Building Minnesota's Bioscience Economy

The College of Biological Sciences is upping the ante in the high-stakes race to build a new industry.

Construction workers are hammering in the last nails to complete the new bioscience business incubator, University Enterprise Laboratories (UEL). When UEL’s doors open officially this summer, the College of Biological Sciences (CBS) — along with University, corporate, and government partners — will have put in place another piece of the structure that will help the biosciences flourish in Minnesota.

The building, located midway between the University’s two Twin Cities campuses, is the latest in the college’s many efforts to serve as a catalyst in turning bioscience ideas into reality, moving them from the laboratory into the world of business. By building an infrastructure of facilities, scientific expertise, and a rich source of potentially patentable technology, CBS is helping to create the
perfect environment for new companies to take root. That could position Minnesota as a player in the new bioscience industry and in a technology boom that will make the information technology boom pale in comparison.

At the heart of this effort: University of Minnesota students. “If we put the needs of students first, everything else falls into place,” says Dean Bob Elde who is chairman of the UEL board of directors. He says students need to be in close proximity to members of the bioscience industry in order to explore careers in bioscience and biotechnology and to participate in real-world research.

“They need the inspiration that comes from interaction with people in the bioscience industry, and UEL will provide that,” says Elde. “There are science and technology companies crowded around the periphery of most university campuses,” he says, citing Palo Alto and Boston. “That proximity provides opportunities and inspiration that our students haven’t had because companies like 3M and Cargill are miles away. “What is there to inspire you here? Grain elevators?”

Like 22 Garages

Business lore abounds with new inventions that were born somewhere between the family car and garden implements. Stanford students Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard designed the
audio oscillator that became the foundation of their electronics empire in a garage. Ditto for Earl Bakken, founder of Medtronic. UEL founders have created an environment that offers the high-tech equivalent of those early garages. They intend to spark the creativity there that will have similarly spectacular commercial success. “With 22 wet labs built into the center of the building, this is like having 22 garages,” says UEL CEO Pete Bianco.

UEL’s CEO Pete Bianco predicts that new companies will “graduate” from UEL in three to five years.

Formerly the headquarters of Target Direct, the 125,000-square-foot facility will house a mix of early- and mid-stage companies along with service providers, such as patent attorneys and bookkeepers. Some of UEL’s earliest tenants include Gel-Del, which uses purified proteins to produce materials that can be molded or shaped into almost any form and engineered to mimic the body’s own tissue. Stent Tech develops biocompatible stents, the tiny tubes that prop open blocked arteries. ANDX uses genomic information to develop diagnostic tests for the pet and agricultural animal sectors. Another company, Prism Research, specializes in Phases I and II clinical trials for new pharmaceutical products and medical devices. St. Paul mayor Randy Kelly hopes that UEL will eventually serve as the starting point for an entire technology park in the area.

Yet, Bianco emphasizes that UEL is about more than just a collection of offices and wet labs—it’s a way to create a network. “There’s an organic element to building this industry,” he says. “You have to create the ‘ecosystem’ where people interact and collaborate. You can’t force it. The power of collaboration is huge. It exponentially leverages the ability of a company to succeed. There’s a cultural and social aspect to this that people don’t understand.”

Building Bonds

Relationship-building is a fundamental aspect of another CBS endeavor, the Biotechnology Institute (BTI), which was launched in 1983 with $300,000 annual funding from the legislature. It was among the first wave of university-based biotechnology centers. BTI’s members include faculty from CBS, the Institute of Technology, Medical School, and College of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences. The institute’s crossdisciplinary, intercollegiate structure makes it a convenient entry point to use the University’s biotechnology expertise and equipment. “The Biotechnology Institute is really one of the strongest outreach efforts to the biotech community,” says BTI director Ken Valentas.

Doug Cameron, Director of Biotechnology at Cargill.

While Hewlett and Packard could launch their electronics ideas from a garage, with bioscience it’s not so easy. Inventors need complex and costly equipment and facilities— clusters of computers, for example, or equipment for large-scale protein expression or fermentation—things not commonly found at the local hardware store. BTI is the place where researchers can go for technical help in ramping up their ideas before they’re ready for a facility like UEL. In fact, the institute operated incubator laboratory space in Snyder Hall and Gortner Laboratories from which some of UEL’s first tenants “graduated.”

BTI works in several specific ways. It led to Biodale, which operates in Snyder Hall and Gortner Lab and bills itself as “Minnesota’s shopping mall for biotechnology and life sciences research support services.” You won’t find Starbucks or Gap at this mall. It caters to customers in both the business and the University community, offering space and state-of the-art equipment that many companies could not afford to purchase. Perhaps most important, Biodale “shoppers” find problem-solving expertise. There are six different shops, each staffed by specialized scientists and technicians.

The “anchor tenant” of Biodale is the Biotechnology Resource Center (BRC), according to its director, Marc von Keitz. BRC is a pilot-scale facility, staffed with a team of highly trained scientists, which provides services in molecular biology, protein expression and purification, and fermentation process development and scale-up. BRC offers advice on refining experiments, or its staff will fully execute a project. Next page

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