A Home-Grown Industry Encourages Clustering

New Mexico Business Journal, Sept, 2001 by Howard Kercheval

ALTHOUGH 'FLOCKING TOGETHER' is certainly no newer in the world of business and commerce than it is among 'birds of a feather,' the concept is getting a lot of attention as groups of industries gather in somewhat tight proximity in locations all over the world to share labor pools and other resources, if not proprietary information. It's known today as 'clustering' -- the gathering of related enterprises in geographic locations.

On the frontiers of science, biomedicine and biotechnology take advantage of vast national laboratory and university resources and find a home in the Rio Grande Corridor

The industry leaders like it, obviously, but chambers of commerce, economic developers, research institutions, politicians and just about every other group with a shingle out in the places they pick to cluster like it too, maybe even more. The arrival of a substantive new business has always been good news for a community because it brings jobs, taxes and other peripheral benefits to the community. Development of a cluster brings all that too -- but in greater depth, and offering broader growth.

With an optics cluster already developing and efforts under way to nurture a microsystems cluster in New Mexico's tech-rich Rio Grande corridor (An Eye to the Future, NMBJ, June 2001), biotechnology and biomedical companies are clustering in the same area, and for much the same reasons. Universities and other academic institutions are already geared to offer high-tech training needed by would-be employees of these businesses, and the businesses themselves are able to draw from the cutting-edge research done at Sandia and Los Alamos national labs, the University of New Mexico and other world-class facilities strung up and down the corridor. Many of those biotech and biomed business, as a matter of fact, spring from that very research.

When those businesses began to stir, they formed the New Mexico Biotechnology and Biomedical Association (NMBBA). "At that point, they began to work together to create new businesses in New Mexico and in the El Paso area," says association Executive Secretary JoAnne Weaver.

The NMBBA has a membership of about 100 individuals and some 60 companies, she says: "Members come from a variety of areas, some from the businesses themselves, and others from venture capital firms, law firms and other companies related to the industry. But they all have the same mission -- to bring people together to help grow the industry"

The association meets formally monthly, alternately in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

Rio Grande Medical Technologies (RGMT) exemplifies the reasons for biotech/biomed companies being in the Albuquerque-Santa Fe high-tech corridor.

The principal business of RGMT, located in a 26,000-sq. ft. state-of-the art facility in Albuquerque, is to research, design and commercialize non-invasive blood chemistry monitoring devices for use in assessing the health of chronically ill patients.

And co-founder Mark Benak says without hesitation that the company "aims to be the leader in the development of non-invasive blood chemistry products that will aid patients worldwide in the management of chronic disease states."

RGMT's founders were doing research in quantitative spectroscopy at the UNM School of Medicine in 1988, and were joined by scientists from Sandia in 1989. That collaboration -- funded early on by the U.S. Defense and Energy departments under their joint Technology Maturation Program -- generated a series of peer-reviewed publications and patent submissions. In order to pursue commercialization of research activities, RGMT was founded in October 1992 and began operating in May 1993.

Benak says because the company recognizes the importance of technical collaboration, it continues to nurture its relationship with the UNM School of Medicine and with Sandia. Each of them was important to RGMT's success, he says, with Sandia providing expertise in chemometrics, quantitative spectroscopy and statistics; the UNM School of Medicine providing a clinical testing site for all product development activities, under the direction of its Internal Medicine faculty; and RGMT providing expertise in project management, and optical, electrical, mechanical and software engineering to support the commercialization of non-invasive medical monitoring devices.

Following the immediate startup years, UNM helped RGMT develop its own on-site clinical testing.

"We still rely on them for guidance and advice," he says, but with the maturing of the company, RGMT has all of that expertise originally provided by UNM and Sandia in-house, as well as some physicians from the UNM med school on the RGMT staff.

"That's why we're here and that's why most of the other biotech and biomed companies are here; it would be difficult -- maybe impossible -- to find the concentration of expertise that we need anywhere else in the world," he says. "UNM has an outstanding reputation as a research university, and the national labs are truly treasure troves of expertise. It's just a perfect place for our industry to cluster."