Breast cancer survivors have message of hope for others

Lisa Meurgue and Joyce McFarland first met when Joyce and her husband, Bob, were regulars at Island Café, a French restaurant on the island owned by Lisa and her husband, Denis.
In 2003 and 2005 Joyce and Bob traveled to France with the Meurgues on their Gastronomic Wine and Dine Tour.
“That’s when our friendship really started to jell,” said Meurgue.
Now these long-time friends share one more thing in common. Both are breast cancer survivors with a message of hope.
“There is life after breast cancer,” said Meurgue “Breast cancer does not define who you are.”

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Meurgue was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008. Joyce McFarland was diagnosed with breast cancer in October. Knowing how important it is to have a friend at a time like this, Lisa made it clear she was there for Joyce night and day.
Any time you have cancer, you don’t know what to expect until all the tests are done, they said.
“The unknown is what makes it scary,” said Meurgue.
Joyce discovered a lump in her breast last summer, but said she had a lot going on at the time in her business and put getting it checked out on the back burner. She and Bob are the owners of the Marco Island Clothing Company.
In October at her annual physical, her blood pressure was off the chart and her doctor was concerned.
“I didn’t mention the lump,” said McFarland.
Watching her write the prescription for blood pressure meds and scheduling a stress test, Joyce said, “I know why my blood pressure is high, I have a lump.”
A mammogram immediately confirmed what McFarland feared. That was just a few days before her good friend, Lisa, happened to drop by the store to look for a new dress.
Lisa mentioned to Joyce that since May, eight women on the island received news they had breast cancer and had phoned, asking for advice. The next morning, Joyce made that same call.
“Lisa, I have something to tell you. I am No. 9. I’ve just been diagnosed,” Joyce said.
Fighting breast cancer
Lisa was always vigilant getting a Pap smear and annual mammogram. In 2008, while on vacation, her hand brushed across her breast and something didn’t feel right.
“I made a mental note to get it checked as soon as we got home,” she said.
The radiologist told her it was nothing to worry about and that it would be gone in three months.
“It wasn’t gone in three months,” said Lisa. She went back to her doctor. A biopsy confirmed she had breast cancer. “But my prognosis was good,” said Lisa, who began sharing what she was going through with friends, including Joyce.
Joyce suggested a fundraiser fashion show be put on by Marco Island Clothing Company.
“This was Joyce’s brainchild,” said Lisa. It was held at Bistro Soleil and more than 200 women attended. Patrick Nowlan from Fox-4 TV was the emcee and the show was a big success.
Lisa received her first chemo on Dec. 10, 2008, opening day at their new restaurant Bistro Soleil in the Olde Marco Inn. The first year after her diagnosis, Lisa was back working at Bistro Soleil with husband Denis.
After 15 minutes, someone was asking why the food was not served.
“I just wanted to pull off my wig and say, ‘I have cancer and you’re worried about your food?’”
Two sessions
In December, Joyce went through a mastectomy and two sessions of chemo. At first she was concerned about radiation and the controversy of having too much. Her advice is whatever they say, do it. “Down the road you don’t want to have doubts that you didn’t do everything they told you to do. They are the experts. If they want to find out about buying a dress, they can come to me,” Joyce said.
Her surgeon told her women diagnosed with breast cancer have two things to deal with. First, you deal with the emotional and second, the physical. “They put me with a team that helped get me started on the right path, like having a navigator,” said Joyce. “Hearing I had breast cancer was scary, but knowing that I had a team already in place lifted the whole burden. It was treatable.”
“Don’t put off getting checked like I did,” she added. “I thought work was more important. I realize now that I am more important than work.”
Both Lisa and Joyce feel lucky to have family and friends who support them all the way. Their breast cancer is 100 percent treatable.
“For me having had breast cancer was just a bump in the road,” said Lisa, now cancer free. “This came along my path and I was going to get through it.”
Joyce is now on the road to recovery and has full confidence she is going to be fine.
Since 2008, Joyce has continued to have an annual fashion show to raise money for the Marco Island Cancer Society. The next show will be held March 10 at Bistro Soleil – with Patrick Nowlan as emcee.
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New year, new wardrobe

Accessories are a great way to incorporate traditional elements into your outfit without looking too dated.
This way, you can keep your dress modern and just let that one necklace or bracelet do the talking.
At Shopthemag, we're launching a series of chinois- meets-rock-chick necklaces and brooches that are perfect for the dresser who wants to keep the traditional-modern balance.
They are from April Issue and we are resurrecting a vintage accessory - the brooch. It can be pinned onto the lapel of a jacket or even on your handbag if you wish to use it as a charm.

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As you know, Radiant Orchid was the colour of the year in 2014 and the trend is running into 2015. So purple is a great colour trend to be sporting for Chinese New Year. Firstly, there's a lot of it on the racks this season, so plenty to choose from.
Secondly, it's a great colour choice if you're not into the full-on red/orange/fuchsia colour theme but still want to look bright for the older folks.
I think just make an effort to be groomed.
It doesn't matter what you choose to wear, but respect the occasion and doll up a little bit.
We have an amazing chinois-inspired Jacquard Trench Dress and a very flattering Cinch-waisted Bustier Dress from Malaysian designer Khoon Hooi. And lastly, we have new arrivals from Australian brand Cameo that is perfect for Chinese New Year, with bright colours and floral print-dresses.
It's all about balance and mostly to avoid putting together pieces and items which are all traditional.
Unless they really complement one another, you don't have to match traditional-looking accessories with a traditional styled cheongsam, for example. Chinese New Year is a time to look your best.
Some of us might only be seen by our relatives once a year, so putting on your best to last a year's worth of impressions is critical! Therefore, I will avoid following trends blindly.
What ladies can take a cue from are perhaps colours and accessories. Following trends blindly might also cause outfits to clash because other folk might also be into that trend at that moment.
Some trends are classic, like how we see gingham making an appearance on Spring 2015 runways, so that is a very doable and classic style to incorporate into your look.
Avoid wearing outfits that are similar to those your children are wearing. While some ladies find it acceptable, identical outfits can be too dramatic.
Similar pieces made of the same fabrics or colours are quirkier and give the individual wearer his or her own style and character.
As always, our modern styled cheongsams are the bestsellers during this Lunar season.
That is one way of incorporating a traditional element without looking dated.
It's a staple classic and evergreen prints like flowers are always a safe bet.
It's all about balance. If there were ever a formula for dressing for Chinese New Year, I think you can safely choose to keep at least one element of your outfit current, and the rest old-school.
For example, throwing in an unexpected colour or unlikely accessory immediately wakes up a look.
Decide first on what you'd like to keep traditional - be it the colour red, the mandarin collar or the dress - and then have fun contrasting with that.
We've issued a seasonal collection featuring our bestselling contemporary interpretations of the samfu and cheongsam.
If you haven't acquired a Meena (our classic cheongsam), then you might want to make it happen in time for The Year of the Goat.
After several prototypes and years later, it's quite simply one of the best cheongsams you'll ever own.
Culottes are still coming on strong as a trend.
They can be quite flattering and comfortable, so no harm making them a part of your festivities.
Finally, do remember that red happens to be a colour that isn't for everyone, so one needs to know how to say no.
We suggest keeping the traditional elements to a minimum, focusing on one or two details such as the mandarin collar or a traditional print while keeping the rest of the outfit modern and simple.
Our design team developed exclusive prints that are great for this occasion while keeping all our looks very versatile and wearable throughout the year.
We have cheongsam-inspired tops that go really well with midi skirts, cropped pants and even "skorts" (skirt-shorts) as a modern update of the traditional style.
Coordinates are also a huge trend this season.
We have a lace mandarin collar top and pencil skirt set that works as an updated cheongsam silhouette when worn together or which can be styled separately with loose tops or pants for an even more modern look.
It is essential to dress appropriately during the Chinese New Year when visiting relatives and friends.
Even though most families are very open towards fashion trends, it is important to avoid wearing inauspicious colours and clothes that show too much skin.
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The Thigh Gap Is Dead

When Stanley Tucci’s character declared in 2006’s The Devil Wears Prada that size zero is the new two, size two is the new four and size six is the new 14, a collective sigh rippled round, many women and a few men wept a little inside and a few secretly shoved fingers down their throats. In an effort to get thin, some took up the Atkins diet, others tried Adderall, daily enemas, and in extreme cases, Eastern European horse-tranquilizers. On top of two hours of cardio each day, too, of course.
Thanks in no small part to last year’s booty obsession, the ultra-skinny ideal of the mid 2000s has moved on. Now Fitness Queens are everywhere on Instagram. Smiling and shapely at the gym or on the beach, hands on hips, triumphant and at ease, these trimsters have firm, rounded breasts and buns, sculpted thighs and flat stomachs. And the positions! Even the Victoria’s Secret models this year made a point of obsessively Instagramming their workouts, rather than standing around pouting.
Hannah Bronfman, DJ, start-up founder, Seagram’s heiress and bubbly girl about town, recently published the following headline on her fitness and lifestyle blog: “F*** the Thigh Gap.”

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Ms. Bronfman was motivated to post her incendiary headline because she was worried that young girls did not understand that thigh gaps—the gap at the top of the legs where the thighs don’t touch even with feet together—are often more a result of Photoshop than of genetics or diet. Even Beyoncé, the patron saint of body positivity, was caught using photo-editing software to add a thigh gap to one of her Instagram photos. Ms. Bronfman, whose 117,000 Instagram followers eat up her workout inspiration photos daily, felt pressure in the past to make herself at least look super-skinny but never caved in.
“As a former ballerina, there was always pressure to maintain a certain weight,” she said, adding, “We still have a long way to go with educating people on good health decisions but with this shift in interest towards fitness and wellness, I’m optimistic about its longevity.”
Ms. Bronfman suspects 2015 will be “the year of wellness,” with strong-bodied women leading the charge, she said.
Hilaria Baldwin is a Fitness Queen at her peak, motivating the masses with her Instagram presence. The accomplished ballroom dancer and yoga instructor spent 2014 posting a photo of herself in a yoga pose every day. Her shapely strength has bucked the city trend for skinny.
People now understand, according to Ms. Baldwin, “they need the time to take care of themselves. Whereas before, everybody wanted a quick fix. People now realize it’s a lifestyle change.”
Women now form tribes based on their preferred workouts.
“There are the SoulCycle people,” Ms. Baldwin, 30, explained, “who want to burn as many calories as possible … and those people tend to suffer in other aspects. Then people who just want to stretch, and they suffer because they’re not into the cardio aspect.”
Current thought has it that high-intensity cardio work outs are not enough to build a strong body alone. Ms. Baldwin added “You need a combination of cardio, stretching and toning,” she said. “If you don’t have one of those elements, then you’re going to get imbalanced.”
Tricia Tumlinson, a 26-year-old PR girl and CrossFit maniac, fits in five to six workouts per week in her quest for the perfect curves. She rises at 6:30, is out the door at 6:45, completes her workout and then makes it to work by 9:30.
Ms. Tumlinson has always been fit—she has gone through Tae-Bo, SoulCycle and yoga phases, interspersed with, shall we say, extended rest periods. But with CrossFit, Ms. Tumlinson feels she has found something that will stick.
“My goals for working out are twofold: to achieve and maintain a toned, defined figure, curves and all and to relieve stress. I’m naturally curvy. I have hips, thighs and a butt.” The key for Ms. Tumlinson not only lies in the competitive and notoriously cultish nature of the program—“The first rule of CrossFit is to talk about CrossFit,” the Fitness Queen joked. It also works because her gym holds her accountable for attending classes. If she registers for a class and doesn’t attend or cancels it less than one hour before it starts, she will be penalized.
The fashionable new body shape is dancer-like in form, with subtle muscle definition. Many of the women leading the new body charge are former dancers. Ms. Baldwin, for instance, started dancing when she was 2 years old. She became a professional Latin ballroom dancer until she broke her hip at age 25. She eased back into things with yoga and before she knew it, the dance and fitness devotee was teaching 36 yoga classes per week.
Of her fitness progression, Ms. Baldwin said she also used to love aerobics—“Jane Fonda workouts and buns of steel.” Since then, the obsession with firm, curvy buns has only gotten more intense. “Everyone’s obsessed with the butt,” she said.
The 9-to-5 publicist Ms. Tumlinson agreed that while she has always had an enviable rear herself, she feels more empowered now that so many pop and hip-hop singles contain lyrical tributes to the booty. It is a relief for her to hear her body type being celebrated so loudly in the mainstream after years of near-silence on the subject.
The butt craze has even led people to ask Ms. Tumlinson about her genetic makeup, inextricably linked as the booty is to matters of race.
“People ask me my ethnicity,” she said. “I say, ‘I’m caucasian with a little bit of Native American.’ And some have asked questions such as ‘What’s with the butt?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know!’ ”
And here we thought prying about a stranger’s natural hair color was rude.
The best place to achieve a perfect rear naturally is Physique 57, Ms. Baldwin (and many others) said. “Talk about getting the perfect butt. I’m a Physique 57 maniac.”
Physique 57 is the ballet-inspired workout method with a following as rabid as CrossFit’s devotees. The classes are designed for maximum impact, and ensure long, strong muscles, tight abs and a pleasantly round derriere.
Tanya Becker, a cofounder of Physique 57, moved to New York at 18 to become a professional dancer while teaching fitness at The Lotte Berk Method’s New York studio. After the studio closed, she and another student, Jennifer Maanavi, decided to develop an offshoot of the ballet-based fitness program.
Program seems like an understatement, here. Physique 57 devotees are nothing short of cultish in their enthusiasm for the workouts. I tried the beginner classes, and I can vouch: nothing—and especially nothing labeled “beginner”—has toned my body as quickly those three classes did.
Ms. Becker noted that an entire portion of each full-body class is devoted to rear sculpting.
“For many women, the butt and hips are the most challenging parts of the body to transform because, thanks to genetics, they tend to be where we store the most fat,” she said. Physique’s “seat series,” she continued, is designed to lift and firm the bottom while also “blasting away fat” by working the muscles “to the point of overload.”
Again, life as a Fitness Queen is not easy. But Ms. Becker notes that Physique 57 enrollment is growing because “strong is the new sexy.”
Ms. Baldwin insists that society’s current emphasis on fit bodies isn’t as oppressive as the body trends of the past. “There isn’t that one figure everybody is trying to go for now,” she said. “You can be a more full-figured woman and people are going to think you’re fantastic. You can be a little skinny-mini woman and people will think you’re fantastic.”
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To Sell Wearables to Women, First Make Them Feel Bad

Women are the early adopters of all kinds of technology. We talk on our phones and send more text messages than men, spend more time using location-based services, and own the vast majority of Internet-connected devices, including e-readers and health gadgets. Not that you would learn any of this while walking around the International Consumer Electronics Show, the colossal gadget convention that wrapped up last week in Las Vegas. CES is a four-day festival of tech at its most hyper-masculine, complete with booth babes, the most ridiculous TVs ever, thousands of square feet devoted to such classic man-toys as high-fidelity audio equipment and car tech.
What little was on display for women spoke volumes about how gadget makers see us, their female consumers. Industry assumption No. 1: To get more women to buy wearables, offer more glamorous options. A handful of companies displayed fitness bands and smartwatches specifically for women—who, the exhibitors claim, are turned off by black rubber and steel form factors. Chief among them this year was Misfit, which unveiled an activity tracker gleaming with Swarovski crystals designed to be worn wrapped around the wrist or as a pendant. Gorgeous, the gadget mag Wired applauded, holding up Zsa Zsa Gabor-esque Swarovski Shine as evidence that 2015 is the year "wearables will stop being so ugly."

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That’s been speculated for the last several years: Women will fall in love with fitness trackers as soon as they get pretty. There's much to be ridiculed in that argument, starting with the fact that few self-respecting women would wear the Swarovski Shine to participate in any actual fitness. I’d also argue that women who care about their biometric data already have some attractive options. The elegance of Withings’s new unisex Activité Pop has the potential, if smartly marketed, to capture women without looking like a spendy bangle from Bergdorf’s. Jawbone claims that users of its Yves Béhar–designed Up are split roughly equally between men and women.
Yet the tech industry continues to insist that a device must be disguised as something precious and Luddite for women to adopt it en masse. Over the past year, many tech companies have made overtures to women by teaming up with fashion designers to produce stylish activity trackers—among them, Intel, which enlisted the fashion-forward Open Ceremony to create a device called Mica, and Fitbit, which commissioned Tory Burch to lend her name and a metallic skin to a fitness bracelet. In the end, it's not clear whether the makers of fitness bands and smartwatches want women to take advantage of the features or if they just want to sell them new bracelets. It's possible that they don't care. A sale is a sale.
CES has speaker panels, too—small confabs about the Internet of Things-this, connected-home-that. Of dozens, only one addressed lady tech. Hoping to hear fresh ideas about how gadget makers might better woo female customers, I hiked over to “Women and Wearables." At the very least, I figured, someone might be able to make a cogent argument as to why they thought prettifying gadgets is the way to go.
None of the big players was there, and the organizers were evidently challenged to fill the panel with people qualified to talk about women and tech. Two speakers—the only men in the six-person group—had little to say about how to get women to love tech, although one held up an sports bra with a detachable heart-rate monitor. Fortunately, the other four panelists made sense. In talking about their products, they pointed to an alternative—if not wholly less-problematic—approach to wearables for women: The right gadget, they suggested, could alleviate a measure of anxiety particular to overextended, hyperconnected women.
“One of the big issues that we have as women is wanting to do everything and be perfectionists,” said Ariel Garten, one of the panelists and chief executive officer and cofounder of the Toronto-based startup Interaxon. Garten invented Muse—a $300 EEG headband that senses brainwaves and delivers feedback—to help women silence their inner critic. "There’s this little voice inside our heads that says, ‘Oh, you should have done better.’ With Muse, what you learn to do is shut down that voice. You can take your brain somewhere else and have—sometimes for the first time—dominion over your own brain.” Garten maintains that by knowing when they’re calm and focused, Muse wearers can train themselves to replicate that brain pattern to control their stress level.
Ugly fitness bands have nothing on Muse, which shouldn’t be worn in public outside a Star Trek convention. Still, if I, a working mother, were given a choice of a jewel-encrusted step-counter or a non-chemical means of managing daily stress, I’d opt for the latter. But emotional well-being isn’t easily quantifiable, so companies—a growing market for fitness devices—are more likely to buy their employees fitness trackers to encourage physical health and lower insurance premiums than to offer onsite yoga classes.
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Art by children comes from the heart - when else do people have the time?

The idea that art is a tough sell for children is an odd one. While many kids might become bored or distracted easily, childhood is also a time during which we enjoy some of the most immersive and profound dives into fiction and fancy we'll ever experience. Think of your favourite stories or games from youth, and try to imagine being so utterly involved in such fantasies as an adult.
"We just don't give ourselves the time, do we?" says Kate Ryan, curator of the NGV's children's programs. "I come from an art background and that time where we're able to spend hours making and doing, for us as adults it's quite rare. But for artists and for children it's something they do every day. And it's wonderful to be a part of that creative experience."
Ryan is behind the upcoming Summer Children's Festival at the NGV, a two-week series of events spanning the gallery's spaces that will eventually spread to 20 regional Victorian spaces. There are heavyweight names involved in the festival. Jean Paul Gaultier has contributed a series of temporary tattoos, while the Romance Was Born team feature heavily across the program. There are workshops and activities by iconic designer Linda Jackson, international electro group Chicks on Speed, Sydney paper engineer Benja Harney and Melbourne textile artist Cat Rabbit.

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But if you're a six year old rocking up to the NGV, you don't care about the names behind the art. Children can't be dazzled by an artist's aura of renown. They make for tougher crowds that way.
Advertisement "It's true that they won't be worried about the celebrity aspect or the genius aspect of the artist," Ryan says. "But they'll greatly value the attention given them by an artist. There's something in common when you're making together, collaborating together, when the artist can engage with the young child and talk to them and through the doing and the making it becomes a richer experience."It's why so much of the program features the artists themselves working directly with their audience. Kate Rohde will show kids how to reinvent the classic pasta necklace as a gold and iridescent item of "pasta bling", illustrators from Sticky Institute will introduce youngsters to the world of zine self-publishing, and Meetoo will help children design new outfits for their favourite stuffed toys.
"It's important for the parents as well," Ryan says, "to see that artists aren't necessarily just Monet and Van Gogh but are people who live here in Melbourne, and their role as artists is relevant and meaningful. Artists enjoy seeing how people respond to their work. And of course for many artists it was when they were children that they knew they wanted to be an artist when they grew up."
Minna Gilligan is such an artist. The 24-year-old Melburnian will be part of what might be the festival's most ambitious event, the Art Party designed specifically for 13 to 17 year olds. There will be DJs, food, a silent disco and artists such as Gilligan giving teens a taste of art as more than just a pastime. She already has cred with under-18s as an ongoing illustrator for the much-revered Rookie magazine.
Though Gilligan works across a range of media, it's her use of collage that will feature most heavily during the Art Party. "Because it's so easy and there's no pressure," she says. "You know, are my drawings going to be bad? If you're collaging it, it can't be bad. They always end up looking great. And they always end up having a real sense of the person who made it as well, even though you're not actually drawing, you're using found imagery."
Most of the source material will be from Gilligan's own collection of books from the 60s and 70s. "National Geographic magazines, things like that. I like to use material that has a variety of people in it, a variety of body types and stuff like that. I don't usually have a lot of high fashion magazines. Crafty books have more interesting models in my opinion than Vogue or whatever."
Just like the teens she'll be working with, the social aspect of the party is as attractive to Gilligan as the work itself. "Interacting with people somewhere that's not on the internet," she says. "Those opportunities are rare. I do crave that interaction. I don't have incredible wisdom but, just to pass on that anyone can do art, and to allow people to see that and feel confident in that."
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Startup gets grants to print body parts

A biotech startup company developing technology to “print” body parts using a patient’s own cells has received support from the National Science Foundation and the Livestrong cancer foundation.
Founded in El Paso by University of Texas at El Paso professor Thomas Boland and entrepreneur Laura Bosworth in 2011, TeVido BioDevices hopes to improve the quality of life for breast cancer survivors by using 3D printing technology to improve breast reconstruction results.
Scientists have been able to form basic types of human tissue using 3D bio-printers for a number of years and imagine a future where organs, like hearts or kidneys, are custom built for transplant patients.
But the technology is in its infancy, so TeVido is starting with a much simpler body part: the nipple.

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To that end, the startup was recently awarded seed funding from two cancer-fighting giants, and in October, placed second in a global venture competition hosted by the Livestrong Foundation.
The National Science Foundation awarded TeVido a $750,000 “Phase 2” grant in August, according to Bosworth, so it can begin the next round of testing.
A few weeks later, they received word that the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health had awarded TeVido a $150,000 “Phase 1” grant.
In October, TeVido was also named runner-up in a new global innovation competition called Big C. The Livestrong Foundation launched the competition this year to improve the lives of people affected by cancer. TeVido placed second, out of 753 competitors, losing only to a San Francisco-based startup called Decisive Health, according to the announcement.
“The relationship with a foundation like Livestrong is going to be really valuable in the future as we start to try to have conversations with the other organizations that are focused on breast cancer,” Bosworth said.
Growing demand
As more people survive breast cancer and some, like actress Angelina Jolie, even undergo preventative mastectomies based on genetic testing for breast cancer, the need for better breast reconstruction surgery is growing, Bosworth said.
“The great news is that treatment for breast cancer has gotten so much better and the survival rates are so much better that longterm quality of life has become increasingly important,” she said.
Almost 300,000 new cases of breast cancer are diagnosed each year. About 40 percent of those women diagnosed will have a mastectomy, and at least 30 percent will undergo reconstruction, according to TeVido.
But in the world of cancer research, little money goes toward improving reconstruction, Bosworth said, and reconstruction results today can be unpredictable.
“I think it is something that women think they can’t talk about very much because, you know, people just look at you and say, ‘You’re alive – what are you doing complaining about the reconstruction,’” Bosworth said.
There are many different ways surgeons form the nipple, or “volume-forming unit,” Bosworth said, after a woman undergoes a mastectomy and breast reconstruction, but they all tend to sink over time.
Some women have the color tattooed on, but the color tends to fade. It’s a traumatizing process.
“Because we would be using a woman’s own fat cells and skin cells, we would be creating a graft that is a more permanent solution,” she said.
TeVido has managed to fashion a small, living nipple out of fat cells and the initial results “look encouraging,” Bosworth said, but they are working to optimize the process to create the pigmented skin.
Bosworth estimates the startup needs to raise $40 million to complete animal and human clinical testing and bring the product to market. If all goes perfectly, she hopes to have grafts ready for implantation in patients in five years.
Later, the startup anticipates using the technology to create breast tissue to fill lumpectomies and create other types of natural human grafts for reconstructive procedures using 3D bio-printing.
Move to Austin
TeVido moved its operations out of El Paso and into a laboratory in Austin in October, after outgrowing its lab space at UTEP. The biotech sector in El Paso is small but growing, and laboratories are in short supply. Outside of the area’s universities, they are nearly nonexistent, said Al Di Rienzo, executive director of El Paso-based RedSky.
RedSky is a new spinoff of the Medical Center of the Americas Foundation, which is guiding the development of a biomedical research park encompassing the Paul L. Foster School of Medicine and University Medical Center in South Central El Paso.
When startups like TeVido “graduate out of academic institutions here they need labs, so they are forced to go to other parts of the country,” Di Rienzo said.
TeVido now operates in a lab at the Texas Life-sciences Collaboration Center in Georgetown, a suburb of Austin. The center was founded in 2007 to bring high-wage jobs to Georgetown by nurturing and recruiting biotechnology companies there.
RedSky intends to do the same thing in El Paso, and the MCA Foundation begins construction in a few weeks on a $29-million “biomedical innovation center” called the Cardwell Collaborative in South Central El Paso near Interstate 10. The four-story building will have three “very large” wet laboratories for companies like TeVido to use, according to Di Rienzo.
“There are a lot of amazing things happening out there (in El Paso),” Bosworth said. “But the timing is a problem because none of it is ready yet.”
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