Purdue News

December 18, 2003

Purdue, Roche extend entry deadline in $147,000 life sciences business plan competition

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - The deadline for entering and submitting executive summaries for the Second Annual Life Sciences Business Plan Competition has been extended to Jan. 26.

Matthew Campbell
Download photo - caption below

The nationwide entrepreneurial competition at Purdue University will award total prizes of $147,000 for business plans that describe the path to market for products and technologies in the life sciences, biotechnology and biomedicine.

Teams based at universities and colleges, research and teaching hospitals, and other academic institutions engaged in bioresearch are eligible to enter.

Teams may be fledgling enterprises seeking seed capital or those further along in the commercialization process, including firms that have received grants, venture capital or equity investments. There is no restriction on the number of members on teams, but teams are encouraged to include participants with business backgrounds or MBA students.

The competition, sponsored by the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship and Roche Diagnostics Corp., will take place April 20-21 on Purdue's West Lafayette campus.

Founding sponsor Roche Diagnostics contributed $100,000 to the competition. Other sponsors

for the 2004 contest are: Clifton Gunderson LLP, Aventor, Baker & Daniels, Indiana Health Industry Forum and BioCrossroads (formerly the Central Indiana Life Sciences Initiative).

The top finisher in last year's competition was Iris AO, which uses the same technology as the Hubble telescope for early detection of eye diseases and has the potential to correct vision to 20/10. The company has set up an office in Berkeley, Calif.

Last year's second-place finisher and top Indiana entry, Medical Reporting Solutions of Indianapolis, has filed four patents on its speech-recognition technology for medical databases since last year's competition.

Contact Don Blewett, associate director of the center for entrepreneurship, (765) 494-4485, blewett@mgmt.purdue.edu. Competition Web site .

Writer: Mike Lillich, (765) 494-2077, mlillich@purdue.edu

Source: Don Blewett, (765) 494-4485, blewett@mgmt.purdue.edu

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

PHOTO CAPTION:
Matthew Campbell, chief operating officer of Iris AO, makes the winning presentation at Purdue's inaugural Life Sciences Business Plan Competition in April 2003. Iris AO won the $50,000 top prize, plus $10,000 in legal and business services, in the $147,000 contest. The winning team was one of the eight finalists who made presentations during the competition, which was in the Purdue Memorial Union. (Purdue University file photo/John Underwood)

A publication-quality photograph is available at https://www.purdue.edu/uns/images/blewett.winners.jpeg

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