Regional Development Resources for Biotechnology

By Daniel Barchi, President, Carilion Biomedical Institute, CIO Carilion Clinic, Roanoke, Virginia

August 2007

Despite the Duell’s prediction, entrepreneurs in the Southeast continue to invent healthcare technology. Unfortunately, invention is often the easiest part - the subsequent challenge is to develop, test, produce, and market the technology. Inventors are often pointed towards a university patent office or business incubator for assistance. While both are helpful, they tend to limit their focus to IP protection or space and administrative services.

In the past ten years, however, a number of organizations have developed to help entrepreneurs, intellectual property, and small companies grow and mature. Most of these are associated with a university or health care system and have regional economic development as a priority, but offer the critical services and access that healthcare and biotech startups need.

 The Carilion Biomedical Institute (www.biomedicalinstitute.com), for instance, is sponsored by Carilion Clinic, a multi specialty health system in Roanoke, Virginia. Since 2003, CBI has helped create 11 companies, 100 jobs, and $65 million of economic impact in southwest Virginia. Those outcomes do not tell the story of the services the institute provides: Every year its staff reviews business plans, makes seed investments, has physicians evaluate product ideas, and manages an angel investment network to help capitalize small biomedical companies. Scott Graeff of Luna Innovations (NASDAQ: LUNA) stated “The synergies between CBI and Luna were very apparent as we began to develop our new medical device, the EDAC QUANTIFIER that monitors the presence of emboli in the blood circuit. We needed resources in the cardio surgical area for testing and product development. CBI helped us quickly make the right connections within our medical field of focus.”

VT Knowledge Works

VT KnowledgeWorks (www.vtknowledgeworks.com), sponsored by Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, also grows small companies through assisting in the planning, launch, and growth of technology-based enterprises. Jim Flowers, VT KnowledgeWorks’ Director states, “For many companies, space and a photocopier are not sufficient resources to launch a company. We therefore work further upstream than a traditional incubator and even extend our services to companies not participating in our incubator program.”

The organization offers an offsite two-day Concept Camp that assists potential business founders in clarifying their core offering and educates them on entrepreneurship well before a full business plan is created. Once a business is launched, VT KnowledgeWorks offers a comprehensive mix of services designed to reduce risk by nurturing core competencies, helping management maintain strategic focus, minimizing administrative overhead, and supporting executive leadership. Flowers notes, “we think that we have a unique program that is designed to maximize the probability of success, and we have seen success with this program”.

Georgia’s VentureLab

Similarly, Georgia Tech created VentureLab (www.venturelab.gatech.edu) in 2001 to move research innovations from university labs to commercial markets by addressing the management, market, and technology risk associated with new venture formation. VentureLab looks for timely innovations that mesh with marketplace needs. In addition, staff members help faculty determine the best route for commercialization. Other programs connect faculty researchers with experienced entrepreneurs and professional managers who serve as coaches and drive the commercialization process forward. VentureLab also sponsors commercialization grants to bridge the gap between research and commercial product. VentureLab has graduated 11 successful companies which have gone on to raise more than $40 million in capital investment.

Duke University is also recognizing the need to guide technologies into the commercial arena. Established in October 2006 with a $52.7-million grant from the National Institutes of Health, the Duke Translational Medicine Institute (www.dtmi.duke.edu), the umbrella organization of the Duke Translational Research Institute, will expedite the translation of new scientific discoveries into clinical practice, by funding new technologies in emerging areas of science and medicine that will enable researchers to discover the links between disease and an individual’s genetic makeup.

It also will fund new facilities to develop new therapies based on cell treatment of disease. The institute sites its investment in information technology to facilitate the movement of information among its many locations to manage projects more efficiently and to “more smoothly navigate the regulatory and financial hurdles involved in conducting research these days.”

University of Florida Center of Excellence

Finally, the University of Florida’s Center of Excellence for Regenerative Health Biotechnology (CERHB) (cerhb.rgp.ufl.edu) was established in 2003. Its mission is to stimulate promising research and facilitate commercialization of technologies that will provide treatments and cures for human diseases, as well as create new companies and high wage jobs for Florida. Activities encompass education, translational research, and biopharmaceutical manufacturing. One program promotes and conducts training programs and fosters regenerative health research. The Center also has a state-of-the-art biopharmaceutical manufacturing and testing services facility, Florida BiologixR, which provides a broad range of drug development services.

In addition, the Southeast BIO organization (SEBIO) recently introduced a new program, BIO/Plan, to help young companies bridge the funding gap. The BIO/Plan competition, which will award a prize of $100,000.00 to the winner, is designed to provide mentorship to help foster the creation of new, venture-attractive life science companies for its ten finalists. The ten finalists were announced in June and the winner will be selected at SEBIO’s Annual Investor Forum in Pinehurst, NC, November 7-8, 2007 (www.sebio.org).

Although often focused on development of university-grown IP or local economic development, the Southeast has many programs and institutes designed to help develop biotechnology and the growth in those programs is continuing to fill the region’s investment biotech pipeline.