California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences

"QB3" redirects here. For the video game, see QB-3.
QB3
Formation December 15, 2000 (2000-12-15)
Type Governor Gray Davis Institute for Science and Innovation
Headquarters UCSF Mission Bay campus
Location
  • UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco, UC Santa Cruz
Region served
 San Francisco Bay Area
Membership
 over 220 faculty
Parent organization
 University of California
Budget
 $5 million
Staff
 approximately 30
Website http://qb3.org

The California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) is a nonprofit research and technology commercialization institute spanning three University of California campuses in the San Francisco Bay Area: UC Berkeley, UCSF, and UC Santa Cruz. QB3's domain is the quantitative biosciences: areas of biology in which advances are chiefly made by scientists applying techniques from physics, chemistry, engineering, and computer science.

History

QB3 was founded in 2000 as one of four Governor Gray Davis Institutes for Science and Innovation (originally, California Institutes for Science and Innovation, or "Cal ISIs").[1] From a 2005 article written for the University of California Systemwide Senate:

The Institutes were launched in 2000 as an ambitious statewide initiative to support research in fields that were recognized as critical to the economic growth of the state—biomedicine, bioengineering, nanosystems, telecommunications and information technology. Moreover, the Cal ISIs were conceived as a catalytic partnership between university research interests and private industry that could expand the state economy into new industries and markets and “speed the movement of innovation from the laboratory into peoples' daily lives” (Governor’s Budget summary 2001-02). The four research centers operate as a partnership among the University, state government, and industry, and each involves structured collaborations among campuses, disciplines, academics researchers, research professional, and students.[2]

South entrance to Byers Hall, the QB3 building on the UCSF Mission Bay campus. Photo: Elisabeth Fall

Leadership

QB3 is directed by Regis B. Kelly, a neuroscientist formerly executive vice-chancellor at UCSF from 2001 to 2004. Kelly's office is in the central QB3 office suite at the UCSF Mission Bay campus. On each UC campus, QB3 is led by a campus director, who is an active research scientist: at UC Berkeley, Susan Marqusee; at UCSF, Nevan Krogan; at UC Santa Cruz, David Haussler.

Faculty

Research faculty are the foundation of QB3. QB3 currently has about 240 faculty members: about 100 from UC Berkeley, 85 from UCSF, and 55 from UC Santa Cruz.[3] The research interests of these faculty fall under the umbrella of the quantitative biosciences. QB3 scientists tend to be bioengineers, biophysicists, or pharmaceutical or computational biologists. Synthetic biology is strongly represented. Members of QB3 include Shuvo Roy, Elizabeth Blackburn, Steven Chu, Joseph DeRisi, David Haussler, Jay Keasling, Arun Majumdar, and Harry Noller.

Research

QB3 member scientists choose affiliations with one of nine research themes:

Activities

A major function of QB3 is to make connections between scientists in different disciplines and between entrepreneurial scientists and business mentors and venture capitalists. QB3 administers buildings custom-designed to facilitate interaction and core facilities intended to bring together researchers from different fields. QB3 also provides networking services for applied research and technology commercialization.[4] QB3 is not a technology transfer office and does not handle patent applications.

Byers Hall, the QB3 building on the UCSF Mission Bay campus, seen from the northeast. Photo: Elisabeth Fall
Stanley Hall, the QB3 building on the UC Berkeley campus, seen to the west from Evans Hall. Photo: Elisabeth Fall

Startups

QB3 assists life science entrepreneurs in the San Francisco Bay Area seeking to commercialize their research.

QB3 supports basic and applied research in selected regions of pharmaceutical chemistry through its sponsored-research agreement with Pfizer.[5][6]

QB3 operates one full-service incubator and two campus incubators, and is a partner in an affiliated shared med/tech laboratory near the Stanford campus.

The QB3 Garage@UCSF was founded in September 2006[7] in Byers Hall on the UCSF Mission Bay campus, and the QB3 Garage@Berkeley was launched in April 2010 in Stanley Hall on the UC Berkeley campus.[8] The Garages offer laboratory space to spinoff companies affiliated with the University of California. Garage tenants pay market rates for increments as small as 120 square feet (11 m2) and have the opportunity to use QB3 core scientific facilities (but pay standard rates). There is a time limit of two years for occupancy.

In April 2011, QB3 and Wareham Development, a real estate company, announced that a 9,300-square-foot (860 m2) space in west Berkeley would house the QB3 East Bay Incubator, which launched in June 2011.[9] The status of the QB3-EBIC as a multi-company space is currently uncertain.

In May 2013, QB3 and Dewey Land Company announced a partnership to renovate and outfit a 24,000-square-foot (2,200 m2) former warehouse in San Francisco's Dogpatch neighborhood as a full-service life science incubator. The building, "QB3@953," opened in October 2013.[10] Now fully occupied, the building houses about 45 startups. (The number fluctuates as tenants leave and move in.)

In August 2014, QB3 and StartX announced a partnership in a med/tech incubator, named StartX-QB3 Labs, located near the Stanford campus and Stanford Medical Center in Palo Alto. It has the capacity to house 16 companies.[11]

In 2009, QB3 director Regis Kelly and associate director Douglas Crawford established Mission Bay Capital (MBC),[12] a venture capital fund currently standing at $11.3 million. MBC exists outside the University of California system but is managed pro bono by Kelly and Crawford. MBC's mission is to make seed-stage investments in biotech companies emerging from the University of California and return 20% of profits to QB3. 80% of profits will return to the limited partners: private investors who contributed to the fund.[13] MBC's portfolio currently includes Redwood Bioscience,[14] a company based on "aldehyde tagging" technology developed in the laboratory of UC Berkeley professor Carolyn Bertozzi; and Calithera,[15] a cancer therapeutics startup launched by UCSF professor Jim Wells. (Bertozzi and Wells are members of QB3.)

In May 2013 QB3 and Mission Bay Capital announced a partnership with major industry allies Bayer, Novartis, Pfizer, and Roche to identify and fund promising life science startups in the San Francisco Bay Area.[16][17]

The QB3 Startup in a Box program provides scientist-entrepreneurs with resources to start a company, such as legal advice and banking services.[18]

December 2012 saw the introduction of the QB3 Accelerator, a membership and purchasing program for life science startup companies.[19] In September 2013 the program was merged with a similar initiative at BayBio, the San Francisco Bay Area's regional trade association:

Education

QB3 is involved in a number of educational initiatives.

QB3 does not offer accredited courses, nor does it hire faculty.

Campus sites

In July 2011, QB3 announced that it was reorganizing internally to concentrate entrepreneurial activities and industry partnerships into a division called the InnoLab, and that the campus sites would focus on academic research.[22]

References

  1. ↑ Governor Gray Davis Institutes for Science and Innovation. Ucop.edu. Retrieved on 2013-11-24.
  2. ↑ http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/senate/news/source/Calisi.pdf
  3. ↑ Faculty. QB3. Retrieved on 2013-11-24.
  4. 1 2 http://www.bayareaeconomy.org/media/files/pdf/TheQB3ModelFinalWeb.pdf
  5. ↑ Pfizer and QB3 form alliance to advance a broad range of research | Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering | UC Santa Cruz. Cbse.ucsc.edu (2008-07-08). Retrieved on 2013-11-24.
  6. ↑ Pfizer-QB3 Drug-Discovery Pact Moving Forward Despite Minor Snags | Biotech Transfer Week. GenomeWeb. Retrieved on 2013-11-24.
  7. ↑ Biotech babies born in 'Garage' - San Francisco Business Times. Sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com. Retrieved on 2013-11-24.
  8. ↑ ‘Garage’ incubator expands to UC Berkeley campus - San Francisco Business Times. Bizjournals.com. Retrieved on 2013-11-24.
  9. ↑ QB3 houses mavericks both old and new - San Francisco Business Times. Bizjournals.com (2011-04-15). Retrieved on 2013-11-24.
  10. ↑ .
  11. ↑ http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/27/startx-and-qb3-open-a-biotech-lab-in-palo-alto/
  12. ↑ Mission Bay Capital. Mission Bay Capital (2012-10-30). Retrieved on 2013-11-24.
  13. ↑ QB3 collaborates with Mission Bay Capital Fund to provide startup capital for UC scientists. News-medical.net (2009-10-28). Retrieved on 2013-11-24.
  14. ↑ Protein-Chemical Design for Optimized Conjugate Therapeutics. Redwood Bioscience. Retrieved on 2013-11-24.
  15. ↑ Calithera BioSciences. Calithera.com (2013-10-29). Retrieved on 2013-11-24.
  16. ↑ Roche, QB3 target life sciences startups in funding plan - San Francisco Business Times. Bizjournals.com (2013-05-17). Retrieved on 2013-11-24.
  17. ↑ Bayer inks startup matchmaking deal with QB3, Mission Bay Capital - San Francisco Business Times. Bizjournals.com (2013-05-15). Retrieved on 2013-11-24.
  18. ↑ QB3 unwraps ‘Startup in a Box’ - San Francisco Business Times. Bizjournals.com (2011-09-23). Retrieved on 2013-11-24.
  19. ↑ New QB3 Accelerator directs biotech startups to the fast track - San Francisco Business Times. Bizjournals.com (2012-11-30). Retrieved on 2013-11-24.
  20. ↑ http://ccb.berkeley.edu/
  21. ↑ http://www.synberc.org/
  22. ↑ http://qb3.org/news/articles/2011/07/qb3-restructures-creating-innolab-focus-technology-commercialization
  23. ↑ http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2005/11/6430/qb3s-inaugural-event-features-announcement-major-partnerships-indus

External links

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