Biotech's potential clean space crunch
08/01/2002
 Michael Levans Chief Editor |
It's the most potent powder keg mankind has ever created. It has the potential to influence every living thing on earth. The issues that come in tow encompass the topics your grandmother begged you to avoid at dinner parties-religion, ethics, politics, even sex.
It's very difficult not to be fascinated by what's happening in this new realm of possibility, the crucible of future healthcare, food productionm breeding-you name it. Corn that produces its own pesticides, bananas grown to contain medicine, strawberries produced with fish genes in order to resist freezing: Biotech's only limit is man's imagination and the potential clean manufacturing space we have available for production when it finally booms.
No matter what side your opinion of biotech resides, one thing is for sure: There's going to be a manufacturing space crunch in the next ten years and it's going to be your job, end-user or supplier, to discover the killer "alternative" clean manufacturing solution.
Key characteristics are going to be "flexibility," "cleanability" and "disposability."
The number of biotech patent applications is staggering-one report I recently read stated that there were more than 50,000 biotechnology patents submitted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO, www.uspto.gov) since 1996. My recent search on the USPTO Web site showed there were 15,250 granted since 1996. No matter, the time frame for these products to become "manufacturable" and "marketable" is roughly 10 to 15 years. You do the math.
So, while you're taking a break from your drug discovery lab bench to read this column, you may want to consider a few things: Do you sell your idea to Monsanto, go your own way with a little cash and a lot of luck, or put your money down on a flexible, state-of-the-art, disposable-ready manufacturing plant that can change gears faster than you can say "gene gun."
Meetings I recently conducted with microfiltration/separation suppliers lead me to believe that they're banking on the eventual change to alternative manufacturing. "If the boom happens, we're not sure who is going to produce this stuff or where they're going to do it," a savvy micro-filtration product manager told me over lunch. Now, if we can just get our hands on some of those decommissioned fabs (see page 38), we might see a new boom in clean-contract manufacturing-food for thought for the courageous speculators out there.
Give the distributors a hand
We touch on the fine art of cleanroom product distribution occasionally, but usually it's an acquisition or merger news story. Last year, we took a deeper look at how distributors were handling the World Wide Web and found that Web applications were as diverse as the personalities and territories that the distributors served.
You may recall a few years back when the so-called "big box" wholesale stores (Home Depot, Lowe's, etc.) where being blamed for putting the small hardware stores out of business. The defiant claimed "you'll never get the kind of service you did from the old corner store." Well, the "big box" guys proved them wrong. They've given us good prices, selection and service.
This month, in what I would call a "survey feature" by our ace Sheila Galatowitsch, we take a look at the "Distributor as Troubleshooter." So before you jump online to get the lowest price, you may want to make this piece (see page 28) your first read this month.
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