LEADERSHIP
This Health Science Department
white coat was presented to Dr.
Timothy Moore by members of an
international student organization
for future health professionals.
TCBusiness.com 13
Q: Tell me about your experiences as
an entrepreneur. What were MagPlasma
and Probaxstra? Are you still associated
with them?
A: What I told the board of trustees of
IRSC was that if I was approved for this
job, I would decouple myself from those
opportunities. So I’m in the process of doing
that now. Probaxstra probiotic is my
baby. It was the derivative of my research. I
had to challenge myself to figure out how
to go from a test tube to a full blown production
company and do it inexpensively
and be able to be successful at it. The
company is 4 years old, it is debt free. It is
selling on Amazon. What is it exactly? It’s
a probiotic. The probiotic that I have is a
single strain bacterium. It works in specific
areas of the gut. We got the intellectual
property for it, I outsourced the manufacturing
and production of the strain, we
identified the FDA compliant producers,
we put together a marketing plan, we got
it in Amazon. It was just myself and two
other partners. But it was my brain trust.
And so what I’m doing now is I’m basically
handing that over to my partners and letting
them run it. MagPlasma is a company
that a friend of mine from the Army from
35 years ago started.
Q: Fifteen years ago we had hopes for
becoming a research center that would
be known as the Research Coast. But
then the recession came and we never
quite got there. Do you see that happening?
A: The only question is, how do we
assimilate IRSC to be a generator ... the
engine behind that. And so, one of the
things you’re going to see me push —
we’ve got a very strong entrepreneurial
base program here — is to accelerate it.
I want these students to come in while
they’re enrolled and start businesses.
Let them learn what they don’t know
already. It’s tough to slog through nothing
to something. Why am I so interested
in making them go out there and try
and possibly failing? It’s because 60 to
70 percent of all businesses in the next
20 years will be an entrepreneur-based
business. If we don’t do this now, we’re
not going to be ready, I don’t think we’ve
even scratched the surface of what we
can do, in terms of helping business be
really competitive. Think about this, we’re
a state-supported sovereign entity right
here. If we build a capacity to produce
widgets and gadgets for industry, we can
become very basic R&D and basic proof of
production line, that saves them money
that improves profitability. That means
they can hire more employees and it gives
us an ability to train their workforce. And
that, to me, that’s a synergistic model. And
I want to see us in that sweet spot, doing
just that.
Q: At Auburn University, you actually
worked on licensing some products,
including a horse vaccine, that were
developed and owned by Auburn. Can
IRSC become actively involved in developing
and licensing products as well?
A: There are certain operating parameters
we have to adhere to but by and
large, if a student comes in with an idea,
and we build the angel, investing and
fund around it we can support them
going out the door. And there’s nothing
wrong with it — we can come up with
a way to provide accounting support or
technical support or production support.
Say that you start your business and you
want to do something for charity and use
our advanced manufacturing facility as
part of your production base, we can be
on a contract to do that. So there are ways
we can do this. I’ve told all my staff, we’re
going to strip away all limitations of our >>
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