The California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) at UC Berkeley will open a new biotech incubator on Thursday, May 6, hoping to duplicate the success of the QB3 Garage@UCSF, which has helped birth more than 28 biotech startups since 2006.

Recent UC Berkeley Ph.D. graduate Wesley Chang is the QB3 Garage@Berkeley’s first tenant, occupying one-eighth of an 800-square-foot windowless basement room in the campus’s Stanley Hall, and saving a lot on the costs of getting his new company, Aperys LLC, off the ground.

“This is a good fit for us, because we have access to the Biomolecular Nanotechnology Center, which is right across the hall,” said Chang, a former UC San Francisco post-doctoral fellow who hopes to sell specialized cell culture platforms that allow researchers to grow nerve cells in precise patterns to simplify experiments. “With the mixed capabilities here, including microfabrication and cell culture labs, we can do our research without having to put up our own infrastructure.”

Early-stage costs, including lab space and expensive equipment, are a big hurdle for start-ups, which typically have few investors. Chang, for example, has a small business grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to tide him over until the next phase of funding, whether it’s additional federal funding, venture capital or from angel investors.

“I’m even now applying for money that will allow us to move on to the next phase, and at the same time to start building a base of customers that potentially could be recurring customers for our devices,” he said.

Within two years, it’s expected that Aperys will be out the door to make room for other nascent companies.

“We hope that this business incubator will jumpstart new companies with origins in UC research labs,” said Susan Marqusee, director of QB3′s UC Berkeley branch and a professor of molecular and cell biology. “These are almost pre-start-ups that would find it hard to lease the small amount of space they need. Instead, they can rent a small amount of bench space from the QB3 Garage@Berkeley, benefit from our core research facilities and world-class scientists and engineers, and get themselves ready to move to the next level. It’s our hope that this innovative approach will help ensure that discoveries made by QB3 and UC Berkeley researchers will achieve their potential.”

The garage model proved successful at QB3′s UC San Francisco branch, where many of the 28 original start-ups on the UCSF Mission Bay campus and in the surrounding neighborhood have successfully landed follow-on funding, and one has already been purchased by larger companies. Sixteen of those companies were launched in the past year.

The opening celebration for the QB3 Garage@Berkeley is open to the public, and is scheduled for 4-6 p.m. on Thursday, May 6, in the Stanley Hall atrium.

For more about technology incubators on UC campuses, check out UC Newsroom.

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