Cell Based Delivery
This article was originally published in Start Up
Executive Summary
Cell Based Delivery is engineering human muscle to serve as "living factories"--implantable bioreactors which have been genetically engineered to overexpress biotherapeutics--for making and delivering drugs such as growth factors, growth hormones, cytokines, or antibodies, over long periods of time. The company is first using its system, called ImPACT, in cardiovascular disease.
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The Vertical Group
The Vertical Group sticks closely to medical device investments, because that's the industry its partners know best. Although it has a narrow industry focus, its flexibility allows it to thrive in good times and bad. It runs an evergreen fund, of which general partners and its two special limited partners own 50%. And it has a great deal of investment flexibility as well; it can invest in all stages of a company, from seed stage to the aftermarket, where it can hold both long and short positions.
Brown University Research Foundation
Brown has a particular leaning towards creating biotech spin-offs, perhaps because of the infrastructure that cell therapy company Cytotherapeutics Inc. created in Providence, the locale of Brown's main campus. Seed stage funding from the Slater Center for Biotechnology, which funds Rhode Island biomedical start-ups, has also helped many Brown spin-offs get off the ground.
Drug Delivery Start-Ups
As an industry segment, drug delivery was virtually created by two companies--Alza Corp. and Elan Corp. PLC. These companies have since evolved into drug companies, abandoning a significant part of the field to second-generation arrivistes. Such companies that have survived the funding drought for small-cap companies have benefited, Inhale Therapeutics, for example, has a number of partnerships for its pulmonary delivery technology. Alkermes, probably the leading drug-delivery pure play, now has its first approved product. What is somewhat surprising about the industry is how little it has consolidated, particularly when one considers that no single drug delivery technology is applicable to a majority of drug delivery problems.