Keeping them here

LETC incubator, cradle for the state's fledgling biotech industry, fills up as room becomes available.

By Steve Clark,   Business Report staff,   

The Louisiana Emerging Technology Center , located in a corner of LSU's campus where an Ag Center barn once stood, has been operational for months, though its function is still largely a mystery.

What it is: A $10 million, 60,000-square-foot cradle of Louisiana 's future biotech industry--a place where small startup firms needing special lab facilities to develop inventions get what they need to grow into something large and profitable. Not that every one will make it. But it's something they didn't have before--an opportunity.

The LETC, one of three wet-lab business incubators in the state, was sold out as of last November and has a waiting list of potential tenants. Its latest tenant is a company built on what appears to be a radically improved method of reducing the danger from hospital infections and terrorists' bioweapons. 

Other tenants include firms developing advanced cell therapy and robotic lab techniques for the life sciences industry.

Business Report sat down with Arthur Cooper , LETC's executive director and interim director of the LSU System Research and Technology Foundation, to get an update on the center's progress.

B.R.: How long before the LETC is completely built out?

"It's being built in four phases. We just completed the first phase [late last year]. That was a common area, five wet labs on the second floor and some core offices. Phase II, which is completion of the rest of the second floor, has been completed. Phase III is a clinical manufacturing facility we're building on the first floor. Construction has started on that. Phase IV is completion of the rest of the building. We're still working on funding for that."

How much money have you spent so far and where did it come from?

"State, federal, then LSU from some of its licensing revenues, though the biggest thing was state capital outlay. The total capital outlay was $16 million. Of that, we've committed most of it. We've signed construction contracts for almost all of that."

What about Phase IV?

"We're still talking to various sources. Some of the potential companies have potential grants. We're also looking at private donations--a lot of areas. The state has been very generous to this point. But just like a private company, any public entity that's trying to do this kind of infrastructure has to keep every iron in the fire. For instance, there may be a USDA program that comes along that we fit into, so you have to constantly monitor the public sources of funding."

Is the newest lab space already spoken for?

"I am negotiating with a number of potential tenants--either LSU startups or some that are LSU-related--to move into the new, three labs I will be opening in next couple of weeks. We feel like there's a lot of demand for the facility. We feel good about it."

Is that going to be enough space?

"It'll be a very short cycle to fill it. Everybody said, 'If you build an incubator it'll take three to five years to fill it.' We'll fill ours in two years. That shows there was a pent-up demand here. So I think that we need more research space like this, whether it's an incubator or what you call accelerator space, which is the next phase. With the activities that are going on at Pennington, the main campus and the LSU Ag Center, there's just a lot of exciting things that are coming out, and we need the infrastructure."

Why are wet lab incubators like LETC necessary to jump-start biotech in Louisiana ?

"This piece of infrastructure is so critical in the life sciences area because without it, you can't start a company. What researchers did historically is they'd stay at LSU within the lab as long as they could. But then, they would get investor money and--boom--they'd be gone out of town."

But isn't venture capital very hard to get in Louisiana ?

The rule of thumb is a [venture capitalist] will only get on one plane. They will not change planes to go see a company they're investing in. Before, particularly in the life-sciences area, most of that funding was coming out of the West Coast or East Coast. But if those people invested in technology down here, they'd want to move it, because that way they could watch their investment."

How do you get around that?

"The [LSU System Research and Technology Foundation] was instrumental in that. [Former foundation director] Paula Jacobi, [LSU System] President [William] Jenkins and all the LSU System chancellors went and basically got seed money from the department of economic development and created Louisiana Fund 1. As a result, we're able to make some earlier stage investments. Hopefully, that'll let the company grow to the point where, when we attract the next round of funding, they won't have to move. Two things we lacked before: facilities and funding. We didn't stand a chance keeping the companies here."

That's the whole idea, right? Keeping them here?

Yes. We're not going to attract the high-end [research and development] centers like Scripps-Howard, like Florida did. But we stand a substantial chance of attracting pharmaceutical manufacturing--but we need more of an indigenous industry, so there are experienced suppliers and engineers. That's why we need to grow some. It all starts with research. We have Pennington [Biomedical Research Center] and the LSU campuses here that are doing great research. That's the core."