Funding Hopes Run High for Biomedical Opportunity Session

The past year has been generous to biotechnology, with soaring share prices for public companies and the end of a long drought in initial stock offerings for a middle tier of firms ready to take off.

With the sector doing so well, officials of the Southern California Biomedical Council are hoping that the 21 early-stage companies presenting at the group’s investment and strategic partnering opportunities conference today will find the private funding they need.

The daylong session at the Pasadena Convention Center is even more ambitious than last year’s. Interest among venture capital firms, private investors and mature biotech and pharmaceutical companies looking for partners is running strong, said the council’s executive director, Ahmed A. Enany.

In addition to local sources of capital, Enany said he expects representatives of financial institutions and companies from around the country to be on hand.

“We expect much better attendance in terms of venture funds than last year,” Enany said.

The Biomedical Council reviewed 50 start-up and early-stage companies before selecting the final presenters.

Each firm is prepped for the conference by a team of council members, who help them polish their business plans and sharpen their presentations.

Several venture capital firms have started local offices based on the growth of Greater Los Angeles as a center for information technology and Internet-related companies, said Fariba F. Ghodsian, senior vice president for research at Cruttenden Roth, who led the selection committee for the conference.

“The next wave is going to be biotech, as a couple of these companies go public and make a splash in the financial community,” Ghodsian said.

The presenting companies at the conference reflect the full range of biomedical businesses in the Southland--working on anti-cancer therapy, building medical devices or producing software for the industry.

The 21 companies are Ambryx Biotechnology, Westlake Village; AMT, Garden Grove; Antiviral Resistance Technologies, Los Angeles; BioDiscovery, Los Angeles; CancerVax, Marina del Rey; EpiGenX Pharmaceuticals, Santa Barbara; E-radlink, Torrance; GenBasix, Duarte; Integrated Medical Systems, Pico Rivera; LifePoint, Rancho Cucamonga; LumaCare, Newport Beach; MDProse, Los Angeles; Nanostream, Pasadena; NeuroGeneration, Los Angeles; Nova Therapeutic Systems, South Pasadena; Pivotal BioSciences, Los Angeles; Protein Pathways, Los Angeles; Ramus Medical Technologies, Santa Barbara; Second Sight, Valencia; TheraCyte, Irvine; and Vialogy, Altadena.