A conference room at NewLink Genetics Corp. in Ames has a quotation from Walt Disney carefully painted on the wall: “If you can dream it, you can do it. Always remember that this whole thing was started with a dream and a mouse.”

Dr. Charles Link notes its double meaning because, for him as well, it started with a dream and a mouse – one that could play a significant role for NewLink and its researchers in developing a vaccine to treat cancer in Central Iowa.

“Research is hope,” he said.

Incorporated in 1999, the company has four cancer vaccines – intended to treat lung, breast and prostate cancer and melanoma – that have been approved for human testing by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. A fifth, targeting pancreatic cancer, is expected to receive FDA approval for human testing by midyear. The collection of accomplishments has made NewLink Genetics the Des Moines Business Record’s Entrepreneur of the Year.

“We’ve been blessed with success thus far, but we’ve got a long way to go,” Link said. “We’re certainly as well positioned as we ever have been.”

Link left the U.S. Air Force Academy after three years to enroll early at Stanford University Medical School. His interests focused on biochemistry, and he found that discovering better treatments for cancer and understanding the brain were two of the most difficult tasks a scientist could undertake.

“One in three Americans will get cancer in their lifetime; one in six will die from it,” he said. “So it seems to me to be the most important medical problem to focus on. And as a scientist, it’s also one of the most fascinating problems to study because of the size of its complexity.” The American Cancer Society announced last week that, for the first time, cancer has surpassed heart disease as the top killer of Americans under 85.

Link worked at the National Cancer Institute, a division of the U.S. National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., before coming to Des Moines about 11 years ago to assist in the start-up of the Human Gene Therapy Research Institute within the John Stoddard Cancer Center at Iowa Methodist Medical Center.

In 1995,Link and several colleagues in 1995 began to research a type of technology now known as HyperAcute, which Iowa Methodist later licensed to Link through his start-up company.

“For a free-standing medical center to have had a part of this is very rare, and I think it has the potential for major economic advantage for the community,” said Dr. Robert Bienkowski, executive director of research at the John Stoddard Cancer Center.

HyperAcute stimulates the body’s immune system to fight an already-diagnosed cancer by making a human cell appear as if it has been transplanted from a mouse so that the immune system will attack it.

“We do that to send a danger signal to the immune system to educate it against proteins that are present only in cancer, but not in normal cells,” Link said.

The vaccine requires the body to become educated to attack cancer-causing proteins by having white blood cells travel and attack cancer in other parts of the body.

Though other companies are excluded from using HyperAcute because of NewLink’s patent protection, two California companies are also doing cancer cell vaccine work, which Link said shows that there are a number of people who believe that immunotherapy is the next category of drugs that can treat cancer.

“It’s interesting, it’s exciting and there seems to be some significant potential for success,” Bienkowski said. “I am personally excited and impressed. It’s a very creative approach, and wow, it may really work in humans and [Link] may develop a vaccine. But the scientist in me says it’s a gamble.”

Gamble or not, the state of Iowa sees the potential in NewLink Genetics, housed at the Iowa State University Research Park, and its role in future economic development. The company was promised a $14.2 million economic development package from the state, $6 million of which came from the Grow Iowa Values Fund, with the understanding that NewLink would generate more than 300 high-paying jobs over the next five years.

“[NewLink] is also looking to develop a pharmaceutical industry in the state, and the clustering effect is so important,” said Tina Hoffman, spokeswoman for the Iowa Department of Economic Development.

The company will receive incremental payments of the Values Fund grant contingent on the completion of several “milestones.” Link said the first set of milestones – raising $2 million in additional capital and moving two drugs through the FDA’s investigation and drug application process – have been completed.

The company is being cautious about adding jobs in order to maintain a “lean operation.” Jobs, Link said, must parallel development of the cancer drugs.

The Iowa Department of Economic Development’s grant announcement provided an unforeseen boost, answering to investors who were skeptical of the company’s decision to stay in Iowa despite multimillion-dollar offers from two other states to relocate. It chose to stay in Iowa primarily because of the quality of life available to employees.

Chief Medical Officer Nick Vahanian, a completed his graduate work at the National Cancer Institute, where Link became a mentor to him. The Royal London Medical College graduate later left his career on the East Coast to join Link in Iowa.

“What made me stay was the project,” Vahanian said. “It was so exciting. There was a lot of excitement in genomic research and a lot of progress in cancer drug discovery and research.” They continued to recruit more scientists, several from the National Cancer Institute and the National Genome Research Institute, and began to see the operation grow.

NewLink has continued to attract researchers from around the country and overseas, many with postgraduate degrees. Three employees have both M.D.s and Ph.D.s. More than half are native Iowans who have been trained in science but want to stay in their home state.

“If they wanted to do this kind of work, they would have had difficulties finding jobs in the pharmaceutical industry [in Iowa],” Link said.

With clinical trials under way, the company plans to expand its clinical development team and its manufacturing capability, which is expanding into an additional 5,000 square feet of office space in the Iowa State University Research Park.

But Link keeps future growth in perspective, and points to another famous quotation, this one by Thomas Edison, as he passes it by in the hallway: “Genius is 99 percent perspiration and 1 percent inspiration.”

“That’s my favorite,” Link says, “because really it is all about hard work.”