CvilleBioHub, a nonprofit biotech accelerator and education organization, has received a $100,000 grant from Go Virginia, a state economic development initiative.
The organization was founded in 2016 and serves as a point of convergence for biotech startups in Charlottesville and Albemarle County.
“We are seeing growth and have become the go-to resource when thinking strategically about biotech in our community,” Executive Director Nikki Hastings said. “We have built strong connections between people and companies and helped bridge that gap to the [University of Virginia].”
It is the third grant from Go Virginia. The largest was a $548,000 grant in 2019, which helped launch the organization.
Hastings said the latest grant allows the CvilleBioHub to address the lack of laboratory space in the region. Biotech startups need access to quality lab space and CvilleBioHub has investigated the issue over the last several years. Through the process, the organization connected with a real estate company, and Hastings is hopeful more lab space will come online in the future.
“We have been studying the models and looking at what other people have done,” Hastings said. “We are creating an advisory group around this issue.”
She said the biotech sector in the Charlottesville-Albemarle area is focused on innovation, as opposed to the Richmond biotech sector that is centered on pharmaceutical manufacturing. One example she cited is Luminoah, a med-tech company behind a portable feed tube system for children. Another is Slate Bio, an immunotherapeutics company focused on an autoimmune disorder and started by serial entrepreneur Andy Kraus.
Hastings said the biotech sector in the Charlottesville-Albemarle region has 75 companies with a total of 2,500 employees. The companies are an economic engine, she said, citing a recent study showed that every job created in the region’s biotech sector created 2½ more jobs.
Hastings helped found the organization and took over as executive director in 2018. She earned her doctorate in biomedical engineering from the University of Virginia and joined a startup that was based on her thesis dissertation. She moved into an operations role and found she was able to connect the science and business areas in a startup.
She said a lot of biotech startups have a good grasp of the science but not business. CvilleBioHub helps founders understand the need to think about bringing products to market and not just as clinical research.
These companies are usually “early-stage spinouts, novel concepts. It’s a lot of things that are seeded at the university,” she said. “They turn into commercial opportunities to grow and build a company around those ideas.”
Hastings said the region has seen an increase in investor funding. There have been more investments recently and the size of the investments have been larger.
CvilleBioHub hosts monthly events aimed at connecting the biotech community with investors and others. They also invite people from the general community to learn about the sector and the innovative companies in the region.
