Montana's Biotech Cowboys Wield Microscopes as They Lasso Deadly Germs and over $120 Million in Capital Projects

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Montana brings a lot of things to mind, but as a rule, high tech laboratories have not been one of them. All that is changing now, with a spate of multi-million dollar construction projects for labs seeking cures or deterrents for everything from Ebola to serin gas. Amid the wide-open spaces and soaring mountain ranges, today's Montana is the site of some of the world's most advanced biotech research laboratories.

The biggest project currently underway is the expansion at the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Rocky Mountain Laboratory (RML) in Hamilton, Montana. The project faced a lot of opposition from a number of watchdog groups, questioning safety issues stemming from the $80 million Biosafety Level Four (BSL-4) lab addition. These labs are designed to study diseases that kill and have no cure. At one time, there were only a few of these labs scattered throughout the country, but, as reported in Industrialinfo.com's Pharmaceutical Tracker - Online Database, there are a growing number of new ones on the drawing board.

Debates over the project's possible safety have raged in the area to 2002. The Hamilton expansion was allowed to proceed, albeit somewhat grudgingly by some, and totally rejected by others, after various safety rules were put in place to assure the populace that the utmost care would be given to containing the pathogens contained within. One of the oldest federal research sites in the country, the RML, is part of the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) division. The lab began in an abandoned school almost 100 years ago and today is an integral part of the federal government's quest to study the infectious microbes that cause disease in humans and animals.

Hamilton is also home to a biopharmaceutical facility plant operated by Corixa Corporation (NASDAQ:CRXA) (Seattle, Washington). Corixa is currently in the process of seeking funding for the addition of manufacturing capabilities to its plant, to the tune of $46 million. If the company decides to proceed with the project, the new manufacturing unit would take roughly two years to construct. Corixa currently has a number of products in various stages of development, including late-stage clinical trials. Its focus is on developing vaccine adjuvants - substances that enhance the immune-stimulating properties of an antigen or the pharmacological effect of a drug- and immunology based products that manage human diseases.

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