The Quest for Pay Dirt : From Idea to Market in Biotech Business Is Long, Risky Trail
FRONTIERS OF SCIENCE. Inside San Diego's thriving biotech industry. Second in a series
May 27, 1991|TOM GORMAN | TIMES STAFF WRITER
So ya wanna start a biotech company?
You need a marketable idea for a drug or diagnostic product, money to pursue it, scientists who think they can develop it and an executive to serve as part public relations front man, part in-house cheerleader, part ego-massager, part drum beater, part fund-raiser and part point man to shepherd the product through the regulatory process.
Then you hope nobody else beats you to it.
That's the part that's driving Dr. Jay Kranzler crazy.
It can take up to 10 years or longer--and $100 million or more--to take an idea for a new medicine, design it, develop it, test it, get it approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and, finally, get it on the market.
"My fear is that we'll be five years into a project and realize, only then, that the product won't work--or that someone else will come up with a product that supersedes what we're working on," said Kranzler, president and chief executive officer of Cytel Corp., located on the east side of Torrey Pines Road on a bluff overlooking Interstate 5. "I'm waiting 10 years for the product--and I know I can be knocked off my high horse any day."
His company is in the test-tube stage of making therapeutic medicines to help govern the body's immune system. Animal tests--and, ultimately, clinical tests involving human volunteers--must come before FDA approval of the drug.
Kranzler is 33, small-framed, wears glasses and short hair, is funny and--unlike some of the executives in San Diego's biotech industry who are awash in their own egos--doesn't seem too taken with himself.
"I was going to be a doctor. I'm a good Jewish boy, and all good Jewish boys are doctors or lawyers," he said. "But, when I was 19, I realized I didn't like medicine. I liked science, but not medicine."
So, after he placated his parents by earning his requisite medical degree from Yale, he got his Ph.D. from Yale as well--in psychopharmacology, or drugs that modulate the chemical activity within the brain.
He merged his immediate interest and his medical training by becoming a consultant for a management consulting company that needed someone steeped in science to address the firm's medical clients.
"They were willing to pay me $100 an hour. What did I have to lose?" he said.
FRONTIERS OF SCIENCE. Inside San Diego's thriving biotech industry. Second in a series
May 27, 1991|TOM GORMAN | TIMES STAFF WRITER
So ya wanna start a biotech company?
You need a marketable idea for a drug or diagnostic product, money to pursue it, scientists who think they can develop it and an executive to serve as part public relations front man, part in-house cheerleader, part ego-massager, part drum beater, part fund-raiser and part point man to shepherd the product through the regulatory process.
Then you hope nobody else beats you to it.
That's the part that's driving Dr. Jay Kranzler crazy.
It can take up to 10 years or longer--and $100 million or more--to take an idea for a new medicine, design it, develop it, test it, get it approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and, finally, get it on the market.
"My fear is that we'll be five years into a project and realize, only then, that the product won't work--or that someone else will come up with a product that supersedes what we're working on," said Kranzler, president and chief executive officer of Cytel Corp., located on the east side of Torrey Pines Road on a bluff overlooking Interstate 5. "I'm waiting 10 years for the product--and I know I can be knocked off my high horse any day."
His company is in the test-tube stage of making therapeutic medicines to help govern the body's immune system. Animal tests--and, ultimately, clinical tests involving human volunteers--must come before FDA approval of the drug.
Kranzler is 33, small-framed, wears glasses and short hair, is funny and--unlike some of the executives in San Diego's biotech industry who are awash in their own egos--doesn't seem too taken with himself.
"I was going to be a doctor. I'm a good Jewish boy, and all good Jewish boys are doctors or lawyers," he said. "But, when I was 19, I realized I didn't like medicine. I liked science, but not medicine."
So, after he placated his parents by earning his requisite medical degree from Yale, he got his Ph.D. from Yale as well--in psychopharmacology, or drugs that modulate the chemical activity within the brain.
He merged his immediate interest and his medical training by becoming a consultant for a management consulting company that needed someone steeped in science to address the firm's medical clients.
"They were willing to pay me $100 an hour. What did I have to lose?" he said.