idea in May 2003, when it was spun off of Symyx Technologies. At the time, Symyx, a specialist in ma terials research and highthroughput experimenta tion (HTE), had been a ^^^^ public company for only four years. Gerrit Klaerner, a German polymer chemist, remembers that time well. Now Ilypsa's chief business officer, he had come to the U.S. in 1997 for a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center on Polymer In terfaces & Macromolecular Assemblies, a National Science Foundation-sponsored partnership among Stanford University, IBM's Almaden Research Center, and the Davis and Berkeley campuses of the Uni versity of California. Following the scientific ties that ran between the center and Symyx, Klaerner joined the company in 1998. Symyx was just hitting its stride in commercializing the idea that got it started. Inspired by UC Berkeley chemistry professor Peter G. Schultz, the company was taking the HTE philosophy of miniaturization, automation, and parallel processing beyond pharmaceutical research and into the materials realm. Symyx tackled the challenge with a vengeance. Before long, it had struck deals with ExxonMobil and Dow Chemical to ap ply HTE to commodity polymer catalysis. It launched its initial public stock offering in 1999 and has been profitable since 2001. Klaerner7 s charge at Symyx was to apply PARTNERSHIP Saltigo is producing ilypsa's polymer at its ZeTO facility in Leverkusen, Germany.
A TRANSATLANTIC POLYMERIC SOLUTION CASE STUDY #1: Helped by a German custom synthesis firm, a U.S. biotech start-up tackles kidney ailment with a specialty polymer A START-UP started by a start-up, Cali fornia-based Ilypsa is a biopharmaceutical company that in just four years has brought a drug into Phase II clinical trials. Now, with the help of the German custom manu
facturer Saltigo, Ilypsa is looking ahead to the product's final stage of clinical testing and potential commercial launch. Although a robust 70-person company today, Ilypsa was just two people and a good
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