Chris Khalil has been at the helm of the New Orleans BioInnovation Center for four years, first in April 2019 when the bioscience start-up business incubator was facing financial collapse, and later as its full-time executive director after Tulane University and other area colleges agreed to provide a stable source of funding.
After more than a decade of struggling to find its footing, NOBIC, as the 66,000-square-foot center on Canal Street is known, is set to become the centerpiece of the city’s fledgling biodistrict. Advocates hope the taxpayer-funded innovation zone will turn a cluster of promising life sciences companies into a county home to thousands of high-paying jobs.
Kalil, a Metairie native and Archbishop Rummel High School student, earned finance degrees at LSU and Tulane after Katrina hit. In the year Before joining NOBIC in 2012, he was a banker for several years to run an investment fund and brings a financial eye to the job of running an incubator.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How is NOBIC doing now after nearly collapsing four years ago?
We are in a good position financially since the organization started[in 2011]. We have doubled our revenue and pursued federal and state grants to support our program. We are now 95% occupied compared to 40% when I took office.
The building cost about $50 million to build and NOBIC was heavily subsidized until a few years ago, and still relies on public funds for some of its funding. What is the public purpose of NOBIC?
I believe the vision of the Bioinnovation Center was to support the diversification of our economy, which is heavily focused on oil and gas and hospitality and tourism. Many of the jobs created from these (biotech) businesses are highly specialized and highly paid. We have a lot of infrastructure in the city and state in research and development, especially in medical and biotechnology research and development. Our goal is to take those new technologies and turn them into growing businesses and create these highly specialized jobs to keep the best and brightest in our communities in New Orleans and Louisiana.
There are some notable achievements from NOBIC, particularly Obatala Sciences, which is based on the proliferation of cellular research materials and AxoSim, which improves the efficiency of drug testing. What are some other promising looking companies raised by NOBIC?
One that we are very excited about is the LSU Health Science Center company Select Diagnostics. The company is developing a test for early detection of necrotizing enterocolitis, or NEC, in premature babies. That’s a nasty intestinal disease that has a 50% death rate for premature babies, so the novel technology allows doctors to determine whether or not they already have NEC. There is a much better survival rate if diagnosed early. (The company, in which NOBIC directly invested, won a $2.1 million Small Business Technology Transfer grant from the National Institutes of Health in October 2021, which Khalil said will help him complete trials and bring the technology to the commercial market.
Another is WayPath Pharma, (founded in 2019 by two LSU students), which is developing a treatment for hemangosarcoma in dogs, a really aggressive brain cancer. The treatment is first prepared for dogs and then applied to humans.
BioAesthetics, (out of Tulane University Research in 2015 and led by Dr. Nicholas Pashos) is working in the area of breast-areolar implants for breast cancer survivors. In collaboration with the Tulane National Primate Research Center, they have completed their monkey experiment and are showing how the technology can give women and men the option of not using prostheses or tattoos after mastectomy.
New Orleans has a strong base of academic research but has been late to the party in investing to turn those into viable businesses. What else can be improved to develop this sector here?
Successful life science ecosystems like University City in Philadelphia have grown because of their commitment to and investment in their innovation communities. There is often support from multiple stakeholders and not just universities, but health systems, economic development bodies and industry. I think that’s the piece of industry that New Orleans could do a better job of bringing to the table.
What is an example of industry growth to support innovation?
The Atlanta-based Georgia Research Alliance was sponsored and supported by many Fortune 500 businesses such as Coca-Cola and Delta Air Lines. When you create that entity, the pool of capital is used to invest directly in businesses and recruit the best of the brightest professors to conduct translational research that translates into commercialization. So these communities have started in New Orleans for decades and have been very deliberate about where to spend their money and how to grow their economy, and they’ve succeeded in communicating that not just to the scientific community. The wider community.
Do you think we’re making progress toward a similar event here in New Orleans?
Two of the things that make me happy that we’re on the small stuff. One is the passage of the Bio District (tax fund), which shows the commitment of the city and the state to this special geography, which contains most of the research and development and production technologies from our research institutions, which will lead to the improvement of companies. Health effects. We also have the Tulane Innovation Institute, which supports proof-of-concept funding as well as direct funding to early-stage companies. (Tulane said it launched a fund this spring that aims to attract at least $100 million from alumni and other sources to seed tech-focused startup companies). And we have recent exits that have created a capital windfall (including New Orleans startups Lucid and Levelset, which were sold for a combined $1.5 billion last year, helping to generate investment for local startups).
A lot of things in New Orleans revolve around Hurricane Katrina, so in my humble opinion, I think we’re just getting started in terms of building that creative ecosystem. But I think we are now on a strong footing in terms of building a life science and biotech innovation ecosystem.
