Daylong workshop is aimed at bioscience entrepreneurs
Despite being a growing hub for biomedical and life science technologies, the Upstate may need a science lesson, or at least a lesson in the business of science, according to South Carolina Biotechnology Industry Organization (SCBIO) President Wayne Roper.
“We’re hosting a daylong workshop where we teach people with technology and entrepreneurs with an interest in starting up their companies how to get their idea off the ground,” Roper said.
The workshop will be the fourth by SCBIO but the first to focus on medical device startups, a rapidly growing sector within the life science and biotechnology space, he said. “They’ve grown a tremendous number of jobs and … there’s going to be more.”
The bioscience industry employed more than 13,600 people in the state in 2012, with the largest subsectors including medical devices and equipment; bioscience-related distribution; and research, testing and medical labs, according to a study by nonprofit research and development organization Battelle, national trade association the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), PMP Public Affairs Consulting Inc. and the Bravo Group.
According to the same study, academic bioscience research and development expenditures made up 70 percent of total research and development in the state at $397,153 that same year, putting it in the first quintile of states.
Roper said roughly half of the state’s 90 medical device companies are located in the Upstate, which he partially attributes to the region’s “very entrepreneurial” health system and the fact that Clemson University has both one of the oldest biomaterials departments and one of the most active bioengineering departments in the country.
The entrepreneurial health system includes more than institutions such as Greenville Health System, Spartanburg Regional Health System and Bon Secours St. Francis Health System, he said – it also includes Spartanburg-based Gibbs Cancer Center & Research Institute alongside The Iron Yard Spartanburg’s digital health accelerator, among many other research hubs.
“When you put clinical practice, research and entrepreneurship together, you create a kind of innovation environment … that is unique,” he said.
Industry experts will lead small-group workshop sessions on topics such as rapid prototyping, patents, engineering, design prototyping, regulatory stipulations, product marketing and business idea pitching.
Roper said the workshop will showcase one of the state’s most prominent assets, the Southeastern Institute of Manufacturing and Technology’s $50 million prototyping and design center. Successful biomedical companies are often the first to develop a product prototype to test and present, Roper said, and the center’s capabilities range from common to exotic 3-D printing materials such as aluminum, stainless steel, titanium, copper, magnesium and plastics.
SCBIO has arranged a bus for workshop attendees in the Upstate. The bus will leave at 7 a.m. from the TD Gallery at CU-ICAR and will return at 6 p.m.
