AllTranz
Audra Stinchcomb, Chief Scientific Officer and Founder
When Audra Stinchcomb began working for the University of Kentucky six years ago, she did not expect it to lead to her first foray in entrepreneurial business management.
But after UK president Lee Todd took the helm and stepped up the university's efforts to encourage research commercialization, Stinchcomb made the decision to launch her own new venture.
"Before that, I would have never had any idea that I would be running a pharmaceutical research company," said Stinchcomb, an associate professor in the UK College of Pharmacy and founder of AllTranz.
Launched in 2004, the company's research focuses on Stinchcomb's pharmaceutical area of expertise - topical and transdermal treatments, primarily for chronic, nerve-related pain. Pain management is currently a $40 billion industry, and medications administered non-invasively through the skin can offer numerous advantages for patients, including a reduced incidence of serious side effects ranging from drowsiness to nausea and constipation. In addition, because the transdermal method can have the ability to deliver medication for as long as one week through a single patch application, Alltranz products could offer the added benefit of improving patient compliance.
The company, which was initially funded through profits from contract research, received $860,000 in capital investment from the Kentucky Seed Capital Fund, the Commonwealth Seed Capital Fund, the Bluegrass Angels and the Bluegrass Angels Venture Fund in 2007. Alltranz was also awarded $400,000 from the Kentucky Science and Technology Center's Gap Fund, designed to help companies bridge the gap between early-stage seed funding and the "venture-ready" stage of development. In addition, the company has also been awarded a $500,000 forgivable equipment loan from the state's Department of Commercialization and Innovation.
"The state funding programs have been very helpful to us," said Stinchcomb, who serves as chief scientific officer of Alltranz.
AllTranz is now focusing its energy primarily on developing more of its own products and establishing partnerships that they hope will lead to new projects in the future. The company has entered a partnership with Louisville-based MetaCyte, Inc., which specializes in launching and managing start-up health science businesses.
AllTranz's lead product is currently in the pre-clinical stage, but Stinchcomb hopes to begin clinical trials with the next one to two years.
"There are so many people with untreated pain who need different options," Stinchcomb said. "Different drugs work on different people. There need to be more options available."
Expungent Assistance Services
Brian Poe, chairman and CEO
For the millions of Americans with criminal records who may be eligible to have their misdeeds expunged by the legal system, the past can still follow them like a digital scarlet letter, in the form of multiple outdated and unregulated Web databases.
Lexington-based Expungement Assistance Services, or EAS, works with clients nationwide, from homeless individuals to big-name celebrities, who are looking to improve their career and credit opportunities by starting again with a clean slate. The company, which has roughly 50 employees including attorneys, CPAs and IT professionals, uses scalable software to help clients not only manage the expungement process but also navigate the intricate web of online criminal record reporting systems that would need to be rectified.
"It's a large market. It's untapped," said Brian Poe, EAS chairman and CEO, who literally wrote the book on the subject, entitled A Guide to Expungements and Pardons. "We were the first ones to ever do this nationwide."
In its first year, 2006, the company showed a profit (EBITDA) with margins of more than 30 percent.†In its second year, revenues rose five times as compared to 2006, most of which was achieved in the first quarter, before the company stopped advertising its services in April in order to control backlog.
More than 70 million people in the United States have a criminal record, Poe said, and of those, roughly 56 million are eligible for EAS's services. As policy, EAS does not accept clients who have been convicted of extremely violent offenses, sexual assault or any crime related to the harm of a minor, even though these individuals may be eligible to have their records cleared in certain states.
"We are not against those who want to be tough on crime," Poe said. "We just believe in rehabilitation, and that once someone has completed their sentence, they can get a second chance."
EAS received $525,000 in funding from the state's Department of Commercialization and Innovation in 2007 and a little over $700,000 from insiders in the form of a bridge loan that converted to equity. The company has turned down almost $9 million in venture capital offers, Poe said, but they are hoping to expand with some new projects in the future that could require additional funding. They are looking at the possibility of adding one additional investment partner, Poe said, but they plan to be highly selective.
The company is currently working with lobbying groups to push national legislation for a fair criminal records reporting act, similar to the consumer protections of credit reporting laws, Poe said.
In addition, EAS has opened three walk-in clinics in Los Angeles and one in San Francisco, and is scheduled to open a fifth in Cleveland, Ohio, this month.
"We are looking to open over 100 clinics in the next 36 months," Poe said.
TranSecurity Systems
Fred Payne, President
In January of 2006, with the aid of a $1.5 million homeland security grant and a collaboration of three Kentucky universities and multiple partnering companies, UK professor Fred Payne and Chris Thompson set out to build a system that could one day ensure a more secure milk supply for the nation.
Bulk foods in general have been identified as a homeland security area of concern, and milk in particular has added vulnerability, because the bulk product is mixed from multiple sources during processing and then consumed quickly.†
Payne and Thompson designed a cargo security monitoring system that includes a tanker-based unit, a handheld mobile computer and a database server to provide Web-based tracking information, as well as communicating key cargo pickup and drop-off data and monitoring temperature.
Payne and Thompson launched their company, TranSecurity Systems, in March of last year to pursue commercial application of their ideas for the dairy industry, and possibly for other bulk transport food industries in the future, ranging from orange juice to caramel coloring.†But safety isn't TranSecurity Systems' only concern.
"We were directed at the beginning of the project to not rely on legislation to mandate our developed system," said Payne, TranSecurity president.†
The system being developed will offer added business benefits to the dairy market in addition to ensuring the secure transport of their product, Payne said. The first test system was installed in August. In addition to the homeland security grant, TranSecurity Systems was awarded an ICC grant of $25,000 in November, and they will be submitting another request for an extension of their homeland security funding early this year.
The desired target date for the company's beta phase is June 2008. And although Transecurity Systems is not depending on legislation to mandate bulk food monitoring systems, the call for stricter security measures may be coming. In a recent food protection policy issued by the FDA, the agency has asked for legislation to require the locking of all food tankers.
"Dairies are looking at the fact that, down the road, they may be required to implement a system like this," Payne said. "The FDA's request has just reemphasized the need for us to get our system commercialized."†
Nano-Mite
Greg Johnson, CEO
Despite the more than $60 billion projected to be spent by Americans on weight loss products in 2008 alone, the United States is, by virtually all accounts, losing the fight against fat. As recently as 1990, no state was found to have more than a 14 percent prevalence of obesity among its population, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. By 2006, obesity rates had climbed to 20 percent or more of the population in all but four states, with levels rising to 30 percent of the population or higher in Mississippi and West Virginia.
One Lexington start-up, Nano-Mite Technologies, is hoping to use nanotechnology and cellular biology to help people drop pounds by harnessing the fuel-burning capabilities of basic human cells.
Dr. Patrick Sullivan of the UK Spinal Cord and Brain Injury Research Center and Greg Johnson launched Nano-Mite Technologies more than two years ago. The company's research centers on the use of tubelike devices developed on the nano scale to serve as mitochondrial uncouplers, altering the rate at which the body's mitochondria, its cellular "powerhouses," burn energy on the microscopic level.
Unlike chemical-based mitochondria uncouplers that can dangerously thin the membrane around the mitochondria, Nano-Mite's development is a device designed to lodge itself in the mitochondrial membrane and self-regulate its own performance within safe, acceptable levels.
"It's definitely novel," said Nano-mite's CEO Johnson, a graduate of Eastern Kentucky Unviersity and retired founder of Thoroughbred Engineering in Georgetown, Ky.
Because most cells regenerate themselves every 30 days or so, the effects will not be permanent, Johnson said. Over time, the implanted cells would be expelled from the body, and additional doses would be needed to maintain the higher metabolic rate. However, the desired effects would conceivably mean clients could have their cake and lose weight, too.
"Technically, you could go from fat to thin without getting off the couch," Johnson said.
The company has completed testing in rats and will continue testing the product in dogs and cats this year. After that, Johnson said the company will seek approval for use of its patented nanotubes in humans.
Until then, the company is setting its sights initially on the obese pet market, in which consumers spend more than $500 million per year on weight-control pet food alone. Nano-Mite has been approved for an ICC grant of $25,000, but it has not yet drawn the funding. Up until now, all investment in the company's initial efforts has been out of pocket, Johnson said, but as the company's needs increase and the fine-tuning becomes more intricate, more investment may be needed to bring on additional expertise.
In the meantime, however, the market for their potential commercial venture isn't getting any smaller.
"If we could somehow eliminate or turn this (obesity trend) back, that would be huge for healthcare," Johnson said.
†
Naprogenix
Cindy Burklow, chief operating officer
The next breakthrough in treatment for depression, alcohol dependency or even breast cancer may be hidden within the genetic code of common plants of native Kentucky.
Based on the combined research of UK professors Dr. John Littleton and Deane Falcone, the biotechnology firm Naprogenix uses a strategic screening process based in genomics for identifying and screening novel compounds in native Kentucky plants for a wide variety of possible pharmaceutical or commercial applications. Naprogenix holds exclusive license on the technology developed by Littleton and Falcone, which is called Natural Products Genomics (NPG).
"Our technology's based on harnessing genomics and proprietary pharmological screens to access chemical diversity of plants, and we're trying to discover novel active compounds that can be used as leads in pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals," said Cindy Burklow, the company's chief operating officer.
The company, which is based in UK's Agricultural Technologies Commercialization Center incubator, focuses on native Kentucky plants with the added goal of eventually using its own discoveries to establish a viable crop and potential future economic benefit for the state's agricultural community. Burklow said Kentucky's plant life offers a rich genetic diversity, and the company has already assembled a library of thousands of screened Kentucky native plants and compounds derived from them.
"Our platform can be used to approach a diverse set of applications in a diverse set of fields," Burklow said. "We want to focus on Kentucky plants so we can find a plant that can be grown successfully here and that would help farmers, but also help our company develop extracts and compounds that can be used in drugs."
In 2007, Naprogenix was awarded $2.3 million in funding to be spread over multiple years, including $1.87 million in federal funding and almost $450,000 in state matching funds.
"The state of Kentucky has been great to us, especially with the Kentucky matching funds," Burklow said. "Without the matching funds, we wouldn't have been able to hire new people at our company." Naprogenix typically has about 13 employees on its roster.
Naprogenix is actively courting investors to help them advance their business and commercialization efforts. The company plans to market its platform technology to pharmaceutical companies and research firms as well as identifying and developing promising lead compounds for commercial uses. The company has already identified multiple lead compounds that have shown promise as drugs and insecticides, Burklow said.
"It's been a very exciting year for us," Burklow said.
Mersive Technologies
Randall Stevens, President and CEO
Lexington-based Mersive Technologies could soon be changing the way the business world looks at large-scale video displays.
Founded in late 2003, Mersive's work centers on the calibration of multi-projector displays, the kind used to build captivating planetarium-style presentations or room-sized digital displays. The company launched its first product, the SOL Server, a little over a year ago, primarily targeted to the military industry for use in advanced simulations. The system uses a standard digital video camera to analyze a display blended from multiple separate projectors and then aligns and calibrates the numerous images to create one expansive and seamless vision.
Having successfully breached the military market, Mersive is now testing the waters for more commercial applications.
"They used to have to do it by hand. It looked terrible and it took weeks, literally, to do it," said Randall Stevens, Mersive's president and CEO. "All the old-school ways of doing it now change, because we can do it automatically and with software."
Mersive's technology is scalable to accommodate as many projectors as a client wants or can afford to use.
"The real strength in what we're doing is that all the hardware components can be commodity components," Stevens said. Mersive's software, Stevens said, can enable clients to create a credible display by coordinating an assortment of relatively inexpensive components, resulting in a lower end cost for the result.
In addition to undergoing a round of venture capital financing in 2006, Mersive has been awarded both phase one and phase two SBIR grants from the National Science Foundation and has also earned matching funds from the state. In December, the company was also approved for up to $255,000 in funding from the High-Tech Investment Pool administered by the state's Cabinet for Economic Development.
After the company's success in 2007 in breaking into the military market, Mersive is now setting its sights on sizable commercial markets with an established interest in information display technology, such as the oil and gas industry, the aerospace market, and the automotive sector.
Mersive is also looking to move beyond advanced calibration with its technology. As image quality and resolution continue to advance in the future, Mersive has partnered with the National Science Foundation to transform how clients can manipulate - and potentially share - the information contained in image displays.
Its latest project, called Stingray, is designed to serve as more of an autonomous operating system than a calibration technology.
"It's not like a monitor or projector of the past, where you plug something into it and see data from one source," Stevens said. "It's multiple sources simultaneously, and potentially multiple users, simultaneously sharing those same pixels."
Mersive is just starting to roll out its first commercial displays and open people's eyes to the many potential applications of its head-turning capabilities.
"It lets (companies) rethink from the ground up what's possible," Stevens said.