Biomedical Startups Bring Money, Jobs

April 26, 2010 | New Mexico Business Weekly, by Kevin Robinson-Avila

New Mexico has experienced a boom in biomedical technology in recent years.

About 170 biotech companies operate in the state, employing nearly 6,500 people, according to a 2008 study by the Battelle Institute. That includes some large companies, such as Johnson & Johnson, Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute and TriCore Reference Laboratories, which together employ nearly 2,000.

Many of the firms do little biomedical engineering, focusing instead on testing and analysis of tissue samples or drugs.

But Shannon Sheehan, president of the New Mexico Biotechnology and Biomedical Association (NMBio), said about half the work force is involved in biomedical engineering, with most growth centered in startup companies.

“Lots of startups have formed and are forming,” Sheehan said. “That’s where the real activity is happening.”

More than a dozen firms launched in the past few years to commercialize new biomedical technologies. Many continue to attract private equity, in spite of the recession.

Among them are:

• Santa Fe-based Vista Therapeutics Inc., which received $1.5 million in venture capital this year to continue developing a medical device that monitors bodily fluids in trauma patients;
• Senior Scientific LLC, which signed a deal in February with publicly traded Manhattan Scientifics Inc. to market breakthrough nanotechnology to diagnose and treat cancer;
• Exagen Diagnostics Inc., which has raised $5 million more in venture capital since the fall to market genetic-based diagnostics for cancer and other diseases; and
• IntelliCyt Corp., which has received $650,000 since October and is raising more capital to market technology that speeds up the work of flow cytometers.

John Elling, a serial entrepreneur in the life sciences industry, said new biomedical technologies attract investors because the market is huge.

“A lot of money is going into startups because the medical community is an avid consumer of new technology,” Elling said. “Medicine, including the pharmaceutical industry, represents one-sixth of our economy. You can always find some maniac in some pharma doing research who will buy what you’re selling.”

Biotechnology represents a more than $30 billion-a-year industry that has produced hundreds of novel drugs, vaccines, medical diagnostic tests and devices, according to NMBio.

Waneta Tuttle, founder and CEO of Southwest Medical Ventures, said investors are paying close attention to New Mexico.

“At least half of the patents generated these days at UNM and the labs are in the life science and biomedical engineering arenas,” Tuttle said. “Investors are closely tracking all that.”