Researchers' start-up companies move to West Main Street offices

By Charlotte Crystal

Five technology-based start-up companies conceived at U.Va. recently moved into new offices in a West Main Street building dubbed Corridor 1. It is part of a joint effort launched by University faculty, local real estate developers and business leaders to nurture the growth of new high-tech businesses in Charlottesville.

"As with the recently established Biotechnology Training Center, Corridor 1 will benefit the local and state economy as well as adding to the science and technology capacity of the community and the University,"said Gene Block, U.Va. vice president for research and public service.

Corridor 1 is the first of what is hoped to be many new or renovated facilities built along a high technology strip envisioned for West Main Street by business, city and University leaders.

Sponsoring the project are the U.Va. Patent Foundation, Main Street Associates, the Batten Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership at the Darden School and the Charlottesville law office of McGuire Woods Battle & Boothe.

Corridor 1 has six offices, five of which will be occupied by the start-up companies. The sixth will be shared by the Patent Foundation, the Batten Center, and McGuire Woods to provide in-house assistance to the new ventures.

The strategy is to put business students and legal interns in close proximity to the principals of the new U.Va. ventures, to the benefit of all. The students and interns will help these companies perform market research and a variety of business development activities. The companies, in turn, will provide the students with professional development through first-hand experience.

"The Patent Foundation is enthusiastic that small companies grown right here at home can bring U.Va.-developed technologies to the marketplace and in the process create new jobs and be good neighbors to the downtown community," said Bob MacWright, executive director of the Patent Foundation.

The Patent Foundation has transferred patent rights in U.Va. technologies to 17 new companies in recent years.

McGuire Woods has created a new internship program to supply legal advice to the companies. Dan Ravicher, a third-year student at the Law School and former Patent Foundation student intern, has been selected as the first McGuire Woods intern.

"We're building a venturing community," said Wendell Dunn, executive director of the Batten Center. "This experiment presents opportunities to people who know what to do with them. To the extent that these ventures take root here, the whole Charlottesville community will benefit."

Corridor 1 start-up companies

• Adenosine Therapeutics L.L.C. started by Dr. Joel Linden, professor of medicine, and Charlottesville investor and entrepreneur Rob Capon
• Alglutamine L.L.C. started by Dr. Richard Guerrant, chief of the Division of Geographic and International Medicine, and Capon
• Applied Metacomputing L.L.C. started by Andrew Grimshaw, professor of computer science and Fritz Knabbe, senior scientist of computer science
• GeNeuron, Inc. started by Dr. Gregory Helm, professor of neurosurgery, Dr. David Kallmes, professor of radiology, and local entrepreneur Matt Hantzmon
• Contravac L.L.C. started by John Herr, professor of cell biology