High-Tech future: technology-based businesses thrive in Lafayette area.

• Author: Mayer, Kathy
• Position: Regional Report: North-Central

Take a growing cluster of science and technology businesses. Add Purdue University's new encouragement of entrepreneurs and its expansions of research facilities. Include the recruiting efforts of Greater Lafayette Progress Inc. and a strategic planning grant from Central Indiana Corporate Partnership, and you have the basis for Greater Lafayette's hightech future, community leaders believe.

"We have a lot of advantages for technology-based businesses here, particularly ones that desire the opportunity to be close to technology developments at the university," says Mike Brooks, president of Greater Lafayette Progress Inc., Tippecanoe County's economic-development organization. He points to facilities owned by Purdue Research Foundation and facilities developed by private investors in both Lafayette and West Lafayette.

"When you compare our occupancy costs to metropolitan areas such as Chicago, it's relatively inexpensive here," Brooks says. "And the advantage of being able to work with researchers within the university is a real plus."

Bioanalytical Systems Inc. tops the list of businesses already succeeding and demonstrates the energy the cluster creates to attract others.

Founded in 1974 and today employing 175 at its West Lafayette headquarters, the pharmaceutical-development company provides contract research services and analytical systems to pharmaceutical, drug-development and medical-device companies. Construction of a three-story, $5 million expansion is under way to accommodate automated robotics and mass spectrometers for pre-clinical research services. And it's just announced it will acquire two companies--PharmaKinetics Laboratories Inc. in Baltimore, Maryland, and LC Resources Inc. in Walnut Creek, Calif., broadening its contract research services technology base and adding new strategic locations.

Another with longevity is SSCI Inc., a 36-employee medical research company focusing on pharmaceutical and industrial chemical solids founded in 1993 that's earned the Indiana Growth 100 award. Cantilever Technologies, with 40 employees, launched in 1999 to market software that organizes data from independent design and supply chain systems into shared information that improves product flow through the design, engineering and manufacturing processes.

Among the newer companies with promise is the biotechnology company Endocyte Inc., which is developing a vitamin-based diagnostic and drug-targeting system it hopes to have on the...