The wonderer: Pilot Therapeutics' odyssey leads a scientist to discover there's more--and less--to business than he thought.

Business North Carolina, April, 2007 by Speizer, Irwin

Staring out from a Web page in a tight T-shirt with his muscular arms crossed, Floyd "Ski" Chilton might pass for a biker but for the lack of menace in his eyes. In fact, he is a 49-year-old biochemist, an authority on the effects of fatty acids on human health. A scientist with some 60 patents who runs a National Institutes of Health research project from his base at Wake Forest University Medical School, he is a crusader for his vision of how to fix the American diet, with an advice book in print and another in the works.

But around Winston-Salem, he is best known--not always fondly--as a businessman. Nine years ago, he used his research to start Pilot Therapeutics Inc., a company that promised to launch the Twin City into the forefront of biotechnology. He...