cover story
industry psychology (1)
industry psychology (2)
insider (1)
insider (2)
iranian impact
leadership
market analysis (1)
market analysis (2)
profile (1)
profile (2)
profile (3)

By Laurie Falconer

Is it possible to save lives with military technology? Yes, it is. Is it possible to change the manufacturing of semiconductors so every child in the world can afford to have a radio frequency ID tag to eliminate the incidence of kidnapping? Yes, it is. Is it possible that one person at one company can initiate this? Yes, it is. That person is Ross Haghighat, and that company is Triton Systems.

Triton Systems is a technology incubator with a strong core competency in advanced materials. And Ross Haghighat is the founder and CEO.

Haghighat is a materials scientist who worked in semiconductors and applied product development before starting Triton Systems in 1992. Triton Systems is based on the idea of leveraging private equity and United States government funding to identify product and market trends. By combining the knowledge the company has of applied materials with an expectation of trends in the market, Triton acts as an incubator. Triton starts with the seed stage, evolving the business or technology to a point when it can either acquire outside funding and spin off or partner with another company already in the market through licensing of patents or trade secrets.

The ultimate goal, Haghighat says, is to get the product into the market place, one way or another. And in recent years, Triton Systems has been successful getting products into the marketplace. Two recent successes are Triton BioSystems and Elecon.

Triton BioSystems: The Science to Kill Cancer Cells
One of Triton Systems’ spin-offs is Triton BioSystems, which has a mission to develop a product that selectively and effectively kills cancer and other debilitating diseases using “targeted” heat. Triton BioSystems is focused on finding ways to kill cancer cells without affecting healthy human cells surrounding the cancer. What’s even more interesting, however, is that the technology, called targeted nano-therapeutics (TNT), came out of work originally sponsored by the U.S. Army.
Triton Systems combined two seemingly unrelated technologies within its portfolio to develop the TNT product. The first was a technology that involved use of a unique family of nanomaterials that, on-demand, heat up to a very specific temperature. What is unqiue about these materials is that once they heat to a specific maximum temperature, they stop heating further, thus maintaining a precise temperature for as long as is needed. This novel technology is deisgned by Triton Systems to weld composites for the US Army, so welding of composites could be carried out at a controlled temperature and with excellent accuracy.

The second technology came from Sensera, another subsidiary of Triton, with a focus on bio-warfare detection. Sensera’s technology was a family of sensors designed to detect chemical and biological agents. Their technology involved bonding antibodies to various sensor elements designed to detect specific biological molecules.

As an example of how Triton leverages the strength of its technology thrusts, the scientists working on these nanotechnologies came to the conclusion that they could develop a breakthrough non-invasive cancer treatment. By linking human antibodies, designed to seek proteins expressed on specific cancer cells, with nanomaterials that can deliver precise heat locally to the cancer cells, they could deliver a targeted therapy with remarkable accuracy and with minimal side effects. By injecting the “activated” nanomaterials, TNT into the body, the smart agents “go find” the cancer cells. Antibodies search out anything bad in the body – this is the nature of what they do. The scientists realized that, once the antibodies find the cancer cells, doctors could remotely activate the nanomaterials The result is that the heat zeroes in on the cancer cells and kills them, without killing any healthy human cells around the cancer.

“While cancer is one of the smartest diseases we know, the cancer cells have what we call an ‘Achilles heal’ – they remain overly sensitive to heat,” said Dr. Samuel Straface, CEO of Triton BioSystems. “The issue in the market up to now has been to find a way to control the heat. Our product solves this issue.”

More Detail: How It Works
Triton BioSystems’ product is made up of two parts, one a biological molecule and the other a nanoparticle many times smaller than a cancer cell and small enough to clear the kidney and the liver to enable the excess TNT to discharge from the body. The biological molecule is a modified unit of the immune system, or an antibody, which identifies certain types of chemical signatures on the outside of cancer cells (these "fingerprint molecules," or antigens, are unique to aggressive cancer). In this way, the antibody becomes the guidance and targeting system, or the "smart missile" inside the body.
The nanomaterial particle is actually a lethal payload when it is combined with a magnetic field. When the doctor switches on the field, the particles all convert some of the magnetic field energy into heat. Each particle acts as a tiny, but lethal concentrator system for the heat, which then blasts away the cancer cells. In this way, the product kills the cancer cells either immediately or leaves them so damaged they die over time.

Because the injection is actually made up of hundreds of thousands of these "payloads", it is possible for hundreds of them to attach to each cancer cell. The heat process takes only a few seconds, and is confined to the immediate vicinity of individual cancer cells and not adjacent normal tissue, so the patient should feel nothing. Because of the nature of the nanomaterial, each particle can heat up to 100 degrees Celsius in one blast, which is more than enough -- it only takes 42 degrees Celsius to disable and kill cancer cells -- to kill cancer.

Status of the Treatment
Triton BioSystems is currently in the final stages of testing the product on animals and expects the results to be completed by the end of May. Animal testing involved three phases: first safety, then biodistribution, and finally, percentage of tumors killed and over what amount of time.
Once the animal trials are complete, the company will take the product into clinical trials on humans, most likely in Europe or Asia.

Status of the Company
Triton BioSystems is as financially secure as a biotechnology start-up company can be, but Straface seems unconcerned. “We just closed a round of funding worth $2 million – this will get us through the remaining work prior to clinical trials. For clinical trials, we will raise substantially more.”

However, the company is planning to leverage partners from around the world, some corporate and some academic, to obtain the resources for conducting the clinical trials. While Straface can’t disclose who the partners are, his lack of concern indicates these are some well-known companies and universities which are seriously interested and involved in Triton BioSystem’s product development.
As for competitors, Straface says Triton BioSystems is coming up against several companies developing new types of targeted therapies. Usually these targeted therapies, however, involve the use of antibodies combined with a chemical,or chemotherapy agent. The drawback of these therapies, in addition to the obvious physical and psychological ones on the patient, is that they are often a part of a “combination therapy” that also involves radiation, causing severe side effects and discomfort for the patient. Moreover, these therapries don’t necessarily kill the cancer – they may stop the cancer from growing or even shrink the cancer instead.

“Our product is intended to actually kill the cancer completely,” said Straface. “It is truly ironic that the idea came from military technology development.”

The treatment is expected to be most effective for advanced stages of breast cancer. In the advanced stages, usually the cancer has spread elsewhere in the body (metastasized), such as in the bone or in the lymph nodes. It is also expected to be effective in the treatment of bone cancer, which according to Straface, is extremely debilitating. With bone cancer, usually chemotherapy, surgery and radiation are not options. With Triton BioSystem’s treatment, which is non-invasive, bone marrow and other tissues will not be affected.

Elecon: Redefining Semiconductor Technology
Another one of the Triton Systems spin-offs is Elecon, a manufacturer of organic semiconductors for the opto- and microelectronic device markets. The company is focused on developing a low cost alternative to silicon semiconductors. In fact, with organics (or plastics), the cost of fabricating semiconductors could be one-tenth of what it is today.

The Science
Elecon’s technology uses nanoelectronics to develop organic semiconductors that enable devices that do not depend on conventional semiconductor manufacturing techniques. The simplified explanation is as follows. Semiconductor devices rely on fast speed to carry out their mission.

Inorganics such as silicon, silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium arsenide (GaAs) have a well-defined crystal structure and attractive semiconductor properties. These materials are the workhorse for all of today’s microelectronic devices. Of particular interest is their carrier mobility. Mobility is a measure of the efficiency with which electrons, or holes, travel from one point to another. Mobility affects the switching speed of a transistor, referred to as on-off ratio. Mobility is measured in centimeters squared per volt per second (cm2/Vs).

Amorphous silicon, which are used in most semiconductor products today, has a mobility value of around 1 cm2/Vs. Other materials such as polycrystalline silicon, exhibit mobilities well in excess of 1 (as high as 400 cm2/Vs or more), and thus are used in very high-speed applications.

One main drawback of organic semiconductors, is their low carrier mobility of 0.05 to 0.2 cm2/Vs. This low mobility value, substantially limits the potential applications of organic semiconductors.

The idea behind Elecon is to produce a plastic that has semiconductor properties that rival conventional semiconductors. Elecon has developed an organic semiconductor, called ELEFLEXTM , with mobility well in excess of the existing organic materials. The current Elecon product can perform up to 100 times better than other semiconducting plastics and substantially better than amorphous silicon. The Elecon team has demonstrated a mobility of over 20 cm2/Vs so far.

The Product
In July 2002 Elecon introduced its first product, called ELEFLEX™. ELEFLEX is a family of organic semiconductors, electrodes and insulators for rigid and flexible display devices and smart windows. The products offer significant cost and performance advantages over current alternatives used in the manufacturing of these devices.

The ELEFLEX™ 2300 conductive substrate is designed for touch panel displays such as PDA’s, cell phones and cash registers in restaurants and is the first ELEFLEX product to be introduced. It is specifically designed to replace indium-tin oxide (ITO) transparent conductors on glass or plastic substrates. Unlike traditional vacuum deposition processing used in ITO substrates, ELEFLEX 2300 uses a low-cost, low temperature solution coating process that reduces manufacturing costs of display devices.

In addition to his duties at Triton Systems, Ross Haghighat is the acting CEO of Elecon. According to Haghighat, “ELEFLEX organic semiconductors represent a revolution in the organic semiconductor field. The cost is one-tenth of ITO, and its exceptionally high mobility allows devices with switching speeds that previously had not been considered with organic semiconductors. With a mobility rivaling polysilicon, ELEFLEX products will enable the design of new opto- and microelectronic devices and applications which were not even considered – until now.”

With this new technology, Elecon makes it possible to manufacture semiconductors in a very cost effective, linear manner. It becomes possible to start with a roll of plastic on one end of the manufacturing cycle and print the circuits using a special printing technology. This means design and fabrication can be done in low initial productions for testing and then high volume production can begin.

Applications
Applications for ELEFLEX products include touch panels, flat panel displays, organic light emitting devices (OLEDs), smart windows, polymer capacitors, and resins for antistatic and EMI-shield coating.
Another application for Elecon’s technology might be cost effective production of radio frequency (RF) identification tags at a high volume. Today in many businesses, identification ‘badges’ are required for entry into buildings – badges that cost up to $10 a piece to produce. By using Elecon’s technology, these ID badges can be produced for about $0.05 apiece.

With costs so low, it becomes possible for companies such as Disney to invest in individual ID tags for all children to wear upon entry into its theme parks so that lost and kidnapped children will no longer be a concern.

An example of where Elecon’s technology can offer significant cost benefit to the consumer, is the “drive electronics” of liquid crystal display televisions, which can be produced at reduced manufacturing cost, making the equipment affordable for the market.

More About Triton Systems, the Incubator
Not all of Triton Systems’ products are the basis for new companies – sometimes the product is incubated through Triton Systems and then sold or licensed to other companies already in existence. One product Triton developed which fits into this category, is a plastic packaging technologyTriton Systems developed the technology and established a significant licensing and supply relationship with a company in China and a manufacturing relationship with a company in Taiwan.

Triton first launched this product in 1998 as a way to reduce the permeation level of gasses through plastics. The product is actually a family of nanocomposites that deliver a high level of barrier characteristics. One example of its use is a plastic food tray used to package food for the military – food is kept ‘fresh’ for up to three years in this manner.

Triton Systems also does some classified work for the United States military. Financially, the company has done well thus far, growing more than 40% every year since 1992 and maintaining profitability throughout. And the company is committed to the incubator strategy – every year the management team takes the profits and reinvests the money back into the company.
Triton Systems is not without its competitors, however. Haghighat considers any product development company in life sciences or nanotechnology for packaging to be a competitor of Triton Systems, the incubator. Each of the spin-offs faces serious competition as well:

As for partners and investors, Triton System’s spin-off companies have some well-known backers. Elecon’s first major investment came from the Millennium Fund and has been followed up with investments and or strategic partnerships throughout the globe. Triton BioSystems just completed the acquisition of Thermonix, a company focused on development of therapeutics based on non-invasive inductive heating, and according to Haghighat, “Triton BioSystems is in negotiations currently with some very large strategic partners.”

One Team to Lead Multiple Companies
So once again, comes the question: Is it possible for one team to lead one company to develop technology to save lives, reduce semiconductor manufacturing costs and continue to succeed in the face of significant competition? “Yes” says Haghighat, “this can only be done by setting an ambitious vision and assembling a world class team who remains passionate about that mission and obsessed with success.

About the Author:
Laurie Falconer is President & CEO of Falconer & Associates. Prior to founding her own company, Falconer utilized nearly 15 years of direct experience in marketing communications, telecommunications, and broadband access to build messaging and positioning strategies and programs for Centillium Communications. She previously had a leadership role in the DSL industry as TeleChoice’s principal DSL analyst and during the previous six years, held a variety of marketing roles at Verizon (previously GTE). Laurie holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in mass communications from the prestigious School of Mass Communications at Texas Tech University, along with a minor in marketing.