Science, business intersect in Sacred Heart

SACRED HEART — A passion for science developed as a student at Renville County West has led Eric Mahlum to take on some very important work.
He was part of a research team now holding a patent on a process that attaches cancer-fighting agents to receptors that are able to cross the brain-blood barrier and deliver their load to cancer cells in the brain.
As part of his research for a doctorate, he identified proteins that certain brain cancer cells produce to tell the body’s immune system to ignore them.
Now he is taking on his most important work: Making a genetic testing and clinical-grade laboratory a successful business in Sacred Heart, his hometown.
He is marketing Yourlabus.com to researchers as well as to people and industries that can benefit from genetics testing. He believes the company’s best market niche will be in serving the many researchers working on limited, start-up budgets.
“For people starting out and don‘t have their own lab or limited capability, we are their solution,’’ Mahlum said.
Yourlabus.com could also be the solution for private companies, hospitals or environmental agencies needing genetics testing. Yourlab.com can do the genetic analysis needed to identify whether an invasive species, such as Asian carp, are present in a body of water, or whether a nefarious strain of bacteria may be present on surfaces in a health care facility.
Mahlum, 37, opened his company in Phil Smith’s former Pioneer seed distribution building in downtown Sacred Heart in November. Bruce Hanson, Hanson Communications, is supporting this hometown venture. He invested $50,000 to create a positive-pressure laboratory capable of performing the highly specialized work needed by researchers.
Mahlum knows this work well. Along with bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Minnesota State University Mankato and a doctorate from the Mayo Graduate School, Mahlum has many years of private industry and research laboratory experience.
He traveled throughout the country as a quality assurance officer for a private pharmaceutical company. In one case his timely discovery of record falsification at a laboratory prevented a batch of HIV positive-tainted blood from being used to make medicine.
His laboratory experience includes years of work at the Mayo Clinic, both in research toward his doctorate and for a private venture aimed at finding treatments for both bone and brain cancers.
The research on crossing the blood-brain barrier is already showing results. Others are now using the knowledge gained to attach nanoparticles of gold on cancer cells in the brain. Microwaves aimed at the cells cause the gold to heat and neutralize the cancer cells while not harming non-cancerous cells.
It is exciting stuff for Mahlum, who is a self-confessed “laboratory rat.’’ He loves nothing more than the focused and detail specific work of the laboratory.
But through 13 years of post-secondary education, he had not taken one business course. He is now working with others to develop the marketing plan needed to attract the research business he knows exists out there.
His mission now is to attend scientific symposia and inform researchers about the services he can offer.
Mahlum said his decision to launch his business in Sacred Heart had everything to do with his love for his hometown and rural living. The move was not without sacrifice. His wife was not willing to give up her life in Rochester and make the move to the small community, he said.
But from a business standpoint, he pointed out that a Fed Ex account and an Internet connection is all that is needed to provide the laboratory’s services to clients anywhere in the world. He believes Sacred Heart can be the right home for Yourlab.com.
“Why not? Why not try,’’ he said of the decision to open his own business in his hometown.