MOMENTUM BIOSCIENCES
4entrepeneur interviews Christian Behrenbruch, Managing Director (Pt. 1/3)

by Richard Jones, Jr.

In addition to his managing role at Momentum Biosciences, Christian Behrenbruch, PhD MBA, is a Professor in the Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging, Department of Medical and Molecular Pharmacology, David Geffen School of Medicine and “Entrepreneur in Residence” at UCLA.

4entrepreneur: What is the origin of Momentum Biosciences?

CB: Momentum Biosciences (www.momentum-biosciences.com) was formed in 2007 to really address the lack of life sciences commercialization in the Los Angeles basin. It’s a very unique concept in that it is an incubator that is founded and funded by UCLA and Caltech faculty who have extensive commercial experience and want to provide an environment of facilities, service and expertise to foster early stage companies. A fairly large percentage of the technologies under development by Momentum Biosciences and its “daughter” companies come from UCLA and Caltech, although we have licensed IP from many other institutions, hospitals and universities in the US and internationally. We are also actively working with companies from UC Santa Barbara, UC Irvine and USC.

We enjoy a close working relationship with both UCLA and Caltech technology transfer offices and we have a pretty transparent relationship with the university administration. Because we’re faculty, we have the opportunity to see a lot of good technology in an early stage – but we also have to balance the way in which we take projects out into the commercial domain, and our obligations and responsibilities as members of an academic community. It can be tricky, but so far we’ve managed to do things well.

4entrepreneur: Why was it formed?

CB: By any metric, the greater LA area should be a mecca for biotechnology, nano-bio and medical devices. UCLA, Caltech, USC and slightly further afield – UC Santa Barbara and UC Irvine – are fantastic research universities. The combined grant funding in the life sciences, nature papers, patents, Nobel prizes, etc. is almost unparalleled anywhere else in the country. Yet despite this, most technology either flows north to the Bay Area or south to San Diego.

Technology has not traditionally been LA’s economic focus. Entertainment, logistics, the aerospace industry, real estate and energy have been the growth engines. We see a real opportunity to harness the talent and ideas that are created in our local institutions, utilize one of the finest public hospital systems in the US (for example, for clinical trials of new devices, therapeutics and diagnostics) and tap into a really well trained pool of scientists who are increasingly interested in being local. There have been a lot of changes in LA’s economy and although companies like Amgen have not “seeded” entrepreneurial environments in the way that, say, Genentech did – there are starting to be signs of movement and interest in starting new ventures. We’ve just heard about a new incubator getting started up in the Ventura / Woodland Hills area and we’re pleased to see that others also recognize this need.

4entrepreneur: Describe how the Momentum Biosciences company portfolio reflects its mission and it focus.

CB: There are really two parts to our portfolio. The first part is the “operational” part of our business. We run a fully equipped incubator in Culver City, about 7 miles from UCLA. Culver City is an “up and coming” part of Los Angeles and a lot of professionals, scientists/engineers and academics are starting to take root in Culver City. Given LA’s notorious traffic, our incubator is considered “accessible” and we have a lot of enthusiasm for its proximity to UCLA, Caltech, Airports, etc. Culver City has been fantastic to work with to set up this kind of a facility and is certainly worth considering for new LA-based biotechs looking for a supportive and responsive local administration.

Momentum Biosciences is the first incubator on the west side and really the only incubator of its type in LA. It’s staffed, heavily equipped (clean room, molecular biology labs, chemistry space, tissue culture room, radiation biology facilities, etc.) and we provide a full set of business services to the 8-10 companies we incubate at any one time. We have seed money to make investments into our start-ups (typically $500k, not usually exceeding $1m) and we also have a PEO (professional employment organization) that staffs all our early stage companies and provides cost effective payroll administration, healthcare, 401(k) administration, etc. The idea is that founders of a new company essentially need to turn up and do “science”. The fund, the PEO and the incubator are essentially three different businesses that work together to provide something unique and significantly de-risks an early stage venture.

The second part of our “company portfolio” are the start-ups themselves. We nurture a fairly broad range of companies in the life sciences, biotechnology, devices and materials science. We are interested in pure nanotechnology/materials opportunities as well – especially since many of the innovations in this space are relevant to biology. The interests and strengths of our Scientific Board are well represented in our companies – Dr. Jim Health from Caltech, Drs Michael Phelps, Owen Witte and Johannes Czernin from UCLA. We particularly like diagnostic technologies (IVD, imaging, biomarkers) because we believe that targeted molecular therapies will increasingly require more sophisticated patient selection and response assessment. We are very motivated by “theranostics” (a term I personally don’t like – but descriptive). Drug delivery systems and formulation strategies to improve the performance of existing therapeutics are also of strong interest to us. We do some more traditional devices and therapeutics too.

We’ll typically incubate a company for 12-24 months. Our goal is to de-risk a company by providing our infrastructure so that their primary “burn” is for headcount, IP and consumables (and a few regulatory costs perhaps). By the time a company leaves our incubator, we’ve stress-tested the IP, demonstrated that the technology works and have identified prospective corporate business development or licensing opportunities or further financing. Our current “crop” of companies are doing very well – although our standards are high. We’ve reduced over 100 prospective opportunities down to 8 that we really like … we expect to see in vivo data in pre-clinical models and some of our start-ups have even progressed further towards Phase 0.

… of course, a lot of this is speculative. It’s our first batch of baby companies. We’ll tell you how things are a year or two from now! The level of support we’ve had is amazing, however, and we have a lot of supporters in both the scientific and business domain who have stepped up to lend a hand and provide expertise and capabilities to what we are doing. It’s very heartening.

4entrepreneur: What would you like entrepreneurs to know about Momentum Biosciences?

CB: Well, we’re always interested to hear about good science and to meet with innovators who are committed to taking their technology to market. We don’t deal exclusively with LA-area inventors but we like people to come to us who see the value of the UCLA/Caltech/USC hub from the vantage point of conducting clinical trials and accessing the local talent pool. We are pretty innovative in the way that we finance companies and will often work alongside the founders to look at a variety of funding options and partnerships, probably beyond what a traditional “angel” does.

We are definitely “hands on”. We help run a business. We take a little “sweat” equity that we have to earn – this means that our interests are well aligned with that of our founding scientific partners.

( Part II will be featured tomorrow, 10/14, exclusive 4 entrepreneur Interview: copyright 2008 4entrepreneur.net )

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Tags: momentum biosciences interview