The University of California, San Francisco, is no stranger to commercialization of academic research. UCSF professor Herbert Boyer co-founded Genentech, the company that arguably kicked off the entire biotechnology revolution, back in 1976. In more recent years the life sciences-focused campus has continued to produce faculty-led spinoffs such as Intellikine, Calithera Biosciences, Principia Biopharma, and SeaChange Pharmaceuticals. It’s also home to the California Institute for Qualitative Biosciences, or QB3, which supports biotech entrepreneurs at UCSF, UC Berkeley, and UC Santa Cruz, and also does some seed investing through its Mission Bay Capital operation.
Still, it takes a lot of time and money to get a life sciences venture off the ground, and for UCSF faculty, postdocs, and students who are new to entrepreneurship, it’s hard to know where to begin. Getting them oriented was part of the mission of the UCSF Center for BioEntrepreneurship, a division of the university’s Office of Research—but for the last couple of years the center has been largely inactive, as its previous director, Gail Schechter, left UCSF some time ago.
To read the full, original article click on this link: A “Restart” for Entrepreneurship Programs at UCSF | Xconomy
