Washington State University Spokane’s business incubator, SP3NW, has received new funding to equip a wet lab for scalable startups in the Spokane area, says Michaele Armstrong, SP3NW’s associate director.

Spokane County Health Sciences and Services Authority has awarded a $65,000 grant to SP3NW to purchase and install incubators, microscopes, a wet bath, shaker plates, a filtered fume hood, centrifuges, and other standard wet lab equipment, Armstrong says. 

The HSSA grant will be met with one-to-one matching funds from WSU to equip the 563-square-foot wet lab in the WSU Center for Innovation, at 120 N. Pine, in the University District.

Andy Johnston, founder of Spokane-based Johnston Engineering PLLC and chair of the Evergreen Bioscience Innovation Cluster committee, says in a press release that life science-related startups need leasable, fully equipped wet lab space to discover new chemicals, biological materials, or drugs.

If those spaces are unavailable or not fully equipped, then startups may relocate, “taking with them the potential for economic benefit to Spokane,” he adds.

Armstrong concurs and says she’s noticed a few companies that moved to Spokane from Western Washington and from Southern California that had to relocate elsewhere such as the West Plains and North Idaho, where wet lab space was available.

For example, she says Gerald Kim’s Spokane manufacturing company Eotron LLC moved from Southern California to the West Plains where it found available wet lab space. 

“There was another company, Butterfly Sciences Inc., that ended up in Post Falls in the University of Idaho Business Park because of the dearth of wet lab space, so we know that there is a need,” she says.

The space is expected to be available this summer.