Technology

TECH NOTES

Cybersecurity Checklist for a Safer 2022

Cybersecurity will continue to be a significant concern in 2022 as threats and ransomware reports have had a sharp upturn over the last two years.

There are myriad items to consider in the quest for cybersecurity hygiene, but here’s a few to contemplate:

Instill a business-first security mindset.

I believe that security is an enabler to making companies go faster. A business-first mentality enables stakeholders to lead the digital transformation and adopt a modern workplace without compromising security or business continuity. It’s about arming CISOs with everything that’s needed to drive action on the ground.

Secure the cloud. Many companies assume cloud security for their data falls under the responsibility of their Cloud Service Provider (CSP), but that’s not always the case. Businesses leveraging cloud services who experience a breach still must manage the reputation and financial fallout, whether it was their “fault” or not. Cloud Customers should implement both technical (like data encryption) and administrative controls (policy and procedures) based upon the type of cloud architecture in use.

Know the business’s talent and security

gaps. Security deficiencies are costing businesses billions of dollars in losses. Businesses lacking staff or training put themselves at a higher risk and should determine when a trusted MSSP, like Avertium, could assist with skills or cycles gaps.

Employee training. Eighty-eight percent of data breach incidents are caused by employee mistakes. A report by Infosec indicates that about 97% of the people in the world cannot identify a phishing email, while 1 in 25 people click such emails, thus falling prey to cyberattacks. These mistakes can take manpower and deep pockets to get out of. —Paul Caiazzo, CISO, SVP of Corporate Communications with Avertium (avertium.com), a leading Managed Security Service Provider that serves as a trusted advisor as well as providing products and services to protect companies large and small from ransomware, threats, various malware attacks and malicious behavior that cyber criminals employ

Mobile Ordering Apps Trend

Mobile apps are rapidly taking over as the preferred way for consumers to place an order with local businesses. More than 66% of consumers stated they prefer using digital wallets and apps with brands they like.

Local businesses in Arizona such as coffee shops and restaurants had to adapt quickly to catch up with the trend of mobile payments. Copper Creek Cookies is an example of a local Arizona business that is part of the mobile ordering apps trend. This femaleowned cookie brand wanted to provide a superior customer experience for its Tucson-based business.

Copper Creek Cookies owners Joyce Schulte and Tami Peek decided to launch an app to stay connected with their customers digitally. They also wanted to make it easier to customize orders. After launching a “Starbucks”-like app with convenient ordering and loyalty rewards tracking, Copper Creek Cookies now suggests its customers download the app (pictured) and place orders on their phone to capture the full potential of the brand. Customers can easily re-order from their previous purchases and are suggested with matching items to make their experience more personalized. Deliveries can be requested in the branded app due to the mobile app provider Orda’s partnership with DoorDash.

Driving the trend is the fact that it is now affordable and accessible for businesses to launch an app using a mobile ordering app builder like Orda. The way it works is businesses use a simple drag-and-drop builder to design their app. They choose their menu and color scheme and branding. The whole process takes around five minutes. Businesses can customize their unique app with a marketplace of third party integrations and features, such as DoorDash and Instagram. The latest case study of 10 local shops that have joined this trend is available at getorda.com/blog/ posts/10-coffee-shop-mobile-apps. —Christine Davis, vice president of Orda (getorda.com)

High-Tech ‘Smart Fitness Studio’ Enters Phoenix Area

On March 3, a new “smart fitness studio” opened at 4626 N. 16th Street in Phoenix that relies on artificial intelligence and robotics instead of dumbbells, treadmills, etc. The exercise machines adjust a person’s workout to his/her strengths and weaknesses in real time, thereby helping people get the most out of their workout and avoid injury. Additionally, the proprietary “Exerbotics” machines make the workouts harder as a person gets stronger, so there is no plateau period. The plan is to open another location within the year in the old town Scottsdale/Arcadia (Phoenix) area.

The Exercise Coach’s personalized programs are optimized for efficiency, requiring only two 20-minute workouts per week. The Exercise Coach’s robotic exercise technology is combined with the guidance of certified coaches to provide a comprehensive workout, regardless of initial fitness level. The studios blend personalized strength and interval cardio training in each session.

When people join an Exercise Coach fitness studio, they receive a unique code. In the first session, they do a range of motion and a strength test to determine a baseline. That information is imported into a computer. Each client’s customized workouts are curated based on this important information. The equipment targets “type II muscles” — those that tend to weaken as people age. This equipment uses electromagnetic technology, instead of weights.

Exerbotics equipment featured at Exercise Coach locations are *Crossfire: (A stretching machine for hamstrings — in some locations), leg press, chest/row, Nucleus: (an abdominal and lower back machine) and shoulder press/pull down.

The Exercise Coach was founded in 2000 and began franchising in 2011. The Exercise Coach established an exclusive relationship with the Exerbotics technology company in 2014. The franchise has more than 140 U.S. locations and more than 35 locations in Japan. —Julie and Timo Moeller, owners of The Exercise Coach (exercisecoach.com)

“We have top-ranked healthcare organizations that provide top-notch care, are innovative and known for research excellence,” says Claudia Whitehead, bioscience healthcare program manager in the City of Phoenix’s Economic Development Department. The long list includes Mayo Clinic, Banner Health and Phoenix Children’s Hospital. On the academic stage, Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University, The University of Arizona, Grand Canyon University, Creighton University and Tufts are powerhouses with their own innovators and support systems in Phoenix. And, of course, leading research institution TGen (Translational Genomics Research Institute) makes its home in Phoenix.

And if that’s not enough to draw more companies into our bioscience and healthcare industry, there’s an extra edge Phoenix has: “We’re attractive to companies outside because we have a business plan to work together,” Whitehead notes, referring to Arizona’s Bioscience Roadmap. “Arizona is the only state that has a blueprint like this,” she says, pointing to the Phoenix Biomedical Campus — which was renamed last month Phoenix Biomedical Core as a truer reflection of its essence — as one of its great accomplishments.

Christine Mackay, community and economic development director at City of Phoenix, says, “When you look at what Phoenix did in creating the PBC here in Downtown Phoenix — although bioscience and healthcare were happening all around us, it really was the first time someone had driven a stake in the ground and said, ‘We’re going to claim this as ours. And this is going to be a strategic move forward in attracting companies.’ And the acquisition and the creation of the 30 acres and the very strategic focus to go after TGen, to go after Dr. Jeffrey Trent … I mean, talk about a time when it took an entire village. This wasn’t the city doing it by itself; this was the state and the county and private sector and foundations and healthcare and the city and others really working to recruit him back to Phoenix. And Phoenix built the TGen building and Dr. Trent is in there and he’s been there since the building opened in 2006. That really was that launch pad for Phoenix to claim this sector as its own.”

Phoenix had to overcome a kinetic energy that had become established in that realm, as this anecdote Mackay shares illustrates: “We would be recruiting at Bio International in the early 2000s, and other cities — Boston and San Francisco, Atlanta, Washington, Philadelphia — each would pat us on the head and say, ‘Aren’t you guys just cute.’ They were 100 years in the market, 40 years in the market, 50 years in the market.” Their message to the Phoenix delegation was, “Yeah, guys, we’ve got this sector sewn up. Please don’t even try. There’s just not much you can do there,” Mackay recalls, relating that, instead, “True to Arizona mentality, we just put our heads down and said, ‘Yeah, sorry about your lock. We’re going to invade in your territory.’ And we did. And it was because we all worked together. It was a sector that, as Mayor Gallego likes to say, ‘The cure for cancer’s going to come through Phoenix.’ And that was the mantra starting in 2001.”

“The City of Phoenix has been very intentional about working with our partners to diversify the economy,” says Mayor Kate Gallego. Stressing the importance of having industries that will thrive regardless of what’s happening with the economy, she notes, “Healthcare and bioscience is one where there both an economic and human impact that benefit the city and our residents.”

Pointing out that not only is this an industry that produces higher-wage jobs so one can really have a career and supports people from a wide variety of academic backgrounds, but, she continues, “It’s one that really makes sense for our city given our great university, community colleges and private-sector partners.”

There’s a quality-of-life aspect, as she says, “I also want to make sure that, if our residents have a difficult medical diagnosis, they can get the very best treatments in this community. It’s exciting to me that people come from all over the world to get neurological treatment in this city. It is great news that you can participate in clinical trials and other drug development, therapy development and development of medical devices right here in this community.

“Before I ran for office, I worked with someone whose child had a really hard time gaining weight. TGen helped them with diagnosis and treatment,” Gallego relates, noting the value of parents sleeping better knowing can get treatment for their children.

And, to the point of this article, there is also an amazing economic impact. “The industry has a multiplier of 2.27; for every dollar in, there’s an additional $1.27 generated into our economy. The employment multiplier is 5; for every bioscience job created, they create an additional four jobs,” Gallego says. “That helps strengthen and diversify our economy.”

Regarding other economic sectors that add benefit to and are benefited by growth in the biosciences, Mayor Gallego relates, “Phoenix is now known as an area of excellence for developing, building, designing medical and healthcare facilities. We have many of the top architecture and engineering firms that work on these projects that tend to be very technical. We have construction firms that are sought after all over the country to build hospitals and advanced facilities. We’ve seen a direct capital investment of more than $3.5 billion since 2019, and the growth of 5.5 million square feet of primary facilities. That also is an area I feel Phoenix is a leader nationally and is recognized for building some of the best facilities. In addition to staffing them.”

Collaboration among many parties enabled Phoenix Biomedical Core to become a reality. But credit for spearheading the effort goes to the Flinn Foundation and its creation of the Bioscience Roadmap.

ARIZONA’S BIOSCIENCE ROADMAP

The Flinn Foundation had been predominantly a healthcare foundation for the State of Arizona since the 1960s, having been funded by cardiologist Robert Flinn and his wife, Irene. But as the millennium came to a close, there were a number of new foundations cropping up in Arizona, especially in the Phoenix area, that were also interested in funding healthcare and human and social services in Arizona. “We saw that as an opportunity for the Flinn Foundation to go more deeply in one specific area of healthcare and try to make a bigger difference through our philanthropic dollars and programs and systems,” says Brad Halvorsen, executive vice president of the Flinn Foundation.

A long period of research and talking with community leaders about areas within health where the foundation could make the biggest difference pointed it to the biosciences.

The Flinn Foundation had, of course, some familiarity with that sector. “But,” Halvorsen says, “we were told Arizona had a lot of assets in the biosciences — this is 20 years ago — and there’s a good amount of excellence in Arizona and if were somehow well organized and properly funded, bigger things could happen. So, at that point, the Flinn Foundation decided to go specifically into biosciences, where we previously were funding in the broader healthcare world.”

In 2002, the Flinn Foundation commissioned Arizona’s Bioscience Roadmap — which was really a comprehensive SWAT analysis that was done on Arizona’s bioscience sector — from Battelle Memorial Institute, which has a unit that specializes in building regional high-technology economies.

The purpose was two-fold: to give the Flinn Foundation a better idea of what was happening in biosciences and how it could make the biggest difference, and to have Battelle give back a strategic action plan of goals, objectives and action steps that could help Arizona build a framework to take the next steps to strengthen and advance its bioscience sector.

Before the end of that year, the Bioscience Roadmap was launched. It was informed by a steering committee that had been put together earlier that year of science leaders, community leaders, business leaders, government leaders to help Battelle understand what we had here. Noting it was not just the Flinn Foundation but a community effort, Halvorsen says, “Once launched, it really galvanized as a statewide plan that various groups and institutions involved in biosciences at the time were really galvanized around, and we’ve been orchestrating ever since.”

The Roadmap addresses strategies meant to build Arizona’s research base; a hub of entrepreneurial enterprises and entrepreneurial-based ecosystem, bioscience talent; build current jobs and future jobs; and more. “It’s a massive plan that hits on all spectrums of developing a bioscience base, from the research end over to the commercialization end, and the other aspects that are important as well, like workforce development, for instance,” Halvorsen says.

“When the Roadmap first came together, it really was a convening point to bring together the disparate groups that make up a healthy bioscience sector,” Halvorsen says. A steering committee was created to oversee the process with Flinn. And once the Roadmap plan was available, numerous committees were created, made up of groups from all around the state to work on specifics of various aspect of the Roadmap. Some were science committees that worked on collaborative plans for areas like cancer research or bioengineering; others were more business oriented, like communications or workforce development; some looked at how to generate more risk capital for Arizona; some were even government relations. “Those committees and the steering committee brought together institutions around the same table that might not have done so before — institutions that were working on the same thing or had similar goals that would start to work together collaboratively.”

Mayor Gallego was a city council member at that time, and she represented the biomedical campus. “We looked all over for the right partners as we grew it,” she relates. “When I visited Wexford Science and Technology in Baltimore, I felt like we found the right partner. They understand how to support innovative companies and create the right environment where people can come together, where they have the right programming, the right business support.” The important question to address: How do you connect medical experts with experts in running a business and recruit them to come to Downtown Phoenix?

“We also try to support our companies in growing and getting investment. We host a large delegation at the annual Bio International Conference. To brag a little bit as mayor, we had three of our bioscience startups as finalists at the Bio International Conference competing with companies from all over the world. So, it’s great news that we have these amazing companies and I hope it’s a point of pride for our residents that we’re helping them to grow. And we are pleased to help connect companies with the resources they need, whether it’s investment, or partners at our Pinnacle system to try to market or do trials. So, I hope our companies feel supported.

“Sometimes I have gotten involved when someone needs to recruit a top scientist or hear about options for schools, if they’re moving their kids here.” Saying she hopes people feel like this is the world’s biggest small town when it comes to our bio community, she adds, “But it’s getting a lot bigger” and cites CBRE’s recent report recognizing Phoenix as No. 1 in life science jobs and in the top five in the nation’s emerging life science markets.

A COLLABORATIVE ENVIRONMENT

Noting that’s one of the hallmarks of a successful bioscience hub is a collaborative environment where groups are working with one another, complementing one another’s efforts, Halvorsen emphasizes, “That’s really one of the gems of the whole Roadmap experience: It has brought together groups and individuals to work collaboratively toward common goals. That’s been one of our secret sauce elements.

“So many different aspects of bioscience, from different sciences to the different groups that are commercializing to groups in the ecosystem that are training entrepreneurs and identifying workers — there are so many different elements that must come together in a unified fashion for an industry like bioscience to really thrive. So, the more people get to know each other and work with each other and pool their complementary strengths, the better the industry is going to be.”

Halvorsen points to our hospitals as one of the big partners of the biosciences in Arizona, explaining we have an extensive amount of research that takes place at our hospitals; clinical research involving patients and

other innovations are coming out of our hospitals; hospitals supply a lot of the clinical arm of the equation as far as the patient base that might have access to new innovations coming about from Arizona bioscience discoveries. “The healthcare system is the endpoint on the spectrum for a lot of what’s being worked on by the university and companies to ultimately be put into use by the hospitals and health providers.

ECONOMIC GROWTH FROM THE BIOSCIENCES

One example Mackay cites of growth in this sector in Pinnacle Transplant in North Phoenix, a startup idea 10 years ago that came out of the university. The company harvests body parts and manufactures them to fit exactly the prescription of the surgery that’s about to take place. “It was the idea of a couple of guys whose dad funded it in 2013. They now employ about 200 people, and they’ve spun out other companies. So, the growth of these companies is just astronomical.”

Some new companies marry medical experience with other assets in our community, such as one that addresses a problem the pandemic made unfortunately common as so many people needed to be intubated for breathing. When the intubation comes out, the sputum sprays all over the room; doctors and nurses are covered in sputum, and small aerosol particles coat the room. Two doctors at Dignity came up with the idea to build a patient box. They knew of a company in Phoenix that manufactured trade show booths for which business was understandably down during the pandemic, so a partnership was made between these two doctors and this group with a lot of plexiglass. They built prototypes for the doctors, and still build them today,” Mackay says, describing their solution as a box put over the patient so that, when the tubing is pulled out, the sputum stays in the box.

Says Mackay, “In life sciences, more than any other industry, I would argue that those unique partnerships, those unique startups, that come out of necessity are probably more prevalent than any other industry.”

“Amazing technologies are being developed locally,” Whitehead says, pointing to spinouts from healthcare organizations, the universities and the bioscience community. Support for entrepreneurs includes the Center for Entrepreneurial Innovation, located at GateWay Community College, which is internationally recognized. Humabiologics — a company discussed later in this article — may enable medical research to bypass animal trials by using human collagen and is one of the companies to come out of CEI.

The ecosystem also includes programs to help support companies as they grow, such as the Mayo Clinic and ASU MedTech Accelerator, which, according to its website, “provides medical device and healthcare IT early-stage companies with personalized business development plans to collaborate with Mayo Clinic and ASU and accelerate go to market and investment opportunities.”

In February, the Flinn Foundation announced participants for its 2022 Bioscience Entrepreneurship Program. A regenerative treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, a respiratory-assist device to improve COPD patient care, a blood-based test for colorectal cancer, and a treatment to solve bad dog breath are some of the transformative advances of the seven Arizonabased, early-stage companies competitively selected for the foundation’s program. Each will receive $30,000 in funding support through a nonprofit partner, a personalized learning plan, and connections with the state’s bioscience leaders in business, research and policy.

Much of the city’s economic development is focused on advanced manufacturing, biosciences and healthcare because, Mackay notes, those are the high-wage, knowledge-intensive jobs that have a really strong economic multiplier. It’s not just the one job they create, but it’s the multitude of other jobs that are created to support that one job. “Particularly in biosciences and healthcare, when you look at biomanufacturing and biopharma, infomatics — those companies need so much support,” Mackay says. “They need suppliers, assemblers, manufacturers, software design, technology support — whether it’s on a septic training techniques or sterilization techniques.” Using biomanufacturing as an example, Mackay says every biomanufacturing job the city attracts supports three to four additional jobs. “The economic impact is in the billions and billions of dollars.”

And in terms of spinoffs, TGen may hold the “patient zero” position for the exponential growth of organizations in this sector. It has, alone, spun off 26 new companies, some of which have spun off others of their own.

A regular part of Mackay’s research and development expansion and retention visits is asking the companies where they got their start. And what these startup companies, these thought-leading companies that are growing here in our market, tell her, she relates, is, “I was with U of A’; ‘I was with ASU’; ‘Oh, I was with TGen’; ‘Oh, my company’s technology came out of TGen’; ‘Oh, my company’s technology came out of’ … name another company.

“And that is so indicative of the strategy we started with, which was we were not only going to attract primes but we were going to grow our own.”

Which raises the issue of venture capital. Halvorsen acknowledges there is an abundance of venture capital on the coasts because that’s where the venture capital firms are; in between, less so. “It was a challenge for Arizona [companies] to grow their firms. It’s been a challenge for the Roadmap since its launch,” he says. But venture capital for bioscience firms in 2019 was $198 million — a record for the state — per the Roadmap report of 2020. The next biennial report is due out this month, and Halvorsen says he’s looking forward to seeing where that comes out in the new data.

INTERCONNECTED WEB OF ECONOMIC IMPACT

Stories of individual institutions inevitably demonstrate the interconnected network that pushes the boundaries of trying to define biosciences as an economic sector. Educational programs connect to research connect to commercialized application connect to healthcare practices, each one supporting and benefitting from the others.

UA COLLEGE OF MEDICINE – PHOENIX

“It’s exciting to be part of the Phoenix Biomed Campus. It’s a bold experiment, trying to bring together the three universities as well as the research institution TGen with the idea of building a premier scientific research and development — and perhaps a company creation enterprise,” says Guy Reed, M.D., M.S., dean of The University of Arizona College of Medicine in Phoenix, suggesting the potential to supply the positions and life health professionals that are needed to take care of the people in Arizona and to generate discoveries and perhaps develop them into new therapeutics and drugs and algorithms and new devices to improve health for everyone.

Regarding the scope of research, Dr. Reed says, “We live in a rich scientific and medical environment that’s enabled by collaboration between institutions. There’s the PBC itself, which has the three universities and research institutions. And partnerships with clinical entities such as out care systems — Banner, one of largest in country; Phoenix Children’s Hospital, which is one of largest children’s hospitals in the country; and Veteran’s Administration Medical Center, which is one of the fastest growing VAs in the country due to population expansion. And,” he adds, “related to the Western character and maybe this point in time, but collaboration seems easier here than some other places in country I’ve worked — the idea that people benefit when we all collaborate. That has driven a lot of success.” [Editor’s note: For more about The University of Arizona College of Medicine’s collaborations, partnerships and innovation progress, see this story online at www.inbusinessphx.com.]

Asking rhetorically, “What’s the fundamental knowledge base for medicine, and how does it obtain, develop, promote and expand that knowledge base?” he offers, “Science is the methodology we use to move medicine forward, so our training for students is science based.” UA College of Medicine is one of few medical schools in the country that requires each student to do the equivalent of a thesis — called a “scholarly project” — in which they do original research with a mentor, a preceptor, and then write that up. “Half of those get published or presented at national meetings,” Dr. Reed says, explaining, “Students need to understand the existing knowledge in medicine but also experience and learn how to generate new knowledge and evaluate new knowledge, because throughout their lives they will be exposed to new data, new innovations, new discoveries, and they’ll need to be able to evaluate those things critically before they think about their application to patients’ benefit.”

One of the medical school’s strategic initiatives is to further develop and support and build an entrepreneurial culture on its campus. “The entrepreneurial part is not just related to the business aspect but it’s really to help our faculty and students and our staff think about how we can address unmet medical needs through our science, our discoveries, and help develop those things — launch them into tangible products that could be used for patient benefit,” Dr. Reed says.

Thus, there’s continuum of discovery, analysis of need, innovation, development of a product, and then into a company that is designed to be the far end of the research and development cascade. “We’re trying to build that culture on this [PBC] campus so that our Arizona community and even the community beyond Arizona could have the benefit of the innovations and knowledge that exists in a place like that,” Dr. Reed says, citing initiatives that exist in that area: “In our own research building, there’s space for limited startup companies to build; once they scale to a certain level, they would move out into a partner institution — the ASU Wexford Building — where they could scale even further.” Many are developing companies that are raising venture capital or seeking strategic partners.

Notes Dr. Reed, “That continuum of an ecosystem obviously has health benefits, but it also has economic benefits for our community because it creates a place that people with talent in discovery and development want to come and live and work.”

CREIGHTON UNIVERSITY

A partnership opportunity instigated Creighton University’s decision to build a second campus in Phoenix. According to Randy Richardson, M.D., dean of Creighton University, the merger of Banner Health and The University of Arizona left St. Joseph’s without an academic partner; UA had been its academic partner for decades. “St. Joe’s wanted to continue to be an academic medical center, so they were looking for an academic partner,” Dr. Richardson says.

But, he adds, “The more compelling reason it was a good fit was the need for health professions across the board in the Phoenix area, and in Arizona.” Omaha, Nebraska, home of Creighton University, has one of the higher students-per-capita rates of all states — it’s in the top seven. Arizona is in the bottom seven (“or somewhere around that,” Dr. Richardson modifies). “So, it was a perfect match.” And the situation of physicians is the same, he observes. “The physician need here was much higher than what we were putting out. For primary care, for specialty care, all aspects of care — physician care, physician assistant care — there’s a huge need.” Additionally, he notes, the population is increasing in Phoenix. “First of all, we’re already behind; and second, we’re getting further behind because of the increasing population. For me, that was the more compelling reason that this made a lot of sense — that we need more learners to get a pipeline for physicians here in Arizona.”

The City of Phoenix was a partner with Creighton, Mayor Gallego shares. “We created a community facilities district to help them with some of the challenges around development and parking. Recently, the city issued hotel development bonds to support the development of a hotel on that campus as well.” Additionally, Gallego notes, the light rail goes right through there, which is a great resource on the transportation side. “None of this happens accidentally,” she says.

Dr. Richardson points to Creighton’s partnership with ASU as one of its most effective actions. “Early on, we started working with their faculty without an agreement in place. Our students were just working with some of their faculty, especially in the biomedical engineering department, and we signed a formal research and faculty sharing agreement with ASU.” Although COVID put a damper on that, a lot is moving forward now

INBUSINESSPHX.COM Photo courtesy of City of Phoenix

in a powerful way, according to Dr. Richardson. “One of the things that was really exciting was to see our students having ideas about products they would like to develop and working with the biomedical engineering department at ASU to develop those products.” Before COVID hit, 13 products had been developed by Creighton students with the help of the biomedical engineering department at ASU.

Benefit of the partnership goes in both directions, Dr. Richardson believes, explaining Creighton is using ASU’s faculty to teach a lot of the basic sciences. “We don’t have an undergraduate campus here and ASU is one of the biggest universities in the country, so we’re leveraging some of that to help our students with basic sciences. We also started a wonderful medical humanities program. We’re using some of the faculty from the Humanities department at ASU to come and sponsor courses here for our students, in art and literature and all of the humanities.”

Dr. Richardson explains that part of Creighton’s curriculum is the art of becoming a physician. “The compassion that we hope our students have, the ethics we hope they have — all this fits very well into the humanities. So, we have the medical humanities program.

“We feel, as a Jesuit university, that has to be a critical piece of developing healers,” Dr. Richardson continues. “They aren’t just good at the numbers and the physiology and the anatomy and the clinical aptitude, but they’re also caring individuals who care about people deeply and want to serve humanity. I just feel that it’s a critical piece that we can’t neglect.”

And Creighton actually puts that into practice with an extraordinary outreach into the community. Sharing, “St. Vincent de Paul is the other one where we really joined together, with multiple health systems, the university and St. Vincent de Paul all working together to provide expanded care for the uninsured in our community,” Dr. Richardson explains that they are able to funnel the people who are admitted through the emergency department at the hospital — where those with no health insurance often end up — over to St. Vincent de Paul for their follow-up care. And it’s been incredibly successful. “So that helps everyone. That helps the uninsured population; it helps their overall health. It helps the health system not have to deal with that and have these huge costs of people who can’t pay. And it helps our students and faculty to serve our community.

“Piper saw that idea and said, ‘We want to sponsor that’ — and gave us $10 million because they thought it was a great idea. And guess what? It was a really great idea. I get too excited about that, probably. But it really has worked out even better than we could have ever imagined.” [Editor’s notes: Dr. Richardson shares more online about the partnerships and extraordinarily effective community-based programs Creighton University is using to graduate healthcare practitioners who “care about people deeply and want to serve humanity” in this article online at www.inbusinessphx.com.] MAYO CLINIC IN ARIZONA

Big news from Mayo Clinic is its plans for the parcel of land newly purchased adjacent to its existing facility on Mayo Blvd. in north Phoenix. Says Richard Gray, M.D., CEO of Mayo Clinic in Arizona, “We are excited about this 228 acres of land. Part of that land is for Mayo Clinic’s generational growth. But also, in furtherance of the 2030 Strategy, we have long wanted to build something like what we’re now calling Discovery Oasis that can produce more solutions more efficiently and be more broadly available to patients by means of collaboration.” Dr. Gray explains Mayo’s 2030 Strategy is for Mayo Clinic to lead in the transformation of healthcare through a robust strategy of “cure, connect and transform” that will also involve a lot of digital technology.

“So, what we envision for Discovery Oasis is creating an ecosystem of bioscience and biotechnology collaboration that spans from discovery science (a research-type of undertaking) to translation of that science (meaning, ‘Okay, we’ve discovered a new drug or a new molecule and we want to make sure it really is effective in doing what we want it to do. How do we make that drug in quantities small enough to be feasible but large enough to do clinical trials in patients at Mayo Clinic and elsewhere?’; the translation of that drug into something that’s meaningful for patients) to commercialization (how do we then make it broadly available?).”

Dr. Gray notes there are areas around the country where there is a research park or healthcare innovation zones. “We would like this to be an area that spans all that — from research to innovation to the commercialization and taking it to the patient. We believe we’re in a prime position to be able to do that because those type of healthcare and technology and bioscience organizations are attracted to this area, they’re attracted to working with Mayo Clinic, they’re attracted to working with ASU, and you put all of those together with a space »

within which they can work with each other and collaborate with each other, and we really believe that within a few short years all eyes will be on this area and what is happening in healthcare innovation and in transformation of the system of helping patients in the U.S. and around the world.

“We want this to be something that’s great for the future of healthcare, that’s great for Mayo Clinic, but great for our area, too. And the transformation of healthcare. And the shoring up of U.S. resources — things that, through the pandemic, we found we need and rely on and don’t always have all of the infrastructure we need to accomplish within the boundaries of our nation.”

Collaboration and transformation of healthcare are the central concepts that underly all the plans Dr. Gray describes. “We believe that healthcare has to transform to more of a platform model around patients, where patients are able to take the best pieces of the healthcare system to meet their needs and put it together in a personalized way.” Furthering that goal, Mayo plans Discovery Oasis to be about the transformation of healthcare that’s needed, based on the core strategy mentioned earlier: cure, connect and transform. Around “cure,” Mayo’s emphasis is in patients that have serious, complex and rare diseases, and producing more cures and more hope for those patients. The connect piece is the digital transformation that’s needed in healthcare to make things better for patients and seamless for patients, but also to unburden doctors and nurses by automating some of the peripheral things so they can focus on the person in front of them — “So,” Dr. Gray notes, “there will be an emphasis on factors that can accelerate digital transformation.” And the transform piece is where technology plays a part: to simplify healthcare and create those digital platforms that people can build around them.

There is no timeline as yet for this development, as Dr. Gray explains Mayo has only just purchased the land and is still in the process of doing the planning for basic infrastructure and envisioning what might be the phases of how Discovery Oasis is rolled out. He credits the City of Phoenix for its support. “The City of Phoenix has been good working with us. They’ve helped us get a handle on what infrastructure will need to be put into place to start developing Discovery Oasis.”

“The City of Phoenix has been an important partner in Mayo’s expansion,” says Mayor Gallego. “Our taxpayers have supported them at more than $20 million and will be, hopefully, approving a deal today to allow them to keep a lot of their construction sales tax as an investment.” [Editor’s note: The Mayo Clinic development agreement was approved unanimously during the Phoenix City Council meeting a few hours after this interview.] “We’re also working with them on infrastructure because a campus of that magnitude will have a lot of infrastructure needs.”

Explaining that Phoenix has been very intentional in making that investment and trying to get world-class care in the city for its residents, Mayor Gallego also notes Mayo Clinic has benefited its surrounding community, attracting restaurants and other nonhealthcare businesses. The Mayo project will be more than three million square feet, with an expansion of clinical research, education and patient care. Gallego anticipates it will garner interest from companies that want to be near the Mayo Clinic’s Discovery Oasis. “So., we hope it’s helping build out an ecosystem,” she says. Evidence points to that being a realistic expectation. Dr. Gray says that since the land auction, there’s been no shortage of interest — in spite of the fact that Mayo has done nothing to solicit interest. “ In fact,” he says, “prior to the auction, we would have organizations approach us about collaborations at Mayo Clinic and we would tell them about the land being brought forward for auction, and they would tell us, ‘We’ll wait.’” Says Dr. Gray, “The Phoenix area has been wonderful in terms of bioscience and biotechnology. What we have seen at Mayo Clinic is incredible opportunity for us in Arizona, in no small part because of the burgeoning bioscience and biotechnology sector here in the Phoenix metropolitan area.” [Editor’s note: Mayo Clinic in Arizona, with its long history of collaboration, has had no small part in that growth. Dr. Gray shares more about that in the online version of this article at Mayo Clinic www.inbusinessphx.com.]

INBUSINESSPHX.COM Photo courtesy of Mayo Clinic

IVY BRAIN TUMOR CENTER

The Ivy Brain Tumor Center is, effectively, a not-for-profit drug development program, says Nader Sanai, M.D., director of Ivy Brain Tumor Center. “We focus on new and developed agents from partners and biopharma and biotech, and deploy them for patients with brain cancer.” This is done through specialized clinical trials as well as laboratory research, all done at the IBTC, which is at the Barrow Neurological Institute. “So, at any given point, our drug development portfolio has anywhere between 15 and 20 novel molecules and strategies, from a variety of companies nationally and internationally.”

What this means for the biotech community in Phoenix, Dr. Sanai explains, is there is an extremely robust avenue for early-stage clinical development in brain cancer. He believes it also means IBTC, by virtue of its being a unique resource here, is helping the region become more visible to the national and international drug development, pharmaceutical, biopharma, biotech community.

“We believe that all boats are floating with our growth here,” says Dr. Sanai. “We are now in our fourth year of our organization and have approximately 60 full-time employees. We treat more brain cancer patients than any center in the United States. And we have more early-stage clinical trials than any center in the United States. So, we think this is a very symbiotic relationship.”

IBTC was founded in late 2018 after an initial $50 million investment from the Ben and Catherine Ivy Foundation, which is the largest nonprofit funder of brain cancer research in the world, as well as an investment from the Barrow Neurological Foundation, which is a nonprofit fundraising arm of the Barrow Neurological Institute. It has grown substantially since then, and Dr. Sanai reports it has more than $130 million committed. Currently under construction at 3rd Avenue and Thomas Road is what will be the largest single-structure dedicated to brain cancer research in the United States — a 75,000-square-foot, five-story facility that will be IBTC’s headquarters and will be primarily laboratory space and clinical investigation space for IBTC’s drug development efforts but also with multidisciplinary space for brain cancer patient care. It is due to open mid-2023.

“Our mission is to facilitate small and large companies that have new agents in development to get to market for brain cancer patients. So, we partner with privately held companies that are emerging from stealth mode all the way up through multinational biopharma that are headquartered abroad,” Dr. Sanai says.

Observing that there’s increasing amount of various avenues of investment in the biotech and drug development industry but that, traditionally, the bulk of those have gone to coastal programs, Dr. Sanai says, “I think what we’re seeing now is that good science can be done in any region, as long as the circumstances are fertile. And with Phoenix’s incredible intellectual capital, relative lack of bureaucracy in the state as well as the influx of younger people, who oftentimes are the foundation for these efforts, I fully expect our region to grow within this sector.”

NEW BUSINESSES, NEW ADVANCES

ONCOMYX THERAPEUTICS

“We’re trying to stimulate the immune system to kill cancer,” says Steve Potts, Ph.D., MBA, the company’s co-founder, CEO and director. OncoMyx is specifically going after colorectal, gastrointestinal and some blood cancers, working with the myxoma virus, which, Potts points out, is unique because it works in solid tumors as well as blood cancers. “It’s very specific for tumor cells. The trick is to find something that only affects the cancer cells, and that’s a hard problem.”

Potts describes himself as a serial entrepreneur. With a doctorate from University of California at Davis and a wife from Arizona, Potts says he moved back here several years ago, started a company in Flagstaff that was acquired, then worked for a San Diego company for four years that was developing a drug for cancer, which Genentech acquired. “While the company was being acquired, I got to know a researcher at ASU — Grant McFadden — a global leader in this area of using a virus cell to kill cancer cells. He’d moved here five years ago from University of Florida and was ready to get into biotech. We hit it off, and fundraised in steps,” he relates.

The $25 million Series A raise was to get OncoMyx out of the University and get tested in animal models. The $50 million Series B, which closed last fall, is, basically, to get it ready for clinical trials, which are slated for next year. “It’s an expensive, long process from idea to actual drug,” Potts says, noting it takes on average three to five years from idea to clinical trials, and then the clinical trials take another three to five years.

Having come out of ASU and tested in collaboration with Mayo Clinic and SkySong — the licensing arm for ASU — OncoMyx, in Potts’s words, is “home grown here.”

And he describes “here” as a very collaborative town with good synergy. “There are really good clinical groups here: Mayo Clinic, Banner Health, a medical school here in town now, the Ivy Brain Institute. ASU is very good about getting companies spun out, helping with the commercialization of technology. There’s research collaboration between the universities and clinics in town.” For OncoMyx, “We do a lot of our research testing with TD2 [Translational Drug Development] in Scottsdale. They do really good research — they’re under the radar, but a really great group. It’s been great to have them in town.”

Crediting the state with a strong history in life sciences, Potts likens the field to a tripod. One leg is the devices industry, involving, for instance, cardiac devices such as pacemakers and stints. Another is the diagnostics industry; observing, “A lot of the really key cancer human genome discoveries were made here,” Potts names TGen and Sonora Quest as among the big names here. “A number of us are trying to build that third leg of the stool — the biotech drug development aspect,” he says, noting that drug development is a huge industry, and what’s been done is just the tip of the iceberg. “The big drug development centers are San Francisco, Boston, New Jersey, to some extent Seattle, San Diego. Phoenix is working to come into that second tier. OncoMyx is representing that wave of trying to get more biotech drug development here in Arizona.”

INBUSINESSPHX.COM Photo courtesy of OncoMyx Therapeutics

HUMABIOLOGICS, INC.

Humabiologics is a spinoff of previously mentioned Pinnacle Transplant. CEO and founder Mohammad Albanna, Ph.D., saw an opportunity to, essentially, salvage donated biologic material that Pinnacle Transplant could not use. He started the company in 2018 and is already shipping around the world — to Japan, South Korea, China, Australia, all over Europe, all over Canada — “because there is no other product like our product in the market,” Albanna says. The product? Human collagen.

Albanna was recruited by Pinnacle Transplant from Wake Forest Innovation in North Carolina, the commercialization arm of Wake Forest Baptist medical center, to be in the research and development department to launch new products. “I was trained by the gentleman who pioneered the field of regenerative medicine,” he says, noting that after early successes, “everyone got into the field of regenerative medicine, where we combine materials and cells, where we can bioprint tissues and organs. Because of the work we did with him, we pioneered the field of bioprinting where we can bioprint human tissues and organs.”

Now, with any type of cells from the human body, we have systems to grow those cells in the lab. However, where it comes to the material, the only option that was available for research was using material obtained from animal tissue. The problem with that for developing human therapies, Albanna explains, is “we know for sure that with animal models, 90% of drugs we test on animals that are shown to be safe fail in Phase 1 clinical trials because the animal does not exactly replicate human physiology.

“But now, we can create models [with human collagen] in the lab to test the drugs so we can get realistic results and response. So, before we spend hundreds of millions of dollars and waste years, we know basically if it’s going to work or not.”

If researchers want to create a cancer model to test chemo drugs and see which drug performs better, which has least toxicity to the patient — because every lung cancer is the same and every breast cancer is the same, for instance, but every patient is different — how about taking a biopsy from the patient’s cancer cell, grow them in the lab, create that model, and then testing the drugs on that so it can be determined what the dose needs to be, what type of drug, and if it’s going to have side effects on the patient. “So, you can, literally, have personalized medicine,” Albanna says.

But to do that, researchers need to have the material. “Until we came as a company, there was no human biomaterial. It was all obtained from animal material; there was no access to human.” Albanna combined his expertise in the field with the tissue banking at Pinnacle. “They worked with donated tissue material. Sometimes you cannot use that tissue for transplant, so you end up discarding that tissue. So that’s where we come in. We take that tissue that is not going to be used for transplant, and we extract the main building blocks, like the collagen, and we provide it to researchers so they can use it to create human tissues and bone. The advantage of that is that you are actually using human material to create a human tissue.”

Albanna says he is proud of what his company contributes to the industry. On the one hand, it is a product that is needed in a $40 billion market where every researcher around the world is trying to recreate human tissue or organs and needs that material. “And we are trying to save money for companies that are developing therapies so they can get their therapies more quickly to the patient.” On the other hand is “the noble cause that we honor someone’s last wishes — they donated the human tissue and if it was not being used for transplant, we make sure the donor’s last wishes still are being honored.”

Crediting a supportive environment for startups, Albanna says, “A lot of people helped with starting the business. The city itself; the state in general; we are still in a business incubator where we can get subsidized rent; we have a lot of free services available to us, so that helps us to stay focused on the business and use our money to grow the business as opposed to building the infrastructure around us.”

And he’s helping to pay that forward. “I remember in my first year here, I went to ASU — I had the relationship with the department there — and we took around 10 students to provide them with a hands-on internship,” Albanna says. “It was very successful. By the end of that internship, we hired three people full-time from those students. Some of them had not even completed their degree yet.” And recently, he says, a chemical engineering student landed a job with Medtronic. “So, the idea that we, as a small company, try to provide internships for students actually opens a lot of doors for them where they can actually stay in the state rather than go to California. At least with our role here as a small company, we’re trying always to provide this hands-on experience for the students so, when they apply for a job, they have something meaningful on their resume where big companies will appreciate and give them the opportunity for a position.”

Speaking of the collaborative environment of the Phoenix Biomedical Core, Albanna says, “We see a lot of great stuff happening here and there, so it’s really exciting to see what’s happening right now. I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen in the next five years. It’s going to be completely different than today.”

MOVING FORWARD

“What’s happened during the years of the Roadmap is Arizona has grown into one of the fastest-growing bioscience states in the country,” says Flinn’s Halvorsen, noting that the growth rate of our bioscience jobs in recent years has been about double what the rest of the nation is experiencing.

Arizona’s Bioscience Roadmap spawned the bringing together of the many disparate institutions across sectors, across companies, from government to academia to industry. “From what we hear, collaboration is not typical in most regions,” Halvorsen says, “but Arizona is a state that does collaboration well; Arizona has the ‘collaborative gene.’”

Arizona, in fact, has a reputation outside its borders as a state where the institutions work well together across sectors. Says Halvorsen, “Our people, our institutions, our customs [have the reputation] of working with one another for the collective good.

“That definitely provides a distinct advantage when you have an ecosystem that’s working efficiently together, and individuals are benefiting from the others in the same ecosystem.”

City of Phoenix phoenix.gov Creighton University creighton.edu Flinn Foundation flinn.org Humabiologics, Inc. humabiologics.com Ivy Brain Tumor Center ivybraintumorcenter.org Mayo Clinic mayoclinic.org OncoMyx Therapeutics oncomyx.com The University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix phoenixmed.arizona.edu

Bert Thornton and Sherry Hartnett, Ph.D., are coauthors of High-Impact Mentoring: A Practical Guide to Creating Value in Other People’s Lives (BookLogix, 2021, ISBN: 978-16653-0344-6), which serves as a blueprint for hardwiring the program into a business’s culture so that every mentee gets a consistent experience every time. (This includes those who might be working remotely — there’s a whole chapter devoted to virtual mentoring.) Part 1 offers “across the table” advice on one-on-one mentoring. Part 2 lays out a framework to help companies put their own program in place.

Bert Thornton is the former president and COO of Waffle House. His first book, Find an Old Gorilla: Pathways Through the Jungle of Business and Life, is a well-received leadership handbook for rising high achievers and emerging leaders.

Dr. Hartnett is a marketing and leadership professor, consultant, author, and mentor. At the University of West Florida, she founded the pioneering, high-impact experiential learning Executive Mentor Program. highimpactmentoring book.com

Nine Reasons Your Company Should Create a Mentoring Program in 2022

A good program will help businesses thrive despite the turbulence ahead this year

by Bert Thornton and Dr. Sherry Hartnett

Companies face numerous challenges going into the new year: a shortage of skilled workers, employee churn, economic aftershocks from the pandemic and shifting consumer behaviors, just to name a few. While there’s no one-size-fits-all fix, there is a powerful tool that can help leaders successfully navigate many of the obstacles 2022 might throw at their business: mentoring.

Especially as the world struggles to regain its equilibrium in the wake of the pandemic, the future is a moving target — and navigating this ongoing chaos requires a workforce with the right mindset and skillset.

Employees and leaders alike must be adaptable, engaged, emotionally intelligent and solution-focused — but those aren’t skills that can be taught in a webinar. Mentoring is the obvious answer.

We wanted to meet the “huge and ironic need” for savvy leaders to share insights with the multitude of rising high achievers who crave that guidance. It makes sense for companies to bring the two groups together. But first they must know what good mentoring looks like and they need a way to scale it in the organization. Our new book, HighImpact Mentoring: A Practical Guide to Creating Value in Other People’s Lives, helps on both fronts.

Mentorship doesn’t happen on its own. Individuals must make a conscious choice to become mentors and learn how to do it well. And companies need to plan and execute a mentorship program that delivers consistent, quality results to all participants.

Creating a good mentoring program can help businesses thrive despite the turbulence ahead in 2022. Consider these nine powerful benefits:

Mentoring helps attract and retain talent. Especially in today’s environment of uncertainty and upheaval, companies need a strong team of employees. And it’s just as crucial that, once hired, good people stay on board. A mentoring program shows them there’s a path for advancement inside the company.

Millennials, in particular, deeply value training and development. By sharing their knowledge and experience with younger employees, mentors help them grow and progress. At the same time, they teach younger people how to navigate challenges specific to their workplace so they are less likely to leave.

It helps new employees hit the ground running a

lot faster. We no longer have the luxury of long onboarding periods for new hires. The pace of business requires everyone to become a contributing member of the team almost immediately. Assigning new employees a mentor early on can help expedite progress while helping them avoid pitfalls.

A solid mentoring program can help cushion training budget shortfalls… Quite often in times of economic turmoil (like now), training budgets are on the chopping block. Mentors