Natural solutions: Utah's biomedical companies unlock Mother Nature's secrets.

• Author: Lindberg, Kelly J.P.

In 1986, Hunter Jackson and his three-year-old son trapped spiders in their backyard. Unlike other dads and sons, however, the Jacksons did more than just put them in jars or take them to show-and-tell. In what Jackson calls "a bizarre twist on the old-fashioned family farm," he took the arachnids to his lab, where he and his wife milked them for their venom.

Jackson and his colleague Tom Parks studied spider venom while working at the University of Utah's School of Medicine. Intrigued by the potential medical benefits of the venom's components, the two unded NE'S Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Today, that company is one of the largest in Utah's growing biomedical industry.

"Biomedical technology is any effort to utilize natural ingredients or natural processes to provide relief, cure or therapy of some kind," explains Brian Moss, president and executive director of the Utah Life Science Association (ULSA), the trade organization for biomedical and medical device firms in Utah.

Moss estimates three dozen biomedical companies exist in Utah, working on everything from analyzing the human genetic code to finding natural compound therapies to cure cancers. Biomedical (or biotechnology companies usually work with internal life processes and medicinal compounds, rather than with medical devices or other types of diagnostic technologies.

Deriving medical products from natural elements has gone on since the first worried mother applied a poultice to a wound; however, the biomedical field coalesced into an industry, separate from other medical fields, within the last 20 years.

NPS PHARMACEUTICALS

From Milking Spiders to Curing Disease

In his office in Research Park, Jackson, now chairman, president and CEO, laughs about NPS Pharmaceutical's early days, when renegade spiders and flies in his coffee cup were an unavoidable part of every workday.

That spider research blossomed into collaborations with Pfizer, Inc. and FMC Corp., which provided an economic stimulus to the company. By 1992, NPS had evolved to the point where they needed more funding, so they obtained venture capital. In 1994, the company went public.

Although they no longer study spider venom, NPS learned valuable lessons from that early work. "We moved from being a research-based discovery company to one that not only discovers, but does clinical development of our own drugs. We're now preparing to enter the marketplace with our own products," says Jackson.

NPS Pharmaceuticals employs 170 people...