Monday, September 30, 2013

So that's one way to deal with bankruptcy

Ripped from the headline's in this week's C&EN, an unusual coda to a business relationship (article by Alex Tullo):
A dispute over a failed biotech start-up may be the motive in one of two attempted murders in La Jolla, Calif., San Diego police say. Hans A. Petersen, former CEO of Traversa Therapeutics, allegedly shot his former chief scientific officer, Steven Dowdy, in the early morning hours of Sept. 18, hitting him once in the lower back. 
Three hours later, Petersen allegedly broke into the home of Ronald Fletcher, his brother-in-law, and shot Fletcher once in the stomach. Fletcher managed to wrestle the gun away from Petersen. The two victims survived the attacks. 
Dowdy is a professor of cellular and molecular medicine at the University of California, San Diego, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. Traversa was founded on small interfering RNA (siRNA) delivery technology that Dowdy developed at UCSD. The technology tackles the problem of delivering siRNA drugs to cells by taking advantage of macropinocytosis, a mechanism that cells use to ingest large amounts of material. 
Traversa made some commercial progress, signing on Sanofi as a partner in 2010, but the company filed for bankruptcy early in 2012. Petersen and the firm had parted ways about a year before that. San Diego police speculate that Petersen blamed Dowdy for the loss of his job.
You'll see that Mr. Petersen has a LinkedIn profile -- you really wonder if the people who he recommended are attempting to scrub their pages now...

4 comments:

  1. Walter White found another way to deal w/ health-related bankruptcy, and provide for his family.
    Even in light of an abysmal salary after 25+ years (?) of service in getting American youths excited about chemistry.

    We should have a WW memorial! Because I cannot think of any chemist in my memory painted in such a glowing light.

    P.S.: I mean, can you recite the winners of Noble Prize in Chemistry, 1989 and 2005. From the top of your head?
    Walter White everybody will remember. :)

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    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yea my favorite part of the post was the affordable internet too.

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  3. I would like to suggest that you hire a lawyer like Marrero as he is a very experienced person and have helped many clients in their problems like bankruptcy, foreclosure defense, debt settlement etc. I have a great experience dealing with him.
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looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20