The biotechnology company formerly known as ChimeraCore hasquit Santa Barbara for San Diego. Chimeros’ decamp comes amid efforts to create biotechcluster along Highway 101.
Thousand Oaks-based Amgen slashed hundreds of jobs lastyear, and groups such as The Biotech Forum have sprung up to prevent talentedformer employees from leaving the region for good.
Founded in 2004, Chimeros predates the Amgen implosion, butthe reasons it cited for departing – a lack of potential workers and lab space– bear on any biotech start-up in Santa Barbara.
Chimeros’ story seems to confirm what some in the regionalcluster-building effort have speculated: The northern stretch of the hoped-forbiotech corridor presents a much tougher environment for companies than thesouthern reach. Instead of a cluster core, Santa Barbara’s role lies insupplying technology, funding and entrepreneurs to the mix.
Working with nanotechnology out of the University ofCalifornia, Santa Barbara, Chimeros teetered on the cusp between research andmarketable products. To make the jump to sales, it needed a broader talent pooland more lab space, said its founder and chief executive, Miguel de los Rios.The company moved to San Diego on May 1, taking all 12 of its scientists withit.
“It’s really unfortunate because [Chimeros] is exactly thetype of company we want to keep in this area as we develop this cluster,” saidBrent Reinke, one of the founders of The Biotech Forum, which has sponsoredseveral events this year to bring together and educate investors andentrepreneurial scientists.
De los Rios cited at least two prime reasons for leavingSanta Barbara, one of them specific to the company’s nano-scale drug deliverysystem and the other general.
Chimeros needed a very specific type of talent: nucleic acidscientists, he said.
De los Rios said to find the right scientists for histechnology, he needed the much broader worker pool the San Diego area offered.“While there were a lot of talented people coming out of Amgen, they reallyweren’t in our field,” de los Rios said.
Chimeros’ other dilemma could affect any biotech company inSanta Barbara. It planned to double its size twice over two years and neededmore wet-lab space. There wasn’t much.
De los Rios, a Ventura native who attended the University ofCalifornia, Santa Barbara, was even willing to retrofit a space. But he foundlandlords unwilling to work with Chimeros because the company draws its fundingfrom investors rather than products.
“[Landlords] are not used to companies that don’t haverevenue for eight to 10 years,” de los Rios said. “It’s really hard to havethat funding process go into negotiations for a lease. It was easier for us todeal with landlords who own hundreds of biotech buildings in California” andelsewhere, de los Rios said.
Reinke said a lack of lab space “could create anotherroadblock to this effort if we couldn’t address this issue relatively quickly.”He has put together a meeting of commercial real estate developers to discussneeds and to begin to remedy the problems Chimeros met.
But even if Santa Barbara had lab space, factors beyond thescope Reinke’s best efforts make it a tough town for expanding companies,ruling it out as a suitable place for cluster core.
“I’ve never expected to see a large sustained tech sector inSanta Barbara simply because of the cost of living,” said Bill Watkins,executive director of the University of California, Santa Barbara, EconomicForecast Project. “In the long run, most of the jobs are going to be someplaceelse. I see this as a sort of a slowly growing tech sector, but it’s not goingto be Silicon Valley, just because of housing.”
Ventura County offers a better locale for a cluster’s coreincubator, Watkins said, because it can draw workers from the San FernandoValley, Santa Clarita and Ventura County itself. “Santa Barbara is pretty muchmaxed out on how many people could commute here in the morning,” Watkins said.“You certainly couldn’t add another 20,000.”
Reinke has made a similar assessment. “I still firmlybelieve that with all these people coming out of Amgen, most of them livesomewhere between Calabasas and Camarillo,” Reinke said. “Those are the areasthey’re going to want to work in. The brain pool already lives in that area.”
Reinke still thinks Santa Barbara start-ups could draw thoseworkers. But the city’s main contribution will come from UCSB in the form oftechnology – such as the more than 50 biotech ideas available at its techtransfer office – and young business minds.
“A key component to any cluster is relationships with theregional universities, and UCSB is definitely one of those that will play asignificant role, hopefully along with [California State University, ChannelIslands],” Reinke said.
Meanwhile, Santa Barbara investors don’t view the Chimerosloss as a permanent hit. Others firms will come.
“We, as the people who fund this technology, really want tosee that these companies can grow and stay in the area,” said Frank Foster,managing director of the Santa Barbara-based DFJ Frontier Fund, one ofChimeros’ largest investors. “If one leaves, we’ll find some more that we cankeep and grow.”
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