Malvern man moves NC company close to home
"The best product development scientists I've ever worked with are up here"
When you're boss, you get to say where your office goes. And everyone else's.
After commuting every week for more than a year, Christopher Prior just moved the latest company he heads, Phase Bio Pharmaceuticals, from North Carolina's Research Triangle Park, to a Malvern site near his home.
Twenty years and three companies after he moved here to run Rhone-Poulenc Rorer's biologics R&D unit, Prior says Malvern's more convenient, not just for him personally, but also for the veteran salesmen and scientists he trusted from other jobs and wanted to hire for his current company. It's easier to bring them on board, and replace most of Phase Bio's North Carolina staff, than to get his "network" to relocate down South, or find new ones. "The best product development scientists I've ever worked with are up here," he told me.
And "the facilities are here" -- a lab last used by Johnson & Johnson's Centocor. Prior leased the space from owner Liberty Property Trust. "Phase Bio (leased) 16,000 square feet, and we still have 20,000 square feet available," says Liberty spokeswoman Jeanne Leonard.
Effective June 30, Phase Bio is closing the North Carolina office, and letting all but two of its Raleigh-area employees go. The firm now employs 15, mostly in Malvern, and expects to add five more by year end. A state-funded agency has offered to pay for college interns. The Chester County Economic Development Board "is looking into certain tax credits and incentives," Prior added.
Phase Bio makes long amino acids that attach to anti-diabetes treatments in hopes of making them last longer in the bloodstream "so you can reduce the dosage," Prior told me. Its products aren't market-ready yet. Investors include OSI Pharmaceutical of Long Island, New Enterprise Associates' Chevy Chase, Md., office, and Johnson & Johnson Development Corp., among others.
"I'm a serial entrepreneur," Prior told me. Using RPR drug delivery technology, he spun off Principia Pharmaceuticals in 1998, and sold it to Human Genome Sciences two years later. "We raised $3 million" to fund Principia "and sold it for $130 million plus" -- including stock that boosted the deal's value above $200 million, he said. Seven years later he sold diabetes-fighter BioRexis Pharmaceutical Corp. to Pfizer for an undisclosed price.