piece of it, too,” Cramer said. Read more

Technology Series Returns May 22 at Biotech Place

The Future of Research Parks and Biotech in Winston-Salem, the Triad & North Carolina. With the opening of Biotech Place, Winston-Salem’s attention has once again been focused on the importance of Piedmont Triad Research Park (PTRP) to our future economic growth. But PTRP’s and Winston-Salem’s ultimate success will not be determined on their own. Additional efforts in Greensboro and throughout North Carolina are strengthening the position of our entire region in regards to developing our technology-based economy, particularly in the area of biotechnology. This discussion will provide an opportunity for the public to learn about the benefits the PTRP and Gateway University Research Park -- and the companies and individuals working in them -- provide to our community; how they are a catalyst for job growth and economic development; how their plans complement each other and additional efforts across North Carolina; and how many resources are available to those working in a research park environment. Panel: Dr. Ed Abraham – Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center/PTRP; John Merrill – Gateway University Research Park; Nancy Johnston – NC Biotechnology Center, Piedmont Triad Office; Phil Shugart – Carolina Liquid Chemistries, PTRP tenant. Read more and register.

Carolina Liquid Chemistries launching new blood analyzer

Carolina Liquid Chemistries is launching the first product from its new headquarters located at the Piedmont Triad Research Park's Wake Forest Biotech Place building. The device, called the CLC 720, is a chemistry analyzer that can process 100 different blood chemistry tests for such things as glucose or cholesterol levels or drug abuse. The system received FDA clearance in March and is the second chemistry analyzer that Carolina Liquid Chemistries has developed in the research park. “This chemistry analyzer is the first in its class to be designed since the 1990s,” said Phil Shugart, President of Carolina Liquid Chemistries. Read More.