Imants lauks biography of william hill

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When Imants Lauks closed the books earlier this month on a deal that will lead to the sale of his second biotech startup, he felt a profound sense of relief.

"It is tremendously draining as an entrepreneur,'' he says.

"You're on the edge all the time.''

That's especially true of pioneers in biotech, an industry that consumes venture capital at a prodigious rate but produces very few winners.

Lauks, 57, beat the odds with Epocal Inc., a nine-year-old firm that makes technology for quickly analyzing blood in health-care facilities and the home.

Lauks shuns publicity and is visibly uncomfortable discussing his personal achievements.

However, he is very easy with staff -- perhaps strong at Epocal -- who are used to seeing him stroll through the labs in black T-shirt and jeans.

"He forgets to shave now and then," notes one employee.

"It's part of the scientist in him."

Lauks revealed Jan.

4 that Epocal had agreed to be acquired, eventually, by Inverness Medical Innovations.

Biography of william shakespeare Lauks, British-born, earned degrees in chemistry and electrical engineering before emigrating in the s to the U.S. By , he had become a tenured professor of electrical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was recognized for his work in the burgeoning field of biochips.

The aggressive, Boston-based company specializes in rapid diagnostics and health management.

IMI will pay up to $ million (all figures U.S.) for Epocal, assuming the Ottawa startup meets a variety of financial targets. The acquisition is expected to be completed sometime "in the next several years."

Lauks's first startup -- Kanata-based i-STAT -- was sold to Abbott Laboratories early in The transaction was valued at $ million.

Surprisingly, Lauks's payout at i-STAT was relatively small, at least compared to the price paid by Abbott.

When he left i-STAT in , his personal stake in the firm had already been diluted to less than 2 per cent and was worth about $3 million.

He could do better with the sale of Epocal, but there's no guarantee.

Venture capital firms own a majority of the privately-held shares and Lauks has years of work ahead of him to ensure Epocal reaches its financial targets.

Both deals are remarkable because Lauks built these firms in a city that lacks critical mass in biotech skills and infrastructure.

Nor was he particularly driven to be entrepreneurial.

Lauks, British-born, earned degrees in chemistry and electrical engineering before emigrating in the s to the U.S. By , he had become a tenured professor of electrical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was recognized for his work in the burgeoning field of biochips.

Academic life was good. It took Bob Johnson, a very persuasive venture capitalist from New Jersey, to convince Lauks to abandon the university in favour of launching the biosensor startup that became i-STAT.

"There's a point in your life, when you're 25 to 35, when risk is exciting,'' Lauks says.

I-STAT designed some very creative products but the business end of things was a hard slog.

Imants Lauks founded i-STAT in in Ottawa, Canada. He left i-STAT in , but remained in Ottawa. In he founded Epocal, and developed the epoc Blood Analysis System. Abbott Diagnostics entered into a co-marketing arrangement with i-STAT in , and acquired the company in

With only a couple of exceptions, the company never made a quarterly profit before Abbott finally acquired it.

That's the way it is in biotech. Lauks personally spent 15 years evangelizing, trying to convince the medical community that

i-STAT's novel hand-held blood analyzers were the way of the future.

These proprietary devices contain a microchip that allow health professionals to get readings of patients' blood gases and other attributes within minutes rather than waiting for blood samples to be tested in central facilities in the traditional way.

The need to build those microchips brought i-STAT to Kanata in the late s.

Kanata-based Siltronics had gone into receivership and had an ideal facility.

Eventually, the advantages of the i-STAT system became obvious. U.S. pharmaceutical giant Abbott Laboratories bought an per-cent stake in i-STAT in , and implemented a five-year plan to distribute its technology.

By this time, Lauks had been operating flat out for 15 years.

He had a significant new partner in Abbott and felt it was a good time to try something new. "I knew I had one more startup in me,'' he said.

Lauks left in and spent some time mulling what he might do.

Imants lauks biography of william hill Epocal's current Chief Executive Officer is Imants Lauks. You're one click away from the most comprehensive, unmatched analyst expertise in tech, in-depth private company data and a platform that brings it all together. Click Now. Join a live demo. Epocal has 1 board of directors, including Kelly Holman.

Two years later, after his non-compete agreement with i-STAT had expired, Lauks launched Epocal.

His starting point was the importance of design. The simpler the device, he reasoned, the easier it would be to manufacture and maintain.

Lauks and his engineers at Epocal drew upon the smart-card industry for inspiration.

They adapted a standard card by adding tiny biosensors that can test for at least eight attributes of blood such as dissolved gases. These, in turn, provide clues about a patient's condition.

A small sample of blood is deposited at one end of the card, which is inserted into a portable reader resembling a card swipe machine in a supermarket.

Information about test results is forwarded wirelessly from the card reader to a hospital computer and combined with the patients' records.

At i-STAT, Lauks had designed a system that used a microchip to analyze blood samples. The setup demanded a more complicated manufacturing system -- clean rooms for producing the chips, for one thing -- and blood cartridges that require refrigeration.

Lauks, British-born, earned degrees in chemistry and electrical engineering before emigrating in the s to the U.S. By , he had become a tenured professor of electrical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was recognized for his work in the burgeoning field of biochips.

Epocal's smart cards can be stored at room temperature.

Like other entrepreneurs, Lauks spent a significant time either raising money or analyzing potential partnerships.

Genesys Capital Partners of Toronto supplied the lion's share of the $ million Cdn. in venture capital raised to Highland Capital led a $million U.S. round in

"You raise money every couple of years, crank up your burn rate and achieve more as a company," Lauks says.

Lauks kept all his options open in -- chatting with venture capitalists and executives at companies that might acquire Epocal.

IMI was certainly one.

Its corporate game plan was to become a world leader in "near-patient diagnostics" and it has been growing by acquiring other firms. IMI offers a range of hand held devices for measuring various medical conditions -- from HIV/AIDS to congestive heart failure.

The time was right to cut a deal with IMI. If all goes to plan, Lauks will have scored his second biotech hit in a row, a rarity in this business.

Does he have another one in him?

"This is it for me," he says.

"I gave everything I had at i-STAT and it's the same at Epocal."

Ottawa Citizen,

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