key-industry

Owned and operated by Biomedical Research Institute, the Virginia K. Shehee Biomedical Research Institute is home to LSU Health Shreveport&#8217;s research program. Over 200 faculty members and researchers use the institute’s 56 wet labs, core research facility, PET Imaging Center and office space to conduct basic and clinical research. Named in honor of Louisiana’s first female state senator, the institute was built at a cost of $37 million and is a 160,000 square foot facility.‍

Virginia K. Shehee Biomedical Research Institute

The University of Louisiana at Lafayette New Iberia Research Center performs biomedical research with the purpose of improving quality of life. The center conducts both basic and complex preclinical studies in nonhuman primate models of human diseases. Its work is funded through partnerships with the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Defense, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and pharmaceutical companies. In 2020, researchers at NIRC played a critical role in the development of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the world’s first fully tested COVID-19 immunization approved for emergency use. The center supports the development of vaccines for SARS-CoV2, HIV and SIV in nonhuman primates. In addition, its activities have focused on preventing, treating and curing infectious diseases such as flu, RSV, Zika and Ebola. NIRC is the nation’s largest academically affiliated, nonhuman primate research center. It is home to more than 6,800 nonhuman primates.

University of Louisiana at Lafayette New Iberia Research Center (NIRC)

One of seven National Primate Research Centers funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Tulane National Primate Center is also one of the largest and the only one equipped with a Regional Biocontainment Laboratory. The center conducted studies for the development of a COVID-19 vaccine while continuously exploring vaccines, treatments and diagnostic tools for infectious diseases such as AIDS, Lyme disease, malaria and tuberculosis.

Tulane National Primate Research Center

An acclaimed teaching, research and medical system, the Tulane Health System encompasses three hospitals and 25 clinics in the New Orleans area. Its facilities include a cancer center, children’s hospital, abdominal transplant center and sports medicine institute.

Tulane Health System

Tides Medical is a biotechnology producer of skin graft products distributed nationwide to treat chronic or difficult-to-heal wounds. Its naturally-derived solutions have a variety of applications, including the treatment of chronic wounds like diabetic foot ulcers, venous leg ulcers and burns. In early 2023, Tides Medical announced a $1.5 million expansion to increase manufacturing capacity.

Tides Medical

South Rampart Pharma’s proprietary compounds effectively reduce pain and fever in preclinical studies without liver and kidney toxicity associated with current treatment. The company’s non-opioid compounds, licensed from LSU Health New Orleans, also greatly reduce the potential for abuse. The company won a $1.9 million National Institutes of Health Phase I/II award in 2022 to support the clinical development of its lead, non-opioid candidate, SRP-3D (DA).

South Rampart Pharma

Revolo Biotherapeutics is developing alternative immune system therapies for long-term remission in patients with autoimmune and allergic diseases. Its two drug candidates reset the immune system by preventing chronic pro-inflammatory immune response as a result of autoimmune or allergic disease. Revolo Biotherapeutics has a global footprint with headquarters in both New Orleans and the United Kingdom.

Revolo Biotherapeutics

Pennington Biomedical is a world-wide leader in nutrition research and treatment. Pennington has been involved in the development of all approved obesity medications on the market today and many key diabetes medications. Under the guidance of Dr. John Kirwan, the center’s primary work is to understand the triggers of chronic disease, especially obesity and diabetes. Kirwan is internationally recognized for his discovery that certain surgical procedures can often cure type 2 diabetes. As part of LSU&#8217;s campus and the Baton Rouge Health District, the five individual research centers are spread across its own sprawling 222-acre space.

Pennington Biomedical Research Center

Launched in 2009, Opportunity Machine (OM) provides programming for hundreds of entrepreneurs across the Gulf South in industries such as technology, health care and more through workshops, roundtables, accelerator programs and their annual Innovate South conference.

Opportunity Machine (OM)

Oleolive extracts oleocanthal from extra virgin olive oil for preventative and therapeutic treatments for Alzheimer&#8217;s Disease and a particular form of breast cancer. The company was formed with the goal of making oleocanthal commercially available after University of Louisiana Monroe researchers discovered its anti-aging benefits and preventative and therapeutic qualities for neurology and oncology treatment. Oleolive has received grants from the National Institute of Health’s National Institute on Aging, the National Cancer Institute and the U.S. Department of Defense. ‍

Oleolive

The state’s only living liver transplant program resides at the Ochsner Transplant Institute. The surgical procedure restores liver health to patients waiting for a full liver transplant. By taking a portion of the liver from a healthy volunteer donor and replacing the recipient’s damaged liver, this type of transplant saves lives and reduces wait times. Living liver transplants are possible because of the liver&#8217;s unique ability to regenerate or regrow. Ochsner’s team of transplant surgeons have performed more than 3,000 adult and pediatric liver transplants.

Ochsner Living Liver Transplant Program

Dr. Alton Ochsner drew national attention when he was the first person to link cigarette smoking and lung cancer. His work, including successfully separating conjoined twins, established a legacy for the hospital system that bears his name as one of the nation’s premier medical centers. Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans is the top ranked hospital in Louisiana, according to U.S. News and World Report. For the past 10 years in a row, its adult neurology and neurosurgery program has ranked among the nation’s top 50 programs, and its pediatric cardiology and heart surgery division is also recognized annually for its world-class care. Ochsner Health’s 47 owned, managed and affiliated hospitals and specialty hospitals and its more than 370 health centers and urgent care centers employ 36,000 employees and over 4,600 providers. Ochsner proudly provides expert care across more than 90 medical specialties and subspecialties. ‍

Ochsner Health

Named for the West African god who sculpts the human form, Obatala Sciences makes tissue engineering models from the building blocks of life: cells. Obatala’s Oba Cell™ platform is the first commercially available system for adipose tissue engineering that can create a human fat-on-a-chip model. Obatala uses such organ-on-a-chip technologies to aid studies of diabetes, obesity, cancer and orthopedic disorders. Harvard University selected Obatala to commercialize fat-on-a-chip models, spreading technology for researchers’ use in drug discovery and research. Obatala is the first life sciences firm in New Orleans that is run by a Black woman, and it made history as the first minority female-owned firm to raise over $1 million in institutional funds to grow a biotechnology enterprise in Louisiana.

Obatala Sciences

Entrepreneurship, science, innovation, technology, academia, commercialization and economic development all characterize the work done at the New Orleans BioInnovation Center (NOBIC), the only wet-lab business incubator in New Orleans. NOBIC’s extended network shares two primary objectives: improving health outcomes and fostering sustainable economic development through biotechnology innovation. Since opening the doors of its LEED gold-certified building in 2012, NOBIC has supported more than 225 new companies, created over 650 high-wage jobs and raised more than $200 million in pursuit of these goals.

New Orleans BioInnovation Center (NOBIC)

Baton Rouge, Louisiana is home to the National Hansen’s Disease Program (NHDP).  The mission of this program is the eradication of leprosy through treatment of Hansen’s Disease (HD), training providers to identify and treat HD and research to improve treatment and provide immunity to HD, formerly known as leprosy. The program was established in Carville in 1894 and provided a leprosarium for patients with Hansen’s Disease (HD). Decades of research at NHDP led to the cure for leprosy in the 1940s and the multi-drug therapy used currently. The leprosarium was phased out in 2000 but treatment, education and research continue. NHDP provides free diagnostic services, and also treatment, including antibiotics, surgery for HD sequelae and rehabilitation services. NHDP directs and provides care in Baton Rouge and at 10 ambulatory care clinics across the United States and provides consultation to private physicians nationwide.

National Hansen’s Disease Program (NHDP)

DOSIS Systems by Manchac help over 300 pharmacies improve efficiency by automating workflow and production of blister card prescriptions for patients in long-term care, mental health and correctional facilities. DOSIS dispensing towers fill, seal and patient-label over 2.5 million prescriptions each month. DOSIS Systems can reduce dispensing costs by 50%, reduce the opportunities for dangerous mistakes and enable labeling features for medication compliance not practical in manual dispensing.

Manchac Technologies

LSU Health New Orleans is a public university and home to schools of medicine, dentistry, nursing, public health and allied health professions. It treats over one million patients each year and educates thousands of students annually through its six professional schools and eight Centers of Excellence.

LSU Health New Orleans

Louisiana Tech’s Center for Biomedical Engineering and Rehabilitation Science provides a state-of-the-art research environment with a focus on biosignal and bioimage acquisition and processing, computer modeling and neural networks, biosensors, drug delivery, cell culture and tissue engineering, cancer detection, stem cells and gene technology.

Louisiana Tech’s Center for Biomedical Engineering and Rehabilitation Science

Pennington Biomedical Research Center’s Louisiana Clinical and Translational Science (LA CaTS) Center combines 10 major Louisiana academic, research and healthcare delivery institutions into a unified infrastructure for addressing health disparities and improving health outcomes in underserved populations with chronic diseases. The LA CaTS Center has been successful in aligning priorities and committing resources of the major biomedical institutions of the state by growing a single clinical and translational science (CT) program for Louisiana.

Louisiana Clinical and Translational Science Center (LA CaTS)

The Louisiana Cancer Research Center is a private-public partnership researching and promoting the diagnosis, detection and treatment of cancer. LCRC includes more than 200 researchers across member institutions promoting collaboration in laboratory, clinical and population sciences research. Focus areas include molecular genetics and signaling, proteomics, immunology, infection and inflammation, viral oncology, drug discovery and minority health and health disparities. The LCRC supports shared scientific resources, including specialized equipment and a biospecimen repository. LCRC’s partners are Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, Tulane University Health Sciences Center, Xavier University of Louisiana and Ochsner Health. Each contributes unique strengths including research, education, clinical trials, health disparities and minority health.‍

Louisiana Cancer Research Center

The FDA-cleared ThermoSuit from Life Recovery Systems treats abnormally high body temperatures, cooling patients with convective heat transfer. The ThermoSuit reaches target temperature of 32C in 30 minutes &#8211; 8Xs faster than any other cooling device. The ThermoSuit has been utilized in stroke, cardiac arrest, COVID-19 and heat stroke victims.

Life Recovery Systems

InterTech Science Park is an 800-acre urban science and technology park located in Shreveport, Louisiana. InterTech provides its tenants with access to academic facilities, researchers, core equipment laboratories, animal care, multi-tenant wet lab and office space, land for building, venture capital, business planning assistance and financial incentives.

InterTech Science Park

The central facility of Building our Region&#8217;s Future&#8217;s (BRF) 40-acre InterTech Science Park near downtown Shreveport, InterTech 1 serves as an incubator for bioscience, technology and high-growth businesses. Companies located in the InterTech park operate in pharmaceutical, digital and entertainment media, drug discovery, venture capital support and environmental industries. A $12.2 million, 60,000 square foot facility, InterTech 1 is also home to the headquarters of BRF, a Northwest Louisiana economic development organization, BRF’s Entrepreneurial Accelerator Program (EAP) and BRF’s Digital Media Institute at InterTech.‍

InterTech 1

BRF’s Entrepreneurial Accelerator Program makes fledgling ideas become realities with business plans, legal assistance, market and financial analysis and funding access. Entrepreneurs are able to create and grow their businesses quickly with the help of EAP’s experts and mentors as well as key connections made through the program. Since its inception in 2014, EAP has provided services to more than 315 startups, helped clients raise more than $100 million in capital and helped launch more than 90 startups.

Entrepreneurial Accelerator Program at BRF

The Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine (VCOM) is a private, non-profit osteopathic medical school in Blacksburg, Virginia (VCOM-Virginia) with branch campuses located in Monroe (VCOM-Louisiana); Spartanburg, South Carolina (VCOM-Carolinas); and Auburn, Alabama (VCOM-Auburn). Founded in 2001, the college’s mission is to alleviate the critical shortage of physicians in Appalachia and the Delta Region by training medical students to become patient-centered physicians focusing on evidence-based medicine. The school emphasizes recruiting students from rural and medically underserved areas. Close to half of students come from rural communities with populations of less than 30,000. Over 65% of VCOM graduates practice in states with medically underserved counties.‍

Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine

Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories is a global pharmaceutical company that offers a wide portfolio of products and services through its three core businesses: Pharmaceutical Services and Active Ingredients, Global Generics and Proprietary Products. The company’s mission is to increase access to and meet the urgent demand for affordable, innovative medications by manufacturing cost-effective generics. The company’s 300,000-square-foot Shreveport location is the nation’s largest producer of silver sulfadiazine cream, which is used as a topical cream on burns; and the second-largest producer of prescription ibuprofen for the North American market.‍

Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories

Chosen Diagnostics is an award-winning, female-owned small business that combines scientific expertise with leading-edge technologies in biomarker development. Since 2017, the company has focused on delivering better outcomes for the most urgent and complex challenges in science and technology. It is a spin-off company from LSU Health Sciences Center and housed at the New Orleans BioInnovation Center, a non-profit life sciences start-up incubator. In 2021, the company received a $2.1 million grant from the National Institute of Health to complete their NECDetect prototype which identifies necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) in preterm infants, a disease that typically results in a 50% mortality rate. ‍

Chosen Diagnostics

The Building our Region&#8217;s Future (BRF) Center for Molecular Imaging and Therapy (CMIT) produces radiopharmaceuticals and conducts positron emission tomography imaging to diagnose and treat a number of different diseases, including applications in oncology, neurology and cardiology. The center’s new 20,000 sq. ft. facility opened in 2022, expanding CMIT’s patient imaging services, its clinical and translational research program and its production capabilities with novel radiopharmaceuticals to detect and treat disease.

Center for Molecular Imaging and Therapy

BioInfoExperts is funded by the National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research program to develop a patented software platform, FoxSeq, that investigates pathogen transmission and evolution. This technology can be used to improve infection control, surveillance and patient outcomes. The company consults on bioinformatics, automated workflows, experimental design and laboratory research.

BioInfoExperts

Bayou Biolabs provides biochemicals and custom services for a broad range of research needs including gene therapy applications. The company is a leading provider of molecular biology enzymes, DNA ladders and plasmid DNA. Bayou Biolabs provides custom manufacturing services to make any type of nucleic acid and protein on any desired scale.

Bayou Biolabs

The Baton Rouge Health District is a place-based health collaborative that delivers health and economic development benefits to its partners, Baton Rouge and beyond. As a non-profit organization, the BR Health District promotes collaboration among healthcare providers, government officials, payors, higher education institutions and others to implement a master plan that will enhance healthcare and economic development in Baton Rouge. Founding members of the BR Health District include Baton Rouge Area Foundation, Baton Rouge General Medical Center, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana, Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center, Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, Ochsner Health Systems, Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University and Woman’s Hospital.‍

Baton Rouge Health District

AxoSim empowers advancements in human neuroscience, neuroprotection and neuroregeneration. Its NerveSim® and BrainSim® platforms are revolutionizing how biopharmaceutical companies develop neurological drugs. AxoSim delivers human data, faster. This reduces clinical failure and enables companies to develop effective drugs more quickly and at lower costs. AxoSim works with its clients to save research and development time and money, which fosters innovation and accelerates breakthroughs in treating the world’s most devastating neurological diseases such as Alzheimer&#8217;s, ALS, Parkinson&#8217;s and Multiple Sclerosis.

AxoSim

Alfasigma, USA, Inc. is the U.S. subsidiary of Alfasigma, USA a global pharmaceutical manufacturer and distributor of prescription drugs, dietary supplements and medical foods based in Bologna, Italy. The company operates a manufacturing facility in Shreveport’s BRF InterTech Science Park. Alfasigma, USA distributes prescription products to help individuals who are suffering from GI disorders, major depressive disorder, diabetic peripheral neuropathy and mild cognitive impairment.

AlfaSigma, USA

Louisiana BioScience Innovators

LED | Louisiana Economic Development

Louisiana’s Economic Development Projects (2024-Present).

A pro-business mentality creating an ideal environment for success.

Deeply skilled. Home to a top-ranked training and development program.

Strategically located, providing global access for commerce.

Top U.S. state for per capita foreign direct investment.

Abundant and accessible raw material for diverse industries.

Taking the guesswork out of site selection.

Offering genuine hospitality and diverse landscapes.

Opportunities for former state residents.

Key facts about living, working and thriving in Louisiana.

Creating a strong and vibrant Louisiana economy.

Detailed info about ongoing economic development activities.

Preparing communities for business investment.

Expanding opportunities for rural Louisiana businesses.

Louisiana BioScience Innovators

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