By GREGORY ZELLER //
A modest state investment will help push a Long Island bioscience pioneer toward the brink of a DNA-manufacturing revolution.
Through its Excelsior Jobs Program and chunky Long Island Investment Fund, Albany is pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into high-growth industries throughout Nassau and Suffolk counties, with clean energy and bioscience front and center.
This week, Empire State Development Corp. offered a $1.5 million slice of that massive pie – in the form of performance-based Excelsior Jobs Program refundable tax credits – to Stony Brook-based Applied DNA Sciences, in support of the company’s LinerDNA platform.
The proprietary platform, developed at Stony Brook University’s Long Island High Technology Incubator, is key to Applied DNA’s long game: manufacturing next-generation, DNA-based medicines.
James Hayward: Healthy potential.
That’s a future worth investing in, according to Gov. Kathy Hochul, who framed the tax-credits package as the official inauguration of Applied DNA’s “team of world-class researchers … and innovative medicine manufacturing” into “New York’s thriving life-sciences corridor on Long Island.”
“Through major initiatives like our Excelsior Jobs program and $350 million Long Island Investment Fund, New York continues to invest in high-growth industries … to stimulate the regional economy, create the jobs of tomorrow and build the next major hub for innovation,” Hochul added.
In exchange for the $1.5 million in tax credits, Applied DNA agrees to create at least 23 new full-time positions over the next 10 years – a welcome boost and an attainable goal, according to Applied DNA Sciences President and CEO James Hayward.
“We are excited that our LinearDNA platform has been recognized for its potential benefit to healthcare and to create new jobs on Long Island,” Hayward said in a statement.
With billion-dollar socioeconomic programs routinely in play, $1.5 million in tax credits and 23 new jobs are fairly modest metrics. But this week’s announcement further exemplifies Applied DNA’s rising prominence – and its global potential.
Hope Knight: Strong opinion.
The biotech cut its teeth as a DNA-based supply-chain authenticator, and still maintains that lucrative vertical. But since its 2015 acquisition of West Virginia-based DNA-sequencing standout Vandalia Research, Applied DNA has grown into a top supplier of unique, research-ready DNA strands and a trusted manufacturer of polymerase chain reaction-focused technologies.
And this is not the first time Albany has boosted Applied DNA’s ascent. In January 2022, the New York State Department of Health offered quick blessings – in the form of a conditional approval – for the Linea 2.0 Assay designed by subsidiary Applied DNA Clinical Labs to rapidly and efficiently sniff out COVID-19.
With its recently signed letter of intent to become an anchor tenant of the ambitious Midway Crossing development – a unique amalgam of hospitality, tourism and life sciences proposed in the Town of Islip – Applied DNA is trending upward in a big way.
And ESD knows a good bet when it sees one, according to Empire State Development President and CEO Hope Knight.
“[The Excelsior tax credits] showcase the incredible strength of Long Island’s life-science ecosystem and will act as a catalyst for even more innovation and growth in the development of DNA therapies,” Knight said. “The use of LinearDNA will allow biotech researchers and scientists to create life-changing medicine and treatments.”
