Joe Turner, former Chief Financial Officer at Myogen (now Gilead (NASDAQ: GILD)), has joined the privately held Los Angeles-based Kythera Biopharmaceuticals Board of Directors. Not only is Joe an incredibly talented executive and individual but most selfishly he too has had a profound impact upon my personal life and professional development, and for that I will always be grateful as well as look forward to some day being positioned to pass along a fraction of the insight and wisdom that was bestowed onto me.
To attempt to summarize the value Kythera is receiving in only a sentence or two seems unfitting nevertheless…a few highlights of Joe’s track record include: responsibility for eight equity offerings which include three public offerings (IPO’s) raising in aggregate approaching approximately half-a-billion dollars, truly amazing! Most recently Joe helped to orchestrate San Diego-based NovaCardia’s $350M exit to Merck (NYSE: MRK) and he continues to sit on additional Boards including privately held Sequel Pharmaceuticals, a NovaCardia spin-out and SGX Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: SGXP).
Kythera with two Phase II compounds and a third preparing for PII along with financial backers Arch Venture Partners, Prospect Venture Partners, Versant Ventures and Altitude Life Science Ventures and now Joe Turner on the Board one might venture to guess that perhaps an IPO may be in their not too distant future?
***NOTE*** Take a look at the new Boulder Biotech Company Tree (HERE)!
***NOTE*** Read the new eBook CLSDF 2007 - What's In A Year? (HERE)!
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Friday, February 22, 2008
Kythera Lands Joe Turner on Board
Saturday, September 08, 2007
3 Commercialized Products & Counting!
QUESTION: What do ZostaVax®, Kineret® and Macugen® have in common…
ANSWER: They are all FDA approved first-in-class commercialized products originating from University of Colorado intellectual property.
Want to learn more about these products and the rich product pipeline portfolio at the University of Colorado? Then take a listen to this podcast featuring David Allen, Ph.D., Associate Vice President, CU Technology Transfer Office speaking at the Holland & Hart Bioentrepreneur Club and observe the year-end performance metrics through July 2007 (here).
ZostaVax® is a vaccine developed by Merck & Co. (NYSE: MRK) which has been shown to reduce the incidence of Shingles (herpes zoster) by over 51% in a pivotal phase III study of 38,000 adults aged 60 and older who received the vaccine.
Macugen® is for the treatment of neovascular (wet) age-related macular degeneration. It was developed by EyeTech Pharmaceuticals who was recently acquired by OSI Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: OSIP) and licensed to Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) for late stage development and marketing. 
Kineret® developed by Amgen (NASDAQ: AMGN) for the reduction in signs and symptoms and slowing the progression of structural damage in moderately to severely active rheumatoid arthritis, in patients 18 years of age or older who have failed 1 or more disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Selecting a SELEX® Pathway
You may have seen the news yesterday on the Archemix and Merck KGaA deal for the use of the SELEX® technology in the oncology field. Well Cambridge and Germany are a long way from Colorado, or are they…
The origins of the Archemix/Merck deal may be traced back to the first floor of Porter Bioscience, home to the University Colorado, Boulder department of molecular, cell and developmental biology and laboratory of Dr. Larry Gold approaching some twenty years ago. Aptamers (a single-stranded oligonucleotide that assumes a specific sequence-dependent shape and binds to a target protein based on a lock-and-key fit between the two molecules) and the SELEX® process (an evolutionary, in vitro combinatorial chemistry process used to identify aptamers to a target from large pools of diverse oligonucleotides) were both discovered there and formed the basis of NeXagen which later merged with Vestar to become NeXstar Pharmaceuticals and in 1991 NeXstar was acquired in an all stock deal by Gilead.
Along the way the SELEX® technology created the aptamer pegaptanib, an anti-VEGF drug approved as Macugen in 2004 for wet age-related macular degeneration. Macugen was created by Eyetech Pharmaceuticals and where rights and ventures lead it through the halls of Gilead, OSI Pharmaceuticals and Pfizer.
Around 2001 Archemix successfully licensed rights to the intellectual property portfolio of Gilead covering aptamers and the SELEX® process for a wide variety of applications, including therapeutic uses. This portfolio included over 400 issued and pending patents resulting from work carried out at both Gilead and NeXstar in the 1990’s. This comprehensive patent estate has established Archemix as the leading aptamer therapeutics company.
Though Archemix is driving aptamers down the therapeutic field with pipeline products in cardiovascular, oncology and autoimmune disease Boulder-based Somalogic has licensed back from Gilead the diagnostic field of use of aptamers and SELEX® and are planning to transform medical practice through next generation disease screening, diagnosis, therapy selection and patient monitoring tools.
Monday, October 30, 2006
When It Rains It Pours...
Why does an acquisition story about an acquirer from New Jersey and an acquiree from San Francisco make it onto the virtual pages of Colorado Life Science Deal Flow you may ask? Well…
The story begins back in Boulder, CO, circa early-eighties, when then CU-Boulder biochemistry professor turned Nobel Prize winner (1989) and current Howard Hughes Medical Institute President, Thomas Cech, Ph.D. demonstrated how, using the Tetrahymena model organism, RNA could fold into complex shapes and catalyze biochemical reactions, a function previously thought to be restricted only to protein enzymes. This discovery led to the founding of Ribozyme Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (RPI) in 1992, where the catalytic properties of the “Ribozyme” would be designed as a therapeutic approach to target and cleave specific mRNA’s in specific diseases.
Tetrahymena - Where it all beganCourtesy of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine - Yeshiva University
As the fate of science, technology and innovation would have it the cellular mechanism RNA interference (RNAi) emerged as an extremely specific method for targeting mRNA’s and inhibiting gene expression. Thus RPI was in part reorganized as Sirna Therapeutics, Inc. in 2002 to focus pursuit upon the short interfering RNA (siRNA) technology and current CEO Howard Robin & Co. have subsequently continued to further build out a potent IP portfolio, become the first company to bring a chemically optimized siRNA into clinical trials, and have demonstrated stability, circulation, tissue targeting, cellular activity and immune response efficacy in their preclinical compounds. Shortly after the reorg the city of San Francisco presented an opportunity to then Boulder-based Sirna that could not be refused and if I am not mistaken all but the cGMP manufacturing facility packed up and headed West.
So on the heels of Gilead-Myogen and Endo-RxKinetix, the Merck-Sirna deal perhaps catapults the 2006 bio deals to the level of historic; and further validates the strength of the universities, IP, talent and investors in Colorado. But shhhh…I have reason to believe that this is just a taste of what is to come.
