Add CTL ImmunoTherapies Corp. to the list of companies that have gone from zero to hero thanks to the Midas-like touch of biotechnology entrepreneur Alfred Mann.

In 1997, CTL was a one-man Toronto biotech startup with little more than a good idea. But a chance meeting in early 1998 with Mann, chief executive and founder of Sylmar-based MiniMed Inc., has since given the company a boost into the competitive world of cancer cures.

Thanks to Mann’s involvement, Merrill Lynch and other investment firms have been calling CTL. Mann has introduced the company to researchers at USC and Stanford, where it has begun negotiations to do initial trials of its cancer-fighting vaccine. And with Mann’s investment, the company has hired 35 employees and is completing a 20,000-square-foot research and development center in Chatsworth, where it moved a year ago to be closer to Mann.

“There is no step of the way where people go, ‘Oh yeah, this is a great idea, it’s going to work,'” said CTL Chief Executive John Simard. “Everybody is always saying, ‘You’re crazy and money’s hard to find.’ Except with Al Mann. As long as he’s convinced the company’s a good one and we’re making progress, we’ve got capital. Having access to capital, that’s everything.”

CTL faces significant competition. The company hasn’t begun U.S. trials on its newest vaccine and is still awaiting FDA approval to begin tests. It is entering a field filled with a dozen or so companies that are already doing clinical phase-three trials of cancer vaccines, the last step before winning final FDA approval if they show measurable results. Several are public companies with high market values and backed by big names like Pfizer Inc.

But CTL has its own big guns behind it. Besides having Mann as a partial owner, the company’s chief scientific advisor is Rolf Zinkernagel, a Swiss scientist who won the 1996 Nobel Prize for Medicine.

Mann gives CTL credibility on Wall Street, said Ahmed Enany, executive director of the Biotechnology Council of Southern California.

Mann also can advise the company on ways to proceed through the FDA process and with clinical trials, as well as business in general. He has a lot of contacts in the investment and scientific community, and he’s got a track record, observers said.

Winning streak

Mann has been involved in seven other startup companies all but two founded by himself. All have been successful. His biggest success story, MiniMed, continues to see its stock soar on news of its coming developments in insulin pumps.

“The investment community looks at (Mann) as a proxy on whether this (CTL) is going to make it,” Enany said.

Simard’s meeting with Mann came about through a blind phone call. He was making calls to medical pump makers in 1998, looking for a partnership that would get him pumps for vaccine trials in Europe. These mechanized pumps are a more precise method of delivering vaccines than traditional injections. After little initial success, he ended up calling MiniMed.

“At the other pump companies, you try to call the CEO, you try to call someone who you think can get excited about it, and you get bumped down the line until you’re at janitorial services and they’re giving you the brush-off,” Simard said. “Al is totally the opposite.”

MiniMed gets hundreds of similar requests every year, Mann said. The company even formed a discovery committee to review the requests and evaluate the opportunities. The team liked CTL’s idea and agreed to provide pumps for CTL’s European trials and invest $500,000 in the company. In 1998, CTL began trials in Zurich with a cancer vaccine delivered with proteins.

Six months later, Simard’s company was running out of its initial funding. Dot-com fever had taken over by that point and biotech firms were having trouble finding venture capital.

Simard again turned to MiniMed. This time, Mann personally stepped forward.

Swiss trip

Since MiniMed’s initial investment, Mann had become more interested in the research CTL was doing. He flew to Zurich to meet with Zinkernagel and understand the science behind the company. And he visited the hospitals where clinical trials were being held.

That convinced him to invest several million dollars in the company for an ownership share.

“I believed they had a good chance,” Mann said. “There’s always a lot of risk, but it seemed like they had a plausible concept. I thought they were worth the price when you see the problem and they have a potential cure.” Still, the company must prove its science to get anywhere.

That science is based on Zinkernagel’s discoveries about how the human immune system works.

The company is planning to go public by year’s end to raise capital. Assuming biotechnology stocks are still anywhere near as hot as they are now, it can expect a strong response.

Already highly valued by Wall Street are such cancer researchers as Vical Inc. of San Diego, with a market capitalization of $924.5 million; Avax Technologies Inc. of Kansas City, with a market capitalization of $239.9 million; and Corixa Corp. of Seattle, with a market capitalization of $1.1 billion.