AURORA, Colo.—The Fitzsimons BioBusiness Partnership biotech incubator is a place where startup companies are working to develop better treatments for cancer, new surgical equipment, better drugs, and testing equipment that can diagnose a disease in 15 minutes from a single drop of blood.
In the process, new companies are being created that may help seed a new economy in central Aurora.
It can take up to 10 years and $1 billion to get a drug to the market. But the incubator is where it all begins.
“There are so many benefits to this,” said Jill Farnham, executive director of the Fitzsimons Redevelopment Authority. “We are seeing scientific discoveries that grow into companies and into jobs.”
The $8 million, 60,000-square-foot building, part of the Colorado Science and Technology Park at Fitzsimons, also houses the Fitzsimons Redevelopment Authority administration.
There are about 30 “baby” companies in the incubator program, companies like Beacon Biotechnology, which is working on a domino-size chip that can detect any of 112 diseases in just 15 minutes.
The redevelopment authority rents space to the companies, complete with laboratories, equipment, furniture and other essentials startups typically can’t afford on their own.
“It would be impossible without this facility,” said Beacon Biotechnology chief executive Fred Mitchell. “We share equipment and don’t have to go out and buy it.”
A fume hood Mitchell uses in his research would cost $20,000 to $50,000 to buy but is included as part of his monthly rent of about $3,500.
When the redevelopment authority formed about nine years ago, Fitzsimons was an empty Army base off East Colfax Avenue. But local leaders dreamed of having one of the top medical and science facilities in the world.
In 2007, that dream became a reality. University of Colorado Hospital opened, then Children’s Hospital. Within the next few years, the new Veterans Affairs hospital will open too.
But an important rung on the ladder to a topflight medical campus is developing new technologies and cures.
“Fitzsimons was always more than a collection of hospitals and a university,” Aurora Mayor Ed Tauer said. “The real secret to this project is to have all these people in one place where they can work together and share ideas.
“When you put three brilliant people in one room, you don’t get three good ideas, you get 25. And that’s the whole point of the campus.”
On a recent day, Kim Gibson, owner of Tissue Genetics, oversaw the work as technicians processed tissue in an auto-stainer machine.
Gibson’s company is developing better and cheaper cancer-testing technology, including testing of tumors to determine whether they are hereditary or sporadic, so that doctors can better treat the disease.
She has four employees and is funded largely by grants. But one day, when Gibson receives her patents, she hopes to secure investors to take her product to market.
“You stay in the incubator until you are viable enough to come out and become a viable, independent company,” Gibson said.
The incubator companies include a mix of science and technology.
Down the hall from Tissue Genetics, Nicholas Bernstein of Touch of Life Technologies helps builds surgical simulators. One of the products in development will help medical students practice operating on a knee.
The company also created a common platform simulator designed to help students learn to inject botox into a patient’s neck to relieve chronic pain.
The company already has sold two.
The next phase in helping the young companies is to create an institute on the campus that will provide business assistance, such as securing venture capital investments, helping to write grant applications and providing legal assistance.
The hope is that when the companies leave the incubator, they will take root on the campus, or close by.
“What it really does is it lets us take the brilliant people at the university and convert their good ideas into jobs and medicines for people,” Tauer said. “The key is start here, stay here.”
