State funds allocated to BTEC support its educational and training programs, which are based on hands-on instruction in state-of-the-art facilities. The BBDC funding provided by the Kenan Institute is helping BTEC staff, graduate and postdoctoral students participate in industry analytical and process development projects, which are not funded by the State. BTEC provides matching funds with more than $4 million in facilities for this effort. In addition, BTEC is providing leverage in the amount of $500,000 per year in staff salaries to support the analytical, process services and research programs. BTEC manages close to $1 M per year in bioprocess services projects for small and large companies in NC. BBDC also enabled BTEC to succeed in getting three major grants from the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL), and more recently, from the Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Institute (CESSMI) and the Bio-industrial Manufacturing Institute (BioMADE).
In addition to participating in several NIIMBL grants with NC State faculty, BTEC initiated a long-term contract with NIIMBL to develop a testbed for studies on adaptive process control methodologies to produce biopharmaceuticals and the development of process and raw materials data ontologies that can be disseminated to NIIMBL companies. This program provided BTEC with approximately $1.3 million in new equipment, and several hundred thousand dollars for support of personnel, supplies, and other related expenditures. These funds are also supporting efforts on the development of new projects to be proposed to federal agencies and private foundations.
The BBDC played a key role in helping develop the technology that led to the formation of a new start-up, MembraneWorks, Inc., to develop all-membrane processes to increase the productivity of biologics manufacturing up to 10-fold and reduce costs significantly, and to land a recent grant from the Gates Foundation for the large scale production of antibodies against malaria at very low costs. The services provided by BBDC play an increasingly important role in the ability of NC State to establish new partnerships and develop new proposals for future funding from industry, non-profits, and federal sources.
The KIETS funding is helping BTEC to enter into totally new areas of biomanufacturing, including the transition from mammalian host cells for biologics to production, to hopefully more efficient and faster production of biotherapeutics in microbial cells such as yeast and fungi. BTEC Director Gary Gilleskie is playing a key role in the establishment of the Faculty Cluster in Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing and is providing key resources for the recruitment of new faculty members towards this effort.