City of Carlsbad Reports Biotech Incubator Success

Presentation to City Council and new video describe success of public/private partnership effort

Carlsbad, CA, March 8, 2016 – After three years of operation, the City of Carlsbad’s life sciences incubator Bio, Tech and Beyond is reporting continued success and growth.  Following the grand opening in the summer of 2013, the incubator helped launch six biotech startups in 2014 alone. Today it reports that 20 startups are currently operating with twenty six employees. Over 40 full-time jobs have been created by the incubator to date.

“We tripled the number of companies and people working at the lab,” said Christina Vincent, Economic Development Manager for the City of Carlsbad. “This growth not only supports our region’s life sciences industry, but creates jobs and has produced millions in investment and local spending.”

The 21-bench laboratory is operated out of a city-owned building at 2351 Faraday Avenue. The city leases the 6,000-square-foot building to Bio, Tech and Beyond, which operates the life sciences incubator. Local scientists can lease a dedicated 10-foot bench for approximately $1,000 per month. This monthly fee includes access to resources such as liquid nitrogen, sophisticated lab equipment and a community of other community scientists and biotech startup entrepreneurs.

The city’s robust life sciences industry is thriving and includes 155 life sciences companies with over 6,500 biotech jobs and over 900 patents issued since 2008.

As the video describes, ownership for all work conducted at the incubator belongs to the citizen scientists. Neither Bio, Tech and Beyond nor the city retain equity. Some current startups have raised over $1 million in venture capital, securing federal funding and winning prestigious grants, financing and prizes. The city council presentation included a new video showcasing the life sciences incubator can be seen here.

Twelve companies have grown out of the incubator and established their own space. In October 2015, Thermo Fisher hosted a Startup Showcase where some of the current startups operating in the incubator described their work for the greater life sciences industry and members of the venture capital community. One startup, GPB Scientific, announced having secured $3.2 million in funding for its cell separation technology that can be used to treat cancer patients. Another Bio, Tech and Beyond startup, Koliber Biosciences, described winning first place as “Best Startup” in the Blue Sky Bio Synthetic competition.

The incubator’s mission is to “make it easy to start a science company” and they do this by making the tools and resources available for modern life science research. Bio, Tech and Beyond Executive Director Joseph Jackson describes that the incubator is geared to serve anyone from an academic researcher, to a retired pharma scientist working on a cure for an obscure disease, to a high school student who also wants to change the world via this “citizen science biotech garage.”

More information, including application to the incubator, can be found at www.biotechnbeyond.com.