Jones Lang LaSalle


Celator Pharmaceuticals
303 B College Road East
Princeton 08540
609-243-0123; fax, 609-243-0202.
Andrew Janoff PhD, CEO and chairman
Home page: www.celatorpharma.com

The headquarters of Celator Pharmaceuticals, a privately held biopharmaceutical company focusing on cancer therapies, moved from 1,800 square feet at 1 Airport Place to 13,000 square feet at College Road East; at the same time, the company's research facility in Vancouver moved from 5,000 to 14,000 square feet. According to CEO Andrew Janoff, growth in several key areas was fueled by the $40 million round of financing completed last year.

Janoff reports significant progress "on all fronts." Celator has completed a Phase 1 study for its lead product, CPX-1, which will be developed for colorectal cancer, and Celator will be announcing results in June. Phase 2 studies are expected to open later this year.

The center of Celator's strategy is its CombiPlex technology platform, for which a patent application is currently pending in the United States and Europe. The technology represents a new direction in developing drug cocktails to fight different cancers. Up until now, the standard for cocktails has been to include each component at its maximum tolerated dose.

Celator holds, however, that chemotherapeutic agents can act synergistically at certain ideal ratios among the component drugs, and its technology has shown significant success in identifying the optimal drug ratios and then locking them in drug carriers so that the ratios can be maintained in patients.

Confident that this approach could represent a significant advance in patient care for many forms of cancer, Janoff expects Celator's staff in Princeton to grow this year from 17 to 22. The company has an additional 29 people in Vancouver.

"The funding represented conclusions by investors that we have a technology that is likely to change the standard of care in treating cancer," says Janoff, adding that early stage trials are showing some promise for this ratiometric approach. "If we're right," he continues, "we have an unlimited pipeline." Initially, the company is targeting new combination therapies involving chemotherapy agents already approved and widely used to treat cancer. This approach positions Celator to pursue promising product opportunities with reduced clinical risk.

Among the investors in the $40,000 funding round were Domain Associates, venture capitalist at Palmer Square, and the Garden State Life Sciences Venture Fund, a fund managed by Quaker Bioventures in which the New Jersey Economic Development Authority is the sole limited partner. This round of funding was touted as one of the largest venture capital investments in biotechnology in the North America for the year (U.S. 1, May 18, 2005).
Celator began in 2000 as a spinoff of the British Columbia Cancer Agency with a laboratory in Vancouver and moved to Princeton in 2003. Janoff has been CEO since 2002.

Janoff had been vice president of research and development at Elan Corporation and, prior to that, vice president and a scientific founder of the Liposome Company. He majored in biology at American University, Class of 1971, and has an M.S. and Ph.D. in biophysics from Michigan State University.