SEBIO Update: Florida Catches North Carolina

Guest Post by:

Mike Schmitt, MD

Life Science Analyst and Editor of the Florida BioDatabase

Mike can be reached at M2Schmitt@aol.com      

Florida is ready to make a good impression at the upcoming Southeast BIO (SEBIO) Conference to be held on December 4-5, 2008 in Palm Beach.  SEBIO is a non-profit public/private partnership to promote the development of the life sciences throughout the Southeast.

Our State has tied North Carolina (this has not happened in recent years that I’m  aware of) with each State having 8 companies selected for the conference (actually, Florida shares an additional company in that NC based Pique Therapeutics has R&D activities in Miami).  Overall, SEBIO has selected 29 companies to participate in this year’s forum.

The conference offers an “early stage” event focused on newly emerging companies along with a “presenting” companies event for those ventures that have completed at least one round of institutional funding.  Public companies are not included in the forum.

This can be an excellent learning opportunity as early stage participants receive direct feed back from venture capitalists and business advisors as they go through the conference process.  Ultimately, 4 of the best are selected for an “Early-Stage Shootout” where they will have a chance to do a full presentation to all of the investors attending the forum.

Selected Presenting Companies of interest to Florida are:

• Atlas Spine Inc., Jupiter, FL
  
• AxoGen, Inc., Alachua, FL
  
• Pique Therapeutics, Inc. , Durham, NC with R&D in Miami
  
• Transgeneron Therapeutics, Inc., Gainesville, FL: winner of last year’s “Early Stage Shootout”
  

 Selected Early-Stage Florida Companies are:

• Claro Scientific, LLC , St. Petersburg, FL
  
• Intezyne Technologies, Tampa, FL
  
• Lakewood-Amedex Inc., University Park, FL
  
• Ophysio, Miami, FL (website not available)
  
• Sharklet Technologies, LLC, Alachua, FL
  

Since 2005, there have been 15 Florida life science companies that have presented at SEBIO with over $117M raised among this group alone during the past 3 years (this does not include the 2008 participants).  This is an excellent opportunity to gain visibility as well as making a possible connection for VC funding (VC firms from throughout the US have attended including the Southeast, Midwest, West Coast as well as the Northeast regions).