🔒Latest incubator creates CT’s ‘bioscience triangle’

1 of 6

Like the CEO of any startup, Wendy Davis understands the challenges of taking a fledgling company and trying to grow it. That's perhaps doubly true in the bioscience industry where access to affordable lab space and equipment are often essential to success.

“Science-based [startups] have unique needs,” said Davis, whose company is working to commercialize a diagnostic for preeclampsia, a potentially life threatening complication of pregnancy. “They need an environment so they don't get bogged down in day-to-day support infrastructure [concerns] that can detract from accomplishing significant milestones.”

Davis, it seems, has found her company's home: Groton-based CURE Innovation Commons, Connecticut's latest bio-tech incubation lab designed to attract startups to and from within the state. The newest site — a $4.1 million, 22,000-square-foot facility — features 12 private and shared laboratories, 18 private and shared office suites, conference rooms, event space and office hours with mentor and industry experts.

The state's latest innovation lab joins similar incubation centers in Hartford/Farmington and New Haven creating a bioscience triangle across the state, according to Stephen MacKenzie, executive director of the Southeastern Connecticut Economic Development Group, which supported the build out and promotion of CURE Commons.

“Bioscience is one of the largest industry clusters in southeastern Connecticut,” MacKenzie said. “We expect this facility will help us attract back some of the scientists and entrepreneurs who may have left during previous economic downturns.”

According to state employment figures, from 2007 to 2012, the state's bioscience sector declined by 13 percent, while the national drop in the industry was about a half-percent. But that decline has been steadily reversing itself. In fact, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the sector now employs more than 24,000 workers in Connecticut, which ranks fourth nationally for bioscience patents per 1,000 people. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy this year said the industry employs 50,000.

With more than 80 percent of the state's R&D dollars — and more than 54 percent of venture capital — invested in bioscience, those numbers are expected to grow. For Susan Froshauer, CEO of CURE, a 24-year-old bioscience industry booster that oversees CURE Commons, that's good news.

“The purpose [of this incubation facility] is to create jobs and cultivate talent,” she said. And Connecticut is talent-rich when it comes to science-based jobs, ranking fifth nationally in the number of science and engineering doctorates in the workforce, according to a 2014 report from the National Science Foundation.

In southeastern Connecticut, much of that talent comes from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which has not only been a strong supporter of the CURE Commons project, but donated the building — renovations were funded by the Department of Economic and Community Development — to make it a reality. “Pfizer recognized there was a need for really talented former employees to have a place to convene and have access to lab space for building out ideas,” Froshauer said.

But the value of CURE Commons is about more than access to labs; it's about access to capital too. “We can mentor these companies to get their ideas together around value creation for investors,” Froshauer said, “and then connect them with different sorts of investors.”

In turn, Froshauer contends, funders often find incubator businesses more attractive for investment because they're a good value. “The investor is not funding the initial build out of a huge infrastructure [for that company],” she said.

That's because CURE Commons allows tenants to use the amenities it needs. “A company, for instance, can lease lab space and take advantage of shared laboratory equipment or rent office space for short or long periods of time,” Froshauer said. “We can be flexible to see what kinds of models tenants are interested in.”

And that flexibility extends beyond the amenities to the types of tenants its seeking to attract. “Our incubator is not only about [pharmaceutical] development,” Froshauer said. “Our definition of bioscience includes a startup with the ultimate purpose of helping improve our quality of life, so we would be delighted to have an IT company or medical device startup [in our facility].”

The facility is already gaining traction, with three new tenants in its first week of operation. Froshauser is optimistic those figures will continue to climb. “I hope we get saturated very quickly and build a critical mass,” she said, “because we have the tools to stimulate and grow new startups.”