Curt Bilby
“At Terapio, we are developing innovative treatments to help cancer patients avoid some of chemotherapy’s most damaging side effects. By reducing these often intolerable symptoms that cause people to suffer from chemotherapy, we hope to make it possible for people to continue chemotherapy unabated – which would help save lives of many afflicted with the ravages of cancer. In addition, our pioneering applications also provide protection from and treatment for radiation damage.
I first came to know Brewster McCracken in my role as Chairman of BioAustin. During our discussions, I learned of his efforts to establish the Austin Bioscience Incubator. Subsequently, Terapio was admitted as a member of the Austin Bioscience Incubator, which, under the direction of Isaac Barchas and Jessica Hanover, has been very beneficial to our company, including being instrumental in helping us secure a grant from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund.
The Bioscience Incubator is an innovative collaboration between The University of Texas and the City of Austin. The incubator promotes commercialization of technologies that can increase the quality of life, reduce the cost of healthcare and, most importantly, save lives. The companies that emerge from the incubator also create high quality jobs and opportunity right here in Austin.
Brewster’s vision of Austin as a major national biotech center has not stopped with creating the Bioscience Incubator. Last spring, I traveled with him to Temple, Texas at his request. He wanted to learn about the possible collaboration between the life sciences sector in Austin and the City of Temple, Scott & White, Texas A&M and Temple’s community college and high schools and how that could help our region train people for good jobs in biotech and healthcare. We spent nearly a full day meeting with Temple’s healthcare and life science leaders and touring their laboratories and job training facilities. Moreover, as recently as last fall, he has brought together various Austin biotech and life sciences executives a number of times to seek their advice on what more Austin could do to help our companies succeed and prosper.
I am supporting Brewster McCracken for mayor. We are at a time of economic transition, both globally and right here in Austin – especially in the biotechnology and life science sector where we are reaching critical mass. I know that Brewster has the vision to lead Austin to a better economic future and is a proactive supporter of the biotech and general business community. I also know from firsthand experience that Brewster is a hands-on leader who has that often elusive ability to follow-through to implement that vision.”
- Curt Bilby
president and CEO of Terapio (an Austin-based biotech company)
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