Intrexon
Based: Blacksburg, VA
Founded: 2000
Website: www.dna.com
CEO: Randal "R.J." Kirk

The Scoop: Cheaper, faster, better is a mantra on the IT side of the innovation realm, but it isn't the kind of thing you hear often in biotechnology. Randal "R.J." Kirk (pictured), however, may change that in the near future.

What Makes it Fierce: For Kirk, thoughts about the potential of synthetic biology began to gel in early 2009. That was when his girlfriend dragged him away on a vacation, giving him some idle time to think through some of the discussions he'd been having with Thomas Reed, the founder of Intrexon. And the more he contemplated what Intrexon had set out to do, the more excited he grew.

"This is potentially a very, very big thing," Kirk says, "and not just because the technology is so cool." 

Kirk has some experience at spotting cool technology. He built and then sold New River and Clinical Data, making himself a billionaire in the process. And now he's devoting a considerable amount of his time and fortune--a recent $100 million round brought Intrexon's total raise to $259 million--to the new, new thing called synthetic biology.  

The potential is, well, off the charts. Says Kirk: "Almost nothing is off limits with the power of this technology."

In a nutshell, Kirk believes that synthetic biology can blast apart old methodologies. Instead of years and years of wildly expensive--and often unsuccessful--development cycles, discovery and development can be shortened, with their industrial scale approach to genetically reengineering cells redefining the landscape in biotechnology. By developing, say, synthetic DNA molecules that can be delivered right where they are needed, spurring the release of proteins that can vanquish cancer cells, Intrexon and its partner Ziopharm believe they can not only come up with a better cancer fighter, but also a cheaper one than the six-figure nichebusters now in vogue.

Kirk's boundless enthusiasm is reflected in the company's multi-targeted mission, which now extends from human therapeutics and protein design to ag biotech, industrial products and animal science. And the company staff has been expanding rapidly. Dr. Glenn Nedwin, a longtime biotech veterean with years of experience on the business as well as the research side of drug development, was recently brought in to run the human therapeutics division for Intrexon.

It's been a busy year for Intrexon. The company announced an exclusive channel partnership with Ziopharm near the beginning of 2011. Then it acquired Agarigen and Neugenesis and launched new commercial divisions. And there are more of these exclusive channel deals in the works.

"We need these exclusive channel partners," says Kirk, who relies on a certain ‘three-c' criteria to identify the ideal partner. 

To qualify, a company has to have the capacity to pursue the technology and offer a compelling "reason to believe that the partner is really going to get behind this stuff, work on an iterative basis, exploit the capability we are providing to them. Ziopharm had plenty of that."

"I spent months getting to know (Ziopharm CEO) Jon Lewis. Intellectually, he is astonishing. His chairman, Murray Brennan (a renowned Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center vet), is also world famous. They really have tremendous intellectual capability. It's clear that if they had their hands on this technology, over the years, what they would do is really exploit more and more of the value of this technology in cancer."

Then there's competence. "Ziopharm's leadership is very much a part of upper echelon of cancer, in clinical research. They're respected guys, know everyone, and they write books and articles. In terms of drug development, we studied their progress to date on their lead drug."

And finally, there was character. "I don't do business with people I don't like," says Kirk. "Life is too short. It's a perpetual relationship. Think for awhile if you want these people as a partner the rest of your life. It's like a marriage."

They also have to have the capital--"there we really lucked out" with Ziopharm--or be able to get it when they need it. And he's willing to take stock instead of cash for a deal, says Kirk, whose position on taking equity provides a case study for accumulating real wealth in drug development.

There's something else that gives Kirk confidence in Ziopharm: they are anything except a Big Pharma company with a huge R&D bureaucracy and little to show for it.

"The upper echelons are largely dysfunctional," says Kirk, who makes his disdain for the behemoths of drug development crystal clear. "The first 'c,' capacity. How could I do a deal with company that has developed nothing for eight years? How could I have confidence when their track record is so abysmal?"

Venture backers: Randal J. Kirk, Third Security and others.