Science in the Triangle

Gov. Beverly Perdue used a ribbon cutting Thursday to propose state incentives to encourage scientists to become entrepreneurs.

Purdue seized the grand opening of Quintiles Transnational‘s new global headquarters in Durham to talk about a founder’s tax credit and small innovation research grants she said she wants legislators to pass during the ongoing session.

Quintiles Plaza, a 10-story-tall, environmentally friendly building befitting a company with nearly $3 billion in annual revenue, made for a good backdrop. Conceived in a trailer on the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill campus 27 years ago, Quintiles has become the largest contract research organization in the world. Of 23,000 Quintilians, as co-founder Dennis Gillings calls employees, about 1,700 work in the Triangle.

“There’s nothing that could have kept me away from this,” Perdue told a crowd of hundreds that had gathered for the grand opening. “This is the kind of company we want.”

Located at the gateway to Research Triangle Park, a North Carolina economic engine that was nothing but scrub pines and possums 50 years ago, Quintiles embodies the entrepreneurship that Perdue said she wants to foster with the proposed incentives. The tax credit, for example, would allow successful company founders to sell their stock without getting penalized for capital gains.

Especially biopharma research and nanotechnology are expected to spawn possible Quintiles of the future and North Carolina is dotted with research hubs in both fields from the Triangle to Charlotte.

As for Quintiles, the company that started as a small consulting business in 1974 grew quickly as pharmaceutical companies farmed out more and more of their drug testing. “We thought we hit it big time when we moved into a small house in Carrboro,” Gillings told the crowd at the grand opening.

Quintiles’ business continued to increase and the company has had a hand in the development of the 30 best selling pharmaceutical medicines and nine of the 10 best selling biotech drugs.

In 2006, about $25 million in state and local incentives convinced Quintiles to expand in Durham and move into a new headquarters building. The expansion was projected to create 1,000 new jobs in the Triangle by 2012.

So far, more than 400 employees have been added, Gillings said. “We’ve come a long way, baby, from that trailer.”