Overland Park ? Russ Middaugh is sure his vaccine research will make a successful start-up company someday. He’s hoping that day comes sooner rather than later.

“This will work,” Middaugh, a Kansas University professor of pharmaceutical chemistry, said Thursday. “The market is there. It’s just waiting.”

Middaugh’s proposal tops the priority list for Lawrence campus research projects ready for commercialization, Jim Roberts, KU’s vice provost for research, told the Kansas Bioscience Authority board Thursday.

Roberts asked the board, which will be responsible for distributing a projected $581 million over the next 10 years to aid the state’s bioscience industry, to consider funding start-up costs for a company that would spin off from Middaugh’s university research.

“This is something I want to get into somebody else’s hands,” Roberts said.

The presentation, along with presentations by research officials at KU Medical Center and Kansas State University, was designed to give board members an idea for university research that could be commercialized. They will consider more formal funding requests in the future.

Projects presented by the KU Medical Center for possible funding included development of a cancer drug and a male contraceptive.

Middaugh’s research promises to “stabilize” vaccines for valley fever, dysentery and West Nile virus to more easily distribute them throughout the world. Many vaccines need to be refrigerated, so they can’t be transported easily to third-world countries or battlefields.

Middaugh, who said he did not want to serve as CEO of the new company, said he’s also had discussions for helping to stabilize the FluMist nasal flu vaccine produced by Medimmune Vaccines Inc.

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Roberts said the three stabilized vaccines Middaugh has produced could result in $180 million to $230 million in sales annually, and the company could have as many as 100 employees within five years.

“In all three of these cases, there is no competition,” Middaugh said.

Specifically, Roberts said, the project needs nearly $2.4 million to further develop the product, attract staff members and commercialize the vaccines.

He said KU also would seek investors for the project. Matt McClorey, president and CEO of the Lawrence Regional Technology Center, said the $15 million raised for local Deciphera Pharmaceuticals proves the capital could be raised for the vaccine company.

“We’d push to get as much money from the private sector as possible,” McClorey said. “A dollar-for-dollar match is a minimum if (the Bioscience Authority) is going to put money in.”

Board member Bill Sanford said he thought the project had merit.

“The developing world is going to need these things,” he said. “That’s where the stabilized vaccines are going to be critical.”