Baker & Daniels Offers $5,000 in Legal Services to Life Sciences Winner

Baker & Daniels LLP will offer $5,000 in legal services to the first-place winner in the sixth Purdue University Life Sciences Business Plan Competition.

On November 10, the $100,000 event will highlight promising entrepreneurship in the life sciences field. Participating teams must represent a life sciences company that is a recent start-up or that's no more than three years old.

First prize in the competition is $30,000, plus $5,000 in legal services from Baker & Daniels and $5,000 in business services from accounting firm Ernst and Young. The top Indiana team also receives $10,000 from BioCrossroads.

Second prize is $20,000, plus $6,000 in legal and business services. Third prize is $10,000, plus $4,000 in legal and business services. Fourth prize is $5,000, and the remaining four finalists each receive $2,500.

In addition, Purdue Research Park will offer business incubator space to the top finalist and affiliate status to the second- and third-place finishers. The top finisher also will receive in-kind 3-D computer graphics visualization services from West Lafayette-based Seyet LLC.

The competition targets U.S.-based start-up businesses in life sciences. Besides being less than three years ago, the company's employment must be the equivalent of less than 10 full-time employees. Entrants also are not allowed to have third-party intellectual property agreements.

Registration deadline for the competition is May 18.

Executive summaries from registered companies are due June 1. The semifinalists will be announced June 30. Those companies will be requested to submit formal business plans, and the top eight finalists will be announced October 12.

Last year's winner was FAST Diagnostics, an Indianapolis-based company commercializing a kidney diagnostic test. The event attracted 42 entrants.