SARANAC LAKE — Bionique, a local testing lab with offices in Lake Clear and downtown Saranac Lake, that specializes in keeping medicines safe from bacteria, is preparing to triple its size — in both its physical space at the Lake Clear site and in its staffing.

After the locally grown lab was acquired by the Japanese chemical company Asahi Kasei in 2021, Bionique CEO Gladis Zamparo promised local facility and employment expansion. Now, it appears they are making good on that promise.

This physical space expansion needs approval by the Adirondack Park Agency. APA spokesman Keith McKeever said this project fell under APA jurisdiction because it is more than a 25% expansion of a commercial use in an industrial land use area.

“Depending on public comment, the project may be approved at the staff level,” he wrote in an email, meaning the APA board might not need to take a vote on this project.

The proposed 19,000-square-foot expansion is at Bionique’s existing 9,459 square-foot building on Fay Brook Lane near the Adirondack Regional Airport in Lake Clear. A public comment period on this proposed expansion will be open through Oct. 12. To make public comment on this project, go to tinyurl.com/25sa9vyb.

The application says the lab plans to eventually employ 90 people. Last year, the lab had 43 employees and was looking to hire many more. But a lack of affordable housing has been making that difficult.

The expansion would also double the parking lot capacity to 100 vehicles.

Bionique’s CEO Gladis Zamparo declined to comment to the Enterprise, citing “company policy to wait until the comment period for the (APA) filing ends.”

She declined to answer questions about what has allowed Bionique to make this growth, what sort of jobs they will be looking to hire, how the acquisition by Asahi Kasei has gone, if the housing shortage is still an issue that they are facing, an up-to-date employee headcount and how long construction is anticipated to last once it starts.

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Growth

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In the past, Zamparo has said Bionique was growing at a rate between 10% and 20% in the late 2010 and through the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Bionique Chief Scientific Officer Jill Mariano previously said the cell and gene therapy industry they service was “exploding exponentially” with new medicines.

Under U.S. and global laws, every one of these drugs is required to be tested for mycoplasma bacteria throughout each stage of its development and manufacturing.

Every time a manufacturer creates a new batch of a drug, it sends a sample out for mycoplasma contamination testing. Bionique is the only lab in the U.S. solely dedicated to testing for mycoplasmas, and one of only two with such a focus on the planet.

Zamparo previously said Bionique serves eight of the world’s largest biopharmaceutical companies and estimated that half of the general population has taken some drug, treatment, medication or vaccine which was tested in a Bionique lab.

Mycoplasma are bacteria that line the throat and lungs and cause respiratory illness — most commonly the illness known as “walking pneumonia.”

They don’t have cell walls, so they’re immune to antibiotics and often grow in antibiotic cell cultures grown in labs for study or production. Mycoplasma is referred to as a “covert contaminant.”

According to Bionique’s website, mycoplasma was discovered in 1956, when contamination was common — between 57% to 92% of cultures were contaminated with the bacteria.

Housing hurdle

The lab’s efforts to grow have been hindered by this region’s lack of affordable housing options in recent years.

That growth is still happening, but it is more “measured” than they had wanted, Human Resources Director Ami Parekh said last year.

Even though the jobs offer good pay, some applicants turned down jobs because of the housing barrier and found work elsewhere instead. People who were hired struggled to find housing to move locally.

The company changed its hiring process because of the housing shortage, allowing people to start work remotely and take some time before they move here.

Founded by Daniel and Judith Lundin in 1990, the company was one of numerous startup biotech companies cultivated at the former W. Alton Jones Cell Science Center in Lake Placid.

Its first home was a small cabin on the Bloomingdale Road outside of town. It later moved to Harrietstown’s business park in Lake Clear. And in August 2020 Bionique expanded again, opening a second location on Main Street by the village’s Saranac River dam.