SANTA CLARA, Calif. & CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) has today announced that biotech startup Angiex, Inc., has been awarded an Agilent Golden Ticket at LabCentral, providing funding of one lab bench space for a year.
Three semi-finalists presented their proposals at LabCentral’s Cambridge, Massachusetts, facility on Jan. 22, 2017. The winner was chosen by a panel of judges consisting of Johannes Fruehauf, M.D., Ph.D., cofounder and president, LabCentral; Darlene Solomon, Ph.D., senior vice president and chief technology officer, Agilent; and John Gavenonis, vice president and general manager, Chemistries Division, Agilent CrossLab Group.
“All the semi-finalists in our Golden Ticket Event exhibited strong entrepreneurship, innovative scientific approaches, and great promise to advance healthcare. Angiex, our first-place winner, demonstrated an excellent combination of scientific impact, enthusiasm to collaborate with Agilent, and personal drive to advancing cancer treatments,” said Darlene Solomon, senior vice president and chief technology officer for Agilent. “Agilent is dedicated to supporting bio-pharma startups and advancing patient care – and from this event, we are excited to begin a strong partnership with Angiex and further expand our relationship with LabCentral.”
Angiex was founded by world-class scientists to develop vascular-targeted biotherapeutics. Angiex’s lead product is an antibody-drug conjugate therapy for cancer, which effectively regresses highly malignant tumors in mice, and has potential to treat such dangerous human cancers as pancreatic, lung, and liver cancers and glioblastoma multiforme. Angiex was launched with IP from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Angiex’s founders are world leaders in vascular biology and vascular-targeted therapies for cancer.
“We are very excited to have been selected as the winner of the Agilent Golden Ticket,” said Paul Jaminet, Ph.D., chief executive officer of Angiex. “Agilent’s superb laboratory tools for chromatography and mass spectrometry will help Angiex bring a promising cancer therapy to the clinic, and Agilent’s Golden Ticket will help Angiex continue to enjoy the benefits of working in LabCentral, the best launchpad space for young biotechnology companies on the planet. We couldn’t be more pleased that a technology leader like Agilent has recognized Angiex’s potential to have a life-saving impact on cancer patients.”
“We’re thrilled that Angiex received the Golden Ticket sponsored by Agilent,” commented Dr. Fruehauf. “Angiex is a company to watch as it steadily meets its milestones moving from the bench toward the clinic.” He continued, “It was a tough decision. All three finalists are promising companies we know well and like. We were honored to have renowned medical journalists Liz Cooney from STAT News and Carey Goldberg from WBUR join us for the evening to ask probing questions and bring out the unique stories behind each of these startups.”
Agilent as a platinum sponsor has equipped LabCentral's shared laboratory workspace with a variety of Agilent technology, including a high-resolution mass spectrometry system, and a cell analysis extracellular flux (XF) analyzer. The sponsorship also includes a Golden Ticket which represents one year of bench space for a scientist, including benefit of LabCentral's shared infrastructure and services (such as conference rooms, permits, shared equipment and facilities, participation in LabCentral training modules and seminars).
About Agilent Technologies
Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) is a global leader in life sciences, diagnostics and applied chemical markets. With more than 50 years of insight and innovation, Agilent instruments, software, services, solutions, and people provide trusted answers to its customers' most challenging questions. The company generated revenues of $4.47 billion in fiscal 2017 and employs 13,500 people worldwide. Information about Agilent is available at www.agilent.com.
About LabCentral (www.labcentral.org; twitter @labcentral)
LabCentral is a first-of-its-kind shared laboratory workspace in the heart of the Kendall Square, Cambridge, biotech innovation hub, designed as a launchpad for high-potential life-sciences and biotech startups. It offers everything young companies need to begin lab operations immediately upon move-in and propel their science forward faster and more cost-efficiently. This includes: beautifully designed, fully permitted lab and office space, first-class facility and administrative support, skilled laboratory personnel, peer learning and networking opportunities, an expert speaker series — as well as critical access to potential funders and industry partners. Founding sponsors include Johnson & Johnson Innovation, the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, Roche, and Triumvirate Environmental. To accommodate demand for growing startups, LabCentral, with support from Pfizer, opened LabCentral 610 in 2017. It now has capacity to serve a total of ~450 scientists and entrepreneurs in about 70 companies across its two-building campus.
About Angiex
Angiex was founded by world-class scientists to develop vascular-targeted biotherapeutics. Angiex targets fundamental aspects of endothelial biology with a focus on angiogenesis. Angiex’s lead product is an antibody-drug conjugate therapy for cancer. Angiex is resident at LabCentral in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Information about Angiex is available at www.angiex.com
