Amicus Therapeutics: Chaperones Work
Speedy Tests Expand Access Bio
At Deer Park Drive: Pharma Services
Corrections or additions?
This article by Barbara Fox was prepared for the May 14, 2003 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Leading Edge R&D: Pharmas & Biotechs
Most of the young research and development companies
on the Princeton scene are in the pharma/biotech areas, and the six
new companies profiled below offer some intriguing demographics. Three
of them — AstaTech, GeneWiz, and Pelican — are technical service
firms, meaning that they do analyses for larger companies. The first
two were founded by Chinese Americans who outsource work economically
to their native land.
The other three companies — Semorex, Amicus Therapeutics, and
Access Bio — are presenting their own new technologies. Semorex
was founded in Israel, the intellectual property of Amicus Therapeutics
was developed first in Japan, and Access Bio’s founder is from Korea.
All six companies reside in incubator-like spaces, at either the state-sponsored
“post incubator” space that comes furnished at Technology
Center of New Jersey, the laboratory complex built by the New Jersey
Economic Development Authority on Route 1 South in North Brunswick,
or the private one at Harold Kent’s Princeton Corporate Plaza on Deer
Park Drive.
Top Of PageAmicus Therapeutics: Chaperones Work
Say “chaperone” and one thinks of class trips
with parents herding kindergartners into a museum or a zoo. But a
firm at the Technology Center of New Jersey, Amicus Therapeutics,
uses the term chaperone to describe pharmacological solutions to genetic
disorders.
Amicus is developing new therapies to treat genetic diseases, particularly
orally active drugs that are simple and convenient to administer.
Occupying four of the furnished spaces in the Commercialization Center
at the Technology Center of New Jersey, it is one of the new bright
stars on the pharma/biotech horizon. The firm has 10 employees and
hopes to hire 20 more people, including a CFO and chief medical officer,
by the end of the year, says CEO Norman Hardman. He expects to raise
$20 to $23 million by the end of the summer and begin clinical trials
next year.
Amicus can create “pharmacological chaperones” to help misplaced
proteins get to the appropriate site of activity and perform their
appropriate biological function. These misplaced or “misfolded”
proteins are the cause of some diseases of genetic origin. When the
proteins can “fold” correctly, they can bypass the cell’s
protein quality control mechanism, get to the right place, and perform
effectively, says Hardman.
“A protein is a long chain of amino acids, like beads on a string,”
explains Hardman. “It folds in a certain shape, and the shape
determines how the protein functions. If it gets changed by mutation,
it doesn’t fold the way it should, so it doesn’t function. We want
to correct that by a small drug that interacts with the protein so
it folds in the right way.”
“As far as we know, we are the first commercial enterprise that
is focused on commercializing pharmacological chaperone technology.
Institutions currently working on pharmacological chaperone technology
are the University of California at San Francisco, the Scripps Institute,
and some scientists in the United Kingdom, but they are not corporately
focused,” Hardman says.
Co-founder Jian-Qiang Fan, a graduate of Kagoshima University with
a PhD from Kyoto University, did a post-doctoral fellowship at Johns
Hopkins University. But he was back in Japan, working on lysosomal
storage diseases, when he discovered that when a small molecule drug
is bound to the protein in a particular way, the protein will work
more efficiently. At an academic meeting he met his future mentor,
Robert J. Desnick, an export on lysosomal storage diseases, and Desnick
— seeing the possibilities — brought Fan from China to Mount
Sinai School of Medicine. Fan paid for the patent filing, but Mount
Sinai helped him pursue the patent and has an equity stake in the
firm.
The consequences of protein misfolding have been known for some time,
but being able to develop drugs based on correcting the misfolding
is new, says Hardman.
Hardman grew up in north of England, near Manchester,
the same part of England as David Palling, the company’s director
of clinical development. His parents had a bakery, and his father
had also been a tailor. With good grades he earned his place in an
academic secondary school, where he says, “I excelled more than
I had ever done — I became top of the class and it tasted good.
I never looked back.” An amateur pianist who plays Beethoven,
Chopin, and Satie, he has the theory that scientists are like artists
because both are passionate about their work.
He says his parents taught him to think independently, “to believe
that you don’t need to know everything about everything, that you
can figure something out along the way.” He met his wife, a molecular
immunologist, when they were both studying in Scotland, and they live
in Cranbury with their two daughters, ages 10 and 12, who are being
home schooled.
A chemistry major at the University of London, Class of 1967, Hardman
earned his doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Manchester.
He worked for Ciba-Geigy Pharmaceuticals in Switzerland and the UK,
and he led its antibody engineering program from 1986 to 1993. He
spent a year as head of R&D at Novartis in Horsham, UK, and then moved
to Texas-based GeneMedicine, where as president and COO he helped
set up the company’s 1999 merger with California-based Megabios Corporation.
Then he was COO of Onyx Pharmaceuticals, also based in California,
and most recently was senior vice president of technology at Enzon
Inc., where he expanded the firm’s single-chain-antibody pipeline.
Before he took the Amicus job he was on the board and had helped to
put the business plan together and recruit the management team.
Venture capitalist Ronald W. Lennox, chairman of the Amicus board,
had been with Hancock Venture Partners and is now with Collinson Howe
& Lennox (CHL) in Stamford, Connecticut. Ten of the 16 companies he
founded at Hancock have gone public.
David Palling, vice president of pre-clinical development, has undergraduate
and graduate degrees from the University of London, King’s College,
and did postdoctoral work at Brandeis. Most recently he was vice president
of worldwide assay R&D at Ortho Clinical Diagnostics, a Johnson &
Johnson Company, where he supervised new product development in transfusion
medicine and immunodiagnostics. He has also been senior director for
pharmaceutical development at Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research
and Development and had worked at Hoffman-LaRoche.
“In smaller companies you can afford to be more nimble,” says
Hardman, telling how he is working with clinical research organizations
(CROs) on the initial stages of his clinical development plan. Amicus
plans for its first product to be used by patients in the first quarter
of next year. Then it will begin to get attention from larger companies
that are active in similar technology areas, such as Genzyme in Boston
and Biomarin in Marin County, California.
Another advantage to being small is that small organizations can afford
to look at the opportunities offered by “orphan” diseases,
with fewer than 100,000 patients in the United States. “If you
are the first in the class to move forward, you get seven years protection,
once you have the drug on your market. And if your molecule is giving
considerable perceived medical benefit, you can get fast track designation,
which means early evaluation of your drug for approval,” says
Hardman.
For deals with larger firms, Amicus focuses its partnering efforts
on the front end, on helping academic scientists work on exploratory
programs in areas such as cystic fibrosis. “If we get to the point
where we have an application in a larger therapeutic area, then those
are the deals we would partner with a larger company.”
Hardman is talking to a half-dozen venture capital companies and by
mid year he hopes to have second stage funding, $23 million for the
next two years. Roughly two-thirds of that money would be used for
clinical trials and 20 percent for subsidizing research in academic
laboratories, the rest for infrastructure.
“Even with a small company we could work on orphan drugs without
partnering, versus developing a drug for large markets that require
$4 to $5 million to get the drug to market,” says Hardman.
CHL has contributed $2.5 million and currently owns about half of
the company, and the two founding scientists “have a considerable
stake,” says Hardman.
The company started in incubator space at Mt. Sinai and moved to Columbia
University in the Audubon incubator, where one of its current neighbors
— GeneWiz — was also staying. Andy Schiffer of Cushman & Wakefield
helped find the four laboratories and four offices that Amicus occupies
in the post-incubator facility at the NJEDA’s Technology Center of
New Jersey. “We moved in last August and will probably renew until
we find our permanent facility,” says Hardman.
“Unlike some new technology companies we are already developing
drugs. The beauty is, we can keep our options open,” says Hardman.
“We have to plan to build the business as far as we can see in
the distance, and we can also see alternatives to that, based on how
the interest in the company might develop.”
Amicus Therapeutics, 675 Route 1 South, TechnologyCenter of New Jersey, North Brunswick 08902. Norman Hardman, CEO.732-745-9977; fax, 732-745-9769. Home page: www.amicustherapeutics.comTop Of PageGeneWiz: Outsourcing to ChinaSteve Sun and Amy Liao are Chinese American scientistswho started their successful pharmaceutical service firm, GeneWiz,three years ago and moved to the Technology Center of New Jersey (TCNJ)last year. Sun, who is living his entrepreneurial dream, plans totap economical offshore labor by opening a branch in China, whichis now open to such opportunities. “At the time I left China Icould not decide my future myself,” says Sun.A molecular biology contract research company, GeneWiz specializesin DNA sequencing, cloning, and protein expression services. Its servicesrange from simple sequencing (a commodity product that costs $16 perreaction) to big projects that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.Its clients are researchers at academic, commercial, and governmentinstitutions.With six full-time workers, GeneWiz is growing — it just postedtwo new scientist jobs. “We are the most established company inthe corridor from North Carolina to Boston, and as far as we knowwe are the only one doing these services in New Jersey,” saysSun. “Most of our competitors are in Texas, Illinois, and California.”Sun met Liao in Beijing, where both were going to school, and theymet again at Columbia University. Both are married and live near Edison.Sun’s wife is a neurobiologist who works at Columbia, and they havea school-aged son and daughter. His mother, who is a retired obstetrician,lives with them. Liao’s husband works for Lucent, and they have aschool-aged son.Liao went to Nankai University in Tianjin and earned her master’sdegree at Tsinghua University, where Sun did both his undergraduateand master’s degrees. Liao got her doctor’s degree at State Universityof New York in Stony Brook, and did post doctoral study at Columbia.Sun earned his PhD at Columbia and did post doctoral work in molecularneurobiology at Rockefeller University and Howard Hughes Medical Institute.”I was working at Rockefeller for three years, considering mynext career move, when I decided to be an entrepreneur, to see whatwe can achieve that way,” says Sun.”Now it is possible to be an entrepreneur in China,” saysSun. His high school friend, in fact, had started his own companyin 1995 and helped Sun get the substantial amount of money he neededfor equipment. The friend’s firm, Freeman International, makes intermediates,a pharmaceutical raw material, that Sun was able to import, store,and sell — to raise seed capital for GeneWiz.Sun started the business in 1999 on Long Island and moved to AudubonTechnology Center in Manhattan for the second and third years. Atthis state-sponsored incubator near Columbia University, it had just900 square feet, not enough space for the growing company. Matt Malatichof CB Richard Ellis represented Sun in finding the space in the CommercializationCenter at the Technology Center of New Jersey (TCNJ).TCNJ is supposed to be a synergistic place, where the work of onetenant can help another. Such synergy actually happened, says Sun,with GeneWiz. When he moved into two units of the CommercializationCenter, the EDA officials introduced him to George Matcham, seniorvice president of Celgene in charge of its agricultural subsidiary,Celgro. Now Celgro is Genewiz’s client.Genewiz’s client profile includes big pharmaceuticals such as Merck,Pfizer, Novartis, and Schering, plus biotech companies “all overthe map,” he says, such as Genentech in California, and academicclients at Columbia, Yale, Harvard, and NIH. Many commercial clientsare in New Jersey. “Here it is much easier for us to visit them,and they know we are in the neighborhood if they need to visit us.”Conversely, most of his former neighbors in the Audubon incubatorregret his leaving, says Sun. “Now they can’t come next door anddrop their samples. They have to pay for overnight delivery.”His marketing plan: “Scientists come to us because they need ourservices, or we get referrals from colleagues, the Internet, or ourads in trade journals. We also visit the laboratories to find outwhat they need, and we have a sales rep, Ed Harris.”To access the economical human resources in China, he had plannedto set up an operation there later this year but, because of the SARSoutbreak, that will be delayed. “We have our own research componentthat we want to develop also,” he says. “And I want to expandour services into forensic ID and into the consumer market — andinto diagnostics and personalized medicine. We have the expertise,and I see that genetic medicine is on the horizon.””I am not against going public or being purchased but that isnot the goal. I want to focus on building our business. As an entrepreneur,”Sun says with enthusiasm, “the sky is the limit.”GeneWiz, 675 Route 1 South, Technology Center ofNew Jersey, North Brunswick 08902. Steve Sun, president. 732-828-8996;fax, 732-828-8790. Www.GeneWiz.comTop Of PageSpeedy Tests Expand Access BioAccess Bio is a good example of how TCNJ’s CommercializationCenter is supposed to work. Founded by Yung Choi, a native of Korea,Access Bio was one of the earliest tenants of the incubator (U.S.1, June 26, 2002). Now it has run out of space and will expand from800 square feet at TCNJ to 15,000 square feet, one-fourth of a newbuilding at Brunswick Business Park, 2033 Route 130 in South Brunswick.It had six people last year and has added three more.Not only has Choi filed for a patent on his protein chip technologyfor DNA diagnostics but last winter he received a $63,000 Small BusinessInnovation Research grant from the U.S. Department of Defense forearly diagnosis of scrub typhus, a disease found in Asia. Caused bya mite, untreated scrub typhus can have up to a 30 percent mortalityrate. “We developed a test kit for the SBIR program and successfullydemonstrated the feasibility of the test kit,” says Choi. At thetime of last week’s telephone interview he was on deadline to submithis application for a Phase II SBIR grant worth $700,000.With its protein chip technology, Access Bio hopes to develop newin-vitro diagnostic tests. “The current technology uses expensiveinstruments and requires highly trained persons. We are developingsimple tests using a small instrument and simple procedures that anemergency room nurse can do. It will give better results with goodoutcome at less cost in convenient way,” says Choi.The technology for diagnostic procedures involves a drop of blood,saliva, urine, or serum on what looks like a small plastic card, fivecentimeters square. It is inserted into a small instrument, whichgives the results in one minute. The equipment costs about $3,000.”Test results will be converted to a digital signal off the chip,”says Choi, “enabling the quantitative test results to be transmittedbetween the point of test and medical experts through the use of wirelessor on-line technology.”Access Bio’s point of care test system contrasts with one made byI-Stat, the two decade old company with 150 people on Windsor CenterDrive (www.i-stat.com). Choi explains that I-Stat focuses on convenienceand detects elements such as urea, sodium, potassium, chloride, andglucose. “Detecting these kinds of materials they don’t need avery sensitive system. In contrast, our market is to detect markersthat exist at very low levels in the blood. Few companies can makepoint of care ultrasensitive test system.”The son of a Presbyterian pastor, Choi studied in Seoul at the AdvancedInstitute of Science and Technology (Class of 1985), and then workedas a project manager at Samsung’s R&D center. Moving to the UnitedStates, he worked in New Jersey before establishing his own companyin September, 2001. He searched for incubator space on the Internet,and last year moved into the Commercialization Center at the TechnologyCenter in North Brunswick. He and his wife, a web designer, and hermother live in Montgomery Township and have three school age sons.Choi is aiming for $15 million in sales in four years. Early revenuemight come from the blood alcohol screening tests. Tests that couldprovide a higher profit margin might be diagnostics for diabetes,cardiovascular disease, and neonatal care.”The big companies keep focusing on the $500,000 instruments andbut we are seeking to carve out a different market,” says Choi,”testing in the physicians’ office and at home, and the ThirdWorld.” Currently under development are tests for such infectiousdiseases as the hepatitis C virus, complete diabetes tests, and analcohol test for drunk drivers.”We don’t have any venture capital yet, but we are talking tosome big companies,” says Choi.Access Bio is not quite the perfect poster child for TCNJ. If it wereperfect, it would have elected to expand within the Tech Center, wherethere is plenty of available space. “The Tech Center is fine,but we thought the larger spaces would not be good for production.They are more expensive, and we also wanted to design our own space,specific to us. Our CFO drove down Route 130 and found a new buildingwith a very competitive price.”Access Bio Inc., 675 Route 1 South, TechnologyCenter of New Jersey, North Brunswick 08902. Yung Choi, CEO. 732-246-7400;fax, 732-246-5766.Top Of PageSemorex: Weapon DetectorRobert Umpleby is working by himself in a unit at theCommercialization Center at the Technology Center of New Jersey. Hiscompany Semorex, based in Israel, believes its technology might helpwith the following:Detect chemical weapons and clean up after chemical warfare.Treat heart disease and some cancers with a pill thatdoes not get absorbed into the bloodstream.Treat GI tract diseases such as gastroesophegeal reflux,hypercholesterolemia, colon cancer, cholestatic liver disease, andgallstone formation.All this is to be done with molecularly-printed polymers (MIPs)by Semorex, which is a shortened term for “selective molecularrecognition.” Semorex has filed a number of patents to protectits high affinity MIPs.Molecularly imprinted polymers bind to molecules selectively, andtherefore they can be useful in detecting chemical weapons, says Umpleby.”It is feasible to have an imprinted polymer that is selectivefor one molecule but it can also be designed for certain class ofmolecules,” says Umpleby.A polymer, he explains, is a large molecule made up of smaller repeatingmolecules — the same molecule linked to itself over and over again,as in plastic and rubber. Because of the physical and chemical propertiesof polymers, it is difficult to work with them in the usual ways,using small molecules. “Polymers can have properties that smallmolecules by themselves don’t have,” says Umpleby.”Imprinted polymers are designed to bind with a specific moleculeor class of molecules. The polymer is made in the presence of thetarget molecule. To make an imprinted polymer, you put the targetmolecule in with monomers (the type of small molecule used to constructa polymer). By judiciously selecting the monomers you can create apolymer that is imprinted with the target molecule and convert themonomer mixture into a polymer by using heat or ultraviolet radiation.”Semorex says its MIPs can work at lower concentrations and are morechemically stable than natural antibodies. Also they may be manufacturedwith less cost and more flexibility.Its sensors can detect individual chemical warfare agents in water,soil and air, and distinguish them from pesticides and related commercialproducts which might be found in a normal environment. The MIPs mightalso help find chemical toxins in the human body, help protect peoplebefore a chemical attack, and be used with clean-up systems followinga chemical warfare attack.The first generation of MIPs can selectively bind to toxins linkedto the onset of heart disease and several major cancers. Developmentof these polymers is expected to facilitate new treatments for thesediseases, through the use of non-absorbable pills that cannot enterthe bloodstream. Another MIP can selectively remove toxic bile acidsin the GI tract, to treat patients with gastro-esophageal reflux disease(GERD).Umpleby grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania, where his father was an industrialengineer at a steel forging company. Umpleby stayed in Erie to earnan undergraduate chemistry degree from Gannon University and MBA fromGannon. He had an accounting job in Pittsburgh before going to theUniversity of South Carolina to get his PhD in organic chemistry,graduating last year. For this position he answered an ad placed ina journal for molecular imprinting “but one of the founders hadalready been in contact with my advisor at USC.”Founders are Bernard Green, a pharmaceutical chemist and pioneer incatalytic antibody research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,and CEO Morris Priwler, an Australian attorney and biotech entrepreneur.Guenter Wulff, a leader in the field of molecularly imprinted polymers,is on the scientific advisory board, as are two officers of CelgeneCorporation, Sol J. Barer and Jerome B. Zeldis, who recommended TCNJ’sspace.The company was founded in 2001, and though Umpleby is working byhimself in the incubator, he expects to have the company of two orthree other scientists by year’s end.Semorex, 675 Route 1 South, Technology Center ofNew Jersey, North Brunswick 08902. Robert Umpleby, research chemist.732-545-7070; fax, 732-745-7270. Www.semorex.comTop Of PageAt Deer Park Drive: Pharma ServicesPaul Guo is living out his version of the American entrepreneurialdream. He grew up on a farm in northeast China, earned his master’sdegree in Canada, and now owns AstaTech, a pharmaceutical servicelaboratory that outsources much of its work to its economical offshorelab in China. AstaTech does custom synthesis/manufacture and productdevelopment.With 11 employees at Deer Park Drive plus the 40-person operationin Chengdu, China, AstaTech draws pharmaceutical clients from NorthAmerica, Europe, and Japan. “In China they do basic research andlight production. Here we do the marketing, customer service, researchand process development, and custom synthesis,” says Guo. “Itis a challenge.”Guo did his undergraduate degree in China and his master’s degreeat the University of Manitoba. He came to the United States in 1992to work for an Eastman Kodak company in Pennsylvania and was a benchscientist at Bristol-Myers Squibb on Route 206 before starting hisown firm in 1999. He and his wife, Rona, a scientist who also worksfor the company, are naturalized citizens living in Hopewell withtheir teenage daughter.”We make the unique building blocks, advanced intermediates fordrug discovery,” he says. “An intermediate requires 5 to 10steps, with the first three steps made in China, and we make the rest.”The company has devised more than 1,000 unique drug-related productsthat were synthesized in its own laboratories, kilo-lab and pilotplants. AstaTech also collaborates with four other manufacturing companiesin China to be produce quantities of materials. One order might beworth from $500 to $10,000.”For our name, we took the first four letters of an elementalchemical, astatium,” says Guo, who started small, borrowing moneyfrom friends, and commissioning a website from a friend. How big doeshe want the company to grow? “As big as I can,” says Guo.Astatech, 1 Deer Park Drive, Suite C, MonmouthJunction 08852. Paul Guo. 732-355-1000; fax, 732-355-1122. Homepage: www.astaath.comTop Of PagePelican’s Testing LabJohn Fiorino moved his commercial analytical testinglaboratory from Lakewood to Princeton Corporate Plaza to acquire betterlaboratory space. His company, Pelican Analytics LLC, is a contractanalytical chemistry laboratory that provides consulting and analyticalservices to the pharmaceutical, chemical, specialty metals, and energyindustries.Formed in 1999, Pelican Analytics focuses on determining preciousmetals and analyzing materials such as high value catalysts and highpurity plastics for the types and amounts of metals that they contain.”Our clients are largely specialty companies interested in thehighest accuracy, or trace and ultra trace elements,” says Fiorino.Fiorino’s wife of 31 years will work with him in the firm. With aPhD in analytical chemistry from the University of Florida, she workedat Bell Labs in materials science, batteries, corrosion and analyticalchemistry, and she has also been a product manager for the telecommunicationsequipment. They live in Bridgewater with their two Shetland sheepdogs.Fiorino grew up in Rochester, New York, graduated from Rochester Instituteof Technology in 1962, and has a PhD from Iowa State. He worked forsuch companies as Kodak, Exxon, and Degussa, and he taught analyticalchemistry at Virginia Polytech, and the University of Florida.He left Degussa, a German firm, to found this three-person firm. “Ihave consulted for years, and the consulting has almost always hadan analytical component. The need and expertise was there — andI couldn’t think of retiring. This is the most kind of fun a personcan have,” says Fiorino.To find his space, he did extensive networking. “We were offereda shot at a space in Newark, but the environment here and the spacehere was excellent,” he says.Pelican Analytics LLC, 11 Deer Park Drive, Suite203, Monmouth Junction 08852. John A. Fiorino, director of technology.732-274-2600; fax, 732-274-0800. Home page: www.PelicanAnalytics.comTop Of PageSpaces AvailableThe NJEDA’s Technology Center of New Jersey has 146,000square feet of empty space. In addition to the tenants noted above,the lineup includes Commercialization Center tenants Ortec International,Aeropharm (now known as Kos), and Chromocell, plus such big companiesas Merial, Celgro, and Cambrex. Four of the 17 800-square foot laboratoriesare available, as are 146,000 square feet of technology space in twobuildings.In contrast, the private landlord who owns Princeton Corporate Plazaon Deer Park Drive has 250,000 square feet of R&D space that is mostlyleased and is building more. “Most of our R&D companies rent about5,000 square feet, spaces that have been designed specifically fortheir needs,” says Harold Kent, the architect who designed thefirst buildings on Deer Park Drive in 1988. “There is a lot ofsynergy between the tenants — they exchange ideas and equipment.”Because most of the smaller tenants do want to expand, Kent is building60,000 new square feet now. And because he wants to keep the pipelinefull, he will set up his own incubator in 10,000 square feet thatused to belong to Gold’s Gym (the fitness center that moved acrossthe street). By this summer there will be a place for 10 companiesto rent 1,000-foot fully furnished labs.Transave Inc., which works on drug delivery for lung disease, canbe considered a poster child for Kent. Founded in 1997, it had 2,500square feet in 2000, and with 17 full-timers recently expanded to10,000 square feet. It offers inhalation therapeutics as an improvementon injectables for treating lung disease because they cost less, providehigher drug levels, and are easier to use. Transave’s lipid complexesand liposomes can be released as a nebulized spray, a dry powder,or an aerosol. Theradex, the firm at 14 Washington Road that manages90 percent of the cancer trials in the United States, is in chargeof Transave’s clinical trials. After these trials, which should take12 to 18 months, Transave will start trials on its anti-infectivedrug.Transave CEO Frank Pilkiewicz, who has raised nearly $16 millionin venture capital, will share the secrets of success on Friday, May16, at 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. when Silicon Garden Angels hosts a Life andInfo Sciences venture capital and angels fair at the New Jersey HospitalAssociation conference center (732-873-1955).”We raised $12 million in second round funding and will use thatmoney to take our product through clinical studies,” says Pilkiewicz.Among his new investors is Sycamore Ventures at 5 Vaughn Drive. Leadingthe second round were include Easton Hunt Capital Partners from NewYork and ABN AMRO Capital from the Netherlands. Also CDIB Bioscienceof Taiwan plus first round investors Techno Venture Management (TVM)of Boston and Munich and Musket Research Associates of Boston.Says Pilkiewicz: “Happy is not the word, I’m ecstatic.”Transave Inc., 11 Deer Park Drive, Suite 117, MonmouthJunction 08852. Claire Strupinsky, manager of corporate administration.732-438-9434; fax, 732-438-9435. Www.transaveinc.comTop Of PageDeathsDavid T. Sheppard 30, on May 2. He worked at Petsmartat Nassau Park.Edward A. Dowey Jr., 85, on May 5. He was professor emeritusat Princeton Theological Seminary.Peter Sannino, 82, on May 11. He owned Sannino Plumbingand Heating Contractors.Next StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
