Corona del Mar resident Scott Connelly, the muscular former Stanford U and Hoag Memorial Hospital doctor and namesake of a lab at UCLA, is back in the nutritional supplements game. Connelly created Met-Rx, a hit with bodybuilders and athletes that he sold to Rexall Sundown for $108 million in 2000. Now he’s rolling out Progenex, a line of protein products. Connelly claims Progenex Recovery, a powder mix that recharges aching muscles, has the potential of Gatorade. Even more ambitiously, he wants to crack billion-dollar markets by demonstrating that Progenex can help patients undergoing chemotherapy or recovering from wounds and fractures. Connelly says he has put “several million dollars” into the venture, and an Irvine VC firm, VenturePharma, is raising several million more. Connelly has partnered with an Australian manufacturer and enlisted Newport Beach sports agent Leigh Steinberg to sign up celebrity endorsers. So far the Progenex Web site features ultimate fighters Keith “The Dean of Mean” Jar-dine and Renato “Bablu” Sobral. After the Met-Rx sale, Connelly says he indulged himself with the purchase of a modified Cessna Citation 501, but otherwise plunged right back into R&D work, spurred by what he says was the failure of Met-Rx’s successive owners to seek broader applications for his brainchild. He says that won’t happen again: “I think I can one-up myself significantly” …
For the first time in six years Sugar Ray has come out with an album of new material, “Music for Cougars.” Also for the first time in six years, the OC-grown band is headlining the Taste of Newport. Mark McGrath and company will perform Sept. 18, followed by Grammy winner Train Sept. 19 and “American Idol” winner David Cook Sept. 20. Organizers hope the big-name entertainers will enable the food fest to defy the recession and break its attendance record set, well, the last time Sugar Ray performed in 2003 …
Fundraiser Amy Larson has left St. Joseph Ballet in Santa Ana and returned to Laguna Playhouse as director of development. She replaces Alice Klein, who has gone into consulting …
U.S. Bancorp CEO Richard Davis keynotes an “Executive Briefing” at UCI Sept. 3 presented by the law school and Manatt, Phelps & Phillips …
Guv candidate Steve Poizner is set to have cigars this evening with the OC Young Republicans at the Balboa Bay Club …
Speaking of cigars at the BBC, Henry Schielein’s 15th annual smoker drew 175 “gentlemen” and raised more than $50,000 for Newport/Mesa scholarships. Attendees included USC football great and Irvine resident Anthony Davis, who is working on his autobiography …
George McGovern, loser to Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential race, visits Chapman U Wednesday …
Chapman’s Dodge Film School is a top 25 pick in the 2010 Newsweek/Kaplan College Guide, which calls the school “one of the little secrets” among California filmmakers and the “right college” for “Spielbergs not bound for USC, NYU or UCLA.”
