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BoroPharm expects to create 25 local jobs

July 14, 2008

A company founded by two award-winning MSU chemistry professors will create at least 25 bioscience jobs locally in the next three to four years, after receiving an investment from a local investor group last week.

Some of these “highly skilled, high paying” jobs will go to MSU students graduating with bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees, said BoroPharm Inc.‘s CEO Todd Zahn.

Additionally, the company would like to add a couple hundred jobs in the next 10 years, Zahn said.

“We need more organized efforts to occur and the support of (MSU) certainly is crucial,” he said. “The university is obviously a great engine of innovation, a great engine for filling the jobs of tomorrow.”

BoroPharm, founded by MSU chemistry professors Milton Smith and Robert Maleczka in 2006, is expanding after a $250,000 investment from Capital Community Angels Inc.

Capital Community Angels is a local group looking to stimulate the Lansing-area economy.

“There’s been a lot of outsourcing to places like India and China, but I think there’s a lot of opportunities in the state,” Smith said.

Traditionally the production of pharmaceuticals requires the use of processes that creates wasteful byproducts, he said. BoroPharm, however, developed a process to create the pharmaceuticals in one step that produces no hazardous byproducts, he said.

The pair were one of those selected for the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Awards Program in June by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for their work.

“What they found was that these guys were on the cutting edge within this industry and what they were producing is going to make for the bonding of chemicals that otherwise wouldn’t,” said Michelle Lantz, a spokeswoman for Capital Community Angels.

Job creation will spur a cycle of increasing sales, which in turn will allow them to expand even further and generate even more sales, Smith said.

This summer, three of the seven BoroPharm employees are MSU students in the process of getting their degrees.

Jacob Stricker, an MSU chemistry senior, said working for BoroPharm has allowed him to get some practical job experience.

However, he said he has never worried about getting a job in Michigan. The job market for those going into biology and chemistry is looking good, he added.

“I’ve never really sensed a shortage,” said Stricker, who plans to attend graduate school outside Michigan.

Capital Community Angels also invested $250,000 in another MSU-affiliated company, XG Sciences Inc., last summer to help it build a small production facility, said Loic Couraud, the investment group’s co-founder and administrator.

“Here we are in the middle of an economic slowdown, if not a recession, (but) it’s very encouraging to look at what’s going on below the surface,” he said.

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