If a biotech visionary can make it anywhere, then it should be in New York City, a growing chorus of government officials and scientific leaders now say. Nestled among the high-rises and bright lights of Manhattan are several top ranked research institutions and hospitals that are increasingly viewed as the launching pad for business-minded scientists.

Leading the way is Columbia University. The Ivy League school has been one of the most successful major research universities at commercializing drugs and technologies discovered in campus labs. According to a recent survey the Association of University Technology Managers, Columbia made $155.6 million from licensing fees in 2002, compared to the $82 million all nine California Universities made combined. At least 65 biotech companies have also gotten their start at Columbia, including Memory Pharmaceutical, cofounded by Nobel Prize winner Eric Kandel. (Memory has since moved out of the city across the Hudson River to New Jersey as its growth exceeded available space.)

Michael Cleare, who directs the technology transfer unit at Columbia, says that the university has a strong cadre of potential entrepreneurs, as evidenced by the constant flow of faculty who pressure his office for help in getting their biotech ideas off the ground. Cleare says he believes that the demand for spin-offs is likely to rise as pharmaceutical companies become increasingly risk adverse at nurturing new drugs through the early stages of development. "Nowadays, these small start-up companies are often the only way to bridge the gap."

Columbia's tech transfer office helps secure venture capital funding and generally serves as a guide for scientists to navigate promising research through the harsh realities of forming a business. About six to 10 spin-off companies are started at each year at Columbia, says Cleare. This still pales in comparison to the 30 or so yearly start-ups that come out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but Clare says that Columbia University stresses quality over quantity in the type of businesses they pursue. "We don't have a lot of room for incubating companies, so we have to be selective," Cleare says. Fledgling biotech companies are housed in the former Audubon Ballroom, now a modern complex with 60,000 square feet of office and lab space (see p. 8). The center, opened in 1995, currently holds 22 startups, including spin offs from other New York universities.

Some institutions have created teaching efforts designed to impart the skills of entrepreneurship. SUNY Downstate offers a special course called "Entrepreneurship in Academia." The course, says Downstate vice president Eva Cramer, was meant for everyone at the institution. "We had people in the beginning of the course give examples of how they went about taking an idea ...and commercialized it." Course speakers have included PhDs and MDs, and even an orthopedic surgeon who described the process of starting a company to market a device that he improved on.

Rockefeller University also has a lecture series that delves into how science and society combine, including the use of biotech as an engine for economic growth. Although the small Upper East Side university is famed for allowing prominent investigators to focus solely on basic research, Rockefeller recently spun off its first biotech company, Intra-Cellular Therapies.

Tari Suprapto, the managing director of the technology transfer office at Rockefeller, said that the university is willing to assist professors who want to start a biotech company. But she emphasized that Rockefeller is not in the business of promoting entrepreneurship over the pursuit of basic science. "We don't like to force our researchers to do anything," she says.