20080327 Tech and Biotech copy.qxp

Transcription

Who’s Who in
Tech & Biotech
Supplement to:
sddt.com/techbiotech08
Profiles Inside
➤
Allan Camaisa is a seasoned
businessman and
founder and CEO of
Anakam Inc., a
provider of online
security solutions.
Page 5
➤
Vet-Stem CEO Robert
Harman’s company
specializes in
regenerative stemcell therapy for
horses, dogs and
cats that suffer from
arthritis and tendon, ligament
and joint injuries.
Page 3
➤
James Lasswell founded
Indus Technology in
1991 to provide
services such as
systems engineering, technical and
program management to government and industry
clients.
Page 8
➤
Magda Marquet, co-founder
of Althea
Technologies Inc.
and board member
of Athena, runs a
company where
women represent
more than 65 percent of the
staff.
Page 6
➤
Ellie Ramos started Technical
Logistics Corp.
more than eight
years ago out of her
home, and now has
33 employees in the
company’s National
City office.
Page 12
➤
Attorney Raymond
Wagenknecht wanted the title of his
practice, Biotech
Beach Law Group
PC, to convey a
more laid back, nonthreatening environment for
clients to discuss their intellectual property.
Page 2
Thursday, March 27, 2008 / Vol. 123, No. 63
The growing role of IP
diligence in corporate
formation, funding, IPOs
By NED ISRAELSEN
Knobbe, Martens, Olson & Bear LLP
After a successful IPO in 2007, San
Orexigen
Diego-based
Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: OREX)
raised an additional $76 million in
early 2008. Orexigen has two weightloss drugs in advanced clinical trials.
In January, the Tech Coast Angels
led a Series A investment round in
Traversa Therapeutics, a new San
Diego company, which raised $2 millon. Traversa’s technology promises
to revolutionize the way that new
RNA drugs are delivered into a
patient’s cells.
Newly founded CardioCreate Inc.
completed a licensing transaction
with a local university this week.
CardioCreate uses stem cells to
repair and replace damaged heart
tissue after a heart attack.
These and dozens of other recent
San Diego transactions all have at
least one thing in common:
Intellectual property diligence was
critical in closing the deal.
Intellectual property owned by or
licensed to a high-tech business can be
a significant asset, and the IP of a
biotech or pharmaceutical venture
could well be the company’s most
important asset. A recent study of
startup companies by Rosemarie
Ziedonis at the University of Michigan
Business School showed that those
with aggressive patent filing strategies
were much more likely to survive and
obtain venture financing.
For example, while only one third
of biomedical device startups had
filed patents, 90 percent of those
that survived and got financed had
done so. In recent years, intellectual
property has assumed an increasingly prominent role in company formation, licensing, angel financing, venture financing and in IPOs. As a
result, intellectual property due diligence is a gating event in an increasing number of deals.
A first step in intellectual property
diligence is to evaluate the company’s own IP; that is, how well it protects the company’s proprietary position and provides barriers to entry
for competitors. This is an important
value question for high-tech investments. For pharmaceuticals, lack of
patent protection is usually fatal to
the venture, given the high cost of
obtaining FDA approval for a new
drug (estimated at $800 million),
and the low cost of launching a
generic copy (a few million dollars).
Without effective patent protection,
or some other form of market exclusivity, an otherwise promising drug
will not attract investment capital
and will likely never be marketed.
DLA Piper
While harmonization of stem
cell research policies and patent
laws worldwide is desirable, given
the cultural and religious differences among the countries, it may
not be possible. This is increasingly evident in the field of stem
cells, where there is no international consensus with respect to
the morality of working with
human embryonic stem cells
(hESCs) and where the corresponding policies for patenting
vary among the national patent
offices worldwide.
Many believe that patents
should be available for isolated
human embryonic stem cells and
methods of production or use of
hESCs, as long as they meet the
general patent criteria in a particular country (e.g., novelty, utility,
non-obviousness, industrial applicability, inventive step and/or sufficiency of disclosure), while
exclusions to patentability due to
the principles of “public order” or
morality should be limited if possible. Today, technical solutions to
these moral dilemmas are being
reported often, including recently
described techniques such as
parthenogenetically derived blastocysts or reprogramming of adult
cells to generate embryonic stem
cells.
In Europe, ethical regulations
Photo: J. Kat Woronowicz
Duane Roth, CEO of the nonprofit organization Connect, was just one of
the participants in a recent roundtable discussion hosted by The Daily
Transcript.
Page 9
Another common part of IP diligence is a review of third-party
patents to spot potential infringement issues. Although few investments are completely free from risk
(including the risk of patent
infringement), a significant infringement issue may well deter further
investment until it is resolved. In a
classic lemons-to-lemonade scenario, entrepreneurs can sometimes
license or buy patents found in a diligence review, simultaneously eliminating the infringement issue and
building the company’s IP portfolio.
Ownership of intellectual property
is often a component of IP diligence.
Common issues include whether
patents have been assigned to the
company by the inventors, whether
licenses have been properly drafted
and whether license terms are favorable. One sometimes hidden issue is
whether any third party has a claim
to the invention. Inventions made by
academics could be owned by the
academic institution. Governmentfunded research often has IP strings
attached. Inventions conceived while
working for a former employer may
be problematic.
From the perspective of the
investor, IP diligence is an exercise in
compromise. The project is typically
performed on a limited budget, often
under severe time con straints. This
See IP diligence on 12
San Diego biotech real estate market on upswing
Colliers International
Last year’s surge toward biotechnology was made unmistakably
clear by big pharma’s emerging
interest in biotech established by
abundant M&A activity, coupled
with record-high placement of venture capital funds into life sciences.
San Diego life sciences firms
secured $1.3 billion in venture capital in 2007, generating a 51 percent
increase over 2006 investments and
accounting for 64 percent of funds
invested across all sectors (Source:
San Diego Metropolitan, Jan. 21,
“Venture Bucks”). Big pharma,
beginning to look to biotechnology
to secure its future success, was very
active in acquiring life sciences
companies. Major acquisitions in
2007 included San Diego-based
NovaCardia for $325 million.
The good news for the San Diego
region: This M&A activity and venture capital trend is expected to continue through 2008, according to a
recent report published by auditing
firm KPMG. The report, which surveyed 350 venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, corporate buyers, investment bankers and research analysts
on trends in venture capital over the
upcoming two years, found that 85
percent of respondents indicated
their expectation of venture capital
activity to continue growing or
remain at current levels. Fifteen
percent of respondents forecast the
life sciences sector to receive the
most capital over the two-year period, placing it second behind the
greentech/cleantech sector.
Stem cells: Global research policies and patent laws
By LISA A. HAILE
Roundtable
bar the patenting of the human
embryo or uses of human embryos
for industrial or commercial purposes. This regulation originates
from a law that prohibits patenting inventions contrary to morality or “ordre public.” Similar to
Europe, many other countries
have a “morality” clause that
affects patentability of certain
biotechnological inventions. In
many countries, this prohibition
or effect on patentability includes
human embryonic stem cells, the
process of extracting human
embryonic stem cells from a
human blastocyst, and patents
covering human embryonic stem
cell lines. For example, the United
States looks at “public policy”;
China, “public interest”; Japan,
“morality”; Singapore, “offensive,
immoral or anti-social behavior”;
and Australia, technologies that
are “against the law.” In some
European countries, such as
Germany, hESCs may not be
extracted from embryos and
research on imported pluripotent
hESCs is permitted only if the cells
originate from culture lines established before Jan. 1, 2002. Europe
generally prevents any financial
gain from use of cells or tissues of
the human body, however, some
argue that embryonic stem cell
lines are not “body parts” since
they are “artifacts” of a culture system.
In Asia, including China, India,
Japan, Singapore and South
Korea, where there are positive
views on stem cell research, private and public entities are developing hES cell lines. Interestingly,
while India and China appear to
be moving forward quickly with
successes in stem cell research,
these countries have much less
experience in terms of a welldeveloped patent system.
In the Asian culture, the human
embryo is highly respected; however, it is the financial exploitation
of human embryos that is rejected.
In other words, the “sin” in the use
of human embryos for research is
in patent protection and subsequent financial exploitation as a
result of patents.
A look at the global collection of
stem cell patent families consisted
of 47,467 documents in November
2007. The greatest percentage of
patents and patent applications
were filed in the United States
Patent & Trademark office
(USPTO); the PCT (Patent
Cooperation Treaty application) or
the European Patent Office
(EPO), followed by Australia,
Canada and Japan. More than 50
percent of inventors on stem cell
patents and applications are from
the United States and more than
57 percent of assignees or owners
See Stem cells on 2
Absorption levels for biotechnology real estate in San Diego have
felt the positive affect of this growing relationship between big pharma, venture capital and biotechnology.
Year-end 2007 direct vacancy
rates for wet lab space migrated
downward to 5.05 percent in
Sorrento Valley; Sorrento Mesa
vacancy decreased to 4.30 percent;
and UTC led the county with a 4.18
percent vacancy rate. This downward trend in vacancy has continued throughout the first two
months of 2008, with sustained
leasing activity among 5,000- to
20,000-square-foot tenants forecasted to continue throughout the
year.
With the exception of a few companies, San Diego’s life sciences
companies are clustered within the
submarkets of Torrey Pines, UTC,
Sorrento Valley and Sorrento Mesa.
The lab market in San Diego stands
at approximately 8 million square
feet of specialized lab space and
another 4.7 million of owner-occupied lab space.
“Tenant demand for this product
type in the UTC market has been
historically strong and should continue, given the surge in biotechnology venture funding,” said Tom
Mercer of Colliers International.
Mercer, along with Chad Urie and
Michael O. Reidy of Colliers
International, are representing
Nexus Properties Inc., a leader in
the development of biotech
research facilities with more than 1
million square feet in San Diego
County.
Nexus is currently developing a
$54 million life sciences campus at
La Jolla Village Drive and
Interstate-805 in UTC. The twobuilding, 161,871-square-foot project is under way with occupancy of
the first building, consisting of
58,904 square feet, anticipated by
first-quarter 2009.
Nexus has constructed multitenant and build-to-suit laboratory
facilities to serve the needs of
numerous life science companies
such as Ligand Pharmaceuticals
(Nasdaq: LGND), Johnson &
Johnson (NSYE: JNJ), Amgen
(Nasdaq: AMGN) and Neurocrine
Biosciences (Nasdaq: NBIX), as
well as incubator facilities for smaller biotech companies.
According to Colliers, demand by
small-tier biotech companies —
users of 3,000 to 20,000 square
feet — should continue well into
2009. As these startups continue to
grow, they will demand significantly more space.
Source Code: 20080327crb
Nexus Properties is developing a $54 million, two-building life sciences cam pus at I-805 and La Jolla Village Drive, with occupancy of the first facility
anticipated by early 2009.
THURSDAY, MARCH 27, 2008 •
2
Who’s Who in Tech & Biotech • THE DAILY TRANSCRIPT
Close-up: Raymond Wagenknecht
Work’s a ‘beach’ for local patent law firm
By DOUG SHERWIN
The Daily Transcript
When
Raymond
Wagenknecht opened his
own law practice several
years ago, he decided against
naming it after himself.
While proud of his family’s
heritage, he found it to be,
well, not so catchy, and more
than a little difficult to say
(for the record, it’s pronounced WAG-ah-nect).
The name he finally settled
on — Biotech Beach Law
Group PC — pays tribute to
the moniker San Diego is
known as throughout the scientific community, although
it, too, can be a bit confusing.
“A lot of nonscientists
don’t (get the reference), so
they think I practice beach
law,” Wagenknecht said with
a laugh. “I’ve gotten pinged
for environmental law,
which I don’t do. ‘Is this the
Surfrider Foundation’ ... that
sort of thing.”
He also wanted the title of
his practice to convey a less
stuffy, nonthreatening environment for potential clients
to discuss their intellectual
property.
“I try to give (the practice)
a feeling of welcome-ness,”
Wagenknecht said. “When
people walk into law offices,
they can have their guard up.
I just want to represent the
lighter side, in a sense.”
His surname has been
beneficial in one aspect,
though.
“It’s helped with European
business,” he said. “A majority of my European clients
are German.”
Wagenknecht practices
patent and trademark law
for life sciences companies
— mostly startups and small
biotech firms — and nonprofit research groups. The
majority of his work involves
patent prosecution. He also
conducts due diligence, evaluating the technology of
competitors to make sure his
clients don’t have any
As the sole full-time member of Biotech Beach Law, Raymond Wagenknecht tries to keep
expenses down for his clients, many of whom are fledgling companies with limited budgets.
infringement issues.
He isn’t involved in much
litigation work, typically
only assisting litigation
groups of other firms in
helping them understand
the underlying technology.
In addition to performing
the basic patent prosecution
tasks, Wagenknecht also
helps guide his clients to
where they might get coverage and advises them on
potential products.
“I think the science in San
Diego is really, really strong,”
he said. “Sometimes it helps
to get another take on what
it is they’re doing and maybe
where you think they can
take it.”
As the sole full-time member of Biotech Beach Law,
Wagenknecht tries to keep
expenses down for his
clients, many of whom are
fledgling companies with
limited budgets. His efforts
become even more important as the costs associated
with intellectual property
continue to rise and the U.S.
Patent & Trademark Office
tighten
restrictions
on
patent applications.
“I’m really trying to push
the value side,” Wagenknecht
said. “I really work on their
protection, so they can not
have ( just) one patent application. If I can cut the cost
down, maybe they can get
two or three patent applications. Hopefully (they’ll) get
more value, so they can get
more protection with what
funding they do have.”
He owns a fairly modest,
two-room office toward the
center
of
downtown,
eschewing Del Mar/Carmel
Valley — the trendy and
pricey home to many of the
region’s intellectual property
groups.
And Wagenknecht only
hires consultants on a caseby-case basis, like when he
needs a specialist in chemistry or biology.
He considers himself a
product of the biotech com-
munity. The Cincinnati
native came to San Diego in
1988 specifically to get a
degree in microbiology from
the University of California,
San Diego, and has been
here ever since.
He worked in the school’s
research labs and, upon
graduation, nabbed a job at
several startups, including
NovaDx, a spinoff of
Hybertech that is no longer
operating.
While at NovaDx, there
was a question of whether a
technology the company was
developing was covered by
another group’s patent portfolio. Wagenknecht worked
with the science group and
the company’s attorneys to
figure out the scope of the
patent in question.
The experience began his
love affair with the legal side
of patents, and soon thereafter he enrolled at the
University of San Diego
School of Law.
After earning his law
degree, he worked as a scientific advisory for a small
intellectual property group
and assisted a few patent
attorneys. The work morphed into his own practice.
“I feel like I’m a part of the
biotech
community,”
Wagenknecht said. “There’s
a sense of home with San
Diego biotech. I want to promote them as much as possible. We have a lot of really,
really smart people here. I
think there are some good
companies, so obviously you
want to help them.”
San Diego’s large biotech
presence has drawn the
attention of national firms,
many of whom have recently
opened offices here.
The trend doesn’t bother
Wagenknecht, who said his
business continues to flourish
and has even grown lately.
“The small biotechs, they
don’t have a lot of money, so
they’re really cost-conscious,” he said. “I don’t
think (large firms) can compete on price. I just try to
provide a good value. Once
you provide a good value at a
reasonable price, people will
come.”
He said it helps his business that he still has friends
and former colleagues at
UCSD, the Scripps Research
Institute and several startups.
“I’m already in the circle of
the biotechnology community,” he said. “It can be a difficult community to get into if
you’re not from San Diego.”
The entrepreneurs he’s
dealt with are usually
involved with more than one
venture, which helps grow
Biotech Beach Law’s client
list.
“A lot of these guys, they
jump around from company
to company,” Wagenknecht
said. “So once you do good
work for one, you’re probably going to get work with
another.”
He also is seeing an
increase
in
work
for
European companies.
Besides the work he does
for his firm, Wagenknecht
has worked with the San
Diego Inventors Showcase,
an event where high school
and elementary students
develop their own inventions. He’s also worked with
VentureForth, an entrepreneurial student organization
at UCSD.
“You’re obviously trying to
serve the San Diego technology groups,” Wagenknecht
said, “but you’re also trying
to encourage innovation,
even with the younger-aged
folks.”
[email protected]
Source Code: 20080327cre
UCSD scientists design sensor
that can detect some bombs
By ELIZABETH MALLOY
A team of chemists and
physicists at the University of
California, San Diego has
developed a tiny, inexpensive
sensor chip capable of detecting trace amounts of hydrogen peroxide, a chemical
used in the most common
form of homemade explosives.
In addition to detecting
explosives, UCSD scientists
say the sensor could have
widespread applications in
improving the health of industrial workers by providing a
new tool to inexpensively
monitor the toxic hydrogen
peroxide
vapors
from
bleached pulp and other products to which factory workers
are exposed.
“The detection capability
of this tiny electronic sensor
is comparable to current
instruments, which are large,
bulky and cost thousands of
dollars
each,”
William
Trogler, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at
UCSD and one of its inventors, said in a written statement. “If this device were
mass produced, it’s not
inconceivable that it could be
made for less than a dollar.”
The device was invented by
a team led by Trogler;
Andrew Kummel, a professor
of chemistry and biochemistry; and Ivan Schuller, a
professor of physics. Much of
the work was done by UCSD
chemistry and physics graduate students Forest Bohrer,
Corneliu Colesniuc and
Jeongwon Park.
The sensor, which is about
the size of a penny, works by
monitoring the variability of
electrical
conductivity
through thin films of “metal
phthalocyanines,” according
to a statement released by
UCSD. When exposed to
most oxidizing agents, such
as chlorine, these metal films
show an increase in electrical
current, while reducing
agents have the opposite
effect — a decrease of electrical current.
But when exposed to
hydrogen peroxide, an oxidant, the metal phthalocyanine films behave differently
depending on the type of
metal used. Films made of
cobalt phthalocyanine show
decreases in current, while
those made from copper or
nickel show increases in cur-
rent.
The UCSD team used this
unusual trait to build its sensor. It is composed of thin
films of both cobalt phthalocyanine and copper phthalocyanine to display a unique
signature whenever tiny
amounts of hydrogen peroxide are present.
The paper was published
in this week’s issue of the
“Journal of the American
Chemical Society.”
According to UCSD, the
sensor is capable of sniffing
out hydrogen peroxide vapor
in the parts-per-billion range
from peroxide-based explosives, such as those used in
the 2005 bombing of the
London transit system.
Trogler said that because
the team’s sensor is so little
affected by water vapor, it
can be used in industrial and
other “real-life applications.”
The university has applied
for a patent on the invention,
which has not yet been
licensed.
The Air Force Office of
Scientific Research provided
funding for the research
study.
[email protected]
Source Code: 20080318cze
patents in any field slows the
investment of capital into new
ventures, and the overall
development and commercialization of new technologies is likewise delayed.
The three WARF patents,
claiming all primate and
human embryonic stem cell
lines, were challenged in
2006 and one was upheld in
part in February and two in
March. While it was previously believed that these
patents were the biggest hurdles to overcome with respect
to freedom to operate in the
stem cell field, certain claims
in the patents were narrowed
to the point that they may
only include certain technologies known at the time of
the filing of the original
patent applications (e.g.,
1998 and 2001).
For example, recent technologies, including parthenogenesis or reprogramming of
adult cells, which allow for
preparation
of
hESCs
through methods that do not
require generation of a “preimplantation” embryo, may
fall outside of the scope of the
re-examined WARF patent
claims for hESCs. While this
may be a positive result for
the advancement of the stem
cell field, there are other technology areas where overlapping patent claims for
nuclear transfer methods,
specific markers unique to
stem cells or products of stem
cells, or other complementary
technologies for example,
may be required for freedom
to operate toward development of commercial and
therapeutic applications of
stem cells.
Regardless of ethical or
moral regulations that affect
patentability of hESCs in various countries, new methodologies in stem cell research
may aid in avoiding various
restrictions in patent laws
and may lead to increased
research in the United States
and other countries.
Stem cells
Continued from Page 1
of these patents and applications are from the United
States.
Patents granted in the
United
States
to
the
Wisconsin Alumni Research
Foundation (WARF) for work
done at the University of
Wisconsin on embryonic
stem cells have created concerns that access to even basic
research tools for studying
human embryonic stem cells
will be more and more difficult over time. Although more
than 400 research and 20
commercial licenses have
been made available by
WARF for hESC production
and use, it is believed that
with the increase in the number of patent application filings in the stem cell area,
other patents may be required
for freedom to operate in the
field, thus imposing increasing transaction costs and
stacking royalty obligations
on those companies entering
into this area of research and
development. Regardless of
the technology area, the need
for licenses to multiple
Haile, J.D., Ph.D., is a partner and the co-chair of the
Global Life Sciences practice
at the global law firm DLA
Piper in San Diego.
Source Code: 20080327crc
3
Close-up: Robert Harman
Vet-Stem technology transforming world of regenerative medicine
observable — less pain and
less effect on quality of life.”
Case in point: In 2005, professional polo player Adam
Snow’s prized mare, Rio, tore
her right-front superficial digital flexor tendon. Rather than
relying on traditional efforts
to treat the injury, Snow utilized VSRC therapy and then
placed his pony in an eightmonth rehabilitation program. She bounced back
strongly enough to clinch the
2006 U.S. Open and 2007 CV
Whitney.
Pets’ positive
responses may bode
well for humans
By BRIE IATAROLA
Special to the Daily Transcript
In a nation where a growing
number of people seem to
cherish the welfare of their
household pets just as much
as — if not more than — their
fellow human beings, VetStem CEO Robert “Bob”
Harman sees endless potential for his company.
Nearly six years ago, the 58year-old
veterinarian-bytraining, statistician and
biotechnology entrepreneur
teamed up with business partner Mike Dale to found VetStem, a Poway-based firm that
specializes in regenerative
stem-cell therapy for horses,
dogs and cats that suffer from
arthritis and tendon, ligament
and joint injuries.
At the time, Harman said,
the biggest question was
whether his enterprise had
entered the veterinary products market prematurely.
“Would people actually pay
for regenerative stem-cell
therapy for their pets?” he
asked during a recent interview.
Pushing aside his uncertainty, the former consultant
abandoned the idea of early
retirement and turned to the
equine world to find out, first
testing
Vet-Stem
Regenerative Cell (VSRC)
therapy on horses as early as
January 2004 after securing a
worldwide exclusive license to
adipose-derived
stem-cell
technology for veterinary uses
in October 2003.
“We were totally taken by
the huge range of possibilities
of what regenerative medicine
can do,” Harman said. “There
were already lots of animal
studies before we came along,
so we didn’t have to do traditional animal studies. We just
extracted the cells from fat in
a horse and dog ... and then
Photo courtesy Vet-Stem
Robert Harman, CEO of Vet-Stem, hopes to break into every
major animal market within five years with the company's
regenerative cell therapy.
adapted the techniques to see
if it worked.”
Mounting proof
In the three-day procedure,
a veterinarian surgically
removes about two tablespoons’ worth of fat from the
patient and ships it to the VetStem laboratory, where the
sample is processed. The animal’s own regenerative cells
are isolated, stored in syringes
and returned to the vet. The
cells are then injected into the
wounded area.
Initial results showed
promise. And the latest technology’s estimated price tag of
$2,500 (it varies depending
on the animal’s particular
condition or disease) was
cheaper than a joint surgery
or replacement, which costs
between
$3,500
and
$10,000.
Along with a plethora of
case studies that demon-
strated improvements from
a single injection last anywhere from “six months to
many years,” the American
Journal
of
Veterinary
Research published data
from Cornell University’s
double-blinded, placebocontrolled study that also
confirmed animal subjects
benefited both statistically
and biologically from VSRC
therapy, Harman said.
These findings contradicted
standard protocol that antiinflammatory drugs or joint
replacements were the most
effective ways to treat animals hampered by soft-tissue tears, fractures and
arthritis.
“I try to give an honest
expectation when people ask,”
Harman said. “The worst side
effect is that (the therapy)
doesn’t work. However, twothirds of the animals we treat
get really better, and it’s quite
Stemagen steps forward in biotechnology
By ROMAN JIMENEZ
Stemagen
Just over two weeks into the
New Year, La Jolla-based
embryonic stem cell research
company Stemagen shocked
the world and became the hot
topic of conversation among
the scientific community
worldwide.
On Jan. 17, the company
announced it had become the
first in the world to create and
document a cloned human
embryo using somatic cell
nuclear transfer (SCNT), or
therapeutic cloning.
The achievement is a major
step forward in creating person-specific stem cells that
could be used for treating
ALS, Parkinson’s and other
degenerative diseases. The
company’s research is exhaustively detailed in a paper published in a January issue of the
peer-reviewed scientific journal Stem Cells.
The company was featured
that morning on NBC’s “The
Today Show” for more than 30
minutes of coverage spread
across three separate segments, as well as the lead
story on all the evening network news broadcasts.
The following morning,
major daily newspaper in several major cities world ran the
story as front-page news.
Since the coverage, the
company has been inundated
with inquiries from potential
collaborators and investors.
Stemagen’s management
team has been taking the
time to carefully consider
each of the several opportunities it has to date been presented with; however, the
company does not have any
specific or immediate funding needs.
“We are a privately funded
company and our needs are
being met at this stage,” said
Dr. Samuel Wood, Stemagen
CEO. “This allows us to make
sure that if we do decide to
collaborate on a project with
another company or research
institution, it would only be
because it’s a clear ‘win/win’
for both parties.”
So far, Wood said, all of the
invitations for partnering are
focused on Stemgen’s core
mission: creating person-specific embryonic stem cell lines
that could be used for therapeutic treatments.
“The
achievement
we
meticulously documented is a
major first step toward creating treatments for people who
need help right now,” he said.
“While we can’t offer them
that, we can offer hope, and
we can offer progress.”
The company’s data is
straightforward.
Five blastocysts were developed from 25 donated mature
oocytes.
Three were confirmed to be
clones based on DNA finger-
See Stemagen on 6
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Lucrative future
Rio is just one of 2,000
horses that have received
treatment since 2004, along
with nearly 300 dogs.
Although research focuses
heavily on these two animals,
cats also have undergone
stem-cell treatments.
“Cats can hide their pain,”
Harman said. “They just show
it differently. The hidden disease in cats is osteoarthritis,
and a lot of owners don’t recognize it. (The therapy) works
the same in cats.”
From a business standpoint,
however, Harman believes
dogs will provide real growth
for Vet-Stem, as well as the
company’s banking program,
where more than 2,000 samples from horses and dogs are
frozen in suspended animation and stored in liquid nitrogen so that pet owners can
refer to them for future use in
their animals. The cost for
storage after the first year
runs $150 per year.
Judging the interest veterinarians and pet owners have
expressed in VSRC therapy,
Harman’s dream to infiltrate
every major animal market
within five years is entirely
possible.
“Business is growing; customers are accepting the technology,” he said. “(Pet) owners
are excited. The reaction has
pushed vets rapidly, and hundreds have picked up on the
technology and the business.
... It’s a real business.”
Just how real? Gross revenues are expected to hit $3.5
million this year, and they
have more than doubled each
year since the company, which
employs 30 workers (six of
whom are veterinarians and
two who hold doctorates),
first began operating. In
September 2007, Vet-Stem
also opened its first lab outside of San Diego in Dubai,
United Arab Emirates.
“We’re pretty much in a
class of our own,” Harman
said. “Our major competition
is what people used to do.
Now we’re offering a new
mode, and our biggest competitor is getting people
trained to understand.”
Part of that training
includes a 3.5-hour, American
Veterinary
Medical
Association-approved certification course designed for
veterinarians who want to
understand how to use regenerative medicine. Once available only in San Diego, VetStem began offering the program online in January, and
more than 700 veterinarians
have signed up.
“They get a whole module
on the science, clinical use,
practicality on how to do it
and how to integrate it into
their clinic,” Harman said. “It’s
a science course, not a marketing piece. We teach what
not to use it for, too.”
Human applicability
Although animals are the
subject of interest for VetStem, Harman has collaborated with companies that focus
on the human application,
and he believes regenerative
medicine will fare better than
controversial
embryonic
stem-cell testing for the twolegged race.
Doctors are already treating
patients in Central America,
Asia and Europe with similar
technology, he said, and “the
big push is with heart disease
and neurological disease.”
“There’s such an advantage,”
he added. “This is their own
cells.”
Iatarola is a San Diegobased freelance writer.
Source Code: 20080327crd
4
Telecommunication Companies
Listed by Number of Local Employees
Firm Name
Address
Phone, Fax
E-mail
URL
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
Qualcomm Inc.
5775 Morehouse Drive
San Diego CA 92121
(858) 587-1121, (858) 458-9096
www.qualcomm.com
AT&T Inc.
101 W. Broadway
San Diego CA 92102
(800) 310-2355
www.att.com
Cox Communications
5159 Federal Blvd.
San Diego CA 92105
(619) 263-9251, (619) 266-5540
www.cox.com
Kyocera America Inc.
8611 Balboa Ave.
San Diego CA 92123-1580
(858) 576-2600, (858) 569-9412
[email protected],
www.kyocera-wireless.com
Time Warner Cable
8949 Ware Court
San Diego CA 92121
(858) 695-8285, (858) 635-8717
[email protected],
www.timewarnercable.com/SanDiego
Leap Wireless International Inc.
(Cricket Wireless)
10307 Pacific Center Court
San Diego CA 92121
(858) 882-6000, (858) 882-6010
[email protected], www.leapwireless.com
Novatel Wireless
9645 Scranton Road, Suite 205
San Diego CA 92121
(858) 888-9231, (858) 784-0626
www.novatelwireless.com
HM Electronics Inc.
14110 Stowe Drive
Poway CA 92064
(858) 535-6000, (858) 452-7207
[email protected], www.hme.com
Teldata Enterprise Networks
9085 Aero Drive
San Diego CA 92123
(858) 874-2151, (800) 658-2922
www.teldata-usa.com
Continuous Computing Corp.
9450 Carroll Park Drive
San Diego CA 92121
(858) 882-8800, (858) 777-3388
[email protected], www.ccpu.com
RF Industries Ltd
7610 Miramar Road
San Diego CA 92126
(858) 549-6340, (858)549-6345
[email protected], www.rfindustries.com
Cbeyond Inc.
6256 Greenwich Drive, Suite 400
San Diego CA 92122
(866) 382-9314, (858) 622-0315
[email protected],
www.cbeyond.net
My Office
9855 Distribution Ave., Suite F
San Diego CA 92121
(858) 549-6700, (858) 549-0306
[email protected],
www.4myoffice.com
American Communications Corp
9725 Scranton Road
San Diego CA 92121
(858) 427-2400, (858) 427-2401
[email protected], www.acccom.com
Time Warner Telecom
(becoming tw telecom July 2008)
9665 Granite Ridge Drive, Suite 500
San Diego CA 92123
(858) 805-6000, (858) 309-0121
www.twtelecom.com
Communications Plus
1675 Morena Blvd., Suite 100
San Diego CA 92110
(619) 276-3000, (619) 276-3131
[email protected],
www.communicationsplus.com
San Diego Wireless
111 N. El Camino Real, Suite F
Encinitas CA 92024
(760) 944-3434, (760) 944-3798
[email protected],
www.sdwireless.com
Packet Telecom Solutions Inc.
9265 Activity Road, Suite 102
San Diego CA 92126
(858) 578-2400, (858) 578-2439
[email protected],
www.packettelecom.com
National Sales Center
7665 Palmilla Drive, Suite 5418
San Diego CA 92122
(858) 657-0370
[email protected],
www.nationalsalescenter.com
Number of
Local
Employees
Headquarters
Business Description
Services Offered
Executive(s) & Title(s)
Total
Number of
Employees
6,000
12,800
5,800
309,050
Designs, manufactures and markets
Qualcomm Inc. is a leader in developing and delivering
digital wireless telecommunications
San Diego, CA innovative digital wireless communications products and
products and services based on its
services based on the company’s CDMA digital technology. CDMA technology and other technologies
Paul Jacobs, CEO; Steven
Altman, President
1985
1985
Randall L. Stephenson,
Chairman/CEO; San Diego
Executives: Mark Leslie, VP,
External Affairs; Tammi Terrel,
VP/General Manager, Mobility;
Denise Cunningham,
VP/General Manager, Wireline
1876
1908
1966
1898
(parent
company)
Telecommunications manufacturer
Noboru Nakamura, Chairman;
Makoto Kawamura, President;
Rodney Lanthorne, President,
Kyocera International, San
Diego
1971
1959,
1969 in
the U.S.
Cable, high-speed online and digital phone services
provider.
High-speed Internet service, Web
hosting, T-1s, dedicated fiber solutions, managed security, vanity email, digital telephone, digital cable
television service
Glenn Britt, President/CEO;
Judy Walsh, President, San
Diego Division; Tad Yo, VP/GM
n/a
1964
Digital wireless service, including voice and data services
under the brand Cricket and Jump Mobile.
Wireless, mobile services
S. Douglas Hutcheson,
President/CEO/Director
1998
1998
1996
1996
1971
1971
1989
1989
Wireless infrastructure and integraProvides integrated systems and services that enable tele- tion and wireless professional servic- PJ Go, President; Mike
San Diego, CA com equipment manufacturers to rapidly deploy Nextes, FlexTCA Systems ATCA and cPCI Dagenais, President/CEO; Amit
Generation Networks (NGN).
platforms Trillium Protocol Software Agarwai, Sr. VP, Engineering
Trillium Professional Services
1998
1998
Designs, manufactures and sells communications equipHoward Hill,
ment, including radio frequency coaxial connectors and
Builds cable assemblies, designs, and
Founder/President/CEO; Victor
cable assemblies used for PCS, radio, test instruments and manufactures, wireless data products
Powers, CFO
computer networks.
1984
1984
More than 20 productivity-enhancing
application including Blackberry,
James Geiger, Chairman/CEO;
voice mail, e-mail, Web hosting, faxBill Rockfort, GM, San Diego
to-mail, data backup, file-sharing and
VPN
2006
1999
Transition management, installation,
PBX/VoIP, storage and distribution
Shaun Alger, CEO/COO
1999
1999
Communications related needs from Internet services
company
Cabling, telephone systems, network
hardware and Internet services to
business customers
Steve Deu Pree, President
1991
1991
A leading national provider of managed network services for
businesses, organizations and communication services companies, specializing in telecommunications, Ethernet and transport data networking, Internet access, local and long distance
voice, VoIP and security.
Integrates data, dedicated Internet
access, and local and long distance
voice services for long distance carriers, wireless communications companies, incumbent local exchange carriers and enterprise organizations.
Larissa L. Herda,
Chairman/President/CEO;
John T. Blount, COO; Lindsey
Burroughs, VP/GM
1998
1993
Installs, services, maintains business telephone and voice
mail systems for companies with 3 to 300 employees.
Comprehensive analysis of telecommunications requirements with a prescriptive diagnosis for low-cost, easy-to-use Neal Schneider, President;
solutions that enable companies and
Ruth Sandven, CFO
organizations to provide a higher level
of service to their customers
1983
1983
Wireless communications provider.
Service provider for Internet, phones, Kevin Mcallister,
pagers, long distance, equipment
Owner/President; Paul
manufacturers
Wheatland, Owner
1986
1986
An authorized reseller focusing exclusively on Nortel
San Diego, CA Networks designed and engineered voice, VoIP and wireless LAN solutions.
AT&T Network Services, Nortel
Networks VoIP telephone systems
and support, network hardware,
wireless solutions and Internet services to government, SMB and large
business customers
Eric Gilmore, President/CEO
2002
2002
San Diego, CA Telecommunications
Sales support and training
Nick Moreno,
Founder/President
2004
2004
San Antonio,
TX
The largest communications holding company in the U.S.
and worldwide, by revenue. AT&T is recognized as the
leading worldwide provider of IP-based communications
services to businesses and the leading worldwide provider
Wireless, high-speed Internet, televiof wireless, high-speed Internet access, local and long dission, voice services
tance voice and directory publishing and advertising services. AT&T is expanding video entertainment offerings to
include such next-generation television services as AT&T
U-verse TV.
Atlanta, GA
A full-service, facilities-based provider of communications
solutions for commercial customers, providing high-speed
Internet, voice and long distance services, as well as data
and video transport services for small to large-sized businesses.
2,300
22,000
1,170
n/a
Kyoto, Japan,
(in the U.S.,
Manufacturer of microelectronic packages for the
San Diego,
telecommunications and microprocessing industry.
CA)
500
Stanford, CT
86,000
370
San Diego, CA
1,507
250
250
Novatel Wireless is a provider of wireless broadband
San Diego, CA access solutions for the worldwide mobile communications.
249
Poway, CA
249
San Diego, CA Telecommunications, installation services company
99
300
88
San Diego, CA
88
70
Atlanta, GA
1,000
A leading IP-based managed services provider that delivers integrated packages of local and long distance voice
along with mobile and broadband Internet services to
small businesses.
66
San Diego, CA Telecommunications
66
60
San Diego, CA
100
30
Littleton, CO
n/a
21
San Diego, CA
21
20
Encinitas
n/a
8
8
High-speed Internet, voice and long
Patrick Esser, President;
distance services, as well as data and
William K. Geppert, VP/GM,
video transport services for small to
San Diego
large-sized businesses
3G wireless PC card modems,
embedded modems, ruggedized
modems and communication softPeter V. Leparulo, Exec.
ware to wireless network operators, Chairman; Brad Weinert,
distributors, original equipment man- President
ufacturers (OEMs), and vertical markets worldwide
A technology company focused on quick-service restaurant
Wireless intercom systems for broad- Harrison Miyahira, Founder;
wireless communications, timing and surveillance technolcast
Chuck Miyahira, CEO
ogy.
99
95
Design and engineering, cable operaRobb Hijar, Owner
tions, telecommunications
2
2
Year
Year
Established
Established
in San Diego
Data Source: The Companies. Listed by Number of Local Employees. This is a partial list; a more complete listing can be found at sourcebook.sddt.com. N/A: Not Applicable, n/a: not available, wnd: would not disclose. It is not the intent of this list to
endorse its participants, nor to imply that a company’s size or numerical rank indicates its quality or service. We reserve the right to edit listings or to exclude a listing due to insufficient information. The following companies did not respond to our
survey: ViaSat Inc., Remec Inc. Last updated 3/2008.
5
Close-up: Allan Camaisa
Entrepreneur’s latest effort provides online security solutions
By SYDNIE MOORE
Hackers are exploiting the
Internet in unprecedented
numbers. In fact, according
to Consumer Sentinel, a
complaint database maintained by the Federal Trade
Commission, identity theft is
the fastest growing crime in
the country, with reports of
stolen identity comprising
32 percent of the more than
800,000 fraud complaints
filed last year.
The bottom line? With a
whopping 250,000 cases
reported in 2007, all consumers are vulnerable to
identity theft — especially if
they use the Internet.
Enter Allan Camaisa, a
seasoned businessman, and
founder and chief executive
officer of Anakam Inc. , a
rapidly growing provider of
online security solutions.
According to Camaisa,
safeguarding your personal
data is “just as critical as
locking your front door.”
The founder of High
Technology Solutions Inc.
(HTS), a hugely successful
enterprise that provided
communications systems,
engineering and outsourcing
to the federal government,
Camaisa is well equipped to
achieve his goal of establishing Anakam as a formidable
domestic force, with an eye
on the global market. Under
his tenure, HTS grew to over
400 employees strong,
boasted annual revenues
exceeding $45 million, and
accrued a slew of honors,
including listings on Inc.
Magazine’s Top 500 private
companies
and
the
Governor’s Small Business of
the Year Award. He went on
Allan Camaisa, founder and CEO of Anakam, says protecting your personal data is “just as critical as locking your front door.”
to raise $17 million in
Venture Capital in 1999 to
launch an Internet subsidiary
(Eye
Velocity)
focused on Internet visualization.
Yet, after selling HTS in
2004 to Wireless Facilities
for nearly $49 million,
Camaisa claimed he was
“ready to retire.”
In reality, retirement is
anathema to this visionary
Southern California native,
who was born in Long Beach
but grew up in Bonita.
After realizing that too
many people were mired in
“security” passwords —
which aside from being
inconvenient, are easy for
hackers to eventually decipher — he honed in on a dis-
Genetics may bring
new life to failed drugs
By SHIRLEY S. WANG
The Wall Street Journal
As pharmaceutical makers
find it increasingly difficult
to bring new drugs to market, they are turning to
genetic tools to seek uses for
medicines that failed to
make it out of the development pipeline.
The discovery of new links
between genes and diseases
can help not only to design
new treatments, but to salvage drugs that are shelved
when they come up short in
clinical trials.
The idea is “to take some
of these compounds, capitalize on past investments sitting idle, and now selectively
accelerate them in the development process,” says Terry
Hisey, a pharmaceuticalindustry strategist at the
consultancy Deloitte LLP.
The ultimate goal is to
develop medicines tailored
to patients with a particular
genetic makeup or who have
diseases with a particular
gene variation that are more
responsive to a specific treatment. While few have been
fully realized so far, there are
a small but growing number,
such as cancer drug Gleevec
from Novartis AG (NYSE:
NitroMed ’s
NVS)
and
(Nasdaq: NTMD) BiDil, a
heart-disease medicine.
“There’s a big buzz about
it,” says Edward Abrahams,
executive director of the
Personalized
Medicine
Coalition, a nonprofit education and advocacy group
comprising industry, academia and government organizations.
While the markets for
these therapies are smaller
than for those that treat the
general population, pharmaceutical companies are realizing there are hefty profits
to be made because patients
are more likely to use, and
stick with, a tailored medicine that works better than a
one-size-fits-all drug. For
instance,
biotechnology
Genentech
Inc. ’s
giant
(NYSE: DNA) Herceptin,
which is taken by women
with breast cancer who have
a particular variant of the
HER-2 gene, reaped $1.3
billion in sales last year.
The broader shift toward
so-called personalized medicine dovetails with pharmaceutical makers’ recognition
of how hard it is to maintain
a business model that relies
on producing a few drugs
that bring in billions of dollars a year.
“The old sort of pharmaceutical model is under pressure right now,” says Wayne
Rosenkrans, chairman and
president of the Personalized
Medicine
Coalition.
“Personalized health care is
one of those potential solutions.”
Drug development typically can take 10 years or more.
Failures cost companies
both time and money, from
$15 million per compound at
the first stage of human testing to $86 million in latestage trials, according to a
2003 study on the cost of
drug innovation published
in the Journal of Health
Economics.
Historically,
these cost have increased
over time above the rate of
inflation, but there aren’t
more recent data available
for pharmaceuticals, says
Joseph DiMasi, a study
author who is director of
economic analysis at the
Tufts Center for the Study of
Drug Development.
Many drug makers say
they routinely evaluate why
a formulation didn’t work,
and genetic information
offers another way of
sleuthing.
“Does genomic information help us understand the
cause of failure and give us
any
information
about
whether we can resurrect the
project?” says Liam Ratcliffe,
head of clinical quantitative
and innovative medicine at
Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE).
“We do this routinely.”
Ratcliffe says this approach
hasn’t yet helped salvage any
Pfizer products, though, an
assessment echoed by some
other big pharmaceutical
companies.
Some industry experts say
it is too time-consuming for
big pharmaceutical makers
to try to salvage drugs; they
say it might be more promis-
See Genetics on 11
tinct market niche.
Utilizing his keen business
acumen, he laid the groundwork for Anakam, a provider
of end-to-end security for
companies and government
agencies that need to provide secure access to Web
sites and internal applications. He recruited a topnotch management team
with expertise in four key
vertical markets: health
care,
government,
banking/finance and e-commerce.
With 35 employees in
offices in San Diego and
Arlington, Va., Camaisa’s latest endeavor is aimed at providing cost-effective authentication and identity protection solutions, with the
potential to service millions.
His company now markets
a comprehensive combination of patent-pending tools
— including two-factor
authentification through the
use of existing devices such
as cell phones, remote ID
proofing, data protection
and system administration
— to a variety of government
agencies and businesses,
among them hospitals, Web
portals with online records,
citizen immigration services
and public health agencies.
Camaisa said the health
care industry, in particular,
is a ripe target for hackers.
“Lack of access to medical
records can lead to misdiagnosis,” he said, but often doctors who would love to look
up medical records can’t,
due to security restrictions.
“By allowing access to medical records online, we’re trying to put more power in the
hands of patients. The more
access a patient has to medical records, the more
important information they
can provide to their physician.”
Not
surprisingly,
Anakam’s business is booming. In fact, Camaisa said,
“We’re expanding at a rapid
clip, and are going from
2007 to 2008 with a 300
percent growth rate.”
Camaisa attributes the company’s resounding success to
his product’s simplicity, versatility and affordability.
“We are an over-deviced
society, but Anakam’s technology leverages the current
devices that are out there,
allowing consumers to log in
anywhere and attain secure
Internet access,” he explained.
Users enter a cell or home
phone number or private email address, and send it
through a different vector so
it cannot be hijacked. This
way, he said, “We’ve added
another level of security to
the mix — a roadblock to the
intruder so passwords cannot be compromised.
Camaisa said his product
is unique: “We are the only
company to offer such a comprehensive security solution.
No one else has such a complete identity management
platform information.”
With an impressive track
record and impeccable credentials, Camaisa is qualified
to combat online fraud —
and to take on the challenge
of building another Inc. 500caliber company. He graduated from the United States
Naval Academy, earning a
bachelor’s in engineering,
and received further training
at Harvard Business School’s
executive
program.
As
founder of HTS, he was
awarded the Ernst & Young
Regional Entrepreneur of
the Year and the SBA Small
Business Person of the Year
awards.
Ideally, this astute entrepreneur will make an important difference in the ongoing battle against online
fraud. Internet theft, he says,
is “subtle and ingenious,”
and ultimately can cause
irreversible harm.
“We (at Anakam) are basically providing authentication for the masses, allowing
more people, easier access to
better security.”
Moore is a San Diego-based
freelance writer.
Source Code: 20080327crg
6
Close-up: Magda Marquet
Althea Technologies targets aggressive growth
By MICHAEL CHUNG KLAM
When Magda Marquet and
her husband Francois Ferre
left high-paying biotech jobs
in 1998 to co-create their own
Althea
company,
Technologies Inc. , their
friends called them crazy.
But the couple held fast to
their dream of building a cutting-edge business that would
step up drug development by
offering dependable, quality
services to the biotech and
pharmaceutical industry; a
company whose employees’
hard work would pay off in
knowledge and advancement;
a company where the work
itself would benefit the lives of
others.
“We looked back in 1997, as
people coming from overseas,
and felt that the promise of
America was a bit bigger than
the one that we were living,”
Ferre said.
With
their
combined
expertise — Marquet had
patented several new methods
to produce clinical-grade
DNA as executive director of
pharmaceutical development
at Vical Inc. (Nasdaq: VICL),
and Ferre had made a name
for himself in cancer research
and HIV clinical development
at Cytometrics and The
Immune Response Corp. —
the couple got off to a good
start. They raised $2 million
in the first quarter of 1998.
“We were quite surprised to
get such a good response,”
Ferre said. “We were two scientists with a big dream. We
put the money in the bank
and said, ‘Now what?’”
However, 1999 was a tough
year of trial and error, and the
company almost crashed. But in
2000, Ferre and Marquet
focused on manufacturing services, specifically making DNA
for gene therapy. The biotech
and pharmaceutical industry
recognized the magnitude of
Althea Technologies’ products
in the fight against disease.
“We started the company in
‘98 and became profitable two
years after looking at gene
expression — or having a protein made from a gene,”
Marquet said. “We applied the
technology to help develop
safer therapeutics.”
The company has not
stopped growing since.
“There was no turning
back,” Ferre said. Althea
Technologies has expanded its
service portfolio by doubling
its manufacturing capacity
and becoming a leading
provider of gene expression
analysis, custom assay development services, protein and
plasmid DNA production
services, and aseptic vial and
syringe filling of Phase I, II
and III clinical products.
Althea Technologies surfaced as a leader and service
provider in the development,
testing and manufacture of
therapeutic products and vaccines.
The genomics revolution
helped scientists to understand that each individual
patient has many different
gene
variations,
Ferre
explained.
“It is a fallacy that one drug
will benefit all,” he said. “A
drug that could be just the
right one for one guy could be
toxic for another.”
Essentially, advanced diagnostics and more personalized
medicine mean more targeted
therapeutics and specific
treatments for individual
patients. Individualized treatment can reduce side effects,
reduce waste and speed up the
healing process.
Althea recently spun out
Althea Diagnostics Inc., an
independent company that
will provide genetic testing
services and products with the
ambitious goal of curing cancer by “reducing the time, risk
and cost of cancer drug development and bringing cancer
diagnostics into widespread
clinical use,” according to a
company press release.
The board appointed industry veteran David Macdonald
as CEO. Althea Diagnostics,
by leveraging previous technology
from
Althea
Technologies, finds itself
uniquely positioned “to establish a leadership role in cancer
diagnostics,” said Macdonald
in a recent interview. Clinical
use will include treatment for
leukemia, prostate cancer and
childhood tumors, he said.
Macdonald had been consulting with Marquet for nine
months prior to accepting his
appointment.
“It’s exciting to watch the
company grow,” he said. “Both
Magda and Francois are fantastic entrepreneurs.”
The culture at Althea is
hardworking, challenging and
fast-paced, Macdonald said,
but the staff enjoys working
there.
Melissa Rosness, director of
the supply team for Althea
Technologies, agreed.
“Althea gave me great
growth opportunities to learn
things so quickly from quality
control to manufacturing and
operations,” she said. “It was a
great opportunity right out of
school.”
The company was honored
last year as a Top Workplace
Finalist by the Wall Street
Journal and received 2006
and 2007 “Best Place to
Work” awards from the San
Diego Business Journal,
Employers Group and San
Diego Magazine.
“It’s the people that really
make the company,” said
Rosness, who began at Althea
as a resident assistant and
now has both the purchasing
and manufacturing depart-
ments under her. “Magda and
Francois foster the company
culture. They encourage
employees to work hard but
also to enjoy their work.”
Marquet, a board member
of Athena — an organization
for executive women in the
San Diego life sciences, technology, health care and business communities — proudly
noted
that
Althea
Technologies’ staff is “over 65
percent women,” and said that
hardworking employees can
apply what they learn and
advance quickly.
The company continues to
presses forward, too. In 2007
Althea Technologies received
a fourth consecutive Fast
Growth Award by Deloitte &
Touche.
“We have very aggressive
growth targets,” Marquet said.
Ferre sees his wife and colleague in the brightest light:
“Magda is one of our main
strengths, a very charismatic
leader; you are drawn to her.
She has a mix of charm and
inner strength,” he said.
“You can see the sense of
purpose in her, the purpose
and integrity of creating a better life for yourself and for the
rest of us,” Ferre said.
Chung Klam is a San Diegobased freelance writer.
Source Code: 20080327crf
New home hair drug test detects
drug use, usage frequency
By NEPI I. RUSSELL
Magda Marquet, co-president and co-CEO of Althea Technologies, noted that hardworking
employees can apply what they learn and advance quickly in the company.
A new home-based hair follicle drug test kit called
HairConfirm can detect drug
use as well as usage frequency
for up to 90 days, equipping
parents with a valuable new
tool for combating substance
abuse.
Developed by biotech company Confirm BioSciences, the
test overcomes the limitations
of two- or three-day saliva or
urine screenings that enable
users to escape detection by
avoiding drug use for a short
period. It is also the first home
hair test to report the amount
of each chemical detected as
well as whether the results indicate low, medium or high
usage.
The HairConfirm kit screens
for
marijuana,
cocaine,
amphetamines, opiates and
phencyclidines,
including
ecstasy, heroin, codeine, PCP
and angel dust. Test results are
available online with a specimen ID number and passcode
two business days after the lab
receives the sample, providing
anonymity with no need to supply personal information.
Customers without Internet
access can opt to receive results
by mail.
Results are provided in
detailed written reports that
indicate positive or negative
findings for each of the five
classes of drugs evaluated,
specify the concentration levels
of each drug for which results
were positive, and allow parents to compare those concentration levels against the ranges
typically found in recreational,
daily/weekend and constant
users. This information, along
with a free counseling hotline
included in the price of the kit,
can assist parents in determining what kind of intervention is
needed.
Tests are run on small hair
samples cut close to the scalp
and at least 1.5 inches long to
provide enough hair for a 90day evaluation. A second test is
performed on all positive
results to eliminate false positives, ensuring accurate results.
Even the smallest amount of a
drug will show up on a test, and
negative tests definitively prove
that an individual has not consumed illicit drugs in the last
90 days.
Two-thirds of parents would
ask their teenage son or daughter to take a home drug test as a
means of keeping them away
from drugs, according to a
2006 survey of 2,064 parents
around the country by
Washington, D.C.-based opinion research and polling organization RT Strategies. The survey was co-sponsored by
notMYkid, a national nonprofit
organization devoted to drug
abuse prevention.
“HairConfirm is designed to
help parents take a proactive
role in preventing their children’s illegal drug use,” said
Zeynep Ilgaz, CEO of Confirm
BioSciences. “Talking with your
child about drugs and taking
preventive measures like hair
drug testing can be a significant
factor in preventing substance
abuse.”
Teens Today research from
SADD (Students Against
Destructive Decisions) and
Liberty Mutual Group has suggested that parents are the No.
1 deterrent to a teen’s decision
to use drugs. Studies by that
group have shown that the
average age of first drug use is
13; more than one-third of
teens have used drugs, including almost one in six middle
school students and 30 percent
of their high school counterparts reporting marijuana use;
and 13 percent of high school
students report using drugs
such as cocaine, crack or ecstasy.
In 2006, 21 percent of 8th
graders, 36 percent of 10th
graders and 48 percent of 12th
graders reported having taken
illicit drugs at some point,
according to the annual
Monitoring the Future survey
of 50,000 students in those
grades in more than 400
schools nationwide funded by
the National Institute on Drug
Abuse.
Hair follicle drug testing is a
highly trusted method of drug
detection regularly used by
employers and law enforcement agencies because of its
accuracy, long window of detection and resistance to tampering. In two independent studies, hair drug testing uncovered
five to 10 times more drug users
than urinalysis. Urinalysis also
carries the risk of substitution
of a sample, dilution and addition of a foreign substance
designed to skew the results.
reproductive purposes at the
Reproductive Sciences Center
(RSC) in La Jolla, a leading
fertility center specializing in
egg donation and other
advanced assisted reproductive technologies.
“As important as stem cell
research is, all of us involved
in this study realized that our
overriding responsibility was
to the intended parents who
entrusted us with their dream
of having a child,” said
Catharine Adams, a co-author
on the paper and RSC laboratory director. “We in the IVF
laboratory felt comfortable in
this collaboration because we
have consistently achieved
pregnancy rates of greater
than 80 percent from these
types of high-quality egg
donors. In this study, all the
intended parents were successful in achieving a pregnancy.”
Stemagen and the RSC
worked closely, over an
extended period of time, with
a
leading
independent
Institutional Review Board to
develop procedures ensuring
that all parties received comprehensive informed consent
and that confidentiality was
protected. All research procedures, including the culturing
of the skin cells (fibroblasts),
were performed under clinical
laboratory conditions in close
cooperation with the Assisted
Reproductive Technologies
Laboratory of the RSC, directed by Adams.
Wood, who is also the medical director at RSC, points
out that the research was
exhaustively scrutinized by
some of the world’s most
respected scientists and
underwent an exceptionally
rigorous process of verification. “This achievement was
so critical to our field, we felt
we should spare no effort in
the process of establishing
the validity of our work,” he
said.
Russell is with GBSS|PR.
Source Code: 20080327crl
Stemagen
printing, demonstrating the
presence of the skin cell donor
DNA in the blastocyst, while
one was further confirmed to
be a clone by an additional
mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)
analysis, which revealed the
presence of oocyte donor
mtDNA without any oocyte
donor nuclear DNA.
For technical reasons, the
genetic material in the
remaining two blastocysts did
not amplify to the extent
required for analysis, and so
while it is likely they were
clones, the evidence required
to claim that with certainty
was not present. Thus, in this
study, cloned blastocysts were
successfully created from
approximately 10 percent of
all mature donated oocytes,
an unexpectedly high rate
given past research in this
field.
The oocytes used in this
study were donated, without
compensation, by egg donors
and intended parents undergoing egg donation cycles for
Jimenez is director of corporate communications for
Stemagen.
Source Code: 20080327crs
7
Distinct flavors featured in San Diego life sciences real estate market
By JOHN BONANNO and
TRACY LANDOWSKI
Grubb & Ellis|BRE Commercial
Over 500 life-science companies occupy more than 12 million square feet in the San
Diego market, about half of
which is owner-occupied. The
market has experienced some
growing pains over the last few
years as company mergers and
acquisitions have caused considerable space consolidation.
Fortunately, the appetite of big
pharmaceuticals for biotech
company acquisitions is also
fueling funding of new venturecapital-based startups, much in
the same way that the opening
of the IPO market spurs new
company investment.
Currently there is more than
1.3 million square feet of lab
space availabilities, about half
of which is sublease space; however, tenant demand has been
on the rise and several landlords are actively negotiating
new leases. Base lease rates
range from $25-$36/year (net
of all operating expenses) and
are expected to increase as the
industry grows and absorbs the
limited space in this prime market. Lease terms range from two
to 15 years and renewal options
are commonly given and tenants typically exercise them.
The primary biotechnology
marketplace in San Diego is
clustered around UCSD.
The submarkets, which represent extreme variations in flavor, attracting different types of
companies with varied needs,
are Torrey Pines, University
Towne Center (UTC), Sorrento
Valley, Sorrento Mesa and
Carlsbad. The first four areas
are geographically contiguous,
with Carlsbad standing apart.
Despite such close proximity,
each submarket displays its
own unique character and
appeal to biotech tenants of all
types.
Torrey Pines submarket
The Torrey Pines biotechnology cluster was originally master-planned by the city of San
Diego and zoned for Scientific
Research (SR). This zoning permits scientific research use,
associated manufacturing uses,
as well as corporate headquarters measuring 40,000 square
feet-plus. The presence of
world-renowned
scientific
research institutes such as the
University of California, San
Diego; The Salk Institute; The
TorreyPines
Thera announces
phase 2 trial
By ELIZABETH MALLOY
TorreyPines Therapeutics
Inc .
(Nasdaq:
TPTX)
announced last week it has initiated a Phase 2 study as part of
its development for a drug to
fight a dry mouth disorder.
The company is conducting
a randomized, double-blind,
placebo-controlled, crossover
study with a Latin square
design for NGX267, a muscarinic agonist in development
for xerostomia, a dry mouth
disease often related to the
autoimmune disorder Sjogren’s
syndrome, radiation treatment, HIV, side effects of medications or aging. NGX267 is
particularly for xerostomia
related to Sjogren’s syndrome.
Approximately 24 patients
will be enrolled at three sites in
the United States. In four distinct treatment periods, each
patient will be randomized to
receive a single dose of 10 mg,
15 mg and 20 mg of NGX267
and placebo. The order of
treatment is determined by the
Latin square design. The primary endpoint of the study is
quantitative measure of salivary flow.
“We are focusing our clinical
development activities on maximizing the value of our lead
compounds to take advantage
of their versatility,” said Neil
Kurtz, M.D., president and
CEO
of
TorreyPines
Therapeutics. “Three Phase 1
studies have already demonstrated the safety and tolerability of NGX267.”
In a Phase 1 multiple-dose
study completed in September,
salivary flow increased linearly
with doses of NGX267, according to the company.
Source Code: 20080318czb
Scripps Clinic & Research
Foundation;
the
Sidney
Kimmel Cancer Center and the
Burnham Institute have contributed to this area’s advancement as a biotechnology
hotbed.
In addition to these research
institutes, Torrey Pines is home
to pharmaceutical giants Pfizer
(NYSE: PFE), Johnson &
Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) and
Novartis (NYSE: NVS).
Buildings in the market are
characterized by ocean or
mountain views and are situated in a natural setting of bluffs
filled with torrey pine trees.
The synergy created by this
cluster of intellectual capital is
unparalleled here in San Diego
and comparable only to the
most sophisticated life science
clusters in country, such as
downtown Boston or South San
Francisco. This market is fully
developed and only a couple of
sites are suitable for additional
development.
University Towne Center
(UTC) submarket
UTC is the location of choice
for many of the region’s largest
biotechnology
companies
because of the market’s proximity to Torrey Pines, unrivaled amenities and the general business community. This
area of the San Diego bioscience market consists primarily of multitenant Class “A”
high-rise and mid-rise office
buildings. The city of San
Diego designated approximately 150 acres in the
Eastgate/Towne Centre Drive
area as an SR zone to continue
to promote the growth of the
biotechnology industry.
There is currently more than
1.5 million square feet of bioscience space in the submarket
and one biotech project under
construction,
the
Nexus
University Research Science
Center, which will total 161,871
square feet and will be available
for life science companies in
mid- to late 2009.
Sorrento Valley submarket
Emerging as San Diego’s first
high-tech corridor in the early
1970s, Sorrento Valley has been
thriving ever since. In fact,
numerous life science companies started in Sorrento Valley.
The market was originally conceived to provide multitenant
office and industrial space primarily to startup and smaller
tenants. Over the last 15 years,
the market has gradually shifted toward biotechnology as tenants and landlords converted
suitable buildings to accommodate laboratory users.
Sorrento Mesa submarket
The Sorrento Mesa submarket consists of mostly research
and development (R&D) and
industrial buildings, but also
has many multitenant mid- and
high-rise office buildings. The
area offers a less expensive
alternative to Torrey Pines and
UTC and available land for
build-to-suits. While lab users
are sprinkled throughout the
market, the build-to-suit
opportunities primarily exist in
the northwest section of
Sorrento Mesa, overlooking
Sorrento Valley with views of
Torrey Pines and the Pacific
Ocean.
Another unique subcluster
exists on an elevated street
called Nancy Ridge, which
arguably is in western
Miramar, but the buildings are
more similar to the R&D buildings in Sorrento Mesa. The
dense cluster of lab buildings
on Nancy Ridge currently
exceeds 750,000 square feet of
lab space.
Carlsbad
Located in North County,
Carlsbad is the smallest biotech
cluster area in San Diego
County. Some life science companies have chosen Carlsbad as
a less congested and less expen-
sive alternative. Carlsbad will
likely continue to attract new
life science companies due to
the availability of developable
land. Companies such as
Invitrogen (Nasdaq: IVGN),
Isis Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq:
ISIS), Genoptix (Nasdaq:
Epeius
GXDX)
and
Biotechnology are headquartered there.
With an inventory of approximately 593,333 square feet, lab
vacancy is currently around 15
percent.
Bonanno and Landowski
are laboratory real estate
experts with Grubb &
Ellis|BRE Commercial’s Life
Sciences Group; they maintain comprehensive market
information and track all lab
availabilities in San Diego
County. They can be reached
at (858) 546-5400 or via email at [email protected]
or [email protected].
Source Code: 20080327crj
8
Close-up: James B. Lasswell
Indus Technology president salutes value of happy employees
By JILL BLACKFORD
In today’s business climate,
most corporate leaders will
tell you their primary asset is
their employees — but not all
corporate cultures make it a
priority to truly cultivate that
asset. Indus Technology Inc.’s
does.
“We are primarily a government contractor whose primary product is services. We
don’t build anything and don’t
have any particular product,”
said James B. Lasswell, president and senior engineer of
Indus Technology. “We exist
because of excellent people we
have in the company that we
provide to our customers in
the form of services. We try to
even carry it a little further.”
Founded in 1991 in San
Diego by Lasswell and his late
wife, Kathleen P. Sridhar,
Ph.D, Indus Technology provides services such as systems
engineering, technical and
program management, such
as C4I communication systems, logistics, IT services and
financial management. For
instance, one of the core competencies the company has
developed centers on an
understanding of how to
effectively manage appropriated monies. Its key clients
James Lasswell ensures Indus Technology employees both enjoy what they do and have the tools
to do their jobs effectively, and in turn asks that his staff make sure customers are happy.
are in the government sector,
such as the Department of the
Navy divisions like SPAWAR
and
SSC,
and
other
Department of Defense divisions.
Lasswell himself grew up in
a military family in San
Diego; his father was in the
Marine Corps. Following in
those footsteps, Lasswell went
into the Navy and feels lucky
to have had the Navy send him
to grad school, where he says
he was able to learn the technical skills that led him to
begin Indus Technology upon
his retirement.
NuVasive moves into new
campus to accommodate growth
By JASON RANDO
NuVasive Inc., a San Diego
company that develops products for minimally invasive
spinal surgery, is moving to a
new campus-style facility to
accommodate its growing
business.
NuVasive will relocate its
headquarters to a two-building campus in Sorrento Valley.
The new campus-style environment will accommodate
all of the company’s departments in a single location and
enable growth up to 300,000
square feet over the next several years. One building will
be dedicated to research,
product development, marketing and surgeon training
activities, while the other will
house the company’s administrative functions as well as
sales and corporate training.
The facility, located within
four miles of NuVasive’s current headquarters in San
Diego, will allow all of the
company’s 300 San Diegobased shareowners to work in
one location. The new campus
environment
provides
NuVasive with increased
infrastructure to accommodate its rapidly growing work
force, support enhanced
training and testing facilities,
and provide a foundation for
expanded clinical use of its
broadened product offerings.
Alex Lukianov, chairman
and chief executive officer of
NuVasive, said the new campus provides ample room for
the company to grow beyond
the next decade.
“The new campus provides
a strong foundation for continued expansion, allowing us
to leverage our unique culture
of Absolute Responsiveness in
order to achieve our next
major milestone, reaching
$500 million in revenues. All
of our shareowners are deeply
committed to this milestone.
Much more than just employees, we call them shareowners
because since day one, everyone has direct ownership in
NuVasive. The focus of this
group of partners working
together has been a key part of
our growth, and this new
environment allows us to
expand that focus.”
NuVasive’s business experienced significant growth in
2007, with full year 2007 revenue increasing 57 percent to
$154.3 million. In 2007,
NuVasive’s stock price rose
approximately 70 percent.
The company has also publicly guided Wall Street to
expect mid-30 percent revenue growth per year over the
next several years. The plan to
achieve this growth rate is
driving deeper product penetration of its existing platform
of products, expanding market share in the United States,
and making an entrance into
select international markets
such as the UK and Germany.
At the core of NuVasive’s
offering to spine surgeons is
the XLIF, or eXtreme Lateral
Interbody Fusion procedure,
which allows surgeons to
approach the spine laterally
rather than through the
abdomen
or
back.
Approaching
the
spine
through the side allows surgeons to avoid critical
anatomical structures and
major trauma associated with
traditional spine surgery techniques, resulting in less operating time and reduced pain
and blood loss. Hospitals utilizing the XLIF procedure
have been able to shorten
operating time by more than
50 percent, foster more rapid
patient recovery (days rather
than weeks), and substantially
reduce the overall cost of standard spine procedures.
NuVasive’s
proprietary,
software-driven nerve avoidance system, NeuroVision
makes the lateral approach
possible. NeuroVision, combined with MaXcess, a unique
split-blade design retraction
system;
and
specialized
implants, like SpheRx and
CoRoent, collectively form the
Maximum Access Surgery
(MAS) platform, a minimally
disruptive system that provides surgeons with a less
invasive approach for performing spinal fusion surgery.
The new campus will feature a state-of-the-art training
facility that will enable
NuVasive to train larger
groups of surgeons in MAS
and XLIF procedures, including surgeons new to the techniques as well as surgeons
learning new indications.
NuVasive trains approximately 400 surgeons at its headquarters each year.
“It is important for us to
See NuVasive on 12
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The company has experienced steady growth since it
was founded, growing from a
couple of employees to 215
currently. When asked how
he’s achieved that growth,
Lasswell again points directly
to his staff.
“It’s real simple,” he said.
“We have a corporate culture
and belief that in the services
industry, the only assets the
company has are its superior
people. So every one of us here
in management, our primary
purpose is to take care of our
excellent employees.”
Because of his management’s focus on ensuring that
employees both enjoy what
they do and have the tools to
do their jobs effectively,
Lasswell continued, he can in
turn ask that his staff make
sure customers are happy.
And, he said, “If we make the
customer happy, our business
will grow.”
He attributed this culture in
part to Sridhar, whom he
called a “tremendous leader of
people,” as well as to his own
military background.
The long-time San Diego
resident also believes that giving back to the community is
essential for his company’s
success. Lasswell is highly
involved with the NDIA
(National Defense Industrial
Association), which allows
him to mentor other small
businesses in the area. Some
of his best small business
advice?
“I always tell small companies that first off, you’ve got to
be prepared to answer the question of why somebody would go
to your company as opposed to
hundreds of thousands of others,” he said. “You’ve got to
answer that question pretty
much every day.”
Another key factor Lasswell
points to is networking and
being able to deal with potential clients in a way that makes
your company a preferred
vendor. He repeats the sales
axiom: People buy things
from people they like.
With its focus on government contracts, it might seem
that the company’s growth
stems in part from the current
war efforts. But because Indus
Technology acts more like a
consultancy instead of providing products, it can actually
see fewer dollars during times
of conflict.
“I think it’s safe to say that
war in Iraq has taken a lot of
discretionary
money,”
Lasswell said. “And it’s utilized that money in direct support of the fighting troops in
helping build infrastructure
in Iraq and Afghanistan. That
reduces the amount of discretionary money that can be
spent on infrastructure and
R&D
organizations
like
SPAWAR.”
For Lasswell, it seems, the
military is not just his business — but in his blood. And
Lasswell said he likes functioning and living within a
strong defense-oriented community like San Diego.
“I really enjoy supporting
the Navy and Defense
Department. It’s something
that is part of my heritage. I
spent 20 years in the Navy,
but I continue to go to military events and am happy to
be supporting the military as a
contractor,” he said. “You didn’t listen to light jazz when
you called the company (during the call transfer). You listened to marching music. I’m
not light jazz — I’m a defense
company.”
Yet while Lasswell’s manner
of speaking is matter-of-fact
and his industry a serious one,
he takes time to appreciate
how much his business — and
San Diego — mean to him.
“It’s a fun business to be in;
I just really enjoy it. It’s
rewarding, and I feel good
doing what we do. You’ve got
to go home and look at yourself in the mirror and say:
What have I done today, have
I done anything good? And
the answer is that we’ve provided a great place to work,
where people enjoy what
they’re doing that is a significant benefit to the national
defense. It’s something to be
proud of.”
Blackford is a Los Angelesbased freelance writer.
Source Code: 20080327cri
Prevost Construction provides valuable
services to biotech community
The life science industry has been a primary focus of Prevost Construction since
its founding in 1989. Completing tenant
improvements in a variety of biotech, pharmaceutical and medical research facilities
throughout San Diego County, Prevost
Construction has earned a reputation among
the life science community for innovative
thinking, expert guidance and superior project results.
BioMed Realty Trust, a REIT focused
on providing real estate to the life science
industry, is one of Prevost’s newest clients.
“Within our industry, there is a tremendous
need for a general contractor that possesses
the technical expertise to perform renovation
work in a laboratory environment with precision, speed and sensitivity to budget constraints,” said Pico Mina, director of real
estate development for BioMed Realty Trust.
“Prevost Construction has demonstrated its
ability to meet the needs of our tenants in all
of these areas and the company delivers a
top-quality project.”
In one of BioMed’s newest acquisitions in
the Torrey Pines area of La Jolla, Prevost
Construction recently completed a 10,278square-foot renovation of a chemistry and
biology lab for cancer research firm
Apoptos. It is now under way on Anaptys
Biosciences’s 16,501-square-foot facility
featuring a renovated biology lab, tissue culture rooms and executive office space.
“Prevost Construction is a superior contractor in every aspect,” said Dr. Robert Peach,
vice president of biology for Apoptos Inc.
“The Prevost team managed the construction
process very effectively, keeping us informed
as the project moved along. We are very
happy with the final product and would recommend Prevost Construction to anyone.”
In 2007, Prevost was selected by
Veralliance Properties, a corporate real
estate solutions company focused on office
and life science assets, in joint venture with
BioMed Realty Trust, for a 16,923-squarefoot build-out valued at $2.1 million for
Scripps Health. A state-of-the-art facility,
the new clinic screens patients and processes
specimens for all of the Scripps Hospitals in
the San Diego area. Prevost is now under
way on a 20,000-square-foot conversion of
lab space to office space for Neurocrine
Biosciences (Nasdaq: NBIX), a productbased biopharmaceutical company that is
consolidating operations within its two-building campus in Del Mar Heights.
“Our roots in build-outs for companies in
the life science industry run deep,” said Jamie
Prevost, president of Prevost Construction.
“One of our company’s first projects in 1990
was a 10,000-square-foot clean room for
Block Medical in Carlsbad. The successful
completion of this $600,000 project created
a long-term relationship with equity partner
Greg Sanckoff, who went on to acquire interests in medical instrument manufacturer River
Medical and IVAC Corp. In a merger with
IMED in 1994, Alaris Medical was formed
and over 250,000 square feet of renovations
were performed in several facilities throughout San Diego.”
The company added that this relationship
endured through most of the decade and produced in excess of $12 million in completed
projects. The relationship eventually came to
a close when Alaris was acquired by
Cardinal Health in 2004.
“Long-term relationships are the foundation of our business success,” added Prevost.
“Our extensive experience in second and
third generation remodel work in combination with our technical understanding of the
life science industry has allowed us to formulate a well-built combination of skills and
services that our clients can rely on.”
Submitted by Prevost Construction
9
Tech & biotech roundtable
Lack of communication obstacle to convergence of wireless, life science businesses
By ELIZABETH MALLOY
When Arlene Harris, who’s
been in the wireless industry
since before most people could
imagine a cell phone, was trying
to secure funding for a company that designs phones for older
people, she was told there was
no market for her product.
“We have older consumers,”
she said. “The venture market
wants to invest in youth, and we
have perceptions that you’re
gaining customers that are
going to die and you’re not
going to have any products to
fill in, so your business isn’t
going to have sustainability.”
Harris’ company, GreatCall
Inc., managed to get off the
ground with funding from
Harris and her husband, and a
product Samsung built for the
Del Mar company free of
charge. The company now has
tens of thousands of customers
across the United States. But
Harris said that disconnect
between what venture capitalists are after and what the wireless industry can create can
often stifle creative young companies.
Others in the industry
agreed. At a recent Daily
Transcript roundtable featuring
local leaders of the life science
and wireless industries, there
was much discussion on how
those two sectors are merging.
But there was also talk about
how sometimes a lack of communication — be it between
companies and investors, engineers and consumers, or even
different generations — can
sometimes have more sway over
what companies and products
survive than anything else.
Harris’ idea was to create cell
phones that act more like regular phones. There are no cameras, games or hip ring tones.
The phones simply make calls.
The buttons are bigger and the
speakers are louder. While
these phones are often perceived as being for elderly people, Harris also had the Baby
Boom generation in mind. That
generation is getting older, but
they still have a lot of wealth,
are still accustomed to being
catered to, and there are still a
lot of them.
“We’re going to have to continue to innovate to stay relevant to the customers that are
moving into our age demographic because their attitudes
and needs are going to change,”
she said. “We think we have a
forever business.”
Despite her company’s success, however, Harris said she
still has trouble convincing
some venture capitalists.
“The venture market wants to invest in youth,” said Arlene
Harris, who initially had trouble financing her now successful
company, GreatCall Inc., which caters to older cell phone users.
Don Jones, who heads up Qualcomm’s new wireless life science
department, said the company has made a habit of creating
teams not just of Qualcomm employees but also partners from
outside the company.
Roundtable participants
Darrel Drinan, CEO
PhiloMetron
Arlene Harris, Founder
GreatCall, Inc.
Fred Hernandez, Partner
Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo PC
Jason Howe, CEO
AwarePoint Corp.
Don Jones
VP of Business Development, Health & Life Sciences
Qualcomm
Lance Kurata, Partner
Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo PC
Rob McCray, Senior Adviser
Triple Tree
Judy Muller-Cohn, President, CEO
Biomatrica
Joe Panetta, President, CEO
BIOCOM
Duane Roth, CEO
CONNECT
Darrel Drinan, founder and
president of PhiloMetron , a
company that makes wireless
human sensing products, said
he sees this disconnect as being
pervasive in the wireless and life
science businesses. In large
biotech companies, he said,
device departments often won’t
speak to the pharmaceutical
departments. At venture capital
firms, the life science specialists
don’t talk to the technology specialists. In the past, this hasn’t
been that big of a problem, but
he thinks the problem will
increase as industries become
more integrated.
It’s also a problem as demographics change. Perhaps contrary to common perception,
when it comes to health care
technology, women actually
purchase more electronics than
men, Drinan said. The trouble
is, the engineers designing the
products are men, and they
often have different wants and
needs from their electronics.
“Guys like buttons. Women
don’t like buttons,” he said.
“Very simple things like that
will cause the implementation
failures.”
Drinan said, however, that he
thinks San Diego has the kind
of business environment that
could help small technology
companies with outside-of-thebox ideas survive. The region
has a history of different companies and sectors working
together, rather than acting as
fierce competitors.
Don Jones, who heads up
Qualcomm’s (Nasdaq: QCOM)
new wireless life science department, said the company has
made a habit of creating teams
out of not just Qualcomm
employees but also partners
from outside the company.
“Almost all of our work is
partnering with companies,”
Jones said. “We bring bio-engineers and electrical engineers
and physiology guys and M.D.s
together in solutions and force
them to work together.”
But most of the local industry
leaders agreed that, like with so
All photos: J. Kat Woronowicz
Darrel Drinan, founder and president of PhiloMetron, said he sees a pervasive disconnect in the
wireless and life science businesses.
many things, education is the
answer. Universities must show
students that just creating electronics isn’t going to change the
world; you must market it, they
said. And the future financial
backers of the world must see
that just because something
hasn’t been done doesn’t mean
it won’t work.
Harris sits on the boards of
several universities and said she
is seeing more convergence at
the university level as well, but
it’s still in its infancy.
“Every head of every business
school in the country is looking
at: How can I make my graduates broader? How can I make
them respect the science guy? If
they’ve got an engineering
school, How can I expose them
to what the marketing department contributes?” Harris said.
“Right now, it’s in the labs
because it’s just so difficult to
figure out how you change educational institutions to try to
mirror what you’re trying to do
in industry.”
[email protected]
Source Code: 20080327cra
Judy Muller-Cohn is president and CEO of Biomatrica, a com pany that offers technologies for stabilizing biological samples
at room temperature.
10
Local Publicly Traded Biomed & Biotech Firms
Ranked by Market Cap on March 24, 2008
Firm Name
Address
Phone, Fax
E-mail
URL
Market Cap on
March 24, 2008
1
Amylin Pharmaceuticals Inc.
9360 Towne Centre Drive
San Diego CA 92121
(858) 552-2200, (858) 552-2212
[email protected], www.amylin.com
2
Invitrogen Corp.
1600 Faraday Ave.
Carlsbad CA 92008
(760) 603-7200, (760) 603-6500
[email protected], www.invitrogen.com
3
ResMed Inc.
14040 Danielson St.
Poway CA 92064
(858) 746-2400, (858) 622-2043
[email protected], www.resmed.com
4
Illumina Inc.
9885 Towne Centre Drive
San Diego CA 92121
(858) 202-4500, (858) 587-4297
[email protected], [email protected]
www.illumina.com
$2,981,718,000
5
Gen-Probe Inc.
10210 Genetic Center Drive
San Diego CA 92121
(858) 410-8000, (858) 410-8625
[email protected], www.gen-probe.com
$2,642,028,000
6
Isis Pharmaceuticals Inc.
1896 Rutherford Road
Carlsbad CA 92008
(760) 931-9200, (760) 603-4650
[email protected], www.isispharm.com
7
NuVasive Inc.
4545 Towne Centre Court
San Diego CA 92121
(800) 455-1476, (858) 909-2000
[email protected], www.nuvasive.com
8
Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc.
6166 Nancy Ridge Drive
San Diego CA 92121
(858) 453-7200, (858) 453-7210
[email protected], www.arenapharm.com
$561,311,900
9
Quidel Corp.
10165 McKellar Court
San Diego CA 92121
(858) 552-1100, (858) 453-4338
[email protected], www.quidel.com
$541,308,000
Ticker
Symbol
Fields of Research
AMLN
Developing innovative medicines to treat
metabolic diseases
$3,844,007,000
$3,238,607,000
$3,899,413,000
Major Products
Smylin, Exentide, Exenatide LAR, AC2592
(GLP-1), AC3056, AC 162352 (PYY[2-26])
Executive(s) & Title(s)
Year
Established
Daniel M. Bradbury, CEO
1987
IVGN
Research tools in kit form, catalog, custom
Gene cloning and expression, electropharesis,
products and services for biotechnology and
protein purification, characterization and
biopharmaceutical researchers and companies
production, enzyme chemistry, molecular
worldwide for life science discovery, developlabation and detection
ment and production
Gregory T. Lucier, President/CEO; David F.
Hoffmeister, Sr. VP/CFO; Nicholas M.
Barthelemy, Sr. VP, BioProduction
Systems and Services
1987
RMD
Sleep-disordered breathing
Devices to treat sleep-disordered breathing
Peter C. Farrell, Founder/CEO; Kieran
Gallahue, President
1989
ILMN
Large scale analysis of genetic variation and
function
Jay T. Flatley, President/CEO; Christian
Cabou, Sr. VP, General Counsel; Christian
Henry, Sr. VP/CFO; Arthur Holden, Sr.
Integrated array-based systems, reagents,
VP/Corp. Market Development; Tristan
software and services for large-scale genetic
analysis including genetyping and gene expres- Orpin, Sr. VP, Commercial Operations;
John Stuelpnagel, DVM, Sr.
sion profiling
VP/COO/General Manager; John West, Sr.
VP, General Manager, DNA Sequencing
1998
GPRO
Nucleic acid diagnostics for human disease
Rapid, accurate nucleic acid tests (NAT) to
diagnose human diseases and screen donated
blood
Henry L. Nordhoff,
Chairman/President/CEO
1983
$1,386,714,000
ISIS
RNA-based drug discovery and development
to treat metabolic, cardiovascular, inflamma- RNA-based drug discovery and development to
tory and viral diseases, and cancer; biosensor treat metabolic, cardiovascular, inflammatory
to identify infectious organisms; small mole- and viral diseases, and cancer
cule drugs that bind to RNA
Stanley T. Crooke, Chairman/CEO; B.
Lynne Parshall, Exec. VP/CFO; C. Frank
Bennett, VP, Antisense Research; Richard
K. Brown, VP, Business Development;
David J. Ecker, VP, Scientific Head of Ibis
Division; Jeff Landes, Assistant Director
of Patents
1989
$1,205,136,000
NUVA
Design, development and marketing of products for the surgical treatment of spine dis- Maximum Access Surgery
orders
Alexis V. Lukianov, Chairman/CEO; Keith
Valentine, President/COO; Kevin C.
O’Boyle, Exec. VP/CFO
1995
ARNA
G protein-coupled receptors
Drug discovery and development
Jack Lief, President, Director/CEO; Steven
Spector, Sr. VP/Counsel/Secy; Robert
Hoffman, VP, Finance; Louis J. Scotti, VP,
Business Development & Marketing;
Dominic Behan, Sr. VP/CSO
1997
QDEL
Reproduction, infectious diseases, general
health screening, bone health and autoimmune disorders
Point-of-care rapid diagnostic tests for the
detection of medical conditions and illnesses
Mark Pulido, Chairman, Caren L. Mason,
President/CEO; Thomas Brown, Vice
Chairman; Rod Dammeyer, President
1979
HALO
Developing and commercializing products
based on the extracellular matrix for the
drug delivery, oncology and dermatology
markets
cGMP Halozyme’s first recombinant human
enzyme Cumulase and Hylenex
Jonathan E. Lim, President/CEO; Gregory
I. Frost, CSO
1998
John Higgins, President/CEO; Martin
Meglasson, VP, Discovery Research; Zofia
Dziewanowska, VP, Clinical Research;
Syed Zazmi, VP, Business Development
Strategic Planning; John Sharp, VP of
Finance/CFO
1987
10
Halozyme Therapeutics
11588 Sorrento Valley Road, Suite 17
San Diego CA 92121
(858) 794-8889
www.halozyme.com
11
Ligand Pharmaceuticals Inc.
10275 Science Center Drive
San Diego CA 92121
(858) 550-7500, (858) 550-1826
[email protected], www.ligand.com
$399,794,600
LGND.PK
Cancer, pain, dermatology, men’s and
women’s health, osteoporesis, metabolic dis- Avinza, ONTAK, Targretin capsules, Targretin
orders, cardiovascular and inflammatory dis- gel, Panretin gel
eases
12
Acadia Pharmaceuticals Inc.
3911 Sorrento Valley Blvd.
San Diego CA 92121
(858) 558-2871, (858) 558-2872
[email protected], www.acadia-pharm.com
$342,056,700
ACAD
Central nervous system disorders
Drug discovery and development
Leslie L. Iversen, Chairman; Uli Hacksell,
CEO; Mark R. Brann, President/CSO
1993
13
Sequenom Inc.
3595 John Hopkins Court
San Diego CA 92121
(858) 202-9000, (858) 202-9001
[email protected], www.sequenom.com
$276,964,000
SQNM
Genomics, drug target discovery
Proprietary instrumentation, the MassARRAY
system, reagents, services, and information
that facilitates analysis of genes and single
nucleotide polymorphims, or SNPs and gene
expression analysis and methylation analysis
Harry Stylli, President/CEO; Charles R.
Cantor, CSO; Elizabeth Dragon, Sr. VP,
Research and Development; Michael
Monko, Sr. VP, Sales and Marketing
1994
14
Cypress Bioscience Inc.
4350 Executive Drive, Suite 325
San Diego CA 92121
(858) 452-2323, (858) 452-1222
[email protected], www.cypressbio.com
$263,129,600
CYPB
Providing products for the treatment of
patients with functional somatic syndromes
and other central nervous system disorders
Drugs and drug development
Jay D. Kranzler, Chairman/CEO; R. Michael
Gendreau, CMO/VP, Development; Denise
Woolard, VP, Business & Legal Affairs;
Sabrina Martucci Johnson, VP/CFO;
1981
15
Neurocrine Biosciences Inc.
12790 El Camino Real
San Diego CA 92130
(858) 617-7600, (858) 617-7602
[email protected], www.neurocrine.com
$199,483,600
NBIX
Insomnia, anxiety, depression, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, irritable bowel syndrome, eat- Biotechnology and drugs
ing disorders, pain and autoimmunity
Joseph A. Mollica, Chairman; Gary A.
Lyons, President/CEO; Kevin Gorman,
Founder/COO
1992
16
Senomyx Inc.
4767 Nexus Centre Drive
San Diego CA 92121
(858) 646-8300, (858) 404-0752
[email protected], www.senomyx.com
$167,787,900
SNMX
Products relevant to taste and olfaction
Discovery and development of savory, sweet
and salt flavors
Kent Snyder, President/CEO; Mark J.
Zoller, CSO/Sr. VP of Research; John
Poyhonen, CFO/CBO/VP
1998
17
Pure Bioscience
1725 Gillespie Way, Suite H
El Cajon CA 92020
(619) 596-8600, (619) 596-8700
www.imspure.com
$139,625,300
PURE.OB
Pharmaceutical, water purification and dispensing, and home drinking water
Fillmaster Pharmacy water purification and
dispensing systems; Nutripure Home Water
Filtration System
Michael Krall, President/CEO; Andrew
Buckland, CFO; Donna Singer, Executive,
VP
1992
SNTS
Products for the prevention and treatment of
GI diseases; no currently approved products;
initial product candidates are formulations
Acquiring, developing and commercializing
designed to provide rapid and sustained action
products for the prevention and treatment of against a variety of upper GI diseases and disgastrointestinal (GI) diseases
orders; Santarus first product candidates SAN05; other products, including a capsule and a
chewable tablet, are in formulation development
David F. Hale, Chairman; Gerald T. Proehl,
President/CEO, Director; Debra P.
Crawford, CFO/Sr.
VP/Treasurer/Secretary; William C. Denby
III, Sr. VP, Commercial Operations;
Warren E. Hall, Sr. VP,
Manufacturing/Product Development
1996
Vijay B. Samant, President/CEO; Jim
Church, VP/CFO, Secretary; Robin
Jackman, Sr. VP, Business Operations;
Alain Rolland, Sr. VP, Product
Development
1987
Andrew P. Rasdal, President/CEO; Steve
Kemper, CFO
1999
$527,069,400
18
Santarus Inc.
10590 W. Ocean Air Drive, Suite 200
San Diego CA 92130
(858) 314-5700, (858) 314-5701
[email protected], www.santarus.com
19
Vical Inc.
10390 Pacific Center Court
San Diego CA 92121
(858) 646-1100, (858) 646-1150
[email protected], www.vical.com
$135,309,500
VICL
Gene-based vaccines and pharmaceuticals
for human therapy
DNA vaccines for infectious diseases, genebased cancer immunotherapies, gene-based
therapeutic proteins
20
Dexcom Inc.
5555 Oberlin Drive
San Diego CA 92121
(858) 200-0200, (858) 200-0201
www.dexcom.com
$127,607,400
DXCM
Pioneering technologies for the continuous
monitoring of glucose in people with diabetes
Continuous Glucose Monitoring systems
$135,986,000
Data Source: Bloomberg and the Companies. Listed by Market Cap on March 24, 2008. This is a partial list; a more complete listing can be found at sourcebook.sddt.com. N/A: Not Applicable, n/a: not available, wnd: would not disclose. It is not the
intent of this list to endorse its participants, nor to imply that a company's size or numerical rank indicates its quality or service. We reserve the right to edit listings or to exclude a listing due to insufficient information. Compiled by Robin Scott,
[email protected]. Last updated 3/2008.
Genetics
ing to form a partnership
with or sell development
rights to smaller biotech or
specialty pharma companies. Such alliances have
grown sharply in recent
years; about $19 billion was
spent on securing such partnerships in both 2006 and
2007, compared with less
than $10 billion annually
from 1999-2005, although
the increase can’t be attributed solely to targeted treatments, according to the
Ernst & Young Global
Biotechnology Center.
When the antidepressant
vilazodone failed to show a
significant benefit in a midstage trial its originator,
Merck KGaA , decided to
take its portfolio in a different direction.
The German company —
which isn’t affiliated with
New Jersey-based Merck &
Co. (NYSE: MRK) — sold
the rights to Genaissance
Pharmaceuticals, a company
since acquired by Clinical
Data Inc. (Nasdaq: CLDA)
of Newton, Mass. The drug
had shown promise in some
patients and had a good
safety profile, and Clinical
Data wanted to identify the
patient population for whom
it works best, according to
Carol Reed, the company’s
chief medical officer.
It was a matter of figuring
why
certain
patients
responded and others didn’t,
Dr. Reed says. In September,
Clinical Data said it found
potential genetic markers
that enhance the drug’s efficacy in some patients, and
last week announced it
would begin clinical trials for
the second of its two critical
late-stage studies. The company is “confident” it will be
able to develop the biomarker test to identify the population segment most likely to
respond, Chief Executive
Drew Fromkin says.
Another drug close to
being resurrected is bucindolol, which had been side-
lined by other pharmaceutical
companies
when
research on similar cardiovascular medicines appeared
to show more promise.
Rather than let the drug die,
a company research scientist, Michael Bristow, bought
the rights and formed a new
company to develop it.
Dr. Bristow and his colleague Stephen Liggett have
since identified one gene
variant
that
improves
patients’ response to bucindolol and another that is
linked with heightened risk
of side effects, according to
Dr. Bristow, chief science
and medical officer. The
company, ARCA Discovery
in Denver, will file for Food
and Drug Administration
approval within the next
month or two and hopes to
bring the drug to market in
the summer of 2009.
Success stories remain
rare, however, and coming
up with personalized treatments
is
challenging,
genomic
scientists
say.
Researchers not only must
identify genetic variations
that are related to how a disease works, but figure out
how they interact with a
medication as well.
Even
when
genomic
knowledge can’t save a drug,
it can shed light on the reasons for failure and spur a
new way of thinking about
how a medication works,
according to Scott Reines, a
vice president in the pharmaceutical research-anddevelopment
unit
of
Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:
JNJ). Companies could also
develop and market tests
that identify patients with a
particular genetic variant.
“I think the bigger value
isn’t in going back and rescuing a particular drug, but you
may be able to go back and
rescue a particular line of
thinking around a particular
pathway,” says Dr. Rosenkrans
of the Personalized Medicine
Coalition.
Source Code: 20080327crn
11
12
Close-up: Ellie Ramos
Woman-owned tech services company provides ‘TLC’ to defense industry
By ELIZABETH MALLOY
On its Web site, Technical
Logistics Corp. refers to the
company by its initials: TLC.
In the world of defense-oriented tech services, “tender
loving care” isn’t a phrase that
comes up too often, but TLC’s
founder and chief executive
said that’s what sets her company apart.
“We really focus on a
work/life balance here,” said
Ellie Ramos, who started the
company more than eight
years ago out of her home. “We
want people to be with us for
the long haul.”
Located in National City,
TLC focuses on four business
areas of technical support:
software engineering, process
improvement, command support and logistics. Most of the
company’s work is currently in
engineering, but Ramos said
her main business focus for
next year is to expand TLC’s
logistics work. The company is
on a path to expand by at least
10 percent this year, which
would actually be a comedown
after expanding 50 percent
last year.
“We’re managing growth
because I’ve been in companies where the growth has
been way too rapid and it’s not
been managed properly,”
Ramos said. “I really think that
we could have been much larger than we are now, but I don’t
think we’d be the company we
are today, and I’m exceptionally proud of what we are.”
TLC began with just Ramos
doing documentation work for
the military, meaning she converted hard copy manuals and
other documents into digital
format so they could be more
easily updated.
When she and her husband
looked to start a family, she
wanted to establish her own
business that would allow her
to work from home. Her husband, a former U.S. Marine,
played baseball with a team of
SPAWAR employees who told
Ramos that the government is
required to use small businesses and minority-owned businesses for a certain amount of
work. Since a woman owning a
technology company is rare,
she would fit the criteria to fill
several quotas, giving her an
instant niche market.
After about two years,
Ramos began expanding the
business. She has a business
background, and while doing
the documentation work, she
noticed other opportunities for
military tech support.
She began hiring employees
who could fulfill those jobs,
and the business kept growing
from there. She now has 33
employees. Last year, her husband came to work for the
company, too.
“I think that where a lot of
businesses, especially small
businesses, make their mistake
is the technical expert is trying
to run the business,” Ramos
said. “The beauty was that I
had such an extensive business
background, I was able to
bring in and hone the right
skill set to plug into the different opportunities.”
TLC largely operates as a
subcontractor now, doing jobs
for larger defense contractors
like Computer Sciences Corp.
and more recently SAIC
(NYSE: SAI). Ramos said she
would like to get contracts
with other government agencies like the FBI and DEA.
TLC does some work with
commercial organizations, but
Ramos prefers government
work.
“With the government, all
things being equal, you will get
paid,” she said with a laugh. “It
may not be in a timely manner,
but you will get paid. It’s a different set of circumstances as
it relates to commercial business.”
Competition for government
contracts is tough. The logistics work Ramos is hoping to
move the company toward is
largely “sewn up,” she said,
with agencies only using a
small pool of companies. But
TLC’s customers tend to be
happy with the company’s
work.
Ramos attributed last year’s
50 percent growth to “organic”
contracts — new work from
old customers. So she’s going
to try to make more collaborations.
That’s where being a small,
woman-owned tech services
company can come in handy.
Ramos said she doesn’t like
to get work just because she
fits a niche on a government
quota; she prefers TLC to get
work because it’s the best com-
pany for the job. But she
admits the company’s unique
leadership does open doors.
Having a woman at the top
makes TLC different in other
ways too, though, Ramos said,
and those differences have also
helped the company to both
get and retain work beyond
the fact that it sometimes
helps fill a quota. She said that
while some of her managers
think she’s “too nice,” she
thinks the employee-friendly
atmosphere at her company
makes her employees more
willing to go the extra mile and
care about what they do.
“There really is just a different way of doing business that
is not necessarily male or
female, but is feminine and
masculine,” she said. “There is
just automatically a little more
compassion or consideration
that tends to come — and
that’s a stereotype of course —
but those are certain things
that are attributed more to
feminine qualities.”
Ramos said she has very
high standards for which she
hires, and expects her employees to work hard and with the
highest level of integrity; but
she also doesn’t expect them to
stay at the office until midnight. In return, she stands by
her employees. She recalled a
recent incident where a customer thought an employee
made a mistake.
Ramos said she defended
her employee — who hadn’t
made a mistake — so strenuously that the client was taken
aback.
She said it promotes a culture of mutual respect in the
office, in which employees feel
appreciated and in turn work
hard for the company.
Ramos said she’s seen other
businesses, generally larger
companies or government
agencies, that look only at their
numbers and treat employees
somewhat cavalierly, and that,
in her opinion, is what creates
slow
and
disinterested
employees who don’t do good
work. The opposite is true of
her own, she said.
“It’s a very different way of
business and we’ve been successful with it,” said Ramos.
“That’s not something we’ll
negotiate away.”
[email protected]
Source Code: 20080327crh
Managing the digital chaos: Unleashing the power of SharePoint
By PAUL WEST
SharePoint360
The “virtual office” lifestyle is
now the norm, with business
conducted on laptops and
Blackberries, in airports and
behind the wheel. Employees
are scattered at worksites with
customers or at remote locations, and in some case, the
need for a physical office space
has been all but eliminated.
Yet, most organizations do
not realize that this new business reality is costing them
tremendous amounts of money
in lost productivity.
Whether it’s hunting down
missing timesheets, trying to
ascertain who has the latest
version of a contract or locating a presentation that might
have been destroyed by a fired
employee on their way out the
door, this digital chaos is causing people to work harder,
instead of smarter.
There has been increasing
hype in recent years that the
solution to this technological
free-for-all lies in SharePoint,
the fastest-growing product in
the history of Microsoft
(Nasdaq: MSFT). This highly
versatile Web-based collaboration and document management platform has promised to
change the very way business is
done through online work-
spaces. In addition to document and photo management
capabilities, SharePoint allows
nontechnical users to quickly
create Web-based worksites
with anywhere access and realtime collaborative features.
The sites allow users to track
document versions, coordinate
calendars, manage tasks, build
workflows, launch surveys and
communicate through realtime alert notifications.
It also provides templates for
creating Web 2.0 tools like
blogs and wikis and serves as
an effective platform for custom applications.
Unfortunately, as many
users have discovered, out of
the box SharePoint requires
highly specialized knowledge
to architect effectively, and it is
easy for organizations without
this expertise to find themselves in over their heads.
Others have simply ruled out
the possibility of centralizing
their business operations on
SharePoint due to financial or
staffing constraints.
A couple of different options
are available for organizations
that
are
considering
SharePoint but do not have
specialized IT professionals on
staff. The first is to work with a
Microsoft-certified consultant
to customize a SharePoint plat-
form to meet the needs of the
organization. Once the customized framework has been
established, an in-house portal
administrator can take the
lead, unless more extensive
customer support is desired
from a consultant on an ongoing basis.
Another option is to choose a
hosted SharePoint portal solution. These user-friendly services involve a small monthly
subscription rate and a set-up
fee, which varies by provider
and the number of users, storage space requirements, etc.
This is becoming an increasingly popular route for many
smaller organizations without
IT departments or for those
that are simply attracted to the
idea of cost-effectively outsourcing this IT function.
Regardless of the approach,
adopting a SharePoint platform can have a profound
impact on an organization.
Here are some examples:
Gafcon Inc. , a large construction management firm
with multiple offices in
California, was experiencing
rapid growth, but wanted to
make certain it was able to
keep up the processes that had
been so fundamental in its success. The company was able to
eliminate file shares and is now
100 percent SharePoint-based,
resulting in a 45 percent reduction in server maintenance
costs the first year. A custom
time card monitoring feature
was added allowing for accurate, real-time analytics and
quickly raised compliance
from 65 percent to 98 percent,
resulting in heightened productivity and increased revenue. Deploying SharePoint
has also provided Gafcon with
a unique competitive advantage in attracting new business.
Another example is a local
community college district,
which was awarded a $207
million bond measure to
improve and expand its cam-
pus system. A condition of the
award was the formation of
the Citizens’ Bond Oversight
Committee to report the construction progress to the public. The group initially created
a basic Web site to relay
reports, but it was time-intensive to manage and required
Web design expertise.
SharePoint was deployed in
its place to provide an easy-touse system for sharing up-todate reports as well as
announcing public hearings.
The improved information
sharing reduced IT costs and
shortened turnaround times.
It allowed for flexibility in
managing content while
improving communication to
the surrounding community.
Organizations that choose to
opt out of SharePoint revolution do so at their own peril.
While currently a “secret
weapon” for enterprising firms,
it will not be long before it
becomes the business standard. Those who wait will be
playing catch-up for years to
come.
dence in the results, but rarely
if ever fully answers all IP
issues or eliminates all IP risk.
Typically, the level of diligence at the angel investment
stage is relatively limited.
Tech Coast Angels, for example, forms volunteer diligence
teams to look into the deal
points, including IP. The diligence team may or may not
include a patent attorney.
Venture capital diligence is
usually more extensive, often
involving a detailed analysis of
patent strength, third party
rights and ownership, typically costing between $10,000
and $25,000. (These costs are
usually paid by the target
company when funding closes.) Diligence in connection
with an IPO can be significantly more extensive.
For companies that are the
target of IP diligence, the best
advice is “be prepared.” Clean
up any ownership issues
ahead of time. Lock in your
licenses. File your key patents.
Know the prior art, and be
familiar with the third-party
patents that are most likely to
be problematic. Be able to
explain why you don’t
infringe, or why the patents
are invalid. This type of preparation is comforting to
investors, builds credibility,
can shorten the diligence
process and can increase the
likelihood of closing the deal.
West is a principal and cofounder of San Diego-based
SharePoint360, a Microsoftcertified partner offering both
SharePoint consulting services and hosted solutions. More
information can be found at
www.sharepoint360.com.
Source Code: 20080327crm
IP diligence
makes it impossible to fully
analyze all of the prior art, all
of the third-party patents, and
all potential licensing and
ownership issues.
As a result, IP diligence
focuses first on those areas of
the most concern, and the
underlying search and analysis focuses on the areas most
likely to yield results. In the
end, spending more time and
money on IP diligence can
increase the level of confi-
Israelsen is managing partner of the San Diego office of
Knobbe, Martens, Olson &
Bear LLP, and is also an active
member and investor with the
San Diego Tech Coast Angels.
He represents companies in
the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device
areas, and numerous venture
capital firms in conducting IP
due diligence.
Source Code: 20080327craa
NuVasive
expand the areas of the spine
that our products treat, to
provide surgeons with product systems to increase operative levels and to expand clinical applications, so we can
both optimize surgeon retention and attract new surgeons
to our product line. For example, the lumbar-thoracic junction and the thoracic spine
become an area of even
greater differentiation for us
as surgeons expand the lateral
XLIF procedure through the
MAS platform,” Lukianov
said.
In addition to broadening
its lines, NuVasive is developing the next generation of
products that focus on motion
preservation for the cervical
and lumbar spine. Its lead
product, NeoDisc, is a cervical
motion preservation device
designed to treat cervical disc
degeneration, an ailment that
occurs when the flexible discs
between the vertebrae in the
neck begin to deteriorate.
Cervical disc degeneration
is often treated via spinal
fusion surgery whereby the
disc is removed and vertebrae
locked together.
NeoDisc offers an alternative
to fusing the vertebrae by allowing surgeons to replace the
damaged disc with a technology
that replicates the cushioning
and motion characteristics of an
intact healthy disc. In doing so,
NeoDisc has the potential to
alleviate the problems associated with cervical disc degeneration while enabling patients to
maintain the range of motion in
their neck.
According to Lukianov,
NuVasive expects to complete
enrollment in the pivotal trial
for NeoDisc in the first half of
2008 and is targeting 2010 for
FDA approval.
“It’s a product that can be
used earlier in the degenerative disc process, before fusion
or a total disc replacement. It’s
very simple to implant and
totally revisable, which allows
surgeons to simply remove it
should they need to take the
next step to complete fusion.”
Rando is with The Ruth
Group.
Source Code: 20080327crt

20080327 Tech and Biotech copy.qxp

Transcription

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