Earlier this month, the Trump administration directed the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to impose restrictions on certain types of funding it provides to research institutions.
Federal judges are temporarily blocking policy changes, but the government says early-stage biotech startups could still face delays or be eliminated entirely.
Gibson, along with serial biotech entrepreneur David Bears, will be launching a pre-seed venture fund called the Advanced Lab Venture Fund, which seeks to invest between $100,000 and $250,000 in 10-15 biotech companies. I thought I was confused. .
Gibson said startups eligible for Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants from the NIH have been invited to apply to the fund. The fund is managed by Altitude Lab, a non-profit life science accelerator based in Salt Lake City, which was set by Recursion five years ago.
“SBIR grants are close to my heart and are important,” Gibson said. “The first thing I did when I started recursion was writing an SBIR grant, which won $1.46 million from the federal government.”
Funding in 2014 helped recursion create that dataset. This has formed the basis for machine learning algorithms and drug discovery platforms, Gibson said. Since then, the company has raised multiple venture capital from investors such as Lux Capital, Menlo Ventures and Felicis, and was released in 2021. The current market capitalization of the recursion is over $4 billion.
Gibson said he hopes the fund will “fill in the gaps” in new biotechnology during this period of uncertainty around NIH funding.
“Early science is extremely dangerous. It’s difficult to know what will happen to these companies, but companies funded by SBIR grants are more likely to be able to raise private funds. ” Gibson said.
The fund will also help grow the biotechnology ecosystem next to recursion. The startup will receive 12 months of office and lab space at the Altitude Labs facility.
“We’re creating our own minican bridge here in the city of Salt Lake City,” Gibson said.
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