Improved facilities and resources are essential for the development of life-science businesses and start-ups. The mission of MBC BioLabs is to aid in the development of new businesses in the life sciences. MBC BioLabs enables enterprises to be quick, focused, and cost-effective by renting space as tiny as a single bench and giving these enterprising scientists access to technology worth millions of dollars. There is a fully equipped molecular biology core laboratory at each location, allowing businesses to begin conducting studies on day one rather than in year one. Entrepreneurs gain invaluable information on where to focus their efforts and how to speed up the innovation pipeline through Mission BioCapital’s partnerships with premier pharmaceutical and life-science businesses and the firm’s in-house venture capital arm. MBC BioLabs has been operating since 2013, during which time they have assisted in the beginning and development of 230 different businesses. Doug Crawford converted a service room on the University of California, Berkeley’s Mission Bay campus into the QB3 Garage in 2006. The Garage was first viewed with suspicion since it was the first technology incubator in the UC system. Their board of advisors warned, “It will never work.” That place will be like an ICU for struggling businesses. But in the first two years, four of the first six businesses got Series A venture capital, and a fifth was bought for $25 million.

The more people who heard about it, the more interested they were. The proximity of lab benches and equipment, as well as the sense of community among other business-minded scientists, attracted a number of these experts to the area. Because of this, in 2013 Doug leased a warehouse in San Francisco and renovated it from top to bottom. The end product is MBC BioLabs, an all-inclusive incubator with labs, offices, conference spaces, and a CRO facility manned by experts and equipped with millions of dollars worth of machinery. It was completely occupied in less than a year. MBC BioLabs is the leading biotech incubator in the Bay Area, with over 50 resident firms, a long history of successful alumni companies, and a second facility in San Carlos. To ensure that MBC Biolabs are always EH&S compliant, they have assembled a team of experts. They can help an organization with chemical reporting, safety training, getting rid of medical waste, transporting it, and more.

Almost everyone has a personal or family connection to someone whose life has been altered forever by a cancer diagnosis. Cartography is focused on finding druggable targets for cancers whose diseases they can’t treat at the moment. Therapeutics across a spectrum of modalities that are specific enough to only engage tumor cells, broad enough to target every cell in a patient’s tumor, and safe enough to minimize toxic side effects are what cartography is focused on. In the latter half of 2020, when MBC BioLabs was just getting started, a cartography department was added to the company’s second site in San Carlos. The Cartography Group was an integral part of the thriving Bay Area biotech community during their time at MBC’s Brittan Avenue location. As Cartography continues to develop a world in which cancer immunotherapies are guided toward the safest and most effective targets, they look forward to tracking its continuing scientific discoveries and progress carefully.

AI Dynamics, a nonprofit dedicated to ensuring that everyone has access to AI’s transformative potential, and Mission Bay Capital BioLabs (MBC BioLabs) have teamed up to host a competition for anybody interested in applying AI to life-science data. Douglas Crawford, Ph.D., founder and general manager of MBC BioLabs, claims that “artificial intelligence has the capacity to provide practical insights from complicated life-science data sets.” “Unfortunately, firms lacking the capacity to deploy AI technologies have not been able to find these insights. We’re thrilled to work with AI Dynamics to make this useful technology more widely available. AI Dynamics has promised to publicize the results of the models, and the winning projects will start within six months of the announcement.”

MBC Biolabs has formed strategic alliances with market leaders in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device industries, including ONO Pharmaceutical, Astellas, Amgen, and Servier. In their infancy, companies like Nitrome Biosciences have found considerable success with this software. For $37/hour, businesses and approved affiliates can take advantage of the Hot Bench Program-provided bench space by MBC Biolabs. Using MBC Biolab’s online calendar, one can quickly and easily schedule meetings at times that are convenient for their colleagues. Mission Bay Capital is always on the lookout for the most innovative thinkers in the industry, and MBC BioLabs is a prime location to find them. Both San Francisco and San Carlos, California, are home to thriving startup scenes, and MBC BioLabs serves both areas by providing fully equipped life-science incubator lab facilities. At a reasonable price, these turnkey labs let bio-entrepreneurs speedily reach major milestones in their businesses.