Biotech Center/NCBIO Partnering Event Off the Charts

Partnering was a big survival topic for many attending the 2012 CED Life Science Conference last week, and that has always been a hallmark of the North Carolina Biotechnology Center’s success as a statewide driver of life-science development.

The Biotech Center and NCBIO (the North Carolina Biosciences Organization) have staged partnering sessions for years to let entrepreneurs, investors and blue-chip life-science giants exchange dance cards and explore possible deals.

This was the biggest batch of one-on-one meetings yet, according to Peter Ginsberg, the Biotechnology Center’s vice president of Business and Technology Development.

Of the 396 registrants for the partnering sessions, more than 150 life-science companies participated in 243 official meetings during NCBiotech Partnering 2012, he said. More than 50 investors and 20 technology transfer offices were also involved. Of course, hundreds of unofficial “ad hoc” meetings also happen during this annual gathering of the clan.

And it’s not just small companies involved. Multinationals such as Abbott, Biogen Idec, GlaxoSmithKline, Grifols, J&J, LabCorp, Merck, Monsanto, Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis, Syngenta and UCB were there, along with venture funds such as such as Harbert, Hatteras, MedImmune Ventures, NEA, Novartis Venture Fund, Pappas, Sofinnova, and Third Rock.

The Biotech Center, as usual, was represented by several portfolio companies – life-science firms across the state that have relied on the Center’s low-interest loans and other business-survival aids to help them achieve.

The popular “Company Showcase” feature of each year’s Life Science Conference included eight biopharma companies and eight medical technology firms, each given 10 minutes to describe themselves to onlookers.

Biopharma companies showcased

Among the biopharma portfolio players:

• Though Aerial Biopharma was only established in Morrisville in 2011, and does not hold a Biotechnology Center loan, its two predecessors under co-founder and CEO Moise Khayrallah (Addrenex and Neuronex) used Biotech Center loans to help them achieve multi-million-dollar buyouts.
• Heat Biologics, a Chapel Hill clinical-stage immunotherapy company with a unique drug platform initially targeting cancer, received the maximum $250,000 from the Biotech Center’s Strategic Growth Loan program in 2011 to help pay clinical trial expenses for its proprietary vaccines. Heat CEO Jeff Wolf, who moved the company headquarters here from Miami in 2011, said the company is now filling out a multi-million-dollar funding series.
• Liquidia Technologies, a fast-rising Research Triangle Park vaccine and therapeutics company, which is getting a Biotechnology Center boost as a participant in the Biotech Center’s Industrial Fellowship Program.

Other biopharma showcase presenters included Chimerix and Colucid Pharmaceuticals of Durham, SCYNEXIS of Research Triangle Park, Vascular Pharmaceuticals of Cary and Viamet, of Morrisville.

Medical technology companies too

Portfolio companies in the medical technologies track included:

• Advanced Animal Diagnostics, of Morrisville, which spun out of North Carolina State University in 2001, was boosted in 2006 with a $20,000 Business Development Loan from the Biotech Center, raised $11 million in B round funding in 2011 alone.
• Advanced Liquid Logic, a Duke spin-out. Duke’s Richard Fair received a $50,000 Collaborative Funding Grant from the Biotech Center in 2003 and hired postdoc Vamsee Pamula to work on commercializing his tiny lab-on-a-chip, or microfluidics, devices. Pamula spun it out as Advanced Liquid Logic the following year. He says the grant kept the research program alive and led to subsequent grants from the National Science Foundation and NIH. Some $468,000 in Biotech Center loans also helped. Advanced Liquid Logic now employs more than 50 North Carolinians and besides the millions of dollars in federal funding it has raised, it holds hundreds of patents, and is about to start launching its first products into the marketplace.
• Clearside Biomedical, a Raleigh ophthalmic startup that got $4 million in Series A venture funding from a recently formed Research Triangle Park seed-stage investment fund. It marks the second investment, but first therapeutics outlay, for Hatteras Discovery, a dedicated seed-stage effort withinHatteras Venture Partners IV. The Biotechnology Center is among the investors in the Discovery fund. The Center put $25,000 into the fund in 2011 to spur additional investments in life-science companies around the state. Clearside plans to use the funding for the initial development of its unique device and system for improved delivery of medicine to the eyes.
• Humacyte, an RTP regenerative medicine company, which got a 2006 $150,000 Small Business Research loan from the Center.
• Metabolon, a fast-growing Research Triangle Park diagnostics and services company, got a boost from the Center by participating in the Industrial Fellowship Program.

 Other medical technology companies presenting included nContact, TearScience and TransEnterix.

And speaking of medical technologies, Bill Hawkins, who retired in 2011 as chairman and CEO of Medtronic and who now serves as CEO of Immucor in Georgia, opened the conference’s second day with a talk at an invitation-only CEO breakfast.

Hawkins is the son of the late Durham Mayor Jim Hawkins and identical twin brother of Durham veterinarian Richard Hawkins.

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