| A team of graduate students
at the NSF-funded Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC)
who participated in the 2009 “Idea to IPO” class—offered by the Center
for BioEntrepreneurship at the University of California, San Francisco
(UCSF)—won a $50,000 grant at a business plan competition to help turn
their idea into reality. SynBERC is based at the University of California,
Berkeley (UC-B).
The Elysium Renewables team—made
up of Jeffrey Dietrich, Howard Chou, and Eric Steen from the Keasling Lab
at UC-B and Angela Won from the Lim Lab at UCSF—developed a business plan
around Dietrich’s PhD work on the in vivo detection of small molecules
using biosensors based on their DNA transcription characteristics.
This technology is used to construct high-throughput screens for the directed
evolution of biofuel and commodity chemical-producing microbes.
The Idea to IPO class was
co-instructed by Steven Burrill, CEO of San Francisco-based life sciences
venture capital firm Burrill & Company, bringing real-world expertise
to a class designed for those clinicians and scientists looking to commercialize
their research work. At the conclusion of the course, teams competed
for the $50,000 Biocatalyst Grant from the California Institute for Quantitative
Biosciences (QB3) by pitching their business plans to a broad selection
of Bay Area venture capitalists. The grant, which the Elysium Renewables
team won, is designed to help reduce the risk associated with commercializing
academic technologies and facilitate future start-up funding. The team
is actively working on further developing the technology. |
