Our Town Coralville: Integrated DNA Technologies a rapidly growing business

CORALVILLE, Iowa (KCRG) -Chemists, biologists, and those on the cutting edge of genomic exploration are part of a rapidly growing business in Our Town Coralville.

Today in our installment of the Our Town series, where we highlight a different community each week, we’re learning how ‘Integrated DNA Technologies’ got its start, and now serves the world from Our Town Coralville.

White lab coats and eye protection are required inside this portion of one of the biggest employers in Our Town Coralville: Integrated DNA Technologies. Where they produce DNA used in testing - including in the recent pandemic.

“So many of our products went into the kits that tested for covid-19, many of them commercial kits but also the CDC’s kits.”

Christine Boge has been with the company for 28 of its 35 years. She’s now the Senior Vice President of Global Operations and spends time traveling the world to visit other Integrated DNA Technologies facilities.

“Coralville has been and always will be out headquarters but we have a facility in San Diego, a Boulder, Colorado, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Research Triangle Park, also production in Singapore and Belgium,” said Boge.

Throughout the years since Doctor Joseph Alan Walder founded IDT - it’s grown and expanded... now with about two-thousand employees worldwide, with roughly half in Coralville.

“When you look at companies like IDT That are employing close to 1,000 people around here and they have this enormous presence in the area? How do we find the next IDT? What does that look like? How can we continue to grow this?” said the University of Iowa Chief Innovation Officer, Jon Darsee.

That growth serves as a model for other start-ups in the region - with the UI Research Park and business incubator also in Coralville.

IDT will soon be home to a CRISPR - a way to edit genetic code. “This will be used in genomics medicine and as a drug substance and in order to treat the most complex medical diseases,” said Boge.

Charting a new business path from testing for disease to preventing it... right here in Our Town Coralville.

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