Weiss hopes to lead Gala to next level

Nathan Leaf

Age: 47

Position: President of Gala Biotech, 8137 Forsythia St., Middleton.

Company at a glance: Gala Biotech was founded in 1996, purchased by Cardinal Health in 2003. It has 50 employees and 10 open positions.

Annual sales: Not disclosed.

Products: Gene insertion technology to engineer cells used in production of biopharmaceuticals.

Weiss' background: Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Lived in Madison in middle school while his father did post-doctoral work in Madison.

Education: Undergraduate degree in biochemistry from Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario. Ph.D. in biochemistry and MBA from UW-Madison.

Personal: Lives in Middleton. Fiancee is Kristin Haslow, a third-year pharmacy graduate student at UW-Madison.

Has a black Labrador retriever named Henri and a yellow lab named Emma.

Hobbies: Softball and golf.

Professional history: After finishing his MBA, went to work for Columbia Laboratories doing both business development and research and development. Left Columbia Labs in the mid-1990s to come back to the Madison area for a job with Scientific Protein Labs in Waunakee, which was a division of Wyeth.Worked into a business development role with Wyeth in Philadelphia. Joined a startup company called 3-Dimensional Pharmaceuticals for about four years until the company went public in September 2000. Joined what was then called Gala Design as a senior vice president of business development in 2001.

Q:What is your typical day like?
A: I am on the road about 40 to 50 percent of the time right now, so I am usually driving to O'Hare . . .

waiting on a flight, getting caught up on e-mails and messages, or on the flight.

When I have a week in the office, I am usually there between 7 and 8 (a.m.) and usually stay until at least 7 in the evening.

Generally, the day is kept busy keeping up with e-mail, talking to clients, and trying to walk around the facility and getting updates from everyone on how things are going. We are in startup mode for our biopharmaceutical manufacturing operations, and that means quite a few ad hoc meetings, etc.

Q:Can you put into layman's terms what your company does?
A:What we do is provide a service to other biotech companies, that, for example, might have discovered an antibody, a protein or biopharmaceutical, that is active against a certain type of cancer.

The biotech company, our client if you will, provides us with the gene or genes for this antibody. We then use our technology, which we call GPEx, for Gene Product Expression, to create a mammalian cell line. This cell line is then grown in a big stainless steel tank and the cells convert the gene(s) that "code" for the antibody into the actual antibody. The beer-making analogy (comes into play here). The tanks are similar, and the cells, instead of making beer by fermenting the broth to produce alcohol ... make the antibody.

We then isolate the antibody to a very high degree of purity, so that it is suitable for injecting into a patient. We do not make a commercial product yet, but rather we focus on products that are still in clinical development.

Q: Where do you go to unwind?
A: During the weekend, I am usually in the office both days for a while but also find time to get the dogs to Indian Lake at least one day, if not both. Also enjoy working around the house and yard but don't want to overdo that.

(My fiancee) is always busy and anxious for me to get out of the house with the dogs, but we do get to the movies once in while and we often take the dogs to Indian Lake together. . . .We also travel about once every two or three months as close as Chicago, or as far as the West Coast ? usually San Francisco. But next month, we're off to Seattle to bottle wine, of all things.

(We also like to go to) Barriques, Vin Santo and stay home and watch a movie and play in my wine cellar. The latter has gotten a little out of hand, but I really enjoy learning about wines, basically all reds. I also love to cook, and eat; this is a problem, and Kristin and I enjoy having friends over to cook together and try wines.

We also are renovating the house, and while this might not be considered unwinding, it is fun to plan things and then see them come to fruition.

I guess you could say that I have become rather Middletoncentric as I work there, live there, and go out there a lot.

Q: Your father did post-doctoral work in Madison . . . in what field? Did he inspire you?
A: Yes, my father did his post doc at UW-Madison at the Food Research Institute. And he was definitely an inspiration to me with respect to getting into the experimental process to solve problems. That said, both my parents worked very hard, and I seemed to have picked this up from them, along with what I hope is usually a very solid dose of common sense. Anyway, I spent quite a bit of time on campus as a kid, including "helping" a bit in the lab. My mother was anxious for me to do something "medical." She worked in the field as an administrator and when I had to choose between doing research and med school, the research won out. That said, I now feel I have the best of many worlds.

Q: What are Gala's goals now that you are a part of Cardinal Health?
A: It's shifted a great deal because there's a lot of regulatory issues around making therapeutic (products) for human use in animals, which is not to say it should not be done. It can be done very effectively. But there are additional regulatory hurdles, and what our scientist did was find a way to take the same technology . . . and instead of using a cow to make the protein, you use a big stainless steel tank. It's a little bit more of a controlled environment. That was also more appealing to Cardinal.

(Another goal is) commercializing the technology. So with our first patent issuing, we'll be looking for additional patents around new applications of the technology ? exploiting the second generation of the technology to get as many clients and customers as we can.

. . . Once you make the cell line with the technology, that then goes into a manufacturing program.

(Our goal is) really to finish building out the facility to become a very high quality clinical scale manufacturing facility.

Our role here in Middleton now is really at the technology piece, to make the cell line, the very front line.

Q: What are some challenges you face in accomplishing these goals?
A: Getting your facility built on time; it's a fairly expensive infraQ:What is your typical day like?
A: I am on the road about 40 to 50 percent of the time right now, so I am usually driving to O'Hare . . .

waiting on a flight, getting caught up on e-mails and messages, or on the flight.

When I have a week in the office, I am usually there between 7 and 8 (a.m.) and usually stay until at least 7 in the evening.

Generally, the day is kept busy keeping up with e-mail, talking to clients, and trying to walk around the facility and getting updates from everyone on how things are going. We are in startup mode for our biopharmaceutical manufacturing operations, and that means quite a few ad hoc meetings, etc.

Q:Can you put into layman's terms what your company does?
A:What we do is provide a service to other biotech companies, that, for example, might have discovered an antibody, a protein or biopharmaceutical, that is active against a certain type of cancer.

The biotech company, our client if you will, provides us with the gene or genes for this antibody. We then use our technology, which we call GPEx, for Gene Product Expression, to create a mammalian cell line. This cell line is then grown in a big stainless steel tank and the cells convert the gene(s) that "code" for the antibody into the actual antibody. The beer-making analogy (comes into play here). The tanks are similar, and the cells, instead of making beer by fermenting the broth to produce alcohol ... make the antibody.

We then isolate the antibody to a very high degree of purity, so that it is suitable for injecting into a patient. We do not make a commercial product yet, but rather we focus on products that are still in clinical development.

Q: Where do you go to unwind?
A: During the weekend, I am usually in the office both days for a while but also find time to get the dogs to Indian Lake at least one day, if not both. Also enjoy working around the house and yard but don't want to overdo that.

(My fiancee) is always busy and anxious for me to get out of the house with the dogs, but we do get to the movies once in while and we often take the dogs to Indian Lake together. . . .We also travel about once every two or three months as close as Chicago, or as far as the West Coast ? usually San Francisco. But next month, we're off to Seattle to bottle wine, of all things.

(We also like to go to) Barriques, Vin Santo and stay home and watch a movie and play in my wine cellar. The latter has gotten a little out of hand, but I really enjoy learning about wines, basically all reds. I also love to cook, and eat; this is a problem, and Kristin and I enjoy having friends over to cook together and try wines.

We also are renovating the house, and while this might not be considered unwinding, it is fun to plan things and then see them come to fruition.

I guess you could say that I have become rather Middletoncentric as I work there, live there, and go out there a lot.

Q: Your father did post-doctoral work in Madison . . . in what field? Did he inspire you?
A: Yes, my father did his post doc at UW-Madison at the Food Research Institute. And he was definitely an inspiration to me with respect to getting into the experimental process to solve problems. That said, both my parents worked very hard, and I seemed to have picked this up from them, along with what I hope is usually a very solid dose of common sense. Anyway, I spent quite a bit of time on campus as a kid, including "helping" a bit in the lab. My mother was anxious for me to do something "medical." She worked in the field as an administrator and when I had to choose between doing research and med school, the research won out. That said, I now feel I have the best of many worlds.

Q: What are Gala's goals now that you are a part of Cardinal Health?
A: It's shifted a great deal because there's a lot of regulatory issues around making therapeutic (products) for human use in animals, which is not to say it should not be done. It can be done very effectively. But there are additional regulatory hurdles, and what our scientist did was find a way to take the same technology . . . and instead of using a cow to make the protein, you use a big stainless steel tank. It's a little bit more of a controlled environment. That was also more appealing to Cardinal.

(Another goal is) commercializing the technology. So with our first patent issuing, we'll be looking for additional patents around new applications of the technology ? exploiting the second generation of the technology to get as many clients and customers as we can.

. . . Once you make the cell line with the technology, that then goes into a manufacturing program.

(Our goal is) really to finish building out the facility to become a very high quality clinical scale manufacturing facility.

Our role here in Middleton now is really at the technology piece, to make the cell line, the very front line.

Q: What are some challenges you face in accomplishing these goals?
A: Getting your facility built on time; it's a fairly expensive infrastructure to maintain. It's a high value product. When we were private, one of the challenges was raising money from local investors in the investment community.

In some sense, we're still raising money within Cardinal Health, so I need to go to Cardinal Health senior management and get money back to keep investing in the facility and building out.

Q: How do you overcome these challenges?
A: Networking in the general sense (to lure talent to the company). We connect with the local colleges. We just hired two MATC grads in the biotech program. Recruiting is a little bit difficult in the Midwest, but retention is real good. It's a bit of an obstacle, but we stay connected to local hiring networks. We do work an awful lot with UW.

Q: What are some mistakes you've made, and what have you learned?
A: We didn't make many, but I think the one we tried to avoid was assuming a deal was done before it was actually done. It's something I call deal creep. You think you have established terms, and people start nibbling away at them.

Q: Is this a mistake you've made?
A: It's happened to this organization.

This is not a criticism of the investors, but everybody is trying to get as much as they can and at some point you're sort of getting blood from a stone and you just can't give any more. When Cardinal bought us, they were looking for a little bit extra here and there, and the investors (initially) weren't willing.

Both sides gave a little to get the deal done . . . (the investors recognized that) a smaller percentage of something is better than a larger percentage of nothing.

Q: Any other mistakes you've learned from?
A: I think you have to watch when you present your technology out there to the world because competitors will (challenge it). There's misinformation. We got caught a couple of times. When you're ready to present your technology, make sure you're ready to defend it, that you have the data and the firepower.

Q: Were there times when you weren't in a position to defend your technology?
A:We fell into the trap of thinking it was ready before maybe it was.

And so we had to basically do a check restart, come back and reengineer the technology, and now it's fantastic and the patent has been issued. You throw it out there and say this technology is great, and everybody starts throwing stones at it. And if you don't have the data or the firepower, the wherewithal, the money ... to be able to address those issues head on, a better strategy might be to not get all splashy and tell everybody about your technology until you're really ready to get out there and run with it.

Q: What have your triumphs been at Gala?
A: Keeping the business running.

We were days, maybe weeks away from going out of business.

Getting Cardinal Health to fund the opportunity. Our theninvestors were flexible enough to maybe not get the huge return they were looking for, but they accepted the conditions that Cardinal came in at.

Getting our patent written.

Q: What do you like about doing business in the Madison area?
A: As a manufacturing group, being in Madison is very good because it has a very solid workforce, very good talents, the cost of living is wonderful. I love living here. The people pool or the human asset is great here. I personally would love to stay if we can make it.

Q: Is there anything you dislike about doing business here?
A: The travel problems. The Madison airport really needs to have more flights to more places. I tend to drive to O'Hare mostly and just use that as a way to get into the system.

I think the state could do more.

They seem to be off by an order of magnitude. I read somewhere that someone got a $50,000 award for something, where in other states it would have been a $500,000 award.

WARF is great at starting companies.

Keeping them here is more of a state thing with tax credits. But I understand its been a tough year.

Q: What is unique about the Madison market?
A: It's very stable. Again, once you're here, I think the retention is very good. People find ways to come back to Madison. You'll see them doing some slight departures from their career just to stay.

Young families love it here. It's a great place for kids.

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