RENT a BENCH Biotech Incubators Such As Labcentral Are Lowering Barriers to Entrepreneurship by Trisha Gura, in Cambridge, Massachusetts
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NEWS | FEATURES | ENTREPRENEURSHIP GOT A STARTUP? RENT A BENCH Biotech incubators such as LabCentral are lowering barriers to entrepreneurship By Trisha Gura, in Cambridge, Massachusetts ith its cookie-cutter windows and square-meter facility, now owned by the boxy brick exterior, the build- Massachusetts Institute of Technology ing here on Main Street could be (MIT) and leased to LabCentral, functions just another former 19th century as a life science “incubator” that helps bud- W warehouse or factory. It’s no sur- ding biotech firms combat the soaring costs prise to learn that passenger rail- of lab space and equipment in the red-hot road cars were once built in its spacious Boston-Cambridge region. Any scientist on June 11, 2015 interior. Yet the Cambridge landmark has with an idea and ambition can rent a bench a history not just of production, but also and an office, sharing space, services, and of innovation. In 1876, it housed the office high-cost tools with others pursuing their of Thomas Watson, assistant to Alexander own entrepreneurial dreams. “It is very ex- Graham Bell, when the pair made the first citing because we are there at the nascent two-way long-distance phone call, to Bos- moment of many really, really cool com- ton. In the 20th century, it was home to Po- panies,” says molecular biologist Johannes laroid and the lab of Edwin Land when he Fruehauf, a LabCentral founder. invented the instant camera. It’s also the nascent moment for facili- www.sciencemag.org Today, a nonprofit organization called ties like LabCentral. Similar incubators are LabCentral has taken up that entrepre- opening up in Cambridge, San Francisco, neurial heritage. The renovated, 2600- and other hotbeds of life science entre- preneurship, and startup companies are lining up to rent space. Incubators lower the entry barrier to the entrepreneur- ial world, foster networking, and serve as showcases of gleaming ideas for ven- in the so-called Boston Innovation Super- Downloaded from ture capitalists and bigger companies to cluster that encompasses MIT and a slew of browse. As startup founder Laura Hales, life science companies. whose company Extend Biosciences was He successfully negotiated the lease, ren- one of LabCentral’s first tenants, puts it: ovated and equipped the lab, and jumped “If you start talking to big pharma, you through the daunting hurdles of permitting need to show them that you are estab- and compliance. But Fruehauf also burned lished. Anyone who walks into this place through $1.5 million and 6 months before is immediately impressed. It just speaks he or colleagues could even lift a pipette. for itself.” “In retrospect, it was really a bad use of our capital and time,” he says. THE IDEA BEHIND LABCENTRAL dawned Fast-forward a year. Li had sold Cequent in 2009 when Fruehauf’s Ph.D. adviser, to another company for $46 million, and gastroenterologist Chiang Li at Beth Israel Fruehauf was launching his own enterprise, Deaconess Medical Center, launched Ce- called ViThera, based on a probiotic tech- quent Pharmaceuticals, bent on delivering nology licensed from a French group. Bank- molecular payloads of artificial RNA via rolled only by his own money—he wanted 2 genetically engineered bacteria. Backed by to stay away from venture capital funding— S I V $22 million in venture capital and with Fruehauf had to find a cheaper way. A UL A P Molecular biologist Johannes Fruehauf and investor a staff that quickly swelled to 17 people, So, he subleased lab space from a Kend- S: O Peter Parker, two of LabCentral’s founders, with Olivier Fruehauf chose a space at One Kendall all Square–based company called Pervasis, T O H Boss, a tenant at an earlier incubator (left to right). Square, a hub of contemporary buildings which was downsizing. Then he brought P 1196 12 JUNE 2015 • VOL 348 ISSUE 6240 sciencemag.org SCIENCE Published by AAAS in cash by essentially subletting the sub- cessful; it gleaned a $90,000 Small Busi- Shannon Pendergrast and Anna Markowska let. Word got out, demand increased, ness Technology Transfer (STTR) grant that of biotech startup Ymir value the networking and by January 2011, Fruehauf spun off a Boss and Farmer shared. However, Boss opportunities at LabCentral. new company—eventually called Cam- still needed to conduct a commercial pi- bridge Biolabs (CBL)—designed to provide lot study. In figuring out where to do that, grant. He transplanted his brown fat cells tailor-made, minimal units of lab space for he found himself in a tricky situation, one into mice, and 3 years later—still rent- early startup companies. encountered by many a potential scientific ing from Fruehauf at CBL—has won an- Olivier Boss was one of his first custom- entrepreneur. “People get in trouble when other $1 million in grant money and ers. Coming out of a small biotech company they start companies around academic partnered with pharmaceutical giant focused on thwarting obesity, Boss and two technology and continue to use academic Johnson & Johnson on a project that may colleagues launched Energesis Pharma- resources,” Fruehauf says. Many, he adds, lead to clinical trials of brown fat therapies ceuticals to develop a technology based end up “fudging things” or conducting in people. on brown fat, which generates body heat “submarine projects” that proceed under- Could he have done it without the incu- by metabolizing stored fat. Desperately neath the university radar. bator? “Absolutely not,” Boss says. “That lab needing access to a lab, Boss initially col- Boss wanted to do it right. He unearthed space was what we needed. And not just us.” laborated with Stephen Farmer, an obesity “the best option, the only option,” he says, researcher at the Boston University School when he met Fruehauf in 2010. Then trying THE SUCCESS OF CBL prompted Fruehauf to of Medicine, but could only work in the to bootstrap ViThera, Fruehauf offered Boss gather backers, most notably $5 million from laboratories there for academic goals, a bench and use of the company’s lab facili- a Massachusetts state life science initiative, to i.e., to churn out brown fat stem cells for ties for $3000 a month. Boss accepted and found a second incubator, LabCentral, in the Farmer’s studies. in 6 months obtained results that convinced back half of the Main Street landmark. The By one standard, the strategy was suc- enough people to score a $750,000 STTR space is a scientific entrepreneur’s dream, SCIENCE sciencemag.org 12 JUNE 2015 • VOL 348 ISSUE 6240 1197 Published by AAAS NEWS | FEATURES | ENTREPRENEURSHIP replete with cell culture facilities, biosafety ure if they offer their services—such as ad- are increasingly backing and partnering level 2 labs, and a dizzying array of gadgets vice on patent filings—cheaply and early on, with startups, particularly at incubators. for analyzing cells, DNA, and proteins. A new the relationship will blossom as early-stage They are realizing that “a few hundred glass-enclosed entrance has a patio for net- companies grow up and move out. thousand dollars invested in a three-person working and the interior includes immacu- Besides, what fledgling entrepreneur has company gives huge amount of return on late common spaces—lounges with video the time and money to slog through envi- investment,” Crawford says. games, glass-walled conference rooms, and ronmental health and safety compliance? For big companies searching for new a well-stocked kitchen with an “As a scientist entrepreneur, ideas, incubators are a convenient place espresso machine. The place your time should be exclu- to look. By attending talks, symposia, and buzzes 24/7—different startup sively focused on what other events at the incubators, the big companies even share work- “We are there problem your business can fish can land the most attractive startups, benches in shifts through- at the nascent solve and how are you using whether by investing in their technology, out the day and night to science to address that,” funding specific projects, or buying the save money. moment of many says John McQuillan, CEO companies outright. In fact, Pfizer leases The arrangement is analo- really, really and president of Triumvi- part of the Main Street building and spon- gous to cloud computing in rate Environmental, a Lab= sors LabCentral for an undisclosed sum—in the information technology cool companies.” Central founding sponsor exchange for picking the recipients of two world, which gives high-tech Johannes Fruehauf, that provides advice and LabCentral slots. entrepreneurs a cheap alter- LabCentral waste management/environ- LabCentral tenants also help each other. native to purchasing costly mental services to life science Hales and her partner at Extend, virolo- computer hardware. LabCentral and other companies. “Any other question ought to be gist Tarik Soliman, for example, partnered incubators essentially proffer a cloud for handed over to somebody else.” up with researchers on the same floor at a life science research. “We dedicated our- company called Advirna. The two startups selves to breaking down the expensive lab STARTUPS LIKE the approach. LabCentral co-wrote a Small Business Innovation Re- resource into such small increments that reached capacity within 6 months of open- search grant proposal to tack the vitamin D any entrepreneurial scientist with a credit ing in 2014—and now has a long waiting metabolites developed by Extend onto card can get going,” says Douglas Crawford, list. Similarly, within a half-year of opening Advirna’s RNAs and so prevent their degra- associate director of QB3, a University of in 2013, QB3 filled one 2230-square-meter dation in the body. The project was funded California (UC) research institute that pro- incubator with 46 startup companies, most by the National Institutes of Health.