Lab to Startup

Irene Griswold-Prenner, Ph. D.,  is the founder and CSO of Nitrase Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company deploying its unique NITROME platform to unlock the therapeutic potential of nitrases, a new class of enzymes discovered in-house that offer the promise of a pipeline of therapies against a broad variety of diseases. Their breakthrough discovery of the enzymatic nature of protein nitration...

Summary: Marija Vrljic, Ph. D., is the co-founder and CEO of Scalmibio, an early-stage biotechnology startup that developed a transformational technology focused on oncology applications. We talk about the inspiration for launching the startup, how she was able to bootstrap the company, raised non-dilutive funds which ultimately led to being acquired in October, 2020. Show notes: - ScalmiBio is a...

Douglas Crawford, Ph. D., is the General Manager of MBC Biolabs, Managing Partner of Mission BioCapital, a VC fund investing in life sciences startups at the seed and Series A stages. We talk about the facilities that help scientists at MBC Biolabs, how to get accepted to the labs, partners, golden tickets and stories of startups; funding hypothesis, the impact, and investment criteria to get fund...

Rocket Fund : https://rocketfund.caltech.edu/ Email: Stephanie.yanchinski@caltech.edu Application process and background information: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19ubtkD1ziVeXqDChnL00gP6wDFWTsQGb/view?usp=sharing Application: https://platform.younoodle.com/competition/caltech_rocket_fund_2022 - A program that has a way to introduce startups to decision makers at utility companies, who can help...

Mark Brinkerhoff is the President of Fusion Design, a consultancy that has helped design over 1500 hardware products from concept to creation stages. We cover the concept of design, building the requirement documents (MRD, PRD), prototyping, iterations, costs and timelines for prototype development, stories of successful products developed and end with future of outsourcing and local sourcing. Sho...

Mission Bio is a startup that pioneered high throughput single cell sequencing. We talk about how they are helping researchers and clinicians unlock single-cell biology to enable the discovery, development, and delivery of precision medicine; the underlying technology; how they decided between single cell RNA sequencing vs single cell DNA sequencing; founding story till the recent change in leader...

Voler Systems - Most challenging projects are the ones where the customer/client doesn't listen. - Current and future states of wearable industry and future - Remote monitoring of patients is here to stay (thanks to COVID) and wearables are going to play a big role. - Advances in low power communication direct to the internet - Phases of product development - Risk management in prototype developme...

4D Molecular Therapeutics: https://www.4dmoleculartherapeutics.com - Gene therapy was risky, but Dave took the leap of faith counting on a few things- gene therapy becoming big one day; AAV is going to play a big role; and that the natural forms of AAV were not going to cut it. - 14 years of research in academia before launching the startup - AAV has passed through several boom and bust cycles, an...

Manan Mehta is the founding partner of Unshackled ventures. We cover the thesis behind funding immigrant entrepreneurs- more specifically about their process for funding startups and how they help them with their visa issues. - A high conviction "friends and family" investor that removes immigration hurdles & gives you a network to succeed faster. -- Connecting the unconnected and supporting the s...

Martin Casado is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), a pioneer of software-defined networking, and a co-founder of Nicira Networks. We cover the lessons learnt from Martin's journey as an academic entrepreneur founding Nicira and factors that aspiring entrepreneurs planning to translate their research to products should consider. - Story of an accidental Ph. D., turned into an acciden...

My guest today is Amanda Cashin, the Co-Founder and Global Head of Illumina Accelerator, which focuses on building genomics-driven startups. We talk about: Accelerator program, sequencing support, seed funding, training and the selection process. Partnering with leading angel and venture capital investors to help the startups Latest partnership with Sequoia Capital to support an incubator in China...

In this episode of Lab to Startup, I speak with Shannon Ciston and Branden Brough. Branden is the Deputy director of Molecular Foundry at the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs and Shannon is the Director of the User Program. We explore various resources that Molecular Foundry offers like: World-class scientists with expertise across a broad range of disciplines and state-of-the-art instrumentation....

In this episode of Lab to Startup, I speak with Brian Feth and James Lim, co-founders of XCellBio. We explore the startup story and learn about: The founding story- the initial hypothesis behind the product they wanted to build and how the technology evolved since then based on customer feedback Fundraising trials and tribulations How there was a lesson hidden in every "No" they received from pote...

This podcast is focused on stories from founders in deep tech space building startups from their research at universities and national labs. Also want to cover resources (investors, tech transfer offices, advisors, industry alliance offices, etc.) that helped those startups. The goal is to provide these stories to others considering this route. We almost never hear those stories of transition from...