Holden Thorp - Research and Entrepreneurship

Research and Entrepreneurship

Thorp was awarded a Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1991 by the National Science Foundation, which provided $100,000 of research funding annually for five years. Later in 1991, Thorp was one of 20 people awarded a grant by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation; the $500,000 fellowship was for research on compounds used in genetic therapy. Both grants were for research to develop cancer and AIDS drugs as alternatives to chemotherapy.

In 1996, Thorp co-founded biotechnology company Alderaan Diagnostics, later renamed Xanthon, Inc., to commercialize a technology he co-developed. The technology involved using electricity to test compounds that could later become new drugs. It was intended to turn a process that previously took months into an electronic process that would instead take hours. In 2001, Thorp was recognized by Fortune Small Business as a Small Business Innovator for the work that led to the founding of the company. Xanthon raised several rounds of venture capital, totaling $25 million, before folding in 2002, after technical glitches had delayed release of its commercial product and it could not find further funding.

In 2005, Thorp co-founded Viamet Pharmaceuticals, another biotechnology company, to develop treatments for cancer and other diseases. It raised $4 million in venture capital funding in 2007, and an additional $18 million in 2009. Thorp is no longer involved in operation of the company.

Thorp is a member of the scientific advisory board of Ohmx, a biotechnology firm based on technology developed by his doctoral mentor, Harry B. Gray. He was previously a venture partner at Hatteras Venture Partners, co-founded by his brother Clay. He gave up that role after being named chancellor of UNC in 2008, and his equity stake in the firm was transferred to a blind trust.

Thorp is a member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Read more about this topic:  Holden Thorp

Famous quotes containing the words research and and/or research:

    I did my research and decided I just had to live it.
    Karina O’Malley, U.S. sociologist and educator. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A5 (September 16, 1992)

    ... research is never completed ... Around the corner lurks another possibility of interview, another book to read, a courthouse to explore, a document to verify.
    Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)