Crash kills NaPro founder
Sterling Ainsworth's company became Tapestry

By Alicia Wallace, Camera Business Writer

August 12, 2005

Dr. Sterling K. Ainsworth, founder of Boulder-based NaPro BioTherapeutics, was killed Tuesday after the plane he was piloting crashed near Calgary, Alberta. He was 65.

Ainsworth was flying a single-engine Lancair that departed Calgary International Airport at 7 p.m. MDT Tuesday with a destination of Grande Prairie, Alberta. About 20 minutes later, NAV Canada received transmissions from the plane's emergency beacon and a ground crew was sent to the site about 12 miles southeast of Sundre, Alberta, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

"He was a very colorful, larger-than-life kind of fellow," said Leonard Shaykin, chief executive officer of Tapestry Pharmaceuticals, which NaPro BioTherapeutics became in 2004. Officials with Tapestry confirmed Thursday it was Ainsworth on the flight.

Ainsworth and a 57-year-old female passenger were pronounced dead at the scene. The RCMP did not release her name at the request of her family. The Canadian Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash.

Ainsworth was born Oct. 23, 1939, in Meridian, Miss. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Mississippi in 1965, and his master's and doctorate degrees from the University of Mississippi Medical Center in 1969.

Ainsworth was an educator, scientist and entrepreneur.

He held positions at various schools, including the Medical University of South Carolina, Harvard Medical School and the Shanghai Second Medical University and Ruijin Hospital in Shanghai, China. He later founded a handful of companies in Boulder County, including Longmont-based Phoenix Fire Systems and NaPro, whose main product was paclitaxel, a cancer-fighting drug derived from the yew tree.

During his years at NaPro and Tapestry, Ainsworth served as chairman, president, chief executive officer. Recently, he served as the company's senior science adviser.
In 2000, he told the Daily Camera that after living in China for years he became enthralled with natural products.

"We had gotten so far away from it," he said in 2000. "We were mostly based in synthetics, and here we had God's little treasure chest of medicinals."

NaPro sold the paclitaxel business to Australia-based Mayne Group Ltd. in 2003.
"We owe him a debt of gratitude for what he's done," said Brian McCudden, head of operations at Mayne's Boulder site. "He operated with great conviction and a lot of principle. He made solid business decisions and stuck behind them."

Ainsworth was a real "people person" who brought knowledge and passion to his job, said Gordon Link, Tapestry's chief financial officer, who started working with Ainsworth in 1993.
"He was exciting to be around, especially when he was in form," Link said. "He moved fast and had great scientific insight and pretty good business instincts, even though he was a scientist. He was fun to work with."

Ainsworth also was an athlete, adventurer and storyteller.

"He was a Southerner from Mississippi, so he could spin a great yarn," Link said.
The tales ranged from when he was treed by a boar and when he hunted bear with a knife, to his time as a Golden Gloves boxer and a Detroit Lions football player.

Ainsworth followed his passions both professionally and personally. One of those was flying planes. Ainsworth built the plane that went down Tuesday.

"He died doing what he wanted to do," Link said. "He had a huge and full life. He really did."