Chapter 3
A Biotechnology Entrepreneur’s Story:
From Start-Up to International Contract
Development and Manufacturing
Organization
Magda Marquet, PhD and François Ferré, PhD
ALMA Life Sciences LLC, San Diego, CA, United States
Chapter Outline
The Genesis of Althea Technologies
The First Year
Reinventing the Company—Again
Our Own Trademark: Co-CEOs
Building a Great Culture
Often the lives of entrepreneurs have varied and unusual
beginnings. I (François) grew up on a farm near Poitiers,
France, with four siblings and spent my youth with a close
connection to nature. My father, Roger, a farmer as well as
a wine maker, was passionate about medicine in his youth,
but unfortunately couldn’t fulfill his dream due to his obli-
gation to uphold our family farm. My father made sure that
none of his sons would ever consider farming by giving
them the worst jobs on the farm during their summer vaca-
tions. It worked! All three boys ended up in the medical
field. My mom, Jacqueline, was also dedicated to helping
me find my passion. My fascination with the miracle, that
is life, naturally gravitated me towards studying biochemis-
try. I completed my Masters in Toulouse and then went into
the new field of molecular oncology at The Pasteur Institute
in Lille. My thesis advisor, Dr. Dominique Stehelin, had
just returned from San Francisco where he was a postdoc-
toral fellow at the laboratory of Dr. Bishop and Dr. Varmus
who later shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their work
on retroviral oncogenes. Dominique communicated his
enthusiasm for the burgeoning field of oncogenes and for
the unmatched research opportunities across the Atlantic.
I (Magda) grew up in Andorra, one of the smallest
countries in the world, nested between France and Spain
Biotechnology Entrepreneurship. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-815585-1.00003-6
Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
30 Accelerating the Growth of the Company 33
31 Turning a Challenge Into an Opportunity 34
31 Orchestrating a Successful Exit—New Beginning with
32 Ajinomoto 34
32 Final Words 34
in the Pyrenees mountains. The youngest of three chil-
dren, I spent my childhood hiking in the summer, skiing
in the winter, and socializing with tourists in the small
hotel my parents owned. At the age of 15, I went to
France to attend high school where I thought about future
careers I could practice in my tiny country. Needless to
say, biotechnology was not on my list of future careers as
the field didn’t even exist at the time. Every Sunday, I
called my family from a phone booth. One particular
Sunday, my whole life flipped upside down, and without
knowing it, my future career path was determined. On
that fateful day, I found out that my mother had been hos-
pitalized with advanced breast cancer. This news
completely shattered me. As a teenager in a foreign coun-
try, I felt very alone, scared, and unequipped to deal with
this family crisis. My mother had always been an example
for me and, along with my father, had always told me that
I could choose to be whatever I wanted to be in life. Not
every girl at the time was fortunate enough to hear this
empowering message, and this gave me the strong belief
that I could accomplish anything. Eventually, I chose the
field of biochemical engineering. I was determined to
build a career in the burgeoning field of biotechnology
with the intention of making a difference in health care.
29
30 SECTION | I Understanding Biotechnology Entrepreneurship
While I was a Ph.D. student at INSA/University of
Toulouse, my thesis advisor invited me to meet with a
collaborator. This is how I met Francois. We were very
fortunate to become life partners and to share a common
passion for health care.
The genesis of Althea Technologies
A year before turning 40, we started playing around with
the idea of starting our own business. At the time, we
were only scientists with big dreams and zero business
experience. We felt we had already accomplished some of
our dreams by getting married and moving to San Diego,
California, from Europe in the mid-1980s where we
started building strong career paths in biotechnology and
a family with two wonderful sons in the 1990s. Just
before the millennium, we clearly got the entrepreneurial
bug as we were becoming more eager to start a new busi-
ness together without a precise idea of what we would be
working on. We both had relevant experience and were
fascinated by the emerging field of gene therapy. We
quickly realized that we had developed skills in that
highly technical space that could form the basis of a cred-
ible venture. Magda was at Vical, a pioneering company
in the fields of gene therapy, and was very involved in
the development efforts surrounding DNA vaccines. So
much so that she was an integral part of the first team to
approach the FDA on the development of a DNA vaccine.
François was at The Immune Response Corporation work-
ing with the late Dr. Jonas Salk on a therapeutic AIDS
vaccine and had developed new methods to quantify min-
ute amounts of gene/gene products in tissues such as
blood. To say the least, we were both involved in some
very exciting and pioneering scientific endeavors. Not
only that but we were both big believers in the promises
of gene therapy. So, the idea was born. Now what?
Our first hurdle was to overcome the negative com-
ments directed at us for starting a company together. As
soon as we shared our ideas with our friends, they said,
“Why would you do that? A husband and wife venture?
Seriously? You have good jobs. Why take the risk?
Maybe one should start the company and the other one
joins later.” Despite the pushback, we were adamant that
it had to be the two of us. We both knew that moving
down the path of starting a business would require a lot
of energy and demand us to keep a very positive attitude
specifically to counter the naysayers. We had to admit
that their arguments were pretty compelling because even
if we could overcome the negative connotation of starting
a business with a spouse, we were heading for some
pretty strong headwinds. We did not have any intellec-
tual property, which was a serious handicap in attracting
sophisticated investors in the biotechnology industry.
Another major obstacle for us was our lack of business
and financial experience. We never read a business plan,
let alone contemplated writing one, neither did we have
any idea of what a revenue forecast looked like. That
being said, we were truly committed to our dreams so
we forged ahead anyway. We realized that an integral
part of entrepreneurship is taking calculated risks cou-
pled with having plenty of perseverance in spite of what
others have to say.
A couple of breakthroughs cemented our destiny. We
were basically two scientists pursuing a dream, but we had
enough common sense to realize that selling the story on
our own would be very difficult, if not impossible. Over
the years, we were lucky to be able to develop great rela-
tionships with our two bosses—Magda with the CEO of
Vical, Dr. Alain Schreiber, and François with the CEO of
The Immune Response Corporation, Jim Glavin. François
and Jim became great friends through playing tennis
together. By late May of 1997, we felt that our business
ideas were mature enough to share with a few key people.
After a riveting tennis match, François, who was still
working for The Immune Response Corporation, mustered
the courage to approach Jim with our new business con-
cept. To our great fortune, Jim responded enthusiastically.
Better yet, he flat out said that once we had a business
plan and were truly committed to the venture, he would be
happy to help by being our first investor. Next thing we
knew, Jim joined our board, and so did Dr. Alain
Schreiber. Alain also decided to invest in our new venture
and brought in other investors. Shortly after, we met a very
successful bioentrepreneur, Richard Chan, who decided to
invest and join our Board to help raise additional capital.
We felt really blessed to have the support of these
mentors who trusted us as scientists, and also knew that
we would need a lot of help on the business side. So
that’s how it all got started, and we honestly think that
they gave us the needed credibility to fundraise our new
business venture.
We learned later on that one key factor to our success
was to attract the right investors and people aligned with
our vision to be on our Board of Directors. In addition to
Jim, Alain, and Richard, we had the good fortune of being
able to convince Tim Wollaeger to invest and join our
Board. At the time, Tim was a very successful venture
capitalist in San Diego who had built a reputation of
being a maverick. So, when Martha Demski, the CFO of
Vical and Magda’s colleague, proposed to introduce us to
Tim, we were quite intimidated. Realizing what a big step
that was for us, Martha very kindly offered to coach us
before the meeting. It couldn’t have gone better. Tim,
being a very intuitive person, makes decisions very
quickly based on how he feels. Obviously, it is hard to
tell what he saw in us but midway through the meeting,
he stood up and declared—“Honestly, I do not fully
understand the science but I like you guys, checked up on
 A Biotechnology Entrepreneur’s Story: From Start-Up to International Chapter | 3
your reputation around town, and can say confidently that
I’m in and would like to join your Board.” We were both
completely shocked and elated. What a guy! We later
learned from him that he trusted us because he viewed us
as big dreamers with fire in our belly. With his knowledge
and experience in building successful companies, Tim
proved to be a great addition to the team. He’d been there
before. In his experience, Tim knew that over the course
of a company’s lifespan, you will experience lots of ups
and downs, and you need to have the right attitude, inves-
tors, and board members to get you through it. He was
really a key contributor to the success of our company.
We called the company Althea Technologies. We
stumbled upon it while looking at names in a flower book
and immediately connected with althea since it means
“healing” in Greek. We felt it was just perfect for a com-
pany whose main focus was to help develop new treat-
ments for patients using gene therapy (Fig. 3.1).
The First Year
It is common knowledge that most new ventures don’t
make it through the first year. Not so common is the fear
that we wouldn’t make it through the first day, and yet it
FIGURE 3.1 Dr Magda Marquet and Dr François Ferré during the
early days of Althea Technologies.
31
was exactly how we felt on the very first day of Althea.
For good measure, we started the company on April
Fool’s day, so we knew we had an out: “just kidding.”
In all seriousness, we were in real trouble. We had man-
aged to raise $2 million, which was no small feat in the
spring of 1998 when all the rage was about dot.com
ventures. Although we had a decent business plan, we
had no idea how to get started. The most daunting reali-
zations were that we were responsible for other people’s
money and that we were racing against time. One of the
best pieces of advice we received later on when we
were contemplating starting a different venture was to
make sure that you triple the money needed and double
the time required in your business plan. It will not guar-
antee success but will surely help you sleep better at
night. So, we had a sleepless night but we made it
through the first day. . .
We were blessed to be able to hire great people from
the start. Intuitively, we knew that we needed employees
who would be self-starters and versatile in their roles. In
essence, we gravitated toward hiring “intrapreneurs,”
people who were willing and capable of wearing multi-
ple hats to drive innovation within the company. Our
business strategy was based on the development of two
verticals: one pertaining to the development of molecu-
lar tests, our service business; the other one focusing on
the development of research products such as DNA
extraction kits, our product business. We reasoned, and
it was fully highlighted in our business plan, that by
developing improved molecular methods for our service
business, we could channel these improvements into new
molecular kits for our product business. It seemed logi-
cal and our investors liked the concept. However, as we
mentioned before, start-ups are all about time and
money. It turned out that we hadn’t raised enough
money to carry both business verticals simultaneously.
In the spring of 1999, less than a year into the venture,
we reached a turning point as the company was bleeding
cash too fast with too little to show for in terms of prod-
uct development. Fortunately, we had a little traction in
the service business, so we were still hopeful that we
would be able to make it through this rough patch. The
board agreed with us, so we focused all our efforts in the
service arena and became a contract research organiza-
tion (CRO). By the fall of 1999, we had enough momen-
tum in our molecular testing business to raise additional
funding. We made it through the first year!
Reinventing the Company—Again
After the first year, we felt really good about Althea’s
potential for growth. Although there were numerous
established and successful CROs serving the biotech and
pharmaceutical industries at the time, very few players
32 SECTION | I Understanding Biotechnology Entrepreneurship
were focusing on the emerging field of gene therapy. Due
to the fact that this new research and clinical area
required highly specialized skills, we were able to become
pioneers in developing these very precise molecular tools.
Everything was smooth sailing until one day, an event
completely out of our control had a major impact on the
future of the company. In September 1999, the field of
gene therapy got hit with a major human tragedy in the
death of 18-year-old Jesse Gelsinger. He was the first per-
son publicly identified as having died in a clinical trial for
gene therapy. This tragedy pretty much destroyed this
nascent field of clinical investigation, because it was so
unexpected, and also, because of Jesse’s dad who became
a very effective crusader against gene therapy, wanting to
halt all clinical development and pushing for more basic
research. His efforts resulted in a major deceleration in
clinical development for many years and impacted the
field in a huge way—but who can blame him? We had
made such a strong investment in serving this specific
clinical space that for a while, the future of the company
looked rather bleak. For one thing, we had to reinvent our-
selves fast and furious. We had a few contracts ongoing, so
those were still running their course, but we needed to
pivot fast. Our Board was very concerned and unsure of
what direction to take moving forward. We had one thing
going for us—we hired very resourceful and bright people.
With their help, we redirected the energy and focus of the
company toward developing new tools to further advance
the research side of the gene therapy field, which was still
relatively strong, and to address new clinical development
markets such as biologics. The Board was skeptical at first
but agreed to run with the new strategy; hence we were
able to pivot effectively. Less than a year later, Althea had
its first profitable quarter.
Our Own Trademark: Co-CEOs
When the company was on solid grounds with steady
growth and profitability, we approached the Board with a
new request. At the time, François was CEO and Magda
was President and COO. We decided to become co-
CEOs, because it was important for us to have parity. We
felt strongly that it would make us more effective leaders
of the organization. The Board was not convinced and
challenged us on the concept. The first objection was of
course—who’s going to be the boss? The second objec-
tion was in a similar vein—nobody does that!—and the
third one—if parity matters to you, why not create an
Office for the President? That last objection was a gift to
us as it undermined the first objection, and the second
objection could be rapidly dismissed as well since there
were already several companies out there with co-CEOs
at the helm. In fact, those companies were doing
extremely well. Although the sample size of companies
run by co-CEOs was way too small to drive any meaning-
ful conclusion, we could still point to the fact that they
did not collapse under the weight of this type of leader-
ship. In the end, the board didn’t like the decision, but we
were able to convince them since we picked that fight at
the right time as things were going really well within the
company. On top of that, they already knew that once we
had made up our minds about something, we could be
quite persistent. By 2000, we officially became co-CEOs
of Althea. To this day, we believe that this was a great
move for the company. At the time, Althea had two very
separate lines of business, and we each had our own. By
having the same title, we immediately informed the teams
that these business branches were of equal value to the
company (which was absolutely true at the time), and
therefore we were able to minimize the internal tensions
that inevitably arise when growing two very different
sides of a company. We believe it also had a very positive
impact on the company culture as we were strongly sig-
naling that as far as advancing your career goes, gender
was a nonissue at Althea.
Building a Great Culture
We set out to create a very entrepreneurial culture based
on trust and a can-do attitude where people would be
rewarded for taking risks, being creative, and reinventing
themselves. We also built a culture of celebration and
fun. The fascinating thing about creating a great culture
is that it is truly an evolutionary process. We have
already mentioned the importance of hiring the right
people, but what does it really mean for the organiza-
tion? We learned over the years that the people who
thrive in the early days of start-up life are not necessarily
the ones who do well in a more mature organization. We
were blessed from day 1 with some extraordinary
employees who embraced the start-up life to the fullest
(Fig. 3.2). They were highly technical people working
around the clock, even on weekends. They were “star”
employees who worked tirelessly and made a huge dif-
ference for the company. We loved them like family and
appreciated everything they did for Althea. As the com-
pany grew, some of them had difficulty adapting to a
more structured environment which inevitably came
with a maturing enterprise. They were also very demand-
ing of our time since we used to give it to them more
freely when we were a small team. How does one man-
age such a dynamic? That’s what building a great culture
is all about. We were strong believers in personal growth
and quickly realized that one of our top priorities as lea-
ders of the organization was to catalyze the personal
growth of key employees. We read many books on the
subject, attended seminars, and even hired a coach. We
wanted to make sure that everyone coming to work at
 A Biotechnology Entrepreneur’s Story: From Start-Up to International Chapter | 3
Althea had an opportunity to grow, to learn new skills,
and to express themselves, and in doing so, helped
deliver further value to the company. The results were
truly astonishing. Most of our “star” employees evolved
to become leaders with their tremendous “can-do” atti-
tude intact, but also tempered by the realization that their
own success was directly linked to their respective
team’s success. Althea rapidly became known in the
industry as a company with a great culture where
employees were rewarded for their creative ideas. It
became known as a place where people worked hard, but
also had a lot of fun playing hard together. Althea had
truly developed a culture of celebration. It came to a
point where pretty much anything became an excuse to
celebrate. When the French national soccer team won its
first game in the 1998 World Cup, champagne was flow-
ing freely for lunch. In the early days, we celebrated
every small purchase order by chanting in the hallways:
“a PO a day keeps the VCs away!” We are very strong
believers in celebrating the small things in life as well as
the milestones, which naturally extended to our corpo-
rate life.
Accelerating the Growth of the Company
In 2002 the company was doing well. However, it became
more apparent that with the on-going lines of business, it
was going to be challenging to get to an accelerated
phase. As a venture driven business, this was of course a
real concern, as entrepreneurs and companies are
rewarded on growth. We had a hunch that we should shift
the company more aggressively toward the contract
33
FIGURE 3.2 Althea Technologies team in
the early days, circa 2000.
manufacturing organization (CMO) aspect of the business
instead of being solely a CRO. One of the key impedi-
ments was linked to the fact that building a CMO busi-
ness was incredibly capital intensive due to the need for
costly equipment and strong customer support on the reg-
ulatory side. Since no one on the team had run a CMO
business before, the Board was not very keen on raising a
significant amount of money to try our hands at it. It also
didn’t help that they just survived a near-death experience
the year before. So, what to do? Again, it is all about who
you are able to bring on the bus. One of our key players
who joined Althea in the first year was Rick Hancock.
Rick was François’ colleague at the Immune Response
Corporation and had consulted for Magda when she was
at Vical. Rick was a wizard in manufacturing very com-
plex therapeutic products such as HIV vaccines. He had a
true knack for making something out of nothing and had
been a real asset in our ability to pivot our business strat-
egy early on. So, when he came to us with an idea for a
new line of business, we paid attention. Rick had been at
the forefront of our CMO business and, in that capacity,
had been talking to many customers. He noticed that a
number of smaller companies struggled with getting their
clinical products in a final form for use in clinical
settings. This activity is called fill/finish and consists of
sterilely producing the final formulation of a drug product
in vials or syringes. Due to the small size of their clinical
lots, our customers had a hard time finding a CMO to
help them. With very limited market research and Rick’s
promise that he could start with little capital, we went to
the Board to pitch this new line of business as our next
growth opportunity. It worked. To this day, we are not
34 SECTION | I Understanding Biotechnology Entrepreneurship
sure why they liked it, but they did. It turned out that our
hunch and Rick’s magic led to what is today the biggest
line of business for the company.
Turning a Challenge Into an Opportunity
The biotech industry is not immune to the financial condi-
tions in the market as 2009 was a very tough year for
Althea. We were still trying to recover from the 2008
financial crash that disproportionally affected our biotech
customers’ ability to raise and spend money on new thera-
peutics. In fact, the fourth quarter of 2008 was the scariest
time at Althea as the phones went literally silent from
October through December. By the end of 2009, we had
regained some momentum, but then some really bad news
hit us at the last Board meeting of the year. Our CFO
announced that our main customer Altus Pharmaceuticals
was unable to raise additional capital and just filed for
bankruptcy protection. This was truly a double-blow since
we not only lost a partner who had just signed a major
multiyear contract with us, but one who also owed us a
very substantial amount of money with no capacity to
pay. The Board was in complete shock and was scram-
bling to come up with the appropriate answer to this new
crisis. The beauty of facing the abyss a couple of times
previously is that it forces one to somehow trust that the
right answer does not have to come from some kind of
rational thinking and may in fact come from a crazy idea
that comes out of nowhere. Now remember, Althea was
already struggling financially before the Altus news. Yet
toward the end of the Board meeting and after ample
deliberations, François blurted out: “Why don’t we try to
buy them?” Complete silence—at first glance, it made
absolutely no sense, but as the stunned Board started to
contemplate the possibilities, it dawned on some of us,
including François, that this idea may in fact have merit.
Altus had developed a very interesting proprietary tech-
nology platform for the delivery of biological molecules
which could potentially be of value to some of our custo-
mers. Although there were no immediate financial
rewards to contemplate, owning this technology could
boost Althea’s perceived value and therefore attract new
venture capital. The Board decided to go for it, and in the
spring of 2010, Althea acquired Altus Pharmaceuticals.
As we went through the acquisition process, we learned
that some of the companies that licensed the Altus tech-
nology were getting great results in clinical trials. This
was exciting news, because it meant that some financial
rewards in the form of licensing milestones could poten-
tially come our way sooner than expected, and that is
exactly what ended up happening. Intuition is a powerful
tool that should not be overlooked; sometimes the craziest
idea leads to a “lucky break.”
Orchestrating a Successful Exit—New
Beginning with Ajinomoto
By 2012, the company was in an accelerated growth
phase; thus we had to decide how to fuel it. It turned out
that it was destiny when in the spring of 2012, at the
International BIO Convention, Magda was introduced by
a colleague to Dr. Shiragami of Ajinomoto. Dr. Shiragami
was focused on licensing a new expression system
(Corinex) based on corynebacteria, the very microorgan-
ism that Magda worked on days and nights decades ago
when she was a PhD student in Toulouse, France. Magda
was fully aware that Ajinomoto’s success over the last
century was based in large part on the production of
amino acids by corynebacteria. Needless to say, this ser-
endipitous encounter was followed by many more fruitful
discussions about the merits of collaborating around the
Corinex platform. In August, the board decided to hire an
investment banking firm to help us find a strategic partner
to acquire the company. Although Ajinomoto had no
intention of acquiring Althea at the time and mostly
wanted to collaborate on technology development, the
trust that Dr. Shiragami and Magda had established was
key in Ajinomoto’s decision to throw its hat in the ring.
This led to the acquisition of Althea Technologies by the
Ajinomoto group just a few months later in the spring of
2013. As founders of Althea, we could not have dreamed
of a better outcome. Not only were the financial rewards
for all stakeholders of Althea significant, but equally
important was that Ajinomoto committed to build upon the
foundation we had created, honored our vision, and offered
every single employee of Althea a path for growth. It is
common knowledge that most company integrations are
disastrous. Fortunately, this wasn’t the case for us. Five
years later, despite the fact that there were huge differences
in both company’s size, culture, and business focus, the
acquisition of Althea by Ajinomoto continues to be a great
success, and we are tremendously grateful for it.
Final Words
As we further reflect on our experiences as entrepreneurs
and creators of a successful life science company, a few
key messages come to mind. We believe that the first and
perhaps most important characteristic of a successful
entrepreneur has to be perseverance. Building a company
from scratch is a marathon, not a sprint. Let us further
define perseverance in the context of successful entre-
preneurship. We believe that it has to be connected some-
how to the upmost conviction on the part of entrepreneurs
that they will not be denied the right to realize their
dreams. In the early stages of a company, so many things
can go wrong and will go wrong that entrepreneurs have
to develop some potent personal tools to resist the
 A Biotechnology Entrepreneur’s Story: From Start-Up to International Chapter | 3
temptation to give up all together. For us, one of those
tools was the wonderful quote from Helen Keller: “Life is
either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” When we
were fund-raising, the quote was posted everywhere in
our home office, by the fax machine (yes, such a dreadful
instrument did exist not so long ago), and taped to our
computer screen or on the wall just above it. It was ines-
capable. When the rejections came through the phone line,
we found great solace reading it aloud. Later on, it became
our rallying cry when the tough got tougher at Althea.
Perseverance is very different from stubbornness.
When facing the wall, it is not about trying to plough
through it, as all too often the wall will prevail. It is about
humbly recognizing one’s limits, genuinely asking for help
with the deep conviction that a solution does exist some-
where, and being able to spot it when it shows up. That’s
when the miracles happen. With that in mind, entrepre-
neurs benefit immensely from developing an open mind
and a capacity to stay centered. In most cases, this requires
a substantial amount of work as the world of an entrepre-
neur is notoriously chaotic. We recognized early on a need
for balance in our lives and decided to use the tool of med-
itation to get us out of the busy work. This provided some
35
significant stress release and helped us refocus our mind.
We believe to this day that it fundamentally contributed to
our overall success as biotech entrepreneurs.
Magda Marquet and Francois Ferre´ are San Diego
life sciences entrepreneurs. After founding Althea
Technologies in 1998 and leading it to a successful exit
15 years later, they used a significant portion of the pro-
ceeds to start an investment fund, Alma Life Sciences, to
help entrepreneurs build innovative companies. They
also cofounded AltheaDx, a precision medicine company
with a leading pharmacogenomics test in the areas of
depression and anxiety. Both of them play a vital role in
building the San Diego entrepreneurial ecosystem by
their involvement and support of local organizations,
universities, and research institutions. They have been
recognized throughout their careers with prestigious
awards such as the Regional Ernst and Young
Entrepreneur of the Year Award in Life Sciences and the
CONNECT Entrepreneur Hall of Fame. Magda and
Francois have two sons, Alex (30) and Max (26). When
they are not involved in biotech, you can find Francois
on a tennis court or Magda in a yoga studio.