CSUCI, Ex-Amgen Scientists Expected to Boost Industry

For the last two decades, the presence of the world’s largest biotech firm has helped Ventura County steadily build its growing biotech industry. Over the next decade, experts say, two other forces will help to power continued growth.

The first is Cal State Channel Islands near Camarillo, which is due to become the county’s first public four-year university in 2002.

The second is a growing collection of former Amgen employees now in business for themselves. More than half a dozen companies they have started are scattered throughout the county.

The combination of those forces should guarantee expansion of the county’s current biotech base, said Doug Obenshain, a San Diego investment counselor who helps biotech companies find financial backers.

“You have some very important foundations for something to be successful there,” Obenshain added.

The county’s new Cal State university will play a key role in training a local biotech work force and serving as a business incubator to help the county establish itself as a viable biotech center, officials say.

“This university has a major role to play,” said Handel Evans, president of the university. “Our emphasis is going to be in the sciences and everything connected with the sciences. With the largest biotechnology company in the world in our backyard, it’s a wonderful opportunity we have.”

The Cal State campus is not expected to compete with the nation’s major research universities where many biotech firms already cluster. But it can provide undergraduate students internships and solid training in biology, chemistry, manufacturing practices, computers and business management. That could build a larger qualified local work force, a strong incentive for companies considering locating in the area.

“The role of research institutions in creating the centers of biotech excellence just can’t be underestimated--it is everything,” said George Rathmann, a founding member of Amgen Inc. and the company’s chief executive during its formative years.

“If you do a Cal State sort of thing, it’s pretty hard to start with three Nobel laureates on your payroll,” Rathmann said. “It’s a long process. But it is a start in the right direction.”

Because many biotech companies nationally are maturing, they will be shifting from research to manufacturing, and that’s a work force that doesn’t need quite as much training, said Mary Pat Huxley, executive director of the Central Coast Biotechnology Center and VCBio, a local industry networking group.

At the same time, Huxley noted, a national effort to map the human genetic code is creating a job market for computer science students with an interest in biotechnology. Computer training for such purposes as analyzing endless rows of genetic coding is well within the scope of a Cal State school, she said.

The county’s new university could build its own academic reputation by wooing visiting professors from University of California campuses and adjunct professors from locally based companies, said Tim Osslund, a longtime Amgen researcher now working on a cure for Alzheimer’s disease.

Osslund teaches a graduate level class at USC and has lectured at UCLA and UC Santa Barbara. He and other area research scientists said they want to be involved at Cal State Channel Islands when it opens.

There are tremendous opportunities, Osslund said. One could be some future doctorate program in biotech science involving Cal State and a University of California campus.

“Why can’t Cal State Channel Islands be a world-renowned center where, if you want to learn about biotechnology, you go there, you get an internship at Amgen or Baxter or other companies, you get practical experience? Then, you can get your PhD from UCLA, but do your research at Channel Islands. Where you do the research shouldn’t make any difference at all.”

To a large extent, investments in the university by Amgen and Baxter International’s Hyland Immuno division--both Thousand Oaks companies, with the biggest biotech presence in the county--will control how serious Cal State’s biotech program becomes. Evans said the university is in talks with both companies, but would not offer specifics about financial commitments.

Because the county will never be a biotech center like Boston or San Francisco, experts say it will continue to have a hard time attracting many outside companies still in research-and-development stages. These are stages when entrepreneurs most need access to investors and a pool of available researchers--both in short supply in the county.

But Ventura County already has its own highly qualified pool of would-be entrepreneurs who don’t want to leave the area. They are Amgen scientists whose families are happy here, but whose earnings from company stock allow them to retire early and break out on their own.

Evans said the university can play a role in helping these firms to succeed, and in turn can reap the benefits.

“We’re hoping we can develop a research-and-development park that will allow us to have start-ups and incubators for this type of science, and that our professors and students will be part of that.”

But he said his focus will first be on giving undergraduates solid academic training in the sciences, and helping them obtain internships at Amgen, the Baxter plant or any of the 27 or more companies now doing biotech work in the county.

Meanwhile, as Cal State administrators plan for the future, Amgen, Baxter and the community colleges in Ventura and Moorpark already have seized on a statewide effort to train biotech students. That training includes courses in molecular biology, chemistry, heredity and statistics.

Ventura College established its biotechnology program in 1993 with a grant from Amgen. It was the first community college in the state to offer training in agricultural and medical biotech.

Program director Bill Thieman said about 100 students have completed the program and 55 are now working in the area at companies including Amgen, Baxter, BioSource and Seminis.

Moorpark College began its biotech training program in 1994, at the urging of Baxter officials. That program emphasizes manufacturing processes. Company officials designed the curriculum and volunteered to sit on an advisory board. Amgen also has become involved and has donated equipment.

Last year, Moorpark College professor Maureen Harrigan, who directs the program, persuaded officials at the future Channel Islands campus to give some early help. Cal State donated 8,000 square feet of space in a former hospital building at the Camarillo campus for a laboratory that duplicates labs at manufacturing plants.

There is a gowning room, where Moorpark College students must suit up in a sterile environment. There also are rooms for cell culturing and purification.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of donated equipment includes incubators and a small bioreactor, microscopes and purification equipment used to isolate proteins from the solutions in which they are grown. Students learn to use all the equipment.

“We want to develop the industry mind-set very early with students,” said Harrigan, who holds a doctorate in molecular biology from USC and worked as a researcher at the Salk Institute.

Several students from both community college programs now work at Baxter, Amgen and other area companies.

Julie Taylor was a 28-year-old single mom and a customer service representative who enrolled at Ventura College in 1996 because she wanted to become a nurse. She stumbled into biotech accidentally when she discovered she was a whiz at chemistry.

Taylor completed both the medical and agricultural biotech sequences at the college. She interviewed for an entry-level job at Amgen, and was hired in May--less than two weeks after graduation--as a biotechnician. She is now growing colon cancer cells for experiments.

“Here I am,” she said. “I’m living a whole different life than I was four years ago.”

Harrigan and Thieman said the university should pick up where their programs leave off, and Taylor agreed.

“I can’t drive long distances, with a family, but I’d love to be taking classes right now,” Taylor said. “You really need a bachelor’s degree and a continuing education to support the research you’re involved in.”

In terms of economic development, experts say the programs at Cal State and community colleges will probably have a bigger impact countywide than the work of ex-Amgen researchers who start their own firms.

Start-ups don’t generally make money or create many jobs; established companies do. Many start-ups fail, and the ones that succeed provide no guarantee that they will stay in the area or remain independent.

Still, these start-ups can have the intellectual cachet local leaders want in building an identity. And there is always the chance they will stay here and flourish.

Jim Chamberlain is the patriarch of the local ex-Amgen set. He is president of BioSource International, which sells test kits and products for immunological research. He left Amgen in 1989, believing his division--which sold proteins and antibodies to outside researchers--would be phased out. It eventually was.

“So I started from zero, from scratch,” Chamberlain said. He became a distributor, selling products used in the industry but manufactured by European firms with no U.S. sales presence. Then, Chamberlain acquired a company with a NASDAQ listing that was losing money, combined it with his operation and turned the finances around.

“Since then we’ve done four other acquisitions,” he said. “Now we do our own research and development, and we keep acquiring companies as they fit into our plan.”

His company reported more than $29 million in sales last year, has 225 employees and just expanded to a 50,000-square-foot office.

Grant Bitter left Amgen in 1992 after 11 years.

“I enjoyed my time there and learned a lot, but I felt I could have more impact in a smaller company,” he said.

In 1995, Bitter started BitTech Inc. in a Westlake Village office park and has been awarded grants from the National Cancer Institute--close to $1.4 million to date.

Bitter’s work has followed several tracks. He is developing genetic tests to determine susceptibility to colon cancer, based on inherited gene mutations. He’s also researching the genetic variations among different types of cancer cells to match specific therapies with specific cancers.

And he has developed a method of screening different organic and chemical compounds to see whether they inhibit enzymes that play a role in the spread of many cancers--from melanomas to breast cancers.

This spring, after getting a patent on that discovery, he created a subsidiary, BitTech OncoLogic Corp., through which he hopes to commercialize his discoveries.

While he loves being his own boss, Bitter has thought more than once about the security he gave up when he left Amgen.

“Since 1992, I don’t know how much the stock has gone up,” he moaned.

Ambryx Biotechnology in Westlake Village is another firm launched by former Amgen scientists.

Since 1997, David Tsai and Jenny Yu have been studying how proteins can be used to destroy tumor cells without harming normal cells. Their research has focused on the use of a protein called fetuin to treat cancers of the prostate and colon as well as leukemia.

Their research on laboratory mice is promising, they said. They are seeking FDA approval to begin clinical trials on humans.

Along with all the other ex-Amgen researchers in the county are two who bring the county’s biotech future full circle to the new Cal State campus so many see as the more important key to growth.

Tsutomu Arakawa and John Philo have already located their new company, Alliance Protein Labs, on the grounds of the new university campus, which currently operates as a satellite of Cal State Northridge.

They pay $700 a month. They are analyzing the structural aspects of proteins and assessing the shelf life of proteins stored in solutions. And they do their work on a contract basis for about 20 clients, a third of them Japanese pharmaceutical companies, the rest mostly West Coast biotech firms.

The building in which they now conduct their research ultimately will become the university library. But when it is time to move, they hope to find another research location on campus.

“Part of it is just the feeling that it’s an academic environment,” Philo said. “That’s where we come from as scientists.”

Arakawa and Philo may not be the only biotech researchers setting up shop at the new Cal State campus for much longer.

Another ex-Amgen executive looking for space there is John Fieschko, who quit Amgen after 14 years, bored with his management post there.

“I had made my first million years ago,” said the biochemical engineer. “It was like, ‘Why am I here?’ ”

Fieschko played golf for a year, but then grew restless. In 1998, he set up shop from his home as a biotech consultant. Since then, his clients have included Seattle-based Immunex, medical and plant biotech firms in Northern California and some local firms.

He’s now negotiating to use space in Moorpark College’s lab at the local Cal State campus to test manufacturing processes for his clients.

Like many, he is a strong believer in biotech’s future locally.

“It’s obviously not a slam-dunk,” he said. “But the optimist in me sees this as inevitable. This mass will continue to grow, and there’s even a high probability biotech in Ventura County will flourish.”