Dutch biotech firm says planned Keene lab could draw similar companies to region

“The pro for a city like Keene is that we’re not one out of 10 or 100 life-science companies trying to settle,” Gazendam said in a Zoom interview Friday. “We’d be just one in a crowd in a Boston.”

He said he was impressed by Keene’s sense of community and the depth of expertise for a city of its size.

“It is quite top-heavy when it comes to, let’s call it, smart people who have an affinity with what we’re trying to do, whether it is on the entrepreneurial side of things or the funding side of things,” he said.

Gazendam said it would initially employ four to five people in Keene, which could grow depending on the company’s success.

The plan is contingent on raising about $1 million in startup capital, he said.

Mary Ann Kristiansen, the executive director of the Hannah Grimes Center for Entrepreneurship, is part of a group that has been trying to spur development of a local biotech sector. She helped pitch Keene to Detact Diagnostics.

She said having a company like that here could draw others to the area.

“We’re not a biotech hub at the moment, but we are a community that supports any business in our midst,” she said. “And we’re pretty close to other biotech hubs — Dartmouth, Manchester, Boston — and we have people in our region that are working in biotech that are great resources.”

Detact Diagnostics was founded in 2014 and has offices in the Netherlands and the U.K.

It has developed a method of testing for the presence of bacteria or viruses using infrared light molecules, Gazendam, a former trauma surgeon, said. It plans to seek FDA approval for two medical uses.

Gazendam said one would allow patients using peritoneal dialysis at home to test for infections. The other would be for testing fluid after a joint replacement — something that now takes days, costing precious time in the event of an infection, he said.

“The whole idea of our test is that it is really quick,” he said. “So it’s a matter of seconds to minutes. The test itself can be done without having specialty training, so you don’t need to be a microbiologist to do it, and you also don’t need a lab to do the test.”

To get FDA approval, Detact will need what’s known as a CLIA-certified lab, which allows it to handle clinical samples. Keene doesn’t have one, so Detact Diagnostics plans to set one up, likely at Keene State College, Gazendam said.

Along with running Detact’s own samples, the lab would take on business from other companies that need a CLIA lab — which could ultimately draw other life-science ventures to the region, he said.

“There are companies like us who need a lab like this, who would now go like, ‘All right, we don’t need to set it up, we can use the Detact CLIA lab in Keene,’ ” Gazendam said. “ ‘So we’ll settle in the Keene region because now there’s a lab that we can use.’ ”

Keene got on Detact’s radar through a personal connection.

One of its consultants, Julie Garcia, previously lived in the Elm City. According to Kristiansen, it was Garcia who first pitched the idea of a local biotech sector, and she subsequently helped launch Bio Nest, the Hannah Grimes Center’s biotech incubator.

Garcia told Detact about the program, which had been looking for a company to settle in Keene.

When Detact Diagnostics visited Keene in March, Kristiansen connected the team with various stakeholders, including city, state and federal officials; the chamber of commerce; potential funders; Keene State College; and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon.

“We really just tried to connect them with as many resources as we could while they were here, so they could get a sense of the support that they’d have,” Kristiansen said.

She said Keene’s higher-education institutions, strong community, proximity to larger cities and lower cost could make it attractive to more biotech firms.

“We are inevitably going to have industries that are shrinking in our community,” she said, “and I think finding one that’s really going to grow well into the future is just important for our diverse, rural economy.”

If all goes well, Gazendam said the lab could be up and running in six to nine months — though he stressed that the funding has to come together for anything to happen.

“We need the funding for this lab to be in place,” he said. “So we’re reaching out to local angels and local investors, and we’ve been speaking to the regional bank. And we’re trying to get the funding organized, and we have faith that that’s gonna work. But that would be the first hurdle.”