Start-ups have huge ideas and very little means to bring them into fruition. Pivot Park helps them by providing the extensive infrastructure needed, particularly in research & development. ‘We have pharmaceutical, chemical and analytical laboratories, including first-class equipment and the accompanying expertise.' Aduro Biotech Europe, formerly BioNovion, is one of the companies to use these elements to develop their ideas and to accelerate their business. Both Pivot Park and Aduro will be presenting their experiences related to precision medicines at the Dutch Life Sciences Conference on 24 November 2016 in Leiden.
Organon ceased to exist, but its spirit is very much alive. Pivot Park was able to prevent talent from going abroad by providing the company’s former researchers with the facilities they needed to start up their own companies. Successful examples are BioNovion, acquired by Aduro Biotech for many millions, and AcertaPharma, in which AstraZeneca took over the majority of the shares for even billions. Mirjam Mol, director of Pivot Park, believes that others will follow their examples. 'Pivot Park will soon be celebrating its fifth anniversary’, she said, ‘and our success formula can be applied to many other spin-outs who want to grow. We not only have the facilities, the equipment, and the expertise they need – we also support them by having the necessary environmental permits.’
Successfully drawing in venture capital
Andrea van Elsas cut in: ‘If it hadn’t been for Pivot Park, BioNovion would have had much more difficulty to arrange start-up financing.’ The Chief Scientific Officer of one of the first companies to populate Pivot Park in 2012 explained that venture capitalists need to be assured that start-ups will be able to follow through with their brilliant projects. And the fact that these have all the necessary facilities at their fingertips will often help to convince them. Van Elsas continued: 'At Pivot Park, we had access to turnkey laboratories and all the equipment and consumables we needed to develop our ideas.’ The biotech company’s ideas consist of monoclonal antibody therapies for the treatment of cancer. These therapies are based on the companies’ unique platform technology and expertise on cancer immunotherapy.
Tangible and intangible advantages
Mol added that equipping research laboratories is a costly business. It is unlikely that a start-up is able to finance this. At the same time, venture capitalists require some indication that a plan is viable. 'With Pivot Park, we break through this vicious circle. Start-ups have all facilities within easy reach. The companies are able to purchase activities, services and technologies on a modular basis - at a very reasonable cost. The equipment is modern and the people are very experienced and extremely well trained. The advantages for start-ups are both tangible and intangible.’ Thanks to the available expertise and equipment, many of them have already become very successful and, in turn, are drawing in more companies to the area.
For more information, visit www.pivotpark.nl