With its many medical and academic institutions, Minnesota is a cradle of biotech ideas. If state representative Tim Mahoney has his way, the state’s government will help many more of them grow into biotechnology products.
Mahoney, a democrat from St. Paul, has served two years as head of the Biosciences and Emerging Technologies Committee. He and his committee colleagues spent the first year, he says, exploring Minnesota’s diverse bioindustry, which includes biomedical devices, biopharmacology, bioagriculture, and biofuels.
Then, Mahoney says, “we focused on policies and state investments that would enhance what we had.” In 2008, the committee saw the first of those investments begin when the Legislature committed to build 500,000 square feet of lab space at the University of Minnesota.
Mahoney hopes to encourage an easier path from lab to manufacturing that includes clearer, faster contract authorization and more flexible work arrangements for people involved in technology transfer.
Professors who thinks up a marketable biotechnology, for example, should be able to work part time at the university and part time for a startup company that’s based on their ideas, he says.
Mahoney is working on other partnerships between schools and industry as well. He thinks community colleges should offer instruction on working in a clean room, a skill important for many biotechnology jobs. He helped St. Paul Technical College get a state-funded clean room and hopes that other schools will follow.
Current and future community college clean rooms, he says, can also serve as inexpensive lab space for small, Minnesota-based startup companies. “We’re looking to bring the cost down for basic research,” he says.
As basic research costs go down, Mahoney hopes that biotechnology startup funding will increase. “Most venture capital is located on the East and West coasts, and Minnesota doesn’t get as much money as we need or should get,” he says. “If a company puts a million dollars into research, they could get $200,000 back as a refundable tax credit to put into research in Minnesota,” he says.
State money is another potential source of biotechnology startup money, he says. Minnesota’s encumbered funds often sit in a bank account until legislators decide how to deploy them. Mahoney suggests putting the interest those funds generate into matching-fund partnerships with venture capital funds to encourage venture capital investment in the state.
Mahoney also advocates keeping state university and college tuitions affordable so that “our smartest kids can get to college and stay in college and not be so burdened with debt that they have to go into business rather than into science,” he says. “The geeks of today are going to be the rock stars of tomorrow, and we need to help them blossom in the state of Minnesota. We have great fundamentals here, and we need to have the will to build on those great fundamentals.”
