The Year in Review

I like to read and watch those “Year in Review” features rampant in the media at this time of the year.  there was one run in the Gazette that I found particularly poignant, with frequent mention of Fred Co Biotech companies, and Chesapeake Green Fuels also featured in This Month’s Frederick Magazine (sorry, not available on-line).

Rather tha cut and paste, I’ll let you follow the links

The Gazette:  Banks, Biotechs and Buyouts

and this one about some of the big moves in Biotech (which is primarily about Mo. Co.) Buyouts marked Biotech Sector in 2007 

BioBeers Fred. Co. Chapter

I came across an organization through My Biotech Life out of Colorado called BioBeers. In the holiday spirit, I think this is a great idea, so I am thinking about starting an East Coast Chapter.

According to their Blog site, BioBeers is all about networking with other Biotech people in the area, even for presenting research, establishing collaborations, having a good microbrew. So now that Flying Dog is a Frederick County “biotech” company, why not have something similar here?

First meeting will be at Barley & Hops, Monday January 7th starting around 4 PM. Be there or be square!

A Day in the Life of Gahaga Biosciences

As I have mentioned before, I would like to do more with this blog than merely finding news worthy mentions of Biotechnology in the county through swiping material from the Frederick News-Post, Gazette, Washington-Post etc. So I was thinking the other day that I would like to start “blogterviewing” everyone I can on my list of Companies and non-profit/government sponsored research. I’ll start with myself, mostly because this is easy and I can just swipe my own blogterview from Attila at PIMM

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The busy life of a stem cell (biotech) startup founder (click here to go to the PIMM blog archive)

Posted by attilachordash on October 15, 2007 (note: I have edited the original bloterview for some minor content and hyper links)

If you ever thought of launching a biotech startup… the following blogterview is for you. Jim Hardy is a long time insightful commenter of PIMM and he shared with me his brand new experience as the founder of a biotech startup in the much hyped field of regenerative medicine. The transparency of the interview makes it really valuable besides its information richness thanks to Jim. I found especially useful the used equipment network by necessity, which could be the base of a worldwide biotech startup network and could serve a bioDIY movement. Make no mistake: biotech is the next IT.

ACs: Would you be kind enough to introduce your background?

JH: My name is Jim Hardy and I have a BA in Biology and Chemistry from Wittenberg University, a small Liberal Arts school in Ohio. I sold Xerox office equipment for a couple years after school before getting back into science. I was large-scale chemical mixer making laundry detergents, a lab tech at the University of Rochester for 3 years and dabbled in graduate classes before moving to Maryland in 1988 to work in R&D at Life Technologies, which is now Invitrogen (a subject for a separate post). I have always found R&D rather boring and would rather finish one project and move on to the next, so the rest of my career has been in Manufacturing.

ACs: What is the story of Gahaga BioSciences?

JH: Gahaga is an acronym for the three founders: Garner-Hardy-Gage. That’s always the first question. We started the company to commercialize a proprietary method for extracting 3-5 times the number of implantable HSC from afterbirth than is achievable from traditional Cord Blood recovery procedures. Our current business has drifted away from the initial goal. I found your blog, because I was googling amniotic stem cells, or something of that nature. The initial process I am using for producing MSC’s is almost precisely as you describe in the “Make Stem Cells at Home” post and in your poster. Dissect amnion, digest, plate or freeze. So, by classification, my cells would be Amniotic Membrane-human Mesenchymal Stromal Cells (AM-hMSCs).

I just learned our cells stain intensely positive for Nestin (a neural stem cell marker), by Cellomics Array scan and CD 44+ (hematopoietic stem cell marker) by FACS. Right now I am just looking to get these cells into as many places as possible to learn what exactly they are.

Gahaga Biosciences is a client company of the Frederick Innovative Technology Center (FITCI), a business incubator program in Frederick, Maryland. Anyway, I’ve just started a local blog called Frederick County Biotech Community.

ACs: What are your working on at this very moment?

JH: I have three separate groups working with me now:

Last week, I dropped some cells off at Dr. Bressler’s lab at Johns Hopkins. They will use them for toxicity work and also to teach a class at the NIH on how to use stem cells (in exchange for free publicity).

I am also working with Dr. Farrar in the Cancer Stem Cell group at NCI here in Frederick. They’re phenotyping the cell line as well as looking at gene expression during differentiation. They have specific of targets they’re most interested in, of course , so I still have some phenotyping to do.

Then I have Dr. Kelleher-Anderson at Neuronascent running Cellomics Array scans . She’s a neuronal stem cell junkie and wanted to look for precursors and hopefully take some pretty pictures for me.

And this week I was talking with an old colleague from Life Tech days. This person invented Lipofectin and commercialized the cationic lipids for the first time back in the late 80’s early 90’s. He has started another new company, tinkering around with novel transfection reagents and wants to use stem cells. Maybe that’ll be the fourth collaboration, although that collaboration would be entirely commercial.

I will know in a few weeks time whether or not I have “stemness” factually instead of just looking like they are supposed to. That would give me something saleable that I could market to researchers. The business model for Gahaga is to make the research tools for the researchers so they don’t have to spend all of their time making things they need to accomplish their research. Kind of like like the hardware store in a gold mining town.

ACs: Where does the funding come from?

JH: I am self funded. I have enough to sustain myself for 20-30 months, in terms of paying the bills, sending kids to college and buying materials. I am funding my “research” by sourcing and processing tissue for a couple of small start ups. Making foreskin feeder layers, cord blood serum for culturing, HUVEC (Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cells, soon to be MSC from Wharton’s jelly, too) and just working up a human placental BME (basement membrane extract) for culturing ES cells. I am also sell a lot of used equipment and we’re also distributors of just about any lab supply you’d need.

Oh, and our latest project is to now become the Biodiesel Testing Center for the State of Maryland! That was a weird twist that just fell into our lap. We have just installed 2 GC’s (gas chromatography system, on free loan from PerkinElmer if we help write their SOPs, standard operating procedure), free lab space from the State and have already started testing last week.

Kind of busy. Maybe some day there’ll be some money in it for me . I applied for Md Stem Cell Commission funding but was not funded. I have also submitted a grant through the NIH/SBIR programs, but no external funding has come trough. At some point in time, I will be trying to raise money through investors, if I am not able to make ends meet on my own and after establishing a few sustainable products.

ACs: Foreskin feeder layers are the replacements of the animal (mouse) feeder layers for hES cells but another big culture problem is the “black box” fetal bovine or calf serum used for human stem cells that eventually should be prepared to clinical trials. How much FBS are you using in your medium and how would you like to eliminate them?

JH: I don’t use FCS in my medium. Although I am using medium from other commercial sources which are known to contain FCS, I use cord blood serum and placental plasma in my own media, which I produce myself. I use a proprietary formulation that I have developed based on my years of work with primary cells.

ACs: What type of used equipment network do you have? This sounds like a terrific recycling idea and one that is perfect for capital-low rookie biotech entrepreneurs.

JH: We have a pretty extensive used equipment network, actually. I am working with a number of the “big guys” in the area (Lonza/Cambrex, Human Genome Sciences, Digene/Qiagen, Invitrogen, Medimmune) because I just happen to know a lot of people in those companies (thanks to Invitrogen eliminating for 2,000 jobs in Maryland in 2000) . They are constantly turning over equipment. I do all of this through BridgePath Scientific although we’re not advertising the used equipment through the web site, yet. We just brought a mechanic on board last week and he’s going to be posting it soon. Just bought 11 biosafety cabinets, 6-8 analytical balances and a bunch of other lab ware from a wholesale group, so we will be busy. Through BridgePath, we’re also able to pool our purchasing power and get pricing on lab supplies that normally are only available to big companies. We are also starting to sell and market products produced by other FITCI companies, so we have closed the supply chain loop.

Fiber Cell in the FNP

The New-Post ran a nice story on FiberCell Systems today.  We’ve known John & Gail for a number of years now and can add our own testimony to the merits of hollow-fiber culturing, if you all need more evidence.  This system has been around for 15 years now and is recently getting a lot of attention in the regenerative medicine field, where it has been used to generate prototypes of an artificial liver.

Invitrogen Settles Suit

According to GenomeWeb News, Invitrogen has reached a settlement with Genetic Applications over a patent infringement claim filed originally by Genetic Application against Life Technologies in 1999.  Thier patent covers the use of a synthetic polypeptide to transfer DNA into eukaryotic cell lines and primary cells. 

Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

Md. Comptroller Peter Franchot Says “We’re #1″

That’s right, Maryland leads the USA in Biotechnology research.

According to an article in The Maryland Daily Record:

“Maryland’s bioscience sector is among the nation’s largest, if not the largest, generating $29 billion in annual economic output, $11 billion in income and nearly $600 million in state government taxes,” said the report by the Sage Policy Group Inc.

Such studies generally do not rank Maryland above more high-profile bioscience hotbeds such as California and the Research Triangle in North Carolina.

But, Franchot said yesterday, those reports undervalue some of Maryland’s key assets, notably major federal agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and various laboratories.

“Traditional rating systems have short-changed the state, because they focus on the private sector,” said Franchot, referring to studies such as the highly regarded Ernst & Young Global Biotechnology Report, which gives weight to the number of large firms operating in a region.

Federal agencies and laboratories such as those at Fort Detrick and Aberdeen Proving Ground “give us a huge competitive advantage,” Franchot said.

It’s nice to hear that all the credit didn’t go to Montgomery County.

UPDATE  12/20:  See this link for a more extensive article in the Gazette published 12/14

Good People Drink Good Beer

Fermentation is perhaps one of the oldest biotechnology practices known to mankind. This explains, in part, my delight to read that Flying Dog Breweries will be moving all of their beer production Frederick in the Baltimore Business Journal.

I have always enjoyed Flying Dog beers and will consume them with even more gusto now that they’re a Frederick Biotech Company! Their links with Hunter S Thompson and the Pranksters have always fascinated me.

And for those uneducated few, you can sample, for free, any one of 16 different beers they have on tap at the brewery on Wedgewood Blvd every Saturday starting at 1:30 PM.

What a great story for a Friday. Happy hour anyone? Cheers!

FNP Picks a Number, Help Wanted at the Fort

I have to give a lot of credit to the Frederick News-Post. They’ve been running different articles with significant implications to the local Biotech scene the past couple weeks.

Here a couple from today’s on-line edition:

There’s an article about JJ Lin’s growing company, Imagilin. One of the first incubator companies at Hood, they make probiotics to aid in animal digestion and recovery from intestinal distress caused by antibiotics, parvo-virus and eating nasty stuff. I have known and worked with JJ for almost 20 years now, since 1988. He hasn’t aged a bit and I have gone nearly completely gray. Here’s a picture from the FNP:

The article is about a recent trip to Japan and China, where there is potentially a huge market for his products. I wish him luck.

Another article is about how Ft Detrick Can’t find enough people to work there. And Col. Deutsch makes a very valid point is saying:

“And everyone thinks it is all scientists, Ph.Ds. But for each Ph.D, we need 10 support people in administration or maintenance. We will need people to fill all of those spots,” she said.

The article also makes note that the public is invited to a community meeting at Fort Detrick at 7 p.m., Jan. 17 to hear about the developments at the base, meet Maj. Gen. George Weightman, the new commander, and ask questions about traffic, water and other issues.

And last, but not least, yet another article about my friends at Akonni. They are really getting a lot of press lately and doing well.

Hopkins: A Hole to Throw Our Money into

I guess this should be a good thing for all of us, but let me rant a bit. Hopkins is consuming $1.3 BILLION DOLLARS of our tax money annually, grants we could be getting and converting into goods and services, and producing a meager $12.5 MILLION from 799 licenses for technology. Anyone who goes into business looking for that kind of return on their investment needs to have the head examined. Granted, a good amount of their research does go into medical research for which we can not quantify their efforts to relieve human disease and suffering. But still, I think we deserve more with our tax money.
Here’s the article from this weeks Gazette:

Johns Hopkins tops in R&D spending

Johns Hopkins University of Baltimore conducted $1.49 billion in science, medical and engineering research in fiscal 2006, making it the top U.S. academic institution in total research and development spending for the 28th year in a row, according to a new National Science Foundation ranking.

The university also again ranked first on the foundation’s separate list of federally funded research and development, spending $1.3 billion in fiscal 2006 on research supported by such agencies as the National Institutes of Health, NASA and the Department of Defense.

“Johns Hopkins is putting renewed emphasis on getting the results of our faculty’s research out into the marketplace where it can do the most good for patients and consumers,“ said Aris Melissaratos, who oversees technology transfer as senior adviser to the president for enterprise development at Johns Hopkins.

“In fiscal 2006, the university earned $12.5 million from 799 licenses and patents,“ Melissaratos said in a statement. “That’s a good performance, and we’re working hard to do an even better job of creating connections between our researchers and business.“

I have had the pleasure of meeting Aris Melissaratos and working with some of the programs he created while at DBED under Gov. Ehrlich. I hope his appointment at Hopkins is and indication that they see the error of their ways and are working to correct the problem.

Follow-up on Good News and Bad News

Over the past couple days, FNP has run a couple a nice articles on both SuperArray and the closing of Kemp.

Follow the links to read the FNP articles.

SuperArray: http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/business/display.htm?StoryID=68423

Kemp: http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/news/displayUpdate.htm?StoryID=68534

UPDATE 12/7:  FNP added a little more detail in the article this morning:  http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/news/display.htm?storyid=68563 

Also, on a more somber and personal note for those who knew him, John Rilling passed away unexpectedly this past weekend while visiting family in Minnesota. I was not able to attend his services today in Rockville, but have been thinking about him and his family today. He was a all around nice guy, an excellent golfer and a valued colleague that is already missed by those who knew him.