Innovation Zone touts new jobs in emerging companies
Maria Kleinz works to filter a dye at her job at MTTI. She was an intern with the company when she was a student at WCU and was offered a full time job after she graduated. Staff photo by Amy Dragoo
WEST GOSHEN — Maria Kleinz, a recent West Chester University graduate with a chemistry degree, had a job created just for her.
A former intern with Molecular Targeting Technologies Inc. in Lincoln Independence Park, she’s now a full-time research assistant there. Molecular Targeting, or MTTI, as it’s known, is an entrepreneurial company that uses small molecules to identify and depict cancer and cardiovascular disease in the human body.
MTTI used state funds, which it got from Pennsylvania’s Keystone Innovation Zone program, or KIZ, to find Maria and train her, explained Chris Pak, the company’s 59-year-old co-founder and chief executive.
“We use the KIZ program to identify talented people and train them,” said Pak, a native of China and a resident of the United States for more than 40 years.
“Today, it’s difficult to get jobs in chemistry with only a bachelor’s degree.”
Once, Kleinz was one of a handful of interns MTTI hires every year. Others came from the University of Delaware and Colgate University.
Especially during current circumstances, as the local and national economies struggle to recover from The Great Recession, creation of any new jobs is noteworthy indeed.
MTTI employs 10 people, of whom five, including Pak, are Ph.Ds.
The state’s Department of Community and Economic Development started the KIZ program in May 2004, and has since plunked down $14 million to develop and sustain it.
It’s meant to help start-up and emerging companies get their feet off the ground, often providing benefits at no cost, said Mary Fuchs, project consultant with the Chester County Economic Development Council, one of several KIZ partners.
Chester County’s KIZ is one of 29 in the state. Its 19 fledgling companies, of which MTTI is one, may avail themselves of any and all KIZ programs. Among other benefits, KIZ offers access to lenders, venture capital networks and foundations, reimbursement for intern training and tax credits, which can range as high as $100,000 per year for a single company.
MTTI will eventually use the credit to defray its own tax liability, chief executive Pak said.
To be eligible for KIZ help, companies must be in the bio/life sciences, information technology or energy fields, in existence eight years or fewer and located within specific KIZ areas.
Chester County is unique in that its KIZ companies are spread out geographically, Fuchs noted. “A lot of other zones are clustered around a research institution. In Chester County, it’s the existing companies that have spun out new businesses close to them.”
MTTI is a perfect example.
Pak, who worked in research and development for Centocor during the 1980s and 1990s — then an independent biopharmaceutical concern and now part of the Johnson & Johnson conglomerate — licensed small molecule technology from Centocor when Hubert J.P. Schoemaker, its co-founder, was still chief executive. (Schoemaker, a pharmaceutical pioneer who went on to found Neuronyx once J&J bought Centocor, died in 2006 after a long battle with cancer.)
The county has seven KIZ areas, located in numerous office parks in the Route 100/Turnpike, East Exton, West Exton, Goshen, Downingtown, Great Valley and Chesterbrook areas.
The Chester County Economic Development Council, which manages Chester County’s KIZ program, recently announced that 15 of the 19 KIZ companies increased revenues by a collective $7 million in second-half 2009, created a total of 30 new jobs and retained 116 more.
“These are all niche businesses, businesses that have defined their markets and are growing and moving forward,” Fuchs said.
The development council has a declining state grant to run the program. It received $225,000 in 2008, $187,500 in 2009 and $125,000 this year to do so.
“The intention is that, as these companies start to operate better on their own, they become more self-sustaining,” she added.
Among Chester County’s 19 KIZ companies are ByTheZip.com, Frontage Laboratories, Isolagen Inc., Level One, Melior, Neuronetics, Othera, Progenra, Promedior Inc., Reaction Biology, Solstice Neurosciences, Tetralogic Pharmaceuticals, Virtual Chester County and Y-Prime.
Also partnering with the Chester County Economic Development Council are the Ben Franklin Technology Partners/Southeastern Pennsylvania, CresaPartners, Drexel University, Fox Rothschild, Kutztown University, Liberty Property Trust, MVM Associates, PECO, Penn State University/Great Valley, Pennsylvania BIO and West Chester University.
To contact correspondent Sarah E. Moran, send an e-mail to semoran219@msn.com.
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