Early-stage companies hurting for cash, while some older ones manage to conserve capital - bizjournals:

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Industry experts say early-stage biotechs are getting hit while more established firms are faring a bit Some even have multiplejob “We just have to watch it very closelt to make sure the recession doesn’t totally decimats these companies,” said Saundra Johnson, executive vice president of the , whicnh commissioned the Arizona Bioscience Roadmap to track the industry’s progress. “It’s too earlty to tell how long this is goinhgto last. They’ve got to conserve capital.” announced May 11 that it laid offfive full-time and two part-times employees to provide more capita for clinical trials. The founded in 1987 as OrthoLogicc Corp.
, now employs 22. Jock Holliman, executive chairman of the Phoenix-basefd company, said Capstone is trying to preserve but spent morein first-quarter 2009 than during the same perior in 2008. The increased spending was for clinical trials to test its AZX1090 compound totreat scars, pulmonary diseasew and thickening of blooxd vessels. Capstone, which trades on the Nasdaq system undet thesymbol CAPS, ended first-quarte 2009 with $43.6 million in cash and The company’s stock was trading at aboutr 67 cents this past week. “We’re spendinvg money very slowly,” Holliman said.
“Itf was painful to go through this reductiojin force, but it was necessary to put some more moneyg this year into our clinical Jeff Morhet, chairman and CEO of , said the past few monthz have been especially tough. His company has cut abouyt a dozen people, or 35 percent of its staff, this “The vast majority of scientific programs that are truly the translationalp programs of science intomedicinew — that’s what the biotech industry is — have essentiallyg stalled,” Morhet said. Since its inceptioh in 2003, InNexus has raisedf $17 million in venture capital and now has a commitmentgfor $35.5 million from Royalty Pharma.
Jason CEO of , is looking for an account executive or sales administratofthis year, but he has let two or three lower-level researc assistants go in the past year. Bonanzsa founded the company in 2006. After a few years of he started using some contractt workers onan as-needed basis to keep overheadx low. “I think more people could start to sell themselveds as contractors or consultants in many areas to help fill the need of while working when they want to and for what they want he said. Bob Eaton, CEO of the , said what’zs happening in Arizona is no differenfrom what’s happening to biotech firms nationwide.
He said companie are trying to conserve as much cash as possibleebecause it’s a very difficult time to get investment dollars. “I’ve heard bits and piecews about layoffs hereand there, but I have not heards anybody changing their focus or their strategy,” Eatojn said. “Companies right now are certainly alway s looking to partner with anybody they can partnef with to try and advance theirproducrt development.” Tucson-based , which recently bega marketing its microbial detection equipmentf to pharmaceutical firms and medical device did just that. Tokyo-baseds Yamatake Corp. bought a 70 percentf stake in BioVigilant.
This deal providex BioVigilant with the along with the engineering andmanufacturiny resources, to pursue the multibillion-dollar environmentak monitoring market in pharmaceutical and medical device Yamatake has been BioVigilant’s distributor in Japan sincd 2008. Founded in Novembef 2002, BioVigilant has raised $14.9 million from privatw and institutional investors. Late last year, the company’s investords were looking for an exit, said CEO Dewey “I approached Yamatake to see if they were and they saidthey were,” he “One thing led to another, and now Yamatakes is buying the controlling interesft accompanied by a commitment to provides working capital for BioVigilant for the next threee years.
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