History:
EnCor Biotechnology Inc. was founded by Dr. Gerry
Shaw, who was born in Nottingham, England sometime in the last millennium.
After school and working for a year in a warehouse, he obtained a B.Sc. degree in Zoology with a focus on the then new field of Cell Biology from University College London.
He then went on to obtain a Ph.D. degree in the laboratory of Dr. Dennis Bray in King's College London. He
then moved to the laboratory of Prof. Klaus Weber and Dr.
Mary Osborn, in Goettingen, in what was then West Germany. This was in
the Department of Biochemistry, later renamed the Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology of the Max
Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry. This institute, also known as the Karl-Friedrich
Bonhoeffer Institute was extremely well funded and an excellent place for a young scientist to learn cutting edge technologies. Then as now, one of the most useful tools available
in biological research was a collection of good antibodies, and as part
of his research projects Dr. Shaw learned how to make both polyclonal and
monoclonal antibodies. Many of these antibodies became widely used by
him and collaborators, and some also became commercially available. In 1986 Dr.
Shaw moved to the University of Florida
to set up his own research laboratory. In this lab he continued to make
a variety of antibodies to aid in his research interests, and also learned
the molecular biological techniques necessary to express proteins in bacteria
in bulk. This turned out to be a very useful thing to know, since antibodies
can be readily generated against such recombinant proteins. Once again many
of these newer antibodies became popular with collaborators and several
found their way to commercial vendors, initially Chemicon (now owned by Millipore), then Novus Biologicals,
Novocastra (now owned by Leica), Sigma-Aldrich and Zymed (now owned by Invitrogen). In fact some of these antibodies
became so successful commercially that shipping them out to companies
and particularly making new batches became a major drain on Dr. Shaw's
time and energy, and research labs are not really supposed to be generating products for sale. It was at this stage that he decided that the most appropriate
way forward was to found a small company dedicated to the manufacture
and marketing of these and other high quality antibodies. The company
was founded in December 1999 and first occupied lab space in the Sid
Martin Biotechnology Development Incubator under the name of
EnCor Biotechnology Inc. in December 2002. EnCor continues to
supply Dr. Shaw's antibodies to a growing list of other companies including Abcam, Abnova, Cell Signaling Technology, Covance, Invitrogen, Millipore, Thermo Fisher, Santa Cruz and many others and
is also selling directly to researchers. The company is routinely making more novel high quality antibodies against proteins of particular interest and has some research projects underway aimed at commercializing
some of Dr. Shaw's recent scientific discoveries. In November 2006 EnCor "graduated" from the University incubator and moved into a converted warehouse in Gainesville. EnCor has been increasingly profitable every year since 2004, which is fairly unusual since many biotechnology companies don't ever make a profit.
Our Tax ID number:
Our FEIN or Tax ID number is 59-3615146. We are a C corporation registered in the State of Florida.
Location:
EnCor Biotechnology was located in the Sid Martin Biotechnology Development Incubator in Alachua, a small community in North Central Florida about 15 miles north of Gainesville from December 2002 to December 2006, but then moved into Gainesville. Gainesville is the home of the University of Florida and the Fightin' Gators, which Dr. Shaw has been reliably informed is some sort of college football team or something. Our new address is Suite 40, Interstate Office Park, 4949 SW 41st Boulevard, Gainesville, Florida 32608.
Map and driving instructions for our current location, courtesy of Yahoo: