http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121727953947391015.html
An Entrepreneur Stricken
With Cancer Sets Up Firm
To Develop 'Virtual' Biotechs
By AMY DOCKSER MARCUS
July 29, 2008; Page D1

Jay M. Tenenbaum became a multimillionaire in the Internet boom of the late 1990s. But it wasn't until he was diagnosed with a lethal cancer that he found his calling as an Internet entrepreneur.


Partnering for a Cure: Patients with less common diseases often find that they need to get involved with the effort to find new therapies. WSJ's Amy Dockser Marcus talks to CollabRx founder Marty Tenenbaum and COO Jonathan Jacoby about the challenges patients face.Dr. Tenenbaum learned in 1998 that he had melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer. He underwent surgery and took an experimental vaccine for a year. Then, nearly five years ago, the cancer returned, having spread to his liver. "That's when I started looking at my mortality seriously," says the 65-year-old from Portola Valley, Calif.

Frustrated with his treatment options, Dr. Tenenbaum began investigating other potential therapies. He found dozens of patient-advocacy organizations dedicated to melanoma that raised money and supported scientific research. They "all had good ideas," he says, "but no one had put the different pieces together in the right way that would let them make progress in finding a drug in the lifetime of a patient."

So he tapped his own Internet savvy -- and his connections -- to create a company aimed at helping patients develop new therapies faster and cheaper for less common diseases, like melanoma, that often don't attract major pharmaceutical company research funding. He set up his new company, called CollabRx, with $2 million he had available and is trying to raise $3 million more from family, friends and private investors....

...Dr. Tenenbaum says patients can get started on a project with as little as $50,000 to $100,000. Sums like that, for example, could fund the creation of a molecular profile of a tumor to try to predict what combination of already approved drugs might be effective. If results proved promising, more money could be raised to set up a full-blown virtual biotech -- with a budget in the millions of dollars -- that might test cocktails of therapies in animal models and try grouping patients into subtypes to better tailor treatments for them, among other projects...

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