Today's Featured Biography

 
Paul Taylor

At the time of our (must have been) 30th Reunion, I had started, built merged and sold an environmental analysis lab. It did a 3 way merger with two other labs, one of which as a public company. The resulting company was called Enseco, Inc. The NASDAQ stock symbol was NCCO. We were bought by Corning Inc. in 1989. I left Corning in early 1991. I liked pain so much that I started a new lab and got divorced in the early 1990's. I remarried in 1995. The new lab did analysis of drugs in development for Pharmaceutical companies. One of my early startups merged into Eneco also did this. That startup developed and was bought by PPDI (a public company at the time) PPDI grew and grew and was purchased by the Carlyle Group last year.

Taylor Technology Inc grew slowly with some bumps due to too much client concentration. Eventually we sold out at a decent price to a fascinating company based in Miami called SFBCI. They gave us the best price and the highest ratio of cash to stock. SFBCI was later unfairly pilloried by Bloomberg News. It is an interesting story, but not for this searchable site. One of SFBCI's other acquisitions (also based in Princeton) took over the running of SFBCI from the Miami folks and moved the Headquarters to Princeton. It was renamed PharmaNet Development Group, Inc after the aforementioned CRO in Princeton. Eventually the debt instrument that SFBCI used to buy PharmaNet turned around and chewed up PharmaNet during the Great Recession. Too much debt is never good. PharmaNet was rescued by JLL, a private equity firm. After I retired PharmaNet was sold to another private equity firm and renamed PharmaNet/I3. (eye three).

In the mean time my lab did well as a wholly owned subsidiary of PharmaNet. We worked for many different pharmaceutical companies. If you have ever used Premarin or Prempro, my lab did almost all of the bioanalysis need to register this drug for sale in their current form. I do not get any of the profit from the sales. This analysis was and is very complicated and exemplifies our motto of "We do difficult assays in volume." We also did all the bioanalytical work for the FDA registration of atomoxetine a drug for ADHD in kids and adults. Lily called this drug Straterra. It was not as successful for Lily as Prozac. We did a huge amount of bioanalysis on Rapamycin for Wyeth now Pfizer.. This is used to prevent rejection of kidney transplants and in one form or another as an anticancer drug. This drug works on mTor pathway. (Google is a wonderful tool) There are other drugs that never made it to the market. So far none of the Alzheimer's drugs have succeeded to the marketplace. I may need them but I won't have participated in the development of them. Solche Schade! Some of them looked so promising! We missed working on the Lilly drug that turned out to be Cialis. We were saturated with work when that opportunity came up. Too Bad.

Taylor Technology, Inc developed (in conjunction with scientists at Wyeth the only assay for Premarin and products which is sensitive enough and specific enough to be validated for FDA approval.This was a long and convoluted story with several early twists and turns. In early 2004 my team (including me) developed and validated a semi robotic sample preparation method, data base software and GCMSMS methods for an 8 analyte assys for various Premarin components and for medroxy progesterone. If anyone took or takes Premarin, or Prempro in the one of the various dosage levels, you have me to blame.

I sold Taylor Technology in 2004 to a company called SFBCI. This company was transformed into PharmaNet Deveopment, Inc. In 2009 PharmaNet succumbed to the great Recession (due to a very bad deal that SFBCI was involved in) and was literally rescued by a medium sized private equity firm. I finally retired in 2010. I am still reviewing the papers I accumulated from these successes and a number of various other business misadventures.

I will try very hard to get to the next Reunion.

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