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In this Issue:

        1.0   Minnesota Business and Technology Forums
        2.0   Jobs in the Medtech, Biotech and Life Sciences Market
        3.0   Calendar of Events
        4.0   Tidbits (Devoted to the Minnesota Business and Technology Forums this month only)
               4.1    Registration For The Minnesota Business and Technology Forums
               4.2    California Stem Cell Project Energizes Other States to Act
               4.3    Illinois May Tax Nip & Tuck Surgery
               4.4    The Ones That Got Away
               4.5    New Wisconsin University Program to Aid Start-up Firms
               4.6    Grow Iowa Values Fund
               4.7    Phoenix Biotech
               4.8    Wisconsin News
               4.9    Embryonic SCR Word Games
               4.10  Wisconsin Biotech Initiative Faces Opposition
               4.11  2005 MN VC Conference Investors
        5.0   MedSuds Email Advertising
        6.0   MedSuds CEO Roundtable - www.medsuds.com/ceo/
        7.0   MedSuds Executive Search - www.medsuds.com/search/
        8.0   Building A Medical Data Network
        9.0   Common-Sense Valuation Improvements
        10.0  How California Proposition 71 Was Born
        11.0  California Proposition 71 Faces Quagmire
        12.0  Guest Writers for this Report

1.0   Minnesota Business and Technology Forums

The Minnesota Business and Technology Forums are useful for many purposes.  In order to view the information on the web forums, you do not need to register.  To post information, you must create an account.  There are many reasons to create a free account.  In order to fully participate as a "MedSudser" in the Minnesota medtech community, you should create an account and use it to full advantage.

The Minnesota Business and Technology Forums - http://www.masvf.com/forums/index.php

Upcoming Events - http://www.masvf.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=4

MedTech Companies - http://www.masvf.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=21

People On The Move - http://www.masvf.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=15

Press Releases - http://www.masvf.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=16

Why email only to your small email list of associates when you can post this information on Minnesota Business and Technology Forums and have access to 2700+ MedSudsers. 

2.0 Jobs in the "medtech, biotech and life sciences" Market

Click on http://www.masvf.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=30 for a list of available MedTech Jobs in Minnesota.

We encourage you to post available jobs for medtech professionals in Minnesota.  You must identify which company you represent.  If your company is already listed, please do not create a duplicate thread.  Instead, post to the same thread.  If you are a recruiter, you must identify yourself as such.

Thank you for the support many of you have shown to the MedSuds recruiting association with the American Consulting Company.  We have developed a quality and impressive MedSuds candidate database.  We always appreciate the opportunity to discuss how we might help in locating candidates for your open positions.   And, we've added an association with OnCall Staffing - www.oncallstaffing.com. If you are a hiring manager, you are invited to review our process, our commitment to ethical standards and diversity recruiting, and other areas of interest at: www.americanconsultingcompany.com.  When you identify yourself as a member of the MedSuds association, we will offer you a discounted rate to assist in locating candidates for your company.  And remember, you never pay a fee unless you hire one of our candidates.  If you are a candidate, visit the ‘Candidate Kit’ at www.americanconsultingcompany.com.  You will find valuable tools to help in your job search.  When you send us your resume, be sure and mention your association with MedSuds.

Renowned entrepreneur and local resume-writing expert Kevin Donlin - www.gresumes.com - is available to assist you in writing a powerful, effective resume.  Kevin can also help you with cover letters and job search coaching.  Contact Kevin at guaranteed.resumes@netsuds.com and tell him Matt Noah referred you.

Hi Matt - Thanks for posting our job opening in the NetSuds monthly.  The number of "good" people we had respond to our position is a direct reflection of the exposure received thru NetSuds.  I do not have a quantitative measurement but having posted the same job just 45 days earlier thru the 'normal' means provides a pretty accurate comparison.  The only thing we did differently was use the NetSuds site.  We have filled the position so the posting can be removed.  Thanks again - Bradd Strelow Director of Technology and Innovation. Dakota County Technical College

The calendar for medtech and hightech events in Minnesota is scattered all over in print, email and online publications.  Up until now, there has been no single definitive calendar.  NetSuds and MedSuds has created the first and only online calendar for all hightech, medtech, biotech and life science events in Minnesota.

Calendar of Events - http://www.masvf.com/forums/calendar.php?

4.0   Tidbits

4.1  Registration For The Minnesota Business and Technology Forums

Visiting http://www.masvf.com/forums/index.php allows one to visit the Minnesota Business and Technology Forums and observe what is available.  However, in order to become a member of the community, one must register.  Registration is simple and has several advantages.  First, you can search for other members in the community using names, IDs and keywords related to industries.  Second, you can identify yourself to the community through the use of keywords and interests.  Third, you can subscribe to certain "threads" and receive email when these threads experience activity.  You may also unsubscribe from any thread at any time.  Fourth, you can post to the Forums.  This is extremely powerful.  Members can post their opinions, information and engage in online discussions.  Jobs can be posted.  Events can be posted.

10.0   How California Proposition 71 Was Born

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20041219/news_1n19stemcell.html

California Stem Cell Research and Cures Act was work of eclectic group that included film director, finance expert, Republican and researcher

By Terri Somers
STAFF WRITER

December 19, 2004

Over dinner at the trendy Esquire Grill in Sacramento, the group discussed putting together a coalition of patient advocates and scientists to sponsor a state bond initiative that would provide money for stem cell research.

President Bush had signed a bill a year earlier limiting the embryonic stem cell work scientists could pursue with federal dollars, and some conservatives in Congress wanted to criminalize the research.

The group at the dinner in Sacramento wanted to make California the global center for the work, which many scientists believe will one day lead to therapies for devastating diseases.

Sen. Deborah Ortiz, a Sacramento Democrat and the legislator who was at the dinner, had just failed in an attempt to get the state Legislature to commit a few million dollars a year to studying stem cells.

However, she had been successful three months earlier in getting the Legislature to approve a bill that made stem cell research legal in California.

Now she wanted to do something more ambitious. "Let's take this to the voters," Ortiz suggested to her dinner partners. A public bond initiative would be the vehicle for securing the funding that the scientists at the table thought was vital.

Out of that discussion grew Proposition 71, the bond issue voters approved last month that will make $300 million a year available for scientists in California to pursue stem cell research over the next decade.

The independent citizens' oversight committee that will govern the effort met for the first time Friday, and its goal is to start distributing the money by May.

The path from that first dinner in Sacramento to Friday's meeting of the oversight committee was an arduous one, as a core group of a few people built a network of supporters and raised millions of dollars to promote their vision.

From the beginning, the idea was for the faces of the initiative to be those of parents with sick children, people with a personal stake in helping support science that could one day lead to cures for diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and cancer.

Meet the Zuckers

Three months after the first dinner, a group that included such parents gathered in the Brentwood home of movie director Jerry Zucker and his wife, Janet. The Zuckers' 16-year-old daughter, Katie, was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes when she was 11.

During the previous two years, the family had logged hundreds of hours on Capitol Hill and in politicians' offices across the country lobbying for stem cell research as part of Cures Now, a patient advocacy group. They also had been active in the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

Ultimately, the Zuckers and two other affluent and politically savvy families took the lead in funding, organizing and campaigning for Proposition 71, the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Act. They spent millions of dollars on polling, lawyers and consultants before they were even assured that enough Californians would support the measure to put it on the ballot.

The three families – which also include millionaire Bakersfield home developer Tom Coleman and his wife, Polly, and Bay Area real estate finance expert Robert Klein – have widely divergent political and religious beliefs. But all have a child with juvenile diabetes.

"These families have dedication, passion and an ability to articulate to the people of California the simple hope, like all parents, to see their children into adulthood," Ortiz said.

The first meeting at the Zucker home attracted an eclectic mix.

Janet Zucker had worked the telephone, as she's known to do, inviting friends, patient advocates and nationally recognized scientists. The group of more than 30 included Zucker's friend Sherry Lansing, the head of Paramount Motion Pictures and an advocate for cancer research; Lucy Fisher, a Hollywood producer who along with her husband, Doug Wick, also were active in Cures Now; and renowned stem cell researchers such as Larry Goldstein of University of California San Diego and Irv Weissman of Stanford.

Tom Coleman, a Republican and a Catholic, remembers sitting in that first meeting at the Zuckers' home and deciding immediately that he wanted to join the effort.

His eldest child, Sarah, 28, was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes when she was 5. Despite the name of the disease, it is a lifelong affliction that can cause limb loss and organ failure and shorten life expectancy.

Bush had approved the limitations on embryonic stem cell research because the work requires the destruction of embryos, collections of 100 to 200 cells that are formed days after fertilization. The Roman Catholic Church and conservative Christian groups oppose the science because they believe the embryos are human life that should be protected.

Coleman said it is not the first time he has disagreed with the church.

"It became a very easy decision for me," he said. "Either you throw away an embryo with no designation as a human being or use it to help another human being. I don't think that violates Christian principles of the Catholic church."

Science vs. politics

The Zuckers, who are Jewish, also did not struggle with the moral issues of embryonic stem cell research.

They recalled when their daughter was first diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. She had lost about 20 pounds and was listless. Then, after an injection from a tiny glass vial, she was smiling and bounding down the halls of Children's Hospital in Los Angeles.

They say such experiences underscore the value of medical research.

"You can't help but take a minute and have gratitude for the people who invented this stuff and worked so diligently to find it," Jerry Zucker said. "The more we got into this, the more we realized how scientists really have to struggle against politics, and often religion, and small-minded people who always think (the scientists) have gone too far whether it's organ transplants or recombinant DNA. The next new thing always seems ghoulish or scary.

"But when these cures become commonplace, we are all lining up to take them," he said.

The Zuckers and the Colemans paid for early polling and political consultants to help them wade through the start-up of a voter initiative.

The early polls showed voters would embrace a bond initiative, though not by a landslide. It also showed that the more people understood stem cell research, the more likely they would be to vote to fund it, Tom Coleman said.

From the beginning, the families decided the campaign would be straightforward and educational.

"We saw that some people just didn't understand stem cell research, particularly embryonic stem cell research," Jerry Zucker said. "Some people think an embryo is a fetus. And they don't realize embryos are being discarded when they could be used for research."

While the direction of the campaign was clear, how to write a bond initiative was not.

Janet Zucker recalled talking to Peter Van Etten, president of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, about the possibility of a voter initiative. She knew she and her husband could handle the lobbying and probably the fund raising the initiative would require.

"But I thought that this bond initiative – actually writing this thing – was going to be a daunting task. Where would we start?" she said during a recent interview in the family's home.

Van Etten told Zucker about Klein, a Palo Alto-based real estate finance expert who served on the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation's board of directors. Klein, who also is a lawyer, wrote the California Housing Finance Act more than 20 years ago.

Janet Zucker remembered picking up the telephone to cold-call Klein, whose interest in stem cell research is a result of his son Jordan's struggle with juvenile diabetes.

"We spent three or four hours talking about it," she said. "Then he was on the phone again the next day."

Drafting the initiative

When Klein first heard about the initiative, he knew its structure would have to be creative. It needed to take into account that the state was fighting a deficit. And it needed to be structured so the bonds didn't have to be repaid until the research had time to generate scientific advances that would bring in revenue for the state.

Many people have come to think of Klein as the author of the initiative. It is not a notion he is quick to dispel.

"The initial conceptual plan took about two weeks, but actually writing the initiative took 30 drafts and about eight months," he said.

The Zuckers and the Colemans said the measure never would have been as successful without Klein's involvement. He was its voice during the last intense months of the campaign. He also formed a nonprofit organization to help appoint the citizens' oversight committee that will administer the grants.

But writing the initiative was definitely a group effort.

There were several writing sessions, consecutive days when a group that included the Zuckers, Colemans, Klein, political consultants, Goldstein and lawyers from some of the state's top firms hunkered down and hashed out the wording.

The first session, during which the group set its initial principles, produced the skeleton of what would become Proposition 71. The next several months were filled with conference calls and meetings where the families, the lawyers, the consultants and the scientists vetted every word and every statement.

Was a sentence politically sound? If so, was it legally sound?

There were complicated issues to debate – how should repayment of the bond be structured, considerations about science and intellectual property issues to address, and rules for avoiding conflicts of interest.

"We could have maybe 50 issues on the table," Tom Coleman said. "We put them in some kind of priority, but as each piece changes, all the issues related to it change. As time progressed, each detail was dealt with in much greater detail."

One of those issues was the price tag.

There was discussion about how much it might cost to create a cure for a disease like polio, Coleman said. And there was discussion about how much the National Institutes of Health spends on a particular disease.

"But you also have to look at what kind of money a particular university might need," he said. "And there was a conversation about how much we need to attract the top scientists in the world to come here, knowing that there's funding for 10 years. You can quickly reach that $3 billion figure."

The members of this group commissioned a financial analysis, which found that the initiative could easily pay for itself even if it contributed to only small advancements in health care.

Proposition 71's passage

The Zuckers, Colemans and Klein still afford themselves a few brief moments to relish the success of Proposition 71, which 59 percent of voters supported.

Jerry Zucker remembers the strength of so many people suffering from so many diseases.

"I remember seeing Christopher Reeve in Washington when we were both lobbying," he said. "I'd be getting off a plane and going to the Capitol to a lunch to make a speech or my pitch. And then there (Reeve) is. For him, every single breath was an effort. It was just so courageous for him to come and do that and speak in this way. For so many people who are suffering like that, there really is no place to turn but science."

Asked if they would like to tackle another initiative, the Zuckers and Tom Coleman laughed heartily. They will be watching closely as the independent oversight committee begins to create standards and then dole out grants. But they have no designs on serving on the committee or any of its working groups.

Klein, however, is front and center.

Long considered the front-runner for the position of chairman of the committee that will oversee spending of the $3 billion, he was the only candidate nominated for the post. The Democrat even won the endorsement of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, to whose campaign he never contributed.

The 27 appointed members of the oversight committee unanimously voted him into the post at their first meeting Friday.

Klein's interest in stem cell research is a result of his 14-year-old son Jordan's battle with juvenile diabetes.

"Jordan's growing about a half inch a month right now, and the human growth hormone really throws blood sugar levels out of whack," he said during a recent interview.

"How can I turn my back on this?" asked Klein, whose father died of heart disease and whose 88-year-old mother developed Alzheimer's a decade ago.

"It's a privilege to commit yourself to something that has the potential to do as much for medicine and human suffering as stem cell research has the potential to do."

Terri Somers: (619) 293-2028; terri.somers@uniontrib.com

11.0   California Proposition 71 Faces Quagmire

from the December 20, 2004 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1220/p03s01-uspo.html

Woes for California's stem-cell experiment

Regulation and ethical battles swirl ahead as the state figures out how to spend its $3 billion initiative.

By Mark Sappenfield | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

OAKLAND, CALIF. - The debate over stem-cell research has been stirred again - this time by the unlikeliest of sources.

For months, state Sen. Deborah Ortiz has been the strongest political voice in favor of California's bid to earmark $3 billion for stem-cell research. From southern California to the halls of Washington, she took part in public forums and bandied words with the Bush administration to promote Proposition 71, the initiative that eventually passed last month.

So when she recently said the plan was so flawed that it needed to be corrected by legislative decree, Senator Ortiz gave rise to a perplexing question: What has California gotten itself into?

Only half-joking, some scientists say California is set to become NIH West - a Pacific Coast counterweight to the federal National Institutes of Health. The concern is that no state has ever attempted a scientific venture of this magnitude and complexity, and some wonder if the state can handle it.

As other states from Wisconsin to New Jersey rush to counter California's massive investment by setting aside stem-cell money of their own, California is reprising a familiar role. As the biggest and the boldest, California will most clearly delineate the promises and perils of stem-cell science for the rest of the nation, showing the limits of federalism by its success or its failure.

"There isn't a precedent for doing biomedical research independent from the federal government," says Jeffrey Kahn, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. "[California is] starting from a different place than anyone else."

The challenges are immense. During the past 50 years, NIH has essentially invented the protocols that govern medical study in the United States - from peer review to ethical guidelines to patient protections. Not only does California have to come up with its own set of rules and regulations, but it also must create them for a scientific field that has never existed in the US.

When President Bush decided that the federal government should not fund the creation or study of new stem-cell lines, he largely squashed a new field of scientific study - as well as the ethical questions that came with it. Now, California must meet them both head on.

"They are going to have to make up from scratch things that don't exist," says Dr. Kahn.

Even in a perfect scenario, the 29 board members of the program that will disburse some $300 million in grants each year would have a difficult job. They will have to choose which projects to fund, picking from among different areas of stem-cell research carried out by universities and biotechnology firms - all the while keeping an eye on the ethics of cloning human embryos. (While the proposition bans cloning humans for reproduction, it allows cloning so that embryos can be used to devise therapies.)

Those decisions lie ahead, however. The template for how to proceed has already generated concern. The template is the text of the ballot initiative itself, and it spreads across nine pages of the California voter's handbook. Only now, more than a month after the election, are analysts and politicians finally unraveling its intricacies, and not all like what they see.

Ortiz first pushed the idea of a stem-cell-research ballot measure, but she is troubled by some of the text. One section says that the legislature cannot amend the initiative for three years, and then only with a 70 percent supermajority. Board members who run the program aren't held to state requirements for disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. And protections for women who donate eggs - a potentially dangerous procedure - are left open.

Although Ortiz says she still supports the initiative, she is trying to pass legislation on these issues - despite the initiative's ban. She calls the measure the product of "an imperfect means of government."

Others are more critical: "This is not the sort of thing that should be done by initiative," says Marcy Darnovsky of the Center for Genetics and Society here. "How many voters went through all that fine print?"

Even supporters of Proposition 71 agree that the scientific process is often not served best by a ballot. But they suggest that the Bush administration left them with no choice. Nearly all agree that it would have been better for the federal government to pick up this work, mostly because NIH can fund the best research in the country - not just the best research in one state. In fact, some scientists suggest California might have difficulty finding enough good in-state ventures to spend $300 million a year wisely.

Yet now that the Bush administration has bowed out of ambitious stem-cell research, California's effort is an attempt to make the best of the situation. And it's a good place to start. "California is not just another state," says Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Mass. "It's like a country investing in scientific research."

Moreover, the processes for making good decisions are in place. The newly created California Institute for Regenerative Medicine might not be NIH, but the model is well known, and many of the people involved in California have been a part of it.

"There are no intrinsic difficulties that arise because it is a state and not the federal government," says Ira Black of the New Jersey's Stem Cell Institute in New Brunswick. "Through the peer-review mechanisms honed by NIH, there are clear guidelines in terms of proceeding."

What gives some ethicists pause, though, is the authority vested in the board members that run the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine. For instance, Prop. 71 was written in such a way that very few people other than the author Robert Klein were qualified to be nominated as chairman. Earlier this month, he was nominated.

Most observers say they still think the Institute will do its job well, and they note the importance of freeing science somewhat from the vagaries of public policy. But if California's experiment goes awry, either as a perceived money grab or as an ethical disaster, it is uncertain what anyone could do to stop it.

"It's not to say [the board] will not put [good rules] in place, but they don't have to," says Dr. Darnovsky. "This is important enough that there should not be a choice."

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