Earlier this month, the Trump administration directed the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to Specific types of funds It provides research institutions.
Although federal judges have Temporarily blocked Policy changes, government grants to early stage biotech startups may still face delays or eliminate them altogether.
Gibson, along with David Bearss, a serial biotech entrepreneur, is an opportunity to build a pre-seed venture capital fund called the Altitude Lab Pre-seed Pred-seed Venture Fund , the fund will seek to invest between $100,000 and $250,000 for investments in biotech companies from $10 to $15.
Gibson said startups eligible for NIH’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant should apply for the fund. The fund will be managed by Altitude Lab, a Salt Lake City, a non-profit, life science accelerator that was founded five years ago.
“The SBIR grant is deep inside me,” Gibson said. “The first thing I had to do when I started recursing was to write an SBIR grant, and we got $1.46 million from the federal government.”
Gibson said the 2014 funding helped recursively create its dataset that forms the basis for machine learning algorithms and drug discovery platforms. Since then, the company has raised multiple venture capital from investors such as Lux Capital, Menlo Ventures and Felicis, and it will be published in 2021. Recursive current market capitalization exceeds $4 billion.
Gibson said he hopes the fund “will fill the gap in new biotech” during a period of uncertainty in NIH funding.
“Early science is super risky. It’s hard to know how the outcomes of these companies emerge, but companies funded by SBIR grants are more likely to continue raising private funds,” Gibson said.
The fund will also help develop the biotech ecosystem next to recursion. The startups will receive 12 months of office and lab space in the Altitude Labs facility.
“We are creating our own mini Cambridge on the streets of Salt Lake City,” Gibson said.
