First published in Business First February 6, 2009
More than a dozen companies are taking advantage of lab space,
shared services and prime offices in the heart of the Buffalo Niagara
Medical Campus.
They have done so by co-locating at the University at Buffalo Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences.
The facility has become a hotbed for collaboration and research,
says Marnie LaVigne, director of business development at the center.
The building currently houses about 300 people, with nearly a third
working for private sector firms.
Since its inception in 2001, the Center of Excellence has worked
with over 50 companies, providing research and development support for
technology development projects, and subsidizing office and lab space.
It has received over $2 million in grants over the past 18 months to
help develop a high tech workforce in the region. This year, the
company expects to work with 15 companies.
“It’s exciting. It’s really all kind of coming together that we’re working together as a community,” LaVigne says.
Following are short profiles of five current Center of Excellence tenants.
CH3 BioSystems (www.ch3biosystems.com) was created in 2007 after
winning the Henry A. Panasci Jr. Technology Entrepreneurship
Competition at UB. The company, which opened offices at the Center of
Excellence this summer, is a biopharmaceutical supplier of molecular
tools and services for biomedical researchers. It has since received
funding through UB’s Center of Advanced Technology through the State
Office of Science Technology and Academic Research (NYSTAR).