Date: Oct 07, 2015 Author: Rich Kirchen Source: bizjournals (
click here to go to the source)
A biotech firm co-founded by Medical College of Wisconsin professor Blake Hill received an investment from Breakout Labs -- the science-centric nonprofit backed by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.
San Francisco-based Breakout Labs invests $50,000 to $350,000 to get startups through the proof-of-concept stage and, ideally, into collaborations or more significant funding, according to the San Francisco Business Times, a sister publication of the Milwaukee Business Journal. Breakout Labs takes a 1 percent equity stake in the companies and receives royalties on marketed products. Those profits then get plowed back into a revolving fund to make more awards.
Hill co-founded CyteGen, which is developing a platform to tackle multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease and rare diseases, hoping to turn back the clock on aging-related neurodegenerative conditions. George Ugras is the president and co-founder of CyteGen.
CyteGen's leaders want to dramatically increase the human health-span by reversing age-related decline in the body. By approaching the topic from a holistic, systematic point of view, they have developed a new way to think about reversing this decline, and to develop therapies that cure some of the most devastating diseases associated with old age, Breakout Labs said.
Breakout Labs said CyteGen has assembled a "dream team" of interdisciplinary experts and is working with researchers at eight major, but unidentified, universities.
Hill is a professor of biochemistry at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Wauwatosa. He joined the faculty of the Medical College in 2012 to pursue translational applications of his laboratory's basic research on the mechanism of mitochondrial homeostasis.
Prior to joining the Medical College, Hill was on the faculty at Johns Hopkins University where he began a National Institutes for Health-funded research program in the molecular basis of mitochondrial homeostasis.
Breakout Labs says it has invested in more than two dozen companies at the forefront of science, helping new technologies get beyond common hurdles faced by early-stage companies. Portfolio companies have raised more than six times the amount of capital invested in the program by the Thiel Foundation, and represent six Series A valuations ranging from $10 million to $60 million as well as one acquisition, according to Breakout Labs.
