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Graduating Up the Corporate Ladder

A group of Ivy League transplants like to joke that it was the ocean breeze that landed them in San Diego, but these scientists-turned-business executives admit it was more than warm sand and swaying palms that enticed them.

At least six local biotechnology executives have come from Cornell University’s “12-month option” masters in business administration program, which accepts 20-40 students each year, compared with Harvard University’s 900. The percentage of graduates from the selective “TMO” program, based in Ithaca, N.Y., who have landed in San Diego, is significant when considering that it is geographically almost as far as one can travel from San Diego without leaving the United States. San Diego-based companies Adventrx Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Anadys Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Immusol, Inc. have hired Cornell TMO grads as business development executives responsible for identifying and pursuing opportunities for buying or selling technologies, gaining partnerships with companies worldwide, and conducting market research.

The recipe for successful biotech executives, says Cornell graduate Zhu Shen, senior director of business development at Immusol, is to have both science and business training.

“It’s very important to be able to use my scientific background to translate terms for marketing people,” said Shen, who speaks fluent Chinese. “It gives you a decided competitive edge. Some people don’t have an appreciation of technology and an understanding of scientific terms. When you are doing deals with other companies, you need to have a grasp of the technical understanding that makes you more convincing and persuasive.”


Successful Recipe

Joe Panetta, the chief executive officer of Biocom, the region’s life sciences trade group, interacts constantly with local biotech executives and keeps a close eye on San Diego firms. He said success in the field calls for a balance of business sense, basic science and leadership.

“I think it is hard to say whether business or science is more important,” Panetta said. “I’ve seen successful scientists become executives and I’ve seen businessmen who have gained a strong understanding of science.”

Shen received a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Colorado in 1994. She began pursuing postdoctoral work, but as the first year was up, she was swept away by her passion for training executives from China and America on how to relate to one another in business. She developed a pilot program for the former Allied Signal, now called Honeywell and based in Morristown, N.J., and other companies began to employ her to teach on a consultant basis, she said.

“(Being in a lab) seemed so removed from real life to me at the time,” Shen said. “(In consulting), I had the ability to communicate with people and enjoy it.”

Since the TMO program has a prerequisite of either a doctorate or master’s degree in a scientific field, it essentially specializes in turning scientists accustomed to often solo lab research into business-savvy networkers, graduates said.

After enrolling in the Cornell program in 1997, Shen spent time working for life sciences firms in New York and San Francisco, including Bayer Corp., the German pharmaceutical company known for its aspirin.

When she ultimately landed at Immusol in April 2005, Shen hired Soorena Izadifar, who also completed the TMO program. He now serves under Shen as the manager of business development. The company works on therapies for cancer, viral infection and ophthalmology.


Winning Team

Before entering the Cornell program, Izadifar was part of a 20-member team at the John Wayne Cancer Institute in Santa Monica that manufactured Canvaxin. San Diego-based CancerVax Corp., which recently merged with Germany-based Micromet, Inc., was formed around the technology.

Izadifar has a master’s in molecular microbiology from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

“Seeing the transition of a 20-person group to a company made me want to learn more about the process,” said Izadifar, who was the youngest supervisor at CancerVax when he was 24. He is now age 29.

The closeness of the Cornell alumni here has meant rapid career progress for the East Coasters.

“Zhu helped me, I helped Carmine (Stengone), and Carmine and I helped Soorena,” said Brian Culley, a 2002 graduate of Cornell’s TMO program who, at age 34, is the vice president of business development for Adventrx.

The biotech develops anti-viral drugs, those to treat cancer, as well as compounds that can improve other drugs. The company’s most advanced therapy is CoFactor, which is about three years from being submitted to the Food and Drug Administration, Culley said.

Before Culley left for Tokyo last week to seek partnerships for Adventrx, he said he didn’t know if there was another school that had “made such an impact on San Diego’s business development in the biotech community.”

“There’s not a lot of these jobs out there,” said Culley, who received a bachelor’s degree in biology at Boston University and has worked at San Diego’s Neurocrine Biosciences as a researcher in its immunology group. “Where else would you want to do it rather than San Diego?”


Staying Local

Executives in San Diego have mostly sought their advanced business degrees through San Diego State University or the University of San Diego, said Clark Jordan, assistant dean of UC San Diego’s new Rady School of Management.

The Rady school enrolled its first class in 2004, albeit part time, and now has around 60 full-time students. When a new building is complete at the end of next year, said Jordan, the school will likely see a class of about 500-600. About 40 percent of this year’s M.B.A. students at UCSD are focusing on life sciences, and another 40 percent are focusing on high-tech industries.

Jordan said while Cornell is a “fine school,” he called the M.B.A. program “underpowered.”

Jordan said the Rady school’s two-year M.B.A. program offers the first chance to get such a degree in San Diego from a research institution, making it a prime educational outlet for residents who want to excel in management of life sciences companies. The school’s goal is to be the “go-to” M.B.A. program for local members or aspirants of the life sciences, defense and high-tech industries.

Jordan said he knows of only one other such program that is one year long instead of two , the University of Pittsburgh.

Cornell’s program works by requiring students to start intensive course work in the summer, essentially reducing the first year of course work into three months. Culley said students get a couple of weeks of vacation, then move into the second year’s course work in the fall.

Carmine Stengone, another Cornell TMO grad, is vice president of business development at Anadys, which develops drugs to treat diseases such as hepatitis and cancer. Though he was traveling in South Korea for his job last week, Stengone responded by e-mail, saying he selected San Diego because of “ample opportunities in both biotech and tech with exposure to big pharma, mid-sized biotech, emerging biotech and start-ups.”

Stengone worked at Johnson & Johnson’s La Jolla research-and-development facility before his time with Anadys. He began as a senior financial analyst at Johnson & Johnson and was promoted within a year to manager of business development finance and strategic planning.

A financing deal Stengone negotiated for Anadys’ collaboration with Switzerland-based Novartis for a hepatitis therapy has won two awards , the Most Creative and Significant Deal award at the 2005 annual Biotech CEO Meeting and Licensing Deal of the Year at the annual Scrip Awards in England.

When asked why he sought to pursue his career in San Diego, Stengone wrote, “Even though we only spent one winter in Ithaca, the frigid days only strengthens one’s resolve to work and live in sunny southern California.”

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