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Partly cloudy. Low 26F. Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph..
Partly cloudy. Low 26F. Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph.
Updated: December 9, 2024 @ 10:15 pm
Mark Brown
Mark Brown
A sizable donation to a local university aims to help the regional — and ultimately national — reboot of a life-saving industry.
According to a recent press release, Sanford Research and the Mount Marty University (MMU) biotechnology program have strengthened their partnership in training the next generation of leaders in the pharmaceutical biotechnology industry with a $100,000 donation from Sanford Research to the biotechnology program for scholarships.
The Master of Science in Biotechnology Management program, a 30-credit virtual curriculum taught by current industry professionals, started at MMU in August 2023. Sanford provides area students in the program with hands-on biotechnology experience through internships and research opportunities, the press release said.
“We’re training future executives,” Mark Brown, professor and executive director of Biotechnology at MMU, told the Press & Dakotan. “So, (the program is) taking scientists, we’re taking engineers, but we’re also taking business graduates, because ultimately, we’re trying to train the future CEOs, the chief financial officers, the directors, managers, VPS, all these executives for the industry.”
Scholarship dollars will help broaden the spectrum of candidates applying to the program, he said.
“We don’t want to limit the types of students who can come into this program or the types of students who can be future leaders in this industry based on who can afford the program and who can’t,” Brown said. “We don’t want that to define who can aspire to join the ranks of our industry’s future executives.”
Biotechnology in the pharmaceutical industry refers to the commercialization of cell biology to produce human medicine,” he said.
“Its application in the pharmaceutical industry is intended to provide global access to life-saving therapeutics through the development of prescription therapeutics and vaccines using cell-based processes,” Brown said. “When people are talking about vaccines, when people are talking about monoclonal antibodies, these are biologics. These require a living system to produce them. That’s what the biotechnology side of the industry does.”
For the program’s graduates to be effective leaders of the industry, they need firsthand experience and exposure to all of the key stages in the life cycle of pharmaceuticals, he said.
“Sanford Research brings together some of the world’s top biomedical researchers to work on everything from curing type-one diabetes to treating pediatric and rare diseases,” Brown said. “This type of research and development is a really critical step in the life cycle of what will become life-saving medicines in the pharmaceutical industry.”
The opportunity for students to work side by side with some of industry’s cutting-edge researchers is priceless, he said.
The move to develop MMU’s biotechnology program arose from supply-chain and biosecurity vulnerabilities identified during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Brown said.
Brown, who has been in the pharmaceutical industry for 20 years and is the CEO and president of pharmaceutical company Phylloceuticals, served on an industry committee developed to strategize a response to federal initiatives designed to return pharmaceutical commercial manufacturing to the United States, he said.
“The United States is still the world leader when it comes to developing life-saving medicines and vaccines,” Brown said. “However, we offshore the commercial production of most of those therapeutics.”
More than 84% of U.S. prescription biologics are produced in other countries, he noted.
“So, when the pharmaceutical industry experiences a supply chain hiccough, like what we experienced during the pandemic, it literally puts hundreds of millions of lives at risk,” Brown said. “Also, it represented a major national security risk.”
The most significant hurdle the committee identified was that the industry had done such a good job of offshoring production that it had stopped training future leaders while current leaders are set to retire, he said.
“So, to train those future leaders for this industry, we developed this graduate pharmaceutical management program,” Brown said. “And I would say that we are truly a one of a kind program when it comes to the way we do this, because we’re the only program like this in the country that is taught entirely by current industry executives.”
As a private institution, Mount Marty can easily adapt this particular type of educational model, he said.
“You know, there are a lot of reasons for Yankton to be recognized in the country, and this is just one more big thing that’s coming out of Yankton,” he said. “It’s being responsive to an area of critical national need.”
Also, as a Catholic institution, Mount Marty provides a key piece in the development of future leaders, Brown said.
“In this industry we are wielding a very powerful tool, and, by nature, it does represent sort of a Pandora’s box,” he said. “So, developing our region’s first biotech program at a Catholic institution helps us ensure that the speed of technological advancement in this industry is tempered by a growing number of biotech leaders seasoned in concepts of bioethics and service to our global communities.”
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To learn more about the Graduate Biotechnology Management Program and Sanford’s Biotechnology Scholarships, visit mountmarty.edu.
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