Translational Research in Colorado

The Colorado BioScience Association kicked off the first BioBreakfast of the year at the new Education 1 building on the Anschutz Medical Campus featuring University of Colorado's new Vice Chancellor for Research, Dr. Richard Traystman. Dr. Traystman together with Dr. Ronald Sokol of The Children's Hospital, presented CU's bid for a Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) grant.

The CTSA grant is part of the National Institutes of Health's Roadmap for Medical Research, a program spearheaded by NIH Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni in response to the rapidly depleting drug pipelines of the nation's pharmaceutical companies. The "T" in CTSA stands for Translational; the concept of bringing a drug from the laboratory bench to the patient's bedside. In other words: applying biomedical research to finding new therapies.

Now we all assume that biomedical research is a good thing and that it's where all of our new therapies will come from, but the reality is that even as the NIH's budget doubled from 1993 to 2004 the pharmaceutical pipelines were thinning. We found out that there is no correlation between spending on basic research and new treatments being brought to market.

The CTSA program represents one of the ways the NIH is seeking to address this issue by becoming more proactive in generating therapeutic results instead of journal articles. The General Clinical Research Center grants are being phased out in favor of the new program, compelling current GCRC recipients, such as CU, to retool and apply for the new program.

Final decisions on the application will be received in May. We’ll keep our fingers crossed.

The Three (or Four) P's of Entrepreneurship

The Colorado BioScience Association (CBSA) convened an all-star cast of Colorado biotech entrepreneurs yesterday morning for a Q&A session. On the panel were Richard Duke, President of Apoplogic, Larry Gold, CEO of SomaLogic, Steve Orndorff, President of Accera, Tim Rodell, President of GlobeImmune, and Jack Wheeler, CMO of MicroPhage.

All five were serial entrepreneurs; they had endured the highs and lows of entrepreneurship multiple times and had lived to tell about it. What does it take to be an entrepreneur? Jack presented his "three P's of entrepreneurship": patience, persistence and perseverance. To this Steve added a fourth P: passion. Since persistence and perseverance seem to be synonyms perhaps we should substitute passion for perseverance.

Patience is good, you've got to wait for the right opportunity, not act simply because of the lack of time (which is synonymous for money for the most part). You must persist in your endeavor despite obstacles that will indeed arise. If you tend to avoid difficulties and rejections, entrepreneurship is not the path for you. And what carries you through the difficult times is a true belief in what you're doing; a passionate belief in the product or technology.

When it came to what the biggest stumbling blocks to success were, most stated the technical hurdles they had to overcome. Larry's company had overcome those hurdles and was now facing an even more daunting challenge: the U.S. healthcare system. How to get payers to pay for new diagnostic tests? Although the life sciences industry can be very entrepreneurial and open to new ideas and technologies, the healthcare industry is much different and imposes many obstacles for new products.