Entrepreneur-Scientist Nurtures Growing Biotech Companies

Dr. Navnit Mitter has a vested interest in the future of biotechnology in Ventura County.

By month’s end, the president of Vitagen Laboratories of Westlake Village is planning to join with fellow scientist Zaki Salahuddin to form the California Institute of Molecular Medicine. The venture, likely to be based in western Ventura County, will rely on alliances with local biotech firms.

To build his Ventura County network and to boost the local biotechnology industry in general, Mitter has signed on as Ventura Institute of Technology’s newest educator.

The Simi Valley-based nonprofit group provides on-site training in a variety of business skills for manufacturing and service companies. The institute employs more than two dozen instructors from varied backgrounds--some hired as part-time employees, others as contractors--to teach business classes ranging from customer service and teamwork to engineering.

In his new role, Mitter will work with biotech companies to bring employees up to speed with the latest developments in the field.

“There are so many advances lately and techniques being polished, and people are lagging behind in the knowledge of the role of genetics,” said Mitter, the former director of prenatal cytogenetics at the SmithKline Beecham Clinical Laboratory in Van Nuys.

“We are offering help kind of as a collaborative effort,” Mitter said. “We can learn many new things from [other companies] and we can impart things to them, so the whole Ventura County area will have growth in biotechnology.”

Mitter said he and Salahuddin, who has been associated with the Center for Complex Infectious Diseases in Rosemead and has been recognized for his work with AIDS researcher Robert C. Gallo, will conduct a variety of clinical research into AIDS and hepatitis C.

And, he said, the two will share their knowledge.

“We’ll teach the technologists at different labs and we’ll be teaching at the [future] Cal State Channel Islands,” he said. “So we are looking forward to many things, to provide expert knowledge in the field of biotechnology.”

In Mitter, the Ventura Institute of Technology found a scientist with a distinguished background.

The Moorpark resident received his doctorate in human biology from Punjabi University of India and moved to the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, for his postdoctoral training. He is a registered diplomate of the American Board of Medical Genetics and is a member of several genetics associations.

Mitter also taught morphology at Punjabi University and served as chief cytogeneticist and research instructor at the State University of New York Health Science Center.

“I recognize we have to keep up with technology,” said John Greiman, executive director of the Ventura Institute of Technology, which, with the addition of Mitter, is able to offer a biomedicine-biotechnology program for the first time in its eight years.

“I had read that there was more biotech in L.A. County than in Northern California,” Greiman said. “I did some research . . . and determined that growth of biotech in Ventura County was actually, percentage-wise, double that of L.A. County. I said, Hey, we’ve got to get into that field. We have to be training in fields that are growing, where there is demand for people.”