OraSure simplifies medical testing worldwide. Why the CEO says theyre still based in Bethlehem. – lehighvalleylive.com

Small enough to fit in a pocket, OraSure Technologies Inc.'s products sold by 23andMe bring DNA testing into the home for people to learn about their health and heredity.

They make saliva tests for HIV cheap and fast enough for public health workers to take them door to door. That helps get people treatment and stem the virus' spread among homosexual men -- the population most at risk for getting HIV -- in places where homosexuality is a crime punishable by death.

Other tests OraSure makes can diagnosis substance abuse, diseases like Hepatitis C that are so sneaky most people don't know they're infected until it's too late for a cure -- and potential epidemics like ebola and Zika.

"What we do essentially is help people learn more about themselves," OraSure President and CEO Stephen S. Tang said this week. "We like to say what's in you, what's on you and what's around you -- it doesn't matter whether you are an individual trying to learn more about your own health or you are a physician or you're a public health worker: We make products that help enable all that."

And it all comes from a company based in Bethlehem, where OraSure got its start in 1987 as Solar Care Technologies at the Ben Franklin TechVentures business incubator at Lehigh University. Its focus back then was developing sunscreen towelettes.

This year OraSure is projecting $170 million in revenue, and Tang said the publicly traded company is carrying cash reserves of around $200 million.

Tang spoke Wednesday night at the ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks in Bethlehem, during the fifth annual Fall Signature Event hosted by the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp.

Life sciences like OraSure's business represent a growing slice of Lehigh Valley manufacturing, which itself is the region's second biggest industry with a gross-domestic product of $7.4 billion, according to the LVEDC. (No. 1 is the $7.6 billion finance, insurance and real estate sector.)

The region is the United States' 50th largest manufacturing market, said Don Cunningham, LVEDC president and CEO.

And thats quite incredible, because we are not the 50th largest population center in the United States, Cunningham told a group of investors gathered for Tangs talk. So we have emerged as one of the areas in the country where we still make things.

With its headquarters at 220 E. First St. on Southside, OraSure is a global company with subsidiaries DNA Genotek Inc. in Ontario; Novosanis in Belgium; and CoreBiome in St. Paul, Minnesota.

"One of the nice things about having manufacturing strength here in Bethlehem is that we are now looking at moving production of some of the products from DNA Genotek up in Ottawa and even in places like Belgium to here in Bethlehem," Tang said.

He declined to discuss what that would mean for job creation locally or a timeline, but said such a move makes sense in terms of combining manufacturing on a larger scale in the Bethlehem location.

Kurt Bresswein | For lehighvalleylive.com

Stephen S. Tang, president and CEO of OraSure Technologies Inc., laughs with Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp. President and CEO Don Cunningham at the LVEDC's Fall Signature Event on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2019, at the ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks in Bethlehem.

Life science research and manufacturing businesses employ more than 6,000 people in the Lehigh Valley, and employment in this sector has grown at a rate of 1.7 percent a year for the past five years, the LVEDC says.

"We're trying to make the Lehigh Valley a center for that industry that fits right in with some of the larger metro areas right around us," said George Lewis, LVEDC director of research and analysis.

OraSure employs people "from GEDs to PhDs," Tang said, and the Lehigh Valley is a perfect fit for its jobs ranging from the manufacturing floor to research laboratories. That's thanks to the strong higher education institutions that help draw young people to the region, as well as quality community colleges and vocational-technical schools, according to Tang.

The region's live-work-play options helped OraSure recruit two of its top scientists from California, he said.

"So I think we need to change our mindset about who we are and who we can attract," Tang said. "It's a quality of life that they never had elsewhere."

The fact that the Lehigh Valley is home to several life science companies helps create a nexus of companies that employees can move between. That was the "miracle of Silicon Valley," Tang said, in that tech companies started spinning off risk-takers who formed startups that amassed capital, with the branches of several major companies becoming intertwined, he said.

"I think we have the beginnings of that here in the Lehigh Valley," Tang said. "It's OraSure, but it's also B. Braun and it's Olympus coming together and needing similar sorts of skill sets together to be able to attract a population."

Tang has been with OraSure since 2011, serving as chairman until he was appointed president and CEO in 2018. He is the son of Chinese immigrants; his mother was a clinical chemist who founded the medical technology program at University of Delaware and his late father, a chemical engineer at DuPont. Tang has a degree in chemistry from the College of William and Mary, a masters degree and doctorate in chemical engineering from Lehigh and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business.

Previous companies hosted by the LVEDC for its Fall Signature Event were Freshpet, Victaulic, Crayola and Mack Trucks.

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.

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OraSure simplifies medical testing worldwide. Why the CEO says theyre still based in Bethlehem. - lehighvalleylive.com