Industry Insights: From Ivory Towers to Incubators - United States Life Sciences 2023

Industry Insights: From Ivory Towers to Incubators

Ground-breaking discoveries will ultimately need to be commercialized to reach patients in need. Sustaining the growth of incubators across the country and fostering a complete life sciences ecosystem through university-private partnerships will be key to continue turning knowledge into medical advances.

“It is challenging to successfully translate technology from an academic lab to a company, which is a complicated entity with many moving parts unfamiliar to academia. Universities spark innovations, but there is a complex ecosystem needed for those discoveries to translate into products that solve societal problems. We need well-educated people keen on taking risks and building companies, from scientists to clinicians to investors.”

David Schaffer, Executive Director, QB3

“As an incubator space, we aim to provide an overlap and an environment where scientists and entrepreneurs can turn new ideas established or developed in academia into ideas that are ready to scale. Now more than ever, we are seeing large pharma putting significant focus and importance on external innovation and seeking out opportunities to partner with academics and early-stage ventures. As more incubators pop up, they create a space for ideas to be scaled rapidly, lowering the barrier to entry into the realm of strategic partnership.”

Tim Jarrett, Site Lead, Pagliuca Harvard Life Lab, Harvard Innovation Labs

“I call Northeastern University ‘the innovation capital of academia’, and I joined this institution as I wanted to innovate in higher education. Northeastern has become a global university and today has various campuses across 14 different locations in the US, Canada, and Europe, which will continue to expand in the future.”

Hazel Sive, Dean, College of Sciences, Northeastern University

“We are talking to universities and nonprofit research institutes to be part of creating an incubator ecosystem across regions. Another initiative is our Hatch Biofund, a US$50 million venture capital fund serving as a companion to the incubators and accelerators owned or managed by the PABC. This fund will not only help local startups accelerate their science but also help our deal flow and our national reputation of this model in how it can benefit other regions as well.”

Louis Kassa, President, and CEO, Pennsylvania Biotechnology Center (PABC)

Background image courtesy of Evonik

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Section 3: Drug Discovery and Development