Issue link: https://nebusinessmedia.uberflip.com/i/1437507
www.wbjournal.com • Worcester Business Journal • 2 022 Economic Forecast 21 2019 Incom's Polymer division expands into a new 45,000 square foot manufacturing facility in Vancouver WA. 2008 The wooly mammoth and Neanderthal have their DNA sequenced using Incom pico-titer plates. 2001 Incom produces the largest fiberoptic taper ever manufactured for x-ray crystallography market. 2016 Incom is the first to move images using a quantum mechanical wave guiding technique. 2014 Incom produces its first ALD micro channel plates under a department of Energy grant. 2011 Incom launches a research and innovation division at its new JRD research center in Charlton, MA. 1971 Incom was founded by J. Wilbur Hicks, the true "Father of Fiberoptics". 1973 Incom successfully fuses the first fiberoptic array faceplate. 1993 Incom produces the first ever distortion free night vision Inverter. 1976 Anthony M. Detarando assumes control of the company and puts Incom on a path of growth and innovation. 1980 Incom new technology turns CRTs into contact printers revolutionizing the print industry. 1985 Incom is licensed to produce night vision viewers for US military tanks. MOVING THE NEEDLE WITH OUR PARTNERSHIPS An interview with Colm Hunt of Orca Bio Incom is very proud to partner with Orca Bio on an incredibly important mission that could change the game as it relates to developing next generation cell therapies with the goal of providing significantly better transplant outcomes. The partnership between Orca Bio and Incom could lead to revolutionary advances in survival rates. We caught up with the Colm Hunt Team Lead Engineer of Orca Bio to speak about their collaboration with Incom. Chris Juetten from the Worcester Business Journal conducted this interview. CJ: What was it like to approach Incom about this project? CH: When Orca first approached Incom, we were not yet a corporate entity. We were developing scientific and technological capabilities and saw an opportunity to work with Incom to advance our approach. CJ: How long did the process take? CH: We set up a visit to Charlton to understand Incom's capability and begin to build a relationship. It was apparent early on that Incom's products could support advancing our technology and platform. Michael Detarando, Jeff Solari and team spent an entire day listening to Orca's story, our requirements, and brainstorming how best to work together. It was immediately clear Incom was very interested in not just the business case, but the therapy Orca was developing to treat patients with deadly diseases. They were fully engaged and determined to support us in our mission. CJ: What was it like working with the team at Incom? CH: From the onset, Incom set up a weekly working meeting to align on development projects, manage orders and brainstorm solutions to challenges encountered along the way. There has never been any doubt of Incom's commitment to the project and it has allowed us to have a very transparent relationship that enables us to partner closely to identify effective solutions. CJ: What do you believe will come out of this partnership? CH: Orca Bio is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing purified, high-precision cell therapies for cancer, autoimmune and genetic blood disorders. In order to scale, Orca needed to develop a platform that could manufacture our investigational products with very high levels of precision at significantly faster speeds than anything available on the market today. Utilizing Incom's technologies to support the advancement of our products will accelerate large-scale real-time production of Orca Bio's potentially life- saving therapeutics designed to improve blood cancer patients' survival rates while dramatically reducing the risk of graft-versus-host disease and other serious complications compared to an allogeneic stem cell transplant (often called a bone marrow transplant). CJ: Do you see more collaboration and partnerships between Bio/life science/research companies with technology and manufacturing? CH: Definitely. As we learn more and more about the human body, we are finding novel ways to create potentially curative therapies that are fundamentally different from historical small molecule medicines. Although the curative properties of stem cells have been understood for years, technology limitations have resulted in very significant side effects that have prevented broad deployment. Orca Bio is working to redefine the traditional transplant process by developing next-generation cell therapies with the goal of providing significantly better survival rates with dramatically fewer risks. With our purified, high-precision investigational cell therapies, we hope to not only replace patients' blood and immune systems with healthy ones, but also restore their lives. The future looks bright for these life-changing therapies, and we believe this important intersection of science and technology will continue to drive more opportunities for companies like Incom to participate. A D V E R T I S E M E N T