When investors ask what your biotech hopes to cure and you say “toenail fungus” instead of, for example, “bone cancer,” it may be tougher to get the money guys to write checks to you. Even though many more people get toenail fungus than cancer every year, a condition like that just doesn’t pique the interest of many.
But that hasn’t deterred MediQuest Therapeutics, which does indeed have a potential drug to treat toenail fungus (the scientific name for the condition is onychomycosis, but I can’t really say that correctly more than once in a row) in Phase IIB trials. It’s also working on a Phase III drug and other possible treatments for inflammatory and infectious skin diseases.
I’ve got a profile (yes, this is a blatant self-promotional bit) of this fairly recent arrival to Bothell here: http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/06/01/30/100bus_quest001.cfm. The company’s Web site is here: http://www.mqti.com.
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FierceBiotech, an e-mailed biotech newsletter, has ranked the top five areas of the nation that offer the best incentives to attract and retain companies. The Puget Sound region is not ranked, which adds to the argument being offered in Olympia that the state needs to do more to grow the biotech cluster here. For more on FierceBiotech’s survey, try clicking here, http://www.forbes.com/2006/01/24/biotech-fiercebiotech-hotspots-cz_kd_1024biotech.html, or here, http://fiercebiotech.com/special2006/regions/issue.html.
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By the way, in my colleague Bryan Corliss’ story today about the Snohomish County Economic Development Council’s 2006 priorities, he mentions that the EDC is “working with a biotech manufacturer that’s considering sites in California and around Puget Sound.” Corliss said the EDC didn’t offer any other hints as to what company that might be. Any guesses out there? To read the whole EDC story, http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/06/01/30/100bus_edc001.cfm
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Finally, the Herald’s news partner, KIRO-TV, reported over the weekend on a guilty plea by a local biotech pioneer, Robert Nowinski. One of the founders of ICOS Corp. in Bothell and three other biotechs is tens of thousands of dollars behind in child support payments, prosecutors allege. Here’s KIRO’s story: http://www.kirotv.com/news/6533311/detail.html
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