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	Photo by Jason Davis Chuck Witkowski Founder, Protein Discovery

In what many consider the heart of Tennessee’s technology corridor, there’s no shortage of commercially viable ideas or entrepreneurs willing to transform startups into standouts. But what Chuck Witkowski, founder of Knoxville-based biotech rookie company Protein Discovery, quickly learned is that venture capital is hard to come by.

Witkowski selected and licensed a technology patent as he finished his MBA from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where he was part of the now defunct Technopreneurial Leadership Center. The university-sponsored course was founded by Lee Martin (best known as co-founder of Oak Ridge-based IPIX) to match technologies created at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory with future leaders who would then launch new firms.

With patent in hand, Witkowski set out to build a team to develop medical tools used to analyze patients’ tissue to detect cancer cells at the earliest stage, preparing 96 samples in just 45 minutes, which is significantly less than today’s labor-intensive methods that can take days to process.

It seemed like a no-brainer. He started a new company in 2001 (formerly known as Qgenics Biosciences) in the Fairview Technology Center incubator facility conveniently nestled between the largest research lab in the country and Witkowski’s alma mater.

Despite the support of ORNL and Oak Ridge-based business resource center Technology 2020, he was faced with many challenges—not the least of which was raising capital.

Many in Witkowski’s situation, with fiery aspirations to “make it,” often look to family and friends to front informal capital to bridge their efforts until they win startup funding, like equity-free Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants.
Instead, Witkowski picked up an early capital loan fund, provided by the Center for Entrepreneurial Growth (CEG), the commercial arm of ORNL’s technology transfer group that manages funding from UT-Battelle, which kept his company afloat.
“I wrote over 20 SBIRs, which was quite an endeavor. The odds on winning those are about one in eight. Being a business guy writing science grants, my odds weren’t quite as good,” Witkowski says.

After six months of submitting proposals, he won about $200,000. To date, he has raised $500,000 in SBIRs.

Witkowski ultimately landed a seed round of $1 million from Memphis-based, early-stage life science fund MB Ventures, and has been looking to raise a Series B round for an undisclosed amount.

Protein Discovery recently graduated out if its incubator into space in downtown Knoxville, reportedly due to an imminent investment by the Southern Appalachian Fund, which is requiring that the company be located in a low-income area. Next month, the company is expected to begin beta trials of its medical analysis tools with an eye to launch the products commercially early in the second quarter of 2006.

Bob Wilson, CEG director, wishes for more successes like Protein Discovery. And, while more room in the state’s budget is unlikely, he believes the real funding power could come from the private sector.

“It’s frustrating because there is a lot of capital in this area. And, it’s just not engaged at the level it could be,” Wilson says.

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