Hybritech’s Founders Take Aim at Cancer

Hybritech co-founders Ivor Royston and Howard C. Birndorf have created a new company that hopes to develop a biotechnology capable of destroying certain kinds of cancer cells. The company, IDEC, already has attracted nearly $2.5 million in venture capital from four venture capital groups, including Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield & Byers, the Bay Area firm that provided Hybritech with its original capital in 1978. IDEC also won backing from two New York City venture capital outfits and a second Bay Area company.

The newly formed company--using technology partly developed by Hybritech--hopes to develop monoclonal antibodies capable of eliminating certain kinds of cancer, including lymphatic cancer, according to Birndorf. He described the technology as a “guided missile that targets in on the (cancer) cells and destroys them.”

Although Birndorf could not say when the technology will become commercially available, he suggested that IDEC will try to “treat patients within the next year on a research basis.”

Royston, a researcher at UC San Diego, will act as a consultant and serve on IDEC’s board of directors. Birndorf, executive vice president of Gen-Probe, will also be a consultant and board member.

Robert E. Sobol has left his position as a UCSD faculty member and will direct IDEC’s day-to-day operations. Birndorf said the company will begin operations with a small research staff. Because Hybritech partly developed IDEC’s technology, Eli Lilly & Co., which recently acquired Hybritech in a deal valued at up to $413 million, is a minority shareholder in IDEC. Lilly may eventually provide the new firm with a product distribution network, according to Birndorf.

Birndorf, who co-founded Hybritech and Gen-Probe, said he anticipates that his third start-up will be “a satisfying experience.”

“When you’ve gone through (a start-up) one or two times, you learn by past mistakes and it’s easier to do,” he said. “I think that the formula . . . can be successful again.”