Amgen Announces Incubator ‘Golden Ticket’ Winners

Amgen Inc. announced Thursday its new five-year sponsorship of a San Francisco life sciences incubator called QB3@953, which focuses on developing new human health therapies. To promote the sponsorship, Amgen has bestowed two “Amgen Golden Ticket” awards, which grants the winners one year of lab access at the incubator, additional facility perks as well as connections to Amgen business and science executives. The winners of the golden tickets were Mission Bio Inc. of San Francisco, which develops tools to study cellular heterogeneity in human health, and SiteOne Therapeutics of Bozeman, Mont., which is developing alternative therapies to treat chronic pain. “The QB3@953 Amgen Golden Ticket award supports our research and development strategy to fund early-stage innovation in the biotech hubs of San Francisco and Cambridge, Mass.,” Amgen’s Vice President of Research in Inflammation and Oncology Flavius Martin, said in a statement. “Amgen also supports the LabCentral incubator adjacent to Amgen’s Cambridge Research and Development center.” Amgen shares closed up $2.46, or 1.64 percent, to $152.27 on the Nasdaq.