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Oscar for entrepreneurship

Ela Dutt
India Abroad Correspondent in Washington

Sudhir Borgonha (32), MD, is glad he did not venture into launching a dot-com last year. He had even developed an idea to start a site providing customised nutrition scales -- but canned it, given the downturn and the drop in stock price of overvalued companies.

Today, Angstrom Medica, the company Borgonha joined, founded by two biotech buddies Edward Ahn and Darren Obrigkeit, is the winner of MIT's twelfth annual Entrepreneurship Competition. Borgonha, who's expecting an MBA in the management of technology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School, collected $30,000, and the two runners-up got $10,000 each. Considered an Oscar of sorts for entrepreneurship, the 12-year-old contest has fostered more than 75 companies with financing and support.

Angstrom Medica will produce synthetic bone for use in spinal fusion and fracture reconstruction surgery, considered a $1 billion annual market in the United States alone. The nano-sized synthetic bone pins can be surgically inserted to fuse two bones and then left in place, unlike the metal pins and screws used at present.

The seven finalist teams were selected from 36 semi-finalists culled from 135 entries. Hardly any dot-coms made it. In fact, only 33 per cent of the semi-finalists had anything to do with networking and the Internet, down from 68 per cent just a year before. Brick-and-mortar companies dominated, and medical submissions made up 25 per cent compared to just 15 per cent in 2000.

The six other finalist teams were Iptyx (runner-up), an organic materials research and development company that designed new dyes and polymers to be used in making smaller, brighter liquid crystal displays; PantaRei (runner-up), a company that designs proprietary technology to help pipeline operators in the natural gas industry access more and better market transactions; Ageless Filters Inc, which designed a filter that reduces carcinogens in cigarette smoke without affecting taste; SiteSpecific Pharmaceuticals, which created a drug discovery platform that will increase the specificity of drugs; The SmartCure Company, which designed a special sponge to help chronic wounds heal faster; and Sunchar, which offers decision-support software to help telecom service providers manage revenues and predict demand and traffic volatility more efficiently.

Borgonha said that he believes Angstrom has a clear shot at succeeding with its flagship product and beyond.

"We are a nanoplatform technology company. Once we have proven this flagship product, we will go on to another - we engineer small miracles."

The synthetic bone is created by manipulating calcium and phosphate at nanoscale level to consolidate it into a strong enough structure, winding up with hydroxy apatite - the same thing that is found in natural bone. "It has been around for a while, but no one had figured out until now how to make it strong enough," Borgonha said.

Born in Kota, Rajasthan, and brought up in Bangalore, Borgonha completed his MD from St John's Medical College. He came to MIT four years ago for post- doctoral studies. He then went back to India to work in Kerala on Ayurveda as a herbal treatment for HIV.

"I decided to take time off and look at some of the interesting data coming out from Kerala," he said. But after six months he left, "It looked too nebulous from a scientific perspective."

Once back in MIT in 1998, as a research scientist focusing on metabolism, Borgonha envisioned a career evolving from the interface between science and industry. "When I am in the lab I see a lot of cool technologies developing but they don't reach people because they are not turned into usable products for people. So he joined Sloan for an MBA in Management of Technology.

He met 'these two very bright people with an interesting concept.' Ahn had developed a way to make synthetic bone. Borgonha had the clinical background and the business application.

Angstrom is a minuscule unit of length (ten-billionth of a metre). "We manipulate at atomic level for medical applications," and so the company's name, Borgonha explained. The three partners worked to develop a single product on a broad nanotechnology platform. "We are a focused company with a focused product with the potential to diversify."

"My scientific background came into play with the clinical application of the product. I say whether something is going to work or not. For instance, I say -- let's target the most important areas -- the ankle for instance rather than the thigh. Or I might say, another area to think about is race-horses. Many have to be killed if they are hurt." He also suggested the synthetic bone material could be molded into a base and used in cheekbone or jawline plastic surgery.

The three are in the process of talking to investors, incorporating into a company, and expect to go into operation in the next few weeks. They expect to be based in the Boston/Cambridge area. They are leaving soon for the United Kingdom for the largest investor meeting.

"We think we have got the most promising technology in this field which has changed very little in last 50 years -- it is like what happened when colour television came in," Borgonha says.

The bone, Borgonha points out, is a very dynamic tissue "and there will always be bone cells eating away at bone and depositing the bone." Where titanium supports a fracture, the synthetic bone integrates into the natural bone and allows it to heal better, he contends.

The team, Borgonha indicates, has a symbiotic relationship. "The great thing is each of us has expertise in our own fields. This has been a great asset because of the diversity and independence of thought we bring in. Secondly, we believe in technology, even in the face of opposition. And we are on very solid structure - a patent and a market."

Today in contrast to last year, Borgonha believes, people do want to focus on solidity. "Last year, you would have to be a dot-com to have a high success rate. I was toying with the idea last year -- customising nutrition. And that had to be a dot-com. It is a workable model but it's not the right time," he concedes.

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