SAN FRANCISCO—City leaders celebrated the 10th anniversary of the “Silicon Valley of Bioscience” on Wednesday at the University of California San Francisco Mission Bay bioscience hub.
“Designed from the ground floor as a center for collaboration and discovery, Mission Bay is at the very heart of what makes San Francisco the Innovation Capital of the World,” said Mayor Ed Lee.
Also in attendance were UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann, former mayor Willie L. Brown, Jr., Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Gov. Gray Davis, and Nobel laureate J. Michael Bishop, M.D., who led the development of Mission Bay as UCSF chancellor from 1998 to 2009.
The bioscience hub hosts nearly 4,000 UCSF researchers, clinicians, and staff, and is the epicenter of a collaborative ecosystem of 50 bioscience startups, 9 established pharmaceutical and biotech companies, 10 venture capital firms, and the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3).
Mission Bay enables anyone with a credit card to rent space for their bioscience startup—a valuable asset to aspiring entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs are trying to change the world in a room where two different companies share the same tiny desk—this is the startup incubator of the bioscience hub, said Douglas Crawford, associate director of QB3.
“I think it’s a great location—the access to SF faculty is wonderful,” said Greg Kapp of Omniox.
“It’s relatively large now, we’re at eight people,” Kapp said. “When we started we were at two people. ... There just aren’t [many] spaces where you can rent 200 square feet, get started, grow, generate that initial data that helps you grow to eight people.”
