Ceva Biomune opens satellite lab at K-State Olathe

Friday, April 1, 2016

OLATHE — Ceva Biomune, a Lenexa-based animal health vaccine manufacturer, is using lab space at the Kansas State University Olathe campus for part of its quality control operations.

In late March, Ceva opened a satellite laboratory at K-State Olathe using rentable lab space at the campus. The satellite lab is conducting part of the company's non-regulated production and environmental control testing. The new lab affords Ceva time to work on expanding its 55,000-square-foot facility without compromising its workload, said Larry Payne, quality director for Ceva Biomune.

"Ceva is expanding so fast that we've quickly been outgrowing parts of our facility on a routine basis," Payne said. "It's a good problem to have, but we're outgrowing our production facilities and, in my case, our quality control testing facilities. This lab space at K-State Olathe prevents us from having to scale down our work while Ceva looks into a building expansion."

Payne anticipates Ceva's quality control unit will lease the lab space for 1 to 2 years.

Payne contacted K-State Olathe about leasing lab space following the recommendation of a colleague in Ceva's research and development unit who rented space at the campus in 2011.

K-State Olathe is uniquely positioned to help foster collaboration between education and industry as well as provide a platform for economic development. For example, the campus leases lab space to businesses for research and development, product scale up or transitioning to the Kansas City market. The labs include storage space and have modular furniture and cabinets that can be rearranged to suit the the renter's needs. The labs also have access to a nearby loading dock.

"The space at K-State Olathe is ideal for our needs and the staff has made this transition very easy for us to manage," Payne said. "Without access to a research lab such as this, we would have been feeling some serious growing pains."