Located on the westernmost edge of St. Paul, Minnesota, adjacent to 280, the large glass building serves as an incubator of sorts for emerging life sciences companies, from clinical trials of experimental drugs to the start of new lab-based biotechs. . About a third of the UPS were started by faculty members at the University of Minnesota.
Founded in 2005, University Enterprise Labs is neither funded by nor officially affiliated with the university, but it is used to test pregnant 60-year-olds in the university’s labs and offices on Westgate Drive. of startups draw talent and inspiration from their immediate vicinity.
The 144,000-square-foot structure includes 33 full-size wet labs with fume hoods and approximately 20 dry labs without fume hoods, in addition to meeting rooms, offices, and common spaces. $6.4 million additional facility including shared group lab space opened in 2019.
Home to 18 Fortune 500 companies, Minnesota’s health sciences sector already has a strong profile in medical device manufacturing, academic research, direct-to-patient care, and retail distribution of health products. As private corporate ventures progress, the life sciences and biotech industries have a much less established footprint.
After five years as UEL’s executive director and chief executive officer, Diane Rucker stepped down this month to focus on her family. An engineer who trained at MIT and the University of Michigan, Rucker returned to MIT in 2012 where she completed an advanced master’s degree in business administration.
Her professional titles include 16 years at Seagate Technology in Minnesota and 5 years at General Motors in Michigan, as well as a Minnesota start-up, Carrot Health, and MIT and Harvard-run entrepreneurship. played a role in the accelerator of
Interim Executive Director Mike Berthelsen, former U of M’s vice president of university services, will lead the UEL until Rucker’s replacement is selected by the UEL’s 12-member board of directors.
The interview below has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What changes have you seen in the last five years?
A: What I’ve really seen is a stronger startup pool, more companies with solid funding — fewer ideas and more ready to scale. Pools are getting bigger and bigger. This is pretty cool for Minnesota.
Q: How would you describe it? what are some drivers?
A: I would like to introduce initiatives like Launch Minnesota by the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development. It has funded over 25 UEL companies in the $25,000 to $35,000 range. Not really a lot, especially for biotech companies, but enough to get you to the next level where you can start raising funding, most of our startups have two to his three founders there is a person Think of organizational building as what it takes to build a business around the technology, not whether it works. It’s about visibility, marketing, supply chain management, understanding scale and manufacturing.
Q: Tell us about the startup environment in Minnesota and the role UEL plays.
A: We recognized the need for connective tissue across the startup ecosystem. Startups, risk capital and funding, market awareness and start-up advocacy organizations, education such as college courses, governments and businesses, do they support or discourage start-ups from entering the market? mosquito?
The five elements here in Minnesota are individually strong, but the connection of the ecosystem as a whole has not. Governments can make it easier or harder to start a business. As such, many companies are incorporated in a different state than where they do business.
What’s happened in the last 5-7 years is that we’ve seen these connections start to grow across the ecosystem. We saw more funding. The Twin Cities Startup Week, which just started over the weekend, has seen incredible growth. There are many exchanges like this throughout the state. So when you start a company, you don’t start in isolation. Access a network of entrepreneurs, funders and mentors.
Minnesota’s five-year startup survival rate varies widely, between 1st and 4th in the nation. He said one of the reasons is that people actually think ahead. They don’t just jump into the market. They really take time to prepare.
Q: What are some examples of startup success stories that grew out of UEL Labs?
A: CoreBiome, which conducts microbiome analysis of genetic makeup to understand disease profiles, was launched around 2016. Acquired by OraSure Technologies in 2019 and spun off into a separate division of the company called Diversigen. They stayed with us for about 9 more months after the acquisition and we wanted them to stay longer but because of what they have planned for his next 5 years There was not enough space in the
Q: I heard that lab space is becoming a nationwide issue. You can’t turn an old law firm into a genetic lab.
A: Honestly, this is a common problem for companies incubating at UEL. As they grow, there aren’t enough places in Minnesota to send them next. No more 5,000 to 10,000 square feet of extra space. I wanted to.
A full-sized lab is approximately 1,000 square feet. Companies typically want to start a full-sized lab, part of a full-sized lab, or 1-2 labs. It has some pretty stringent heating, ventilation, air-conditioning requirements, and biosafety requirements.Zepto Life Technology has his new addition, his second floor, which is nearly 8,000 square feet.
Q: What does the future hold for Minnesota’s UEL and life sciences start-ups?
A: This is a good time for the board to get more involved in strategic planning and think about what they want to do with the startup community and what they can do in the next 5-10 years. The big question is what does the community need of us? …Twin Cities, and in Minnesota, what would it take to make Minnesota a truly powerful place in the world of life sciences?
We are already very strong in medical technology. We specialize in insurance with companies like UnitedHealth Group, retail with companies like Target and Best Buy, and logistics like CHS. There is a fair amount of movement with people across the industry. What do we do really well and what can be applied to life sciences and biotechnology? Target and Best Buy have survived by understanding what their customers are thinking. The retail industry has mastered it perfectly.
