TechJournal South selected 25 of most influential people in the Southeast technology and entrepreneurial space from nominations by venture capitalists, serial entrepreneurs, and tech related organizations in its Nov. print edition. We’ll be running a selection of them daily for the next few weeks. Today: Rebecca Kaufman, chair of SEBIO, and attorney with King & Spalding in Atlanta.

Rebecca Kaufman combines legal and biotech expertise

By Allan Maurer, Tech Journal South

ATLANTA, GA—Rebecca Kaufman recalls working as a college intern as a researcher at the National Cancer Institute when Robert Gallo, the U.S. discoverer of the AIDS virus got into a fight with a French researcher over patent rights to HIV. Kaufman, a counsel with King & Spalding’s Intellectual Practice Group in Atlanta and chairman of SEBIO, says, “I found the patent battle so much more interesting than what I was doing at the bench as a researcher.”

That determined her choosing a career in law over one as a laboratory researcher. Kaufman, who holds a Ph.D in molecular biology as well as a J.D., was also a principal with Cordova Ventures, an early stage life sciences fund, and also worked at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Advanced Technology Development Center, where she helped form the joint Georgia Tech/Emory University biotech incubator.

Her combination of skills has obviously given her a strong voice in the Southeast biotechnology community. Kaufman received more nominations than any other person on our list of some of the most influential people in Southeast tech. They came from CEOS, leaders at industry organizations, other attorneys, entrepreneurs, and her colleagues.

Kaufman may have chosen the law as her primary profession, but no one faults her knowledge of biotech. She has areas of expertise that include chiral chemistry (left and right handed molecules), protein chemistry, drug delivery, molecular biology and molecular oncology. Those include major areas leading to the creation of new drugs and new companies, or in the case of chiral chemistry, changing the handedness of a molecule might extend the patent on existing drugs.

Biotech business maturing
“The biotech industry didn’t really take off until the 1980s,” Kaufman says, “but I’ve experienced a significant time period in the industry that’s still ongoing. People used to talk about small biotech companies and large pharma companies, but now we’re seeing large biotech companies as they merge or buy others.

“The business models have matured over the years. It’s still not for the faint of heart, particularly for the types of clients I work with, venture backed emerging companies where success depends upon early clinical trial results. It’s a speculative business, full of a lot of talented people who are fun to work with.”

Kaufman, who is a patent attorney, among her other accomplishments, says both the biotech industry and patent law are going through “growing pains. Real changes are coming out of the patent office, not entirely positive.”

She says the variety of her experience helps her deal with her clients problems. “I spent a number of years working for a venture capital fund, a number working for a university, and that gave me a foundation to ‘get’ where they’re coming from. They’re driven more by business concerns than by patents,” she says.

Landscape constantly changes
She cautions, however, that it “makes sense for a company to understand the landscape they’re in sooner rather than later. You can invest a lot of time and money in a particular technology only to find out there were deal busters out there all along or problems that could have been solved. My job is to see that they get what they need in a business context.”

She notes that patents will always be one of the more complicated parts of any biotech endeavor. “The landscape is constantly changing,” she says. “The patent office is not perfect, and once in a while something slips out that’s kind of crazy.”

Kaufman, who has written for TechJournal South on the medical device and biotech industries in the Southeast, admits, “Journalism is my secret passion. When I left law school and went back to work on my Ph.D (in molecular biology), I wanted to be a science writer. Science magazine had a science writing program but would not accept her because she already had a law degree.

Kaufman says her position as chairman of SEBIO lets her step back and comment on what Southeastern states are doing in biotech. “So many people want a piece of the life science industry,” she says. “There’s not a state that doesn’t have some initiative.

“North Carolina has a headstart. Florida is an up and comer. Georgia still struggles. There’s no resident venture fund for life science, nothing anywhere near what’s in NC.” North Carolina boasts not only dedicated life science venture funds such as Pappas Ventures, but also a number of others who make life science investments a major part of their portfolios, including Intersouth Partners and the Aurora Funds, among others.

SEBIO, she says, can be influential in getting investors to “think more regionally. There’s a lot of great technology in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Tennessee, but not a lot of capital.”

Working in life sciences has rewards that do not have anything to do with money, she says. “Information technology products have a high impact, but working on life science products to treat cancer? You can’t beat that.” Her husband, Douglas Gooding, is CEO of Regado Biosciences in the Research Triangle, NC, and “He shares my interest,” she says.

Kaufman says that everything she does entails “making connections between people. Whatever job I’ve had, that’s really been the theme. Making those connections is really enjoyable and satisfying.”

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