![]() ![]() “I think we’ll be able to do the same thing with (bioCapture’s) technology.” “That generated the appetite I had for starting companies, to take something and move it quickly from seed to plant,” Allston says. ![]() Today, the company is one of the region’s success stories and is an industry leader in life-saving medicines for life-threatening diseases. As VP of business development, Allston helped the push for a successful IPO within 18 months of ViroPharma’s founding. She wasn’t alone in her thinking and she and a small team of entrepreneurial scientists founded ViroPharma in 1994 in the hopes of fulfilling a vision of the ideal pharmaceutical company-a mix of good science, good people and a value-based culture. As much as I loved academia, I couldn’t see my teaching benefiting patients directly.” “That’s where I learned we need to translate research from the classroom to the bedside. “Working in academia was very exciting,” says Allston, who earned her undergrad at the College of Charleston and did pre-doctoral work at Rockefeller University. It’s around that time that the entrepreneurial bug started to bite Allston, and she would soon become an integral part of the then-burgeoning life sciences sector in Southeastern PA. Her team discovered the first non-nucleoside analog inhibitor of HIV and set a record by moving the discovery to NDA with the FDA in four years. After a stint as an assistant and tenured associate professor at Alabama, she joined Ridgefield, Conn.-based Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals as its director of molecular research. During her post-doctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology, Allston and her colleagues made a discovery–that the immune system mutates the genetic code for the binding site of antibodies to amplify their affinity for binding the foreign invader that elicited the immune response–that appears in many immunology textbooks today.Īs Allston kept moving up and diversifying her experience, she continued to innovate. ![]() Her doctoral research thesis at the University of Alabama’s Birmingham Medical School was the first major sign of things to come, as it formed the basis for the mechanism of action for the influenza drugs Tamiflu and Relenza. This isn’t the first time, nor the first venue, in which Allston has driven success. This will also be key for researchers, like those who study protein interactions. Another will be used to purify therapeutic proteins. The company’s second product removes interfering substances, reducing the number of false-negative results for the diagnosis of diseases like Lyme’s. The first product will be used to purify stem cells for cancer treatments and for research on numerous other diseases like diabetes, heart disease and Alzheimer’s. Those products are capture agents that determine what the particles will find. “We think we have three areas that will improve the quality of medical care for people.” “We have products manufactured in the refrigerator and ready to go out the door,” says Allston, who adds that there are four more products waiting in the wings that could be ready for distribution by the end of the year. A new website (designed by Pottstown sustainable branders BarberGale) just launched, Allston is rounding up friends and family as angel investors, and bioCapture is ready to start making sales. The platform has great potential for stem cell research and regenerative medicine, purification of therapeutic proteins that should reduces manufacturing costs for biological products, and to improve existing diagnostic tools.īased in the PA Biotech Center of Bucks County in Doylestown, bioCapture is moving fast this summer. Specifically, that impact comes through breakthrough technology called Capture Agent-coupled Particles (CAPs) that separate biological materials. “Building a company like this is very high risk, but the satisfaction of building a company that can have this much impact on healthcare is exciting,” she says. She is financing its early growth out of her own pocket as she builds it into something she hopes is strong enough for someone else to come into sustain. The latest young company currently in her care, bioCapture, could be Allston’s most successful. While she would certainly qualify as one, having been an integral part of building three successful biotech companies, she sees herself more as a nanny who raises a child to teenager and then moves on to the next baby. ![]() Johanna Allston thinks the term “serial entrepreneur” is overused. ![]()
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