| Carilion’s first biotech sale
Virginia Business
September 2004
The
creation of the Carilion Biomedical Institute in Roanoke
five years ago was supposed to mark a new era of biotech
growth in western and Southwest Virginia. Now the institute
can claim some success with the sale of the first company
it helped launch. The assets of Charlottesville-based
Biophile Inc., an eight-employee company that makes
laboratory freezers developed by University of Virginia
scientists, were bought in June by Massachusetts-based
TekCel Inc., a lab equipment company.
Institute leaders say the sale is proof they can get
a concept out of a university lab and into the private
sector. But since Biophile’s launch in 2001 the
institute has put $10 million into the company, and
it’s not clear if they recouped that investment.
Terms of the deal were kept secret at the buyer’s
request, says institute President and CEO Daniel Barchi,
who was Biophile’s CEO prior to the sale. The
institute was a co-owner of Biophile, along with Carilion
Health System, the Virginia Tech Foundation and the
University of Virginia Patent Foundation.
TekCel says it plans on keeping Biophile in Charlottesville.
“We’re thrilled that for $10 million we
were able to start a major capital company, build it
up, create all those jobs, generate $2.5 million in
revenue (in 2003) and then sell it to a major player.
If that’s not good, I don’t know what is,”
says Barchi.
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