Only a few months after Pfizer dropped a bomb on Southeast Michigan with the announcement that it was closing its Ann Arbor campus, new companies and University of Michigan researchers are starting to move into the complex.
It's a move that is giving new life to the wet lab section of the campus and small sigh of relief for the surrounding community. Three life sciences companies have announced they will move into the space and Ann Arbor SPARK is in negotiations with a fourth for the remaining space of 34,400 square-foot lab.
This goes along with news that Ann Arbor SPARK is working on opening two office-style business incubators in downtown Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. The incubators will help nurture start-ups, which are expected to create more jobs. Ann Arbor SPARK is working with 31 businesses that are taking advantage of or are planning to use one of the three new business accelerators. Many of those businesses have ties to either university research or former Pfizer employees.
"Currently, no space exists in the Ann Arbor region that offers life science and biotechnology companies both infrastructure and room to grow; the wet lab incubator meets a unique and pressing need for these startups," Ann Arbor SPARK CEO Michael A. Finney says. "The wet lab incubator space is affordable and organized -- ideal for emerging companies and entrepreneurs. The flexibility offered by the space is highly attractive to a growing company."
The wet lab space at the Traverwood office park on Huron Parkway, north of Pfizer's main Ann Arbor campus, is the real prize. Such space is hard to come by and expensive to set up because it's equipped with highly sophisticated, climate-controlled, specially ventilated research facilities.
"There are currently more companies looking for this type of wet lab space than Ann Arbor SPARK can accommodate,'' Finney says.
New startups will lease 12,000 square feet of it while UofM researchers occupy the remaining 22,400 square feet. The three announced companies include:
OncoImmune Ltd., an Ohio-based company licensing patents from UofM and Ohio State University, would open an Ann Arbor office with three to four researchers initially working on treatments for multiple sclerosis and cancer.
SensiGen, LLC, uses proprietary technology invented by Dr. David Kurnit, UofM professor of pediatrics and communicable diseases, to improve the ability to diagnose early stage kidney disease and cervical cancer.
Genomatix Software Inc, a new Ann Arbor-based subsidiary of Munich, Germany-based Genomatix Software Gmch, which works with UofM, Wayne State University and Pfizer, has occupied 900 square feet of the incubator since August but expects to move to another location outside the incubator as tenants needing lab space move in later this year. The company hopes to have 40 employees within three years.
Source: Ann Arbor SPARK
Writer: Jon Zemke
THIS STORY FIRST APPEARED IN METROMODE
Enjoy this story?
Sign up for free solutions-based reporting in your inbox each week.