The newly named QB3 Garage swung open its doors last Friday, inviting visitors in to see the incubator space where up to six young biotech companies are developing their technological innovations.
The new ventures - most consisting of just a few scientists - need the space to advance their technology to the next step: gaining venture capital to translate their ideas into new biotech processes or devices. Their projects range from microsurgical instrumentation to new ways to detect telltale disease "biomarkers."
QB3, the California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research, headquartered at UCSF Mission Bay, leases space at market rates to the companies. A total of 2,500 square feet is available to up to six companies. One company leases only 130 square feet, and the cap is just 550 square feet. Such small amounts of space are simply not available for very young start-ups in San Francisco. The space is even more desirable because it puts the enterprising scientists in close proximity to UCSF and QB3 researchers. Neither QB3 nor UC has any financial ties to the new ventures. Leases are for one year, with a possible extension to 18 months. The program began last November.
On September 15, the incubator space was renamed the QB3 Garage, in celebration of the entrepreneurial spirit that can lead some companies from humble beginnings to major technological advances. In this spirit, Hewlett-Packard donated a photo of the Palo Alto garage where Bill Hewlett and David Packard launched their company. QB3 Associate Executive Director Doug Crawford, PhD, and Katie Desmond of Hewlett-Packard hung the framed photo on a wall in the newly dubbed QB3 Garage.
"We name this incubator space the Garage in hopes that the scientists who are testing their technological visions here will be able to grow their companies up to make significant contributions to biomedical research, improved health and a vibrant economy," Crawford said.
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Cristian Ionescu-Zanetti, president of Fluxion Biosciences, Inc, one of the start-ups leasing small research space in the newly named QB3 Garage, describes his company's technology. |
Launched in 2000, QB3 is one of four California Institutes for Science and Innovation conceived by the state of California that combines state and private resources to advance research critical to sustain economic growth and competitiveness. As part of its mission, QB3, a cooperative effort among UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, UCSF and private industry, develops research collaborations with private industry to accelerate the transfer of research innovations to commercialization.
Some of the companies in the QB3 Garage are spin-offs from UC scientists' research, and the others have ties to UC. At the open house, David Sretavan, MD, PhD, UCSF professor of ophthalmology, showed some of the early-stage micro-instruments his company, Mynosys Cellular Devices Inc., is developing in a leased QB3 Garage space hardly larger than 10 feet by 10 feet.
Visitors squinted into a microscope to see a pair of micro-tweezers the scientists developed that are capable of holding a single cell. The micro-tweezers, in turn, are needed for assembling other astoundingly small tools, such as a micro-knife capable of making precise incisions at the site where electrical signals are transmitted down a nerve axon. The devices are being developed both as tools for research and for potential use in microsurgery.
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Hewlett-Packard's Katie Desmond and QB3 Associate Director Doug Crawford hang a photo of the original garage in which Bill Hewlett and David Packard started their company. |
Another Garage tenant, Fluxion Biosciences Inc., is led by Cristian Ionescu-Zanetti, PhD, a former postdoctoral scientist at UC Berkeley. He demonstrated his company's technology for an instrument that can provide easier, more useful measures of electrical activity across a single cell membrane for analysis needed in basic research and in drug discovery.
The other biotech tenants in the QB3 Garage are Satoris, Inc., which develops blood-based protein biomarkers for diagnosing neurological disorders; True Materials Inc., advancing a new technology for nucleic acid and protein analysis; and Nidaan Inc., which is developing diagnostic biomarkers for a variety of diseases. Negotiations are nearing completion with a sixth potential tenant.
Photos/Christine Jegan
Links:
California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research
UCSF Mission Bay
