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NEWS MEDIA Kentucky puts hopes in natural-products sector
By MARCUS GREEN LEXINGTON, Ky. — It could be the ultimate paradox: Tobacco that can help you quit smoking. In a laboratory at the University of Kentucky, Peter Crooks' young company, Yaupon Therapeutics Inc., refines an extract from tobacco that it hopes to market in smoking-cessation products someday.
The year-old firm, which has grown to eight full- and part-time employees, tests a type of tobacco plant that Crooks said produces a compound with fewer cardiovascular side effects than nicotine. "We're hoping to make an impact on the smoking-cessation market," said Crooks, a UK medicinal chemist who started Yaupon with pharmacologist Linda Dwoskin. Yaupon's effort to find alternative uses for tobacco — and harness it for commercial use — is just one example of Kentucky's growing natural-products sector, a broad group of goods derived from plants, animals and microscopic organisms. Not to be confused with organic balms, patchouli oil or free-trade coffee, these natural products are the marriage of agriculture and technology. They are also seen as a critically underdeveloped part of Kentucky's push for new economic-development opportunities. University of Kentucky President Lee Todd, speaking at Wednesday's inaugural state conference on Natural Products Innovation in Lexington, lamented the fact that Kentucky is one of just two states (Vermont is the other) without a federal research and development laboratory. During his successful campaign for governor, U.S. Rep. Ernie Fletcher said bringing a federal lab to Kentucky would be one of his top priorities. "Maybe natural products is the way that we could do that," said Todd, a Kentucky native who started two high-tech firms with patents he secured as a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Yaupon is one of three Kentucky-based companies conducting research with the help of a $30,000 grant each from the Natural Products Alliance, a project supported by the National Science Foundation, Kentucky's Office for the New Economy and UK. The alliance aims to build partnerships among university research, government agencies and private businesses to develop and commercialize natural products. Allylix Inc., a start-up incorporated in September 2002, banks on growth in the medical, industrial and agricultural markets for chemicals that other companies use as flavor and fragrances in the manufacturing process. That market's sales "are well over $5 billion a year," said UK professor and Allylix co-founder Joe Chappell. "That's expected to grow to $25 billion by 2010, and we would hope to be in that market to some extent." Chappell said the Natural Products Alliance creates "a real nice cocktail" of like-minded companies. Allylix has already built a relationship with Oraceuticals Inc., another Lexington company in the research phase. Oraceuticals tests extracts from common and exotic plants — including some grown in Kentucky — for use in treating oral infections. It also is looking at ancient medicines used in Asia. "The company actually has links with Chinese biotechnology companies," said co-founder and UK professor Jeffrey Ebersole. Kentucky economic-development officials have approved $250,000 for the Natural Products Alliance to help it become a statewide umbrella group that brings together natural products companies, private groups and public agencies, said Scott Smith, dean of UK's College of Agriculture. Meanwhile, UK plans to open an incubator by early next year for young companies at the Kentucky Tobacco Research & Development Center on its campus. "We have several potential occupants lined up ... and hope that it will become a tremendous asset ... for start-ups to move forward," Smith said. Arguably, the timing could not be better. Despite being a longstanding part of the state's heritage, agriculture is at a crossroads with the decline of tobacco as a leading cash crop in Kentucky. For Dean Wallace, executive director of the Council for Burley Tobacco, the prospect of new uses for tobacco in a natural-products economy is encouraging. Still, he doesn't believe large numbers of tobacco farmers will benefit. Most likely, he said, growing such crops would be an alternative — but not a cure-all for burley growers' woes. "It would be another income opportunity for some Kentucky farmers." From The Courier-Journal, Business Section ı Sunday, November 09, 2003. Louisville, Kentucky. |
