GTC Biotherapeutics (fka GTCB)

[gym gravity]

thank you Lucy for putting GTCB next to Millipore, Genzyme and Biogen:

http://www.bizjournals.com/masshightech/stories/2007/05/07/story17.html?from_rss=1

Bay State digs deep, grows up since BIO 2000
Plastics, goats among innovation hotbeds
Mass High Tech: The Journal of New England Technology - May 4, 2007by Lucy Caldwell-Stair

When BIO last held its conference in Boston seven years ago, the human genome hadn't been fully sequenced, biotech stock prices were soaring, bioinformatics was brand-new, and global pharmaceutical competition hadn't heated up yet.

While much has changed for New England biotech since BIO 2000, ingenuity still shines brilliantly here, especially in therapeutics research and development and in bioengineering, as shown in two companies who will exhibit at the conference this May in Boston.

Millipore Corp. in Billerica is making the dream of the "plastics factory" a reality with its disposable bioprocessing equipment. Single-use plastic bags and pipes don't need to be disinfected for repeated use, trumping traditional stainless steel.

"Over the past two years, disposables for biopharmaceuticals have really taken off," said Roberta Landon, group product manager in Millipore's Bioprocess Division. "The major driver is that they assist with speed to market," she said.

GTC Biotherapeutics is taking production even further. The Framingham-based company manufactures human proteins in goats. Yes, a flock of goats is the newest pharmaceutical factory. Using farm animals to raise antibodies for research has become routine, but it's a completely new feat to grow human proteins in genetically engineered goats. These proteins are extracted and purified to become lifesaving drugs for patients who can't make them on their own.

Last summer, GTC Biotherapeutics won European regulatory approval to commercialize the human anti-clotting protein it extracts from the milk of transgenic goats. It's one of many human proteins that can't be made in enough quantity using its usual method of growing live cells in vats. GTC's new technique is creating entirely new markets.

"The key competitive advantage we have is we don't have limited production capacity, so the company can expand into therapies that require large quantities of product," said president Geoffrey Cox, recently to investors.

Of course, New England faces stiff competition from abroad as well as from other U.S. regions. That competition will be out in force during BIO 2007 and supported by dozens of economic development groups and consortia exhibiting at the convention -- the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council says it's ready.

A surge of startups that had begun at about the same time as BIO 2000 filled the state with companies that, in 2002, were considered "a bit like adolescents -- well beyond the infancy of their startup years, but not yet adults in the sense of being healthy, profitable companies," according to the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council in its MassBiotech 2010 report, published at about the same time.

Since then, many of those biotechnology and life sciences companies have either folded or grown up. The investment community has certainly responded. The IPO market has once again begun to open, offering exit opportunities for those companies that were able to find funding. And more and more companies are being funded. For example, in 2000, biopharmaceutical companies in Greater Boston raised $370 million in venture capital investment, according to Dow Jones VentureOne. Last year, that number was $570 million.

And while earlier this decade no Massachusetts pharmaceutical company had produced a blockbuster drug (more than $1 billion in sales), last year saw two companies with drugs selling in that stratosphere. At Biogen Idec, sales of Avonex generated worldwide revenue of $1.7 billion in 2006, up from sales of $1.5 billion in 2005. And Genzyme Corp. said sales of its Cerezyme drug totaled $1 billion in 2006, which represented 35 percent of all product revenue for the Cambridge company.

If all goes according to plan at GTC Biotherapeutics, its anti-clotting drug could someday be a $500 million to $700 million drug, said Cox, its president. More drugs will follow for oncology and automimmune diseases based on growing hard-to-express proteins in transgenic mammals.

And Millipore's disposables make it easier for Massachusetts' biotech "teenagers" to proceed through drug development, that is, "for folks in Phase 2, where you're still not sure you're going to make it through the trials," says Landon.

Lucy Caldwell-Stair is a freelance writer in Newton.