Incubating the Future at UCSF's Mission Bay Campus

The start-up incubator space at the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, or QB3, is called the Garage by the scientists and inventors working on UCSF’s Mission Bay campus, who are hoping to make that difficult first step from research bench to biotech start-up. Its name is a homage of sorts to the Palo Alto garage from which William Hewlett and David Packard started HP and to the Los Altos garage where Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak launched Apple. But more important for QB3, and its Associate Executive Director Douglas Crawford, PhD, the QB3 Garage is the place where marriages between academia and entrepreneurship flourish. Like any good matchmaker, Crawford chooses his prospects carefully. Most are from QB3’s three member campuses, UCSF, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz — hence the nickname QB3. Crawford is looking for biotech innovators who are ready to leave the laboratory, but not yet ready for the boardroom. “In order to be successful, we have to get these companies further along the path.” QB3 has dedicated 2,500 square feet in Byers Hall to rent out to clients for up to two years. They have that long to get to the proof-of-principle stage, so they can court venture capitalists and leave home to make room for the next group. Right now, five start-ups are splitting the space — two renting as little as 130 square feet. Far from being a drawback, Crawford says, the small space is actually an asset. “Real estate companies rarely want to rent less than 2,000 square feet and usually can’t break even on less than 5,000.” For a young start-up firm looking for a workbench and maybe a small office, a space big enough for a dozen people is far too large and expensive. Crawford admits the garage analogy is a bit of a stretch when it comes to the needs of a biotech start-up. “We rent Class A space at market rates and provide access to top-notch equipment and facilities.” The location — in the heart of UCSF’s Mission Bay campus — has been essential to the success of the Garage companies. There, they can collaborate with UC labs, attend seminars and make use of several advanced core facilities. Allopartis: The Quest for Cheap Biofuel Allopartis is a start-up hoping to turn the literal California harvest into cheap biofuel for our cars. The four-man team began renting a lab bench space and a small office in February. Their quest is to enhance the enzyme that breaks down cellulose into sugars. If they succeed, we will be able to cheaply and efficiently convert everything from wood to grass clippings and agricultural waste into biofuels. Ethanol is the best known biofuel, but turning corn into ethanol wastes potential food, uses up valuable agricultural land and a requires a lot of water. Unfortunately, getting the sugars — or fuel — out of other plants that would be potential sources of biofuel is difficult. The best hope is to find just the right enzyme to break down the cell walls of the plants and free up the sugars. Allopartis President Robert Blazej, PhD, is the co-inventor of a process of directed evolution that can speed up the creation of the hoped-for magic enzyme. “We can take an existing gene and make trillions of [enzyme] variants and test each one to find the ones that are most efficient.” Blazej says that his team can produce the enzyme with just a small work space like that available at QB3. “We’re dealing with DNA molecules. You can hold a billion of those in a single test tube in your hand.” Still, Allopartis needs the high-powered microscopes and other equipment in QB3 to carry out the work. In less than three months, the Allopartis team has gone from theory to proof of concept and is already talking to venture capitalists. The company hopes to have one or more enzymes ready for production by the time it’s their turn to leave QB3. Simprota: Homing In on Peptides for Therapeutics Employees at another recent start-up at the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences don’t need any lab space. Their work is virtual. Simprota is an example of a multidisciplinary start-up that combines physics with biology. The company’s complex algorithms can predict the behavior and interactions of peptides and proteins in drugs, vaccines and materials. Founder and CEO Ilya Chorny, PhD, says Simprota’s technology can steer pharmaceutical companies away from blind alleys of research. “Instead of them guessing, we’re computing the structure and dynamics of their peptides and proteins. Our modeling studies can tell them where to make changes in their lead compounds to get the results they’re looking for.” While you might think that Simprota could do its work in any office complex, Chorny says that’s not the case. “I still talk to the other labs. We’re not that far removed from what they’re doing, and what we do can be useful to them as well. The QB3 Garage also provides us connections with potential investors who flock to UCSF in search of new technology.” With just 130 square feet of office space and access to QB3’s server farm, Simprota has already begun working with a number of biotech clients since opening shop in December. Chorny says that QB3 is helping break down traditional barriers between academics and businesspeople. “The science is the hard part. There is at least one person in every lab here that wants to go into business or consulting of some kind.” For QB3 matchmaker Doug Crawford, that’s the idea. “In the early 20th century, the great innovation was to unite research universities and hospitals, creating research hospitals such as Johns Hopkins and the UCSF Parnassus campus. In the 21st century, it looks as if we are embarked on a similar breakthrough. Now we are bringing industry, universities and research hospitals together as innovation engines. This is just what Mission Bay, UCSF and QB3 are doing.”