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Season 5, Episode 2: Novel Translational Therapeutics with Linda Goodman

Episode Contributors: Ayush Noori, Ashton Trotman-Grant, Linda Goodman

Episode Summary: Millions of people die every year from chronic diseases. Traditional drug discovery has failed in identifying solutions to many of these persistent health challenges. Functional genomics is offering a way forward by identifying gene networks and enabling the development of drugs with very specific targets. But, rather than just relying on gene targets within humans, Linda and her company, Fauna Bio, is casting a wider net across the animal kingdom. Extreme adaptation is common across many mammals, giving us an incredible pool of potential targets to go after. Whereas a single heart attack can kill a person, certain animals not only survive 25 heart attacks a year but also go on to thrive, living 2x longer than other mammals their size. By identifying and understanding the gene networks underlying these extreme adaptations, Fauna can identify novel targets across 415 different species, map them to human genes, and develop drugs that exploit our natural protective physiological mechanisms.

However, the process by which gene transcription is regulated is incredibly complex; thus, prediction transcriptional regulation has been an open problem in the field for over half a century. In his work, Eeshit used neural networks to predict the levels of gene expression based on promoter sequences. Then, he reverse engineered the model to design specific sequences that can elicit desired expression levels. Eeshit’s work developing a sequence-to-expression oracle also provided a framework to model and test theories of gene evolution.

About the Guest

  • Linda is the Co-Founder and CTO at Fauna Bio, a biotechnology company leveraging the science of hibernation to improve healthcare for humans.

  • She earned an MPhil in Computational Biology from the University of Cambridge and got her Ph.D. in Genetics and Genomics from Harvard University.

Key Takeaways

  • Many mammals have evolved complex adaptations that enable them to survive in extreme environments or withstand physiological events that humans cannot.

  • At Fauna Bio, Linda Goodman and her team are working to better understand the biological networks that underlie these adaptations, in hopes of developing therapeutics inspired by the adaptations of the animal kingdom.

Impact

  • Drawing on a completely new source of knowledge about the defense mechanisms of living organisms, Fauna Bio goes beyond the limitations of traditional drug development and looks for better, more effective drugs based on natural defense mechanisms.

Company: Fauna Bio

Season 4, Episode 7: Demystifying Tech Transfer with Seth Bannon and Ashton Trotman-Grant

Episode Contributors: Seth Bannon, Alex Teng, Ashton Trotman-Grant

Episode Summary: In this very special episode of Translation, Seth is joined by Ash Trotman-Grant to demystify spinning out from academia. Much of this knowledge has so far only been available to select groups of academics and PhD founders are at a disadvantage – some potentially breakthrough technologies never saw the light of day and didn’t get a chance to have a real impact. We want to bring the power of the tech transfer process back to entrepreneurial scientists.

Enter the Spinout Playbook – your complete guide to spinning out of academia. In this episode, we chat about the Playbook’s content and share useful tips for entrepreneurial academics eager to spin out their research into an impactful company. Ash shares his experience from spinning out Notch Therapeutics and, together with Seth, they offer brilliant insights into navigating the (up until now) stormy waters of the spinout process.

About the Guests

  • Seth is a Founding Partner at Fifty Years, a venture capital firm backing founders using technology to solve the world’s biggest problems.

  • Ash is a Synthetic Biologist at Fifty Years and Founder of Notch Therapeutics, a stem cell spin out company from the University of Toronto.

  • Ash & the Fifty Years team have created the Spinout Playbook, a living document that will help academic founders spin out their companies from universities and negotiate with Tech Transfer Offices – TTOs.

Key Takeaways

  • A spinout is a company that has been developed from a university's research.

  • The process of establishing the spinout as a new company involves multiple hurdles, like licensing patents from the tech transfer office, splitting equity among academic and full-time founders, and deciding when to leave academia.

  • Universities take months to sign agreements and make startups unfundable by taking too much equity.

  • The final licensing agreement may include counter-productive clauses that prevent the company from succeeding.

  • University tech transfer offices (TTOs) refuse to negotiate directly with grad students and postdocs.

  • For Ash, the creation of Notch Therapeutics was his first real step into the entrepreneurship world and the first encounter with the process of spinning out a company.

  • The Spinout Playbook, the newest Fifty Years initiative, will serve as a comprehensive guide for founders and scientists wishing to spin out a company.

Impact

  • The Spinout Playbook will help future founders and scientists better navigate the challenges of the process.

  • Previously only available to a coterie of academics, the know-how of tech transfer will allow great science to see the light of day more easily.

  • A transparent process can give scientists the tools and information they need to build world-changing companies, which is hard enough by itself.

Find The Spinout Playbook here.