Jones Lang LaSalle
Linguagen
Ten years after founding a drug discovery company, F. Raymond Salemme successfully sold it to Johnson & Johnson and was recruited to head another promising company, Linguagen. Less than two years later, he is leading that 22-person firm in a major expansion.
Linguagen, a molecular biology firm, develops ingredients used to improve the taste of food, beverages and pharmaceutical products. It will more than triple its space with a move from 5,100 square feet at Eastpark at Exit 8A in Cranbury to 18,577 feet at 7 Graphics Drive in Ewing. Tom Giannone of Cushman & Wakefield represented Linguagen in the lease with BioMed Realty Trust, a real estate investment trust that owns the 72,000 square-foot building formerly occupied by J.D.S. Uniphase; another tenant of the building is Medeikon.
"We have plans to expand our range of capabilities," says CEO Salemme. "One of our key product development areas has to do with the creation of more acceptable and more efficacious formulations. To put those together and test them requires some unique facilities."
Salemme started out as a crystallographer, described as "a physical scientist who is interested in biology." It is actually similar to his late father's profession, metallurgy, which focuses on the crystal structures of metal.
Even as a child, Salemme was drawn to crystal structures. He tells of wanting Tinker Toys when he was 12 years old. "My mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas, and I pointed to the toys with the little sticks and nodes. Like many good mothers, she read the age group for that toy, ages six through nine, and said, 'This is not an advanced enough toy for you.' But I have spent my whole life investigating those kinds of structures," says Salemme. At age 14 Salemme bought his own set of "sticks and nodes" and notes, "In my career I have spent quite a few tens of millions of dollars doing similar stuff."
A molecular biophysics major at Yale University (Class of 1967), Salemme has a PhD in chemistry from the University of California at San Diego. He set up drug-discovery groups specializing in structure-based drug design, biophysics, and computational chemistry at Sterling Winthrop Pharmaceuticals and DuPont Merck Pharmaceuticals, and he founded 3-Dimensional Pharmaceutical in 1993.
When he came to Linguagen in 2004, he left crystallography behind. "I broadened my technological capabilities to many aspects of drug discovery besides crystallography," he says, "and now I do a half dozen things reasonably well, including building a company."
He has his name on more than 25 patents from his 3DP days, and in his 18 months at Linguagen he has filed some more. Says Salemme: "That's one of the best parts about working in a small company, you can contribute to the projects."
Linguagen, 2005 Eastpark Boulevard, Eastpark at Exit 8, Cranbury 08512; 609-860-1500; fax, 609-860-5900. F. Raymond Salemme, CEO. www.linguagen.com
Linguagen
Ten years after founding a drug discovery company, F. Raymond Salemme successfully sold it to Johnson & Johnson and was recruited to head another promising company, Linguagen. Less than two years later, he is leading that 22-person firm in a major expansion.
Linguagen, a molecular biology firm, develops ingredients used to improve the taste of food, beverages and pharmaceutical products. It will more than triple its space with a move from 5,100 square feet at Eastpark at Exit 8A in Cranbury to 18,577 feet at 7 Graphics Drive in Ewing. Tom Giannone of Cushman & Wakefield represented Linguagen in the lease with BioMed Realty Trust, a real estate investment trust that owns the 72,000 square-foot building formerly occupied by J.D.S. Uniphase; another tenant of the building is Medeikon.
"We have plans to expand our range of capabilities," says CEO Salemme. "One of our key product development areas has to do with the creation of more acceptable and more efficacious formulations. To put those together and test them requires some unique facilities."
Salemme started out as a crystallographer, described as "a physical scientist who is interested in biology." It is actually similar to his late father's profession, metallurgy, which focuses on the crystal structures of metal.
Even as a child, Salemme was drawn to crystal structures. He tells of wanting Tinker Toys when he was 12 years old. "My mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas, and I pointed to the toys with the little sticks and nodes. Like many good mothers, she read the age group for that toy, ages six through nine, and said, 'This is not an advanced enough toy for you.' But I have spent my whole life investigating those kinds of structures," says Salemme. At age 14 Salemme bought his own set of "sticks and nodes" and notes, "In my career I have spent quite a few tens of millions of dollars doing similar stuff."
A molecular biophysics major at Yale University (Class of 1967), Salemme has a PhD in chemistry from the University of California at San Diego. He set up drug-discovery groups specializing in structure-based drug design, biophysics, and computational chemistry at Sterling Winthrop Pharmaceuticals and DuPont Merck Pharmaceuticals, and he founded 3-Dimensional Pharmaceutical in 1993.
When he came to Linguagen in 2004, he left crystallography behind. "I broadened my technological capabilities to many aspects of drug discovery besides crystallography," he says, "and now I do a half dozen things reasonably well, including building a company."
He has his name on more than 25 patents from his 3DP days, and in his 18 months at Linguagen he has filed some more. Says Salemme: "That's one of the best parts about working in a small company, you can contribute to the projects."
Linguagen, 2005 Eastpark Boulevard, Eastpark at Exit 8, Cranbury 08512; 609-860-1500; fax, 609-860-5900. F. Raymond Salemme, CEO. www.linguagen.com
posted by Jones Lang LaSalle NJ News Blog at 9:51 AM
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