Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

Life Science Tennessee spent Tuesday intermingling with biotech entrepreneurs, innovators, and healthcare professionals in Knoxville. It’s part of their statewide mission to help put Tennessee on the national radar as a biotech hub.

The organization hosted an afternoon session of its Life Science Venture Program educational series, this time focused on helping entrepreneurs navigate pathways to build and scale their own lab space. Establishing a functional, compliant, and efficient lab is a critical milestone for emerging companies, and the decisions made early can have lasting impacts on cost, productivity, and scalability.

An international company, Avantor, spoke with local founders about their laboratory designs, furniture, products, and services. When starting, incubators and academia often offer innovators accessible lab space at the lowest cost. However, once a biotech founder outgrows a more confined lab space, moving up in size costs a pretty penny.

 

The size and cost of a lab are completely dependent on the needs of the founder. Some founders can work efficiently in a modular, mobile laboratory unit, while others need high ceilings, advanced ventilation systems, fume hoods, and complex plugins. The takeaway? Laboratories are not a one-size-fits-all.

However, during early-stage research, development, and testing, incubator labs are a great fit.

Following the presentation by Avantor, Rickey McCallum, the Executive VP for Innovation, Research Partnerships, and Economic Development, and Bill Malkes, the Director of the Spark Innovation Center, provided tours of Innovation South’s new laboratories on the third floor.

Following the tour, participants joined others in the life science space at Calhoun’s On The River for a Beer & Biotech industry networking opportunity.

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