ECU's new research and innovation campus supports rapidly growing pharma industry

By Abbey Slattery, WRAL Digital Solutions

This article was written for our sponsor, East Carolina University.

In late 2021, East Carolina University officially opened its Life Sciences and Biotech Building, a $90 million, 4-story building with almost 150,000 square feet of space.

The capabilities of this new building range from providing research experiences toward new discoveries in the life sciences, biotechnology and the environment to cutting-edge education and training facilities for the biopharma industry.

“You’ll find researchers from biology, physics, engineering and chemistry physically working together in the open lab layout of this facility. This collaborative, multidiscipline approach to research is the key to significant discoveries and applications,” said Loren Limberis, Ph.D., associate professor of engineering at ECU. “This new building will help ECU provide additional opportunities for student success, which leads to regional transformation and economic growth. These opportunities come from additional teaching space, additional research space and additional collaborative space.”

Regional growth is a major component of ECU’s overall mission, and the addition of this building allows students to get involved in that growth in a new way — namely, getting experience in biotechnology and biopharmaceuticals.

Biopharma is based on using genetically engineered organisms that produce proteins and other biological products, such as insulin, monoclonal antibodies and vaccines, that are injected rather than ingested. The manufacturing of these is extremely difficult and expensive, but the products can often lead to groundbreaking therapies in treating all types of diseases and conditions.

Because of this potential, ECU’s new building serves as an exciting research and development center for the university’s partners in the pharma industry.

“ECU is connected to the pharma industry in several ways, one of which is the Eastern Region Pharma Center, which is housed on the first floor of the building. This center serves as a workforce development center in the pharma industry with spokes to five surrounding community colleges serving these distressed counties,” said Limberis. “As North Carolina continues to explode in growth in the pharma industry, the ERPC is reaching out to those distressed counties with initiatives to increase awareness of the industry and to provide various pathways to careers in the pharma industry.”

The Life Sciences and Biotechnology Building serves as both the brick and mortar and distance education access to several of those pharma career pathways. In doing so, the school hopes to maintain the growth of the pharma industry in North Carolina, train workforce talent that’s greatly needed and provide meaningful career opportunities for residents of eastern North Carolina.

For students at ECU, this means a foot in the door to one of the most active industries in the state.

“The bioprocess engineering concentration does an excellent job in preparing students for the pharmaceutical industry. This program has courses dedicated to engineering types used in pharmaceuticals, which provided me not only with experience with each but also gave me insight on what career pathway I wanted to pursue in the industry,” said Jeremiah Coley, an ECU graduate and current validation specialist at PharmEng Technology. “The professors that teach these courses also do a tremendous job of providing students the opportunity to network with people in the industry. During my time in the program, I was given the chance to network with numerous people employed at a variety of different pharma companies which led me to the company I currently work at. I still utilize the knowledge and experience I gained in the program at ECU, and it continues to help me grow in the industry.”

The new building doesn’t only support the biopharma industry, however. The space in the building is also used by students pursuing degrees in research, academia, bioprocess engineering, biomanufacturing, environmental engineering, biomedical engineering, biology, physics, chemistry and technology systems. The building will also provide opportunities to those who want to engage in cyberinfrastructure and cybersecurity as part of the move toward digital transformation in biomanufacturing.

While the first floor of the building houses the biomanufacturing training and education labs and the second and third floors are being used for interdisciplinary research, the fourth floor is currently unfinished. Once funding is secured, the research capabilities will continue to expand in the same direction.

“Providing this knowledge and experience will prepare both the current and future workforce for the pharma industry,” said Coley. “This will have a positive impact on the state as North Carolina continues to attract pharmaceutical companies to conduct their business here.”

This article was written for our sponsor, East Carolina University.