Economic Development Financing Collaboration Assists Business Expansion

BioSpherix, Ltd. (BL) located in Lacona, NY was established in 2001 by Randy Yerden, CEO and owner.  As a successor to a previous company, Reming BioInstruments Co., also started by Yerden, BL is focused on the development and manufacture of advanced equipment for the purpose of growing and handling human cells used in biomedical research and cell therapy.  As a research technician early in his career, Yerden found that conventional cell culturing equipment lacked the instrumentation to fully meet the needs of cells, and therefore did not provide optimal conditions.

The company’s focus on the comprehensive optimization of cell environment led to the development of the Xvivo System product line.  This modular, fully closed cell incubation and processing system can be configured in multiple ways to accommodate any cell research application, and provides unprecedented new capabilities to biomedical scientists. As such, BL is experiencing heavy demand from major medical research universities, hospitals, government labs, big pharma and biotech companies.  In addition, the Xvivo System appears to be the most economical and practical way to produce high quality clinical grade cells. As such, BL is expecting explosive growth as the new cell based therapies such as stem cell, tissue engineering, gene therapy, adoptive immunotherapy, etc. revolutionize medicine.

As the demand for high value cells continues in the industry, BL designed a comprehensive plan to aggressively position “cell-centric” equipment, particularly the Xvivo Incubation System, as the tool of choice for cell and tissue production processes.  These initiatives included validation of the flagship Xvivo platform, development of a sales and service curriculum, as well as a comprehensive marketing and branding program, reaching across its global customer base.  With a sizeable investment already made by BL, Yerden began looking for additional funding to support this expansion.

To assist with the additional costs, Greater Syracuse Business Development Corporation (GSBDC) in partnership with the Central New York Enterprise Development Fund (CNYEDF) provided $200,000 in working capital from their Quasi-Equity Loan Fund in collaboration with the Oswego County Industrial Development Agency who provided $145,000 in financing.  According to Randy Yerden “As the huge new market in cell therapy opens up, it would have been impossible to build the infrastructure necessary to handle the growth without the help of these three creative and progressive local community organizations. Many, many homegrown jobs will result”.

BioSpherix, Ltd currently has 45 employees in a variety of well paying positions.  Within the next five years they hope to increase their workforce by at least 50 for a total workforce of close to  100 employees.