Friday, May 4, 2007

Spain's Biotech Revolution

Continued from Page 7

Developing Experience
Credibility is crucial in this emerging field. The company Advancell began when its university-based founders realized that their services in cell-based reagents were in high demand. Today the company has two main areas of operation: one in services and the other in innovative pharmaceutical products.

The pharmaceutical arm of the company is developing a new system for drug delivery based on nanoparticles and natural biopolymers. Basically, a naturally occurring substance called chitosan, a powder made of crushed crustaceans, provides the transport mechanism to encapsulate drugs in nanoparticles. This can be useful for topical delivery of drugs used to treat eye diseases, or for oral delivery of drugs such as insulin. Because this new technique is being tested with drugs that have already been approved, the trial phase is only about two years, as opposed to the usual 10 for testing new drugs—and these existing drugs could see dramatic improvement in efficacy and safety.

Advancell’s business model is typical of many current Spanish biotech companies: they began providing services as a way to earn money and then invested that money in research and innovation.

The business model isn’t the only typical feature of the Advancell story. CEO Luis Ruiz says his personal story reflects the experience of most others in the current generation of biotechnology entrepreneurs in Spain. He was a molecular biologist with years of experience in academia, then shifted to the local pharmaceutical industry and spent four years in business development.

“I had the rare hybrid academic and business profile that is required for managing these kinds of companies,” says Ruiz.

Of other heads of companies that started within the past five years, such as Garmendia of Genetrix and Carlos Buesa of Oryzon Genomics, Ruiz says, “All of us came from the university, at a certain point shifted to industry, and with this experience began managing biotech companies.”

Today the company has 30 employees. The services arm is already making money, and the research arm is closing in on creating a marketable product. “Now there are more people with a variety of experience,” says Ruiz, but in 2000 or 2001, when the current generation of biotech business began, “not many people were willing to take the risk.” Today, though, the field has changed. He adds, “I feel a little privileged; I’m a player in something that is evolving very positively, and I’m optimistic about where it’s moving.”