Innovation Awards Past Winners: Where Are They Now? Rescentris

Editor’s Note: Plans are well underway for the 2010 TechColumbus Innovation Awards with nominations currently open and coming in from all types of individuals, disciplines and organizations from the largest research institutions to the earliest stage startups. This week, TechWeek continues the look back at some of the previous winners of these awards which have been going on since 1996 when they were known as the TopCAT Awards (1996-2007). As the awards have grown from year to year, we wanted to see how some of the past winners’ endeavors and companies have also grown. We continue the series “Where Are They Now?” with a look at Rescentris, Inc., the 2006 winner for Outstanding Service – Less than 50 Employees.

Rescentris was borne, like most successful technology solutions, out of a highly specialized need. Ironically enough, some of the most advanced scientific discoveries in biomedical fields such as human genome research, were traditionally tracked, documented and shared via very rudimentary tools – namely a bound paper notebook and some Scotch tape.

Up until the early part of the 21st century, researchers printed hard copies of their results in spreadsheet form, word processing documents and other computer programs, physically cut them down to size to fit within a bound notebook and taped them into place to provide historical and chronological records and IP protection of their discovery processes and findings. Often, scientists signed and dated the edges of the tape to validate the authenticity of the notes or results. And how did they manage collaboration among multiple researchers working on the same project? They passed back and forth the physical lab notebook.

In 1986, Jeff Spitzner was a doctoral candidate at Ohio State conducting molecular cancer research and involved in early human genomics studies. At that time there were hundreds of researchers involved in these studies and literally no technology tools for analyzing, recording and sharing the discoveries that were being made by this wide group of collaborators. Spitzner saw this as a challenge for advancing such critical science and so he brought onto his team his father, Joseph, an expert in computer data analysis, with the charge of creating a way of using technology to help him record, visualize, protect and securely share his research with the team and with researchers at other institutions.

After earning his PhD, and while conducting his post-doc at MIT, Spitzner continued the collaboration to utilize and expand the technology toolset they had begun developing at Ohio State. Finding this “electronic lab notebook” (ELN) and bioinformatics software to be of such value to his research, Spitzner decided to form a company to commercialize the software solution.

In 1997, Spitzner located the company in the BTC’s technology business incubator which is now currently TechColumbus. With support from the business commercialization specialists at the incubator, as well as support from BioOhio (formerly EBTC and Omeris), Spitzner and his partners began developing scientific and bioinformatics software, including an ELN built on XML and early semantic technologies, to serve the biomedical research field, particularly those involved in genetics research.

The product was launched with support from Ohio State and in 2003 was one of the first recipients of a BRTT grant from the Third Frontier. The BRTT Program was designed to support biomedical and biotechnology research representing collaboration among Ohio higher education institutions, non-profit research organizations and Ohio companies.

In 2005-06, the Rescentris Collaborative Electronic Research Framework (CERF) was rolled out to initial customers such as the US Air Force Labs and the Centers for Disease Control. CERF represents a state-of-the-software solution that utilizes advanced knowledge management technologies to meet the complex requirements of multidisciplinary R&D organizations. The CERF server is installed on a dedicated machine within a client’s organization or on a remote "cloud" server space. Scientists then connect to the server using full-featured software that allows note taking and the addition of data of any kind from any source. Data is indexed for easy searching and securely stored according to 21CFR11 regulations. The CERF ELN allows centralization of data for secure, managed and simultaneous access for scientists, managers, intellectual property specialists and collaborators.

From its initial launch, Spitzner says the company had a two-fold mission – 1) to provide a best of breed platform to support research advances in the biomedical field and 2) to provide great customer service. And in 2006, the company was recognized for achievements in these areas by receiving top honors in the Outstanding Service – Less than 50 Employees category of the TopCAT Awards (now the Innovation Awards).

Spitzner says that winning the TopCAT award was helpful in the early days of launching the product.

“When you’re a new company and your client list is not quite as full as you would like it to be, being able to say that you are an ‘award-winning’ company can be very impactful in validating your product, company and market position.”

Spitzner says validation by way of the TopCAT award helped the company position itself as it went on to win awards from other organizations such as the prestigious Best of Show for Knowledge Management from Bio-IT in 2009. Rescentris prominently displays its “Award Winning” status on the pages of its Web site and continues to leverage its TopCAT win with potential customers, investors and strategic partners.

So where is Rescentris now? In 2010, the company continues to scale at an increasing pace. In the last year, revenues have grown approximately 400 percent and the company now serves 80 different scientific and research organizations in 10 countries around the globe. According to Spitzner, the company is currently working on closing additional equity investment to fuel further growth and believes the company is a prime target for an eventual strategic acquisition by larger companies working in this space.

Nominations for the 2010 Innovation Awards are currently being accepted through October 18. You can nominate a company, an inventor, a woman in technology, a technology team, or any of a variety of nominees across broad categories. You can even nominate yourself!

The 2010 Innovation Awards will be held February 3, 2011. More details and the nomination forms are available at here.