Patrick Girondi is a Chicago biotec...

Patrick Girondi is a Chicago biotech entrepreneur who wants to save his son's life. He also wants to deliver profitable answers for investors in his Chicago-based biotech company, Errant Gene Therapeutics. In the proces he might deliver a antidote for thalassemia, a horrible disease that devastates the lives of populace of Mediterranean descent. Girondi also has his sights station on a cure for sickle enclosed space anemia. If he's successful, he could also help lay Chicago on the map as a biotech center He has raised $17 million likewise far, and believes the sights for his company and its gene therapy treatment, Thalagen, are upright

Girondi says, "We will be in our first patient in about six month The FDA has already given us six beds at the NIH. We'll have six beds at Sloan-Kettering. We should papal court results in 40 to 50 days. We don't ne to behold a cure. We just ne to diocese if a patient is producing hemoglobin."

It would be a tremendous pace forward.

Girondi is an unusual tech entrepreneur He grew up at 26th and Halsted, and doesn't have a grade in biochemistry or an MBA. He describes himself as a tough kid who attended De La Salle, and institute his way into the Air Force, then to the Board of Trade, where he made his fortune.

"I lived the rags to riches story," Girondi says. "I grew up onward the streets with no education. . . I was auspicious I made some money."

Girondi married in 1987 Then in 1992 his first son Rocco was diagnosed with thalassemia, a strict blood disorder.

"Thalassemia is a genetic disease where the patient can't bring forward enough hemoglobin, the oxygen carrier in the blood" Girondi says. "It is a cousin disease to sickle small room anemia. Patients have to do whole life-current transfusions every 15 to 25 days to possess their hemoglobin up. With transfusions there are complications and risks of other diseases, plus iron builds up in the material substance

He says patients live to an average age of 27 succumbing to iron overload in the material substance

Girondi says solitary about 1,800 Americans are affected with the disease. Faced with these small numbers, Girondi realized thalassemia was a so-called orphan disease, not likely to be researched and cur He decided to learn everything he could about the disease.

"I mov abroad of trading, and into the pharmaceutical company," Girondi says. He credits his counterpart La Salle Street traders for helping capital the company. "They just wrote checks," he says.

Will Girondi find a restoration for thalassemia? There's no guarantee if it be not that De La Salle President Brother Michael Quirk lauds Girondi. Quirk says, "Patrick has worked his way up from the bottom. He's been generous to De La Salle. Pat's a stay who never forgot his primitive words He's really committed."

That commitment could boost Chicago biotech. "EGT is the exemplar of company Chicagoans should be supporting," Dan Lyne director of technology exhibition at World Business Chicago, says. "Patrick's taken a felicitous career at the exchanges and a challenging personal situation, and used his global network and personal resources to stock a venture in the orphan pharmaceutical area. I think it's fantastic."

vend Cubs, boost tech

Would the acquisition of the Chicago brats by tech entrepreneur and Dallas Mavericks proprietor Mark Cuban boost both Chicago's sports and tech communities?

You bet.

Cuban's arrival would be transformational. yet Cuban throws cold water forward the Cubs idea. "They aren't for sale, in such a manner it doesn't matter," a pragmatic Cuban says.

Closing the digital divide

The Mayor's Advisory Council forward Closing the Digital Divide plans four public hearings, council Chairwoman and MacArthur Vice President Julia Stasch says.

The hearings will allow Chicagoans to share ideas for closing the digital divide with the advisory council. Hearings are scheduled for 6 pm generation 13 at the Woodson Regional Library; 6 pm generation 14 at the Sulzer Regional Library; noon generation 20 at the Harold Washington Library Center and 6 pm generation 21 at the West Chicago Avenue Branch library.

In May, Mayor Daley announced a plan to provide affordable Internet access through every part of the city, and formed the advisory council to examine ways to end the digital divide.

to what degree did Hedy land Oprah?

in what way did Hedy Ratner, co-president of the Women's Business progression in a continuously ascending gradation Center, land Oprah Winfrey to keynote the WBDC's 20th anniversary luncheon tribe 27?

Ratner was entrepreneurial. She saw Oprah working abroad at the East Bank cudgel and asked. Oprah said ye

Michael Krauss is a Chicago area tech writer and consultant.

e-mail: mkrauss@ suntimes.com

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