Salt Lake City-based accelerator Altitude Lab is hoping it can entice biotechs impacted by the uncertainty surrounding federal grants.
Altitude has secured a fund of “at least” $2.5 million sourced from private individuals, which the accelerator is planning to dole out to “promising” biotechs in parcels of between $100,000 and $250,000 of pre-seed investment capital. Selected companies will also get access to mentorship and 12 months of lab and office space at Altitude’s “rapidly-expanding life science hub in Salt Lake City.”
The accelerator is designed to be a "stopgap" for companies needing immediate assistance, an Altitude spokesperson told Fierce Biotech over email.
To take advantage of the opportunity, biotechs will need to have previously requested funding under the National Institutes of Health's (NIH’s) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program and received an impact score of 20 or less.
SBIR and the NIH’s Small Business Technology Transfer (SBTT) program account for a total of around $4.5 billion in annual funding obligations, making them “a cornerstone for biotech innovation,” Altitude said in a Feb. 19 release.
Salt Lake City-based biotech Recursion founded Altitude in 2020, and Chris Gibson, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO of Recursion and chair of Altitude’s board, is one of the private individuals contributing to the fund. He's joined by Halia Therapeutics CEO and co-founder David Bearss, Ph.D.
“Earning our early SBIRs was a pivotal moment for Recursion,” Gibson said in a statement. “The few million dollars that came in via the SBIR mechanism in our early years allowed us to build the fundamentals of our platform.”
However, Altitude alluded to recent SIBR-related policy changes as placing “an estimated 1,500 health-related startups in limbo, jeopardizing critical advancements in medicine, drug development and diagnostics.”
The fund announced today is designed to “help bridge this gap, while continuing to grow the rapidly-expanding life science hub in Salt Lake City by offering capital and infrastructure to high-potential startups currently at risk,” Altitude explained.
“Federal funding disruptions are stalling groundbreaking biotech research,” Altitude’s executive director Chandana Haque said in the same release.
“With this fund, we are doing our small part to help secure the future of biotech innovation in America, to build the ecosystem of life science companies around Recursion in Salt Lake City, and also ensuring that the best female and underrepresented founders—who receive only 15% of SBIR funding and 3% of venture capital—have an opportunity to build the next great biotech,” Haque added.
Fierce Biotech asked the NIH for clarity on the future of SIBR and SBTT funding but had not received a response at time of publication.