Newton, Handique raise profile of med device startup By Tom Henderson

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1 Page 1 of 6 Advanced Search: Detroit Business» Detroit and Southeast Michigan's premier business news and information website Home This Week's Issue News Crain's Awards Features Lists/Resources Columns Blogs Events Video Not logged in to community. LOG IN or REGISTER Detroit Jobs Free Signup Subscriber Service Contacts Advertise Classifieds Topics in this article: Entrepreneurship Technology September 11, :00 PM Newton, Handique raise profile of med device startup By Tom Henderson Most Read In Memoriam Most Commented Born from crisis: Businesses adapt to post-9-11 world 9-11 forced big changes for biz: Increased security often costly DeNovo Sciences LLC, a tiny medical device startup in Plymouth Township, has joined forces with two big names: Roger Newton and Kalyan Handique. Detroit department focuses on communication, education KEITH CRAIN: Sept. 11: A day that no one will ever forget Handique, co-founder of HandyLab Inc., will serve as CEO and Newton, founder of Esperion Therapeutics Inc., as scientific adviser. Both men also will be investors. DeNovo, which rents literally just a few square feet of lab space at the Michigan Life Science and Innovation Center, was founded by Chris Siemer, Saedeh Sepehri and Handique Priya Gogoi, young biologists whose biggest accomplishment to date was their business plan win at the Great Lakes Entrepreneurs Quest in June. Their product is a small microfluidic chip about an inch square that they hope will analyze blood samples to detect a wide range of very early-stage cancers. The company has a prototype that has passed early tests at the Karmanos Cancer Institute to see if the design works to capture cells. Blood flows in one end and out the other, with 10,000 tiny chambers in between to, in theory, capture cancer cells circulating from very early-stage tumors. The company hopes to start human trials soon and applied in August for a broad-based patent. It also is trying to raise a seed round of up to $1 million this year and a Series A venture capital round of $7 million next year. The technology, if it works as planned, could also be used by researchers to see how well drugs attack cancer cells. The market is huge, the need great. Such a chip could save tens of thousands of lives a year and many millions of dollars in biopsy costs, said Ramzi Mohammad, the director of gastrointestinal cancer research in the Department of Oncology at Karmanos. But good ideas and big markets are par for the course for entrepreneurs. What's not par for the course is landing the likes of Handique and Newton. Newton founded Esperion in 1998 to make a drug to treat high cholesterol. He raised $200 million to fund drug development, took the company public in a $54 million offering in 2000, then sold it to Pfizer Inc. in 2002 for $1.3 billion. In 2008, backed by nearly $23 million in venture capital, Newton relaunched Esperion, buying back from Pfizer the rights to a cholesterol-fighting molecule. It is currently in trials. Newton year. Siemer and Gogoi were interns at Esperion before deciding to found DeNovo last

2 Page 2 of 6 "Their flexibility in taking on projects impressed me," said Newton. "And their technology is fascinating. It has legs." In 2000, Handique and Sundaresh Brahmasandra, engineering students at the University of Michigan, founded HandyLab, which used microfluidic technology to quickly and cheaply diagnose diseases. The company raised more than $46 million over the next nine years. In October 2009, HandyLab was sold for $275 million to New Jersey-based Becton, Dickinson & Co. Handique, known as Handy, joined Becton, Dickinson & Co. He left Becton Dickinson at the end of July and recently agreed to join DeNovo after helping advise the cofounders for much of the past year. "At big companies, things move so slowly. I am really enjoying being back at a startup," said Handique. His first mission is to make the rounds of the local angel investor community. Tom Kinnear -- executive director of the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at the Ross School of Business at UM, chairman and president of the state's Venture Michigan Fund and an avid local angel investor -- will be happy to hear Handique's pitch. "This is a great story, a perfect example of a successful entrepreneur with a very good reputation taking his talents to help another company grow," Kinnear said. And Jan Garfinkle, managing director of Ann Arbor-based Arboretum Ventures, a HandyLab investor, looks forward to hearing from Handique. "I'm excited to hear the news," Garfinkle said. "His strength is building a team and a culture." The timing of a pitch to Garfinkle is particularly fortunate for Handique because Arboretum announced last Thursday that it has closed on its third and largest fund of $140 million. The firm had been seeking $125 million, but based on returns from the sales of HandyLab, HealthMedia Inc. and Accuri Cytometers Inc., the fund was oversubscribed. Mahendra Ramsinghani, managing director of the First Step Fund, a $5 million Detroit-based fund that typically invests $50,000 in new companies, met with Handique and DeNovo's founders last week. He said he will recommend an investment in the company. Tom Henderson: (313) , thenderson@crain.com. D Durance wrote: Great Lakes Entrepreneur's Quest congratulates DeNovo Sciences on their progress and this exciting new announcement. This venture has great potential and is exactly the kind of innovative business we want to see growing and thriving in Michigan. 9/11/2011 9:39 PM EDT Recommend Report Abuse Permalink You must be logged in to leave a comment. Login Register Submit

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