University faculty launch new companies based on their high-tech innovations

By Liza Gutierrez | Staff Writer | Gazette.Net

Say you’re in China and come upon a road sign in Chinese. The problem? You don’t speak Chinese. Thesolution: your cell phone.
 
That’s the idea behind new software being developed by David Doermann, a researcher at the University of Maryland, College Park, and part-time entrepreneur. Doermann is among the cadre of University of Maryland scientists launching startup businesses with the school’s help.
 
These faculty inventors and cutting-edge researchers are taking advantage of campus resources that fuel business development. Some are sticking with their consequent startups as advisers, but others, such as Doermann, are taking the riskier path of entrepreneurship.

One problem these high-tech innovators may encounter is that what works in the lab may not work on a large scale, said Gayatri Varma, acting executive director of the Office of Technology Commercialization at the University of Maryland, College Park. It’s a risk some companies don’t want to take, but faculty members treat these projects like their babies and want to see them mature, she said.

Alba Therapeutics Corp., a biopharmaceutical company in Baltimore, is a success story out of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, school administrators say. Co-founded by a professor almost four years ago, it raised $20 million in less than two years and has grown to more than 50 employees.

 

The school provided a ‘‘reality check,” Doermann said. ‘‘We had to prove that there was a business model [and] that we could make money.”

Pure plastic winsbest business pitch Lawrence R. Sita is another College Park professor planning to give entrepreneurship a shot. The chemistry and biochemistry professor has been working for eight years to develop a pure form of plastic that’s free of chemicals.

Sita said that when he started, there was enough evidence in scientific literature saying that nothing would work, so he thought, ‘‘OK, we won’t have any competition.” The core portfolio of products that has evolved from Sita’s work, aside from plastics, includes waxes, adhesives, oils and lubricants.A ‘‘professor venture fair” at the university’s Bioscience Day in November planted the entrepreneurial seed in Sita. After cramming years of research into a three-minute pitch to a judging panel of venture capitalists, Sita’s plan beat out eight others.

‘‘That really then got me thinking” that he was onto something, he said. ‘‘I’m not going to give up my day job,” but he is working on developing a business plan. Sita gives the university, the state of Maryland and all federal agencies that financed his work a ‘‘tremendous amount of appreciation and credit for taking the risk associated with funding this research.” About $1.1 million came from the National Science Foundation, with $50,000 from the Maryland Technology Development Corp.

‘‘For a faculty entrepreneur, you have to make sure he or she is committed to doing this process because it is a lot of work,” Varma said, as they must fulfill their academic responsibilities while working on their venture.

No ivory tower for him.

‘‘Doing science for science, just to prove a concept, is a tremendous waste of money, time and talent,” said Alessio Fasano, professor of pediatrics, medicine and physiology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Fasano co-founded Alba Therapeutics.

‘‘What good is it to us if we stay in our ivory tower, to do our beautiful science, and never be able to prove or disprove the validity of our ideas?” he asked.

Alba started when Blake Paterson was looking for technologies to base a business on and stumbled upon Fasano’s research for drugs to treat autoimmune diseases. Paterson believed the only way to bring this business to life was with Fasano’s full dedication to the company, Fasano said.

‘‘I thought he was nuts,” said Fasano, who had no business expertise, but agreed that, for the work to have credibility, ‘‘the person that developed this technology should be heavily involved.”

‘‘It never occurred to me in my wildest thoughts to start a company,” he said. ‘‘I never considered to leave academia.”

But he jumped on board to carry out the greater goals of his research, with the understanding that he would return to academic life when the company reached a milestone and became independent, he said. The duo founded Alba Therapeutics in 2004, with Fasano as chief scientific officer.

‘‘I learned so much about the corporate world, the venture capital world, and the functions and dysfunctions of biotechnology companies,” he said. But lesson No. 1 for Fasano was that ‘‘I would not be a good CEO.”

In the less than two years Fasano worked at Alba, the company raised $20 million and won a series of awards. Once ample funding was secured, he returned to academic life, and now heads the company’s scientific advisory board.

If a faculty member wants to ‘‘do wonderful science” but realizes he won’t be good at business, he shouldn’t shoot for CEO, Fasano said. ‘‘But if you realize you can give more to science ... by jumping in the business parts of this equation, do it. But you need to have that drive, that capability to be business savvy, to do this right.”

The University of Maryland, Baltimore, saw about eight new companies spring from technology developed there over the past four years, said James L. Hughes, vice president of research and development at the school. In 2007, three licenses went to new companies and 21 went to existing businesses, he said.

The 15-year-old office really started building its budget and increasing staff over the past seven years, he said.

‘‘Usually we prefer the professor not to be the CEO,” Hughes said. The school also prefers faculty members to stay with the university, although there have been some who left to run companies, he said.