SAN DIEGO--- CONNECT Inducts Dr. Ivor Royston into Entrepreneur Hall of Fame
CONNECT has named Dr. Ivor Royston as the next inductee into the CONNECT Entrepreneur Hall of Fame. Dr. Royston, one of the founding fathers of San Diego's biotechnology industry, will be honored for his professional and personal contributions to the region's thriving scientific and business communities.
The Entrepreneur Hall of Fame, CONNECT's highest honor, celebrates San Diego's entrepreneurial heroes who have paved the way for today's technological innovations and businesses, and who continue to inspire future generations of entrepreneurs.
"The CONNECT Hall of Fame is a significant honor, as it recognizes the elite group of individuals who led the transformation of our local economy," said David Hale, Chairman of Micromet, Inc. and former President and CEO of Hybritech. "As a physician, researcher, entrepreneur and venture capitalist, Ivor Royston has played an important role in developing San Diego into a world renowned cluster for the biotechnology industry."
CONNECT honors a Hall of Fame recipient each year with a high-profile luncheon event, where the inductee tells his or her story to the audience through a live one-on-one interview with Fred Lewis, host of ITV's "The Heart of San Diego." Dr. Ivor Royston will be honored on November 8, 2006 at the Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines.
Dr. Royston led the concept of partnering medical discovery with industry when he co-founded Hybritech, San Diego's first biotechnology company, in 1978. With a goal of speeding the delivery of medical treatments from the laboratory to patients and a $300,000 investment by venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, Hybritech set out to change the landscape of scientific research and medicine with the idea of using monoclonal antibodies to diagnose and cure diseases. Hybritech, which was eventually purchased by Eli Lilly for $480 million, launched innovations such as an antibody for the hepatitis B virus and the first of its kind PSA test for the early diagnosis of prostate cancer. Today, a good majority of San Diego biotechnology companies can trace their roots back to Hybritech.
"Ivor Royston had the insight to recognize that the research discoveries in biology in the early and mid-'70s had the potential to lead to innovative medical treatments," said Dr. Edward Dennis, Professor, UCSD Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, School of Medicine and Revelle College and member of the CONNECT Hall of Fame Committee. "At the founding of Hybritech, this view was not widely accepted by the research community or the pharmaceutical industry and Ivor successfully created a whole new industry and did it in San Diego. Ivor's contributions to our local life science industry are far reaching and we are delighted to honor him with a place in the CONNECT Entrepreneur Hall of Fame."
Prior to founding Hybritech, Dr. Royston was an academic physician scientist devoted to treating cancer patients. He received an M.D. from Johns Hopkins University and completed his residency at Stanford University before joining the faculty of the University of California San Diego, where he was instrumental in the development of the UCSD Cancer Center. He left UCSD in 1990 and co-founded the San Diego Regional Cancer Center, now known as the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, which he ran as the president and CEO for a decade. In 1993 Dr. Royston co-founded Forward Ventures, a San Diego-based venture capital firm focused on funding innovative life science companies. As an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, Dr. Royston has contributed to the formation of many local biotechnology companies, including Idec Pharmaceuticals (now Biogen Idec), Genstar Therapeutics (now Corautus Genetics), Favrille, Inc, and Targegen, to name a few.
In addition to his significant scientific and business achievements, Dr. Royston and his family generously contribute to a variety of community healthcare, educational and cultural organizations. Through the establishment of the Ivor and Colette Carson Royston Advised Fund at the San Diego Foundation, the Royston family generously supports community organizations such as the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, San Diego Opera, La Jolla Playhouse, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as national organizations, such as Johns Hopkins and Duke Universities.
As the third recipient of the award, Dr. Royston joins Qualcomm's Dr. Irwin Mark Jacobs and Walter J. Zable of Cubic Corp. as a member of the CONNECT Entrepreneur Hall of Fame, which is memorialized at the CONNECT office in La Jolla. CONNECT, along with a group of local business leaders, envision a future technology museum in San Diego that will house the Entrepreneur Hall of Fame, a place where the San Diego community can view artifacts associated with the development of local tech companies and their products, and learn about the history of the region's tech entrepreneurs and their economic and social contributions to San Diego. The November 8 luncheon event honoring Dr. Royston will be underwritten by lead sponsor, DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary and, supporting sponsor, Ernst & Young.
About CONNECT:
CONNECT is a globally recognized public benefits organization fostering entrepreneurship in the San Diego region by catalyzing, accelerating, and supporting the growth of the most promising technology and life sciences businesses. Founded in 1985 at the urging of San Diego's business community, CONNECT is widely regarded as the nation's most successful regional program linking high-technology and life science entrepreneurs with the resources they need for success: technology, money, markets, management, partners and support services.