State Grants $7.9M for Biotech Research Center

DOYLESTOWN, PA-The commonwealth of PA released a $7.9-million grant to Delaware Valley College here for development of a 55,000-sf biotechnology research complex. The complex will be co-owned by DVC and the Hepatitis B Foundation, a worldwide organization dedicated to finding a cure for viral hepatitis.

The center will be a public-private partnership working with non-profit research labs and emerging biotech start-up companies in the area. The college anticipates that it will increase student enrollment and attract and retain high technology companies. It projects that the center will directly create 110 jobs and estimates that it will generate $14 million in state tax revenues over a five-year period.

Expansion in biotechnology and the life sciences is a centerpiece of Gov. Ed Rendell’s Plan for a New Pennsylvania. He called “this grant of critical capital development dollars . . . a perfect example of the type of targeted investment we must make as a state if we are going to turn our economy around.”