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Behind the Biotech Mask
Who really are those biotech people, and what is it exactly that they do?
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Business New Haven
3/5/2001
By: Linda Mele
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Towns and cities across Connecticut are seeking to attract biotech firms because they appear to offer the most rapid employment growth in, at least, the immediate future.
Bioscience companies bring jobs and tax money to the communities in which they locate while lending an aura of respect to the economic development of those communities.
Small communities like Orange, Branford and Guilford as well as cities like New Haven are eager to attract these companies, which are expected to flourish in the new Millennium.
But who are the people that work for them? And what, exactly, is it that they do?
Are they “techo-nerds” whose pocket protectors are hidden beneath lab coats?
Do they sit around all day looking at slides through microscopes and dream all night about what they saw? Or are they just like us - jogging in the early morning, fighting rush hour traffic on our way to and from work and chauffeuring their kids to soccer matches at night? What's hidden behind all that education and inquisitiveness? What kind of educational background and work experience is needed to work in this suddenly sexy industry?
According to Albert May, managing director of communications and public
policy for Connecticut United for Research Excellence (CURE, www.curenet.org/), those who work in bioscience are split fairly evenly: About one third have associate's or bachelor's degrees, one third have master's degrees and another third have Ph.D.s.
“Those who do the research work have degrees in the sciences,” May says, “such as chemistry, biology and molecular biology.”
“There is, however, still a need for those who have people and business skills, because every company needs people to run them. These companies also need paralegals and lawyers to handle the patents and legal work that's involved in getting their discoveries to market,” May says.
“There is also a great demand for those with IT experiences in the bioscience field,” May says, “because a lot of the research going on now, especially that which is related to genetics, is computer-based.
According to May, in organizations such as CURE as well as smaller bioscience firms, there is also a vigorous demand for people who have a background with large pharmaceutical companies in the area of research, business and marketing.
May says it's easy to forget that these emerging companies are businesses, too, and that they have to watch the bottom line just like any other business.
Rex Denton and Cathy Wilcox both work for the New Haven-based Genaissance Pharmaceuticals, which was founded in 1997 and is currently located in Science Park. The park was designed as a sort of incubator location that would attract bioscience and other technology-based companies.
Genaissance develops “proprietary technologies that make it possible to harness information about genetic variations in genes of pharmaceutical relevance and connecting it to drug responses,” according to its Web site (www.genaissance.com).
Denton is the company's director of partnership programs. He came to Connecticut to work for Yale from positions in Rochester, N.Y. and Bethesda, Md. six years ago. He's been with Genaissance for two and a half years.
“I was here when there were only 15 employees, and now there are 160,” Denton says. “I watched the company grow up.”
His current job involves negotiating agreements for collaborative projects like the one the company developed with Johnson & Johnson and one of its subsidiaries, Janssen Pharmaceutica.
Before coming to Genaissance, Denton served his time in pure research, which requires one to be methodical and disciplined as well as patient and able to take rejection, all qualities that are also required in the discipline Denton pursues when away from the office.
In his personal life, Denton is an accomplished jazz trumpeter who has played with Ray Charles and Manhattan Transfer in New York as well as in musical theater productions at venues such as New Haven's Shubert Performing Arts Center.
The Madison resident lives with his two children and his wife Margi, who plays the flute and is a research scientist at the Bristol Myers-Squibb facility in Wallingford.
“She comes from a musical family,” Denton explains. “Her father was the principal clarinetist with the Hartford Symphony for many years.”
“The Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute facility in Wallingford is the company's center for infectious disease and neuroscience drug discovery; infectious diseases, neuroscience and oncology clinical R&D as well as lead discovery and high-throughput screening. research and development,” according to its Web site (www.bms.com).
BMS' principal businesses are medicines, beauty care, nutritional products and medical devices.
On the undergraduate level, the company needs people with degrees and/or experience in accounting, business, computer science, engineering, finance, health science and information management. Those with education and experience on the graduate level in the fields of business administration, accounting, computer science, human resources management, information management, marketing, finance, distribution, regulatory affairs and all levels of research and development (virology, veterinary sciences, informatics, pharmacology, biostatistics, etc.) are likewise of keen interest to the BMS hierarchy.
Similar needs affect most companies in the field even though the number needed by any firm may not be on a par with the needs of a BMS.
Wilcox, who says she's often described as the Energizer Bunny's twin, has been a docketing assistant in Genaissance's Intellectual Properties Department for nearly a year.
While hers may not be a pure research position, it is vital in the company's overall scheme of getting research and drug discoveries patented and into the marketplace.
“I help draft patent applications for any new technology or drug developed by Genaissance researchers through the patent process,” Wilcox explains, “making sure we don't miss any deadlines.”
Wilcox holds an associate's degree in physical therapy, a bachelor's degree in liberal arts and came to Genaissance after working in the health-care industry and concluding that it simply wasn't her cup of tea. “I'm in a degree program now to get certified as a paralegal,” Wilcox says.
When the Milford resident is not working, attending school or planning her 2002 wedding, Wilcox is an accomplished actress who has been acting and singing for 13 years.
“Right now I'm working on my third show in the past year,” Wilcox says, “which is a production of Camelot.”
Wilcox doesn't see her off-work activities as incongruous with her work. She says that in both fields you have to have patience and be willing to practice or go over things until you get it right.
“I'm easily bored, so dealing with things that are constantly changing is very challenging to me,” Wilcox says.
Brett Cohen, executive vice president of Clinical Research Consultants Inc. (CRC), with offices in Trumbull, Pensacola, Fla. and Erie, Pa., is an independent research center that conducts clinical research in multiple therapeutic areas including clinical trials, medical device studies, outcome studies, mall studies, diagnostic studies, nursing home trials, nutritional studies, clinical trial protocol design and review and dental trials.
The company maintains a database of more than 100,000 active patients and, unlike some others in the field, works directly with patients, Cohen says, on projects that require study subjects both before and after FDA approval.
A family business, CRC was founded in 1990 by his Brett Cohen's father Selwyn Cohen, M.D. who is board-certified in internal medicine and rheumatology. The senior Cohen is a senior attending physician at Bridgeport Hospital and an associate clinical professor of medicine at the Yale University School of Medicine.
CRC says it “has exclusive privileges to coordinate and manage clinical trials for the largest physician group in Connecticut.”
Brett Cohen's responsibilities are in the areas of marketing and business/corporate development to companies concentrating in the fields of oncology, allergy/immunology, cardiology, neurology, dentistry, dermatology, nutrition, otolaryngology, endocrinology, gastroenterology, psychiatry, pulmonology, gynecology, rheumatology, hematology, urology disease vaccines and geriatric medicine.
The company remains privately held even though it was sold to a Pennsylvania company recently, Cohen says.
Cohen's out-of-office life is adventure-oriented, just like his family's plunge into the biotech field.
“I've climbed Mt. Kilamanjaro, love to adventure travel and have run a couple of marathons,” Cohen says. Cohen describes the biotech field as a “working adventure.”
CURE's May reminds a listener that the field is still in its infancy even given the proliferation of biotech firms and the expansion of such giants as Bayer, BMS and Johnson & Johnson, to name a few.
“There's not a shortage of employees now, but [everyone in the field] needs to help get kids to like and enjoy science,” says May.
“The growth is and will continue to be there and the need for workers in all the science-related fields will have to be satisfied eventually,” May adds.
To that end, the state's Department of Economic & Community Development (DECD) launched an “industry clusters” initiative two years ago. This identified bioscience as one of the top five industries upon which initiatives should be focused to nurture future economic development.
“The purpose of industry cluster economic development is to bring about changes that help Connecticut gain a competitive advantage,” explains DECD Commissioner James F. Abromaitis. “We will
accomplish this by nurturing and leveraging the strengths of Connecticut's businesses and residents, and by removing constraints that limit their competitive potential.”
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