When Sergey Dryga, Ph.D., began searching for laboratory space to use for his bioscience startup, Q Biotech, last year, options were sparse.
Instead of looking for dedicated labs, Dryga searched for commercial real estate locations that he could retrofit with his own laboratory equipment. After looking at "a number of spaces" over the course of a few months, he signed a lease in March for a four-story office building at 333 Rio Rancho Blvd. NE at a rate of $16 per square foot.
"It's office space, but there is no carpet," Dryga said. "If there was carpet, it'd be hard for me. You can't have carpet in the lab."
There's also room for expansion within the same building, he added. Still, Dryga said it's not ideal — but in a tight market and with limited money for a bootstrapped startup like Q Biotech, the uncarpeted, 1,112 square feet of traditional office space will do.
"For some biotech, it has to be dedicated space," he said. "If you work with, for example, dangerous pathogens, and you have to take not only security but biosafety measures, then it's only dedicated space basically.
"But for general molecular biology work, a space like this is perfectly acceptable."
Dryga founded Q Biotech in the fall of 2022. The startup wants to commercialize a chromatography instrument, called Inceptum, that life science researchers and companies can use to purify proteins.
Dryga currently has two pending patents for a prototype of the instrument that he said he built himself — "everything from mechanical designs through electronics design and programming."
"The idea for Q Biotech and my instrument is a simple system which could be a personal chromatography system, so that every scientist would have it on their bench," he said. "You put a cartridge into the instrument, press a couple of buttons, inject your sample, and then one hour, two hours later you get your purified proteins."
While the startup is still in the testing phase with Dryga's prototype machine, he said he's currently working with an engineer to finish developing the commercial system. He wants to sell that system to customers for around $5,000 — much cheaper than alternative instruments, which Dryga said can cost upwards of $100,000.
A native of Russia, Dryga has worked for life science companies in New Mexico for over a decade, including vice president roles at medical device company NanoDiagnostics — formerly known as BioDirection Inc. — and nanoMR Inc., an Albuquerque life science company acquired by DNA Electronics in 2015.
Q Biotech joins a host of other biosciences startups that have launched in the Land of Enchantment over the past few years — including Santa Fe-based Mercury Bio, which recently reported a $1 million raise under its new name; Albuquerque's BioFlyte, a bioaerosol company that expanded into a new corporate facility in March; and Circular Genomics, a diagnostic science company that also raised over $1 million nearly two months ago.
Some incubators, like The Bioscience Center in Albuquerque and the Santa Fe Business Incubator, feature lab space for those life science companies and opportunities for connection with other founders. But for startups like Dryga's — who said he considered leasing space in the Santa Fe Business Incubator but cost and proximity to his home pushed him away from that building — converted office spaces can offer a decent alternative.
Dryga said he wants to hire between 12 to 15 people over the next year to help commercialize his personal chromatography instrument. And he said he's talking with several angel investors for early investments that he said "will help me grow faster."
All of Q Biotech's work — lots of lab testing to perfect that prototype system — will, for the time being, be run out of its converted Rio Rancho lab space.
