The emerging field of plant-grown biologics will get a foothold at Iowa State through a $10 million grant from the Iowa Values Fund Board.

The board voted Wednesday to designate the money for the facility, which will produce plant-based proteins for commercial use.

The new facility will extract and purify plant-based proteins that can be used for pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals, which are naturally-occurring food or food supplements, or other industrial purposes, said James Bloedel, vice provost of research.

“The biologics facility is currently conceived as a facility for extracting product-oriented proteins from plants,” Bloedel said. “These are proteins that would be used for industrial purposes.”

Steve Carter, director of the ISU Research Park, worked with Bloedel to develop ideas for the biologics facility.

“The biologics facility is a pilot-scale extraction and purification facility,” Carter said.

Carter said the facility would primarily serve companies that produce protein-based products from plants. This facility would be used for relatively small-scale extraction and purification of those substances, he said.

Bloedel said products and ideas will be tested for feasibility at the biologics facility.

Carter said the testing will be done at a support facility called an incubator. The plans for the incubator facility are less defined than those for the extraction and purification facility, he said. The incubator is a support facility similar to a laboratory, he said.

“[The incubator] provides a facility in which technology developed at the university or an Iowa business can be further tested and matured to determine its viability as a product in the commercial arena,” Bloedel said.

The new biologics facility will have benefits for Iowa State researchers as well, Carter said.

The facilities are complimentary, and can be used for research by the Plant Sciences Institute, the College of Agriculture and the College of Veterinary Medicine, Carter said.

“It will also serve as a framework for our students to obtain experience in this new, emerging industry,” Bloedel said. “We’re discussing training programs that can be built around the facility.”

Bloedel said the importance of the facility extends beyond Iowa State.

“The area of plant-grown biologics is very important in biotechnology at the moment,” Bloedel said. “This is an industry that has a great economic potential in Iowa.”