On Jan. 30, 2020, the University of Washington (UW) announced that a new center was being created with $4 million in matching funds from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for promising biomedical discoveries. WE-REACH is one of five national commercialization hubs selected for funding by the NIH in 2019.

UW’s newly funded Washington Entrepreneurial Research Evaluation and Commercialization Hub (WE-REACH), with an annual budget boosted to $1.4 million by contributions from other partners, is organized to mentor and support biomedical entrepreneurs as well as provide project funding to fuel four to six biomedical startups a year with up to $200,000 each.

Those projects will include innovative disease treatments, new drugs, diagnostics, genetic testing and health technologies. Ho said the center will support innovation steps not typically supported by research grants, such as human clinical trials or the development of and access to products.