MADISON – When Beth Donley was an undergraduate, her plan was to one day run her own business.
Instead, she followed her mother – Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Pat Roggensack – into the legal field.
But after more than a decade representing the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation as chief counsel, Donley left WARF last year to found Stemina Biomarker Discovery with UW-Madison stem cell researcher Gabriela Cezar. Donley also served as executive director of WiCell, the stem cell offshoot of WARF.
During the past nine months, Donley has been hard at work raising money, trying to get the company organized and off the ground. In May, the company received $1 million in state grants and low-interest loans in a ceremony at Cezar’s lab officiated by Gov. Jim Doyle.
Donley said her time at WARF has served her well in her work at the start-up, as it allowed her to learn about both the business and the science aspects of working with new technology.
“We did a ton of selling of technology and licensing deals,” Donley said. “With Stemina a lot of what we’re going to be doing at the outset is the service model: We want to approach pharmaceutical and biotech companies about helping them screen their drugs, and then make sure we do that in a way that we retain rights to use the biomarkers we identify for future projects. … That, I think I’ll be well-suited to do because I’ve probably done in excess of a thousand agreements myself over the course of a dozen years.”
Donley and Cezar hope to move Stemina into offices and labs in University Research Park this fall.
