Biotechnology Business Plan Competition
April, 2001

These are the entries to the April, 2001, Biotechnology Business Plan Competition 

Acceleration Biopharmaceuticals | AmberGen | SiteSpecific Pharmaceuticals | Cell Transplant Technologies | JOPES Journal | *FFA Sciences* | GeneSpectrum 

 Genome Village | Halsa Pharmaceuticals |  Immunosensor  | Optical BioScience  *Potentia Pharmaceuticals* |  Selective Therapeutics |  Talisman Neuroscience

!!! WINNERS ANNOUNCED !!!

Congratulations to First Place Potentia Pharmaceuticals and

Second Place FFA Sciences !!!

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Acceleration Biopharmaceuticals

Product/Service: Anti-HIV Biotherapeutics 
Contact: Ralf Geiben Lynn
acceleration@rcn.com
Phone: (617) 924-8918

 

Acceleration Biopharmaceuticals Inc. is a drug discovery company that has three lead compounds that show significant anti-viral activity against the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) of AIDS.  The company’s core technology is licensed out of the Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. The first product, ORYX™ will consist of three anti-HIV biotherapeutics.  We expect accelerated Phase I and Phase II trials because there already exists significant toxicological and pharmacological data for one of our lead compounds. ORYX offers new treatment options and is directed at the $2.86-billion reverse transcriptase (RT) and $2.14-billion protease inhibitor (PI) markets. 

 

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AmberGen 

Product/Service: Drug Discovery and Screening

Contact: Norman E. Priebatsch 
Norman@Priebatsch.com
Phone: (617) 308-0078

 

AmberGen, Inc. is a world leader in the cell-free expression and advanced engineering of proteins.   AmberGen’s ProScreen™ technology, developed with $5 million support from the National Institutes of Health and U.S. Department of Defense, offers unique advantages over current technology in the areas of drug discovery and disease diagnostics. ProScreen accelerates drug discovery and disease diagnosis by rapidly producing labeled proteins directly from genes in a test tube instead of inside cells. These labeled proteins facilitate a variety of novel high-throughput drug screening assays for the pharmaceutical industry. Arrays of labeled proteins produced using ProScreen provide a unique and powerful means to screen the entire human proteome for interaction with drugs and other biomolecules. The company, founded by Professor Kenneth J. Rothschild, Ph.D., Director of the Boston University Biophysics Laboratory, has 9 employees and is located in Boston, MA.  

 

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SiteSpecific Pharmaceuticals 

(Formerly Barnes Pharmaceuticals)
Product/Service: Drug Discovery

Contact: David Barnes-Seeman

barnes@slsiris.harvard.edu

Phone: (617) 290-2412
 

Our proprietary drug discovery platform will enable the cost-effective production and screening of orders of magnitude more compounds for both lead identification and optimization.  We will thereby be able to find dramatically more specific drugs against a wide range of protein targets.  Increased specificity will reduce non-mechanism based side effects, and therefore improve the likelihood both of successful clinical testing and of best-in-class efficacy.

 

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Cell Transplant Technologies Inc. 

Product/Service: Medical Devices for Improved Cell Transplantationtion
Contact: Tim Murray
timwmurray@yahoo.com
Phone: (678) 772-8470

Cell Transplant Technologies, Inc. (CTT) is a medical device technology company that intends to design, patent, and market medical devices that remove detrimental blood cell components from bone marrow and stem cell grafts. Bone marrow and stem cell  transplantation is a first line therapy for several lymphoproliferative disorders including leukemia and lymphoma. Relapse of these cancers remains the most significant clinical problem for patients undergoing high dose chemotherapy and hematopoietic progenitor cell (HPC) transplantation, and represents the most common cause of death among patients receiving transplants for hematological malignancies. Recent clinical data indicate that patients who received more type 2 dendritic cells (DC2) in their bone marrow graft had significantly increased risk of relapse post-transplant, and less chronic graft versus host disease. These initial data indicate that DC2 donor cells have a significant role in regulating the graft versus tumor effect, and suggest a novel strategy for graft engineering to enhance the graft versus tumor effect via removal of donor DC2. The CEO of the company has developed several key patents in the field of hematopoietic cell transplantation. With approximately 47,000 bone marrow and stem cell transplants performed last year, CTT projects the total market opportunity at approximately 1 billion dollars. CTT has developed a proprietary technology to identify and rapidly produce novel small molecules called ligands that selectively bind to the cell surface of the different types of dendritic cells. This technology will be incorporated into device that will efficiently eliminate DC2’s from bone marrow and stem cell grafts prior to transplantation.

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CLA's Journal of Problems in Experimental Science (JOPES)

Product/Service: Medical Journal
Contact: Clarissa Ceruti, Ph.D. 
cceruti@hbs.edu
Phone: (617) 496-3019

 

This business plan aims to create a new scientific journal, "Journal of Problems in Experimental Sciences " (JOPES). Traditionally, scientific publications have only dealt with results that confirm the hypothesis that the researcher proposes. In contrast, this scientific magazine would document all the past problems that have been encountered during the experimental process. These negative experimental data (data that support the null hypothesis rather than reject it) will help to integrate all the information regarding the specific scientific topic. The overall benefits that the scientific community will obtain from the information published in this journal are astonishing, given the expensive and uncertain scientific environment.

 

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FFA Sciences

Product/Service: Diagnostic of Cardiovascular Ischemia

Contact: Kevin Kleinfeld

KKleinfeld@TPIMS.ORG
Phone: (858) 445-3776

FFA Sciences is using rational protein engineering to develop new diagnostics and therapeutics directed towards problems in human disease involving fatty acids.  The first product of this strategy has yielded a simple blood-based test (ADIFAB) for cardiovascular ischemia; the largest cause of death in the first world.  We estimate the market for an ischemic diagnostic to be approximately $4 billion worldwide.  Unlike antibody based diagnostics the ADIFAB technology cannot be replicated, ensuring that profit margins will not decline over time as is common in the diagnostics industry. The company's proprietary technology platform gives it a unique ability to monitor molecules critical for human health.  For example, human sera contains more than 20 different unbound free fatty acids (FFAu) whose distribution change in response to disease.  FFA Sciences is developing an array of new molecular probes to detect the individual FFAu and thereby provide powerful new diagnostic fingerprint for a wide range of human diseases.   Using its molecular probes the company has been able to identifying potential new targets, involving fatty acid metabolism, for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, and obesity.  FFA Sciences is using proprietary methods to screen for drugs that alter the function of these targets.  This work is being done using large numbers of small molecule combinatorial libraries in collaboration with Mixture Sciences Inc, the world's leader in the development and use of positional scanning methods for mixture libraries.  To date, approximately $6 million has been invested in the technology that forms the basis for the company's technology platform.  FFA Sciences believes that within three years and $10.5 million in further funding it will, 1) be ready to market its test for cardiovascular ischemia, 2) have developed a new generation of diagnostic probes, and 3) have identified candidate drugs for the new targets it is identifying that indicate the involvement of fatty acids in disease.

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GeneSpectrum 

Product/Service: Diagnostic Chips

Contact: Peter McHenry

PMcHenry@ix.netcom.com

Phone: (781) 449-9164

GENESPECTRUM will lead the emerging market for DNA and multi-gene diagnostic chips in the $19 billion worldwide test and diagnosis sector, after responding to the rapidly growing demand for bioinformation with its new computational biology sequencing technology in the $1.5 billion biomedical research products market. Sequencing support of frontline protein research is expected to grow this market demand rapidly. The company will earn income from license fees, probe sales, proprietary data processing, high throughput task/probe optimization fees, and enabled-product royalties. Sales will start in two years. The primary invention has multi-layered protections without competitive constraints. GENESPECTRUM’S inventor/founders have shown that probes optimally patterned with universal basesenable an 8-base/ 65,600 feature chip to sequence over 16,000 contiguous base pair lengths of DNA – or multiple shorter lengths – in one pass, by upgrading the hardware, consumables and reconstruction software already in use for high throughput screening. This is over 20x the performance of the only competing process (the non-SBH Sanger method). It is deliverable at a cost over 200 times lower, without any electrophoresis and with controllable accuracy over 99.5%. It enables HT sequencing-as-screening. The company has full standalone / IPO potential. Remarkably brief funding brings investors three key interim valuation events and two early exit points, as biochemistry qualifies candidate universal bases, strategic partnerships secure product manufacture and distribution, and reconstruction software is adapted to provide easy graphic user interfaces for popular scanners.

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Genome Village

Product/Service: Internet Portal
Contact: Andrew M. Lehrer

info@genomevillage.com

Phone: (781) 729-0287

 

Genome Village ("The DNA People") is the nucleus for a future global  network of biotechnology discoveries base on a hub and spoke information  exchange among emerging and established ventures. With approximately 500 biotech-specific .com domains all pointing to genome village.com, this  represents potentially the most developed and applicable collection of  virtual biotech activity. Subscribers can either pay monthly fees for access  to a particular virtual address(es) or purchase the name outright and pay a monthly fee for membership in the GenomeVillage community. Educational  awareness, collaborative research, product distribution and talent  acquisition will all promote and sustain GenomeVillage. 

 

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Halsa Pharmaceuticals

Product/Service: Obesity Therapeutic

Contact: Philip Speros

psperos@telephonetcom

Phone: (713) 225-2100

 

Halsa Pharmaceuticals Inc. believes it has discovered a material that when injected by a physician into a medically obese patient will cause, immediate, safe and substantial weight loss in that individual. Halsa seeks funding to allow it to continue to develop and pursue FDA approval for this novel pharmaceutical. Halsa’s management team possesses over forty years of management experience, 25 years in the pharmaceutical industry, three Ph.D.s, 25 publications and seven U.S. patents.

 

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ImmunoSensor

Product/Service: Proteomics, High-Throughput Screening

Contact: Moshiur Mekhail Anwar

mekhail@eecs.berkeley.edu

 

ImmunoSensor is a medical technology company that intends to design, patent, and market a revolutionary platform for proteomics research into the areas of drug discovery and disease targeting.  The company’s core technology is based on very scalable bio‑MEMS chips that will enable massive paralleled high throughput screening for any protein or drug target.  The company has designed very novel and patentable techniques in the areas of protein sensing, integrating a “lab on a chip”, chip array assembly, and detection relay.  As the technology is scalable, ImmunoSensor plans to implement a two phase strategy.

 

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Optical BioScience

Product/Service: Pigment Engineered Drugs

Contact: Elizabeth Rogers

rogersoptical@earthlink.net
Phone: (203) 831-8601

 

Optical BioScience is a startup pharmaceutical company developing new drugs  based on Pigment Engineering. Optical BioScience has two missions in 2001.  The first mission is to market aggressively the first and second generation drugs that have shown in vivo efficacy against tumors and viruses.  Our second mission to continue our research by conducting in vivo tests with Pigment Engineered drugs that have shown efficacy in in vitro tumor, virus and bacteria models.  We plan to continue our research into the efficacy of these same first and second generation drugs on restenosis and rheumatoid arthritis, and on amyloid diseases such as Alzheimers Disease, Prion Disease and Diabetes Mellitus Type 2.  Separate research studies will focus on attaching Pigment Engineered drugs to antibodies and other vehicles to enhance the effectiveness of existing drugs and to test the effectiveness of Pigment Engineered drugs when they are administered in combination with other chemotherapeutic agents. We have already identified one new drug that has enhanced the effectiveness of Tamoxifen, in a receptor negative breast cancer model. Optical BioScience has a unique proprietary approach to designing Pigment Engineered drugs and we have exclusive world wide rights to a portfolio of domestically and internationally issued patents for a new class of drugs produced by Pigment Engineering.  We have a team of talented scientists who contribute to drug design and development and we are totally committed to quality in drug development.  Given these as strengths, we believe that Optical BioScience is well positioned for success in the Pharmaceutical Industry.

 

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Potentia Pharmaceuticals

Product/Service: Drug Discovery

Contact: Alec Machiels
amachiels@mba2001.hbs.edu

In the next five years, the pharmaceutical industry will needlessly spend over $15 billion developing drugs against inappropriate protein targets that will ultimately fail. Potentia's proprietary technology identifies the most appropriate protein drug targets for a particular disease. Approximately $16 million and three years are required to develop this technology and establish a high-margin, scalable service. Potentia is projected to grow rapidly, reaching $55 million in revenues by 2006.

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Selective Therapeutics
Product/Service: Drug Delivery

Contact: Robert Sharman

boboshar@green.ucdavis.edu
 

ST will develop proprietary delivery systems that can deliver DNA to specific target cell types.  The DNA will alter the growth pattern of the cancer cells, and eventually lead to the destruction of the cancer while leaving the surrounding tissue intact.  This will be accomplished by using a Modular Targeted Gene Therapy (MTGT) technique that will establish a library of gene delivery systems that can be designed to be tissue specific. This library will be used in conjunction with DNA attachments to fight different diseases including but not limited to cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, diabetes, and other forms of cancer.

 

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Talisman Neuroscience

Product/Service: Neurological Disorder Therapies

Contact: Jonathan Sacks
Phone: (617) 576-4776

Talisman Neuroscience will develop a novel, superior therapy for a wide array of incurable neurological conditions including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and stroke.  The therapy involves taking a brain biopsy from the patient, expanding the patient's own neurons in the lab, and re-implanting the new neurons in the patient.  Initially, the company will conduct research to identify and patent the gene or combination of genes that control replication of adult human neurons.

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