iJOBS Seminar: Startups and Fellowship Opportunities

By Kiranmayi Vemuri

The big question for many PhD students or postdocs at the end of their term is “What’s next?” Finding an answer to this can be nerve-wracking. Fortunately, Rutgers iJOBS has been great at pointing students towards a multitude of available opportunities. It was at one of the iJOBS seminars where I learned about a career path other than the usual academia and industry – the world of startups. A startup company is a new business focusing on one or two products that address a gap in the market. In the biomedical field, this can be a diagnostic test, a novel drug or any other modality targeting disease. Startups can provide fresh master’s/PhD graduates (or postdocs) with a chance to capitalize on their knowledge while also providing an opportunity that is fulfilling much more beyond a traditional job. It can also be a vehicle to bigger companies or bigger opportunities.

Many startup companies run out of incubators, which are central workspaces designed to help startups by providing workspace, seed funding, mentoring, and training. One of the closest incubators to Rutgers is the New Jersey Bioscience Center on Route 1 in North Brunswick. It is currently home to many well-known biotech companies including Allergan, Boehringer Ingelheim, and Chromocell. Many successful companies have graduated from the NJ Bioscience Center, including Advaxis and Amicus Therapeutics. More about incubators later in the article!

The iJOBS panel on Startups and Fellowship Opportunities introduced the attendees to to the basic ins and outs of a startup. Three panelists from NJ startups spoke about their experiences navigating the entrepreneurial landscape and enthusiastically answered the many questions which came up. There was also an exciting fellowship opportunity which I talk about at the end of this article, so keep reading!

The first panelist was Roelof Rongen, Founder and CEO of Innovative Molecules LLC, based in the NJ Bioscience Center. The second panelist was Jason Huang, an advisor and program manager at Delphine Diagnostics. The founder and CEO of Delphine, Andiappan (Andy) Bala was also in the audience. Delphine Diagnostics operates across two NJ state universities, with an R&D lab based in Kean University and an office at Rutgers, making it truly homegrown. The third panelist was Viraj Mane, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Lactiga. Lactiga is also NJ based and will soon join the incubator at North Brunswick.

The first half of the event focused on understanding the path the entrepreneurs took to get to their current position, which they spent quite some time talking about. As TS Elliot once said, “The journey, Not the destination matters.”

• Roelof has an engineering degree in bioprocess engineering from the Netherlands. He was in the consulting world for a while, and then moved to the US to do an MBA. Following that, Roelof worked with the Wilkerson group in NYC, followed by a position as product director for Humira. His big jump into the pharmaceutical industry was when he joined Reliant pharma where he worked for 8 years. Reliant was acquired by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in the late 2000s. According to him, those 8 years were a very formative part of his career. He moved to a few startups following the merger of Reliant and GSK and then started his own company in 2012. He’s co-founded several startups since then and is currently at Innovative Molecules LLC. His work focuses on the discovery and development of novel small molecule medicines for the treatment of cancer, and metabolic and inflammatory diseases.
• Jason received his degree in biology but started his career outside of biology in the field of information technology. He’s currently using his expertise in software development to help develop potential solutions to sepsis diagnosis. Jason’s project at Delphine Diagnostics is both biology and computer based making him the perfect candidate for this project. Delphine is using a machine learning model to understand some of the factors that lead to sepsis. They have partnerships with companies and hospitals in India to obtain electronic medical records and diagnostic data which are then used in an AI-driven software product to identify the initial signs of sepsis. Their ultimate goal is to identify pathogens causing sepsis in under 6 hours. The current reference standard takes 24-48 hours.  
• Viraj earned a PhD investigating gene therapy modalities at Baylor University in Houston. One of his postdocs was at the FDA where he developed a molecular diagnostic tool to resolve the 13 IFN-alpha genes. Incidentally, this work led to his first patent!  After leaving academia, he got a great opportunity as a private consultant for the US Department of Defense to investigate highly specialized medicines for biowarfare agents of concern to the US military. When it came to deciding on a more permanent career, he was at a crossroads. All his experiences were in different parts of biology, so picking one to focus on was a problem for him. So, instead he moved into venture building and decided to capitalize on an idea he had during his vast research experiences. His idea was to collect antibodies on a broad scale from breastmilk and deliver them as therapeutics for immunocompromised patients. Breast milk antibodies are highly stable and bioactive in mucosal compartments, GI, and respiratory tracts, making them a great therapeutic for disease types affecting those areas. This is the focus of his company, Lactiga.

During the session, each of the panelists offered helpful advice about how they made the leap to build their ideas into a business. The first thing everyone emphasized was how they relied on  the various connections they had made. It’s easy to have ideas but having the bandwidth/funding to pursue those ideas to fruition is a completely different story. In those initial stages, one of the best people to approach is a professor at a university who can impartially judge your idea and give you feedback. Professors can also be a great resource for making connections in the investor world, as they may be part of businesses themselves. This brings me to the second, and perhaps most important piece of advice they gave. Once you’re sure your idea has impact, you need to find the means to fund it. One of the best routes to funding is to apply for grants. Jason mentioned the NSF resources, especially the NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps), a 7-week entrepreneurial training program. This program lets you form a triad with a faculty member and someone in the industry to build the skills required to launch a product-based biotech startup. Another option for funding is to approach groups of angel investors or venture capitalists. If you decide to go down this route, know that these people may or may not be from the biotech field. So having some business knowledge is a huge plus. You would need to prepare a business plan which lays out details about your product and how this product will fit in the market.  Investors review this and decide whether your startup is worth funding. Viraj chimed in here and mentioned a third option for funding -  self-funding. All of his initial studies were self-funded. He generated the data, got patents and grants, and used this preliminary work to approach the investors. He stressed upon the fact that having justifying data was crucial before ever approaching an investor. Whether you choose one of these fundraising methods or employ a combination of them is based on your startup’s needs and goals. Whichever route you choose, make sure you do the research beforehand and have a solid plan in place.

But what if you’ve already succeeded in obtaining funding from a reputable source? Where do you establish your lab? How do you validate and scale-up your product? How do you get FDA approval? The startup landscape can be unbelievably overwhelming! Again, the best thing to do here is to rely on your connections. Viraj and Roelof both emphasized you should find people you can trust and who can help validate your idea. During the initial stages of both their startups, they had just the minimum number of people required to launch the company. One person donned many hats. There were no titles, no designations – everyone just worked together. As for lab space, Roelof talked about how incubators are a great resource. Incubators usually house 20–25 companies. There’s even a helpful management team available to all the companies to deal with all the bureaucratic hassles. Most incubators have a 2–3-year time limit and expect their resident companies to graduate to their own space after that point.Intellectually, incubators allow employees from different companies to interact with each other, bounce off ideas and form collaborations. It can be a hugely rewarding environment.

Towards the end of the seminar, a very exciting fellowship opportunity came up – the NJ Innovation and Research Fellowship Program. This is a great opportunity for newly graduated students who are interested in exploring the startup landscape. It’s a 2-year program and applicants apply in conjunction with a company who is willing to work with them. One would need to sketch out a project plan for 2-years of funding. Other documents include an updated CV, publication list, and letters of recommendations. If you’re interested, the weekly iJOBS emails usually list companies which are looking to partner with a student. Applications open in the fall and close in mid-April, so if this is something that interests you, it’s time to start your application!

In conclusion, the startup world in the biomedical sciences is not easy. If you’re expecting something fun or glamorous like Shark Tank, then maybe it’s not for you. If job stability, benefits, a 401(k), and a good salary are important to you, then maybe it’s not for you. But, if you are someone who wants to take their idea and see it impact thousands, maybe millions, of people, then you’d be perfect in this world. It’s challenging for sure, yet in many cases the rewards outweigh the challenges making it a very worthwhile career option.

Some of the resources mentioned in this article:

• Rutgers iJOBS (Rutgers students’ resource to job and startup opportunities and fellowships)
• New Jersey Bioscience Center (incubator in North Brunswick)
• NSF I-Corps (for training programs for entrepreneurs)
• National Innovation Network  (NSF resource - network of regional hubs which empower entrepreneurs to bring their ideas to the market)
• Innovation and Research Fellowship Program (fellowship opportunity for entrepreneurial students and postdocs)

This article was edited by Senior Editor Natalie Losada and Senior Editor Shawn Rumrill.