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SANTEE - It's 4 a.m. and business partners Tom Cantor and Phil Scarpace are off to San Diego's back country to see the goats again.
They have high hopes the goats have produced the desired antibodies.
Equipped with flashlights, they draw blood from each goat, then place the tube containing the blood into their rebuilt car's radiator fan. The fan works like a centrifuge and spins the tube so fast that it can separate the antibody from the blood.
At 9 a.m., in lab coats smelling of goats, the friends start their regular workday at the Veterans Administration Hospital in La Jolla.
Then, from 5 p.m. until midnight, it's back to the chilled blood tubes waiting in Cantor's garage converted into a laboratory for processing.
That's how Scantibodies Laboratory Inc. in Santee began 24 years ago. Today, Cantor's enterprise of 350 workers produces some 1,600 products for shipment to Japan, Paris and distribution in the United States every day. Antibody-Based Products Products range from antibody-based blood and urine tests for laboratories to pregnancy kits and fertility kits sold to consumers in stores like Wal-Mart and Kmart.
In 1999, Scantibodies had total sales of $22 million. Cantor anticipates sales will climb to $25 million this year, boosted by a new generation test that detects a hormone responsible for elevated calcium levels.
That's a long way from the $65 Cantor and his friend, Scarpace, each got permission from their wives to put toward realizing their dream to commercialize antibodies like no one else.
The name Scantibodies is a mix of three names: Scarpace, Cantor and antibodies.
Back then, laboratories and medical-device makers relied mostly on researchers at institutions to supply them with antibodies, Cantor said. To find the right antibody or enough of it could be a daunting task, Cantor said, drawing from his own experiences as a biochemist.
The...