Take a look at the change in view from one of our library offices:

In mid-July

In late September:

North Carolina's first statewide non-profit economic development corporation targeting job growth through the blossoming field of advanced medical technologies is underway.

The North Carolina Advanced Medical Technologies Center of Innovation (NC AMTC) is incorporated, with J. Greg Davis elected board chairman and Cindy Clark, J.D., running day-to-day operations from a Research Triangle Park office, as president.

The North Carolina Biotechnology Center awarded the center a four-year, $2.5 million grant after a year of planning by dozens of interested entrepreneurs, community leaders and others interested in the field.

Advanced medical technologies include devices, diagnostics, imaging agents, and potentially other things related to health and healing.

Read the full news release

The North Carolina Biotechnology Center's approval of a $150,000 Small Business Research Loan for agricultural biotechnology upstart Athenix seven years ago is now harvesting major benefits for North Carolina workers and taxpayers.

That early investment of state tax dollars from the General Assembly, through the Biotechnology Center's loan programs, provided Athenix not only critical early research money, but also nurture.

Entrepreneurs frequently cite the Biotechnology Center professionals' vetting and approving of loan requests as a vital signal to subsequent investors that their company is a good risk.

Athenix did grow. In less than a decade it raised more than $40 million in venture capital and hired about 60 more people.

Then, in August of this year the Research Triangle Park company was purchased by German-based Bayer CropScience. The parties have just disclosed the selling price: $365 million, plus up to $35 million in additional earn-out payments when certain milestones are met.

Bayer CropScience already contributed mightily to the state's economy, with a workforce of about 475--most at its Clayton campus. All told, it employs some 18,000 people in more than 120 countries. And Bayer still plans to open an R&D facility in Morrisville.

Even in a tough economy, Biotechnology Center loans overall generate some $100 for every dollar of outlay.

Read the full news release

Score another major trophy for North Carolina.

The state's business climate is ranked the best in the nation by Site Selection magazine for the fifth year in a row--and the eighth of the last nine years.

The magazine's cover shows hot-air balloons floating in a blue sky, with the balloon identified as NC 001--the largest, front and center.

A promo line for the cover story explains it all, saying, "Commerce and curriculum are a natural match in North Carolina, which tops the business climate rankings yet again." North Carolina's stellar university infrastructure and its balance of reasonable taxation won the day, according to the publication.

A scoring system used by the magazine's editors allowed the Old North State to come out ahead of Texas in the November cover story.

Overall, key contributors to the win include the state's tax climate, work force, incentives and economic-development strategy, non-union environment, utility infrastructure and legal and regulatory environment.

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Students going from the cloistered halls of graduate school to their first job in industry often require nine months to a year to adjust to the business environment, according to Lisbeth Borbye, Ph.D., an expert on the topic at North Carolina State University.

Borbye said a key to dealing with the problem is getting more interaction between university faculty and business, and designing graduate-school classes with the help of industry personnel so students enjoy a better fit when they get to the workplace.

"We're training professors to provide their students more professional skills," she said. "Things like teamwork, flexibility, discipline, project management and communications skills haven't traditionally been what the university has seen fit to take care of. But now we find those skills are very important, because they're important to the businesses where these students will be working."

To address the issue head-on, Borbye and 20 educators from 13 North Carolina colleges and universities will roll up their sleeves with some industry counterparts in a workshop Nov. 12 and 13.

The workshop, "Creating Alliances and Educational Projects with Industry Partners," will be held by at the North Carolina Biotechnology Center headquarters in Research Triangle Park.

Borbye is an author, assistant dean for professional education at North Carolina State University and directs the 16-campus University of North Carolina System's Professional Science Master's (PSM) Initiative.

"People across North Carolina are aware of the cross-pollination between businesses and community colleges in workforce training programs," she said, "but some of us at the universities are also taking the initiative to educate our educators, changing campus culture and embracing the business world."

Some 80 percent of graduate students go into careers outside academia, said Borbye, "and at NC State that number is even higher." She wrote two textbooks dealing with the need to break down fences separating the halls of learning from the halls of commerce:

• Industry Immersion Learning: Real-Life Case Studies in Biotechnology and Business
• Secrets to Success in Industry Careers: Essential Skills for Science and Business

Another is about to be published:

• Out of the Comfort-Zone: How to Add Professional Skills Acquisition to Academic Curricula

Attendees will be using materials from all three in the workshop.

"We must do more than make copies of professors," said Borbye. "We must also prepare professionals for non-academic careers."

Durham-based Quintiles, the world's largest clinical research organization, has added another major global pharmaceutical company to its expanding list of services.

Just days after announcing a new agreement with Japan's Eisai to shepherd six Eisai cancer drugs to the marketplace, Quintiles unveiled an "industry-leading alliance" with AstraZeneca.

Financial terms were not disclosed, but Quintiles will handle global clinical pharmacology work across multiple therapy areas for AstraZeneca. The deal is aimed at streamlining AstraZeneca's development pipeline.

"This model gives us access to the right scientific and medical expertise plus the quality, flexibility and capacity we need to work efficiently and cost-effectively to deliver these studies," said Anders Ekblom, AstraZeneca executive vice president for global drug development.

Read the full news release

The discussions ranged from a possible $100 million cyclotron for the North Carolina Research Campus to cycles affecting the state's multi-billion-dollar bioscience business sector.

The Fifth Annual BioSciences Forum drew more than 125 bioscience entrepreneurs, investors, educators and students to the North Carolina Biotechnology Center for a morning of updates and projections on the statewide involvement in biotechnology applications to agriculture, engineering, pharmaceutical development and advanced medical devices.

The free event is presented each year by the BioSciences Management Initiative at North Carolina State University's College of Management and co-hosted by the Biotechnology Center.

Featured presenters at this year's forum were:

• Scott Uknes, vice president of business development at Athenix Corp.


• Michael Luther, president of the David H. Murdoch Research Institute


• William N. Starling, chief executive officer, Synecor, LLC


• Fred van Eenennaam, Ph. D, professor of strategy and dynamics of strategy at Universiteit Nyenrode, Nyenrode Business Universiteit, Breukelen, the Netherlands


• Richard Kouri, Ph. D, professor and executive director of the Biosciences Management Initiative at the N.C. State College of Management

Besides the Biotechnology Center, event sponsors include:

• Biogen Idec, the North Carolina Drug Discovery Center of Innovation, Inspire Pharmaceuticals, Athenix and VWR International.

Read the full news release

It isn't because he's so successful at avoiding rivalries by holding concurrent professorships at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University.

Joseph DeSimone, Ph.D., is just plain successful.

That's why he's one of six North Carolinians who this week received the state's highest civilian honor, the North Carolina Award.

DeSimone, founder of Liquidia Technologies in Research Triangle Park, got the award Thursday evening from Gov. Bev Perdue during a ceremony at the N.C. Museum of History.

The award, conferred for outstanding achievement in fine arts, literature, public service and science, is administered by the state's Department of Cultural Resources.

"The award celebrates creativity and innovation, two values which sustain our economy, our culture and our people," said Perdue, "bestowed upon individuals whose contributions to our state are enduring and significant."

Durham-based Quintiles, the world's largest clinical research organization, has added to the expanding scope of bioscience business relationships between North Carolina and Asia by signing a strategic alliance with Eisai, a global pharmaceutical company with worldwide headquarters in Tokyo but with a major U.S. facility in Research Triangle Park, near the Quintiles campus.

The pact, announced just a few days after Gov. Bev Perdue and a contingent of business and policy leaders returned home from an economic development trip to multiple Asian countries, is designed to speed six experimental Eisai cancer drugs to the marketplace. The six drug candidates target 11 kinds of solid tumors.

The companies wouldn't disclose financial terms beyond the fact that Quintiles agreed to partly pay for the clinical studies in exchange for success milestone payments.

"Quintiles and Eisai are using the power of partnerships to manage risk and enable transformation in a rapidly evolving industry where the rules are changing on all fronts," said Ron Wooten, executive vice president of Quintiles Corporate Development.

"This goes beyond the traditional boundaries of the pharma business model, offering a more nimble, modular and variable way of leveraging resources to increase the value of assets."

Hideki Hayashi, Eisai's senior vice president and chief product creation officer, called the approach "a significant business model and new strategy for development."

"We will explore multiple indications in parallel so that we can deliver our compounds as fast, widely and appropriately as possible for cancer patients' benefit."

Privately owned Quintiles employs 23,000 people in 50 countries, 1,600 of them in North Carolina.

Eisai's 10,000 employees worldwide discover, develop and markets pharmaceuticals in three main therapeutic areas--neurology, gastrointestinal disorders and oncology/critical care. Eisai's RTP facility has about 300 employees involved in pharmaceutical production and formulation research and development.

Read the full news release

Durham-based Aldagen has renewed plans to become publicly owned with an initial public offering of stock after putting a similar plan on hold a year ago.

The company has nenewed its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go through with the IPO listing on the Nasdaq exchange to raise $80.5 million. The company had filed for the IPO in May, 2008, but pulled back three months later, saying market conditions were "not in the best interest of the Company at this time."

Aldagen previously raised about $56 million in venture capital. Those owners include:

• Aurora Funds of Research Triangle Park


• Intersouth Partners of Durham


• Harbert Venture Partners of Birmingham, Alabama


• Tullis-Dickerson Capital of Greenwich, Connecticut


• CNF Investments of Bethesda, Md.


• The Trelys Funds of Columbia, S.C.

Another nearby Research Triangle Park biotechnology company, Talecris Biotherapeutics, paved the way for public offerings a month ago, raising $950 million in what was America's second-largest IPO of the year--and the year's first biotech company to go public.

Aldagen is a biopharmaceutical company developing proprietary regenerative cell therapies that target significant unmet medical needs. The company's most advanced product candidates are ALD-101, ALD-301 and ALD-201.

Aldagen is currently conducting a pivotal Phase 3 clinical trial of ALD-101 to evaluate its efficacy in improving engraftment following umbilical cord blood, or cord blood, transplants used to treat inherited metabolic diseases in pediatric patients. In addition, based on the results of our Phase 1/2 clinical trial of ALD-301, the company intends to commence a pivotal Phase 3 clinical trial of ALD-301 in 2010 to evaluate its efficacy in treating critical limb ischemia.

Aldagen has received a special protocol assessment, or SPA, concurrence letter from the FDA for the design of this trial. Aldagen has also completed a Phase 1 clinical trial of ALD-201 for the treatment of ischemic heart failure. We are also developing additional product candidates for the improvement of engraftment following cord blood transplants used to treat leukemias, for the treatment of inherited metabolic diseases and for the post-acute treatment of ischemic stroke.

Wilmington-based contract research organization PPD has announced three major business moves:

• Buying Excel PharmaStudies, a large Chinese CRO


• Spinning off PPD's "compound partnering" pharmaceutical research and development business activity into a separate company


• Investing $100 million into Celtic Therapeutics Holdings L.P., a biotechnology investment partnership

PPD said it's buying Excel because it's the market leader and one of the largest contract research organizations in China, providing PPD additional capacity and expertise in this rapidly growing market. It also significantly increases its employee and client base in the Asia Pacific region.

The company also said that spinning off its compound partnering business from its core CRO, business will result in two well-capitalized, highly focused, independent public companies.

Two-year-old Celtic Therapeutics is a successor to Celtic Pharma Management. The group, headquartered in New York and in the U.S. Virgin Islands, buys clinical-stage therapies. PPD's investment is part of a $700 million Celtic fundraising project.

Read the full news releases

Therapies from Morrisville drug company Salix Pharmaceuticals were reviewed in 13 presentations as part of the 2009 American College of Gastroenterology (ACG) Annual Scientific Meeting which started last Friday in San Diego.

The company's therapies for bacterial and inflammatory bowel disease and bowel cleansing product lines were reviewed in oral and poster presentations from a variety of academic and company researchers throughout the event, ending Oct. 28.

Salix products reviewed included Rifaximin, Apriso and Moviprep.

Read the full news release

What recession?

Research Triangle Park-based Metabolon has exceeded expectations in its Series C fundraising effort, snagging an additional $6 million from recent investors to close the round at $12.3 million.

The developer of metabolomics for use as research and diagnostic tools closed the first portion of the funding round at more than $5 million on April 30, and expected the balance to end up at around $11 million. It came in more than a million higher.

Metabolomics is the emerging science of measurement and analysis of metabolites, such as sugars and fats produced in the cells of organisms, at specific times and under specific conditions. Using tools such as spectroscopy, chromatography and specialized computer technologies, metabolomics scientists are pursing improvements in the diagnosis and treatments of human diseases and the understanding of related biochemical activities.

Metabolon specializes in high-speed analysis of large numbers of complex biological samples to find markers and pathways associated with disease and the activities of medicines.

CEO John Ryals said the Series C funding will help Metabolon launch its own diagnostics products targeting prostate cancer and insulin resistance.

The investment included an expanded involvement from the global agricultural firm Syngenta, which maintains a significant North Carolina presence. The Syngenta Ventures investment branch of the company will take a seat on the Metabolon board.

"This investment follows a research collaboration with Metabolon which has existed for some years," said Sandro Aruffo, head of research and development at Syngenta. "We believe Metabolon's unique metabolomics platform will be an increasingly important technology for the development of innovative new products in the agriculture industry."

Read the full news release

Research Triangle Park drug discovery and development company SCYNEXIS has received a preclinical milestone payment for an undisclosed amount, resulting from a collaboration to discover and develop cancer drugs.

"We are pleased to celebrate success in reaching another milestone with our valued
partner, Merck," said Yves Ribeill, Ph.D., SCYNEXIS president and CEO. "This milestone provides further validation of our long-term relationship with Merck in a number of therapeutic areas through discovery research and innovation."

Since it was founded nine years ago, the privately held SCYNEXIS' research teams have integrated medicinal chemistry, advanced biological screening, computational chemistry, bioanalysis and analytical chemistry to find good drug candidates from its customers' arrays of possibilities.

Entrepreneurs, investors and others interested in North Carolina's growing bioscience industry, including students and faculty, will have a chance to rub elbows and exchange ideas Friday at the Fifth Annual BioSciences Forum co-hosted by the North Carolina Biotechnology Center.

The BioSciences Management Initiative at North Carolina State University's College of Management presents the annual forum at the Biotechnology Center's Research Triangle Park campus to provide an opportunity for open discussion of management issues unique to the biotechnology and biosciences industries.

The event is free, but online pre-registration is required.

Featured presenters at this year's forum are:

• Scott Uknes, vice president of business development at Athenix Corp.


• Michael Luther, president of the David H. Murdoch Research Institute


• William N. Starling, chief executive officer, Synecor, LLC


• Fred van Eenennaam, Ph. D, professor of strategy and dynamics of strategy at Universiteit Nyenrode, Nyenrode Business Universiteit, Breukelen, the Netherlands


• Richard Kouri, Ph. D, professor and executive director of the Biosciences Management Initiative at the N.C. State College of Management

Besides the Biotechnology Center, event sponsors include:

• Biogen Idec, the North Carolina Drug Discovery Center of Innovation, Inspire Pharmaceuticals, Athenix and VWR International.

Read the full news release

A team of Triangle-area scientists has published a research paper describing changes to lungs in mice exposed to six hours of inhaled carbon nanotubes, though the researchers said it's too soon to know whether those changes represent a health threat.

Carbon nanotubes are being considered for use in everything from sports equipment to medical applications, but a great deal remains unknown about whether these materials cause respiratory or other health problems.

The newly published collaborative study from North Carolina State University, The Hamner Institutes for Health Sciences and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences shows that inhaling these nanotubes can affect the outer lining of the lung, called the pleura.

Pleural tissues were targeted for the research because they're prone to developing the cancer mesothelioma when exposed to certain types of asbestos fibers.

The study, "Inhaled Carbon Nanotubes Reach the Sub-Pleural Tissue in Mice," was published in the October issue of Nature Nanotechnology.

Some 150 invited guests gathered earlier this month at the North Carolina Biotechnology Center for the 2009 Summit on Environmentally Responsible Development of Nanotechnology, hosted by the Research Triangle Environmental Health Collaborative.

Experts from around the world exchanged hopes and concerns that can inform policy and practice for the safe and efficient development of nanotech.

Read the full news release

Phillips named director of Eastern Region office of NC Biotechnology Center
Greenville Daily Reflector
... biomanufacturing and contract research and manufacturing organizations, marine biotechnology installations and our all-important agricultural biotech ...

Durham-based Argos Therapeutics scientists are reporting positive results on an experimental therapy to confer individualized treatment to people infected with HIV.

The company generated interest from two presentations in Paris this week at the AIDS Vaccine 2009 conference, demonstrating safety and effectiveness from an ongoing Phase 2a trial of AGS-004, its personalized immunotherapy candidate.

The company said the AGS-004 results are "unprecedented for an immunotherapeutic candidate in HIV and, if confirmed in an upcoming randomized study, could lead to a new treatment paradigm for HIV."

Argos, a Duke University spinout started with help from a $10,000 North Carolina Biotechnology Center loan in 1998, has developed several platform technologies and a diverse pipeline of product candidates based on the biology of dendritic cells--the master switches that turn the immune system on and off.

The company's focus is on developing new treatments for cancer, infectious and autoimmune diseases, and transplantation rejection.

Last year Argos closed on a $35.2 million financing package--the latest in a series totaling some $88 million from business investors. Also, in 2006, the National Institutes of Health awarded the firm $21 million to develop novel HIV immunotherapy candidates. Its personalized immunotherapy products are designed to train patients' immune systems to recognize, target and destroy unique features of their diseases.

Read the full news release

Morrisville-based Centice, a Duke University spin-out that makes and sells a computerized sensor-based drug verification system for safer dispensing of medicines, has raised another $6.1 million, this time in Series C financing.

After winning the Duke Start-Up Challenge compeition, Centice was incorporated in 2004 and now is commercializing its PASS Rx pharmaceutical authentication sensor system.

Centice closed a $3 million A round in 2004 and secured an $11.3 million second round of financing in November 2007.

The new investment added Fulcrum Financial Group of Raleigh to the previous supporters: Cary-based Aurora Funds, S-Group Direct Investments, Innovation Ventures and several individual investors.

Read the full news release