Corrections or additions?
This article by Barbara Fox was prepared for the May 29, 2002 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Wireless R&D
The search for gene-based pain therapies at Purdue Pharma’s
new 115,000 square foot facility is being enhanced by a wireless network.
No matter where the researchers are working — at the lab bench
or in the cubicles — they can connect their laptops to the genome
sequences on the Internet and the company’s bioinformatics databases.
Tage Honore, head of Purdue Pharma’s new R&D group, says that though
his organization is entrepreneurial, it has deeper pockets than its
cohorts, so it has enough money for such “extras” as the wireless
network. “In our soul, we are like a biotech company but we have
a `big pharma’ economic structure,” says Honore.
Honore, 51, was educated in Denmark, is married, and has two school-aged
children. Known for the discovery of the Ampa excitatory neuroreceptor,
Honore most recently directed research at Novartis in Switzerland.
When he came to head the R&D efforts at Purdue Pharma in October 2000,
60 people had already been hired. At 115,000 square feet in Cranbury,
he is hiring genomics, informatics, and proteomic scientists to raise
the head count from 110 to 140.
Commitment to computer technology is integral to Purdue Pharma, a
subsidiary of Purdue Frederick, a privately owned company funded in
large part by the Sackler family. The fact that, early in the history
of the Web, the company plucked a plum website name — pharma.com
— would bear this out. “You can guess the family applied for
that name very early in the Internet story,” says Honore.
The ownes are committed to developing new medicine for pain. “We
put two new potential drug candidates in the pipeline in the first
year, and they have very competitive profiles. One is a broad spectrum
sodium channel blocker for pain, and the other is a neuro steroid
for insomnia,” says Honore.
Purdue Pharma LP, 6 Cedar Brook Drive, Cedar BrookCorporate Center, Cranbury 08512. Tage Honore, vice president of discoveryresearch. 609-409-5123; fax, 609-409-5799. Home page: www.purduepharma.comTop Of PageSiemens’ X-Ray EyesSeven centimeters is a long way for your scalpel tocut if you are cutting into someone’s brain to find a tumor. You hopeyou know precisely where that tumor is. As it turns out, the abilityto conjure up three-dimensional pictures of someone’s anatomy canbe the difference between a good surgeon and a great surgeon. A greatsurgeon “sees” what is below any surface in a three-dimensionalway.Until now, surgeons have had to look at a scan of a tumor on a lightscreen, put it together with their minds’ eye views of an anatomicalmodel, and then try to imagine where that tumor is. But a new Siemenstechnology can essentially render the patient transparent to the surgeon.This “in-situ visualization,” a kind of augmented reality(AR), lets the surgeon see a tumor in three-dimensional space fromdifferent angles, says Frank Sauer, a project manager at Siemens CorporateResearch on College Road. He received his undergraduate degree inStuttgart and has a PhD in optical information technology from theUniversity of Erlangen, and has been working at Siemens for 10 years.”The ability to look inside the patient and see the tumor in three-dimensionalspace from different angles helps the surgeon determine the best routeto the tumor,” says Sauer. His prototype — discussed 10 yearsago but made possible now by faster computers — uses a head-mounteddisplay with three miniature cameras. Two of them take a stereoscopic(3D) view of the surgical site, and the third is used for viewpointtracking, so that no matter which way the head is angled, the usersees the correct view. “We want the surgeon to have direct accessto this information and make it available in context with the patient’sbody,” says Sauer. A metal “halo” helps to keep everythingin synch.Pre-clinical tests on “phantom” objects have been performed,and results are encouraging. Clinical testing could begin by the endof 2002.Siemens Corporate Research Inc. (SI), 755 CollegeRoad, Forrestal Center, Princeton 08540. Norbert Gaus, CEO. 609-734-6500;fax, 609-734-6565. Www.scr.siemens.comTop Of PageExpansionsJ. Kerney Kuser II, Attorney (), 230 Nassau Street,Princeton 08542. 609-921-0888; fax, 609-921-6442.J. Kerney Kuser II has expanded to 1,000 square feet with a move from1 Palmer Square to 230 Nassau Stret. A graduate of Kenyon Collegeand the Seton Hall School of Law, he specializes in real estate, trustsand estates, and corporate law. His great grandfather had owned theTrenton Times.Top Of PageName ChangesGriswold Special Care, 14 Washington Road, Building6, Suite 615, Princeton 08540. Joseph (Mandella, director. 609-799-8856.Home page: www.home-care.netTo honor the founder of this 20-year-old company, Jean Griswold ofErdenheim, Pennsylvania, the nursing service provider has changedits name from Special Care to Griswold Special Care. It has more than70 offices in 12 states, and there is a Middlesex County office at732-745-7788. The company offers caregivers for a wide range of conditionson an hourly, overnight, or live-in basis.Top Of PageLeaving TownBostonCoach, 780 Dowd, Elizabeth. Ronn Harris,site supervisor. 908-965-0056 or 800-672-7676; fax, 908-965-1596.Home page: www.bostoncoach.comBoston Coach, a limousine firm, has closed its office at ResearchPark (19 Wall Street) and is planning to move it to Bridgewater, butin the meantime is operating out of the New York area headquartersin Elizabeth. Three years ago it had started a satellite branch herewith a fleet of 25 Volvos.Top Of PageDeathsIrving Flicker, 87, on May 27. He was chairman emeritusof Homasote Company on Lower Ferry Road.Next StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
