She’s bridged the gap between the lab bench and the corporate boardroom, and now she’s helping her Calgary genetics company transform a simple safflower seed into an international cash crop.

Meet Nancy Markley — mom, molecular farmer and business developer.

When the 35-year-old wrapped up her post-doctoral research in molecular biology at the University of Calgary two years ago, she was looking for a new challenge.

Not content to spend her career teaching or with her eyeball glued to a microscope, she wanted to use her knowledge of the science of biotechnology to launch herself into the business side of the industry.

“I realized early on that I wanted to stay in science and biotechnology . . . but I didn’t want to be a bench scientist,” says Markley.

“I realized that what makes biotechnology run is not just the science. There’s many aspects, intellectual property, regulatory, business development, there’s all sort of components that together drive the science to commercialization. So I started to pick apart those individual roles in biotechnology to see if I would fit within any one of them.”

The urge to learn about the developing and marketing of biotech products was a natural move for the Edmonton-raised Markley, who comes from a family of small business entrepreneurs. But opportunities were slender in a province where ag-biotech firms were only just beginning to flower.

Enter SemBioSys Genetics Inc., a Calgary-based biotechnology company which “farms” safflower oilseed proteins for the pharmaceutical and personal care cosmetic market.

In 1998, ag-biotech business pioneer Andrew Baum was appointed president and CEO of the SemBioSys, a start-up company of University Technologies International Inc., and immediately turned his attention to the full commercialization of its products.

Markley was hired in a junior position as a market analyst. She had worked hard to research alternatives to a purely academic science career and had decided that business development, not the ivory tower, was the right path for her.

SemBioSys “was an exciting company,” she recalls. “Andrew had just joined, and it was growing. I knew the technology had some potential and it looked like a really good opportunity for me to get some experience.”

Today, she oversees market research in addition to being manager of dermal (skin) applications. She also juggles the challenges of a three-year-old daughter at home while being eight months pregnant with her second child.

One of Markley’s biggest challenges, however, is explaining to people just what SemBioSys does. “The technology is very powerful, and has a lot of benefits for different applications. It’s not just this horror story about GMO’s (genetically modified organisms).”

The company has developed technology to grind up native safflower oilseeds in large quantities for the low-cost production of specialized proteins which can be used in a variety of applications.

The soft and creamy raw material extracted from the natural oilseed can replace a number of other ingredients commonly used in cosmetics and skin care products, including mineral oils, silicon and vegetables oils.

The safflower plants can also be genetically modified to produce customized proteins on the oil bodies, which can be used as a delivery system for pharmaceuticals such as anti-acne medicine, or cosmeceutical skin cream. The transgenic plant actually becomes a “bio-factory” for the easily-extracted protein.

The world market is interested: Two weeks ago, the company reeled in $16.5 million in financing, one of the largest deals so far for a Canadian biotechnology company.

A confident Baum predicts you’ll see SemBioSys products on the shelves within a couple of years.

“In order to build a good biotech business, you need three things — technology, people and money,” he says. “We’ve always had good science, we’ve had great people, but we haven’t had the money which is the fuel to make the engine run. With this financing, we now have the resources that are required for us to really go after this business.”

For Markley, it’s exciting to be involved in both the science and the business of success.

“It’s very dynamic,” she says. “We’re on the cutting edge of technology. There’s an explosion in biotechnology right now, and I feel I’m right at the forefront.”