Charleston Life Sciences Boosts Networking

For Daniel Dechert, president and CEO of Charleston based Nanoscreen, the meeting that would later be known as the kick-off to the Charleston Life Sciences portal was no less than a stroke of providence.

"It was sheer chance that I sat down next to a Corporate Vice-President of Charles River Labs, and we started talking and realized our companies were a perfect fit to do business together," he said. "I couldn't believe we had nearly missed a customer so close to us or that they had nearly missed finding out about us."

The meeting was a gathering of companies in the life sciences industries held at the Charleston Digital Corridor, and the topic was the need for a comprehensive resource for life sciences companies. Creating a portal of information will possibly help other companies like Nanoscreen, a liquid-handling manufacturer, and Charles River Laboratories, whose products detect endotoxins, find other local companies with which to partner. Nanoscreen's clientele is worldwide, yet Charles River Laboratories is the company's first local client.

"This is great, because there's an even better level of service we can give a customer in our back yard," Dechert said. "There's some frustration to being in Charleston and not having that specific tech company that you need located next to you. Is it possible to do business in Charleston with people flying in from somewhere else? Absolutely. But there's an advantage to being only 15 minutes away."

There is no place in Charleston to see life sciences as a collective, said Ernest Andrade, executive director of the Corridor. "So we had this idea to start aggregating information. It's a market-driven and a very market-responsive concept. Basically it's addressing a need," he said.

"That meeting was the official start of the Charleston Life Sciences portal," Dechert said. "It was very fortunate that Ernest had put that together, and it was especially fortunate for us. A week later we had a purchase order from Charles River Labs."

The portal, which Dechert described as "an advanced form of networking," includes a Web site that contains information, resources and contact information. "The Charleston Life Sciences portal builds on the foundation of life sciences companies in Charleston by uniting, engaging and promoting their needs through a couple of ways," said Andrade. "And it doesn't take a million dollars to do this. We've gone from idea to implementation in less than 60 days, and we're doing it with no additional administrative overhead."

First, he explained, the portal will develop a network of resources to benefit Charleston's life sciences companies. Second, it will act as the conduit to receive, disseminate and share relevant information.Third, it will advance member- and sponsor-driven initiatives with input from the Charleston life sciences community.

"We've had great success with the Charleston Digital Corridor and how it's basically used as a networking and resource portal," Andrade said. "It seemed the next logical step to create a vertical portal for this sector of industry."

Andrade said the life sciences portal will be developed in a grass-roots manner much like the development of the Charleston Digital Corridor. "The idea is to develop a community of relevant individuals and parties who are interested in the development of Charleston's life science community," he said.

Among the information shared on the Web site will be resumes and job postings. "This is a good idea because we've always had people coming into the area sending us resumes thinking they would be a good fit for Nanoscreen," said Dechert. "In a lot of cases, they'e good people but we just don't have room for them. Now there's a place to post their resumes. But the other side is true also: We can find someone through the portal we may have missed by not having the network in place. Before the portal was in place, there was no direct line of communication for us."

"That's what most exciting - that this is specifically in our field. The Digital Corridor is great, and it's always been very helpful to belong to it, but the Charleston Life Sciences portal is much more in tune with what we do. It's right down the center for us. This is an excellent chance for serious collaboration."