BUS604: Innovation and Sustainability

Background

Harlem Biospace is a coworking space and incubator within the health and biotech sector that searches for ways to reduce the barrier for turning biotech ideas into products. By offering access to a shared work space and an equipped bio lab, Harlem Biospace helps innovators overcome the financial strain of expensive equipment and New York City's high rents. It is one of 25 incubators that have received funding from the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC).

In Essence

Harlem Biospace provides competitively selected, early stage life science companies (including those from local research universities) access to industry-specific facilities and equipment. Unlike software research, biotech research needs a wet lab (a lab where chemicals are handled in liquid or volatile states with direct ventilation and special piped utilities), microbench space, and expensive specialized laboratory equipment. Harlem Biospace offers access to top-of-the-line equipment, including turnkey access to a cell-culture hood, incubators, benchtop centrifuge, autoclave, chemical fume hood, microscopy, freezers, and fridge space. Harlem Biospace members have unlimited 24/7 access to the physical space. As part of its role as an incubator space, Harlem Biospace provides mentorship, business support, and programming expertise. It offers one-on-one mentorship guidance with leading scientific mentors, investors, and practitioners. In its role as a coworking space, Harlem Biospace creates opportunities for like-minded biotech entrepreneurs to share ideas and experiences. Harlem Biospace tenders and hosts a series of events and classes on the business of biotech and launching a small business, covering such topics as the utilization of technology, legal issues, and business pitching. This CCS also hosts open events for the broader community on the future of biotech and other related issues.

Impact

Harlem Biospace is creating opportunities for innovation within the biotech sector. It helps in part by optimizing the cost of testing ideas, providing start-ups with a scientific lab and its equipment at an affordable price. In addition to having a space catered to industry-specific needs, Harlem Biospace offers general training and business development ideas through access to biotech experts with strong business acumen. Harlem Biospace leverages the city-level ecosystem of medical and health institutions and affiliated universities. Mentorship expertise from such institutions leads to an alignment of product development with local demand. These different forms of engagement and alignments allow Harlem Biospace to contribute to the local health sector innovation and be an active participant in the larger city-level biotech ecosystem. Harlem Biospace is located in a rejuvenated building in an old industrial area in Harlem now undergoing a dramatic revitalization. It is serving as a trigger for neighborhood transformation by providing a high-quality business infrastructure and creating a new node for the city-level biotech ecosystem. The NYCEDC strongly supported and subsidized this incubator on its launch precisely because it anticipated this impact on urban regeneration.

In Practice

Project in Focus

EpiBone (http://www.epibone.com) is a bone reconstruction venture that allows patients to "grow their own bone". EpiBone started at Harlem Biospace; eventually it received more than $5 million in funding and was able to expand its team to 15. Harlem Biospace enabled the company to get started with just a small team and without a need to invest in lab infrastructure. The company's pioneering technology uses a scan of the patient's bone defect and the patient's own stem cells to construct and cultivate a defect-specific autologous-like bone graft. EpiBone is strategically positioned to provide a superior bone graft that will provide an exact defect repair, a simplified surgical procedure, improved bone formation and regeneration, and shorter recovery times, without the complications of foreign body implantation, to the more than 900,000 patients who undergo bone-related surgeries each year.