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For all the cheer about San Diego’s burgeoning life-science industry, for all the economic riches it has brought the region and for the thousands of jobs it has created for women, the top still smells of testosterone. For evidence, look no farther than Biocom/sandiego, a pioneering industry trade group that Nova now chairs. Of its 425 members, about half are bioscience firms. Cull that list and start counting on your fingers. Anne Crossway is president and chief executive at Cistem Molecular Corp. Jacqueline Johnson holds the same titles at ReRx Inc. At Advanced Tissue Sciences the exceptional scientist Gail Naughton is president; Art Benvenuto is CEO. Lily Lai is president and CEO of eBioscience and Gina M. Stack is co-founder and COO of Irisys Research & Development, where there is no CEO or president. OK, you’re done. Counting Nova, that’s six. Certainly Nova is qualified to run Genoptix, otherwise a steely venture capitalist like Drew Senyei at Enterprise Partners wouldn’t have risked $5 million to $15 million of his money to put her there. And get this: he put her there to go find a technology to build the company around. Of course earlier he invested millions in two local success stories — Ligand and Nanogen — where Nova ran the science while the local Midas of startups, Howard Birndorf, served as CEO. So Senyei knows Nova. Senyei acknowledges that Nova, the woman, is a rarity. Yet his hardball criteria, born from seeing more than 5,000 “opportunities” each year, is gender neutral. “It would be great to have more women if we could find them,” he says. “Tina has some very unique skill sets. We look to hire the best people for the job. I am more than open to finding other great Tinas.” Nova herself finds the situation slightly frustrating, especially given the large number of women in biotech. “I am alone at my level; I am not alone in my field,” she says. “A lot of people throw out the statistics, which makes me very angry, that ‘We have 50 percent men and 50 percent women at my company.’ I say, ‘OK, but where are those 50 percent?’ The answer is in the bottom half and not distributed through the management. That is the part I don’t understand. Why aren’t there women in senior positions? It hasn’t changed virtually at all over the years.” Men also dominate her industry’s boards. She, too, would like to be on a company’s board. Instead, “I always get asked to be on foundation boards and nonprofit boards,” she says. All the preceding aside, if Nova has read this far she is probably cringing. She’s hardly a militant. She introduces herself as a scientist. And she is a big people person. “Fun,” “enthusiastic,” “funny” and “friendly” were words that came up as often as “motivating,” “smart” and “leader,” in conversations with those who have worked for or with her. The History Nova came to San Diego via a coast-to-coast and back again journey that began when the daughter of immigrant Greek farmers in Bakersfield fell in love with science as a young school girl. Her father made sure she wanted to go to college. “(He) put me on a tractor when I was about 12 years old with my sister,” she says. “We went out and raked hay, which means you cut the hay, you rake it and you flip it over so it will dry on the other side. My sister did every other row and I did every other row. He pretty much told me, ‘If you don’t get educated this is where you will end up.’ That was very motivational.” With little assistance from her high school, she decided to go to UC Irvine in 1971. “I went to my high school counselor and told him I wanted to go to a university and become a scientist,” she recalls. “He said, ‘Why?’ That was encouraging. It was small town USA where the girls married the farmers next door. Even out of our large high school, very few people went to a university. And if you wanted to go to college you went to Bakersfield Junior College. If you really went away you went to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. To go to Irvine was just really out there.” A biological sciences major — that’s what it was called then — she considered a career as a medical doctor. “I got a job in a free clinic in Laguna Beach in the summer between my junior and senior years. I really didn’t care for clinical medicine. I knew that the science was for me.” After graduating from Irvine, she spent two years working in labs. Then she went to UC Riverside and earned a doctorate in chemistry. At that time the school was rated the nation’s second best biochemistry institution, right behind Wisconsin. “Move to Wisconsin?” she asks. “I don’t think so.” At graduate school Nova worked on the regulation of proteins. She was the first to purify an enzyme responsible for hemoglobin production. “Being the first to do that, and to publish that, I was just thinking it was the biggest scientific thing. Although it was nothing, at the time I thought it was the best.” Then she was off to NYU for postdoctoral work. “I took medical school courses just to get a little more familiar with medicine,” she says. “That was another great experience. A whole other world. After growing up in Central California and then going to Irvine and UC Riverside, picking up and moving to New York City was quite a ride.” Dad again had some advice. The conversation, she recalls, went like this: Dad: “You’re moving to New York? Why would you do that?’” Nova: “Well, Dad, they have this really good school.” Dad:“Well, OK, here, don’t tell your mother.” “He gave me a gun,” Nova says, pausing to laugh. “He said, ‘Just pack it in your suitcase.’ Well, I knew how to use it. I grew up on a farm. We used guns and it wasn’t a big deal.” In New York she made a monoclonal antibody to a protein found in skin. That earned her a 1983 call from Hybritech in San Diego. It wanted to license her discovery. She flew out and ended up with a job as a research scientist. Hybritech is widely credited as being the industrial mothership for San Diego’s bioscience industry, with UCSD, Salk and Scripps providing the fresh science that has since fed Hybritech alumni. At the time, Nova says, those working there had no idea what the local industry would become. “I mean, we were young,” she says. “We were in our late 20s; I think the oldest person at Hybritech was 35, and that was old. Also, when I came out to Hybritech I liked the people I met. I thought, ‘They are more like me than the people I met in academics at NYU.’” Because Hybritech was relatively small, the research scientists were involved with everything from discovery to manufacturing, an experience that later would serve Nova well. “There are very few companies where you would have been allowed to have such latitude,” she says. Off the bat, Nova had a big success, one that affects every man from middle age on. “The first scientific problem I was given was to help figure out how to make this PSA test,” she says. “Every time they purified the prostate specific antigen, and tried to use it, it was unstable. Therefore, they could not make the product.” She and an assistant solved it and filed a patent in six months. “I didn’t realize at the time that several people had tried this and it hadn’t worked,” she says. “And it wasn’t because they didn’t know how to do it and I did. It was because I was trained as a biochemist and had experience with proteins. I knew a lot of bioprotein chemistry and could apply it to the problem.” At that time a PSA test was not a big deal. Since then, it has become one of the most important diagnostic medical kits of all time, detecting possible prostate cancers and helping track the progress of those diagnosed. Eli Lilly and Co., which bought Hybritech in 1986 before selling it a few years later, sent Nova the patent on a plaque. “I looked for a check in the envelope but it wasn’t there,” she says. “Everyone always says to me, ‘How much did you make?’ Well, I had a job. That was it. It was incredible to have been part of it.” After the purchase by pharmaceutical giant Lilly, the atmosphere at Hybritech started to change. “I remember we went to a meeting where all the executives were standing up there saying, ‘Now nothing is going to change and this is all great.’ And then one year later none of them was there and everything had changed, including no alcohol at our TGIFs.” Nova hung around for two years. While the Lilly corporate structure didn’t suit her entrepreneurial nature, she remains grateful for the management and other training programs offered. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a venture capital firm, recruited Nova in 1988 to join a startup called Ligand Pharmaceuticals. It was to be the first of four biotechs where she was in the door on day one. There she teamed for the first time with Birndorf, who had left Hybritech about the time Nova arrived. “When I went to Ligand, they had identified some initial technology out of Scripps Research Institute that was to make them a cancer diagnostic company,” she says. The problem was, she and Birndorf determined it didn’t work. So they found a technology that did. The exercise would serve Nova well later. During her five years at Ligand, she started “transitioning farther away from the bench.” She was managing scientists, helping raise money and working with corporate partners. “I found I was a person who could explain science to nonscientists,” she says. “A lot of scientists can’t do that. In the beginning of a company, you talk to a lot of venture capitalists and potential investors who do not have scientific training. If they come in and hear a presentation from a founding scientist and they don’t understand what they heard, they are not going to make the investment.” She left Ligand to help start Selective Genetics, serving as vice president and chief operating officer. Two years later, the VCs came calling. “Nanogen came by and I just loved the science,” she says. The concept was for a diagnostic device equipped with a microchip that could check a single drop of blood for many diseases. “I got back with the team I was with at Ligand,” she says. “The same investors. So not only was it Howard and me — I went there as the president — but Kleiner Caufield, Enterprise Partners and Sprout Group, who were all with us at Ligand. We were recycled, just a little older.” After seven and a half years as Nanogen’s president, Nova pushed on. “It was time for me to have my own thing,” she says. “I contributed a lot to the success of the companies I was at, but wasn’t the person in charge.” She has since been joined at Genoptix by three others from Nanogen who left at various times, for the similar reason that the company had matured and the challenges had changed. “I am a startup person. I am an R&D person,” Nova says. “We were building instruments with Hitachi. What am I contributing to that?” The Company Genoptix actually is the nonlinear evolution of a company called DNA Dynamics that Enterprise Partners and Tullis-Dickerson plunked $8.5 million into in early 2000. They brought Nova on to look at their dot-com investment and help determine the company’s course. She began an evaluation of the business model with Senyei and eventually with Jim O’Connell, who came on board as Genoptix president.
She recommended not just a sea change, but a move to a new ocean. “What was decided was not to keep any of the technology,” she says. “It always is hard to go in and tell investors that you should dump 100 percent of what you are doing and start over. So I had to do it gently, and I did. I think I saved our investment. We could have just burned through that money and had nowhere else to go.” Instead, the three identified, then licensed new technology that uses lasers to find and move around individual cells in a blood sample. “If you were to take a sample of blood today and be told to go quickly, easily and cheaply separate all the cell types that were in there — the red cells, white cells, normal cells, cancer cells, tumor cells — that would not be an easy thing to do,” Nova says. “It would be expensive, it would be time consuming and it would not be pure.” Genoptix uses high-frequency lasers to look “all the way down to the atomic level of the cell, all the way down to the DNA,” Nova says. “So if there is a small change at the atomic level we can detect it.” Not only can the cells be identified, they can be easily sorted. “As the blood comes through, you can think of it going through a channel; you can control all that,” she says. “You can make the red cells make a right turn, the white cells make a left turn, you can make the cancer cells go this way and the normal cells go this way. It is very cool.” How well it will work in the real world, of course, is the big test. But the possibilities appear grand. Genoptix started working with the technology in October, using lab space down the street from its Sorrento Valley office. A lab in its headquarters is under construction and should be finished this summer. “It could really be helpful in a couple of areas,” Nova says. “One, the whole drug discovery area, where if you look at a cell, treat a cell and look for changes; that is something that is not now easy to do and is expensive. Also to look at toxicity of a drug on a cell. To look for changes. As you know, drugs are still found to be toxic late in the testing process. So what if you could pull out that information at the beginning?” The cancer testing possibilities also are intriguing. “Let’s say you have a tumor and they go in and take the tumor out,” Nova says. “What’s known is, if a tumor comes back, you can have circulating cancer cells in that patient and you can’t detect them until it is late; you get another growth. So what if you could monitor that patient and not wait until the tumor is back to invade with treatment?” The company has named this convergence of optical science and biology “optophoresis.” O’Connell, president of Genoptix, notes that years of research and investment in the telecom and optical industries have produced the lasers necessary to make it work and make it affordable. “Even two years ago you might have tried this but the lasers would have been too expensive,” he says, noting the firm just bought a 16-laser machine for $125. While filing its patents and getting its intellectual property situation in order, O’Connell says, he found no other company taking this approach. Investor Senyei is enthusiastic. “I think this company is very uniquely positioned to change the way we discover drugs and analyze cells,” he says. “Those opportunities don’t come along too often.” The Industry Opportunity is the name of the biotech game in San Diego. Nova notes that she has never had much problem recruiting here from other places because of the diverse employment scene. “When we hire people they like the fact they are not coming to a town with just a few biotech companies,” Nova says. “I say, ‘If it doesn’t work, you are not isolated in a town with three biotech companies. We are a town that has 350 biotech companies and three universities where you can go do something.’ That gives us a lot of options.” One thing Nova says has not changed since she arrived is the camaraderie of those in the local industry. “I really believe that you can call anyone in this town and ask them for expertise or ask them for advice and you’ll get it,” she says. “Friends of mine who are in the Bay area say that just is not true there.” At the same time, Nova notes that San Diego has been unable to develop a powerhouse bioscience company, like an Amgen, the 6,500-employee biotech in Thousand Oaks. Biotechs here with that potential, such as Agouron or Combi-Chem, have been acquired by larger companies. With nearly 600 employees, Idec Pharmaceuticals Inc. is one of the region’s strongest independent pharmaceutical companies today. It may become an Amgen, but has not yet. Nova acknowledges a major success would benefit the region, but she doesn’t consider San Diego’s emphasis on startups and mergers a negative. “I look at it as a business model,” she says. When those larger companies get involved, she notes, some of their smartest people move to San Diego. “They say they are going to be here a couple of years and then don’t leave.” The Friends Those who do stay and get to know or work with Nova become her biggest fans. Monica Schoon, who worked for Nova at Nanogen as a quality engineer supervisor, grows wistful during an interview about her old boss. “Talking about her makes me miss her,” Schoon says. “She is a wonderful boss. I really hope one day I can work with her again. She is really kind and understanding and friendly. ... She always is out there to help women scientists and employees. She takes risks when she sees potential in employees. She will give them the opportunity to take on new jobs and responsibility.” Bry says Nova is comfortable sharing success: “She doesn’t have an ego in terms of having to take the credit and say ‘I, I, I,’” Bry says, noting that’s a good thing in biotech where smart scientists abound. O’Connell, who joined the company in part because of Nova, says she also has “a realistic view of what can get done over a period of time. Some times nonscientists don’t have that.” Biocom’s President Joe Panetta says Nova has the No. 1 attribute for leadership. “She is able to motivate people to do things. People want to work with her. They respect the leadership she offers.” Birndorf describes Nova as a very ambitious, energetic and detail oriented person. “She is a good manager,” he says. “She is able to get things done, especially in startup stages. You say, ‘we need this done,’ and she gets it done quickly and efficiently. The fact that she is a Ph.D. means she also understands the science. She gives great presentations and represents the company well when entertaining sponsors or giving talks to community groups.” The Politics Nova’s personable nature may one day serve her well in another field. “Tina is very active in Democratic politics,” Birndorf notes. “It wouldn’t surprise me if she went into politics at some point.” Birndorf is not alone in this assessment, but for now, Nova insists her sights are set squarely on the company. Her party leanings go back to when she was an infant in California’s Central Valley. “When I was a baby my parents took me to Cesar Chavez’s house and his parents actually baby-sat me. How is that for a political beginning?” While she refers to politics as a hobby, she participates at a rather high level. In 1996, she chaired the Democratic Biomedical Caucus that advocated for Ward Valley as a repository of low-level nuclear waste. A year later she partnered with California Controller Kathleen Connell to support better technology programs at junior colleges. A year after that she was talking science policy with then-Vice President Al Gore. In a January 1998 article on Gore that appeared on Wired Magazine’s Web site, Nova earned two paragraphs praising the presidential candidate’s understanding of technology. She also described him as “a hunk — not cold or wooden at all.” She laughs at that hunk description now — that was before he gained some weight, she says — but remains impressed with Gore. Unlike other politicians who make promises to the scientific community to get support, but never deliver, Gore, she is certain, would be sincere. “If he wasn’t a politician I’m sure he would be a scientist,” she says. Two months ago she met the ultimate Democratic politician, former President Clinton, through her involvement with the Democratic National Council’s Progressive Policy Institute where she serves as a source on technology to people in senior government positions. Nova was attending a retreat at the White Oak resort in Florida. One night she found her name tag at a table of eight, right next to Clinton. “I sat right down and introduced myself,” she says. “He asked me what I did and I told him. He was charming and he was fascinating. He talked about his last days in office and his future travels to Ireland and India.” Clinton also noticed Nova. “He kept leaning over and putting his hand on my hand and saying, ‘Are you OK?’ I go, ‘yeah,’” she says. “The next morning he walked up to me like I was his long lost buddy. ‘Tina, thank you for last night.’ I’m like, ‘Right, you are thanking me?’ and he said ‘Good luck with your company.’” Of course, Clinton still has detractors, as Nova discovered after the meeting was reported in the local media. “I got anonymous insulting, dirty e-mails,” she says. Although her friends mostly envision a national, appointed political position in her future, Nova says she has not ruled out local politics. Ultimately it just may remain a hobby. “I’m not sure how serious I am about it,” she says. The Challenges In the more immediate future, Nova concerns herself with her company, industry and family — she’s a single mother with a 6-year-old and 16-year-old. “I had my Hybritech baby and my Nanogen baby,” jokes the former Tina Berger, who kept her married name after the divorce. The energy she spends on challenges is impressive. She sleeps four hours at night and is naturally very healthy. Birndorf says she’s the kind of person who returns to work two weeks after having a baby. One challenge facing the industry is constraints on developable property. “Where are there 100 acres of land to go (for manufacturing)?” she asks. The issue of energy also has gained urgency. “You hear about the power shortage every morning on the radio, but it goes in one ear and out the other,” she says. “Then we came in here and at 10 in the morning the power went out. I heard it was because of the (hot weather) and air conditioning usage. Well, we didn’t have our air conditioning on and it wasn’t hot outside. I thought, ‘Great, what is going to happen this summer?’ But the most interesting thing that happened is that everyone stopped working. Everyone is out of their offices. We have a small lab down the street, everyone came back here. Then I thought, ‘Do you know what this is costing us?’ We couldn’t do our experiments and the computers were down — that is how we live. How do you run a business? That is scary stuff. And it feels very third worldish, to go back to a time when you didn’t have the power to do what you needed to do.” The scientist in Nova also has safety concerns. “You don’t want your power just going out when people are doing certain things in the lab,” she says. “I brought that up at a Biocom meeting and I really got some looks because a lot of people don’t understand scientifically that, for example, you could be working in a tissue culture hood with a cell line that you don’t want to breathe. And that is why you are working in a hood, because it takes the air and removes it. Once the power goes out, what if you are working with viruses? What if you are working with bacteria? I am worried about this summer. I think everyone is. For us to put backup generators in this building is a huge financial investment. And not only that, but you talk to people about generators and they say, ‘Good luck’ in ordering a generator.” The Future Nova’s primary focus is on the success of her company. She will continue to mentor women in the industry, but laughed out loud about the prospect of a woman soon joining the Genoptix board. “You think I have the choice now? I don’t,” she says. “This is investor time. When you start the company, the board members are 100 percent your investors. That is the way it goes in a startup. As the board changes, as the company grows, you can add outside board members.” Yet when that chance does present itself, she expects to hit another hurdle: finding a board member with the right expertise. “You have to add based on what the company needs,” she says. “So, for example, if you need a scientist with some expertise to be on the board, or a pharmaceutical executive with ‘X’ expertise, that’s the way you look for candidates. It doesn’t become gender based. A lot of times when you are looking for that, you just run into males who have been in those positions. “So it is tougher not just to find women to be on your boards; it is tougher to find women who bring the expertise you are looking for because they are not in those positions. It is a circular problem.” For now, Nova will speak encouragingly to groups of women and have the occasional supportive 20-minute telephone call that ends two hours later. “I wish,” Nova says, “I would have had someone to call 17 years ago.”
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Barbara Bry pauses. The vice president of business development at 