Biotech entrepreneurs could hardly wait for the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse to recruit a permanent chief executive after inaugural CEO Dennis Yablonsky left early last year to head the state's Department of Community and Economic Development. You can excuse his replacement, Dr. Doros Platika, for wondering if some of those executives now may be having second thoughts.

	Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette Dr. Doros Platika, CEO of the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse, says that instead of widely distributing funds, he'd rather make bigger investments in fewer start-ups. Click photo for larger image.

Hired in November to head the state-backed biomedical development organization, Platika says he isn't inclined to widely distribute the Greenhouse's pre-seed funds, which are used to launch start-ups and which many entrepreneurs desire. Instead, he wants to make larger investments in fewer companies.

"I'll go right out on the limb about my position and I'll tell you it's not unanimous," Platika said of his view to limit the use of pre-seed funds.

Adding fuel to a potential fire may be his desire to recruit from outside the region as many as half of the 20 companies the Greenhouse hopes to help launch in the next five years. He's heard from others who "want all 20 to be homegrown."

Barely four months into the job, Platika comes to his new post at a time when some biotech start-ups have grown disenchanted over the trickle of funding from the nearly 2-year-old Greenhouse and disgruntled at the fact that the lion's share so far has gone to universities.

"A lot of us would really like to see things move a lot faster," complained one entrepreneur who requested anonymity for fear of jeopardizing any funding he might seek. He was among a number of local executives who grumbled last month when they heard the Greenhouse already had provided $12.2 million to the region's universities for research facilities and recruitment of research faculty.

So far, the Greenhouse -- which was started with $33 million from the state and $66 million from foundations -- hasn't announced any pre-seed investments in companies and has thus far allocated only $777,721 in other forms of financial support. It is pre-seed money entrepreneurs say is needed locally to help them attract investments from venture capitalists.

"There's a philosophical discussion internally" about how to apportion the pre-seed funds, acknowledged Platika. Instead of the $100,000 commitments the Greenhouse had originally planned to make to individual companies, he wants to up the ante to $500,000, which would mean there would be fewer investments to go around.

The reason, he said, is that the more selective the Greenhouse is with pre-seed funds, the more its commitments would take on the status of "a Good Housekeeping seal of approval," thus encouraging venture capitalists to look hard at those companies. The last thing the Greenhouse should want is a reputation for backing companies that "couldn't get money from anywhere else," Platika said.

Making larger commitments also is a way of conserving money needed to do the thorough business analysis any investment requires, he added. "It doesn't make any sense to spend $100,000 [on the necessary due diligence to review a company's business plan] to invest $100,000."

As for criticism of the backing provided to universities, Platika and Greenhouse board members defended such support as part of the Greenhouse's original charter. Platika said the university commitments should help increase the region's output of marketable technologies, and pledged that his organization would keep tabs on how well scientists recruited with its funds were performing.

Despite the criticisms, Platika's appointment has been enthusiastically received. It helps that he brought with him credentials as a physician, scientist and entrepreneur with broad exposure in biotech, and that his hiring ended a six-month stretch during which the Greenhouse was without a permanent leader.

For his part, Platika -- who is scheduled to speak at the Pittsburgh Technology Council's breakfast meeting this morning -- said wasn't looking for a long "honeymoon" with the region's biotech community. He said he's anxious to accelerate the Greenhouse's pace and hopes to give the organization more "transparency'' so that its progress can be fairly judged.

He believes recruiting start-ups from outside the region is one way to do speed local change -- and noted it's not a departure from goals the Greenhouse originally set, when Yablonsky set targets for local biotech employment that would include recruitment of outsiders.

Platika said outsiders could benefit from some of Pittsburgh's strengths. As he sees it, the city boasts lower costs for office space and other needs new ventures have, as well as some university research specialties that lead their fields.

Since his appointment, he said a dozen start-ups or venture capital firms from outside the region have contacted him to discuss ways in which the Greenhouse might work with them to start companies, research units or, in at least one instance, a manufacturing facility. Some that had tight time frames for making decisions already have moved on with other plans.

But Platika said he'd continue working his contacts while pushing forward existing programs at the Greenhouse, including recruitment of some additional seasoned biotech execs for the organization's so-called Executive Corps, which provides support to start-ups.

Platika's contacts are undoubtedly broad. An Internet search of his name brings up scores of conferences where he's spoken, interviews he's given, articles that reference him and companies he's headed. By his count, he's raised more than $500 million in research and venture funding in the course of his career.

A Romanian-born emigre who earned his bachelor's degree at Reed College in Portland, Ore., and his medical degree at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Platika spent the early part of his career as a clinician and scientist and faculty member at prestigious institutions, including Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard Medical School and Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

He left academe to help colleagues in a commercial research venture, Progenitor Inc. in Ohio and, as executive vice president of research, helped take the company public. Some of Progenitor's original financial backers and former scientific colleagues subsequently recruited him back to Boston to head another start-up, Ontogeny Inc., that he took public by merging it with two other firms. He left to head another firm, Centagenetix Inc., and then left that firm after it was sold to join a Boston-based venture capital firm.

Platika said his earliest interest in biotech came as a teenager, captivated by science fiction and the possibilities it described for perpetuating human life to very advanced age -- if not forever. Some of his later scientific work and technologies, developed at companies he headed, were aimed at activating genes to repair damage to the body caused by age or disease.

Platika said he turned down much higher salaries at other ventures that were wooing when he joined the Greenhouse. Apparently, the idea of using biotech to repair an aging city captured his imagination more.

"I do believe ... there's an opportunity to make an impact, to leave a legacy and be part of something that's bigger than being CEO of another company."