Slideshow: Bayer opens its CoLaborator

Bayer HealthCare showcased its new CoLaborator incubator Monday under sunny skies, literally and figuratively. Leaders of young biotech companies Aronora Inc. and ProLynx LLC, and roughly 100 other guests, officially opened the 6,000-square-foot facility Monday on the ground floor of Bayer's Mission Bay research center. It was, Mayor Ed Lee said, proof that San Francisco is "the innovation capital of the world," linking small and large companies.

Bayer opens Mission Bay 'CoLaborator' with 2 tenants

Bayer's Chris Haskell.

Bayer HealthCare's answer to the incubator boom -- and the company's push to tap outside innovation -- officially kicks off Monday with the opening of its Mission Bay CoLaborator. Two companies -- Aronora Inc. and ProLynx LLC -- are the first tenants of the 6,000-square-foot ground-floor incubator in Bayer's nearly 2-year-old research center. Aronora, led by CEO Andras Gruber, is working on drugs that prevent or interfere with blood clotting. ProLynx is developing "linker systems" that help predict and control the extension of drug half-life, or the amount of time it takes for a body to lose half of the amount of a drug.