New institute puts NCCU in biotech mix

DURHAM -- To the science-challenged, the western wall of N.C. Central University's new biotechnology building looks like little more than a collection of bricks and windows.

But to a student of genetics, it is an inside joke that hints at the high-minded discovery taking place within. The vertical brick-and-glass pattern is cast in the image of a micro- array chip, a lab tool commonly used to analyze thousands of genes at a time.

This facility is the Biomanufacturing Research Institute and Technology Enterprise, better known simply as BRITE. It opens this morning and is expected to give NCCU a signature program and a significant presence in the rich Research Triangle biotech community. The $20.1 million facility was built with money from the Golden LEAF Foundation, the organization created to distribute tobacco settlement money to economic development ventures. The state has kicked in $6 million in annual operating funds, allowing university leaders to build a faculty heavy on industry experience.

It is a rare venture for one of the state's historically black public institutions and illustrates the university's growth and growing ambition.

"It's a big deal because it positions the university to be able to attract an array and quality of students, faculty and staff and research dollars like other institutions like Duke, [N.C. State] and Carolina," said NCCU Chancellor Charlie Nelms.

The building and its fledgling pharmaceutical sciences program -- in which students will learn how to discover and manufacture drugs -- is a response to the state's thriving biotechnology industry and its need for skilled workers. The BRITE facility is part of a consortium called NC BioImpact that also includes biotech programs at community colleges and N.C. State. The idea is to develop workers for every stage of the drug-creation process, from basic science on the front end to manufacture and quality control on the back end.

By 2010, the program is expected to have 200 students in bachelor's and master's programs. Eventually, NCCU plans to add a doctoral degree in pharmaceutical sciences.

New science community

Drug manufacturing is a staple industry across North Carolina, with 16,000 to 18,000 employees statewide and 7 percent to 10 percent annual growth, said Kathleen Kennedy, a vice president with the Research Triangle Park-based N.C. Biotechnology Center. NCCU's venture fits nicely into the larger whole, she said.

"They can train students in the whole continuum," Kennedy said. "From basic research to getting the product actually on the shelf in the pharmacy."

The 52,000-square-foot building is one of two science facilities west of Fayetteville Street, NCCU's traditional campus border. Its location is both symbolic and necessary -- a new, cutting-edge venture so large it needed the sort of space the campus core couldn't accommodate.

Campus officials hope the BRITE building, with its massive, glass-fronted, two-floor foyer and broad, mirrored eastern wall, will be an eye-catching centerpiece of a new science community on this western edge of campus.

Inside, students in the two-year-old program will learn how to discover and make drugs in laboratories built to replicate work done by drug manufacturers.

Luring the staff

Li-An Yeh, recruited in 2005 from Eli Lilly to start the program, has spent nearly three years recruiting faculty, designing labs and classrooms and ordering the sort of high-end lab equipment more often found at private companies.

The state's substantial annual operating fund commitment lets Yeh lure professors from private industry, which traditionally pays better. It helps, for example, that she can offer the use of a $450,000 nuclear magnetic resonance machine, used to determine chemical structures.

"Faculty tell me they can't [think of] any instrument they want, because it's already here," said Yeh, who has hired 11 faculty members and has six spots left to fill.

Yeh is looking for top credentials: One new hire was trained at Harvard, another at Stanford. Two came to NCCU from drug company Eli Lilly, while a third was hired away from Biogen Idec, another pharmaceuticals company.

Gordon Ibeanu left his post as a drug discovery scientist at Eli Lilly two years ago, lured by NCCU's promise that his research could center on neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Huntington's. Scientists are still struggling to understand the root causes of these afflictions so they can be countered or treated with drugs. At BRITE, Ibeanu is teaching students how research is done while working in his chosen specialty area.

"At universities, you're not driven by profit," Ibeanu said. "Companies have priorities, and you just go by the priorities they set."