Nurturing growth: incubators across the state provide shelter for budding life sciences companies.

• Author: Hromadka, Erik
• Position: LIFE SCIENCES

IN A NATIONAL RECESSION, it's a dangerous time for startups that are working to bring new ideas to market.

However, a number of growing life sciences companies across Indiana have found some shelter at business incubators that combine resources of the state's research universities and local communities.

The latest is a 40,000-square-foot facility in Bloomington that is scheduled for completion in 2009 and designed to accommodate both life science and Internet technology startups.

It's part of Indiana University's Innovate Indiana program, an effort to expand economic development across the state by working to bring technology from the school's public research programs and transfer it into new private companies. That effort includes promoting collaboration such as those between the university's school of medicine, the University of Notre Dame and a South Bend incubator; Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne and the Northeast Indiana Innovation Center; and regional campus programs and Inventrek Technology Park in Kokomo.

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"This undertaking represents a long-term commitment by Indiana University to provide our research scientists with all the support and assistance they will need to transform the discoveries and great ideas generated in their laboratories into marketable products and services," explains IU president Michael McRobbie. "Ultimately, all of Indiana will benefit from the jobs and economic vitality generated by this collaboration between public research and private entrepreneurship."

The new Bloomington site will complement the university's Emerging Technologies Center in Indianapolis, a 67,500-square-foot incubator located on the Central Canal that enjoys 98 percent capacity with 23 tenants. IUETC president Anthony Armstrong, who will oversee both incubators, said some companies have already committed to moving into the new Bloomington site, which will provide a balance of office space with traditional and wet laboratory needs.

"This is an extremely exciting rime for the economic development arm at IU, for the Bloomington business community and for our researchers who will now have a home where their advances can move forward with respect to business development," he says.

And in trying economic rimes, he stresses the importance of nurturing such young life science companies. "We need to not only grow new companies, bur also make sure that we don't lose any that are in the pipeline," he says.

Kevin...