Source: LA County Economic Development Corporation

Los Angeles has the opportunity to catalyze the city’s growing life science industry by nurturing innovation nodes in naturally occurring areas. But where are those areas?  A great example is the Los Angeles Bioscience Corridor, a 4-mile stretch of Northeast Los Angeles surrounded by California State University, Los Angeles (Cal State LA), USC Health Sciences Campus, and Grifols, Inc. And soon, Agora Partners and ASG Real Estate will be adding HATCH to the growing list of bioscience resources in this corridor. The Hatch project is an adaptive reuse project that will bring 18,000 square feet of commercial wet lab space to the market, by third quarter of 2018. The Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation (LAEDC), the City and County of Los Angeles have been instrumental in supporting the project.

The corridor is also becoming better able to nurture entrepreneurs, startups and the growth of early-stage companies.  One of HATCH’s partners, Cal State LA, is scheduled to open the LA BioSpace, a bioscience incubator in 2018. The LA BioSpace incubator will provide up to 25 startup businesses with access to low cost space and equipment, allowing them to focus more resources on research and growth. The Incubator will help capture those Cal State LA students looking to stay in Southern California and start their own businesses. As successful start-ups thrive and outgrow incubator space, facilities such as HATCH will allow a natural progression to take place –  giving students’ startup companies a permanent local home. This is all part of the pervasive energy along Valley Boulevard in what Jose Gomez, Cal State LA’s Executive Vice President hopes one day will be known as “the Biotech or Bioscience Valley.”

In addition to LA BioSpace, Cal State LA also launched LA BioStart, a Bioscience Entrepreneur Boot camp this past summer. LA BioStart is a five-week training program funded by the U.S. Economic Development Administration in collaboration with Cal State LA, the Biocom Institute, and the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator. The training program seeks to provide startup bioscience companies with mentoring, training, and business proficiency. The program is already exceeding expectations for all those involved.