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Pete Yonkman, president of Cook Group and Cook Medical, sees initiatives like the new Indiana University IU Launch Accelerator for Biosciences, or IU LAB, as key to helping Hoosier health care companies stay on the cutting edge.
Yonkman was among the speakers Monday at the official launch of IU LAB, which will be based at the 16 Tech Innovation District. In December, IU announced that it received a $138 million grant from the Lilly Endowment to fund a six-floor, 150,000-square-foot facility expected to open in 2027.
Yonkman joined IU President Pamela Whitten, Gov. Mike Braun and others in lauding the potential of IU LAB to strengthen Indiana’s life sciences sector by facilitating academic-industry partnerships for the discovery, innovation, and commercialization of new therapeutics, diagnostics, and devices.
When he took the stage, Yonkman joked that he wondered why he had been invited because Cook had no major announcement. But then he said Cook’s long-term success underscored why IU LAB was so vital.
“We’re sort of the prototype of what a future partner might look like,” he said.
Yonkman said he reviewed the history of Bloomington-based Cook Group, the medical device pioneer founded in 1963, in preparation for his remarks.
“Over that time, we have 57 medical firsts as an organization,” said Yonkman, citing examples including the first approved coronary stent. “Go back to that list. What you see is that in no case of that 57 did we invent that technology alone. We did it through, either, collaboration with an individual physician, researcher, research institute or university.”
IU has called the grant the largest it has ever received in support of research and development. The grant from Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment was to the IU Foundation.
IU President Whitten said IU LAB’s initial focus will be on research in innovation in diabetes, neuroscience, rare diseases, cancer, and bone engineering and regenerative medicine.
David Rosenberg, CEO of IU LAB, said that having students, from middle schoolers doing labs to medical students exploring research opportunities, was a top focus.
“There will be classroom space,” he said. “There will be incubator space and accelerator space for new companies.”
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