PhosphoSolutions Inc. tech startup of the month.

INITIAL LIGHTBULB

As a professor at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Dr. Michael Browning found himself in need of antibodies for his research into the biology of memory in the mid-1990s. (Antibodies are used to elicit responses from proteins in laboratory settings, often paving the way for drug discovery.) Recognizing an unmet demand, he started a company, Tangible Research Solutions, to license antibodies and have them produced for scientists and drug companies all over the world.

Browning ran a profitable business for about six years while working as a full-time professor, then recruited Dr. Andy Czernik, his former post-doctoral colleague at Rockefeller University in New York, to come to Colorado as chief scientist of a new startup, PhosphoSolutions Inc.

This new company rolled in Tangible Research Solutions' core business and expanded it into the production of much-hyped phospho antibodies, sometimes called "smart" antibodies, growing the company from one part-time employee to eight full-time staffers in the time since. Browning now serves as president and splits his time between his university lab and PhosphoSolutions' lab and offices, right next door to each other in the Colorado Bioscience Park at the Fitzsimons redevelopment in Aurora.

IN A NUTSHELL

PhosphoSolutions' business plan is focused on the biological equivalent of on/off switches. "The proteins that do important things in your body, you don't want them doing it all the time," said Browning. "There's a protein that sucks glucose out of your blood and stores it in your liver. You don't want it to do that when (glucose) is low, only when it's high. The way the body turns proteins off and on is by putting a little stop sign on a protein, or taking it off." This "stop sign" is a phospho-protein.

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It follows that PhosphoSolutions makes phospho antibodies, "antibodies that actually detect not whether the protein is there but...