business

WORTHINGTON, MINN. - Minnesota is poised to benefit from an explosion in consumer digital health-care technology and next-generation biofuels, a leading biotechnology investor said Friday.

Steven Burrill, a prominent San Francisco venture capitalist who's leading efforts to create a $1 billion local biotech investment fund, told attendees at a bioscience conference at Minnesota West Community & Technical College that advances in DNA sequencing and mobile technologies will allow consumers to instantly store and update medical information on cell phones, PDAs and even iPods.

Such real-time information will help patients better manage their health care by "telling what's wrong with you and be predictive of whether you get diabetes or Alzheimer's," Burrill said.

"And the University of Minnesota and Mayo Clinic are right in the middle of all of this."

In 2007 the two institutions inaugurated a $25 million genomics research facility at a Mayo building in Rochester. The collaboration, called Minnesota Partnership for Biotechnology and Medical Genomics, hopes to speed the research and commercialization of projects such as anti- cancer drug development and treatments for heart disease, pancreatic cancer, neuromuscular diseases, auto-immune diseases, transplant rejection, drug addiction and tuberculosis.

IBM in Rochester and the Hormel Institute in Austin are also using supercomputers to speed up research and the development of promising new medical technologies.

Burrill's visit to the fifth annual regional bioscience conference in southwestern Minnesota created much stir. Last month Tower Investments, a real estate development firm, said it's partnering with Burrill to create a venture capital fund that will attract biotech start-ups to Tower's planned Elk Run Biosciences Center in Pine Island, just outside Rochester. The partnership will also seek to fund new companies spun off from the university and Mayo.

Burrill spent part of Friday meeting with key industry leaders such as the BioBusiness Alliance of Minnesota and the U's Office of Technology Commercialization.

"We had a very good discussion," said Doug Johnson, head of the Venture Center, responsible for spinning out companies from university technology.

In an interview, Burrill for the first time confirmed that he is looking to raise $1 billion for the fund, an unprecedented amount for a state that has struggled to attract early-stage venture capital for start-ups beyond medical devices. He said a top official at Mayo had first contacted him about Elk Run, a sign that Mayo is playing a more active role in the project than it has previously let on.

With $1 billion, Burrill says he is confident he can lure top-quality companies to Minnesota. Stung by the economic recession, venture capital money has dried up for many biotech start-ups, and Burrill hopes he can find some bargains.

"Capital today is a powerful thing," he said. "From an investment standpoint, [the economic turmoil] creates enormous opportunities for us. We can buy more-developed companies cheaper."

Burrill said he would not have participated in Elk Run without the presence of Mayo and the U. That said, Burrill told the bioscience conference audience that global availability of technology, talent and capital means geography plays less of a role in successful start-ups than it used to. Rural communities like Worthington, for instance, have created a fine niche in animal science and renewable fuels like wind and biomass, which Burrill calls "the future of non-hydro energy."

"Minnesota is not fly-over country," Burrill said. "We're hoping to finance ideas. ... If you had hundreds of entrepreneurs with great business plans, all of the capital will be here."

Thomas Lee • 612-673-7744