By Charlie Deitz
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wamc/local-wamc-954294.mp3
Pittsfield, MA – The fight to cure cancer can be a tedious and painstaking process. On the front lines of that work is a Pittsfield, Massachusetts based firm that specializes in harvesting tissue samples and loading thousands of pieces of information into a database, WAMC's Berkshire Bureau Chief Charlie Deitz has the report
Nuclea Biotechnologies recently moved their prep lab from Worcester to Pittsfield where founder, President and CEO Pat Muraca comes from. Muraca graduated from Berkshire Community College before moving on to head up a company whose hook is streamlining the laborious process of examining tissues, speaking from the new offices he explains where Nuclea fits in to the process of treating cancer.
The system works with two different operations working side by side, basically the laboratory part and the computer part. Over in the lab, technician Sam Triano is staining dozens of slides, each with different tissues on them.
Nuclea has developed a patented technology that allows them to put up to a thousand different samples on each slide, here Marky Pannesco is showing how they use wax molds on a patented apparatus called a microray machine.
Once those samples are placed on the slide, the next issue is organizing thousands and thousands of different tissue samples in a coherent way, that's where the computer part comes in, or what's called bioinformatics.
They also have to use a finite map that tells them instantly what sample is where, then extrapolate the data they want from the sample, so they can call that up and research the tissue.
So their biggest clients are pharmaceutical companies, who go to Nuclea for comprehensive outcome analysis for experimental or commercial treatments. The company recently landed a more than 1 million dollar contract with Boston Medical Center where they'll be paying the hospital for access to their radiation and pathology labs.
The payoff for Nuclea after laying out over a million cash is that they get to keep any new advances made in the process, from new data mining techniques, to enhanced knowledge of how certain cells and blood types are responding to therapies. The company has benefitted from the state's push to bring more life science firms in to the state, by receiving over 700 thousand dollars to create an internship program for up and coming biology and computer science majors. They recently hired a 2 year intern from the Massachusetts college of liberal arts, he'll start as soon as he graduates later this year.