Small Chemical Business
Discovery to Commercialization

The New Jersey Group of Small Chemical Businesses
is a professional organization dedicated to facilitate the formation and
growth of small chemical businesses, and serves its members by:

• Serving as a forum to foster interactions among chemical companies of all sizes, consultants and entrepreneurs,
• Promoting continuing education of its members through speaker presentations at its meetings and through special interest seminar.
• Facilitating networking among its members and guests, creating new business relationships
• Fostering closer relations between the chemical industry and the community at large.

The Group meets bi-monthly for dinner meetings. Speakers with relevant professional experience address topics of special interest to small chemical businesses in a setting that provides unique networking opportunities. 

Please visit our web site for complete details about our organization
http://NJChemBus.org

Chemical Process Development has emerged as a vital step in the long path to drug commercialization. Not only must process chemists devise new, efficient, safe and scalable synthetic routes to a target compound, they must also meet tight deadlines, while identifying cost-effective ways to produce commercial quantities of a target molecule. Realizing that “route design” was still primarily an intellectual/intuitive process, and no technological tools had been developed to support this complex task, ROW2 Technologies developed intellectual property and an innovative software application to revolutionize the process chemistry world. ROW2 developed ChemSpire®, a software application with an underlying knowledge base of commercially-practiced chemistry and novel searches based on “synthetic analogy”.

Dr. D’Antuono will outline the development process and critical learnings for launching a novel software technology. He will also describe how ROW2 has had to adapt to its customers’ needs and emerged as a “software & solutions” company. Today, ROW2 markets products to process development, business development and sourcing professionals in the life sciences and chemical industries. Finally, Dr. D’Antuono will highlight the key issues faced in the commercialization process, and strategies taken to address those issues, which led ROW2 to develop a sustainable business model based on breakthrough technology.

Biography:
Dr. Joseph D’Antuono received his B.S. in Chemistry/Biology from Providence College followed by a Ph.D. from Indiana University in Synthetic Organic Chemistry, working for Dr. David Williams, and an MBA from Rutgers University. Dr. D’Antuono held a number of diverse functions in the pharmaceutical industry, including positions in process development, regulatory affairs and strategic sourcing with increasing responsibilities within the organizations. After a short time selling contract manufacturing and generic APIs, Dr. D’Antuono joined ROW2. His experience has been instrumental in designing services and solutions targeting process development, business development and sourcing professionals in the areas of route design, business expansion and supplier capabilities and selection.

The effort involved in moving from the excitement of an initial discovery to the point of commercialization is often underestimated by those who make the initial invention. Dr. Kathryn Uhrich has made several innovative leaps forward in science, particularly in developing a new class of pharmacologically active biodegradable polymers, and it has been Polymerix Corporation's responsibility to find the right commercialization path for each. Some joys and pitfalls of developing an innovative platform technology in the post-web-bubble-post-9/11 investment environment will be described.

Biography:
Karen J. Giroux, Ph.D., Co-Founder, Chairman, President & CEO, was previously Interim President & COO of EpiGenesis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. where she executed a turnaround and negotiated deals with Chiesi Pharmaceuticals and Taisho Pharmaceuticals valued at over $120 million in pre-commercial funding for the company and managed the effort to obtain an IND for the first antisense drug for pulmonary delivery. Before joining EpiGenesis, she was a Principal with Muzinich & Co., Inc., where she identified and managed investment opportunities in life sciences, and initiated Ariane Health LDC, an offshore life sciences venture fund for which she served as Portfolio Manager and Board Member.

Earlier in her career, Dr. Giroux was a Vice President and then Director of Technology Management & Funding, at LP, a firm specializing in partnering early-stage, high-tech companies with large corporations. She has also held university as well as government management positions, and received a Fulbright award to spend a year in Germany as a Senior Professor of Business Administration investigating European financing opportunities for early-stage companies. She received a B.S. in interdisciplinary science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in biology and mathematics from North Carolina State University.

Prior to that, she held the position of Intellectual Property and Compliance Vice President for Agere Systems, the semiconductor subsidiary of Lucent Technologies. In that capacity, Ms. Sheft had profit and loss responsibility for Agere’s patent and technology licensing business, and was involved in the allocation of intellectual property assets during the AT&T trivestiture, using her experience in assessing patent portfolios. She has provided IP guidance to many of the high technology M&A and divestiture activities at AT&T and Lucent.

Ms. Sheft has extensive business development experience outside the U.S., including the negotiation of product development and marketing agreements with companies based in Japan, the PRC, and Europe.

Abstract:
HydroGlobe developed through a unique partnership between academia and the private sector. It was founded in 2001 by three professors from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ, who had developed technology for the removal of heavy metals from water, and had done pioneering work in prototyping the technology to remove arsenic from water in such areas as Bangladesh. Stevens, under its Technogenesis program, initiated incubation of the company, whose purpose was to commercialize the technologies. The start up was also to allow continued involvement of the professors, students, and other Institute personnel as a learning experience in how a business is started and run.

Through a licensing arrangement, HydroGlobe’s strong management team, which had high quality technical expertise, used their state of the art facilities for the commercialization process. After three years of product engineering, during with time HydroGlobe developed a series of water applications, HydroGlobe LLC was recently acquired by Graver Technologies, a leading player in the water treatment industry, who will move the technology through the next, expanded commercialization steps into a variety of markets.

Biography:
JOHN SCHROEDER, VP of Operations, Graver Technologies, HydroGlobe Division. Before the acquisition, he was President of HydroGlobe, Inc., which specializes in products and technologies for removal of Arsenic and heavy metals from drinking water and wastewater. He oversaw the development of technologies invented at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken NJ and recently sold the company to Graver Technologies LLC.

Prior to HydroGlobe, Mr. Schroeder was Executive Vice President of the $70 million Environmental Products and Services segments of Sybron Chemicals that included the ion exchange and biochemical products and custom manufacturing. He served on the Sybron Board of Directors until the company’s sale to Bayer Corporation in 2001.

Mr. Schroeder is Chairman of the Chemistry Council of New Jersey and is past Chairman of the Municipal Utilities Authority and of the Planning board of Mt. Laurel Township, New Jersey. He graduated from Stevens Institute of Technology in 1971 with a Bachelors degree in Engineering, and subsequently earned both a Masters in Chemical Engineering and a Masters in Management Science from Stevens. He currently holds a Professional Engineering license in the state of New Jersey.

InMat®, Inc., headquartered in Hillsborough, New Jersey, is a leading company in the field of nanocomposite coatings that dramatically improve the barrier properties of polymers and elastomers. Founded in 1999, and selling commercially since 2001, InMat develops, markets and manufactures nanocomposite coatings based on the Nanolok™ breakthrough technology.

InMat’s proprietary and patented Nanolok™ technology platform haas lead to commercial products that have been marketed under the brand name Air D-Fense™ and Nanolok™. These products enable significant advancements in industries where barrier technology is key, including flexible and rigid packaging, automotive,medical device components, protective apparel, and sports equipment.

InMat’s product line has been developed with the use of funding from large corporations, the founders, Angel investors, state agencies, federal agencies, and venture capital. All development efforts were focused on the needs of customers in specific markets. How these needs were addressed became the cornerstone of InMat’s strategy and business plan, enabling InMat™ to hold a leading position in nanocomposite barrier coatings

Biography:
Harris A. Goldberg, President & CEO, InMat® Inc., received his Ph.D. in condensed matter theory from the University of Massachusetts in 1975. After a postdoc at the University of Toronto, he began an industrial research career at the Celanese Research Center in Summit, New Jersey in 1978.

Working first for Celanese, and later for Hoechst Celanese, he made technical contributions and led business development teams in numerous material science areas concentrating on organic based optical and electronic materials. He has experience in taking technology from concept through all the stages of R&D to commercialization. With more than twenty patents, Dr. Goldberg has co-authored over forty technical papers as well as a book entitled The Physics of Carbon and Graphite Fibers.

In 1999, he co-founded InMat LLC with his partner, Dr. Carrie Feeney, supported by their technical team. It later became InMat Inc. The company’s first commercial success was with Wilson Sporting Goods, who introduced their Double Core™ tennis ball, the official ball of the Davis Cup, in July of 2001 using the Nanolok™ technology. InMat leads the development of nanocomposite barrier coatings for use in packaging, sporting goods, automotive and chemical protection markets.