By Dick Lindsay, Berkshire Eagle Staff
The owner of Nuclea Biotechnologies LLC says he’s making good on a promise to double the firm’s Pittsfield operations and vows to triple it by year’s end.
President and CEO Patrick Muraca on Wednesday officially opened the Nuclea Genomics Center on Elm Street, across from Harry’s Supermarket.
The biotech company raised $2.5 million in private equity funding and converted the former Hillcrest Dental Center office into a 3,500-square-foot laboratory for gene-based analysis in cancer research. Nuclea Biotechnologies identifies genes and proteins associated with diseases, such as cancer, to aid in diagnosis and treatments.
The Nuclea Genomics Center will employ 14 to 16 people — nearly half of them new hires — and they join the 14 employees at Nuclea’s computer operations center on South Street.
“We’ve hired five new people and we’re moving toward eight,” said Muraca at a ribbon-cutting ceremony, where city and state officials gathered to welcome the company.
Mayor James M. Ruberto called the employment prospects new “high-paying jobs with well-skilled employees.”
In addition, Nuclea is looking to lease another building in Pittsfield for a manufacturing facility that would make “monoclonal antibodies,” which are cells that aid cancer research, Muraca said. That facility would boost the company’s payroll another 15 to 20 employees.
Muraca said another $9 million in private investment will und this manufacturing facility, bringing the total investment financing raised to $17.6 million since the Pittsfield-based company was founded in 2005.
“We had a very nice offer from Worcester, but we decide to go ahead and keep expanding in Pittsfield,” Muraca said. “We’re happy with the direction the city is going, especially the downtown, which is absolutely amazing.”
Muraca’s plans to keep expanding in Pittsfield is a far cry from two years ago, when he moved all of Nuclea’s scientific operations to his alma mater, Clark University, in Worcester. The re-location of 16 jobs back then followed the company’s failed attempt to expand to the William Stanley Business Park of the Berkshires.
But the city native said keeping Nuclea’s computer operations in Pittsfield, where the company was founded in 2005, allowed him to keep future local expansion in mind.
Muraca’s Pittsfield workers and state officials are glad he remained committed to the city.
“A lot of us have families who couldn’t leave for Worcester,” said Rachel Rosier of Pittsfield, Nulcea’s vice president of operations and mother of three children. “We’re fortunate [Muraca] kept part of the company here and it’s growing.”
Since 2001, the life sciences field has grown more than 42 percent statewide, according to Peter Abair, the economic development director for the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council.
“This is an important industry for Pittsfield to have a stake in,” Abair said. “We look forward to other ribbon cuttings for businesses like Nuclea.”
State officials also praised the company for participating in a state-sponsored internship program to help increase the local biotechnology workforce.
“We have been partnering with [Nuclea] to develop new life sciences talent in Western Massachusetts,” said Susan Windham-Bannister, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center. “Life Sciences is an industry we can grow state wide.”
The state center is a quasi-public agency charged with implementing the state’s 10-year, $1 billion dollar life sciences initiative.
