MedTech Innovator Launches Biotech Accelerator Program

0
MedTech Innovator Launches Biotech Accelerator Program
MedTech Innovator enrollees

MedTech Innovator, a Westwood-based nonprofit that operates accelerators for medical companies, has launched a new biotech accelerator program.

The program, called BioTools Innovator, is taking applications from early stage biomedical and biotech companies for the program’s first company cohort.

 
The application window closes April 30. The first cohort of 10 companies is scheduled to begin the three-month accelerator program this summer.


Unlike many accelerator programs, BioTools Innovator will feature a competition for up to $200,000 in cash prizes and in-kind services, with four companies to be selected as finalists. A grand prize winner will be determined through a live audience vote.


“The launch of BioTools Innovator is the next step in our journey toward transforming health care through accelerating critical new innovations,” Paul Grand, chief executive of MedTech Innovator, said in the launch announcement.


“Drawing on our success with the MedTech Innovator program, which is now in its ninth year, BioTools Innovator will reach an entirely different sector of early stage companies developing life science and biology-driven tools and services that are poised to advance research and impact all areas of human health,” he added.


Funding for the BioTools accelerator program comes from the Frederick Gardner Cottrell Foundation, which was set up by Tucson, Ariz.-based Research Corporation Technologies Inc.; BroadOak Capital Partners of Bethesda, Md., also provided funding.


Research Corporation Technologies established the MedTech Innovator accelerator operation in 2012 and ran it internally for four years before spinning it off as a nonprofit in 2016. MedTech Innovator’s first program was aimed specifically at medical device companies.


After the spinoff, the innovator set up offices in Westwood. The accelerator expanded its program to target companies in the pediatric medical technologies market and then opened a small accelerator office in Singapore to draw in East Asian biomedical companies.


According to Kathryn Zavala, chief operating officer for MedTech Innovator, about 90 companies are enrolled in these three accelerator programs. That number will reach roughly 100 with the 10 new biotech companies added by the BioTools Innovator program.


Zavala said Research Corporation Technologies and pharma giant Johnson & Johnson of New Brunswick, N.J., have been the principal funders of MedTech Innovator since its spinoff.

 
She said the two companies provide the “vast majority” of the approximately $3 million in funding, with the rest coming from nearly two dozen corporate partners — including BroadOak Capital Partners — and a few government grants.


Zavala said about one-third of the funds ultimately end up being passed on to the enrolled companies that win the competitions.

 
Those competitions are intended to spur enrolled companies to master the program’s material and training, which include customized education, mentorships and the honing of pitches to potential investors.


“BioTools Innovator fills a growing need to help emerging entrepreneurs and startups in the life science tools area,” Bill Snider, a partner at BroadOak Capital Partners, said in the announcement. “The amount of breakthrough innovation from biology-
driven products and services increases annually, and more support is needed at the seed and early stage.”


Unlike accelerators that have all enrolled companies gather in a classroom setting, Zavala said, the MedTech Innovator model used remote learning from the outset. When the pandemic began, the operation went completely remote, and MedTech Innovator vacated its Westwood office space.


After the pandemic subsides, Zavala said, MedTech intends to establish a small administrative office on L.A.’s Westside,.


“We still intend to keep our remote digital model that we’ve had all along,” she said.

No posts to display