A Baton Rouge-based company that is developing advanced cell therapy technologies was expected to be a major part of a national press conference this afternoon alongside Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Louisiana’s own Sen. Mary Landrieu. The two Democrats are looking to drum up support for a pair of small business programs; and Dr. Kenneth Eilertsen, vice president and chief scientific officer of NuPotential, has been tapped to share his company’s story with reporters. Just last week, NuPotential and its local partner, Pennington Biomedical Research Center, were awarded a nearly $230,000 research grant from the Small Business Technology Transfer program, known more commonly as STTR. More specifically, the U.S. National Institutes of Health made the award to “accelerate development of novel and safer approaches for generating patient-specific induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells for regenerative medicine and drug discovery.” In simpler terms, by using cell reprogramming, researchers hope to change existing cells—like fat or skin—into brain cells, liver cells or other cells that can be used to treat stroke, liver failure, burns and other afflictions. “We also expect these iPS cells to play a key role in NuPotential’s drug discovery initiatives focused on type 2 diabetes, obesity and cancer,” Eilertsen says.
Landrieu, who chairs the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, wants to extend the STTR program and the Small Business Innovation Research program, or SBIR, for another eight years. The programs were set to expire at the end of January, but the Senate approved a temporary extension through May. Should the programs be shuttered, Landrieu argues, Louisiana would miss out on a multitude of opportunities like those being offered by NuPotential, which is housed in LSU’s Emerging Technology Center. She says that over the lifetime of the SBIR and STTR programs and due exclusively to them, nearly 250 small, high-technology firms in Louisiana have received more than $56 million in funding. “These programs are some of the most successful partnerships between the public and private sectors,” Landrieu says. Action on the Senate floor was also anticipated this afternoon on the programs, which have been held up in recent weeks by Republicans, including U.S. Sen. David Vitter. GOP lawmakers in the Upper Chamber have vowed to block all bills on the floor that do not cut spending, although a compromise was expected to emerge on the small business programs in question.
