A Biotech Pioneer Finally Has His Chance To Call The Shots -- His Turn Now

Randall "Tony" Goffe is an inventor, a biotechnology executive and a 47-year-old man possessed by a childhood dream.

It seems impossible to confine the Jamaica-born Brit to one thought at a time. Or confine him to his seat.

Conversations with him don't last minutes. They last hours.

Ask him how he came to form his most recent venture, the Bothell-based company Genespan, and he leans off the edge of his chair, raises his voice and tells the story of how a mediocre immigrant student growing up southeast of London evolved into an African-American executive in the Northwest's largely white biotech world.

When he tells a reporter with a straight face, `We are all bioelectrochemical systems," he darts up to a writing board, grabs a marker and draws pictures of positive- and negative-charged molecules to illustrate his point.

As one of the people who started the once-promising but now-defunct Seattle biotech company CellPro in 1989, Goffe is the first African-American founder of a publicly traded biotech company.

"I am the Jackie Robinson of the biotech industry," Goffe boasts.

His career began 35 years ago in a grade-school science class. It was 1964, and Goffe was 12. Computers were the size of whole rooms. The word biotechnology hadn't been coined yet.

But as Goffe stared out the window daydreaming, he wondered whether he could make a device in a laboratory that could duplicate

the way cells in the human body behave.

"That thought has guided my entire career," he says. "I was always fascinated by how things work at a fundamental level and how you can manipulate that."

Goffe has turned that grade-school fascination into a lucrative scientific career. And he is making a name for himself as an African-American pioneer on the fast-developing biotech frontier.

Goffe's Ph.D. from City University of London says he is a bioelectrochemical engineer. In layman's terms, he makes medical devices that either mimic or enhance the human body's natural processes. Genespan's main product, Cellstasis, is a patented desktop incubator that can grow human cells three-dimensionally, in the form of cancer tumors and fully functioning organs.

The tumors can be used to test new cancer drugs, reducing the need for lab animals and humans in experiments.

Researchers are using Cellstasis in a series of experiments to create artificial pig liver tissue from special stem cells. If successful, the device eventually could be used in human organ research or as a natural dialysis device for people whose livers have malfunctioned.

Goffe left CellPro in 1992 after developing the company's first big product, a cell-separation system that was thought to be an alternative to bone marrow transplants for some leukemia patients. But his accomplishment was dimmed somewhat when the giant pharmaceutical company Baxter sued other CellPro executives for patent infringement after he left.

CellPro ultimately was ordered to slash distribution of its cell-separation system. It filed for bankruptcy and shut down last fall.

Though he wasn't a target in the lawsuit - and despite lukewarm relationships with the executives who were in charge of the company when he left - Goffe says he feels bad about CellPro's downfall.

The new company is Goffe's chance to do things his way.

Genespan, however, is not just about business or even breakthrough science.

Goffe says he founded the company as a way to entice young African Americans and other minorities into his field. He is concerned that as he ascends in stature and experience in the biotech industry, few African Americans are following in his footsteps. Even at Genespan, which has 10 employees, he is the only professional employee who is African American.

"This is the future," Goffe says of biotechnology. "It's really hard to get people to see that."

His internship program is still in its infancy. Each year Goffe selects one student, giving preference to African Americans, from North Carolina A&T University to intern at Genespan during the summer. He also hires advanced science students of all backgrounds from the University of Washington to work on products at his lab.

Genespan's laboratory serves as the real-world classroom for the college students who win the paid internships. They help Goffe and his research team, headed by Ronald Berninger, formerly of NeoRx, bring his ideas to life.

Goffe has also given jobs to his two children, Andre, 15, and Adelia, 17, who are budding scientists in their own right. Though still a high-school student, Adelia has a co-patent on one of Genespan's products, a mixture that's used in Cellstasis and genetic research.

This is a critical period for Goffe, his company and his internship program.

While he has been successful at growing cells, he has been less successful at growing his company's bank account. He has funded much of Genespan's development with research grants and several million dollars he made by cashing in his CellPro stock when it was trading high. Without more capital, though, Goffe's dream of creating a successful company with a social mission has been left in limbo.

Goffe is in the process of raising $10 million from investors to fuel research and development efforts and to intensify the marketing of Genespan's products.

As part of the strategy to turn things around, Goffe has hired a Seattle business-development company, Elliott Bay Management, to set a more aggressive business plan in motion.

In return for a fee and a percentage of the company's revenue, the company will help build Genespan into a profitable medical-devices company. As part of that plan, Goffe last week stepped down as Genespan's president and hired Gary Reys, a well-connected Seattle biotech consultant, to fill that role. Goffe will remain chairman and chief executive officer.

Goffe, a scientist at heart, says Reys will bring much-needed sales and marketing expertise to Genespan. An executive with Reys' combination of skills can more effectively sell the company to investors, potential corporate partners and customers, he says.

In the future, Goffe will spend more of his time nurturing the company's product line.

"Tony as an individual is a rare commodity," says Lynn Taylor, president of Elliott Bay Management. "He's an extraordinary innovator and a rational businessman."

Taylor says the key to Genespan's potential is the fact that it leases its lead product, the Cellstasis incubator, to research-oriented companies and institutions for about $300 a month, while other companies are selling similar but less sophisticated systems for $25,000 to $125,000 a piece. So far, 10 of the devices have been leased.

In the United State alone, there are some 40,000 corporate and academic laboratories, and in many cases they are doing research that involves replicating cells. With Cellstasis and other research-oriented products, Genespan stands to take a substantial share of that market, Taylor says.

The Cellstasis system is a metal and plastic box that resembles a microwave oven.

Inside, a small rotating plastic cylinder serves as a petri dish where specially selected cells grow. Bands of tiny porous tubes leading into the cartridge act as membranes, supplying the cells with amino acids, oxygen and other nutrients they need to multiply and stay alive. At the same time, the device filters out any waste.

Though Cellstasis is patented by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for testing with pig liver cells, companies that want to use it in other FDA-sanctioned experiments must first have the device approved by that agency.

While several other firms either market cell culture chambers or are developing improved ones, Genespan's device appears to be the most advanced, says Lola Reid, a professor of cell and molecular physiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Reid and her assistants are leading the project to create pig liver tissue in the Cellstasis incubator.

She says the problem with most cell incubators is they become clogged and can shut down within days as cells amass and start binding to each other. If the system can't deliver nutrients, the cells die. However, Goffe may have figured out how to keep artificial tissue alive indefinitely.

"He hasn't solved the problem yet - no one in the world has - but he's much farther than others at getting cells to last," Reid says. "Right now his is one of the very best systems out there."

Acceptance of Goffe's invention may take time though, Reid says.

"A lot of the big companies in the industry are leery of the new products," she says. "They're waiting to see what they can do."

Throughout his career, Goffe says, colleagues have doubted his idea of creating living human tissue outside the body.

"Their philosophy was it can't be done," Goffe says. "My philosophy was, `Do you mind if I try?' "

In Goffe's view, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to be a great inventor.

He gives as an example the cell separator he invented for CellPro. Though he had been toying with the abstract concept in his head, the inspiration for the device came one day at a laundromat.

He noticed that washing machines use an agitator to gently shake the dirt off of soiled clothing.

"It was one of those `Eureka!' sort of things," Goffe recalls. So he made a device that would agitate a mixture of blood cells and protein so that the desired cells separated from the rest of the concoction.

"Inventions are quite simple really," Goffe insists. "Literally, kids can do what we do.

"It's the boy in me that does it," he says. "You take the child's creative mind and give license to it."

Tyrone Beason's phone message number is 206-464-2251. His e-mail address is: tbeason@seattletimes.com

---------------------------------------------------------.

Genespan

Founded: 1994, privately held. Headquarters: Bothell. Founder, Chairman and CEO: Randall "Tony" Goffe. Employees: 10. Focus: Developing cell-growth and gene-therapy products. Financial picture: Genespan, which has struggled financially, is trying to raise at least $10 million from investors to support expansion of research and development, as well as marketing efforts. Product line: Cellstasis Cell Culture Chamber, for growing tumors and organs; VectorStat, a mixture used to grow cells and research genes; GeneXpansion, a cell-culture kit that includes VectorStat. Most recent milestone: In early February, Genespan launched a new business plan and hired a new president, Gary Reys. Business advantage: Cellstasis may be leading product of its kind, as it is able to rapidly grow cells in the laboratory and keep them alive for extended periods.