Concordia's Daniel Sem bridges science, entrepreneurship

From quitting a steady job in pharmaceuticals to co-found a drug discovery startup as he was becoming a first-time father, to later leaving a tenured professor post at Marquette University for a non-tenured role at Concordia University Wisconsin (CUW), Daniel Sem's career has involved taking calculated risks.

Sem hasn't always been so risk-tolerant, he said. But since being violently mugged in a dark alley at age 20, he's been less concerned with risk and more focused on living.

"I thought I was going to die," Sem said. "It was life-changing."

Some of Sem's biggest gambles have paid off. The startup he co-founded, Triad Therapeutics, raised more than $40 million from venture capitalists and eventually sold to Novartis for $60 million, he said.

The non-tenured role, which was at CUW's pharmacy school, led to his current job as dean of the business school and president of CU Ventures, a new entity within Concordia aimed at commercializing inventions related to the Mequon university.

With CU Ventures and several other initiatives he's involved with, Sem is combining his interests in science and health care with his passions for entrepreneurship, business and mentorship.

“There’s this kind of conflict between business and science. Science is pure, it’s not about making money,” Sem said. “But at the same time … I’m a capitalist. …You have to make money to help people so it can be sustainable. I think I can bridge those two worlds in kind of a unique way.”

CU Ventures, which Concordia announced last month, is a nonprofit organization that mentors early-stage companies that have a connection to the university. It will also provide equity seed funding directly from CU Ventures and through the Concordia Angel Network, an investment group that Sem plans to launch this fall.

Although it's modeled after the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) Research Foundation and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation in Madison, Sem said CU Ventures is uniquely positioned to help guide entrepreneurs through the process of starting a business around their inventions, rather than the more straightforward process of licensing the technology to larger companies.

As a smaller university that's less focused on research than larger institutions, Concordia can "take time to nurture" emerging businesses, said Sem.

For CU Ventures and the Concordia Angel Network, Sem is working with Curt Gielow, former executive dean of CUW's pharmacy school, and executive vice president and director of CU Ventures.

"The irony of this is, I hired him and now I’m working for him," said Geilow, who also called Sem "a superb collaborator." "He’s a combination of a brilliant scientist and a consummate businessman."

Sem is already mentoring several companies under the CU Ventures umbrella, including blood clot testing company Retham Technologies LLC, of which Sem is the acting CEO; and women's health pharmaceutical firm Estrigenix Therapeutics Inc., of which he's the vice president of business development.

Retham — which was co-founded by Anand Padmanabhan, a physician and former researcher at the BloodCenter of Wisconsin — has raised nearly $700,000 in seed funding including grants, the company reported to the Business Journal. Investors have included BrightStar Wisconsin Foundation Inc., the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. and a group of high-net-worth physicians who believe in the technology, Sem said.

Based at the UWM Innovation Campus at 1225 Discovery Parkway in Wauwatosa, Retham is seeking a full-time CEO and then plans to raise a "large" Series A round, Sem said.

"The time is right for Retham to launch," Sem said. "Every company kind of has its lifecycle and I think it's kind of Retham's time right now."

If Sem wasn't busy enough with his dean, professorial and mentoring commitments, he's also leading a National Institutes of Health-funded consortium that's aligning to help commercialize medical innovation in southeast Wisconsin through an effort known as Advancing Medical Product Development.

Funded by an NIH grant to the Medical College of Wisconsin, the group includes representatives from the technology transfer offices at Concordia, MCW, UWM, Marquette, Milwaukee School of Engineering and the Versiti Blood Center of Wisconsin, Sem said.

"It's all about talking about the technologies that are health care-related in our six institutions and how to help them commercialize," he said. "We have to have a way to bring the innovation that's percolating together. ...I want to be part of that."

Daniel Sem