Funding, jobs
to help cancer battle
Bioscience authority supports firm’s
drug approval efforts
October 3, 2007
Lawrence Journal World - By Mark Fagan
CritiTech Inc. is preparing to hire 25 to 30
employees as its cancer-fighting drug formulation works its
way through the federal approval process during the next three
years.
The Lawrence-based company, founded a decade
ago as an outgrowth of a Kansas University professor’s
research into super-critical fluid technology, is working
to win permission for use of its Nanotax formulation to fight
ovarian and pancreatic cancers.
CritiTech recently closed a round of financing
that generated more than $2 million for the company’s
ongoing development efforts, which include work on another
drug that would be complementary to Nanotax, said Sam Campbell,
chief executive officer.
“Obviously, we
feel great about it,” Campbell said. “Everybody
in the company and those who are knowledgeable about it are
very excited at this point.”
To help fund the company’s investigational
new drug application for Nanotax, the Kansas Bioscience Authority
has agreed to give CritiTech $260,000 through the authority’s
Bioscience Tax Investment Incentive Program. The program allows
the authority to cover up to 50 percent of a company’s
net operating losses.
Among the program’s goals are to increase
permanent, full-time employment in the state.
“This program fits perfectly for what we’re trying
to achieve,” said Jan Katterhenry, the authority’s
chief financial officer and chief operating officer. “I
think this company has some fantastic opportunities.”
CritiTech’s application for money through
the incentive program was one of several projects approved
Friday by the authority’s board of directors. The others:
• Giving $1.25
million to an undisclosed company, described as a “Lenexa-based
manufacturer of high-quality microbiology products,”
for expanding manufacturing, research and development in Kansas.
The company forecasts the expansion to cost $7 million to
$12 million during the next five years, with an addition of
90 to 180 new employees.
• Giving Kansas
Environmental Management Associates, Topeka, a research and
development voucher for up to $312,000 of work with Kansas
State University researchers on techniques for reducing phosphorous
levels at cattle feedlots. The company intends to match the
authority’s investment, while K-State plans to contribute
$65,000.
The authority also is working with K-State
to help fund research of Juergen Richt, an animal health researcher
scheduled to join the university’s faculty in April.
K-State will be expected to match the authority’s eventual
contributions, and the authority anticipates Richt’s
research efforts will attract up to $1 million a year in financing
within several years of his arrival.
The bioscience authority, formed by the state
in 2004, is a 15-year effort with an anticipated $588 million
to conduct, facilitate, support, finance and perform bioscience
research, development and commercialization in Kansas.
Goals include creating jobs, fostering economic
growth and advancing scientific knowledge while making the
state a national leader in bioscience.
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