Helixis Adds Leading Industry Advisors to Support Launch Team
Nanodrop* Founder and Former Illumina Chief Scientific Officer Add Expertise as Helixis Prepares to Launch First Product
Carlsbad, California, August 18, 2009 - Helixis, Inc., developer of nucleic acid analysis tools, announced today that David Barker, Ph.D., and Lynne Kielhorn have joined the company in advisory roles, bringing experienced viewpoints on the life science industry and new product commercialization.
"As we prepare for the launch of our first commercial product, the expertise of these two industry leaders gives us access to a wealth of knowledge," commented Alex Dickinson, Helixis CEO. "David's scientific experience in the genomics area and Lynne's role in the launch and rapid growth of Nanodrop for the bioresearch market are of tremendous value to us."
Barker retired from his position as vice president of research and chief scientific officer at Illumina in 2006. He has experience at a range of other leading life science research companies including Amersham Biosciences (now part of GE) and Molecular Dynamics (purchased by Amersham). He holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Brandeis University and was a postdoctoral fellow in neurobiology at Harvard Medical School.
"I've been following Helixis with great interest since their genesis at Caltech," commented Barker. " Their rapid PCR technology is unique and should be adopted for many applications, particularly in molecular diagnostics."
Kielhorn was one of the founders of Nanodrop, a highly successful start-up company that rapidly developed and commercialized a unique spectrophotometer using an unconventional business model. Nanodrop was purchase by Thermo Fisher Scientific in 2007. Earlier Kielhorn was a key founding member of Qualicon, a pioneering DuPont venture that is now the leading supplier of automated DNA-based microbial analysis systems for the food industry. Lynne was also a member of the DuPont team that commercialized one of the earliest DNA sequencers. Kielhorn holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Bucknell University, an MBA from Wharton and is a frequent invited lecturer on entrepreneurship at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
"I'm impressed not only with the Helixis product but also with the deep understanding they have developed of the industry and customer needs," said Kielhorn. "Introducing a technology platform suitable for personal use will revolutionize the application of real-time PCR in the research lab."
Helixis, headquartered in Carlsbad, California, develops innovative nucleic acid tools for research and clinical diagnostics applications. The privately held company was founded in 2007 through a unique collaboration between molecular biologists and engineers in the labs of Nobel Laureate David Baltimore, Ph.D., and Axel Scherer, Ph.D., at the California Institute of Technology. Helixis is currently developing a new generation of high-performance, low-cost, real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) systems. For more information, visit www.helixis.com.