Upstate Medical University has completed the final build-out of its Central New York Biotech Accelerator, where entrepreneurs can come to launch companies involved in science and medicine.
The university recently unveiled its $5.4 million Medical Innovation and Novel Discovery Center, or Upstate MIND, the newest facility within the 60,000-square-foot accelerator at 841 E. Fayette St. at the foot of University Hill.
The university said the center will serve as a hub for industry-university collaborations and as a precision medicine laboratory where doctors and professors can perform “virtual” autopsies and plan surgeries.
Upstate Medical serves as the building’s anchor tenant and manages the facility. Built on the former site of the Kennedy Square public housing project, the facility is described by the university as the “newest hot spot” for entrepreneurs to pursue the next big idea in the fields of science, medicine, engineering, business and product development.
“We hope to brand Central New York as a biotech corridor,” said Dr. Robert Corona, chair of Upstate Medical’s pathology department and vice president of innovation and business development.
The state-funded biotech center has seven tenants, all startup firms involved in the biotechnology industry. The facility includes laboratories, equipment and conference space that the
companies can share while they are launching their businesses.Two other companies that got their start at the center have “graduated” and moved out to facilities of their own.
Among the features of the Upstate MIND center is a $100,000 machine that serves as a table for digital autopsies. Shaped like a table, the machine displays digital scans of human bodies (both alive and dead). Medical students can use the images to explore every part of the human anatomy without the use of an actual cadaver. Doctors can use it to plan surgeries to, say, remove a tumor.
The center also features a 200-seat theater for technical presentations and a “creation garage” where prototypes of new products can be developed and tested. (The “garage room” comes complete with a working garage door as an ode to tech giants that got their starts in garages.)
