Research Triangle Park might be North Carolina’s hotbed for biotechnology, but the neighboring Piedmont Triad region has quite a bit going on in the way of healthcare innovation, too.
An economic development group within the 12-county region, which is home to companies like Piedmont Pharmaceuticals, Targacept and regenerative medicine company Tengion Inc., has just launched a new business accelerator.
Triad StartUp Lab is a five-week program that will match startups with mentors and provide them with co-working space at Elon University School of Law’s Center for Professional Development. Run by the Piedmont Triad Partnership and supported by the Lincoln Financial Foundation, it’s an extension of the PTP Next Business Competition program, which awards seed funding grants to area entrepreneurs.
The first class of eight startups includes five mobile or digital technology companies and three in the biotech space, including Blue Atom Technologies.
Blue Atom is using predictive modeling technologies licensed from Targacept to develop a search, modeling and forecasting engine for improving drug discovery. Chairman Mauri Hodges said in a statement that the company would focus its time in the accelerator on formalizing its marketing and sales strategy, plan and systems for its two software products.
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