Start-Up News June 2007

For universities looking for homes for their early stage medical device technologies and individual entrepreneurs looking to move their innovative ideas out of the garage, a resource gap exists that new incubators are helping to fill. Namely, early stage device innovators need funding to build prototypes, conduct proof-of-concept in animal models, and create an infrastructure to support development efforts that will move technologies up the value chain to the point where venture capitalists will consider investing in them. Now, new incubators, working with universities (but not necessarily owned or run by them) and local economic development agencies are springing up with the mission of starting and sheltering early stage device companies so they can reach the first important milestone of an external founding round. (See, "The New Device Incubators," START-UP, June 2007 Also see "The New Device Incubators" - Scrip, 1 June, 2007.). These new organizations not only extend the capabilities of traditional technology transfer by creating new companies around university IP, but also serve other aims like regional economic development, or providing a training ground for students, in attracting companies formed out in the community to university incubators.

The University of Massachusetts, for example, recently started up a medical device incubator called M2D2 (for Massachusetts Medical Device Development Center) on its Lowell engineering campus, with $135,000 in seed...