Experts Offer Their Advice On Turning Science Into Business

What does it take to succeed in an entrepreneurial scientific venture? Following are some pointers from scientists who have prospered as entrepreneurs and others who have helped scientists scratch their entrepreneurial itches: * "You should identify the niche you want to be in and have the scientific expertise and inside information as to how you can build the niche adequately," says Robert Zipkin, president of Biomol Research Laboratories Inc. of Plymouth Meeting, Pa. Zipkin founded and incorporated Biomol in 1983, a year before he finished his Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. He and his partner, Ira Taffer, a fellow student from his undergraduate days at Drexel University, were confident that there was a healthy market for certain commercially unavailable organic compounds, such as leukotrienes, biologically active compounds that function as regulators of allergic and inflammatory reactions. Traditionally, academic labs created these compounds and gave them to other academic researchers; alternatively, professors acting as consultants to pharmaceutical firms gave them to clients. Zipkin developed expertise in building leukotrienes at the bench in graduate school. While he never conducted formal market research, he knew through the academic grapevine that such compounds were in high demand by both academic and industrial pharmaceutical researchers. "We stepped in as a service operation," Zipkin says. Biomol started with five products and a grass-roots distribution system; in 1984, Zipkin and Taffer personally distributed their first sales brochure at a symposium on prostaglandins and leukotrienes held at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. "The next week we sat back and heard our phone ring off the hook," Zipkin recalls. Today, Biomol offers more than 300 products and has seven full-time employees. The company, with sales of more than $700,000, has had a history of 20 percent growth per year since its debut. * "Get the right people," advises Steve Chubb, president of Matritech Inc., a Cambridge, Mass.-based biotechnology firm specializing in cancer diagnostics. Chubb, 46, compares his role in creating successful scientific entrepreneurial ventures to that of an orchestra's conductor: "I don't know how to play the trombone or the piano; I need virtuosos who can. We all need to work together to make music, not noise." A good team, Chubb says, must also be willing to take great technological, financial, regulatory, competitive, and marketing risks. Matritech is the third company Chubb has founded. His first, Cytogen Corp., a Princeton, N.J.-based biotech firm specializing in monoclonal antibodies, was created in 1981. When Chubb left the company in 1984, it had $1 million in revenues. In 1989, it had more than $7 million in revenues. Chubb left Cytogen to begin his second company, T Cell Sciences Inc., which develops products that detect and treat T cell disorders and, like Matritech, is located in Cambridge. In 1990, T Cell Sciences had sales of more than $5 million. Chubb left T Cell Sciences to found Matritech in 1986. Chubb has a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the United States Naval Academy and an MBA from Northwestern University. His strategy has been to find and license hot research being conducted in university labs. At T Cell Sciences, the technology came out of Stanford University and the Ontario Cancer Institute in Toronto. Matritech was founded to hold the exclusive license for nuclear matrix proteins, which were discovered three years ago in a cell biology lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Today, Matritech has 32 employees, including five Ph.D. scientists. While no revenue has accrued so far, Chubb says that should change when Matritech's first product, a diagnostic antibody, is unveiled in June. Pathologists and oncologists working in both academic and industrial pharmaceutical settings are the product's expected customers. Chubb says his strategy for Matritech is to forge agreements with companies in the United States, Europe, and Japan to develop specific diagnostic products for their needs. Several such agreements already exist, including one with Sangtec Medical AB, a diagnostics firm based in Stockholm, Sweden. These agreements will be supplemented by Matritech's own products. * "You need vision and courage. It [an entrepreneurial venture] is a frightening thing to undertake," says Ted Greene, chairman of Amylin Corp., a San Diego-based biotechnology firm focusing on carbohydrate and lipid metabolism for diabetes therapeutics development. Greene points out that it's lonely and scary to be working outside the confines of an established institution. An entrepreneur needs to be secure in the conviction that whatever he or she is working on has the potential for success, he says. "Sometimes that fear [of failure] drives you to get done what others may give up on." Greene, 47, has started five scientific entrepreneurial ventures in San Diego and remains actively involved in all of them. Four are biotechnology firms, and one is developing new medical instrumentation. Amylin, his newest company, was founded in early 1988 and now has 50 employees. Its first product is expected to enter clinical trials in the early months of 1992. Greene, who has a B.S. in physics from Amherst College and an MBA from Harvard University, is well known in both biotechnology and business circles for his creation of one of the country's first highly successful biotechnology firms, the San Diego-based Hybritech Inc., in 1979. Hybritech, like Chubb's Cytogen, is developing new monoclonal antibodies. In 1986, the Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly & Co. bought Hybritech, which had about 800 employees and $60 million in annual sales, for $500 million. In 1990, Greene says, Hybritech achieved the $100 million sales mark. * "You need commitment. You [must] have a dream, and you must be completely committed to making it real," says venture capitalist Thomas R. Morse. Morse, who provided the seed money for Matritech, is managing director of Philadelphia Ventures Inc. Lots of people have good ideas for developing a new product or service, but the successful entrepreneur must have a dogged drive to turn a dream into reality, according to Morse. He or she needs to show that the product will work and that there's a market for it, and then must be able to deliver it in a reasonable time frame for a reasonable amount of money. These matters, Morse says, are more important than personal startup funds. "The major part of the risk with a scientific or technological venture is the risk of the actual technology and being able to commercialize it," he says, "whereas with other ventures the risk of execution and marketing is greater." Lisa Simon is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia.

Experts Offer Their Advice On Turning Science Into Business

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