little quicker through a biotech company about to expand into Wilkes County, state and local officials announced Friday.

"AviGenics, an Athens-based biotech company, has gotten a $773,300 OneGeorgia loan to help pay for an egg production facility to be built here in Wilkes County," said Wilkes County Commission Chairman Sam Moore. "The process they'll develop here, if it all works as planned, could help speed up the development of the next treatment for cancer and liver disease."

Moore traveled to Americus for the OneGeorgia award ceremony along with County Commissioners Donna Hardy and Jerry Stover, Washington Mayor Willie E. Burns, City Administrator Mike Eskew, and PDA Director David Jenkins. They met with Governor Sonny Perdue and other state officials who announced more than $13 million in grant and loan awards from the OneGeorgia Authority to Georgia communities that will create jobs and implement economic development projects.

"We are preparing rural Georgia to compete in the 21st century economy with a comprehensive and integrated economic development strategy," said Governor Perdue. "We are providing the financial resources necessary to stimulate private investment and economic growth."

Moore said that the Washington-Wilkes Payroll Development Authority had been working with AviGenics for more than a year to bring the development-stage life-sciences company's new plant to Wilkes County.

AviGenics will build a $5.7 million production facility in the county near Washington, Moore said. The 16,000-squarefoot facility will house six independent animal rooms, each housing up to 1,200 hens that have been genetically modified to produce specific human proteins in their eggs.

When those proteins are extracted from eggs and purified,they may be used in treatments developed for some cancers, infectious diseases and human organ dysfunction. The company's production process, when proven at the Wilkes County facility, may help alleviate some of the restraints on capacity, time, and costs that slow the discovery and development of new drug treatments.

The company grew from laboratories at the University of Georgia and now maintains research and laboratory facilities at UGA's BioBusiness Center while also leasing two poultryproduction facilities in Clarke and Oglethorpe Counties.

The AviGenics loan announced by Governor Perdue was the first award for the Strategic Industries Loan Fund (SILF), loans intended to be used only when needed to filla financing gap unmet in the private sector.

They are targeted to science- and technology-based industries in which development-stage companies are creating commercially promising technologies and the opportunity for higher quality jobs in rural Georgia.

The announcement of AviGenics coming to Wilkes County may not result in many jobs immediately, Moore said, but it may serve to get the county some attention in the exploding biotech industry. "When a company like AviGenics decides to come here, other companies are going to notice," he said. "We're in an ideal location to serve all the research industries that work with both UGA and the Medical College of Georgia."