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The only journal focused on North Alabama’s engineering, space

and genetics community, anchored by Cummings Research Park. WINTER 2009
RandD-01-04.qxp-1 12/16/08 11:33 AM Page 27

Across the
Great Divide
Huntsville firm’s revolutionary cell-culturing
machine will start to change science this summer
By ANNA THIBODEAUX

A
Huntsville startup company’s innovative new cell
growth machine promises to cut the costs, size and
maintenance involved in the mechanics of cell gen-
eration, and it’s about to hit prime-time. When the first
device – dubbed InQ – rolls off the production line this
summer, its inventors believe it’s going to replace the petri
dish, its more than 130-year-old predecessor, in laboratory
experimentation and advancing biotechnology.
“It’s a smart petri dish that grows cells as if they’re in
your body,” says Aaron Hammons of the portable cell
incubator. What makes InQ so hot is that, when
researchers throw out their petri dishes, they will also
sever their ties to all the expensive machinery needed to
keep cell growth processes

Winter 2009 COVER STORY HUNTSVILLE R&D 27

RandD-01-04.qxp-1 12/16/08 11:35 AM Page 28
From left, Amy Bishop, UAH co-inventor, Aaron Hammons, Micah Harvey and Dick Reeves, former Biztech CEO.
progressing in those dishes. Instead,
they will work with a vastly smaller
machine that is portable and inexpen-
sive. Hammons is the CEO of Prodigy
Biosystems, the company formed to
develop and market the device, and he
says his first impression was, “Why
hadn’t someone done this before?”
InQ co-inventor Amy Bishop credits
the coming together of a group of peo-
ple with certain skills and crossover
knowledge in a series of highly fortu-
nate events fueled by Huntsville’s evolv-
ing entrepreneurial spirit.
“It’s great to actually see it hit the
market, and the sooner the better,”
says Bishop, assistant professor in the
Department of Biological Sciences at
28 HUNTSVILLE R&D
the University of Alabama in
Huntsville. “My colleagues think it
will change the face of tissue culture. It
will allow us, as researchers, to not live
in the lab and control our tissue cul-
ture conditions, including the sensitive
cultures including those like adult stem
cells. The conditions to differentiate
those have to be exact, and the incuba-
tor will help that.”
Tired of applying 1920s science to
the rapidly advancing work of biotech-
nology, Bishop approached her hus-
band, Jim Anderson, chief science offi-
cer of Cherokee Labsystems in
Huntsville, about inventing a portable
cell incubator. Together, she and
Anderson designed a sealed, self-con-
COVER STORY
BOB GATHANY
tained cell incubation system that is
mobile and eliminates many of the
problems with cultivating tissues in the
fragile environment of the petri dish. It
also has its own on-board computer
that maintains and regulates the incu-
bator, allowing tighter control of the
cell environment.
Hammons’ market research indicates
up to 40 percent of cultures in a petri
dish are lost to contamination, so the
more stable InQ seems like a no-brain-
er. But even the most obvious ideas also
need the right conditions for success.
BETTER CHEMISTRY
About 1 1/2 years ago, Bishop
Winter 2009
RandD-01-04.qxp-1 12/16/08 11:35 AM Page 29

COVER STORY
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brought their design to Dr. William ADD A DISCOUNT.
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“InQ should bring major productiv- Heating and Air Conditioning
ity improvements to researchers doing
biology projects around the world,”
says former BizTech CEO Dick Reeves,
who now serves there as a consultant.
“It brings modern information techol-
ogy to the biology lab, which for some
reason has been bypassed so far. The
human-body-like environment it cre-
ates for the cells a researcher is study-
ing will make it possible to speed up
biological experimentation and study
by major accounts.”
Hammons’ studies verified the con-
cept’s viability and BizTech formed the
company that is bringing InQ to mar-
ket. A business team was assembled
including Hammons as CEO, and he
recruited Micah Harvey to be vice
president of product development for
the engineering work. Bishop and
Anderson wanted to play a role in the
project, but did not want to manage
the company to develop and market it.
InQ could present BizTech’s first
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RandD-01-04.qxp-1 12/16/08 11:37 AM Page 30

30 HUNTSVILLE R&D COVER STORY Winter 2009

and looking for a biotech-related proj-
ect he could head up, and we hooked
the need with the resource.” Hammons
says what attracted him to the project
was seeing cell culture, engineering
and software come together for the
first time. His market analysis revealed
no one else was coming close to doing
that in a mobile device with miniature
components and digital controls, or in
the price range of $2,000 to $2,500
per unit.
“I just saw a huge opportunity
there,” Hammons says. “This will be
my first one taking to market. It’s mov-
ing pretty fast, but you have to get to
market as fast as possible. If you can
have excited, stressed and scared at the
same time, that’s what my emotion
would be.”
Harvey initially assisted with the
market analysis and then 3-D model-
ing to sell the concept to Alabama
Launchpad and investors earlier this
year. From there, his role changed to
product development.
The company, then called IntelCell,
placed third in the Alabama
Launchpad’s business plan competi-
tion in 2007. Hammons says the com-
petition helped fine-tune their busi-
ness plan, as well as provided the
$25,000 prize money that helped
launch the company and gain investor
confidence. Alabama Launchpad is a
project of the Economic Development
Partnership (EDPA) of Alabama that
promotes economic development in
the state. The EDPA has been a leader
in initiating the movement to capital-
ize on the universities’ research to cre-
ate jobs and wealth locally. It recog-
nizes technologies and provides seed
money for three start-up businesses a
year. The program also is aimed at
raising awareness of how entrepre-
neurship is an important economic
development driver.
GOING TO MARKET
Hammons says one of the first chal-
lenges was naming the company. They
filed a trademark to call it IntelCell. But
for legal reasons, the company was soon
renamed Prodigy Biosystems.
Hammons says they wanted the new
name to reflect the incubator as a smart
petri dish that doesn’t just grow cells
but also nurtures them. “If you ask any-
one doing cell cultures, they’ll tell you
cells are their babies,” he says of
researchers pulling long hours to care
for them.
While there were stressful moments
about raising money, Hammons says his
worries quickly eased.
“It was an easy sell, because the part
of our investors who are scientists got
into the science and the tech investors
got into the engineering and science,”
he says. “And this is a time when
biotech is really taking off in Huntsville.

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RandD-01-04.qxp-1 12/16/08 11:38 AM Page 31
Winter 2009
We’re taking off at the perfect time, at
the perfect place.”
The major challenge lies in convinc-
ing scientists to use the InQ, which
Hammons considers an especially
daunting marketing task when the petri
dish has been around more than 130
years. Despite its headaches, he says
that’s what they’re accustomed to using.
“For some people it’ll be an easy sell,
while other scientists are only interested
in their own research, and learning a
technology might take away from that
research,” he says. “The challenge is to
prove InQ can get results 10 times
faster, with more accuracy and more
data.”
Because 85 percent of the world’s
research occurs in the U.S., they will ini-
tially target sales in the domestic mar-
ket, then expand internationally two to
three years later. They hope to sell 500
units the first year, mostly to neurosci-
entists like Bishop who would be more
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COVER STORY
likely to welcome the incubator to culti-
vate neurons, which are finicky. “We
feel if we can tackle that market, we can
tackle any market with aid from Amy,
and then we can spread out from
there,” Hammons says. Within five
years, they hope to be in neural cell,
stem cell and all primary human tissue
markets.
For Harvey, the challenge has been
to shrink the refrigerator-sized unit to
one that can fit on a desk without los-
ing effectiveness, while anticipating
future needs. Even with three years
experience in product development, he
says it’s proven the most challenging
work of his career. He’s striving for
that delicate balance where he keeps
all the moving parts together while
keeping on path with their slogan of
“Growing Smarter. Harness the power
of a cell incubator.”
Also, Hammons is determined to
avoid the InQ becoming a “big black
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HUNTSVILLE R&D 31
brick.” It will be customizable and
available in just about any color
desired, even pink.
Bishop says the device being smaller,
more affordable and more controllable,
with more software integration, takes it
in a different direction than their com-
petitors. “We just kind of scooped the
industry by going in the right direction
at the right time.”
It’s a direction that Hammons says
will provide much more information to
scientists who are accustomed to the
limited data coming from their petri
dishes. “We can measure every millisec-
ond or every hour, depending on what’s
needed. Compare getting a datasheet
with 100,000 datapoints compared to
‘the cells are OK today,’” he says of
InQ. They are recruiting professors and
researchers for a three-month beta test
of the unit and hope a successful trial
will help jump-start business by word of
mouth.
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RandD-01-04.qxp-1 12/16/08 11:45 AM Page 32

32 HUNTSVILLE R&D COVER STORY Winter 2009

INQ’S TIMING
From a science perspective, Bishop
praises the pro-technology environ-
ment at UAH and BizTech.
“I feel I’m part of a new wave of
biotechnology, cell biology and neuro-
science,” she says. Citing a study that
indicates using rats as study subjects
may be invalid because they’re not as
similar physiologically to humans as
originally thought, Bishop says InQ’s
timing is particularly significant. “This
means science must push toward using
human cells to test drugs, injuries, etc.
This is a crisis point.” The InQ would
allow use of adult stem cells, which she
says can be backed up to a near-embry-
onic cell state without controversy,
while still furthering the technology.
Tissue cultured in less than year would
eliminate the enormous culling of rats
needed in order to obtain a viable
research test group.
“There are a lot of American inno-
vators out there, and the difference
between the one who comes up with a
great innovation and me is, all these
elements come together in a synergy to
make it happen,” Bishop says. “And
it’s why American inventors are sup-
ported in a real and immediate way, so
America can have a renaissance in
innovation, and I think Huntsville is
doing that.”
At UAH, professors are coached on
their inventions as potential intellectu-
al property and on how to get their dis-
coveries to the market to really help
people. Bishop feels fortunate to have
had that input, which she says isn’t
being provided at many Ivy League
institutions, where she says innovation
money is going to overseas researchers
brought in as low-cost staffing to the
exclusion of American researchers and
innovators.
InQ represents the first of what
Reeves hopes will be a steady stream of
new companies coming out of new
technology developed in the labs of
universities. BizTech has been incubat-
ing new companies started by
Huntsville engineers and scientists for
more than 11 years. Two years ago, it
partnered with UAH to provide these
services for ideas created in the univer-
sity’s research labs. The effort provides
a bridge to the marketplace for aca-
demics who create innovations but
don’t want to be an entrepreneur.
“With its usual wanna-be engineers
and scientists,” Reeves says, “BizTech
has a person who wants to be the
entrepreneur, to lead the company and
to activity participate in its day-to-day
business.”
BizTech’s technology commercial-
ization service fills the entrepreneurial
role, which Reeves says involves doing
all the organizational work on a con-
cept, from determining commercial
merit to cost and design. During this

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Winter 2009 COVER STORY HUNTSVILLE R&D 33

period, the newly founded company is
a client and receives office space,
advice and services needed in order to
develop. When the development work
is done, a company is formed, a man-
agement team is recruited, money is
raised from investors and then the new
company spins off as an independent.
As a client, Prodigy Biosystems’
office and labs are at BizTech’s
Sparkman Drive location. BizTech
assembled the company’s management
team and board of directors, and earli-
er this year helped draw $1.25 million
in angel investors for its capital.
selves into a network that can bring many of this kind of person, comfort-
these capabilities to every part of the able with uncertainty and with
state, he says. The BizTech model of incomplete information, willing to
technology commercialization will be push the established envelope in order
a key element in that plan. to accomplish something new. Dr.
“You have to create the right kind Amy Bishop and her husband, Jim,
of environment for this to work, and inventors of the InQ, are this sort of
you have to be bring together the person. They are difficult people for
right kinds of people,” Reeves says. many of us to deal with, because they
“Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft’s for- are unwilling to accept the established
mer chief of technology officer, put it ways of things, and they believe that
this way: ‘Huntsville has always had better is possible.’” ■

SILICOTTON VALLEY?
Huntsville’s continuing emergence

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as an innovation player in Alabama is
helping address what Reeves says is
one of the state’s great challenges –
equipping its people and economy
with the tools needed to provide job
and wealth creation in the knowl-
edge-based economy. “Without these
jobs, our young people will have to go
elsewhere to earn the style of living
they feel should be theirs,” he says.
“Huntsville has always been a leader
in the formation of Alabama’s tech-
nology industry, taking pieces of tech-
nology coming out of our government STUART M. MAPLES CHARLES A. RAY, IV
labs and turning those into new infor- SMAPLES@MAPLESANDRAY.COM CRAY@MAPLESANDRAY.COM
mation technology companies like
SCI, Intergraph, Adtran and FINANCIAL RESTRUCTURING/BANKRUPTCY
Avocent.”
Now, Jim Hudson and his team at CONSTRUCTION LAW
HudsonAlpha Institute for
Biotechnology are leading COMMERCIAL LITIGATION
Huntsville’s way into the biotechnolo-
gy field, Reeves says, using technolo- CREDITORS RIGHTS
gy to personalize medicine. “InQ is
just another example of how the
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steady stream of projects like the cell
drive happen here in the years to
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HUNTSVILLE, AL 35801
come.” NO REPRESENTATION IS MADE THAT THE QUALITY OF LEGAL SERVICES TO BE PERFORMED IS GREATER THAN THE QUALITY OF LEGAL SERVICES PERFORMED BY OTHER LAWYERS.
Alabama’s business incubators are
working together to organize them-