Nighttime inspiration developed Stemina

Interviewed by Amanda Kramer

Beth Donley

Chief Executive Officer, Stemina Biomarker Discovery

Age: 44

Family: Married to Brian (20 years), two children -- Katherine, 14, and Jack, 11

About the company: Stemina Biomarker Discovery discovers and validates small molecules as biomarkers for drug screening and disease diagnostics in all human systems. Stemina uses human embryonic stem cells and differentiated cells, such as neural cells and cardiomyocytes derived from stem cells, to study toxic responses.

Experience: Stemina was formed by Beth Donley and scientist Gabriela Cezar in 2006. Donley is a patent attorney who served as general counsel and director of business development for the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation for more than eight years. During her tenure at WARF, Donley also served as managing director of both WARF subsidiaries: WiSys Technology Foundation and WiCell Research Institute. Prior to joining WARF in 1998, Donley practiced law with the law firm of Quarles & Brady in the areas of intellectual property law, business transactions, securities and corporate law.

Education: Donley earned her undergraduate degree in journalism from UW-Madison. She has a law degree from the UW-Madison Law School, an M.B.A. in finance from UW-Whitewater and an M.S. in bacteriology from UW-Madison.

Q: What was your involvement in the creation of Stemina?

A: I co-founded it with Gabriela (Cezar) and talked to Gabriela about the idea of starting the company in the middle of 2006. She'd always wanted to start a company and I had also wanted to start a business. We started talking about it -- I'd recently gone from being the interim director of WiCell to being the permanent director. Ultimately the governor announced his stem cell initiative and we both were anxious to get started with a project.

One night in October, I couldn't sleep so I got out of bed, went to the computer and outlined how I thought we should work together. I called Gabby in the morning and said I was up all night and put together a proposal. She had chosen the name already.

We met that night at Johnny Delmonico's for steak and wine, sat down and tweaked it a little bit and decided to go forward.

I filed papers to start the company November 16 -- my daughter's birthday -- of 2006.

Q: Why create this type of business?

A: I think there are a ton of good reasons. The first is that the science is so interesting -- and so promising.

Gabriela's platform technology is really unique in that she's using the human embryonic stem cell as a bioreactor to understand what's happening inside the human system when a human is exposed to drugs, particularly a developing embryo, and right now there's a great way to test drugs for whether or not they cause birth defects. Mice and rats are only about 50 percent predictive of whether or not they'll be toxic to a human fetus and right now we don't put pregnant women through human trials for a really good reason.

I thought it was an opportunity to do something very creative in a very interesting field. I had worked for about nine years protecting the intellectual property around stem cells at WARF. That's something that needs to be done but it can also be very conflict related…and so this seemed like a way to do something more positive with the technology. And then beyond that, I've always been pretty entrepreneurial, as has Gabby…and there was the promise of support from the state — we knew money was available. We've both always been advocates for the state in terms of trying to keep it open to doing research and growing the cluster here. It seemed like it was the right time.

Q: How did you come up with the "Stemina" name?

A: Gabriela came up with a modification of the word "stamina" because we're studying the energy systems of the human body, and then, of course, the "stem" for stem cells. And it had to end in an "a" because Gabriela's Brazilian and she speaks Portuguese.

Q: What has been your biggest challenge to date?

A: The biggest challenge was actually finding the right space. We actually wanted to be open in the summer. We weren't having good luck finding a space that could accommodate hepa filtration for the cells and certain configurations so we could have the mass spectrometer in its own environmentally controlled room. We moved in on November 1 (2007). During that first month we were receiving equipment. We got the human embryonic stem cells on November 27 (the national stem cell bank is here at WiCell Research Institute).

We use Dr. Thompson's lines that were created in 1998 -- we're not using new embryos … those can really go on in perpetuity. Ours were passage 30 -- that was very early and that means they've been split, divided and replated 30 times as a passage.

Q: Stem cell research is a fast-moving and controversial field. How do you deal with the challenges both personally and professionally?

A: That's an interesting question. Professionally, I do a lot of speaking, like at Rotary groups. We always are very conscientious about the fact that this is an area people have moral concerns about and that it is a personal issue. I try to be respectful of other people's beliefs. I personally see it like tissue donation, these are embryos that are excess from IVF that would otherwise be thrown away. So, I see it very much similar in nature to donating your organs or your body after you die. I think that the cells would otherwise go to waste. The promise of them (cells) is just so huge.

There's so much misinformation. People are envisioning aborted fetal tissue and it's nothing like that -- it's a small cluster of cells in a Petri dish, it has no beating heart, it has no primordial streak where you can see a spine forming. It has never been in a uterus and it never will be in a uterus.

Q: What's the biggest mistake you have ever made in your career?

A: Losing my temper. You never win when you lose your temper and you usually say something you wouldn't have said otherwise. I work hard not to and I actually find that's easier in my current setting where you're working to build something -- as opposed to my previous setting where I was very adversarial and fighting for the rights of WARF and the patents. In the last year I can feel myself just naturally becoming less adversarial because I'm in a totally different role and I think it suits my personality better.

Q: What has been your biggest triumph?

A: I think building this company. I think the promise of what we can do here is just hard to even express. And the partnership that Gabby and I have is really a positive one. We play on each other's strengths and we work really hard to stay in partnership. I would say it's been the most exciting thing I've ever done in my career.

Q: Do you plan to keep your business here? If so, why

A: Yes, absolutely. Well, first of all I'm a Madison girl. I've lived here since I was six. Part of the reason I spend a lot of time speaking not only about our company and human embryonic stem cell research, (I  also speak -- when asked to -- about the bio-corridor from Chicago through Madison including Milwaukee up through Eau Claire and the Twin Cities) is that I really strongly believe this can be an Austin, Texas. It can be a leader in biotechnology and I want to make that so.

We would never move this company -- now, would we ever have another office somewhere? Possibly.

Q: What are three things that keep you sane?

A: Exercise -- top of the list. I run pretty much four or five mornings a week. I like to ski and cross-country ski. Two, I'd say friends and family. I have a really great network of friends and family here in Madison. I would say three is certainly my core family -- my kids and husband -- we escape quite frequently to a cabin we have in Winchester, Wisconsin. It has everything you need -- wood burning fireplace and it's on a lake.We sleep like bears in hibernation up there. We go every single month. It's good, quiet family time.

Q: What kind of impact are you and your business having on Wisconsin?

A: I hope we're helping to maintain our leadership in stem cell research by helping to add to the critical mass here. I think that's really important -- Wisconsin was the birthplace of stem cell research and I want to see us stay a leader even in the face of a $3 billion initiative in California and large ones in Mass. and New Jersey. Our Legislature is not always supportive of stem cell research particularly as it leans to the Republican side. We do have a governor who is strongly supportive and will protect us against a legislature that would keep us from doing work. I think it's important also from the standpoint of advancing women in science. We have not gone out purposely to try to hire women although we've ended up with mostly women and one man (but we interviewed another man named "Kelly" this week!) There are great women in science doing great things in science…I don't know why it is that we attracted women, but we did. We spend quite a bit of time encouraging women students … we want to give women a vision that they can really do anything.

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