A wellspring for new companies: Colorado BioScience Association fosters collaboration to help bring new technologies to market.

• Position: Bioscience Colorado: ELEVATED THINKING

While the Colorado BioScience Association has yet to reach its 10th anniversary, the state's roots in the industry stretch back decades. No less than Amgen--the world's largest biotechnology company--grew from work by University of Colorado researchers, including professor Marvin Caruthers, who was a member of the company's first scientific advisory board when the Thousand Oaks, Calif., company was founded in 1980.

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Colorado's research institutions remain a vital wellspring for new companies, says Holli Riebel, president and CEO of the Colorado BioScience Association. Research and technology coming out of the University of Colorado Boulder, the Anschutz Medical Campus, National Jewish, Colorado School of Mines, Colorado State University and other entities leads to the creation of 20 spinoff companies a year on average.

To foster such commercialization, the state extended a five-year, $25-million commitment for the Bioscience Discovery Evaluation Grant Program, which provides matching dollars to researchers and early-stage companies that have developed technologies coming out of Colorado research institutions. In the first four years, the program has spun out 34 companies, created more than 1,063 direct and indirect jobs and leveraged more than $86 million in new investment.

"We're very fortunate in Colorado because we have nationally ranked research institutions," says Riebel, who cited the work of the CSU Animal Cancer Center as an example: "The Animal Cancer Center is nationally recognized for treating dogs with cancer. These pets are eligible for treatment in clinical trials that ultimately can be used by researchers at Anschutz Medical Campus to find cancer therapies for humans."

Riebel also noted the work of the University of Colorado BioFrontiers Institute, which is newly headquartered in the Jennie Smoly Caruthers Biotechnology Building, a 336,800-square-foot research and teaching facility that opened in April on CU-Boulder's East Campus. By design, the institute shares the building with the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and the Division of Biochemistry in an effort to increase collaboration between various disciplines. The institute is directed by Nobel Laureate Tom Cech and Chief Scientific Officer Leslie Leinwand.

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"People are not working in silos. It brings about better creativity and better development of new drugs and technologies," Riebel says.

Colorado's...