Hartford Business Journal Special Editions

www.HartfordBusiness.com April 11, 2016 • Hartford Business Journal 7 and Yale — out of their "silos'' and promote collaboration between them and the broader marketplace to elevate the prospects for suc- cess in its bioscience ecosystem. The ultimate aim, supporters say, is to retain as many of the technologies and other intellectual property they create, and the startups they generate, at home in this state. In January, for example, UConn and Yale formally launched their bioscience collabo- ration, Program in Innovative Therapeutics for Connecticut's Health, or PITCH. According to its backers, PITCH and other formal and informal academic and public- private collaborations, are hallmarks of Con- necticut's biosci- ence ambitions to move more research out of labs and into c om me r c i a l i z e d , potentially life-sav- ing products. Dennis Wright, professor of medici- nal chemistry at UConn's School of Pharmacy, who teamed with Yale University biochem- ist-bioentrepreneur Craig M. Crews, said the latest collaboration model supplants the old one in which college scientists publish their research, then hope it draws attention of an investor or drug maker with pockets deep enough to evolve and test the research into a marketable drug. PITCH, launched about 18 months ago with $10 million in startup funding through the state's Bioscience Innovation Fund, aims to shorten the time needed to validate whether UConn and Yale investigators' basic research is marketable, Wright said. "The state, through that fund, is acting very strategically,'' said Wright, who has previously launched a pair of bioscience startups of his own. "It reflects an evolving landscape where you can pull all of these resources in the state together and create a powerful engine for growth in biotech.'' PITCH is but the latest example of Yale and UConn's collaborative bent, said Susan Froshauer, a bioentrepreneur who is CEO of Connecticut United for Research Excellence, or CURE. Yale's School of Medicine, for instance, has opened its Center for Biomedical Interventional Technology (CBIT). The center's mission is to bring together, Froshauer said, faculty and students interested in starting companies that improve health care via new medical devices and information technology. Mentors and Yale and UConn faculty serve the program that also provides educational events and offers grant opportunities, she said. Leveraging UConn's strength in engineer- ing, CBIT also holds "hackathon events" to stimulate development of these new health- care devices, Froshauer said. "These are weekend-long sessions, where entrepreneurs from across the state, convene to percolate ideas and pop-up new mixes of teams, and pitch possibilities for startups,'' she said. "The diverse and highly engaged teams are judged by members of the state- wide community. It is lively and fun, and some exciting new ideas circulate to the top." Small ventures The birthing and financing of bioscience and other tech startups is another area in which silos are falling. Take the Yale Entre- preneurial Institute (YEI), born in 2008 to grubstake and nurture a wide range of bio- science and "green-technology'' ventures generated by Yale faculty and pupils. Two years ago, YEI partnered with Con- necticut Innovations Inc. (CI) and First Niagara Bank to create the YEI Innovation Fund. Since January 2014, the fund has pro- vided early-stage funding of $100,000 apiece to 10 ventures. That fund's recipients lever- aged the $1 million into $21 million more of private equity, according to YEI co-founder and Managing Director James G. Boyle. It's too soon to gauge the fruits of the YEI Innovation Fund, Boyle said. However, the institute's value has been to expose entre- preneurial Yale pupils to hands-on learning beyond the classroom, he said. According to YEI's homepage, its more than 80 portfolio startups have raised more than $135 million in funding and created more than 350 jobs. "It was at CI's suggestion that the fund was created in the first place,'' said Boyle, an alum who previously oversaw licensing and startups in Yale's Office of Cooperative Research. "There was quite a bit of thought into what we wanted to do back in 2008. We wanted to create ventures. That's different from teaching principles of entrepreneur- ship. We were much more focused on creat- ing experiential learning.'' Big fish Perhaps the most prime example of pub- lic-private collaboration, some observers say, is the state's successful wooing of a sat- ellite of one of the world's most renowned and respected bioscience institutions — The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medi- cine (Jax), based in Bar Harbor, Maine. "A thoughtful and strategic move on the part of Connecticut,'' said Michael Hyde, who is the nonprofit organization's vice president for external affairs and strategic partnerships. Jax received $291 million in state incen- tives to build its Farmington facility, a deal that generated certain financial rewards for the state. According to Hyde, in addi- tion to jobs, about 80 cents of every dollar of Jax's $40 million Connecticut budget is being spent on goods, services and other expenditures in the state. Meantime, Jax already is planning for construction of a second administration- laboratory building adjacent to its current home on UConn Health's campus in Farm- ington, Hyde said. Finally, Jax's highly-paid workers — many of whom are Millennials from the U.S. and abroad with advanced science and medi- cal degrees — have bought houses or leased apartments in and around the campus, he said. In addition to one day emerging from Jax's shadows to become bioscience entre- preneurs themselves, Hyde said some Jax hires also brought with them highly educat- ed spouses or significant others willing and able to contribute to Connecticut's economy either as employees or business owners. Jax's mission to unlock the secrets of the human genome one day could open the door to more effective drugs and treatments for cancer, lung and cardiovascular ailments, among others, and hasten the arrival of "per- sonalized medicine'' in which treatments are prescribed based on a patient's genetic profile. Jax is also collaborating with UConn and UConn Health. In addition to joint hires, for example, Jax and UConn last August announced they were launching a $7.7 million joint Single Cell Genomics Center in Farming- ton, enabling researchers from both organiza- tions to isolate and study individual cells. Meantime, across from UConn Health, at 400 Farmington Ave., is the site of the university's bioscience startup incubator. Rita Zangari, executive director of UCo- nn's technology incubation program, said the school is currently in talks with about 20 companies interested in partnering with UConn to commercialize research. At least one wants to team with UConn's dental school to apply its technology to certain dental applications, Zangari said. "The key thing we were looking for that companies not just be here," she said, "but that there be collaborative research between the companies and the university.'' PITCH's aims are similar. But with only a dozen research prospects still gestating in its portfolio, it will take time to see which ones germinate into marketable treatments and technologies, Crews and Wright say. "I'm optimistic that 10 years from now,'' Crews said, "there will be PITCH graduates whose ventures are growing and succeed- ing. It's about paying it forward.'' n from page 1 Shared ideas, resources a hallmark Could CT be the next big bioscience cluster? There's room enough on the East Coast for one or two more major bioscience clusters, and Connecticut easily could be it, says a planner for one of this state's leading bioscience hubs. Matthew Nemerson ran the Connecticut Technology Council before joining the city of New Haven in 2014 as Mayor Toni Harp's economic-development director. Nemer- son, too, was a co-founder of the Elm City's Science Park development that is home to a number of bioscience startups Beyond Fairfield County, Connecticut is fairly uncon- gested and affordable, Nemerson said. Its transportation network of I-95, Amtrak and the Metro-North and Shoreline North commuter rail lines make Connecticut accessible to and from Boston, southern New York/northern New Jersey, and Baltimore-Washington D.C., he adds. "If you're in New York, it's easy to turn to Connecti- cut. If you're in Cambridge [Mass.], it's easy to turn to Connecticut,'' he said. Moreover, those East Coast bioscience clusters outside Connecticut "are reaching a tipping point where they're too expensive and too congested.'' But to enhance its bioscience appeal, Connecticut eventu- ally must zero in on a particular region of the state to anchor its ecosystem. "It's always about creating geographic critical mass,'' Nemerson said. "When you think about places that are suc- cessful, you rarely think about states. You think about cities.'' "We believe everything we do has to involve Storrs, Hart- ford, New Haven, Stamford and New London,'' he said. " … But that's a different model than what they have in Mas- sachusetts and New York, where they put everything in one place. Connecticut has got to focus on geographic location.'' – Gregory Seay CT's Bioscience Resources A partial list of Connecticut state agencies and public/private organizations engaged in nurturing the sector. See more detailed info at www.HartfordBusiness.com: Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) — (860) 270-8000; www.ct.gov/ecd/site/default.asp. Connecticut United for Research Excellence (CURE) — (203) 470-2720; www.cureconnect.org. Program in Innovative Therapeutics for Connecticut's Health (PITCH) — www.pitch.yale.edu. Connecticut Innovations Inc. — (860) 563-5851; www.ctinnovations.com. SECT Technology Center — (203) 868-9249; Teg6854@gmail.com. Yale Entrepreneurial Institute — (203) 436-8893; www.yei.yale.edu. Building Bioscience A N H B J S E R I E S O N C T ' S B I O S C I E N C E S E C T O R P H O T O | P A B L O R O B L E S New Haven economic development director Matthew Nemerson launched that city's Science Park two decades ago. James G. Boyle, co-founder and Managing Director, Yale Entrepreneurial Institute

• Cover