Biotech incubator lures Argolyn Bioscience

A former North Charleston hospital that is being converted into South Carolina’s first privately financed technology incubator has picked up its first hatchling.

Now headquartered in Mount Pleasant, Argolyn Bioscience Inc. chose the Ashley River Center for Science, Technology & History over existing laboratory locales in Augusta and Greenwood.

Also, the owner of Ashley River Center — an alliance of developer Robert L. Clement III, GreenHawk Partners and Cherokee Investment Partners –agreed to participate in a $1.4 million round of venture capital financing for Argolyn.

The Stanley Medical Research Institute, an institutional investor with a previous investment in the company, is the main participant. Individual Charleston-based “angel” investors also are involved.
The financing will allow Argolyn to continue its biopharmaceutical research for at least a year.

As part of the deal, the Medical University of South Carolina spin-off will design and oversee construction of a community lab that will be available to other biotech startups. The firm, which works with human proteins based on the research of co-founder Thomas Dix, preferred to stay in the Lowcountry, said Pierce Gilbert, president.

“The source of the technology is here, and this allows us to stay close to the source of the technology,” Gilbert said. “And the people involved don’t have to relocate. In the other circumstances, we would have had a headquarters in one place and a lab in another.

Beyond that, “it’s easy to recruit people to come to Charleston,” he said.

The lab and incubator, part of the former Roper North Hospital campus, will be ready for occupancy within 90 days.

“To build a facility like this from a standing start would take at least three years,” said Jim Lumsden, a managing principal with Raleigh-based GreenHawk Partners.

Dormant for nearly three years, the bulk of the space in the building is being revived as a biotechnology incubator to fill what Lumsden termed a “missing link” in the local business-recruiting arsenal.

Besides the “shared” lab that Argolyn is refurbishing, the former operating rooms can be easily converted into contaminant-free “clean rooms,” he said.

Incubators are a vital to young biotech firms because they can help nurture fragile startups during the most critical stage of their development. Specifically, they provide cash-starved companies with generally low-cost labs and office space, with the hope that they will grow to the point where they will expand and move out on their own. Also, the collaboration and industry contacts that successful incubators generate typically get the attention of venture capitalists and other financiers, Lumsden said.

“This whole venture-capital thing is like a stew,” he said. “You have to have all the ingredients and cook things for a while.”

Led by Cherokee Investment Partners, Lumsden’s group also is bankrolling Magnolia, a proposed 500-acre redevelopment on the upper peninsula. Among its goals is the creation of a new, Charleston-based $130 million venture fund that other biomedical companies can tap into, and the formation of a nonprofit association to help entrepreneurs succeed in the high-stakes world of venture capital.

“Charleston’s geography, rich culture and great lifestyle options have gotten the attention of young companies across the country,” Lumsden said. “There’s so much here that the rest of the United States would like to have. With the addition of only one or two elements — like incubators and a well-organized venture capital community — Charleston could become the model of an exciting, sustainable community.”