Founder of U of A-Affiliated Company Named Finalist for Cartier Award

Photo by Matt Reynolds

Ellen Brune, CEO, Boston Mountain Biotech

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Ellen Brune, who started a manufacturing company to produce pharmaceutical proteins using a method she helped develop at the University of Arkansas, is one of 18 women in the world who have been selected as finalists for the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards.

The Cartier Women's Initiative is an international business plan competition created in 2006 to identify, support and encourage projects by women entrepreneurs. Brune, 28, is one of two women from the United States who will compete in France in October for a prize package that includes $20,000 and a year of coaching in business development and marketing.

Brune earned a doctorate in chemical engineering with a focus in bioprocessing in 2013. She founded Boston Mountain Biotech after helping develop a patented method to simplify the production of pharmaceutical proteins used in drugs that treat a variety of diseases and health conditions.

“I am very excited to be named a finalist for the Cartier Women’s Initiative Award and to showcase my business at the fantastic venue in France this fall,” Brune said.

Boston Mountain Biotech – a Genesis Technology Incubator client at the Arkansas Research and Technology Park – holds the exclusive license to market the trademarked Lotus purification platform.

Brune, who conducted research as both an Honors College Fellow and Doctoral Academy Fellow at the U of A, created a series of custom strains of the bacteria Escherichia coli that produce minimized sets of contaminants or “nuisance” proteins, simplifying the purification process on the front end of protein pharmaceutical production.

“It can cost half a billion to $1 billion in 10 years for pharmaceutical manufacturers to deliver a protein therapeutic from a lab to the manufacturing stage,” Brune said. “Our company uses genetic engineering to make the purification process more efficient. We’re trying to help large pharmaceutical companies get their drugs to market cheaper and faster.”

In addition to receiving a total of more than $1 million in research grants through the National Science Foundation and Arkansas Biosciences Institute, Brune participated in the graduate entrepreneurship certificate program at the U of A and participated on a team that built a business plan around her discovery. The team won $43,350 in prize money in graduate student business plan competitions.

“The Cartier Women's Initiative Awards are much more than a competition,” said Stanislas de Quercize, CEO of Cartier. “Every day these women rise to the challenge of matching social impact with economic value, and initiatives like this are essential to share new models and build responsible businesses. There is something very special about a community of driven women entrepreneurs federating these values.”

About the University of Arkansas: The University of Arkansas provides an internationally competitive education for undergraduate and graduate students in more than 200 academic programs. The university contributes new knowledge, economic development, basic and applied research, and creative activity while also providing service to academic and professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the University of Arkansas among only 2 percent of universities in America that have the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the University of Arkansas among its top American public research universities. Founded in 1871, the University of Arkansas comprises 10 colleges and schools and maintains a low student-to-faculty ratio that promotes personal attention and close mentoring.