There was a heavy turnout among rank-and-file scientists when the grassroots San Diego Entrepreneur Exchange (SDEE) hosted a panel discussion earlier this year on how to win a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant.

So it might be standing room only for the briefing that San Diego’s Biocom industry group has organized tomorrow at the Mintz Levin law firm, with presentations by the top administrators of the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) SBIR Development Center. In recent years, the center has launched a variety of new initiatives aimed at the funding needs of life science startups and intended to help commercialize new technologies for diagnosing and treating cancer. Perhaps foremost is the Phase II Bridge Award program, which can provide as much as $3 million over three years—triple the $1 million funding limit usually set over a two-year period for Phase II awards.

With venture capital funding still at a low ebb following the market collapse of 2008, applications for Phase I funding (a maximum of $150,000) under the SBIR program increased by 68 percent from 2008 to 2009, according to GenomeWeb.

In recent years, the federal government has been awarding a total of more than $2.2 billion a year in funding for SBIR and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grants—with the NCI getting about $110 million of the $616 million total allotted to the National Institutes of Health in 2010, according to Ali Andalibi, program director of the NCI SBIR Development Center.

“What’s changed is the way the program is administered,” Andalibi told me in a recent telephone interview. In creating the SBIR development center in 2008, Andalibi said the NCI was emulating the National Science Foundation by creating a centralized program office to manage all aspects of the cancer institute’s SBIR and STTR programs. As an example of the sort of innovation needed, the NCI and other NIH institutes recently issued a SBIR contract solicitation in search of  … Next Page »

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The panel discussion that CommNexus organized yesterday in San Diego was intended for the telecom association’s military special interest group. But since the financial markets tanked and credit dried up, many fledgling technology companies might also be interested to know how to tap federal small business research grants.

Good thing Xconomy was there, eh?

The Small Business Innovation Research program, or SBIR, which some speakers called “sibber,” could be a lifeline for startups trekking through the Valley of Death. The SBIR program and the Small Business Technology Transfer program, or STTR, provide more than $2 billion a year in total grants. Both are managed by the Small Business Administration and they are the largest source of early stage R&D funding for U.S. small businesses, typically providing as much as $850,000 to small companies developing advanced technologies sought by the government in specific areas.

In getting this funding, companies with fewer than 500 employees incur no debt, give up no equity, and can retain their proprietary data for five years. The company also can keep its prototype and any equipment purchased with SBIR funding. Applicants do not have to be incorporated. Startups with venture capital funding and private or public investors are eligible for SBIRs, provided at least 51 percent of the company is privately owned.

The panelists were Robert Fagaly, senior research scientist with Quasar Federal Systems in San Diego; Robert Cogan, a patent attorney and partner in the San Diego office of Nath & Associates, and Steve Stewart, SBIR program manager in San Diego for SPAWAR, the Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command.

Cogan provided an overview of the SBIR program and served as panel moderator. Among the key points that he made:

—SBIRs are a great tool for building technology companies, and are generally more practical because STTRs require working in partnership with university researchers.

—”Some people just fool around with the SBIR for a couple of years and then discard it,” Cogan said. “The difference between people who use SBIRs to build a company and someone who just fools around with it is generally your approach or philosophy.” The right approach requires showing … Next Page »

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