Blue Sky Biotech To Launch New Business Line | Worcester firm partners with Amherst company to make research kits
A Worcester biotech company that has grown up quite a bit over the last seven years plans to grow some more with the launch of a new product line to help drug and biotech researchers get more accurate results.
Worcester-based Blue Sky Biotech Inc. has been known since its inception as a contract research organization. It provides high-quality services such as antibody purification, gene synthesis and full DNA sequencing, but this fall it will begin releasing research kits.
Peas In A Cell
The company has partnered with an Amherst startup called Protein Attachment Technologies LLC to provide kits with cell membranes that include a protein signaling team just as it is in the human body, according to Paul Wengender, Blue Sky’s founder.
Blue Sky will provide high-quality proteins and Protein Attachment will provide the membrane environment, said Scott Gridley, Blue Sky’s director of product development, who oversees the new line.
In order for proteins to be studied properly and to get an accurate picture of how a potential drug may be reacting at the cellular level, researchers need an environment that replicates the body’s signaling process exactly.
The exciting part of the new product line is that it will help biotech and drug researchers make better discoveries, according to Gridley and Wengender.
The cell membrane technology made by Protein Attachment sets up the protein signaling team, not just pairs of interactions. The pairs, which are the most common offering of similar research kits, only offer a tiny piece of what goes on in the body at that level, Wengender said.
“It’s not necessarily the best replication of biological behavior,” he said. “It will very likely lead to the development of some novel therapeutics.”
This kind of evolution has been BlueSky’s growth mode all along.
By developing services early on — what it calls “gene to screen” research services — the company has grown since 2002 when it opened with only two employees.
Now there are 35 full-time workers and it has forecasted that it will bring in $5 million in revenues by the end of the year, Wengender said.
Blue Sky’s landlord is not surprised that the company has found another young firm to collaborate with or that the company is on a growth spurt.
“I think the only company I could compare them to is ViaCell, which was bought by PerkinElmer,” said Kevin O’Sullivan, president and CEO of Massachusetts Biomedical Initiative, a nonprofit corporation that rents incubator space to startup life science companies. O’Sullivan said that like the Cambridge-based ViaCell, they entered the right business at the right time, and the company will benefit by continuing to grow quickly.
PerkinElmer Inc. acquired ViaCell for $300 million in 2007. ViaCell developed new drug therapies from stem cells.
And the company sees more blue skies ahead. “We’re relatively young company in a young industry,” Wengender said.
Got news for our Biotech Buzz column? Contact WBJ Staff Writer Eileen Kennedy at ekennedy@wbjournal.com.
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