El Paso City Council’s Feb. 7^th decision to allocate 75 percent of the city’s Impact Fund to the MCA Foundation will result in accelerated growth of the MCA campus; but what may be most exciting and least reported by news media is the MCA Foundation’s plans to create a biotech industry in El Paso. Central to the plan is the creation of an MCA Biotech Commercialization Institute that is comprised of three pillars: discovery, development and deployment. Essentially, the institute will bridge university intellectual property to the marketplace. Businesses in the region – from law practices to accounting firms to manufacturing - will begin to see an increase in the demand for biotech expertise and specialty areas over the next 20 years and beyond.

Subsets to the commercialization institute will be the establishment of a Proof of Concept Fund and a Clinical Research Organization. The Proof of Concept Fund will be available to start-up biotech companies that meet a defined set of qualifications. Each grant can be as high as $50,000 per company with a potential second grant at least one year later. The Clinical Research Organization will help launch and scale-up operations of a local clinical trials network.  The MCA Foundation will manage the network through education, cataloging providers’ specialty areas and their patient demography and case mix, and linking providers with clinical trials on a large scale. 

The commercialization institute and the Proof of Concept Fund is projected to start in fiscal year 2013.  The CRO is projected to start in fiscal year 2012.

MCA website