AZBIO
Supporting the journey
Flinn Foundation program offers Arizona biotech entrepreneurs funding support, personal mentorship By BRIAN POWELL
A
Flinn Foundation program dedicated to the success of earlystage bioscience startups is providing Arizona entrepreneurs with critical funding support as well as personal mentorship and connections with the state’s biotech leaders. The program aims to address key recommendations in Arizona’s Bioscience Roadmap, the state’s long-term strategic plan to advance its bioscience sector. Six new Arizona biotech startups will be selected for the 2020 program. The application will be open for several weeks beginning in mid-September. The six competitively selected participants in the 2019 Flinn Foundation Bioscience Entrepreneurship Program— three from the Phoenix area and three from Tucson—were the first assigned a personal mentor in addition to receiving $30,000 each in nondilutive funding support administered through the Arizona Bioindustry Association, the Flinn Foundation’s nonprofit partner on the grants program. Travis Witzke, CEO of 2019 participant Desert Valley Tech, said the mentorship is an incredibly valuable benefit of the program as he seeks investors and makes his first attempt to take to market a product regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. “I come from medical transportation, not biotech, so having someone with decades of history within that sector has been invaluable to us,” Witzke said. “The grant money is fantastic and having a mentor increases that multifold.” The Mesa-based company is working on a cold chain storage and transportation container for blood products, organs, pharmaceuticals and vaccines that can reach further into remote battlefields and disaster areas than is currently feasible. The concept and use case stem from the personal experience of Witzke, a U.S. Army veteran. While serving in combat in Iraq, he was unable to stabilize an injured man enough to survive a helicopter evacuation without the necessary blood. Desert Valley Tech is one of 34 Arizona early-stage bioscience firms to participate in the Flinn Foundation program since it was launched by the Phoenix-based philanthropic grantmaking organization in 2014. The program addresses several of the goals of the Bioscience Roadmap, which Flinn commissioned in 2002 and updated in 2014. The Roadmap’s five overarching goals are: 138
AB | September - October 2019
WINNING WAYS: Desert Valley Tech CEO Travis Witzke, left,
and President Burt Skiba, center, are honored at the Flinn Foundation for the company’s participation in the Bioscience Entrepreneurship Program. Also pictured is program adviser Russ Yelton. (Provided photo)
• Forming an entrepreneurial hub; • Turning research into practice; • Developing bio-talent; • Promoting Arizona’s convergence of research, health care, and commercialization to economic partners in neighboring states, Canada, and Mexico; • Enhancing the state’s “collaborative gene” reputation. Executives of the selected companies in the Flinn entrepreneurship program also participate for one year as members of Arizona’s Bioscience Roadmap Steering Committee, a group of about 100 state leaders overseeing the Roadmap. The steering committee meets quarterly and has dedicated teams working to advance the bioscience ecosystem in the areas of entrepreneurship, legislative relations, risk capital, and talent. The entrepreneurship program participants present about their companies to the committee, receive up-close exposure to the bioscience ecosystem in Arizona, and collaborate with sector leaders as they grow their companies. “We have gotten in front of leaders and now better understand the resources and people available to us, which has been pretty nice,” Witzke said. Brian Powell is the communications manager at the Flinn Foundation.
ARE YOU A BIOPRENEUR? The application for the 2020 Flinn Bioscience Entrepreneurship Program will be open from Sept. 16 to Nov. 4, 2019. For more information about the program, including a 2020 brochure and list of past winners, visit flinn.org/entrepreneur. The winners will be announced early next year.