Science in the Triangle

RTI International and two Durham drug development companies hauled a lot of cash into the Triangle, a national research team led by the University of North Carolina will look for new cancer-fighting medicines and grassroots support for entrepreneurs is alive and well in the Triangle.

Money haul

As Wall Street is starting to show signs of life again, cash is beginning to flow and refill empty coffers of drug development companies. Inspire Pharmaceuticals, a Durham company specializing in eye and respiratory treatments, sold $115 million in stock in a follow-on offering, taking home $109 million of it.

Chimerix, another Durham drug development company, raised $16.1 million in venture capital to continue work on a broadspectrum antiviral.

Finally, RTI International, a large research institute in Research Triangle Park, will receive $11 million over five years from the National Cancer Institute to study the effects of radiation on people who are routinely exposed, such as medical professionals.

All that money translates into research and development jobs that will be created or saved in the RTP area.

In other company news, Chesson Labs, a three-year-old Durham company, received regulatory approval to sell its liquid bandage. The product will compete with Liquid Band-Aid, which retails for about $7 per 10-application bottle and was developed by Closure Medical before the Raleigh company was bought by health care giant Johnson & Johnson several years ago.

Looking for cancer fighters

Scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina Central University in Durham and the Hamner Institutes for Health Sciences in RTP will be part of a national drug discovery initiative that will work on new cancer-fighting drugs.

The initiative, which involves the National Cancer Institute, plans to establish a development pipeline from the bench to clinical tests.

The Triangle team will be led by Stephen Frye, director of UNC-CH’s Center for Integrative Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery. Frye joined UNC two years ago from GlaxoSmithKline in RTP, where he headed the drugmaker’s worldwide drug discovery efforts for years and was involved in the discovery of GSK’s breast cancer drug Tykerb.

A hand up

Small companies, startups and mid-size businesses, where discoveries are turned into tomorrow’s products, are the Triangle’s strength.

Many of these companies rely on the support of each other and entrepreneurial organizations to flourish.

Under the leadership of its new CEO Joan Siefert Rose, the Council for Entrepreneurial Development brought together 17 of these support organizations Wednesday in a new event called the CED Cafe. A crowd of about 130 packed the meeting room in Durham to listen to the five-minute presentations.

Find a list here and which of the support organizations got its budget cut here.