CEO of Newnan biotech company was bitten by health care bug

Tom Gordy was on his way to divinity school when a Newnan hospital administrator asked him to work part time as a medical social worker.

“I fell in love with hospitals,” he says now. “The health care bug bit me.” That was 35 years ago, when he found his mission in life, he says.

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Sean Drakes/Special

After working in the hospital industry and starting his own business, Tom Gordy and a group of investors bought into CeloNova BioSciences, which makes coatings and medical devices.

THE THOMAS GORDY FILE
• Age: 57
• Residence: Newnan
• Family: Wife, Denise; sons, Joe and Austin ages 32 and 14; daughters, Allison and Susan ages 28 and 26
• Hobbies: Fishing and gourmet cooking.
• Best vacation ever: Spending time with his family on the "Redneck Riviera" as a child.
• Favorite book: "Georgia Voices," by Spencer King
• What I'm reading now: "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne
• Favorite movie: "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"
• Favorite music: Anything with lyrics by Kris Kristofferson.

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He moved into hospital management, then became an executive at a national hospital company. He formed his own firm in 1988 in Atlanta specializing in health care, telecommunications and international security services.

The company delved into medical products development, which led to his current role as CEO of CeloNova BioSciences Inc. It’s a privately held Newnan-based biotech company that produces a coating for medical devices and coated microparticles for cancer treatment.

Q: How did you get involved with CeloNova?

A: A small group had a license right to use a new polymer from a German company. They couldn’t get anyone to put capital into the company. I realized they couldn’t raise capital because they didn’t have enough control of the assets. I put together a group of people who would put money into this company and worked out an arrangement where we could acquire 100 percent of it. We opened up research laboratories and expanded manufacturing facilities in Germany. I came on board to manage the company in March 2004, and became CEO.

Q: Why Newnan?

A: I grew up in Newnan, and had been commuting to my offices either in Atlanta and in Vinings for 15-plus years. I had just made a decision to move back to Newnan when we opened CeloNova. We looked at space across the street from Georgia Tech. And then it occurred to me, if I were a scientist, I would rather live 20 minutes from the airport where I could have a lot of breathing room and space, and I wouldn’t have to commute.

Q: Talk about what makes your Polyzene-F special?

A: Polyzene-F is a material that is an inorganic polymer or plastic. We can make it very, very thin or very, very thick, without changing the characteristics of the molecule. There’s nothing in the molecule that the body reacts to. So it’s like looking at the mirror image of cells that have been dissected. It doesn’t allow inflammatory reactions, which would set up a cascade of things from infection to blood clots. The body has a natural reaction to it. It’s many times slicker than Teflon.

Q: How do your microparticles coated with Polyzene-F work?

A: These are microspheres, called Embozene, that can be used, for example, to treat a uterine fibroid tumor. We’re taking the microspheres, putting them through a catheter, taking them close to a tumor bed, and injecting a calibrated size into the appropriate vessel to shut off the blood supply to the tumor. We’ve done 6,000 to 8,000 or more procedures in Europe. We’re also treating tumors in the liver and in the spine.

Q: Are they used in the United States?

A: We did our first case in Atlanta in December, by Dr. John Lipman at Emory-Adventist Hospital. We’ve done cases elsewhere now. Quite frankly, we’re selling these at a much faster rate than we would have expected. Physicians love their characteristics. We decided to take ours and add colorants, so there was no doubt what size [of microspheres] are being used.

Q: You’ve also created Polyzene-coated stents in Europe.

A: We created a stent called Catania; we did our clinical trials in Catania, Sicily. We did really complex lesions [for patients] with clogged coronary arteries. It’s a fairly normal coated stent that’s coated with Polyzene-F. … It’s a coating that’s very, very thin, put on so the body would have no reaction at all. The results are unbelievably good. Already in Europe, people are really interested in using this stent.

Q: How soon will it be used in the U.S.?

A: We have two other coronary stents we are developing simultaneously. We’re not absolutely sure which of those stents we will bring to the United States first. The time frame is probably two years — if we want to, we’re less than six months from clinical trials.

Q: What’s the future of CeloNova?

A: I’ve said since 2006 that we would be a company with a $1 billion value by 2011. I still believe that, but I think I undershot it. We are a coatings and a surface modification company and we are a medical device company. We can take any major company’s device, and by modifying the surface in certain ways with Polyzene-F, we can eliminate so many of the medical problems. We have higher interest in creating a significant international health care company with a heart and a conscience.