Hartford Business Journal

www.HartfordBusiness.com August 8, 2016 • Hartford Business Journal 13 tests before diving into a phase 1 clin- ical trial. "That gives us a high level of confi- dence we have a bet- ter chance," he said. "I'd be lying if I said it was a sure thing." He's also embold- ened by the makeup of his board of direc- tors, which includes Susan Froshauer, a Harvard-trained microbiologist and molecular geneticist who raised millions of dollars as CEO of Rib-X Pharmaceuticals (now Melinta Thera- peutics Inc.), which she left in 2010. Today, she leads the state's biotech industry asso- ciation CURE. Froshauer said she's been familiar with Rose's research for decades and her admira- tion for him is part of what spurred her to join CaroGen's board. As for Almassian, Froshauer described him as a great networker and collaborator, and she gives him credit for keeping a strong team together with relatively few financial resources. Trying to raise money can be frustrating, Froshauer said, but she has found Almassian to be persistent. If CaroGen is ultimately able to help procure a blockbuster drug, Almassian says he wants to use his proceeds to reinvest in biotechnology and give to charity. And in the statisti- cally more likely scenario that he doesn't strike gold, he said he's still happy to improve science. "Any additional data we generate, even if we don't take it to the market, I think it's an improvement," he said. Dual focus While Almassian's core focus is CaroGen, he is also co-founder of Aria Neurosciences, which was created in 2010 and controls a patent related to a treatment for Alzheimer's disease. Almassian's name is on that patent, along with several other researchers. He helped develop the technology during his time at a New Jersey biotech company called Exsar, where he held his first CEO role, from 2005 to 2010. Exsar closed in 2012. The company's founder granted Almas- sian the rights to the technology when he left, he said. "[Aria's] on a slower pace because I've shifted more of my time to CaroGen, which I feel has a lot of promise," Almassian said. In addition, he said investors view Alzheim- er's treatments as riskier bets. Aria is going to need a good CEO to navigate those waters and Almassian intends to hire one after CaroGen completes its pending investment. Almassian said Aria has promising tech- nology and a good team. For example, its board contains Harry Penner Jr., a personal mentor to Almassian who is a longtime bio- tech exec who co-founded seven companies, including Rib-X along with Froshauer. Reflecting on a painful rejection Almassian recalls being interested in med- icine at a young age, when he lived in Iran. He moved to Boston in the late 1970s, where he earned his doc- torate in medicinal chemistry. Today, he has two grown sons and lives with his wife in Cheshire. Almassian said he spent much of his professional life striving to be a CEO, a goal he achieved when he became chief executive of Exsar. "I had a passion to really run an operation and build a company from scratch," he said. He's had jobs as a chemist, drug devel- oper and chief operating officer — where he learned to work with investors — at com- panies spanning geographically from Con- necticut to California. While Exsar was his first CEO gig, he had a shot at a leadership position in Connecticut three years earlier — but things went badly, ending in a lawsuit. The matter nearly soured Almassian on the Nutmeg State for good. In 2002, Penner tapped Almassian as COO for a Yale spin-off called AlexiPhar- ma, which was trying to raise $10 million to get a pain treatment into clinical trials. Almassian says he was promised the CEO job if he could help the company hit funding milestones. He was also excited to be mentored by Penner. One of the first steps was trying to secure $500,000 from a Connecticut Inno- vations bioscience seed fund. But accord- ing to a lawsuit Almassian filed in 2003 against a CI official, Carolyn Kahn, who oversaw the fund at the time, Kahn told Penner that she didn't think Almassian had the right mix of business, science and negotiation skills necessary to lead AlexiPharma. "I was just devastated because I've never been rejected before if you look at my career," Almassian said, looking back on the 13-year-old case. "It hurt." Almassian's suit against Kahn alleged, among other things, that Kahn was biased against him because he is a Muslim. Kahn, who left CI soon after the suit, denied the allegations, saying she had no idea Almassian was Muslim and that she had merely performed due diligence on a potential portfolio company's prospects and the business qualifications of its leadership, according to court documents. Kahn's attorneys convinced a federal judge to throw out the discrimination charge, and the judge remanded the remain- ing allegations — which included contrac- tual interference and infliction of emotional distress — to state court. But there is no record of the case proceeding any further. Attempts to reach Kahn, who moved to California after her time at CI, were unsuc- cessful for this story. After the rejection, Penner urged Almas- sian to stay with the company, but Almas- sian — who said he never faulted Penner for what happened — quit and took a job at a Maryland company called Panacea. "I really wanted to get out of the state of Connecticut," he said. "It was a bad experi- ence after that." But he returned seven years later to launch Aria and work for CaroGen. Looking back, Almassian said he always felt confident in his abilities, despite the rejection. Still, he feels his leadership skills are more polished today. The past legal spat with a top-ranking CI exec doesn't appear to have hurt Almas- sian's image in the long run. Asked about the suit, Crowley, CI's current managing director of investments, said of Almassian: "I think our existing investments are a testament that we believe in him." n Yale's next vaccine platform John Rose, professor of pathology at Yale University and director of its molecu- lar virology program, is the man behind the science on which CaroGen's "virus-like vesicle" (VLV) vaccine platform is based. Vaccines are complex, but Rose said the best way to think of the experimental ther- apeutic platform is as a hybrid of two types of vaccines — a live virus-based vaccine, such as the Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccine, and an inactivated or "killed" vac- cine, like the common influenza vaccine. CaroGen says VLVs activate an immune response that could be more effective in children, the elderly and the immune-compromised. Rose has been studying VLV for years. He first published a paper on the platform in the mid-1990s. But in the years that followed, his atten- tion was focused on a separate vaccine platform, which was eventually used to create an Ebola vaccine candidate. "So ... the (VLV) technology was really on the back burner, and we went back to it because we had pushed (the Ebola vaccine) about as far as we could," Rose said. In 2008, Rose published a paper show- ing that VLVs could be a useful vaccine technology. He's since filed for several other related patents. Rose said there are still plenty of challenges ahead both, financial and scientific to get the vaccine to its next stage of development. "Therapeutic vaccines are not easy," he said. "Getting the funding is not easy." — Matt Pilon Susan Froshauer, CEO, CURE Kevin Crowley, Managing Director of Investments, CI ▶ ▶ ' I work harder now than when I was in my 30s and 40s. As a scientist, I've had a huge drive to have an impact on something major and worldwide.' Bijan Almassian, co-founder and CEO, CaroGen and co-founder and CEO, Aria Neurosciences — would likely be highly attractive to one or more of those operators, he said. City Councilman Larry Deutsch says he would support the sale of city property as long as the public benefits are shared evenly through "community-benefits agreements.'' That would include access to affordable housing, healthful food sources, walkability to job opportunities, and "the careful use of tax breaks to assure these goals of fairness and equity throughout the entire city.'' Deutsch said he rejects any proposed sale of city land that would promote either "gentri- fied quadrants or continued blight or impov- erishment of other neighborhoods.'' Another opportunity exists, McGarry says, with the city-owned office building at 525 Main St., next door to the Metropolitan District Commission headquarters building on Main Street, and across the street from city hall and the Hartford Public Library. That building, however, is largely vacant, except for some city operations and staff housed on the upper floors, and leased retail space on the ground floor. Pittsburgh's lessons Thomas J. Murphy Jr., is a senior fellow at the nonprofit Urban Land Institute, who from 1994 to 2006 was mayor of Pittsburgh, Pa. Dur- ing his tenure, the city created a $60 million development fund that leveraged $4.5 billion in partnerships with private developers, result- ing in opening the Steelers' Heinz Field and the Pirates' PNC Park, among other realty projects. Surplus and underused real estate is a challenge for not only Hartford, but other U.S. cities, Murphy said. At one time, 40 percent of Pittsburgh's real estate was exempt from property taxes. However, he said Pittsburgh aggressively explored ways to monetize its realty holdings either through sales or development partner- ships. For instance, it assigned an underused, 28-acre surface parking lot that once housed the city's Civic Arena as the anchor for an estimated $500 million master-planned development of housing, a hotel, and office, retail, entertainment and public spaces in the Lower Hill District. Similar private development opportuni- ties likely exist for Hartford, Murphy said. "Hartford needs to think about all this property it owns,'' he said. " … My view is you need to spend a dollar to make a dollar. If they have all that land, they can create value.'' n from page 4 'Spend a dollar to make a dollar' The city owns this 525 Main St. office building, directly across from downtown's city hall. H B J P H O T O | G R E G O R Y S E A Y

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