The Saga Begins

A government agency wanted to develop some novel defenses against biowarfare, and knew some innovative scientists. It contacted one at a major university, who contacted me to run a company that would develop the technology.

The agency asked me to draft up a proposal, without spending any time on it, so they could show me what they needed. Along with some friends I wrote the thing in a weekend, and sent it off for review. That same week they came back to me and said that my application with its budget was approved! Needless to say, the whole thing was a fantasy--we had no idea about its feasibility and the costs were pulled from our experience without any reality testing.

Oh, one more thing...we did not have the RIGHTS to any of the material we needed for this project! With our government-approved fantasy timeline in mind, we needed to negotiate not one, but TWO license agreements: one for the rights to use the technology, which were held by one party, and the other for the actual product, which was held by another.

These two parties--call them SDA, for Sleazoid Drug Affairs, and MFU, for Much-Feared University, hated each other. They had entered into the initial licensing agreement as part of a shotgun wedding, and were trying their best to screw each other. We succeeded in getting a research license from MFU--a license that enabled us to do absolutely anything, as long as it did not make money for us. With that in hand, SDA wrote us the same license to its technology.

To make things more interesting, SDA did not reference MFU in its license to us, an interesting strategy which became highly relevant later on. You seek, SDA had licensed patent rights from MFU, and in its license it had to pay to MFU a portion of any fees it got for the technology. Since we paid a fee to SDA, we expected MFU to get a share. That never happened.

With these licenses in hand, and no other rights whatsover, we began our 3-year relationship with that unnamed government agency, whose largesse enabled us to run a truly innovative development program.

With no valuable licenses in hand, however, we had nothing to raise money with for our future company, which we called Nankipoo Biologics in honor of the Mikado-like relationships we had with all the parties.

NB sprang into action, writing contracts with a dozen companies eager to get their hands on some government dollars and to test our product in their systems. The first question was how to make the stuff--it took 12 months to find out that the systems we thought most likely to work would not, and 6 more to come up with two systems that worked...although not entirely as expected.

While science marched on, business went nowhere. With rights to nothing, we had nothing to sell, and that is how things went for over three years.

Skanks of biotech

Seven years ago I was brought into a new company to run its drug development program. The company had a fascinating technology and the Federal Government liked it so much it was willing to pour millions of dollars into helping it develop in order to fight bioterror.

I was introduced to a fascinating world at the intersection of government and science, and led a great team to do some first class drug development.

At the same time I found that the owners of the technology hated each other, and the key player was as profoundly dysfunctional as any I had ever met.

As the first step in my personal program of psychotherapy I plan to vent and to try to rid myself of the poison that I ingested by contact. I am changing the names, hiding the details, and doing my best to avoid legal jeopardy, so I hope that nobody reads this blog. Perhaps I should call it "Skanks of biotech"...