SialoGen Therapeutics Wins UC Davis Business Plan Competition

Business Editors/Education Writers

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DAVIS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 16, 2003--A biopharmaceutical company developing a breakthrough treatment to prevent the spread of cancer by putting tumor cells on a low-carb diet has won $10,000 in a business plan competition organized by MBA students at the University of California, Davis.

SialoGen Therapeutics, Inc. of Davis won first place in the third-annual Big Bang! Business Plan Competition, designed by students of the Graduate School of Management to promote entrepreneurship, innovation and hands-on learning.

SialoGen has patented chemical technology that shuts down the production of enzymes that make polysialic acid, a sugar polymer found on the surface of cancer cells. It's thought that the presence of the carbohydrate allows tumor cells to rapidly multiply and expand. SialoGen has already identified one inhibitor that will work and could lead to a future cancer therapy.

Team members are Brian Rogers, a UC Davis Graduate School of Management alumnus and adjunct professor; Frederic Troy, a professor in the UC Davis School of Medicine; Jaqueline Gervay-Hague, a professor of chemistry at UC Davis; Sandra Reynoso, a Ph.D. in immunology from UC Davis and MBA student; and Neil Byzick, an MBA student at UC Davis.

A panel of nine venture capitalists from the Sacramento region and the Bay Area, including two UC Davis alumni, served as judges and selected the first- and second-place winners in the final round. Results were announced at the final event of the competition on campus Thursday evening.

"This $10,000 is our lucky charm. We need to go out and raise close to a half-million dollars to launch the business, but this is a beginning for us," said Sandra Reynoso, COO of SialoGen. "This competition is not about the money. The feedback we have received has been invaluable. I was taken aback when two venture capitalists and an angel investor who judged our presentation approached me and offered their help. I didn't have to move. I was excited that people were coming up to me saying that we want UC Davis to be successful in starting companies."

"In SialoGen we found a start-up with an intriguing new hypothesis on the molecular cause of invading cancer cells, and more importantly, the drug candidates to treat cancer based on this novel idea," said Brian Atwood, a managing director of Versant Ventures in Menlo Park and a UC Davis alumnus. "Their scientific work and business plan were first rate, and the judges were impressed with the SialoGen team."

Second place and $3,000 was awarded to Inventra of Davis, which focuses on innovative prosthetic valve technology for the treatment of cardiovascular disease. Team members are Dr. Michael Dake, Chris Elkins, Karoon Monfared, Bassel Rifai, Ceron Rhee, Dr. Jacob Waugh and UC Davis undergraduate Lana Chan.

As the audience's favorite, Davis BioPharma of Davis won the People's Choice award and $2,000. The company has developed technology that more quickly screens compounds leading to the discovery and identification of new drugs, with an emphasis on those used in the treatment of cancer.

Team members are Paul Yu-Yang, an MBA and doctoral student at UC Davis; Suzanne Miyamoto, a research assistant at the UC Davis School of Medicine; Alan Lehman, a post-doctoral scholar at the UC Davis Medical Center; Jeff Doherty, an MBA student at UC Davis; Alicia Jerome, an MBA student; Young Lee, a doctoral candidate; Flore Look, a law student; and Kit Lam, a professor and chief of hematology/oncology at the medical center.

The other finalist team was Applied Microsensors, Inc. of Oakland, which is promoting sensors that will allow farms to remotely monitor their crop's health with real-time data on temperature, humidity and light intensity. Team members are Sparky Rose; Kimberly Cornett, a UC Davis master's graduate and doctoral candidate; Michael Guddal, a master's graduate of UC Davis; and Mark Chang, a graduate of UC Davis.

Matthew Weeks, co-chair of the competition, said the organizing team was pleased with the level and breadth of competitors this year. "As a direct result of our increased outreach efforts, we've seen increased participation from across the UC Davis campus, including more student teams from the Graduate School of Management, biotechnology and engineering," said Weeks.

"The Big Bang! is building closer ties between investors and the academic community," added co-chair Corinna Krueger. "This gives financiers early access to innovative research and technology investment opportunities originating at UC Davis, particularly in the life sciences."

After the competition's launch in October, students from the management school organized a series of workshops to help competitors craft business plans based on marketable ideas.

More than 40 teams submitted executive summaries of their business plans in two rounds: a November warm-up round and a final deadline in February. Eleven qualifiers were asked to submit complete business plans in March. Following a review of the business plans, four teams were selected to make presentations before judges Wednesday and before a public audience Thursday.

Throughout the competition, judges were asked to evaluate the summaries, plans and presentations as they would for ventures funded by their firms. The final judging panel included: Gilles Attia of GrayCary Ware & Freidenrich in Sacramento; Brian Atwood of Versant Ventures in Menlo Park; Barry Selick from Sofinnova Ventures in San Francisco; Bill Lanfri from Accel Partners in Palo Alto; David Aslin from 3i in Palo Alto; Cynthia Posehn from the Sacramento Angels; Roger Akers from Akers Capital in Fair Oaks; Harry Laswell from American River Ventures in Roseville; and Pete Bernardoni from Technology Funding in El Dorado Hills.

About 25 firms provided financial sponsorship, led workshops, groomed the teams or judged the competition.

Major sponsors included Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich law firm, Lightsource Creative Communications and Versant Ventures. Other sponsors included Fenwich & West; Sofinnova Ventures, Kinko's, William Lanfri and Bank of Sacramento.

For more information, visit http://bigbang.gsm.ucdavis.edu/

This is not directly related, but since it is also an academic student project, I thought I'd add it here:

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Diabetes Tech Is Good Biz Cents

By Katie Dean | Also by this reporter Page 1 of 2 next »

02:00 AM May. 17, 2003 PT

Diabetics endure painful and frequent finger pricking to stay healthy, but such practices may be a thing of the past if a new, award-winning technology comes to market.

A team of students, called SmartCells, won the $30,000 grand prize earlier this week in the annual MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competition for its work on a new monitoring device.

Click thumbnails for full-size image:
The winners of the MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competition delivered a winning business plan for a once-a-day, self-regulating insulin delivery system for diabetics. The SmartCells team, pictured left to right, are John Hebert, MIT; Martin Curiel, Harvard University; Todd Zion, MIT; Tsafrir Vanounou, Harvard; and Robert Bruch, MIT.

The team hopes its work will simplify life for diabetics who must monitor their blood sugar meticulously on a daily basis. The team developed a product called SmartInsulin which automatically regulates the blood-glucose levels in diabetic patients.

The five-member SmartCells team, made up of students from MIT and Harvard Business School, beat out a field of 118 teams, which had submitted plans on subjects including vehicle safety devices, semiconductors and alternative fuels.

SmartCells team member Todd Zion invented the technology as part of his Ph.D. research in chemical engineering at MIT. He's been working on the project for about four years.

The product is a once-a-day injection. Currently, monitoring glucose levels can be cumbersome and painful for diabetics who prick their fingers multiple times daily to test blood-glucose levels. Those who depend on insulin -- Type 1 diabetics and a small percentage of Type 2 diabetics -- must give themselves shots several times a day.

"It's well known that you can measure your blood sugar and then monitor your diet to control your blood sugar, but that whole process is not nearly as good as (how) a nondiabetic controls their blood sugar," Zion said. "You really need that real-time response to fluctuations and changes in blood sugar. That's essentially what we’ve built into SmartInsulin."

SmartInsulin contains nanoparticles that release insulin in proportion to blood-glucose levels, according to team member John Hebert, a second-year student at MIT Sloan School of Management.

"These particles will start to slowly break down and release insulin into the bloodstream, regulating (the) blood-sugar level," Hebert said. "Once the blood sugar is at normal levels, the particles close back up, resolidify and then stop releasing insulin."

Zion had an additional incentive for researching this disease.

"Type 1 runs in my family. There's a genetic predisposition for it," Zion said. "I also have family members who have Type 2 diabetes. It hits home a little bit closer when someone you know has the disease."

The SmartCells team members will use their winnings to help launch the company. They have filed a preliminary application for a patent.

Hebert said that throughout the competition, which starts each fall, the team received invaluable feedback from the judges on how to structure their financials, how to focus on the market and how to proceed with product development.

"We're very honored to be chosen among so many great teams and so many great technologies," he said.

"We don't know how to cure diabetes so it's a market that is going to be there for the foreseeable future," said Joe Hadzima, an MIT Sloan lecturer and venture capitalist at Main Street Partners who has served as one of the judges each year since the contest began in 1990. "Now the question is can they take it from the lab to clinical trials."

Hadzima said the strong lab research seems to indicate the product could make it to market within a few years. Of course, there's no guarantee, he added.

Medically based teams have dominated the prestigious entrepreneurship competition for the past five years.

Hadzima said this area "pulls disciplines together to solve problems" and that often these team members have been researching these areas for many years.

The winners of the MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competition delivered a winning business plan for a once-a-day, self-regulating insulin delivery system for diabetics. The SmartCells team, pictured left to right, are John Hebert, MIT; Martin Curiel, Harvard University; Todd Zion, MIT; Tsafrir Vanounou, Harvard; and Robert Bruch, MIT.

Medical technology "is a big space and the population is not getting any younger on average," he said. "These are big recurring problems and a large market. It won't just be a fad."

The competition has sparked the success of more than 60 companies including Akamai Technologies and others acquired by Cisco Systems, Broadcom and Ask Jeeves.

This year's runners-up, the NeuroBionics and Brontes teams, collected $10,000 apiece for their business plans.

NeuroBionics submitted a plan to build neuromodulation devices that would work like "a pacemaker for the brain." The team, which built a prototype of the implanted, self-regulated electrical stimulation system, would help treat epilepsy, obesity and depression.

Brontes developed a low-cost camera system that transforms 2-D instruments like cameras and microscopes into 3-D devices.

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