Kyle Koopmeiners, a student lab leader at InnovaBio, tests a synthetic version of human brain-derived neurotrophic factor for a client of the non-profit commercial research organization operated by the biotechnology department of Salt Lake Community College.

There is an obvious industriousness to the students entering the lab marked InnovaBio along the wide hallway occupied by the Biotechnology Department at Salt Lake Community College (SLCC).

Arriving at different times throughout the day, the students stride through the door to bench spaces marked with their names, check lab notebooks for instructions about their assigned experiments, don lab coats and gloves, and get to work.

Ten years after the non-profit, contract research organization began at SLCC with the support of an Advanced Technological Education grant from the National Science Foundation, InnovaBio continues to provide student interns with commercial biotech research lab experience. InnovaBio has 21 interns this fall, and has served more than 220 students since 2004.

A Student's Perspective On Biotech Research on Community College Campus

The hands-on laboratory experience "is a big thing that I love," said Kyle Koopmeiners. A biotech associate degree student at SLCC, he began work at InnovaBio in January 2014 as one of the unpaid interns who work in the lab as part of a three-credit course. Within a few months, he became one of two paid student lab leaders. Aside from getting to work nearly 20 hours a week on a wide array of state-of-the-art biotech equipment and learning a bit about personnel supervision, Koopmeiners is energized by the chance to work on authentic experiments that influence the development of real products.

"I've taken lab classes and stuff, and there's like a huge difference from taking a lab class, where it's just like you're just running through the same protocol; end of the semester they throw things away. If things fail, oh well, no problem, you just keep going.

"Where here, we're actually working on a project. If something doesn't work right, we have to go back: Alright what happened? What can we change to make this go through better? And then at the end of it we give it [the work] back to the companies. They in turn use it ... they are like our customers we are providing a service," he said.

Koopmeiners also appreciates that the three scientists who run the lab do not feel compelled to tell the students the answers to each question they encounter as they execute experiments. "They just guide us along," he said.

Mary L. Nelson, the PhD who serves as director of InnovaBio, explained that the exploratory approach is designed to mimic what students will encounter in the workplace. Utilizing students to supervise protocol implementation and to instruct newcomers on how to use equipment is also by design.

"It really cements that information in their brains if they need to explain it to someone else," Nelson said of the expectations for all the high school and college students who work in the lab to help each other along by sharing what they themselves may have only recently learned.

"It's just wonderful to see how that knowledge gets passed on. We may need to fill in some gaps every now and then. It gives them ownership and leadership in the lab. They want to do well. They have a responsibility to train new students as they come in," she said.

Mark Elgort, the other PhD employed by InnovaBio, is officially the talent manager who oversees day-to-day operations, but he prefers to be referred to as "the guy in the lab." Alejandro Pabon, the project manager, has a master's degree in biochemistry. His responsibilities include devising action plans, tracking projects' progress, assembling data, and writing the final reports that InnovaBio delivers to its clients.

Novel Program Becomes Model

InnovaBio was unique when it started in 2004 with a $791,231 ATE grant from the National Science Foundation. Three years earlier the college received an ATE grant to develop its biotechnology technician degree program. When she was serving as director of SLCC's biotechnology program and principal investigator of the ATE projects, Tami Goetz said part of the impetus for starting a contract research organization (CRO) staffed by students was to address the difficulties community college students encountered when they tried to get biotech industry internships. Since she left SLCC in 2007 to become state science advisor, Goetz has taken on additional STEM education leadership roles in Utah. Goetz talked about InnovaBio during a 2011 TED talk.

The paradoxical problem of biotech internships persists in some locales today due to the regulatory environment that biotechnology companies operate in and some biotech employers' reluctance to place associate-degree students in internships. However, without internships, biotech program graduates do not have the work experience some employers require.

Goetz recognized that the many small start-up biotech companies in Utah needed a low-cost option for lab tests that student interns could do as part of their academic program. With the ATE grant during the first three years of operation, InnovaBio built a roster of clients and became a model for other community colleges.

InnovaBio's Sustainability Factors

Generous state funding and the entrepreneurial approach of InnovaBio's leaders have helped it become an integral part of the SLCC biotech experience for the associate degree students at SLCC's Jordan campus and concurrent enrollment students who take biotech courses for college credit at their high schools.

Craig Caldwell, the interim dean of SLCC's School of Science, Mathematics and Engineering and previous InnovaBio director, explains the benefits of biotech education having its own line item in the Utah state budget: “As part of its overall strategy to support life science education and employment opportunities, Utah has made substantial investments in training through programs like InnovaBio at Salt Lake Community College. The state has supported salaries for mentors and material support for high quality laboratories that enable employees to build effective partnerships and attract valuable external grants and contracts that provide projects for interns. The outcome has been an enhanced focus on student learning rather than the need to attract client fees.”

That means that InnovaBio clients pay just for the consumable materials used on their projects and a lab fee that amounts to about $1,000 per project.

To simplify its interactions with the biotech industry SLCC never sought any interest in the intellectual property of the work done by InnovaBio. Because some of its interns are minors who cannot not legally enter into confidentiality agreements and a different cohort of students move through the internship program each semester, InnovaBio does not enter into confidentiality agreements with clients. Consequently, the experiments interns carry out are not the critical questions on which a company is pinning its financial future. Projects have timelines, but the fact that they are client's back-burner projects gives InnovaBio interns time to learn and re-do experiments if they fail.

The robustness of the biotech industry, particularly the dietary supplement industry in Utah, and the entrepreneurial attitude of InnovaBio's leaders continues to make it possible for Koopmeiners and other InnovaBio interns to do experiments that address substantive, product development questions.

InnovaBio's work with Cytozyme Laboratories Inc. is a success story that Nelson likes to share.

The agriculture product company was so pleased with InnovaBio's research that it hired both the intern who worked on its project and Adam Blaszczak, InnovaBio's director from 2008 to mid-2013, as full-time employees. Cytozyme 's July 2013 press release announcing Blaszczak's appointment as director of research and development in molecular biology and microbiology, stated: “Adam’s expertise in the field of gene regulation, molecular biology and a proven track record of success in management of contract research aligns perfectly with Cytozyme’s commitment to better understanding of molecular mechanisms for sustainable food production.”

SLCC's Entrepreneurial Approach Continues With Small and Large Companies

A recent example of InnovaBio leaders' energy and innovative thinking is the systematic way that Nelson and Elgort contacted biotech companies that have obtained Small Business Innovation Research grants from the federal government. Their outreach to companies throughout the U.S. is often the first information these small companies have about the additional funding they can get by partnering with a community college on product-relevant research.

Large companies also benefit from utilizing InnovaBio.

Steven M. Wood, director of Global Research at Pharmanex, a Utah-based nutritional supplement company that is part of Nu Skin Enterprises, Inc., that operates in 53 countries, talked about the company's positive experiences with InnovaBio when he spoke at BIOMAN in July. BIOMAN is professional development program for biotech college and high school instructors that NBC2 sponsors each summer. This year, the four-day instructional sessions were held at SLCC.

During his keynote address to the 49 people attending BIOMAN, Wood reported that InnovaBio interns did some of the analysis of Cordyceps sinensis, a fungus that grows out of certain caterpillars in China.

Wood said he finds the fresh perspective of students working under the guidance of faculty in an independent facility helpful. "They may not be entrenched in a specific process or a specific way of approaching it. This has been great," he said, noting that the company has contracted with InnovaBio on several projects.

He thinks the CRO benefits students, too. "It also gives the students some real, real-life situations. This is a real problem that we're trying to solve. And some of them, as you know, are tenacious. They really go after these problems. They look at it. They try to understand it.

"I think it's a great environment just to learn, and possibly down the road we have some of these students who become employees," he said.