TRADE MISSION NOTES:

Perspectives of a University Startup: Part 2

Jason Kuo, Rheoblast

09/03/10

So what does it take to build a biotech company?  Technology?  Money?  People? Market?  I used to think (somewhat naively) that a risky technology was the principal reason that a biotech would fail.  With the support of Washington State’s Life Sciences Discovery Fund, most of our research effort at the University of Washington was devoted to technology development: running a clinical trial to demonstrate that our technology indeed works on specimens from cancer patients.  Now in the third year of clinical trial, where do we find the resource to hire people to continue the commercialization path?

It is no secret that venture capital firms have been facing tremendous difficulty raising money from pension funds and endowment funds in this economy.  The competition for the dwindling venture capital is fierce.   How do we get the spigot for capital turned back on?  Can we find spigots elsewhere?  How can we ensure that the jobs created with spigots elsewhere stay locally?