Why Madison?

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In October, QRG Bioscience, a developer of therapeutic products for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, announced that it would be moving its cooperate headquarters from the Milwaukee suburb of Richfield to Madison. The company moved into new office space in University Research Park in November, and we asked its management team, “Why Madison?”

Our interview was with Mike Beamon (“MB” below), president and chief executive officer, and Mark Underwood (“MU” below), vice president of product development and chief operating officer.

UW Business News Wire: What is the name of your company and where are  its offices?

Mark Underwood: QRG Bioscience is an early stage biotech company focused on developing treatments for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. The company develops therapeutics that address the imbalance of calcium ions commonly thought to be related to the neuronal degeneration seen in the diseases of aging.  QRG has offices in both Richfield and Madison, Wis., as well as supporting the laboratory or Dr. James Moyer at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

UWBW: What does your company do?

MU: QRG Bioscience is a biopharmaceutical company. We are focused on the development and commercialization of new mechanisms to treat the diseases of aging. The company’s therapeutic products focus on alleviating the consequences of impaired calcium homeostasis — the imbalance of calcium ions commonly thought to be related to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. The laboratory work is completed in Dr. Moyer’s labs, and we are starting to tap into the development resources at UW-Madison.

UWBW: When and with whom did you form your company, and is it privately held?

MU: We are privately held. We started the company on June 7, 2004. Mike owns a manufacturing company called Quincy Resource Group in Richfield, and they have provided an incubator-like atmosphere for QRG Bioscience to grow from. The associates at Quincy provide accounting, human resources and information systems support for us, so that Mike and I can focus on our commercialization and development efforts.

UWBW: Is the company based on research that you and/or your partner(s) carried out, and if so, where and when was that?

MB: Mark developed the hypothesis while pursuing his undergraduate degree in the mid-90s and kept up with the technology in the field on the side while pursuing other career opportunities. It made sense to turn it into a business plan after some hurdles with the expression of the protein were overcome. We subsequently started talking last winter, started officially in June and filed our patent also.

UWBW: Why have you opened an office in the Madison area?

MU: We think that the biotech community in Madison will help our company flourish with the great human and technological resources there. There are only a handful of communities that can support an endeavor as large as ours in the country, and we are very proud to be in close proximity to a premier research institution and in a city with a track record of helping companies succeed.

MB: The Richfield location allowed us to get on our feet as we developed and established our business. Now in Madison we can go full steam ahead. The opportunities that are in Madison are limitless. We still maintain an office in Richfield, affiliated with our parent company, so maybe in time we will be able to help bridge the Madison-Milwaukee biotech gap.

UWBW: Why have you taken an office in University Research Park?

MU: Hands down, University Research Park is the best “incubator” environment in the Midwest.

MB: The facilities are nice, the collegial atmosphere is refreshing, the rent is reasonable. What more could you ask for?

UWBW: What have you noticed and experienced concerning your business and your outlook for the business now that you are operating in Madison?

MU: I think that the pool of talent within Madison is amazing. There are many years of experience here in development of this industry, and the climate is perfect for biotechnology in the state in general. Madison specifically is a great place to live, and with regard to recruiting other employees to the area, we do not see that as a problem at all. Great minds will follow great ideas. Investors follow great ideas too.

MB: With the concern that others would view me as an outsider, I have found the environment in Madison to be very welcoming. There is a warm and welcome atmosphere here for growing a business. From my perspective, Madison has certainly lived up to our expectations. We had a chance to show a poster at the Wisconsin Life Sciences and Venture Fair. There has been good response from investors to talk further about our business plan and their opportunities to invest. Those conversations are progressing well.

UWBW: What observation do you have, if any, concerning the presence of UW-Madison here and the resources that you may have discovered at the university?

MU: Specifically with the Lenor Zeeh Pharmaceutical Experiment Station and the Waisman Clinical Biomanufacturing Facility, the infrastructure exists to fully develop pharmaceuticals to a level that will then attract interest from big pharmaceuticals. In the biotech industry it would be hard to imagine a better environment to develop your technology because the capital investment is already been made within the university. The labs of UW-Madison are certainly where we can also see the growth of our technology. Right now our focus is on neuroprotective actions of the protein that we are investigating. In time we will look at the specific actions of neuroprotection within specific diseases and disease models.

UWBW: Are there any other comments or observations you'd like to make about your company and your relationship with UW-Madison?

MB: Everything has gone very well so far with UW-Madison. The folks over at Waisman have been very helpful in addressing our protein expression needs, and we look forward to working with them further our journey of development. The resources within the UW System are world-class and certainly we feel that they are the engine that will drive the commercialization of our technology. We greatly appreciate all of the assistance that the university has offered to facilitate our business growth.