The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) opens its New Venture Incubator (NVI), a facility with laboratory, office and meeting spaces to support technology start-ups in the greater San Antonio region.
The incubator, housed on UTSA’s Main Campus, will serve as a bridge between the region’s research and development community and San Antonio entrepreneurs, who will take the innovations forward through commercialization.
As part of this connection to a broader entrepreneurial ecosystem, UTSA established a Commercialization Council that includes an influential group of top executives who meet monthly to advance the region’s status in technology entrepreneurship. Currently, the council includes representatives from UTSA, Southwest Research Institute, Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research, San Antonio Technology Accelerator Initiative, Biomed SA, South Texas Technology Management, The Small Business Development Center and AT&T.
The first start-up to occupy space in the incubator will be Bio-pharmaceutical ViroXis Corp, which aims to identify and patent botanically-derived compounds for use in infectious disease and cancer therapies.
Over the next two to three years in UTSA’s incubator, ViroXis will work to develop a rapid, cost-effective and proven botanical prescription drug targeting human papillomavirus (HPV), which causes skin and genital wart infections and is the leading cause of cervical cancer.
FinSMEs
08/03/2010