Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) today announced that biotech startup Angiex, Inc., has been awarded an Agilent Golden Ticket at LabCentral, providing funding of one lab bench space for a year.
Three semi-finalists presented their proposals at LabCentral's Cambridge, Massachusetts, facility on Jan. 22, 2017. The winner was chosen by a panel of judges consisting of Johannes Fruehauf, M.D., Ph.D., cofounder and president, LabCentral; Darlene Solomon, Ph.D., senior vice president and chief technology officer, Agilent; and John Gavenonis, vice president and general manager, Chemistries Division, Agilent CrossLab Group.
"All the semi-finalists in our Golden Ticket Event exhibited strong entrepreneurship, innovative scientific approaches, and great promise to advance healthcare. Angiex, our first-place winner, demonstrated an excellent combination of scientific impact, enthusiasm to collaborate with Agilent, and personal drive to advancing cancer treatments," said Darlene Solomon, senior vice president and chief technology officer for Agilent. "Agilent is dedicated to supporting bio-pharma startups and advancing patient care — and from this event, we are excited to begin a strong partnership with Angiex and further expand our relationship with LabCentral."
Angiex was founded by world-class scientists to develop vascular-targeted biotherapeutics. Angiex's lead product is an antibody-drug conjugate therapy for cancer, which effectively regresses highly malignant tumors in mice, and has potential to treat such dangerous human cancers as pancreatic, lung, and liver cancers and glioblastoma multiforme. Angiex was launched with IP from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Angiex's founders are world leaders in vascular biology and vascular-targeted therapies for cancer.
"We are very excited to have been selected as the winner of the Agilent Golden Ticket," said Paul Jaminet, Ph.D., chief executive officer of Angiex. "Agilent's superb laboratory tools for chromatography and mass spectrometry will help Angiex bring a promising cancer therapy to the clinic, and Agilent's Golden Ticket will help Angiex continue to enjoy the benefits of working in LabCentral, the best launchpad space for young biotechnology companies on the planet. We couldn't be more pleased that a technology leader like Agilent has recognized Angiex's potential to have a life-saving impact on cancer patients."
"We're thrilled that Angiex received the Golden Ticket sponsored by Agilent," commented Dr. Fruehauf. "Angiex is a company to watch as it steadily meets its milestones moving from the bench toward the clinic." He continued, "It was a tough decision. All three finalists are promising companies we know well and like. We were honored to have renowned medical journalists Liz Cooney from STAT News and Carey Goldberg from WBUR join us for the evening to ask probing questions and bring out the unique stories behind each of these startups."
Agilent as a platinum sponsor has equipped LabCentral's shared laboratory workspace with a variety of Agilent technology, including a high-resolution mass spectrometry system, and a cell analysis extracellular flux (XF) analyzer. The sponsorship also includes a Golden Ticket which represents one year of bench space for a scientist, including benefit of LabCentral's shared infrastructure and services (such as conference rooms, permits, shared equipment and facilities, participation in LabCentral training modules and seminars).