The biotech entrepreneur: A multi-state search leads to Ellsworth
Behind the walls of the modest brick-front building in a 200-square-foot lab, Christine Soto is looking for answers. Armed with two mice and two decades of research experience, her work could someday help doctors diagnose the Lassa virus that kills about 5,000 people each year.
Soto’s company, Monoclonals Inc., is based in the Union River Center for Innovation, a business incubator and coworking space in Ellsworth that opened in 2016. Last year, the center received support from MaineCF through our first round of Downeast Innovation Fund grants.
Soto found her way to Maine after she launched a business that would produce monoclonal antibodies that are used to develop rapid test kits and deliver targeted treatments for infectious diseases and cancer.
Why Maine? Soto searched nearly a year for lab space but couldn’t find affordable lab space near her home in Pennsylvania.
“At that point I had to get bold and said, ‘Wherever I have to go is where I go,’” she recalls. A Google search brought her to Ellsworth in 2017 and a zoning officer pointed her to the Ellsworth incubator, where she found a community that understood her entrepreneurial spirit.
“They knew exactly what I was talking about when I said that I wanted to make these molecules in mice,” says Soto. “It was really nice to have that support.” That relationship has helped her secure two grants for research and purchase necessary and expensive equipment that would have taken another year to acquire on her own.
Looking forward, this biotech entrepreneur – who still supports herself with a part-time job – hopes she and her colleagues can expand lab space at the Union River Center for Innovation for more researchers who share her determination.
“When you’re so firm and so passionate about what you do, I don’t think you’ll find one person who would say no,” Soto says. “And I still haven’t since I’ve been here in Maine.”
Photo: Christine Soto at the Union River Center for Innovation in Ellsworth. Photo Ashley L. Conti
