By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold
Bruce: Medipacs [one of the incubator's success stories] is a very low cost,? highly reliable infusion pump. The inventor is a man named Mark Banister.
Medipacs pumps could be produced at a fraction of the cost of the current pumps available on the market. The pumps could be used for three or four days, and then they?re disposable. They also allow for continuous monitoring of the medication being administered. They have a number of cool applications.
One is to be used in hospital settings where instead of having to have a nurse or doctor come in and administer medication every few hours and take the risk of errors and so on, you can put this pump on the patient, and it will administer medication continuously in doses as required over a long period.
The other advantage of it is because of its low cost, it has the ability to provide this technology and this kind of medication administration to the developing world where you?d want to help patients who couldn?t afford it otherwise.
Irina: At what stage is this business now?
Bruce: The inventor got his product developed. He?s going through his third generation of pumps.
Molly: He?s working through his Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals. I believe that they started some of the clinical work. They?re almost ready to start to take it out to market, I believe, in the next year or two.
These kind of products require extensive use of laboratory space to develop them. That?s part of what we?ve offered him, the use of wet labs and so on.
He?s gone through a series of successful funding events so that he?s been able to raise the capital and move this product forward. This is a really interesting one because Popular Science magazine selected this product as one of the 10 most promising inventions in 2010.
He?s won a number of awards, including the governor?s innovation award here in Arizona. This product is promising. It?s drawn a lot of attention as well as investments. As Molly said, I think we?ll see it going to the marketplace probably within the next year or two.
Irina: Anybody else?
Molly: Sure. Another company is MSDx. This is a company that came out of the McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship program at the University of Arizona. They developed a series of biomarkers that can be tagged and monitor the progress of multiple sclerosis in patients.
It?s a simple blood test. Presently, MS patients are treated by using CAT scans and brain scans to monitor the disease. But they found a way to monitor this through a simple blood test. It actually can show increased deterioration quicker than the CT or brain scans can.
Right now, they?ve done some of their initial prototyping and they?re raising funds so that they can do their larger scale studies so that they can meet the FDA requirements.
Irina: How long do companies stay in your incubator on average?
Bruce: It depends on the nature of the company. These two companies, which have to go through FDA trial review, have been in the incubator for four or five years because that process is protracted. Some of our companies, which are IT companies or device companies, have moved through a lot faster.
On average, we like to keep the companies in the incubator no more than two years. It depends on where the company is and our evaluation for their success. If they?re right on the verge of taking their product to market, we?ll let them extend their tenure or their time in the incubator.
Irina: Do you have any engagement with the companies after incubation?
Molly: We stay in touch with them. Our hope is that when they graduate, they?ll take space at the tech park, which is where we?re located. There?s no requirement for them to do so.
Irina: How is this incubator supported financially?
Bruce: That?s a very good question. It?s always a struggle to support these incubators because the majority of them, in our judgment, are not profit-making organizations. Our incubator is primarily supported by revenues generated by the U of A Science and Technology Park.
The incubator is actually a subsidiary of our nonprofit organization called the Campus Research Corporation, which operates the Science and Tech Park. They provide the space and laboratories on site for the incubator as well as some funding for it. We also receive some funding from the University of Arizona. We?ve received corporate funding from Wells Fargo Bank and Chase Bank. Most recently, we received a stimulus grant from the office of the governor that?s allowed us to expand our programs and build some new facilities.
This segment is part 4 in the series : Business Incubator Series: Bruce Wright And Molly Gilbert, Arizona Center for Innovation ? Tucson
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