UC SAN FRANCISCO
Corinna Kaarlela, News Director
Source: Kristen Bole (415) 476-2557
E-mail: kbole@pubaff.ucsf.edu
Web: www.ucsf.edu
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 26, 2009
The California Institute of Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) is collaborating with a newly launched $7.5 million fund to provide startup capital for University of California bioscience entrepreneurs and a long-term endowment for QB3.
Bioscience Laboratories is an incubator run through MandalMed, a small biotech company in the SoMa district of San Francisco, California. I have been in touch with Constance John who runs MandalMed and she told me that while MandalMed was started over a decade ago, she only opened the incubator four years ago when people began approaching her with scientists and funding in need of lab space. The incubator is 4,000 sf with shared equipment, and it is appropriate for companies with 1-4 employees. Bioscience Laboratories currently has 5 tenant companies. While MandalMed.com has information about the company's pipeline of products Connie gave me this flyer with the incubator's information.
Photo credits: Bioscience Laboratories
California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) has recently made a new addition to their already broad network of innovation. I spoke with Douglas Crawford QB3 Director of Industry Alliances & Associate Executive Director, he described the incubator scene in Mission Bay and the motivations that led to the augmentation of QB3’s services and the formation of QB3 Mission Bay Incubator Network. The new network is a cooperation of QB3, the City of San Francisco and FibroGen. And soon, fortunes willing, by the end of the year, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. will make additional space available for small start-up companies.
QB3 is forwarding a multidisciplinary approach to the biological sciences. Drawing on the strengths and resources of three closely situated branches of University of California’s system including UC San Francisco, UC Berkeley, and UC Santa Cruz, QB3 formally integrates the quantitative sciences to rear a new generation of researchers in the fields of synthetic biology, bioengineering, computational biology, experimental genomics, and proteomics in addition to the more established sciences of biochemistry and cellular and molecular biology.
The initiative has worked perhaps even better than they had hoped. University of California and more specifically QB3 have produced more inventions and discoveries than they actually know what to do with. QB3’s business incubator, QB3 Garage gets its name from the famous garage where the giants of innovation, Hewlett and Packard formed Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto, California. It is the dream of QB3 that the inclusion of the quantitative sciences will usher in a remarkable generation of technological insight and invention.
QB3 Garage has a strategic goal, which is to invite and excite University of California entrepreneurs to create more young successful companies; the only problem is that it has been full since it opened three years ago. QB3’s Garage program is so effective that they must turn away many requests for tenancy on an almost daily basis. When that happens Douglas tells the applicant about space elsewhere if he knows of any. Other places in the area that sometimes have space are: San Jose BioCenter the Grandparent of California bio incubation; The Molecular Medicine Research Institute (MMRI), where leases are not signed for space but for the number of people involved; The Molecular Sciences Institute (MSI) like MMRI, while also a research institute, rents extra space if they have it; and MandalMed, a small biotech company located in the SOMA district, also leases out lab space through their incubator Bioscience Laboratories.
Recently QB3 in cooperation with other organizations in the Mission Bay area including the San Francisco Center for Economic Development, and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce has reached an agreement with FibroGen. FibroGen has generously agreed to rent tiny units of space on the same terms that QB3 does for the Garage, and there are hopes that in the coming year, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. will also have some additional space for small start-ups in Mission Bay.
Of the first crop of ten companies, QB3 Garage has had twelve tenants, but of the first ten, four have gone on to close venture rounds, and one was acquired for $25 million by Affymetrix. Douglas explained that there is a class of companies that are created that incubators enable, that could not be created otherwise, that can go on to do great things.
Read more
The Molecular Medicine Research Institute (MMRI) www.mmrx.org
Photo Credits: California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences and Douglas Crawford
The QB3 Garage is a biosciences incubator located within the QB3 building on The University of California San Francisco's Mission Bay Campus. The facility comprises 2,500 sq ft of office space, laboratory space and multi-functional rooms.
The QB3 Garage arose from the need for members of the California Institute of Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) including UC Berkley, UC Santa Cruz and UC San Francisco to spin out recent discoveries or inventions into companies. Because space is limited, the QB3 Garage is only open to affiliates of QB3 or The University of California, or to organizations in close collaboration with their investigators.
Contact
Douglas Crawford,PhD
QB3 - California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences
UCSF MC 2522
Byers Hall Room 214C
1700 4th ST
San Francisco, CA 94158-2330
Telephone: (415) 514-4408
Fax:(415) 514-4661
email:Douglas.Crawford at ucsf.edu
Photo Credits: California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences
*Updated 7/20/09
*Updated 7/21/09
Karl Handelsman
