The Daily News
Feb 11, 2009
By Tom Wilemon
The Memphis Bioworks Foundation has added an additional 6,000 square feet of lab space and launched a new program to aid biotechnology startups.
With these additions, Bioworks is better poised to take full advantage of the competitive edge the new UT-Baptist Research Park will give Memphis, said Steven J. Bares, president of the nonprofit foundation.
Bares can watch from his office windows the construction of the $493 million complex on 10 acres in the heart of the Memphis Medical Center. The Research Park is going up across Dudley Street, from the headquarters of Bioworks, in an eight-story structure that formerly housed medical offices.
The fourth floor of the building has just been converted to 6,000 square feet of new laboratory and incubator space. This is in addition to 5,500 square feet of lab space in another building Bioworks has immediately north of its headquarters, and 6,000 square feet on another floor devoted to the InMotion Musculoskeletal Institute.
"We've pretty much got this building built out," Bares said.
Office space
Bioworks already has prospects interested in the new lab space, but the foundation may hold off converting the one floor it has left into additional space. Instead, new incubator space could be put into the Research Park.
"It might be better for me to build space that really accommodates more mature companies and start to push companies that are here into three and redeploy the lab space here," he said.
A key goal of Bioworks is implementing an incremental strategy. The new mentoring program, TECworks, is part of that strategy. The Tennessee Technology Development Corp. provided a $270,000 grant to fund the program.
"Let's figure out what the pipeline is," Bares said. "You can't know what the pipeline of lab space is unless you have your seed fund and your TECworks program and your mentoring. If you don't have those, you're really not assessing quality demand."
Jan Bouten of Raleigh, N.C., who was a venture partner at The Aurora Funds, has been hired to be the executive director of TECworks. He has experience investing in startup companies, monitoring them and advising them.
Bouten, who has degrees in software engineering and a MBA from Duke University, came to Memphis with his wife, Leta Nutt, who has joined the research staff at St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital.
His task is to focus on technology entrepreneurship and commercialization. Bares said another task will be to coordinate efforts between EmergeMemphis, LaunchMemphis, the Memphis Minority Business Council, the FedEx Institute of Technology and other organizations involved in economic development.
'An easier sell'
The TECworks program is a natural follow through on the 2007 launch of Innova, a seed fund Bioworks set up to provide venture capital to emerging companies, Bares said.
Darryl Jackson, who joined the Bioworks staff last summer as vice president of sales and development, said Memphis is an attractive option for biotechnology companies.
"If you're going to attract entrepreneurs and talent, you have to have the best facilities," Jackson said.
"With this research park that we're developing, it clearly puts us in a position to state that we do have a world-class facility. As people begin to see the buildings rise, it becomes more of a presence and an easier sell."
The research park is being built in stages. A biocontainment lab should be complete by May. The University of Tennessee Health Science Center College of Pharmacy is scheduled for completion in 2010. The first part of the Research Park campus should come online by 2011, and other buildings will be completed in stages.
"Most cities don't have the land, don't have the medical center, don't have the resources for this type of research park," Bares said. "For example, if you go to M.D. Anderson (Cancer Center) down in Houston, there is no land, so there is no option. If you go to Atlanta right by Emory (medical center) ... the land is so expensive you can't possibly do that. You can't assemble it. We're sitting here with open land in this Downtown center in the middle of the Memphis Medical Center. We have the ability to create this high-synergy, unique environment in a place that's a pretty good place to live."
