Scientists say commercialization of stem cell research is a decade off — at least — but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t any jockeying business-wise among the international crowd at StemConn, Connecticut’s stem cell research conference last week.
The search for a piece of the state’s $100 million commitment to stem cells is happening around the edges, but is coming from all parts of the state.
It’s a matter of when and how, not if, stem cell science leads to local companies and private sector investment, said Charles G. Jennings, a member of Connecticut’s stem cell research advisory committee. But Jennings, of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is in the same camp as everyone else in thinking the day that a medical treatment using stem cells is far off.
“There are many major challenges before that can be accomplished,” he told StemConn attendees in the State Capitol last week.
Investments Limited
Peter Longo, executive vice president of Connecticut Innovations, the state’s publicly funded investor in technology, said he researched venture capital that had been put into stem cell companies and found only between $400 million and $500 million in the entire country.
Most of it, he said, was concentrated among a handful of companies, and that was unlikely to change until more was known about what the process will be for patenting research and getting treatments approved by the federal government.
“All that leads to a great deal of uncertainty, and venture capitalists don’t like uncertainty,” he said.
But as Connecticut has already divvied up $19.8 million for local scientists and labs, and plans to give out $80 million more, there are plenty of strategies for capturing some of the cash without applying for a grant.
A growing field of companies and entrepreneurs are offering equipment to stem cell scientists.
One is Biospherix, a Redfield, N.Y. firm that is marketing its XVIVO Phenotype stem cell incubator, “a powerful new tool” for the stem cell niche, according to the advertisement in the StemConn program. Sales reps were on hand to discuss details.
UConn Idea
A University of Connecticut scientist, Nejat Olgac, is also trying to get in on the act. He has designed a tiny automated device that he says can smoothly drill through the wall of a cell or egg to extract its DNA, a possible improvement over the glass pippettes commonly used to break through cell walls. Xiangzhong “Jerry” Yang was among the UConn scientists attesting to the tool’s effectiveness.
One of the few private sector scientists, Dr. Edward D. Wirth III, of Genron Corp. in Menlo Park, Calif., said new equipment sales could take off commercially before the science does.
“If somebody did come up with a new petri dish, and it was gangbusters, it would make a lot of money,” Wirth said.
Lawyers are also laying the early groundwork for new business. Frank J. Marco, a partner at Wiggin and Dana in New Haven, came to StemConn even though he thought it might not lead to any business for “10 years or so.”
