Southern Research is launching a full-service biotechnology incubator and an accelerator later this year.
The news comes after the Birmingham-based organization created a venture studio and hired its founding director in November.
The incubator, accelerator and venture studio are part of Station 41, a biotech commercialization hub powered by Southern Research. It aims to help those with everything from a hypothesis to an established company grow their ideas through funding, expertise and wet lab space.
The Station 41 Incubator will cater to startup founders looking for wet lab space and support services. It provides wet lab and office space between 150 and 1,000 square feet, plus shared lab equipment and services. This will include a shared equipment room, 24-7 monitored freezer farm, proximity to full-service contract research organization and core facilities, entrepreneurship support programming, 24-7 security and building access and a communal break room and wellness room.
The Station 41 Accelerator will cater to academics with a hypothesis for therapeutic products. It provides non-dilutive funding up to $100,000 to advance new drug, biologic or diagnostic products, and is set to launch in the fall, according to the Station 41 website.
The Station 41 Venture Studio caters to those with a biotech product intellectual property that they want to license or joint venture. It is seeking licensing and commercialization partners to advance biotech products through non-dilutive and equity funding.
It will be operated by Tayo Sanders II, who will work closely with investigators at Southern Research to advance current drug programs. In conjunction with its partners, Southern Research has more than 20 drug programs currently in preclinical development. These programs hold potential for patients in therapeutic areas such as cancer, infectious disease and neurological disease.
Sanders spent the last seven years working with investors and startups in the biotech and industrial technology space. He led due diligence on more than 15 companies, totaling more than $130 million in deployed capital as a senior member of the investment team at the Boston-based VC firm, Anzu Partners.
Prior to this role, Sanders led technical diligence on Anzu’s first investment, Axsun Technologies, which was acquired for an eight-times return in the first quarter of 2019. He earned a bachelor's degree in materials science from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and pursued a doctorate in biomedical engineering at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.
In order to enter the venture studio, programs undergo a rigorous selection process that assesses scientific strength, commercial potential and regulatory considerations. The first set of spinouts, Cohort I, was created in November with fundraising to begin in November 2023.
Cohort I includes four companies:
- Litus Therapeutics is advancing therapies that target a critical feature of many cancers: silenced tumor suppressor genes. Litus expects that these new therapies will be powerful tools in the fight against triple-negative breast cancer as well as other solid and liquid cancers.
- Silanus Therapeutics is developing new therapies to disrupt protein-protein interactions responsible for cancer immune evasion.
- Pratum Therapeutics is using drugs that target the tumor microenvironment to improve treatment for a variety of cancers. Pratum anticipates its new therapies will not only lead to better outcomes for patients receiving immune checkpoint inhibitor treatment, but also expand the types of cancers that can be addressed.
- Divum Therapeutics is developing a new class of drugs to treat moderate to severe chronic pain without the side effects associated with traditional opioid analgesics. Studies by the Divum team indicate that potent pain relief can be achieved while reducing tolerance, withdrawal and addiction liability. Divum hopes this promising work could play a significant role in combating the opioid crisis.
Southern Research is also hiring for key roles to support the new biotech commercialization hub, including a client services manager and technical inventory manager for the incubator and a program manager for the accelerator.
