Arkansas biotech startup PhytoTEK earned a top-three finish in a prestigious Harvard business plan competition.

At the final round of Harvard Business School’s Alumni New Venture Contest, PhytoTEK topped teams from nine U.S. and international regions including Boston, Chicago, Southern California, Brazil, Germany, India, Shanghai, South Africa, and United Arab Emirates.

Chief executive officer Dr. Cassandra Quave of Little Rock and chief financial officer Sahil Patel of Washington, D.C., represented PhytoTEK, which is investigating new plant-based biofilm inhibitors useful for preventing staph infection. To participate, teams had to include at least one member in a key leadership role who was a Harvard Business School graduate. Patel received his MBA from Harvard in 2005. Quave, who also serves as chief scientist for PhytoTEK, is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

Assisted by the Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center at UALR, Quave and Patel worked together to write PhytoTEK’s business plan for the contest. Patel concentrated on the business modeling and financial projections and Quave focused on the sections pertaining to the technology and market space.

“We were delighted to have the opportunity to participate in the Harvard Business School New Venture Contest global finals,” said Quave. “It gave PhytoTEK’s management team a chance to network with other promising entrepreneurs from around the globe and learn from leading business instructors. The experience was invaluable, and being selected for the semi-final round of the competition as one of the top three teams was quite an honor.”

PhytoTEK qualified for the finals by winning the regional competition for New York and Washington, D.C., alumni teams in January.

More than 90 teams participated in the second annual Alumni New Venture Contest, judged by Harvard faculty and alumni. The $25,000 top prize went to BioMine, a California company that uses mining industry technology to salvage discarded electronics containing valuable metals and rare materials. CardSwap of Toronto was the other semi-finalist.

The ASBTDC assists researchers-turned-entrepreneurs like Quave in growing innovation-based companies. In addition to getting help with PhytoTEK’s business plan from ASBTDC, Quave honed her investor pitch at Advanced Invention to Venture, a  workshop presented by ASBTDC and National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance last year. She also received guidance from ASBTDC in writing two Small Business Innovation Research proposals for the National Institutes of Health.