St. John’s / MSU JVIC receives $1.4 million in grants from state

The Missouri Life Science Research Board has awarded $13 million in grants to research and commercialization projects, including two in Springfield totaling close to $1.4 million.

The Missouri Life Sciences Research Board, created in 2003 to support biotechnology programs and research, was appropriated the $13 million dollars this year by the Missouri General Assembly. That funding comes from a portion of the state’s annual tobacco settlement.

Jordan Valley Innovation Center and Missouri State University received a three-year research grant for $825,000 for new medical materials, devices and instrumentation. This Research Center Grant will be used to stimulate high-risk, high-reward applied research and development projects targeted toward commercial product development. Principal Investigator and Executive Director, Dr. Ryan Giedd describes the work as “the development of new medical techniques and tools for the prevention and treatment of trauma and infection. In a grant of this nature we’re trying to get ideas from the laboratory to the manufacturing floor as quickly and efficiently as possible.” The long term goal of the Jordan Valley Innovation Center is to help bring a new wave of advanced manufacturing jobs to Springfield. Dr. Giedd describes this process as “more important than ever given our current economic difficulties.”   

St. John’s Medical Research Institute received $574,450 to fund the first year of the commercialization of iPrep, an antiseptic for the eye to be used clinically and over-the-counter.  Currently, there does not exist a product capable of broad spectrum antisepsis that does not require local anesthetics or a product for minor infections of the eye other than a physician-perscribed antibiotic.  iPrep may also have applications in treating the world's leading cause of preventable blindness,Trachoma, in third world nations.

iPrep will be the first commercialized product to come from the collaboration of St. John's Medical Research Institute and the Jordan Valley Innovation Center. Plans are to locate manufacturing and sales of iPrep in downtown Springfield near the Jordan Valley Innovation Center. Research efforts and commercialization will be lead by Dr. Wendell Scott, Keela Davis, research scientist,  Dr. Roger Huckfeldt, Pete Miles, and Kara Childers, research associate from St. John's Medical Research Institute and Dr. Paul Durham, Director of the Center for Biomedical and Life Sciences at the Jordan Valley Innovation Center-Missouri State University.

According to Keela Davis, research scientist for St. John's Medical Research Institute and Center for Biomedical and Life Sciences, Jordan Valley Innovation Center at Missouri State University, the transition from laboratory to commercialized product is a critical time period within translational research.  

“Although many revolutionary product ideas and prototypes are founded each year, very few make it to the market due to the high risk transition from prototype to product.  This high-risk period is the interim between basic research funding opportunities and cash flow from the product.  The risk during the transition period is due to the significant funds required to scale up production, comply to state and federal regulations, and hire personnel to meet scale up demands in comparison to the relatively long amount of time before there is a return on the investment which has never proven to be profitable although marketing predictions have indicated so,” she explained.

 The State of Missouri has identified this pitfall in the commercialization of Missouri-developed technologies and have initiated means to support companies during this period including the Missouri Life Science Trust Fund in which these grant funds have been allocated.

St. John's Medical Research Institute partnered with the Jordan Valley Innovation Center in 2006 to work together to create products and technologies to meet the needs of their patients.  Currently, St. John's Medical Research Institute is working on more than 40 projects, most of which are ideas of their physicians about products that will improve ways they treat, care, and serve their patients.  It is anticipated that two to four additional products will be commercialized this year by the St. John's Medical Research Institute.

Springfield was designated by the Missouri Life Science Research Board as a Center of Excellence in 2007. Other centers are St. Louis, Kansas City, and Columbia.
For consideration, a center must be established within a specific geographical area; shall be comprised of public and private not-for-profit academic, research, or health care institutions or organizations that have a minimum of $15 million dollars combined in annual research expenditures in the life sciences – including a minimum of $2 million dollars in basic research in life sciences.

FOR MEDIA INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT ST. JOHN’S MEDIA RELATIONS AT 820-2426 or cora.scott@mercy.net.