Healthcare, Science, and Startups Unite: A Deep Dive into Fitzsimons Innovation Community

In the latest episode of Compliance Conversations, host CJ Wolf sits down with Steve VanNurden, a seasoned innovator and the CEO of Fitzsimons Innovation Community. The conversation takes us on a journey through the unique ecosystem where healthcare, science, and startups come together to revolutionize the future of medicine. 

With over 34 years of experience, Steve wears multiple hats as the Associate Vice Chancellor of Biotechnology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, and as the CEO of Fitzsimons Innovation Community, a unique biotech park integrated with the university's medical campus. 

A Unique Innovation Hub in Healthcare

Fitzsimons Innovation Community is a one-of-a-kind hub that defies the traditional separation between biotech parks and academic institutions. Situated on a former army post in Aurora, Colorado, this community brings together academic research, clinical practice, and entrepreneurial spirit—all within one square mile. Steve shares how this integration allows for seamless collaboration between different stakeholders, from scientists and physicians to entrepreneurs and investors. 

Transforming Challenges into Opportunities

During the interview, Steve discusses the unique advantages of having a biotech community adjacent to the medical campus. For instance, a physician can see patients in the morning, teach medical students at noon, check in on a research lab in the afternoon, and work on a startup project later—all without moving their car. This proximity fosters an environment where ideas can flourish and move quickly from concept to reality. 

Steve also addresses some of the common challenges faced by startups in the healthcare sector, such as access to capital and navigating regulatory hurdles. Fitzsimons Innovation Community has tackled these issues head-on by leading the creation of the CU Healthcare Innovation Fund to provide financial support for promising startups. Additionally, they host weekly regulatory breakfasts to help innovators understand the complex regulatory landscape early in their journey, preventing costly mistakes down the line. 

Steve points out that Colorado has become a hotspot for innovation in recent years, and Fitzsimons Innovation Community is a big part of that growth. Once considered a “flyover state,” Colorado is now recognized as one of the best places to start a business, thanks to its highly educated workforce, strong business environment, and access to key markets via Denver International Airport. 

Learn more about Colorado’s role in life sciences and healthcare innovation through the Colorado Hub for Health Impact campaign. 

Creating an Innovation Ecosystem

The conversation dives deeper into the importance of building a truly integrated innovation ecosystem. At Fitzsimons, you’ll find everything from shared labs and clinical trial services to industry collaboration spaces—all designed to accelerate the journey from discovery to patient care. 

Don’t miss this insightful conversation on how healthcare, science, and startups are coming together to create a brighter future for patients.  

Episode Transcript

CJ: Welcome everybody to another episode of Compliance Conversations. I am CJ Wolf with Healthicity and today we're going to talk about innovation and innovation communities and our guest is Steve VanNurden. Steve, welcome.  

Steve: Thanks CJ!  

CJ: We're glad to have you and we're we appreciate your expertise in this area, Steve. We'd like to give our guests a moment to kind of tell us a little bit about themselves, maybe a little bit about your background and what you're currently doing to kind of set the stage here for us.  

Steve: Sure! So, I started my career in innovation at Academic Medical Center in 1990. So, 34 years has gone by pretty quick in innovation, but I've spent entire career there. The first 22 years was at the Mayo Clinic, I was the Chair of Mayo Clinic Ventures and did interesting things there. My first foray was to start MayoClinic.com in 1995, back when people said; "Will people really go to the Internet?" And from there I got to do a lot of really interesting things. And then about 12 years ago I decided to move to the University of Colorado and started there, actually restarted there what they call tech transfer, restarting their tech transfer offices because typically you take the approach of tech transfer offices at universities usually don't work very well and so we wanted to reinvent tech transfer. So, we started really all over, we start from scratch. And what we did and that's why I have three, I wear three hats today at the university. One is I'm the associate vice chancellor for biotechnology and innovation at the University of Colorado Anschutz medical campus, so that the medical campus, all I know is medical.  

CJ: Got you!  

Steve: And then I'm also the CEO of our biotech park here called the Fitzsimons Innovation Community. And that's really unusual to have both of those on a specific campus. Usually, biotech parks are away from campuses. They're not really right on the campus here. It's within one square mile and it's you wouldn't if you came to our campus, CJ, you wouldn't be able to tell one from the other. They're all integrated, which is where I spend most of my time these days is integrating all of the innovation into a single campus, so that you would not know when you were to come or if industry comes on campus or start, you want to integrate those all to all together, that's very unusual in the United States. There's not very many places where it can be all integrated onto a single campus.  

CJ: That is unique and so I appreciate you pointing that out. You know, a lot of us I think take for granted that the new things pop up in the healthcare space and not realizing all the work and all of the ideas and all of the things that led up to that. So, tell us a little bit about what's the vision of the Fitzsimons innovation community and tell us about that.  

Steve: Yeah! So, this is actually an old army post. So, it was started in 1919 as an army post. It was. It was made for medical. So, they built hospitals and everything on this campus. And then in the late 90s, I think it was like 96-95 somewhere around in there, the United States went through this thing called the BRAC closure Base Realignment and Closure Act, and they close Fitzsimons. So, what do you do with an old army post? It's actually one square mile. And so, the University of Colorado and the City of Aurora, Fitzsimons Innovation committees in the City of Aurora, Co they formed this new entity to build a biotech park on one of side it and to build an academic Medical Center on the other side. And so, they started that in 1996. Do just that is to build a biotech park. So, today we have 5000 physicians on campus.  

CJ: Wow!  

Steve: 2.7 million patient visits, $800 million worth of research, 81 companies that we that we have here, and so when they closed the base there were about 5000 people that worked here and there are kinds of campaigns to keep the base open but closed. Today, there are 27,000 people that come to work on this single campus here, and for an old army post.  

CJ: That's great! 

Steve: If you're a physician, for example, you could see patients in the morning. It's one of the three hospitals. There's UC health, there's Children's Hospital in Colorado, and there's the VA hospital on this campus. So, you could see patients in the morning. You could walk over to the medical school at noon and teach at the at the medical school, you could go over at 1:00 and look at your lab. And at 2:00 you could go over to your company and you didn't even move your car.  

So that's where what we mean by integration, to integrate those together and so that's how our campus looks today and again much different than an old army post.  

CJ: Yeah, well, it sounds exciting. I'm like a school nerd, if I had unlimited funds, I would just try to learn the rest of my life. And so those types of centers are pretty exciting because you get the juices flowing. Then you get creative thinkers and those sorts of things. And it sounds like that's what this community is meant to do, to bring together industry. You know, scientists, patient care advocates, right? and good ideas. 

Steve: That's right. And we want to, if you have a good idea in your lab or you're seeing patients and you have a good idea on the light bulb goes off, you know, you probably weren't trained in innovation or you weren't trained in this. And so, what do I do with it? So, our whole goal, well, our whole goal is to get technologies to patients. That true north, that's what we think about every single day is. How can I get this to patients and then you work backwards from there. But we want to make that very easy for you to do that. So, I've been involved in over 60 startups in my career. And so, we're a physician, that or a scientist or researcher would be like; "I haven't the first clue on what to do."  

Our team has been built around really looking finding those technologies or those ideas that we believe we can get to patients and then surround that inventor with as much as we can so that they could have a better chance of becoming more successful here than they could on their own or someplace that didn't have that integrated model of what we have here at the University of Colorado.  

CJ: Yeah! And so, tell me a little bit about kind of the environment in the state of Colorado. It seems like there's been some incentives and a lot of work probably behind the scenes to get this going, right?  

Steve: Yeah! In fact, I'm going to pull up, CJ, because I had a couple of statistics I wanted to. So, when I came here 12 years ago, Colorado was pretty much a fly over state unless you skied, you either going to from Boston to San Francisco or San Diego or, you know, back and so you just flew over Colorado. But since I've been here in the last 12 years, it's really changed the whole entrepreneurial environment. Now, you know, Colorado is on the map and I'm going to give you why I think or some of those one, we have the largest airport in the country now and it's 20 minutes from our campus. And so when I've had CEOs of companies or investors, I've picked them up personally at the airport and you can fly pretty much anywhere. So, it's a very large airport right by us. The 2nd it's rated by Forbes advisor as the 2nd place to start a business, second best place to start a business. Number 3 for economic stability and potential, according to U.S. news and World Report, these are all from 2023. Number 4 for state, for higher education. It's one of the most educated workforces in in the country. The 5th for state for Business Environment. And so all of those things have now start to come together.  

CJ: Yes!  

Steve: The one thing that we were missing several years ago was access to capital. You can get that in Boston. You can get that in the Sand Hill Road in the Bay Area. And so, in 2019, I actually started a venture fund. So, my third hat is a partner for the CU Healthcare Invention Fund, because what we found was, especially in startups, you could put all these elements together and we did all of that on a single campus. But they didn't have the funding to build a strategic and investment fund to be able to invest in the most promising startups that we can help create and develop here. So that was the one missing piece. But since then, there's been a billion dollars in investment into Colorado year now for I think since 20, I think past 77 years, there's been over a billion dollars in investment that's come in into Colorado, and I don't see that really changing anytime soon. And the cost of living and other aspects of quality of life. Your dollar can still go. It's gotten more expensive here, but your dollar can still go a lot further than it can in, you know, in the coasts.  

CJ: Yeah, absolutely, Steve. This is fascinating. We're going to take a quick break everybody and then we'll be right back to talk some more about an innovation community. 

Welcome back everyone from the break we've been talking about innovation, Steve, and tell us a little bit about how somebody might select an innovation community cause there are others, right? And so people have choices. So, you know anything that you'd like to share in that regard.  

Steve: Yeah! So, one is and we get this all the time with companies. It's the ability to recruit talent. That's been a big thing nowadays, and to do that and 2nd diverse talent. And so, fortunately, in the city of Aurora, Co, it's a very diverse community. So, access to talent and educated talent like I mentioned, you know, we're in the top three or four as far as educated workforce, but it's also diversity. And so the ability to first and foremost to track the right talent is really, really important. And because Colorado is the lifestyle of Colorado, so the campus is really a live work play. So, we have apartments on campus, we have hotels, we even have a micro-brewery we got in Colorado. And so, the live work, play model aspect of that of being able to develop that and then it's right across the street, literally, you wouldn't be able to tell where one campus ends and where the other from, from the ability to interact with Q opinion leaders. Like I mentioned, there's, you know, 5000 physicians and $800 million worth of research, a typical biotech park does not have that.  

CJ: Right! 

Steve: So, the ability to interact and collaborate and rub shoulders with that. So, what I love to see is on a nice day on a you know at the outdoor restaurant, you got a surgeon sitting next to a CEO sitting next to a lab tech sitting next to a bioinformatics person and they're all collaborating on that. And that's where innovation really happens a lot of times.  

CJ: Yeah, absolutely!  

Steve: So just say; "Hey, CJ, did you know about this and this? And they're like, well, did you think about this and this and this?" And we create that kind of environment, that has that ability to do that. So, the you know, the PhD goes back to its lab and says; "Well, have we ever thought about this?" And the physician goes back to the practicing and going; "Why are we always doing it this way?"  

CJ: Right, right. So...  

Steve: Then yeah, go ahead.  

CJ: Sorry, I was going to just so kind of on that that point you know I'm assuming there's research in the basic sciences but also the applied sciences, engineering, clinical. Can you tell us a little bit about kind of the mix of science that's going on there?  

Steve: Yeah! So, we have five schools here, so the School of Nursing, the medical school, the only medical school in the state of Colorado, a pharmacy school, School of Public Health and the School of Dentistry. So, you can cover the gamut from that. You can also go from what they call cradle to grave, because we have Children's Hospital here, you have UC healthy adult hospital. And a lot of physicians practicing both. And so, you can do longitudinal studies from a lifetime span because we have all of that on the campus. And what the Fitzsimons innovation Community does is it surrounds itself with all the other things they need. So, let's say you are collaborating and you need to do a critical experiment, and you need a lab, but you got a five-year lease on the lab.  

CJ: Exactly!  

Steve: We have shared labs, for example. You know, if you wanted to start a company, CJ, I can do that right now. I could give you access to a secretary or somebody to help you there. You need a conference room. You need an address for SBIR funding or you need the ability to meet these five physicians across the street. To organize your clinical trial, that's what the Fitzsimons Innovation community does. It looks at all of what's missing, in order for these technologies or ideas to get to patients and then we try and fill in those gaps. And what's really important about that is speed. So, what's been frustrating in my career is it takes a really long time to get a technology to patients.  

CJ: Right!  

Steve: Why is that? And so, we asked that question all the time to the ability to be able to say; "Well, it's this bottleneck or it's this bottleneck and can we solve that bottleneck?" That's the power of an innovation community is to be able to look at that from end to end, but also have the cross functional teams. They're already on campus. They may not be organized in the right way for innovation. But that's our job. And once you do that, magic happens, I'll say.  

CJ: Yeah, absolutely! You know, some of our listeners, you know, most of our listeners are involved in healthcare compliance and those sorts of things. Are you aware of any maybe hurdles or like you mentioned, bottlenecks that relate to maybe regulatory or legal or those sorts of things that might need to be thought of at least? 

Steve: Oh, for sure I can give you a very specific example. So, when you start with an idea and it looks like a really good idea and maybe file patents around it and those kinds of things and now you want to make progress toward getting these to patients. One of the earliest mistakes companies make is they don't bring their regulatory people in soon enough. They go down a pathway pretty far. Then somebody, somewhere along says; "Well, do you think the FDA will approve this?" You should have thought about that early on.  

CJ: Yep! Right, exactly!  

Steve: What we do, because we have regulatory people on campus here at any given time. I just looked this morning, CJ, we have 922 clinical trials that are currently enrolling patients.  

CJ: Wow, that's great! 

Steve: And so, we have all the regulatory aspects of that. So, every Thursday we have a regulatory breakfast kind of thing. And so, if you're an inventor or if you're thinking about starting a company or you're a first time CEO or you're looking at this, you can come to this kind of open forum. It's really meant to be informal. And so you can ask those questions and you don't have to spend, you know, all kinds of money or all kinds of time trying to find a regulatory person, Fitzsimons organizes that.  

And it's amazing on how many people come to those meetings on Thursday and amazing how somebody thought they were going down pathway A and they should be going pathway B. And once they talked to the regulatory people, they said; "Well, that's a great idea, but you'll, you know, it'll take you 5000 patients to prove that for the FDA or it'll be, you know, $75,000 a patient and you're going have to do 300 patients. You know you don't have the money for that."  

CJ: Exactly!  

Steve: It's been amazing to me to sit in on those on Thursdays and really had a lot of things off that you normally would have gone down that pathway too far before you were the regulatory people in.  

CJ: Right! It's smart to kind of bring those folks to the table at the beginning rather than at the end, you know, just hearing you talk, I used to work in medical device and just I saw all of the things that you mentioned, you know, patients’ hospital and it is all scattered. So, this is just like a dream. It's like all of these things are right at your doorstep and good ideas can get to fruition. Sounds like in a relatively quick. And that is exciting for people.  

Steve: Yeah! And it's been really exciting to see it happen. And for people to start to work together and because again, our whole goal is to get this to patients and you can't do that without regulatory and things that I would take for granted like you said you're in the device world.  

CJ: I was, yeah! 

Steve: Yeah! So that's interesting because last Thursday we had a scientist come in who was developing a device for cardiology. And somebody said; "Well, that's probably a 510(K).  

CJ: Right!  

Steve: And the physician or the scientist said; "What's the 510(K)?  

CJ: Yeah! 

Steve: I mean, you know, that's a huge difference in victory, whether you can do this as 510(K) or not?  

CJ: Exactly!  

Steve: They had never even heard of what a 510(K) is.  

CJ: Yeah! Now, and you got to have those folks all together to kind of talk about those things, cause you can have the best idea in the world and the best science, but those things have to also fall in line, too.  

Steve: Yeah, I've been involved my, not me personally, but I've commercialized over 2000 technologies in my career.  

CJ: Wow!  

Steve: And I've seen so many of them fail not because the technology fail, they just didn't understand the pathway to patients. And of course, one of those big ones in our industry is regulatory.  

CJ: Exactly! Well, Steve, we're getting a little bit towards the end of our time together. I always give our guests the last word, any last thoughts or comments or suggestions for our listeners?  

Steve: I don't think so, CJ. You know, it's great that we're able to talk about Colorado because a lot of people don't know what's here now. And the momentum that we've built over the last, you know, decade and the ability to really put this on the map and hopefully the audience will say; "I never really looked at Colorado before, but maybe I should."  

CJ: Yeah, absolutely! Well, I'm going to pay attention to the website I, you know, I got on there and looked at it a little bit and see what good things are coming out of this community. So, Thank you so much for sharing.  

Steve: Thank you, CJ! Thanks for the opportunity! 

CJ: Absolutely! And thanks to all of our listeners for listening to another episode as we always do at the end, we'd love to invite listeners to suggest other topics, other guests that you'd like to hear about and hear from. So, thanks again for participating and take care until next time.