Press Release

Ablitech, Inc. To Help In Robotics Competition

Hattiesburg, Mississippi – Hattiesburg, Mississippi biotechnology company Ablitech, Inc. and Brookhaven, Mississippi school Enterprise Attendance Center are partnering to introduce students to future science endeavors.  Ablitech’s latest role – helping students participate in the eleventh annual First Lego League in the 2010 Body Forward Challenge.

“This is more than a competition,” Tyler Hodges, Vice President of Gene Therapeutics with Ablitech, who has been working with Enterprise over the last year, stated.  “We are taking bright and eager students in Mississippi’s K-12 system, getting them out of the everyday classroom, into a laboratory and actively involving them in today’s science problems.”   

On December 4, 2010, Enterprise teacher Kathy McKone will take her team of five sixth grade students to compete in the robotics challenge.

To complete the two-part competition guidelines, students are required to explore what happens when engineering meets medicine, as they meet with bioengineering experts and investigate actual science problems.           

 Hodges said, “Our company’s mission is to help heal and protect the human body, and we daily tackle and explore the problems of how to stop pancreatic, bladder and brain cancers and other diseases with our products.  So, this is a great opportunity to introduce students to the future of medicine.”           

Ablitech’s scientists met with the students Thursday, October 7, and Chief Science Officer Lisa Kemp conducted an interactive demonstration to help students understand their work of polymers and drug incorporations.  

“Outreach efforts like this are just one way that Ablitech can give back to the community – contributing to economic development in Mississippi,” Kemp explained.

Kemp concluded, “It’s important for us to take the time to encourage the next generation of scientists, making them aware of what is happening in their own backyard.”

About Ablitech, Inc.: Ablitech, founded in 2006, is a Hattiesburg, Mississippi-based company that draws from the latest advances in polymer science and medicinal chemistry. Ablitech develops radical technologies for healing the human body. Ablitech's flagship product line, VersadelTM, is a technology that enables gene therapies for the treatment of all forms of cancer and other life threatening diseases.