Grant boosts research: Money will help St. Louis create new businesses
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
September 24, 2010
Efforts to create businesses around scientific innovations in the St. Louis region got an important boost yesterday through a $1 million government grant.
The grant was awarded to a collective of area research and business entities headed by the Coalition for Plant and Life Sciences and BioGenerator -- area organizations working to help the region capitalize on the scientific innovation taking place.
"We have great science in St. Louis, particularly at the medical schools and in plant sciences," said Donn Rubin, BioGenerator's executive director. "But we've not done a great job commercializing that science. Our goal is to create the ecosystem, to build the infrastructure around the research, to capture the economic benefit."
The grant, known as the i6 Challenge Grant, aims to push science-based entrepreneurship and business on a regional level and is administered by the federal Economic Development Administration in partnership with the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.
The grant application involved research institutions, universities, businesses and civic groups, including St. Louis and St. Louis County, the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, St. Louis University, the University of Missouri-St. Louis and Washington University.
"This was a multi-agency approach from the federal government's perspective, run through the EDA," said Denny Coleman, president and CEO of the coalition.
"But just as they were bringing together a collaborative approach to make these awards, they demanded that regions would come together in their responses, and I think that was extraordinarily helpful."
The federal collaborative awarded $12 million in grants total. Coleman said yesterday the St. Louis grant was the only one awarded to a region focusing on plant sciences as well as biomedical sciences.
BioGenerator, a not-for-profit that has helped six life-science companies get off the ground in St. Louis in the past 18 months alone, will take the lead in managing the grant.
The two-year grant will go primarily to identifying and developing early-stage scientific innovations.
"We're trying to build the portfolio of tomorrow by focusing on early stage technology," Rubin said. "That's what this grant is about. It's about reaching back to feed the pipeline."
The ultimate goal, Rubin, Coleman and others said, is to not just create the businesses around the science but keep them in the area.
"There's a lot of promising technology and lots of scientific discovery going on -- a lot to be tapped into," Rubin said. "Ultimately, these are companies that will create jobs in St. Louis."
