March 22, 2016
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
CARLSBAD, Calif. – After three years, the city of Carlsbad’s life sciences incubator Bio, Tech and Beyond, has helped create 20 startup companies that are operating with 26 employees.
Carlsbad’s incubator is one of the latest in public and private bodies supporting innovations in the biotech industry.
The Carlsbad incubator opened in the summer of 2013 and has produced a total of 40 full-time positions since its founding, the city of Carlsbad said in a statement. In its first full year, the incubator launched six startup companies. One year later, the incubator reported 26 companies operating out of its space.
Christina Vincent, economic development manager for Carlsbad, said the incubator has seen a tripling of companies and people working there since its opening. Some of the startups in Bio, Tech and Beyond have raised over $1 million in venture capital, secured federal funding and won other types of grants and financing. One startup, GPB Scientific, recently secured $3.2 million in funding for its cell separation technology, which can be used to treat cancer patients.
“This growth not only supports our region’s life sciences industry, but creates jobs and has produced millions in investment and local spending,” Vincent said in a statement.
Scientists who operate out of the city-owned building pay a fee of approximately $1,000 per month for a dedicated 10-foot bench space. The fee includes access to resources such as liquid nitrogen, sophisticated lab equipment and a community of other scientists and biotech startup entrepreneurs.
Bio, Tech and Beyond Executive Director Joseph Jackson said the incubator was designed to serve any level of scientist, from an academic researcher, to a retired pharma scientist who is working on a cure for an obscure disease and “wants to change the world” using this “citizen science biotech garage.”
Scientists working at the incubator are able to draw on a robust life sciences community of about 150 companies in the area.
Biotech incubators are popping up all over, often supported by public and private partnerships. Several high profile life science companies, such as Janssen, a division of Johnson & Johnson , and Bayer , have launched incubators to help biotech startups.
Earlier this month Bayer launched its Boston-based East Coast Innovation Center, which expands on the company’s existing innovation sites across the globe to develop relationships with multiple life science companies.
Bayer is not the only company to set up innovation centers and incubators in Boston. Earlier in March, Bristol-Myers Squibb inked a deal with LabCentral to support the launch two new life sciences and biotech companies in Cambridge’s Kendall Square, the hub of the Boston-area pharmaceutical industry, through a “golden ticket” method. Under the agreement with LabCentral, a shared laboratory space designed to launch startups, Bristol-Myers Squibb can nominate up to two startup companies annually to take up residence in LabCentral’s Kendall Square space.
Janssen has set up its JLABS incubator sites that focus on early stage biopharmaceutical, medical device, consumer, and digital health programs. JLABS is part of Johnson & Johnson’s external R&D arm. The program provides a “capital-efficient, resource-rich environment where emerging companies can transform the scientific discoveries of today into the breakthrough healthcare products of tomorrow,” according to the JLABS website.
