Can Minnesota’s biotechnology environment someday rival that of California’s Silicon Valley? Bruce Barclay thinks so.
Barclay is president and CEO of Eden Prairie-based SurModics, Inc., which provides surface modification and drug delivery technology to health care companies. The firm specializes in biomaterials and polymers and creates textural coatings—which can double as drug delivery systems—for medical devices. “We’re best known for our work with Johnson & Johnson on a drug-releasing stent,” Barclay says.
“We’re the polymer on the stent that releases rapamycin, a drug that inhibits cell growth and keeps the artery open.”
SurModics also is working with Merck (based in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey) on a polymer-coated eye implant that releases medication over one to two years. If approved, the device will treat retinal diseases, including age-related macular degeneration and diabetic macular edema, the two leading causes of adult-onset blindness.
Currently, patients with either disease suffer through monthly eye injections. An implant, releasing a constant tiny dose of medication, would offer a less painful, more effective treatment.
SurModics got its start in 1979, when it received the first of what ultimately totaled about $30 million in government-supplied small business innovation research grants. Its current business model involves partnering with other medical and pharmaceutical firms.
Barclay came to SurModics in 2003 after three years with Vascular Architects, six years with Guidant (now merged with Boston Scientific), and 15 years in California’s Silicon Valley with Eli Lilly (based in Indianapolis, Indiana).
Minnesota, he says, shares many of California’s strengths. “Silicon Valley has a strong medical device industry, and I see a lot of good things here that also worked well in California.” That list includes a strong university and clinical presence, strong local technical and management talent, a good number of biotechnology customers, and other companies that the business community can see succeeding. “Many other parts of our country would love to have what we have here,” he says.
In addition to more venture capital, Barclay would also like to see Minnesota’s pharmaceutical firms develop and new ones enter the fold. “Minnesota has a strong med-tech community but a less well developed pharmaceutical community,” he says.
“MGI Pharma, Cima Labs, and PDL Biopharma are all here, but they’re not as well known as a Medtronic. I’d love to see a Lilly-, Pfizer-, or Merck-type company headquartered locally.”
Such a company would be good for the overall biotechnology industry, Barclay says, and might also help SurModics advance its business goals. “I see us building on what we have, becoming more pharmaceutically centered,” Barclay says. “We won’t discover drugs, but we will figure out ways to get them into the human body.” Ideally, the company will do that in what he expects will be a growing, thriving Minnesota biotechnology community.
