Medtech

At least, Lee and Collier might get some of that business.

The region's economic developers have been working for years to expand Collier and Lee's economic base, which is dependent on tourism, construction and agriculture. A top focus now: bringing in health-based technology firms.

It's a natural fit with Collier's thriving health-care community, says Tammie Nemecek, executive director of the Economic Development Council of Collier County. To show its commitment to such firms, Collier has created a category for research and technology park zoning for privately developed, mixed-use areas where people live, shop and play on campuses they share with their research and technology employers. In addition, county commissioners are expected to approve a new toolbox of incentives, from rewards for job creation to encouraging "smart" buildings with high-tech infrastructure, that aim to recruit tech firms, Nemecek says.

In Lee, the blooming of Florida Gulf Coast University and seeding of the Florida Gulf Coast Technology and Research Park have directed the focus on biotechnology. It's important to attract those kinds of companies here "to provide high-tech, high-wage jobs for people in our region," says Tom Roberts, director of research and sponsored programs at FGCU, which is launching a biotechnology degree program this fall.

The ability to share in research capabilities, faculty and staff expertise, and equipment will help draw companies, Roberts says. FGCU's presence in the park will help attract firms by providing much-needed technology infrastructure for biotech companies, attracting research grants and creating a local workforce.

Other factors, including the expansion of Southwest Florida International Airport, demographics that show that the 25- to 44-year age group is the fastest-growing population group in Lee, and projections that the number of workers between 18 and 24 here will grow 30 percent faster than state and national averages, mean "we are now in a position where we can actually compete to attract those businesses and at least get considered by them," says Pamela Cox, spokeswoman for the Lee County Economic Development Office.

What the region can bring to the table are financial incentives, a qualified labor pool and that all-important quality of life. "If they can get comparable incentives and square footage pricing and workforce and the university ties, it might be quality of life that can throw it in our favor'and that's great," Cox says.

The stories of two local biotech companies'NeoGenomics and Inovo'reflect the innovation and research already under way in Southwest Florida.

New Research at NeoGenomics

As with other executives who have moved their companies to the Gulfshore, the weather and lifestyle drew Dr. Michael Dent to Collier. In 1996, he set up an obstetrics and gynecology practice that has grown into Naples Women's Center, located near North Collier Hospital. A couple of years ago, inspired by such advances as the groundbreaking mapping of the human genome, he started NeoGenomics. The firm, currently based in Naples, is the only announced private tenant in the Florida Gulf Coast Technology and Research Park so far.

Biotechnology, Dent says, is a "whole new big branch of medicine." No longer is research the bailiwick of major universities, where grants narrowly restrict research goals and require thousands of patients enrolled over a period of four to five years, he says. Now, "you could do research on as few as 10 patients that could be significant."

NeoGenomics' research is focusing on the threats to pregnant mothers and fetuses. For example, it is collaborating with California company Ciphergen Biosystems, which makes a high-tech research instrument called the ProteinChip mass spectrometer. The research is focusing on preeclampsia, a disease that accounts for about 15 percent of deaths in pregnant mothers and is one of the most common causes of prenatal death. "We're proposing to distinguish a test to identify whether they have the disease early on and [quantify] the level of the disease they have, based on that technology," Dent says.

Although NeoGenomics initially gained backing from a Sarasota-based venture capital group, Dent realized the company needed ongoing funding. "In order to do that, we looked at the clinical side of the lab, the cytogenetics laboratory, which could produce revenue," he explains. The lab, which received state and national certification in May 2002, processes samples and provides diagnostic testing. For example, if a woman wants amniocentesis testing to see if her fetus is normal, the doctor takes the sample and sends it to a lab such as NeoGenomics for analysis. "There's not a lot of [companies] out there to do the kind of testing that we do," Dent says. In addition to offering pregnancy-related chromosomal testing, Dent plans to broaden the scope to include testing for a genetic breast cancer and bladder cancer, among others.

Staff members currently include two technicians, a director and a researcher as well as a marketing and a billing position. The real need is for more technicians so NeoGenomics can take on more work. "The tests are very labor intensive. They have to spend a lot of time at the microscope, then arranging the chromosomes, then staining and harvesting the chromosomes," says Dent, who hopes to add seven technicians by the end of the year.

He hopes FGCU's new biotech program will expand the labor pool for technicians (starting salaries are about $40,000) and directors (starting salaries are about $120,000) in Southwest Florida. While it waits for the technology park that it'll eventually call home to be built, NeoGenomics has outgrown its space in Collier and will move into a temporary space in Lee. The doctor believes the park benefits both his company and the university. "We can do collaborative research together that would provide us some grants to get new money coming into the company," he says. "And they can use our equipment. For example, the ProteinChip instrument is very expensive, almost $300,000, and they can use that instrumentation along with us for some of their research projects."

Innovation from Inovo

One of the world's largest manufacturers of oxygen regulators finds its home on a busy industrial corridor in Naples.

The company, Inovo, was founded by Len Zaiser in 1997. Zaiser, who moved to Collier in the late 1970s, owned other companies (including Defense Research and Southern Research, a producer of cryogenic vessels for liquid oxygen) before starting Inovo, which specializes in the metal gadgets on compressed oxygen containers.

Inovo produces between 125,000 and 200,000 regulators per year, and sales goals are $10 million annually, estimates general manager Kevin Confoy, who declined to provide exact figures. With a staff of about 50, the company produces 800 different styles of regulators and labels them with customers' brand names. "We're not a sales organization, we're a manufacturing organization," he says.

In the next year Inovo plans to introduce new products including a lower-cost line of regulators, and has additional plans for its oxygen-conservation devices, which turn themselves off between breaths. There also have been discussions about different oxygen products for patients, including reentering cryogenics to produce liquid oxygen. The company also produces regulators for divers (who use air, not oxygen) on a small scale. "The economy's not been doing very well and scuba is definitely a luxury item," he explains.

Health care, on the other hand, is a necessity, which is one of the reasons why Inovo plans to start manufacturing small surgical instruments to meet the growing demand for less-invasive procedures. "This will be just as big as what we're doing now," Confoy says.

Inovo competes with manufacturers in China, where labor costs are low, partly through its technology' machines keep production going even when they aren't staffed. Although the lower-wage packing and assembly jobs are easy to fill, machinists, who bring in $16 to $18 an hour, are "hard to come by in Florida. We recruit most of our machinists out of the Midwest," says Confoy. (The annual salary for employees who can take a project from a drawing to set-up ranges from $55,000 to $80,000.) In addition, the Collier EDC has been working with Inovo to establish an apprenticeship program.

One of the company's biggest challenges is handling its growth. Having outgrown its 20,000-square-foot space on Mercantile Avenue, the company looked into building a larger facility in Collier, but decided against it because of the county's impact fees for new construction. Instead, Inovo moved some operations to another location in Collier. "We feel like it's getting harder to do business in Collier County," Confoy says. "We're still talking about Lee County. If splitting the company in half like this turns out to be wildly inefficient and we still have to seriously consider consolidating in one larger space, we might have to do something like that."