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V O L . X X V N O. X V I 64 Fact Book / Doing Business in Maine W hile it may not have the cachet of biotech- nology hubs like Boston and San Francisco, Maine is home to a growing concentration of companies, research laboratories and professionals working in life sciences. In fact, more than 200 life-science organizations are now based in the state, according to the Bioscience Association of Maine. An estimated 6,600 Mainers work in the field, up 3.3% from 2014. "Maine's industry is a little cluster," says Gary Goodrich, a board member of the association. "It crosses a lot of different areas." Goodrich should know. Nearly 30 years ago, he founded Bioprocessing Inc., a maker of proteins used for diagnostic testing, in Scarborough. In 2012, after building it into a 20-person company and expanding into a larger Portland facility, he sold his business to Bio-Rad Laboratories (NYSE: BIO), a California company with annual sales of $2.2 billion. "We didn't have to be big," he says. "A small com- pany just has to find its own niche. For most of the bioscience companies in Maine, growth is organic — it's bootstrapping. at's the Maine way." Keeping it local Another company following that path is Portland-based ImmuCell Corp. (Nasdaq: ICCC). ImmuCell, which makes preventative health products for dairy and beef cattle, launched in 1982. Since then, it has carved a niche slowly, carefully and with little public attention. e years of work now seem to paying results for the 50-person business. In 2017, it constructed a $20 million manufacturing facility. Earlier this year, ImmuCell com- pleted a $9 million public offering. e company also posted its most successful first quarter for sales, $4.4 mil- lion, a 53% increase over the first three months of 2018. Like Goodrich, ImmuCell President Michael F. Brigham credits Maine's bioscience boom-lette to organic growth. "[e growth] is really about guys from here," he says. "All those professionals aren't just going to come out of Boston." Instead, many of them come from other Maine companies. Maine's bioscience family tree ImmuCell traces its roots to founders who had worked at Ventrex Laboratories Inc., a diagnostic testing company founded in Portland during the mid-1970s. Goodrich worked at Ventrex for four years before launching his company. And Westbrook-based IDEXX Laboratories Inc. (Nasdaq: IDXX), another biotech company specializing in animal health, was launched in 1983 as a spin-off of Ventrex. In total, Goodrich estimates, such connections to Ventrex and another Maine bioscience pioneer, the Foundation for Blood Research, have spawned more than 20 Maine companies. Ventrex was acquired in 1991 and moved to California; the Foundation for Blood Research closed in 2016. And some of their successor companies have failed, been acquired or relocated. But the bioscience industry in Maine has also been nurtured by other long-standing research organizations. Off the beaten biopath Some of the best science in Maine is being done far from the corporate world, at sites including MDI Biological Laboratory, in Bar Harbor, and Jackson Laboratory, in Bar Harbor and Ellsworth. Both are independent, nonprofit institutions and together have been responsible for a host of biological breakthroughs over the course of decades. MDI was founded in 1898; Jackson Lab, also called JAX, in 1929. Scientists have flocked to Maine, drawn sometimes by the availability of marine animal specimens — and sometimes by the chance to work in picturesque set- tings, far from the pressures of huge research universi- ties and traditional academic labs. I N N OVAT I O N / R & D A small company just has to find its own niche. For most of the bioscience companies in Maine, growth is organic — it's boot- strapping. That's the Maine way. — Gary Goodrich Bioscience Association of Maine Michael F. Brigham, president of ImmuCell Corp., a Portland company that has found a niche supplying preventative health products used in raising cattle. P H O T O / T I M G R E E N WAY Innovation's family tree B y W i l l i a m H a l l Maine's home-grown science is coming into its own

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