 "Photo: DTH/Bliss Pierce")
When Holden Thorp first pitched an idea for a company to his brother, Clay, they both were cautiously optimistic.
It was the mid '90s, and neither Thorp had ever started a company. Holden had developed a gene-based screening technology in his UNC lab, and the question was whether to license it to an existing business or to spin off one of their own.
"I didn't know; neither of us knew," Clay Thorp said. "If we knew then what we know now, we probably wouldn't have done anything as crazy as we did."
Holden founded the company, Xanthon Inc. It had a promising start and as many as 65 employees before falling with the stock market in 2000. Thorp's technology was sold for debt, and Xanthon filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2003.
It was "frustrating and certainly painful," characterized former company CEO Jim Skinner. "Eighteen to 24 months of hell on wheels."
But it was also just the beginning of Holden Thorp's forays into the industry. He's served as consultant to companies across the country. He's a venture partner in his brother's firm, which invests in local biotech companies. And in 2005 he founded Viamet Pharmaceuticals Inc., a therapeutic company that targets metalloenzymes.
When Thorp becomes chancellor July 1, he'll bring along entrepreneurial perspective, plus individual relationships he's forged with the relatively small pool of people who get N.C. research-based start-up companies moving.
That background has people in the University and the local biotech industry wondering how Thorp might boost support for UNC researchers and prompt them to broker more deals with area companies.
Thorp said he has yet to form specific plans but looks forward to working with the offices that commercialize UNC research and finding the money to expand their reaches.
"We can do more to get our technology and ideas out in the marketplace where they're helping people," he said. "I hope while I'm leading the University of North Carolina, people feel like this is a place where they can take more risks."
Many in Research Triangle Park would like to see the University community do just that.
Douglas Reed, a Viamet director and general partner with Clay Thorp's firm, Hatteras Venture Partners, cited the successes of universities such as Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, both of which have a history of investing in spin-off companies.
Like UNC, those schools are near major research parks that borrow faculty and ideas. But the University lags behind in the financial give-and-take, bringing in only about 4 percent of Stanford's licensing income and 20 percent of MIT's spin-off count.
"Looking at the way things are done successfully in these other places, there has to be an understanding that this is a portfolio," Reed said of universities' spin-off companies.
"The most important thing is to get as many of them as possible into the community, get as many of them funded as possible and recognize that many of them won't be successful."
There's been a national movement to broaden universities' focus from licensing patents to actually founding companies that market the protected technology.
UNC's Office of Technology Development has stepped up its own efforts during the past decade to help faculty know their options. Most of UNC's 42 spin-off companies have formed in those years, and only seven have failed.
But the University's start-up number remains behind those of its peer public universities in California, Michigan, Texas and Wisconsin.
Starting a company is a significant sacrifice for faculty, and Thorp is unique among academics in his eagerness to navigate the patent protection, confidentiality agreements, contract negotiations and private fundraising it takes to do so.
Thorp expressed an interest in helping faculty and students down that track. Garheng Kong, a Viamet director on the investment team of Intersouth Partners, said Thorp's support of a project means something to people in his field.
"He has a very strong network," Kong said. "When he comes and says, 'I have an idea,' I usually pay attention to it."
Thorp's own history of interfacing academic and commercial pursuits illustrates how the two can become intertwined.
Since 1993, 60 percent of the almost $5 million in sponsored research for Thorp's UNC lab has come from industry sources, with $2.8 million from companies in which Thorp or his brother has held financial interest.
UNC also receives licensing income from Xanthon technology and is a shareholder in Viamet. The Office of Technology Development did not disclose how much the University has received from either relationship.
As chancellor, Thorp will have no operational business roles but expects to maintain advisory relationships with Viamet, Hatteras Venture Partners, Pittsburgh-based Plextronics Inc., Illinois-based Ohmx Corporation and Pasadena-based Osmetech Molecular Diagnostics, which owns Thorp's Xanthon technology.
Contact the Investigative Editor at iteam@unc.edu.
