Albany Medical College
(also a 2014 RIS Seed Capital Funds grantee)
Location |
Albany, New York |
|---|---|
Project Name | Biomedical Acceleration & Commercialization Center at Albany Medical College (BACC) i6 |
Program | i6 |
Award Amount | $399,585 |
Matching Amount | $519,878 |
In 2014, New York’s Capital Region Economic Development Council (CREDC) identified the biotechnology sector as a significant economic opportunity for our region. Albany Medical College (AMC), which is collocated with the only tertiary care medical center in upstate New York and a newly established Biomedical Acceleration & Commercialization Center (BACC), immediately formed a project team to identify and survey national centers of excellence in this cluster to determine a best of class commercialization model. Feedback gathered this past spring was consistent: academic commercialization models that possess experienced bio executives, access to available seed capital, and efficient technology transfer processes have a much higher rate of success than those that lack these critical tools.
The BACC project will address significant gaps in the infrastructure of biomedical innovation in New York’s Capital Region, including (the lack of): experienced senior business leadership in biomedical innovation, knowledge of and training in best practices in technology transfer, and, in conjunction with the BACC Seed Fund, seed capital for regional emerging and startup biomedical innovation companies. With this three-pronged approach, AMC will help build an entrepreneurial culture, improve the processes by which ideas become products and companies, and provide critical technology transfer resources to companies, investors, and entrepreneurs.
Specifically, AMC will (1) build a comprehensive bio innovation curriculum to recruit and retrain accomplished C level executives, successful entrepreneurs, and military officers who have not had previous experience in biotechnology, in parallel with offering leadership and advanced business curricula to inexperienced startup CEOs within the bio space and (2) design and implement a robust, inclusive, efficient and accessible tech transfer model at the Medical College. AMC believes that these components are fully scalable, will dramatically improve patient outcomes and experiences, and that this initiative is key to sustaining and diversifying its regional economy.