BJC, Wash. U join $30 million commitment to new bioscience group
St. Louis Business Journal
September 27, 2011
By Diana Barr
The Coalition for Plant and Life Sciences is evolving into BioSTL, a new organization to promote the growth of bioscience business in the St. Louis area, and has received an initial $30 million funding commitment.
Washington University, BJC HealthCare and the St. Louis Life Sciences Project have each committed $2 million per year for each of five years to the BioSTL, what organizers call "the next step" in a 10-year-old collective effort to increase economic activity in the medical and plant biosciences in St. Louis.
Most of the funding will go toward pre-seed and seed investments and support for new enterprises. Some will go toward BioSTL's efforts at regional collaboration to advance bioscience in St. Louis.
The Coalition, a group of local civic, business and academic leaders that began in 2001, played a leadership role in creating much of the local bioscience infrastructure, including the CORTEX science district in Midtown and Bio-Research & Development Growth (BRDG) Park at the Danforth Plant Science Center.
Now, BioSTL's organizers say a more formal organization is needed to coordinate and integrate the various elements and give the local bioscience effort a "coherent voice."
The Coalition will continue to convene as an advisory board but will become part of the new organization and be renamed BioSTL Coalition.
Donn Rubin, past executive director of the Coalition, is the new president and CEO of BioSTL. Marcia Mellitz, most recently vice president of business development for the Coalition and former president and CEO of the Center for Emerging Technologies , is BioSTL's vice president for program development, and Dan Broderick, a venture partner with Prolog Ventures , will be vice president for capital formation.
BioSTL will be chaired by John McDonnell, retired chairman of McDonnell Douglas Corp. , with initial board members Dr. William Danforth, chancellor emeritus of Washington U. and Coalition chairman; Steve Lipstein, president and CEO of BJC HealthCare; and Mark Wrighton, chancellor of Washington University.
"St. Louis is fortunate to have an extraordinary concentration of world-class scientists producing cutting-edge innovations in bioscience," Rubin said in a statement. "This new commitment positions the region to capitalize on opportunities to create and attract enterprises and jobs in a significant high growth 21st century industry."
