There is an outbreak of urgent funding opportunities for small biotechnology companies.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are available to small biotechnology and medical device businesses to fight COVID-19. The money is in the form of non-dilutive grants, contracts, and also in exchange for equity positions in your company. For example start-up incubators may offer small seed funds of $25,000-$50,000 in exchange for residency, mentorship and an equity position in your company. Other funding includes large multi-year grants of $5,000,000 or more offered by the Department of Defense. The monies may bring forth the best and brightest ideas from biotechnology and medical device start-ups and other small businesses. These funded innovations could be critical in the fight against COVID-19 and other infectious diseases. The solutions to the current crisis may help us improve healthcare and disaster readiness for years to come.
The money is coming from public and private sources. For-profit and non-profit institutions. Military and civilian agencies. These funding sources accelerate the development and availability of transformative technologies and approaches to protect Americans from health security threats. Here is a partial list and links to some of the Health and Human Services and Department of Defense related funding agencies: NIH-SBIR (https://www.sbir.gov/) , CDC (https://www.cdc.gov/) , BARDA (https://www.medicalcountermeasures.gov/barda/) , DARPA (https://www.darpa.mil/), MTEC (https://www.mtec-sc.org/) , MCDC https://www.medcbrn.org/).
Department of Defence (DoD) Consortiums like MTEC and MCDC, facilitate DoD and industrial relationships and funding agreements . Today they are advancing countermeasures to COVID-19 and other infectious diseases. The mission is to protect the population and improve war fighting capabilities. These agencies also understand that the funding helps small businesses survive in tough times and the military has a clear need to promote resilience of the defense industrial base during the COVID-19 pandemic. Biotechnology solutions, point of care medical devices, and therapeutics have become the armaments of the war on pandemics.
Philanthropic organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative are offering funds to fight COVID-19 and care for the sick. These types of organizations can provide expert advice and support to start-ups to bring their solutions to the COVID-19 induced healthcare crisis.
Several start-up Incubators such as SOSventures/IndieBio, QB3, J&J Innovation Centers are offering seed funds ranging from $25,000 to $250,000 in exchange for an equity stake in the venture. The COVID-19 specific offerings have an urgency to them not seen in the past.The announcements are occuring at a fast clip in March and April. Often applicants are given days to weeks to respond with a technical proposal and detailed budget. Often the product or idea must be completed and ready for deployment in 3-12 months. The areas of interest include Point of Care Diagnostics, Prophylactics, Ready-to-Go Therapeutics, Medical Devices, Protective Gear
Computer Modeling, Disease Tracking, and AI for Drug Discovery.
BioTether Sciences is proud to be a member of Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium, (MTEC), the NIH-Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program, and the State and Federal systems for award management (eProcure, and betaSAM.gov). We are developing technologies for diagnostics, prophylactic and therapeutics to fight COVID-19. Our technologies exploit high affinity interactions between target-receptor, antigen-antibody and other ways macromolecules interact.