Executive Interview By Justin P Day

Dr. David Sarphie CEO of Bio Nano Consulting Education: – B.Sc in Mechanical Engineering at Notre Dane – M.Sc in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford – D.Phil in Medical Engineering at Oxford Professional: – Co-inventor of PowderJect, needle-free drug delivery – 13 years of Biotech, Medtech, and Nanotech entrepreneurship

Justin Day (J): I am Justin Day. I am here in the greater London area as part of the University of San Francisoc’s Academic Global Immersions Program with a Concentration in Biotechnology. I am here with Dr. David Sarphie, CEO of Bio-Nano Consulting. Thank you for being with us today. I just wanted to talk with a little bit. Could you tell us a little about your background? Dr. David Sarphie (D): Yes, my background is that I am American by birth, and by being brought up there. I came over here about 22 years ago to do a Ph.D. at the University of Oxford which I completed in the early 90’s. From that came some technology that I was working on. We started a business based on that technology. Eventually what emerged was called PowderJect, which was developing some technologies for needle-free devilry of drugs and vaccines. That company was bought by Ciron; which of course, Ciron, has now been bought by a number of others. So it is all that dog-eat-dog world of biotech. But, that technology is now being developed by Pfiser, here in the UK. And since that point, I have been involved in a number of start-ups in either the med-tech or biotech field for number of different products since then. Transcript:

J: So now you are with Bio Nano Consulting… D: Bio Nano Consulting, yes. J: Which is quite an amazing little organization, very unique. Could you tell us a little more about that? D: Yea, it is little unique in that we kind of straddle the divide between academia and industry. So what we do is that we facilitate R&D activity between companies, which are looking for solutions of particular problems, and researchers at two universities, those being Imperial College and UCL which are based here in London. Effectively we have very close links with researchers at those two universities and we look to find out where the technologies that they have developed can be used by an industry, to solve problems of an industry; and what we do is to facilitate that activity. So up until now, if an industrial group wanted to try and access a particular technology often there are many hurdles that need to be addressed and overcome; many of those hurdles actually being, actually, provided and created by the universities because they, for example, want to protect their intellectual property… Transcript Continued:

…What we have been able to do is, effectively, facilitate the interaction and have close enough links with the universities to enable these kinds of projects to be much quicker in being both getting up and going and also to ensure that once they are up and running that the projects are well managed throughout the entire process. J: Now BNC is a not-for-profit organization, what are some of the advantages of being a “not-for-profit?” D: Yes, it is true. We are wholly owned, jointly owned, by the two universities, by UCL and Imperial, which offers advantages, as well, in terms of being able to interact with the administrators of the two universities. They are very much, they like the ability that we bring in terms of bringing in good research dollars, research pounds, into the universities. But in terms of it being a not-for-profit, that also enables us to be able us to participate in a number of different grants, grant calls, and other things that we might not otherwise be able to participate in at all; so it frees us up from the need of having venture capital investors, or other investors, who might be looking, really, just to focus on profit and trying to get their cash… Transcript Continued:

…out of the business. It means that we while certainly operating at a very high level of professionalism, we believe, it means we don’t have to satisfy investors who have different, or potentially different, needs or different wants from what we as a business want. J: So it currently operates as a fairly small core staff, do you see that expanding? D: I see that there is a potential to expand, certainly. We have grown from a core staff of an entire team of 4 people, at the end of 2009, to a total team of 12 people, at the moment; although a number of those are scientists working on particular projects, and we hope to be able to extent the contracts of those scientists as we get more and more projects that are inline with what these scientists expertise might be. But, we certainly, I believe, that we have a good chance of expanding beyond our core team as for example we have one project that we are negotiating on at the moment, which if successful, and I have a pretty strong belief that we will be able to be successful but they have led us to believe that anyway, that once that is signed we will certainly being growing, we will have to grow. And of course, growth brings its own challenges. Growing from a small team of people, all of… whom know each and are able to both works well together on a professional basis but also socialize in the evenings and so forth, to go from that up to, and as a team grows, and goes beyond that of course there will be a point when that is no longer possible. We will have smaller teams of people rather than a core team that all works well together. J: So as a CEO, how to navigate these challenges? D: That is a very important, very important question. To be able to manage growth is, I think, a challenge and probably a skill that I am still gaining, and hopefully gaining, but it is absolutely essential for any company, as you grow, to be able to manage the growth. It is certainly a better challenge to have than managing failure, but clearly it has its own challenges. As you succeed and as you get more and more contracts, you are able to agree on more and more deals with clients you need to make sure that you are able to provide professional delivery on those contracts, and you are going to give professionalism every single time. To be able to do that, you have to have a team of people around you that you trust and that will effectively delivery. And as you continue to grow, you have to be able to make sure that maintain that professionalism on a regular basis. J: Well it sounds like a very exciting time for you. D: Very exciting, challenging but very exciting. J: Well we wish you the best. Thank you very much. D: Thank you very much. Transcript Continued:

…whom know each and are able to both works well together on a professional basis but also socialize in the evenings and so forth, to go from that up to, and as a team grows, and goes beyond that of course there will be a point when that is no longer possible. We will have smaller teams of people rather than a core team that all works well together. J: So as a CEO, how to navigate these challenges? D: That is a very important, very important question. To be able to manage growth is, I think, a challenge and probably a skill that I am still gaining, and hopefully gaining, but it is absolutely essential for any company, as you grow, to be able to manage the growth. It is certainly a better challenge to have than managing failure, but clearly it has its own challenges. As you succeed and as you get more and more contracts, you are able to agree on more and more deals with clients you need to make sure that you are able to provide professional delivery on those contracts, and you are going to give professionalism every single time. To be able to do that, you have to have a team of people around you that you trust and that will effectively delivery. And as you continue to grow, you have to be able to... Transcript Continued:

…make sure that maintain that professionalism on a regular basis. J: Well it sounds like a very exciting time for you. D: Very exciting, challenging but very exciting. J: Well we wish you the best. Thank you very much. D: Thank you very much. Transcript Continued:

Conclusion Bio Nano Consulting connects companies and industries with university researchers Bio Nano Consulting is expecting growth over the next few years There is a potential market value in organizational development of expanding biotechnology organizations