Bradley Fikes, a veteran reporter at The San Diego Union-Tribune, has been covering the biotech industry for 26 years. During that time, he has talked with countless scientists and entrepreneurs who have led the way in the life sciences industry.
When asked in a recent Q&A about what makes a successful life science company, Fikes said, “Experienced management that has successfully built other life-science companies.”
Fikes went on to mention, “Avalon Ventures does this well from a venture-capital perspective. Their partners keep in close touch with the science world and specific scientists, and they use their business knowledge to judge when the science is ripe for building a company.”
In addition, he discusses Avalon’s partnership with GSK to build biotechs in the San Diego area. Created in 2013 and re-upped in 2015, this partnership combines Avalon Ventures’ strength in creating biotech start-ups around great science and teams with GSK’s unparalleled R&D expertise and resources.
As part of the collaboration between Avalon and GSK, an incubator called COI Pharmaceuticals was established. COI Pharma provides intellectual and operational support to the companies established under the collaboration as well as those that are independent portfolio companies.
Fikes goes on to talk about his early years as a journalist and discusses the joys and challenges of writing about life sciences.
The Q&A with Fikes was part of a larger SDUT piece that profiled five innovative San Diego life science companies, including Synthorx, one of our portfolio companies. Synthorx is a biotechnology company using synthetic biology to discover and develop novel therapeutics.
Read the full Q&A with Bradley Fikes at The San Diego Union-Tribune.
Do you know these five San Diego biotechs fueling life science innovation?
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