'Startup in a Box' program loses leader to consulting firm

Ken Harrison.

A public-private partnership aimed at growing San Francisco’s biotech ecosystem has lost the leader of a core group of programs for the second time in its 1-1/2 years. Ken Harrison, who was entrepreneurship program manager at the QB3 institute housed at the University of California, San Francisco, took a job last month with L.E.K. Consulting. He had joined BioSF, the organization assembled last year by QB3, the mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development and the San Francisco Center for Economic Development, in January. In his role at QB3, or the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, Harrison oversaw the exploding Startup in a Box and Accelerator programs.

Mission Bay roars to life: Biotechs, UCSF, residential developers jostle for space in S.F.'s newest neighborhood

QB3's Reg Kelly.

On a typical lunch hour in Mission Bay, drug researchers rub elbows with venture capitalists and postdoctoral fellows at Peasant Pies’ big communal table. When store co-founder Ali Keshavarzarrived with his French meat pies four years ago, his store was a vacant shell on an empty plaza. Now Peasant Pies serves lunch to some 400 people a day at its Mission Bay space. “We get more people every day, from housing units, pharma companies, students finishing Ph.D.s,” Keshavarz said. “It’s like a phoenix rising.” With more than 50 life sciences companies and venture capital firms, about 1.7 million square feet of commercial office and lab space, and pilings in place for another 423,900 square feet of office space, Mission Bay is emerging from the recession with plans for a new wave of growth that will crest in 2014-15. “All of this is opportunistic. You try to be flexible and nimble,” said Reg Kelly, director of the QB3 institute at theUniversity of California, San Francisco. “I would like Mission Bay to be a magnet for innovators of all kinds.”

Allopartis subsists on seed cash, Mission Bay incubator space

Allopartis CEO Robert Blazej.

Allopartis Biotechnologies is not unlike the other 25 or so companies that have set up shop in the Mission Bay Innovation Center: It is a startup with eager leadership, intriguing science and a penchant for saving a few dollars here, a few dollars there. What it does not have — again like many others in the life sciences incubator space overseen by biotech company FibroGen Inc. — is a solid path carrying its find-a-better-enzyme technology to the market. Not that the five-person team led by Robert Blazej, Allopartis’s co-founder and president, isn’t trying. In fact, on its way toward discovering better enzymes to more efficiently turn cellulose into energy, the four-year-old company decided to focus on higher-margin biochemicals. The company is waiting for partnerships to come through after “several” pilot-type collaborations with large companies, Blazej said.

Johnson & Johnson to open 'innovation centers' in Bay Area, globally

Johnson & Johnson will establish an innovation center in the Bay Area as part of a global plan to scout early innovation and boost partnerships with universities and biotech companies. The New Brunswick, N.J.-based drug, medical device and diagnostic powerhouse (NYSE: JNJ) said Tuesday that it will set up "innovation centers" over the next few months in San Francisco -- including a satellite in San Diego -- as well as Boston, London and China.

QB3's 'Startup in a Box' powers new wave of biotech startups

Caribou Biosciences CEO Rachel Haurwitz.

QB3’s boxes are stacking up. Startup in a Box, which initially aimed at helping 15 wannabe life sciences entrepreneurs blow past barriers to launching companies, has aided 76 startups since it began a year ago — and it is pushing deeper into the Bay Area. The 17 companies fully operational with Startup in a Box’s aid have set up shop in San Francisco, Berkeley, Walnut Creek and San Jose. That diaspora is exactly what leaders of the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, or QB3, had in mind when they started the program in summer 2011 to help entrepreneurs-in-waiting incorporate a company, get startup government funding, protect their intellectual property or simply set up a no-fee company bank account. What they weren’t counting on, however, was an overflowing box.

Stealthy Didimi pushes cells back to the starting line

If twins know each other better than anyone else, leaders of Didimi Inc. are counting on the same holding true for our cells. One of the companies on the growing roster of the QB3 East Bay Innovation Center, Didimi is focusing on a way to regenerate insulin-producing islet cells — from a patient’s own or someone else’s cells — as a treatment for Type 1 diabetes. Call it a cellular do-over or a scientific version of “Groundhog Day” with some potentially stunning implications.

Biofuel startups target revenue

Kiverdi CEO Lisa Dyson.

Biofuel and biochemical startups have wised up about market forces. Many first-generation companies that produced advanced fuels and products shot for the moon, targeting transportation fuel markets that required years of research and development as well as massive scale up and capital. Such companies included South San Francisco-based Solazyme, Emeryville-based Amyris Biotechnologies, and South San Francisco-based LS9 plus other companies such as Kior and Gevo that formed between 2003 and 2006.

No place like home: Moscone expansion helps Bay Area biotech prospects

How local is this week’s Biotechnology Industry Organization convention in Boston?

While riding the hotel elevator this morning,Reg Kelly, the director of QB3 at theUniversity of California, San Francisco, stepped on the elevator. Among the sponsors are South San Francisco-basedGenentech; San Francisco-based life sciences financial services firm Burrill & Co.; and Novato’s BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc.

In all, there are at least a half-dozen other sponsors here with some sort of San Francisco Bay Area connection and scores of attendees from the Bay Area.

Imagine if, instead of Boston, BIO and its 15,000 attendees landed again in San Francisco.

New growth industry: Bay Area biotech incubators

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Biotech incubators in the Bay Area have doubled in the last two years to six from three — and the space is filling quickly.

Incubators have increasingly become an important part of nurturing fledgling life sciences companies, especially those spun out of local universities and searching for ways to reduce their early-stage costs.

J&J 'bridges the gap,' funds promising QB3 research

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Two projects — including one aimed at developing an artificial pancreas that would eliminate daily injections by diabetes patients — garnered funding from health care giant Johnson & Johnson to turn science ideas into companies.
The projects are the first Bridging the Gap Awards supported by J&J through a program with the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, or QB3.
The awards of up to $250,000 over two years are meant to give researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz funding to prove that their projects are viable. The ultimate goal is to form companies around those projects, said Neena Kadaba, QB3’s director of industry alliances.

Biotech hopefuls pile into the Box

QB3’s Startup in a Box is bursting.
Unwrapped roughly six months ago with the goal of helping 15 wannabe entrepreneurs per year convert their science ideas into actual companies, the program already has 36 clients.
“We’ve hit an untapped vein,” said Douglas Crawford, associate director of QB3, or the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, the University of California-based initiative linking life sciences researchers and companies.
Now, Crawford said, the goal is to help 50 entrepreneurs-in-waiting this year cut through the financial and legal barriers for starting new companies.

Three more years: Pfizer, QB3 extend, expand collaboration

Pfizer Inc. is reupping a three-year, $9.5 million research collaboration with the University of California’s QB3 institute, but this time it is bringing money for startup life sciences companies to the table.
The world’s largest drug marketer and the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, or QB3, are expected to announce Friday that they will renew and expand the deal, which has led to 22 joint projects at UC San Francisco, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz. One project was licensed by Pfizer.

Slideshow: QB3, Canada find common ground with entrepreneurs

QB3 took an early step Tuesday toward becoming — as director Regis Kelly calls it — “a United Nations of entrepreneurship.”
Canadian Ambassador to the United States Gary Doer and San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee cut a ceremonial ribbon opening the Canadian Technology Accelerator at Genentech Hall on the Mission Bay campus of the University of California, San Francisco.
OK, so maybe the deal isn’t on a par with another big international accord signed in San Francisco 67 years ago, but Kelly and Douglas Crawford, QB3’s associate director, say the Canadian venture could be the first of several deals with other countries.

Canadians ink deal for QB3 incubator space

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Canadians are accelerating toward QB3.
The Canadian government is renting four spaces in the digital health incubator of the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, or QB3, on the Mission Bay campus of the University of California, San Francisco. But it may be only the first of several formal deals between the institute and foreign governments.
The Canadian Technology Accelerator, supported by Richa Wilson, the trade commissioner for the Canadian consulate in San Francisco, is designed to give a handful of the country’s early-stage life sciences companies an entrée into the United States, provide access to QB3’s services for startups and introduce them to venture capitalists and angel investors.

BioSF's new chief brings research, tech transfer background to job

San Francisco’s nonprofit resource for life sciences startups has hired its second leader in less than a year.
BioSF, a partnership between the mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, the nonprofit San Francisco Center for Economic Development and the University of California’s QB3 institute, in January hired cardiovascular researcher Ken Harrison as director.
Harrison will oversee a BioSF program that envelops several QB3 projects, including its new “startup-in-a-box” initiative that provides legal, banking and mentoring help to young companies.

Bayer targets Mission Bay incubator, partners

Bayer HealthCare is diving into the Mission Bay incubator business, hoping to parallel the success of nearby startup havens and, perhaps, snag a long-term partner or two in the process.
The drug developer, which in late 2010 set up its U.S. innovation center in San Francisco’s Mission Bay biotech enclave, said Monday that it would create a 6,000-square-foot incubator this summer to house three or four companies.

Mission Bay startups stay, grow at FibroGen digs

Startups are growing up in Mission Bay, but not moving away from home.
Early-stage life sciences and cleantech companies not only flocked to available incubator space in the FibroGen Inc. building, they’re sticking around. Biofuels company Siluria Technologies Inc. and clinical tools companies Locus Development, Ablexis Inc. and GigaGen are among a growing cadre of startups opting to stay put and grow rather than move to new digs, the usual path for incubated companies once they gain traction.

Biotech's new normal: Innovation but no VC money, risk

If there’s a new normal in biotech — and some would argue that we’re still trying to find that base — it involves fewer people, a lot less cash, less risk taking and labs full of enthusiasm.
A few events this week in the Bay Area are pretty illustrative: the BIO Investor Forum, Peter Thiel’s new fund for off-the-grid researchers and Thursday’s QB3-Deloitte Award for Innovation.

QB3 unwraps 'startup in a box'

QB3 is delivering a startup in a box, minus only the bow.
Working with banking and legal partners, the University of California’s link between life sciences companies and academic researchers is rolling out a new program — dubbed Startup in a Box — to move researchers-cum-entrepreneurs a step closer to their startup dreams. If all goes as planned, the program will launch 15 to 25 companies a year, said Douglas Crawford, associate director of QB3, or the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences.
“It starts with, ‘I’ve got an idea’ to a well-functioning company,” Crawford said.

BioSF manager leaves after 3 months

The leader of a nascent public-private effort to build San Francisco’s life sciences industry has left after about three months on the job.
SallyAnn Reiss resigned last month as program manager of BioSF.