BioWorld Today Columnist
My fancy was struck by the news that Gene Logic Inc., of Gaithersburg, Md., was selling off its genomics division and planning to change its name as well.
Gene Logic is one of the last of the brave band of "genomics" companies, formed back in the great "tools and -omics" financing fad of the late 1990s, to shed its past.
Once the hot place to invest, genomics lost its luster. Gene Logic's colleagues Millennium, Human Genome Sciences, Incyte, Myriad, Curagen, Genome Therapeutics (acquired), Hyseq (now Nuvelo) and Lynx (acquired) all migrated to the "drug, not tool" side, got acquired, and/or changed their names as their mission changed.
Oh, sure, Gene Logic forayed into other arenas as the -omics frenzy faded. It bought TherImmune, a contract research company, in 2003. It acquired in vivo imaging and in vitro metabolomics technology in 2004, then leaped on the "repurposing" bandwagon in 2005 with Pfizer and Roche deals.
That last fad is a "keeper," judging by the latest press release. The board wants to change the company name to Ore Pharmaceuticals, presumably to indicate its ability to mine for value in under-valued drugs. The Gene Logic name will migrate to India as part of the genomics division sale to Ocimum Biosolutions Ltd.
This news made me nostalgic, so I headed into my trusty database to look for other firms that changed their names to protect the "innocent" (or at the very least throw new investors off the track of old bad news).
My personal favorite example of poor choice of new name goes to MarrowTech - the first stem cell company, founded in the 1980s. Okay, so MarrowTech might scare away investors. But I ask you, is Advanced Tissue Sciences that much better? I always thought folks would either be grossed out by the reference to "tissues" or think they were developing a new generation of Kleenex.
The evolution of California Biotechnology Inc. into Scios in the 1990s is a good example of using a new name to cover up old tracks. This firm had been around since 1981 and had made little progress toward the market by 1992.
It was briefly called Scios Nova following one of the first "accelerated commercialization" plays, when it acquired David Blech's Nova Pharmaceutical Corp. and some marketed psychiatric drugs. These drugs failed to generate net cash, and the sales force ate dollars. Scios eventually got new management, then was acquired by J&J.
NeoRx Corp. was founded in 1992 with an initial focus on . well, all I remember is its radio-labeled antibody in vivo tumor imaging. The company struggled for years to drag the FDA toward providing guidance for developing such products, to little avail. There was a foray into genomics and gene discovery in the late 1990s, but company death seemed certain. Now called Poniard Pharmaceuticals, the firm has new management, got infusions of $65 million in 2006 (private) and 2007 (public), moved the office to San Francisco and changed the name.
And finally, the evolution of Bio-Technology General into Savient Pharmaceuticals did a good job of camouflaging that firm's 1980s birth date, allowing management to duck some of the recurring questions about just when management planned to actually make money.
Xoma Corp., on the other hand, has bravely kept its original 1980s name after decades of soldiering on. Its original technical expertise and patent portfolio in the monoclonal antibody and peptide engineering fields came to its rescue when therapeutics didn't pan out.
Don't Panic
Sometimes the name change marks a desire to distract investors from past management. ICN Pharmaceuticals was inextricably linked to its founding CEO Milan Panic. Panic became infamous for prematurely releasing results from an AIDS drug trial at H&Q during the 1980s, not to mention his reign as prime minister of Yugoslavia.
A 1999 company press release that inexplicably reported on Panic's ideas for supporting democracy in Kosovo, Bosnia, and the surrounding area also spotlighted Panic's continued ire over the Milosevic government's seizure of ICN Yugoslavia.
But 2003 saw a name change to Valeant, a shift to the currently "hot" specialty pharma strategy, and new top management.
Lidak Pharmaceuticals, founded in 1988 around David Katz, got its new name - Avanir - after the board fired Katz a decade later. For a view of the soap opera nature of this, the March 8, 2005 San Diego Union-Tribune reported: "When Lidak Pharmaceuticals was sued for ousting David Katz as its chief executive in 1998, the company countersued him for mismanagement and misconduct including allegations of bizarre and hostile treatment of employees."
In attempting to portray Katz as a so-called toxic boss, he was compared to Captain Queeg, the mentally disintegrating ship captain in the "The Caine Mutiny." That image stuck with jurors, who eventually awarded Katz $6.7 million in damages while ordering him to pay the pharmaceutical company $9 million." Post-Merger Changes Name changes frequently show up post-merger. One of the great examples of marrying to get a MUCH better name was when T. Breeders (what WERE they thinking?) merged with Viacord and the combo became ViaCell Inc. This name does a darned good job of describing the firm's cord blood stem cell focus, though it does prompt Marx Brothers' quotes (I know why a chicken, but ViaCord?). Migenix used to be Micrologix International Ltd., which in turn was created by the acquisition in 1990 of two tiny academic-run startups at the University of British Columbia by Canadian Consolidated Mining. I believe this was the first example of a reverse merger with a public shell (this one on the then-slightly slimy Vancouver Stock Exchange) sucking up a biotech business. A more recent reverse merger turned Hudson Health Sciences Inc. into Hana Biosciences Inc. when Email Real Estate.com Inc. acquired it. Apparently, the Email folks didn't know about the sordid past of Hana Biologics here in the San Francisco area, where Hana Biosciences was relocated. Sometimes early company names are "placeholders" that get changed once the company moves into the larger stage. Stemco Biomedical thankfully changed to Aldagen Inc. just in time to enter significant clinical studies and raise big bucks. Big Bear Bio Inc. turned into Acoligix Inc. (though I do retain a fondness for the original name). Finally, I have a candidate for renaming: Renamed Biologics, formerly called Nephros Therapeutics Inc. It could refer to renal drugs or, depending on how you choose to view the name .. (For more name changes, see chart on page 5.) Robbins-Roth, Ph.D., founding partner of BioVenture Consultants, can be reached at biogodess@earthlink.net