Life sciences giant Johnson & Johnson Innovation announced the opening of a fourth JLABS accelerator in South San Francisco that will accommodate up to 50 startups that span the healthcare landscape.
It’s the fourth JLABS to open, following an original location in San Diego, a second in Boston and another San Francisco proper. Another is forthcoming in Houston in 2016, according to Melinda Richter, head of JLABS.
The new space is a 30,000 square-foot facility just south of San Francisco, where Johnson & Johnson said it will be attractive to startups up and down the peninsula. While the Bay Area is booming with tech and life-sciences, with numerous incubators already established, Richter said the JLABS model is unique among incubators, in that it doesn’t take any equity or first rights, unless a deal team from Johnson & Johnson determines that’s the appropriate action at a later time.
“That allows them to be free and really build value,” she said. The initial San Francisco spot, a 24-000 square-foot facility in the Dogpatch neighborhood, is at capacity and Johnson & Johnson needed a larger presence in the Bay Area incubator realm, Richter said. That facility is in partnership with QB3, also known as the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences.
“We knew we had to be here in a bigger way,” she said.
The South San Francisco JLABS has already identified 10 initial startups, including several that were named winners of its Quick Fire Challenge:
— Ab Initio Biotherapeutics, which uses directed evolution to engineer therapeutic proteins for immuno-oncology.
— Afferent Pharmaceuticals, which develops small molecular compounds that are aimed at treating chronic respiratory, urological and pain conditions.
— Alkahest, Inc, which is developing products to extend quality of life in aging and neurodegenerative disease, based on factors isolated from human plasma and blood.
— Applied Molecular Transport, an oral biopharmacueital developer to treat immune-mediated inflammation and metablic diseases; it recently announced a collaboration with Janssen Biotech on products for inflammatory bowel diseases.
— Audentes Therapeutics, which is developing treatments for patients with serious, rare diseases using gene therapy.
— Cortexyme, a therapeutics company that aims to alter the course of Alzheimer’s and other aging disorders by targeting a pathogen tied to nuergodegeneration.
— Driver BioEngineering, which is working on remote control of chimeric antigen receptor therapeutics.
— EbiBiome, Inc, which is developing precision microbiome engineering that targets problematic bacteria in agriculture and other areas.
— Goleini, Inc, which works on gene therapy for the treatment of primary open-angle glaucoma.
— MiNDERA, which is working on a non-invasive, high-precision skin diagnosis tests that seek a better understanding and diagnosis of skin cancer and other skin disorders.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
While the initial lineup is centered around biotech, Richter said health IT and digital health consumer-focused companies will be added, and that it views the spectrum of digital health as inter-related.
“It will cross the full spectrum of life sciences,” she said, including pharmaceutical and biotech, medical device, digital health and consumer health. “We cover it all, and that’s what’s exciting about it.”
For those capital-intensive biotech and device startups, having unfettered laboratory space and equipment will be a significant boon, Richter said.
The South San Francisco JLABS includes a collaboration with PerkinElmer, which will outfit the space with lab intstraments and software, along with training, OneSource Laboratory Services and on-site technical support.
Across its multiple accelerators, JLABS has some 80 companies and is accepting applications for South San Francisco and Houston.
