For two years, a group of world-class scientists pitched their idea for a hot new biotech company to investors: a start-up focused on a promising therapy for preeclampsia, a serious pregnancy complication that can become life-threatening. It was cutting-edge science, backed by a Nobel laureate, a Harvard kidney specialist, a leading chemist, and a biologist with both expertise and personal experience.
Eventually, they gave up — not on the science, and not on preeclampsia — but on the investors.
"We talked to so many different venture capitalists and other companies. The scientists and doctors would get excited," said Melissa Moore, a University of Massachusetts Medical School scientist who began working on preeclampsia after she suffered from it in 2003 and was put on bed rest for more than a month, only to give birth seven weeks early to a baby girl who weighed less than four pounds.