Friday, March 7, 2008

Crane and Sasisekharan Make It a Trifecta

I had Tempo Pharmaceticals CEO (and Polaris Ventures partner) Alan Crane on a panel this past Wednesday night at one of the occasional Convergence Forum dinners at the Harvard Faculty Club.

Earlier in the week, Ryan McBride of Mass HIgh Tech had noted that Crane was involved in a new start-up called Parasol Therapeutics. This is the third company that Crane, MIT prof Ram Sasisekharan, and Polaris have started (#1 was Momenta Pharmaceuticals, now public; #2 was Tempo.)

Crane just smiled when I asked him about Parasol, which also involves Polaris principal Kevin Bitterman. He said the company is still very much in stealth mode, and that he's just serving as a director -- no plans to leave Tempo and serve as Parasol's CEO.

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Sunday, August 26, 2007

Today's Globe column: 'Why biotech CEOs need to think like Steve Jobs'

Today's Globe column deals with the importance of being able to sell a big vision in life sciences -- especially when a start-up is trying to pioneer a new area of science.

Among the CEOs I mention as "poster child" communicators are several alumni of Millennium Pharmaceuticals, including John Maraganore of Alnylam, Steve Holtzman of Infinity, and Alan Crane of Tempo Pharmaceuticals. Then you've got Christoph Westphal of Sirtris, and Josh Boger of Vertex. All these guys have elements of Steve Jobs' ability to communicate something ambitious and exciting -- something that is sorely missing among tech companies in New England right now.

The video clip features Alan Crane explaining how Tempo is using nanotechnology to engineer a new kind of cancer drug.



Finally, a few quotes that didn't make it into the edited piece....

“Someone who is a great storyteller can win people over with relatively little substance,” says Michael Gilman, formerly executive vice president of research at Biogen Idec. “But other people tend to be rubbed the wrong way by it.”

“The scientist in me is never going to make assertions that I don’t think I can back up with data,” says Gilman. “That’s just the way I’m wired. If you promise too much and disappoint, it’s not good for you in the long run.” Gilman founded Stromedix, Inc. of Cambridge in 2005, licensing a product that Biogen Idec had started to develop. It’ll begin trials later this year.

“Companies undergo a brutal and challenging transition when they’re forced to be evaluated on the merits of their products,” says Steven Dickman, CEO of the consultancy CBT Advisors. Dickman worked with Alnylam in its early days...

That transition hasn't quite happened yet for all of the companies I mention in the piece; while they've got drugs in clinical trials, none are yet on the market.

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