So You Want to Start a Biotech Company?

RICHARD T. SCHUMACHER,
CEO, President, and Founder of Pressure BioSciences, Inc.

Learn from the twists and turns of a career spent building up a biotech company, selling it and starting all over again. Richard T. Schumacher, CEO, President, and Founder of Pressure BioSciences, Inc., will share his wisdom at the November 8 WPI Venture Forum meeting.

Described as the "quintessential entrepreneur," Schumacher spent 13 years in a research lab, then took his idea into his garage and grew that into a company of 300 employees, Boston Biomedica, Inc. The company developed and manufactured quality control products to ensure the accuracy of test results for infectious diseases.

Ten years after he founded it, Schumacher took it public. Last year, he sold most of the company to SeraCare Life Sciences, Inc., retaining possession of one technology. With that and three employees, he started all over again, renaming Boston Biomedica, Inc. as Pressure BioSciences, Inc. (PBI).

PBI is a publicly traded, early-stage company focused on the development of a novel technology called Pressure Cycling Technology (PCT), which offers a way to test samples without destroying them, using alternating high and low pressure to extract molecules from cells and tissues that can be difficult to break down. PBI currently holds 13 US and 4 foreign patents covering multiple applications of PCT in the life sciences field, including in genomic and proteomic sample preparation, pathogen inactivation, control of enzymes, immunodiagnostics, and protein purification.

Schumacher served as the Director of Infectious Disease Services for Clinical Sciences Laboratory, a New England-based medical reference laboratory, from 1986 to 1988. From 1972 to 1985, he was employed by the Center for Blood Research, a nonprofit medical research institute associated with Harvard Medical School. Schumacher was a founder and first Board Chairman of Panacos Pharmaceuticals, was the 1987 recipient of the senior research award from the World Federation of Contraception and Health, and has published and presented widely in the area of human infectious diseases. He received a B.S. in Zoology from the University of New Hampshire.