Dominion Resources GreenTech Incubator Opens

The Dominion Resources GreenTech Incubator will provide assistance with research, financial services, business planning and other issues as well as office space for start-up companies. As the companies grow, they are expected to move to nearby locations, boosting the local economy.

Founding members of the new incubator are Hanover County, Va., the Town of Ashland, Dominion and the Virginia Biosciences Development Center (VBDC) of Richmond, Va., which will manage the GreenTech incubator. The VBDC, which manages the Virginia Bio-Technology Research Park’s business incubator in downtown Richmond, has helped launch 68 companies in its 13 years of existence. Forty-one of those companies have successfully left the center, including three whose stock is now traded publicly.

The GreenTech incubator will follow Gov. Tim Kaine’s “Renew Virginia” program and is expected to contribute to Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell’s promise to create new companies and jobs early in the incoming administration.

Twins start firm to help allergy sufferers

As lifelong allergy sufferers, twin brothers Eric S. Edwards and Evan T. Edwards, co-founders of the Richmond-based specialty pharmaceutical firm Intelliject Inc., keep their epinephrine auto-injectors close by.  The accidental ingestion of peanuts, tree nuts and shellfish can cause them to go into anaphylactic shock, a potentially fatal allergic reaction.  Injecting the drug epinephrine into the thigh quickly reverses the symptoms.

The 29-year-old brothers and their management team have built Intelliject around the goal of creating a more intuitive, compact and safer emergency epinephrine delivery system.

Their result: a credit-card-size device that "talks" users through administering epinephrine.  In the hands of a babysitter or parent who has never used an epinephrine injector, for instance, precious seconds could be lost trying to figure it out, he said.

A month ago, Intelliject moved into the big leagues, announcing a multimillion licensing deal with pharmaceutical giant Sanofi-Aventis U.S., which will manufacture and market Intelliject's novel epinephrine injector.

The agreement with Sanofi-Aventis U.S. calls for $25 million up front to Intelliject. In addition, Intelliject is eligible for up to $205 million more over time as development and commercial milestones are reached, plus royalties on sales associated with the licensure.
The Virginia BioTechnology Research Park, with its business incubation centers, offered a place early on for brother’s to fine-tune their idea.

"We asked them to tell us their story," recalled David R. Lohr, executive director and vice president of business development at the park's Biosciences Development Center. "What are you trying to accomplish? What are you looking for in the way of help? We also shared with them our program, how it works, what it does and perhaps what it doesn't do. . . . We don't invest, but we can help them raise capital."

Lohr said his first impression of the brothers is that they had a unique and revolutionary idea -- they probably didn't realize how revolutionary.  "We helped them to think about this as a drug-delivery company and not just a single-product company," Lohr said.
Over the next three to four years, the incubation center provided mentoring, networking, help with the business plan and financial model development, fundraising and help identifying a chief executive.
"Why are these guys successful? They had a great idea rooted in their personal understanding of an unmet medical need," Lohr said.

"The thing that differentiated them is these guys listened and took the advice they were given from this myriad of advisers. They processed it, integrated it, and they just kept redoing their thinking."