I first met Irene Rombel just months after joining Delaware Bio in the Covid summer of 2020. At the time she was an executive with Spark Therapeutics, the pioneering gene therapy company.
As a strong believer in Delaware’s life science ecosystem, Irene saw value in Spark joining Delaware Bio and she made that happen. Soon after, she set out to build something new: a company using AI to transform how life-changing cell and gene therapies are manufactured. She made that happen too, the company was BioCurie.
Just a few short years later, BioCurie has been awarded a highly competitive $9.3 million ARPA-H grant to advance its novel AI platform for scalable biopharmaceutical manufacturing.
The award is the latest in a series of major recognitions for BioCurie, bringing both funding and validation as the company continues to invest in its technology, team, and partnerships.
Most importantly, this is tremendous news for patients. BioCurie’s work has the potential to accelerate access to more affordable cell and gene therapies for cancer and other deadly, debilitating diseases.
BioCurie’s progress reflects not only Irene’s vision and leadership, but also the palpable strength of an ecosystem that so many individuals and organizations have worked tirelessly to build over a two-decade period – the twenty years not coincidentally, since Delaware Bio was founded. The company’s early momentum has been supported by initiatives such as the EDGE Grants and, more recently, a $1 million investment from the Delaware Accelerator and Seed Capital Program.
And the focused, nurturing efforts of organizations including the Delaware Technology Park, the Delaware Prosperity Partnership, the Small Business Development Center and Innovation Space have been essential to creating the conditions for many a BioCurie’s success.
This is still the early stages for BioCurie. The same is true for Delaware’s life science sector… and while we are blessed with an abundance of major recent achievements to celebrate – the latest being Novartis’ multi-billion dollar acquisition of Synnovation Therapeutics portfolio of developmental cancer therapies and Wilmington PharmaTech’s announced $50 million investment to double their manufacturing capability – future success is in no way guaranteed.
The path to actually having a product on the market, much less profitability, is an arduous, expensive and uncertain one for homegrown life science enterprises. The full potential of our early-stage science and technology companies can only be realized through continued investment in the unique assets and impactful collaboration that make Delaware distinctive – and competitive with other venues.
That’s why we are actively advocating a series of proposals designed to ensure our state remains a great place for founders to start and grow new businesses. This includes creation of a new vehicle to provide matching support to young Delaware companies that win prestigious, non-dilutive federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grants. Such a program would incentivize the most innovative of our small companies to stay and grow here in Delaware, and, frankly, would simply bring us up to par with neighboring states and municipalities.
Recruiting and retaining the very best scientific talent in the world is another industry must, and we are seeking continuation of the STAR Fund, a successful new program we helped launch last year with the state. The STAR Fund keeps top STEM talent from our universities in Delaware by helping pay down student loan debt. Twenty STEM graduates benefited from the STAR Fund last year, talented young people with many options outside our state.
These are just two examples of opportunities to enhance our state’s attractiveness as the best place possible for life science innovation and investment to thrive. The industry is an agreed priority for state leaders on all sides and our policies must keep up with the dynamics of a highly-competitive global market – one where many states, regions and even countries would love nothing more than to make companies like BioCurie their own.
Michael Fleming is the president and CEO of the Delaware Bioscience Association.