News and Events > Bio Business is Booming at the University of Colorado

Bio Business is Booming at the University of Colorado

It has been four years since CU revamped and revitalized its technology transfer organization -providing funding, human resources, and a new roadmap for moving inventive discoveries out of the lab and into the marketplace. In 2004, the CU Technology Transfer Office ("TTO") chronicled its approach to the business of technology transfer in an article published in the peer-reviewed Journal of the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) entitled "Creating a Start-up Climate: Ideas for Next-Generation Technology Transfer." In it, TTO posited a new approach for balancing the needs of academia with the demands of business and outlined an entrepreneurial framework for removing barriers to innovation and "unleashing the creative potential of faculty to solve problems through cross-disciplinary collaboration both within, and outside, the university." By all accounts, this approach is working at CU and the result is an unprecedented growth in new "concept" companies derived from CU intellectual property. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the bioscience industry.

"Our goal is to continually refine the process for engaging faculty inventors in technology transfer from the very first stages of thinking about protecting intellectual discovery right through to building a company around a core set of scientific assets, whether in the form of patents, patent applications, or prototypes of a particular invention," said David Allen, CU's Associate Vice President for Technology Transfer. "Our partnership with the Fitzsimons BioBusiness Incubator ("FBBi") expands the blueprint we've laid out for assisting our inventors with the resources and network needed to build a company in today's marketplace," noted Allen.

The FBBi is a collaborative program for assisting bio businesses with the key elements any start-up business needs to move from concept to reality. "Collaboration is the single most important factor in building quality bioscience companies," said David Drake, Director of the FBBi. FBBi was founded in the fall of 2005 with the mission to assist the growth of the bioscience cluster in Colorado with a special emphasis on Fitzsimons, the $4 billion "square mile" of life sciences being built at the former Fitzsimons Army Medical campus in Aurora. Through harnessing the network of available resources in the state, FBBi seeks to compress the time and effort needed to develop a strong business plan, vet the plan with leading industry and venture capital experts, and determine the best and most likely method for funding a particular enterprise -including identifying investors, preparing presentations, and assisting in the recruitment of management, technical, and scientific advisors.

"We work closely with FBBi in the formative stages of assessing whether or not a particular medical technology should be a company or a license opportunity," says Tom Smerdon, Director of New Business Development at the TTO. "Their network in Colorado bio is unparalleled and that access to quality advisors, market, and financial information helps us determine the most appropriate commercial path for an invention." Once a company is formed, the decision to work with FBBi is left to the principals of the company. "FBBi is competitive," said Drake. "We've deliberately built a process designed to quickly, and hopefully accurately, assess a concept company's strengths and weaknesses, and determine what it needs to be successful. If selected, companies become clients of FBBi. "This is sometimes confusing to people," said Drake. "But at FBBi companies are clients and our customer is the investment community. Without the 'green enzyme of progress' as Jim Linfield, managing partner at Cooley Godward LLP, calls investment capital, companies cannot do the things they need to do at an early stage to prove concept. Therefore, we concentrate our efforts on hitting the investment bulls-eye," notes Drake.

The dearth of seed capital to fund scientific experiments that are designed to prove commercial viability is well known in the Colorado bio business community, but three relatively recent developments are changing the landscape in favor of entrepreneurial ventures, fueling the creation of more high quality start-up companies. In 2004, TTO launched its "Proof of Concept" investment funding program (POCi) for qualified start-up companies. Since inception, the investment program has funded eight companies, five of which are in biosciences. In 2005, the State of Colorado chose High Country Venture LLC to manage a $50 million fund to invest in seed and early stage businesses in Colorado. A focus of the Fund is biotechnology, agritechnology, and medical devices. "With the addition of these two funding programs," said Drake, FBBi is much better positioned to assist CU bio start-ups with accessing the seed capital needed to move the business from prototype to commercial stages of development."

Recently, the TTO announced a third program of early stage investment in promising discoveries. The POCg (Proof of Concept - Grant) program provides up to $25,000 for lab experiments designed to determine whether or not a particular theory or set of results could yield patentable (and licensable) scientific discoveries. "These critical early experiments are the lifeblood of commercialization," says Smerdon. In its first solicitation last fall, TTO invested in five development projects at $10,000 each and eight development projects at $25,000 each. "If you look at other regions that have developed, or are developing, strong bioscience clusters, you see this kind of grass-roots support of entrepreneurs," said Drake.

The relationship between TTO and FBBi is highlighted in the progress made by CU start-up Innovative Bio Devices, Inc. (IBD). IBD was born out of a collaboration between inventors from CU campuses (Boulder and the Health Sciences Center) and departments (Electrical and Computer Engineering and Cell and Developmental Biology) who are developing a miniaturized wireless and battery-free biomedical device with numerous potential applications. IBD won a Fall 2005 $100,000 Proof of Concept Investment (POCi) award and since then FBBi has actively participated in the formation of IBD including recruiting advisors, working with management on issues of strategy, markets, and finance, and assisting the TTO with aspects of company IP strategy and development.

"FBBi provides us a much needed channel to public markets and information that augments our ability to assist CU faculty with commercializing their inventions," says CU's Dave Allen. "We're pleased by the progress we've made thus far and look forward to hitting our target of 10 start-up companies this fiscal year, over half of which we estimate will be in bio."