Trenton biotechnology firm receives first product order

TRENTON – Just more than a year after it was founded, a small local biotechnology company reached an important milestone Wednesday.

It received its first-ever order for a product. Massachusetts Ear and Eye Infirmary, part of Harvard Medical School, bought one of Bar Harbor Biotechnology’s signature StellARray genetic identifying kits.

“It’s a small order, but it’s significant to us,” Robert Phelps, Bar Harbor Biotech’s new president, said by phone Wednesday. “We’re very excited. We’re hoping we can ship it out tomorrow.”

There actually are about 30 types of such kits sold by the company, which was spun off from Bar Harbor’s nonprofit The Jackson Laboratory in August 2006. Scientists at Jackson Lab, known worldwide for its research on disease and mouse genetics, had come up with a more efficient and cost-effective way to determine before-and-after genetic changes in diseased biological tissue.

When word got out and researchers at other medical scientific institutions began asking Jackson Lab scientists for help in creating genetic profiles of their projects, Jackson Lab officials realized they might have a marketable product.

According to Phelps, the StellARray kits now sold by the Trenton company are geared toward different diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, various cancers, blood disorders, and even allergies, to name a few. The kits can profile either 96 genes or 384 genes from a single sample of biological tissue. Most kits cost $199.95 apiece, but the ones that can profile more genes cost $410.25 each.

“We’ve come up with a new scientific method for researchers so they can streamline the process of identifying genes of interest that cause disease,” Phelps said.

The firm also has two Web-based software packages that help scientists with their research involving StellARray technology, according to Phelps. GeneSieve Bioinformatics helps scientists determine which sort of StellARay products might help their research, and Global Pattern Recognition Bioanalysis helps scientists analyze the StellARay testing results and identify what other kind of genes might be suitable for testing.

Both programs are available for free on a limited basis on the company’s Web site, www.bhbio.com, but the company plans to start charging for full access to each program in the near future, according to information on the Web site.

The firm’s Web site and its StellARray product were launched for market on Oct. 1. Researchers from 56 different countries have visited the site since then, while the site has logged more than 3,000 visits overall, Phelps said.

The company president said Bar Harbor Biotech plans to conduct most of its marketing and sales online.

“For the most part, we’re hoping to drive scientists to the Web site,” he said. “It’s really starting to take off.”

The company’s staff also has grown in the past year, though only slightly. It had four employees last fall, and now that Phelps has been hired as president, it has five. Phelps worked for Applied Biosystems in Seattle for 12 years prior to taking the job in Trenton this summer.

In addition to venture capital, the fledgling company has received financing from Maine Technology Institute in the form of a grant. Phelps said the $334,632 it received from MTI this summer has gone toward development of another product. The StellARray kits now available are for research involving mice, which have genes that closely resemble those of humans. The new kits will be tailored directly to research on human disease and genetics.

“We anticipate a launch of human [oriented] products on Jan. 4, 2008,” Phelps said.