Takes President Position with Aurora Portfolio Company; Transitions From Principal to Venture Partner
Research Triangle Park, N.C. (November 18, 2003) – The Aurora Funds, a leading early stage venture capital firm in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic region, announced today that Doug Gooding will become the President of Regado BioSciences, an Aurora portfolio company. As part of that transition, Doug will become a Venture Partner with Aurora.
“I joined Aurora because of my experience with a number of venture-backed life science companies and my desire to get more involved in company formation and development,” explained Gooding. “I have worked very closely with Regado over the past 18 months during its formation and incubation here at Aurora. The company is now at the point where it requires a more focused and time-intensive effort, offering me the perfect opportunity to actively lead its next growth phase.”
Since joining Aurora in April 2001, Doug has worked primarily with Aurora's life science portfolio, specifically in the areas of biotechnology, agriculture, and biopharmaceuticals. In his new role as Venture Partner, Doug will continue to be actively involved as a Board member with the companies in which he led investments, including two Research Triangle Park- based companies, CropSolution and Metabolon, as well as TissueInformatics, a Pittsburgh-based biotechnology company.
“Doug has done a terrific job in shepherding Regado to this point, and by enabling Doug to have a more active leadership role in Regado, we are significantly increasing the chance of success in that company and Aurora’s potential return on its investment,” said Jeff Clark, Managing General Partner of the Aurora Funds.
“We are thrilled to have Doug take an operational role in Regado BioSciences, at a time when we need to focus not only on achieving short-term goals, but also on building a solid foundation that will ensure long-term success,” explained Chris Rusconi, Vice President of Discovery and Development and Co-founder, Regado BioSciences. “Doug’s unique combination of venture capital, operational and business development experience will help us achieve those goals.”
Prior to Aurora, Doug was Director of Business Development at Paradigm Genetics (NSDQ: PDGM) in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. He also spent time at Incyte Pharmaceuticals (NSDQ; INCY) in Palo Alto, California, and Stratagene Cloning Systems in La Jolla, California. Doug holds a Bachelor of Arts in Biology, minor in Chemistry, from the University of San Diego, in California, and an MBA from the Kenan-Flagler Business School in Chapel Hill, NC.
About The Aurora Funds
The Aurora Funds is a seed and early-stage venture capital firm providing capital, connections and strategic help to entrepreneurs with early stage life science and information technology companies. The firm has over $155 million of total capital under management and is currently investing out of its recently closed fourth fund of $85 million. Since its inception in 1994, Aurora has invested in over 45 companies. Aurora’s investment team members have over 40 years of combined venture capital experience and over 55 years of operational experience. Aurora’s breadth of venture capital investment and operational experience enables the firm’s active approach to working with entrepreneurs to help build successful companies.
Aurora typically invests in seed and first round financing opportunities. The firm’s initial investment size ranges from $50,000 in a seed investment to as much as $2.5 million in a first round financing. The firm has the capacity to invest between $4 million and $7 million throughout the life cycle of an investment. More information is available at www.aurorafunds.com.
About Regado Biosciences
Regado Biosciences is an early stage biopharmaceutical company positioned to become a world leader in the discovery, development, and commercialization of antidote-controlled therapeutics. Its proprietary technology allows Regado to generate highly specific antidotes for each new drug it develops. The rational design of drug-antidote pairs represents a new paradigm for developing safer therapeutics that addresses multi-billion dollar markets in acute care medicine. The initial focus of the Company is on developing antidote-controlled drugs that prevent or eliminate blood clots (“antithrombotics”). Antithrombotic therapies (anticoagulants, antiplatelets and thrombolytics) represent a current market of approximately $10 billion with total sales expected to reach $22 billion in 2007. Regado’s regulatable drugs will initially address the injectable sector of this market that posted sales of over $3 billion in 2001 and is rapidly growing. Injectable antithrombotics have a broad range of applications including cardiovascular and vascular surgery, angioplasty, orthopedic surgery, acute myocardial infarction, stroke, and sepsis.
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Contact:
Shawn Ramsey-Kroboth
SRK Communications (for The Aurora Funds)
919-621-0737
shawn@srkcommunications.com
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