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Portola: A Cardiovascular Boutique with Big Plans

 
• By Deborah Erickson

The founders of Bay Area start-up Portola Pharmaceuticals aim to leverage understanding of platelets, as well as their experiences at Cor Therapeutics and Millennium Pharmaceuticals. They intend to create an improved version of the blockbuster blood thinner Plavix. A key task for reaching that goal, they say, will be developing some new way to assay what's actually going on with platelets circulating in a patient's body at a given point in time.

The founders of Bay Area start-up Portola Pharmaceuticals Inc. think they know more than any other group about blood platelets, and how to use them for drug discovery and development. They could be right. All three—Charles Homcy, MD, David Phillips, PhD, and Robert Scarborough, PhD—were integral to the development of the acute anti-thrombotic drug eptifibatide (Integrilin) at Cor Therapeutics Inc. The injectable product generated $305.8 million in sales last year for Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc. , which acquired Cor at the end of 2001 [See Deal].

The trio of scientists aims to leverage their own experience and knowledge, as well as lessons learned at both Cor and Millennium, as they build Portola with the intention of...

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