Date: Sep 27, 2011 Source: (
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The University of Kansas Medical Center's Bioscience & Technology Business Center officially opened its doors Tuesday, looking to attract more life sciences-based startups.
A group of university administrators and researchers, as well as Kansas City-area bioscience industry leaders, held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the business incubator, which is in the remodeled Breidenthal Hall at 2002 W. 39th Ave. in Kansas City, Kan.
The center actually began operating in the spring, housing three companies that employ a total of 11 people, while final touches were made to the facility. Officials said the center, with 30,000 square feet of usable office and wet-lab space, has room for seven or eight more companies.
The center gives the KU system a total of 60,000 square feet of biotech incubator space, including two facilities in Lawrence.
KU Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little said the facility will give entrepreneurs access to top researchers and spinoff technologies.
"The BTBC is a unique model that will encourage collaboration between KU and industry, and this collaboration will accelerate commercialization of university research, which means we can move more quickly to have life-changing discoveries from university labs introduced into human trials and eventually patient bedsides," Gray-Little said.
Among the companies already operating at the center is Orbis Biosciences, which is developing a number of pharmaceutical and food products using KU research.
Orbis still is as far as two years from commercializing the research, but it's grown from one to five full-time employees since opening in 2008, Orbis President Maria Flynn said.
"While we can be experts in the technology, we can't be experts at every possible application of this technology, and we need to look outside of our company -- and many of those experts we can find here," Flynn said.
The $6 million center was paid for through a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce, $2 million from the Kansas Bioscience Authority and $1 million from the university.
