One year, one lab, 16 spinouts

The secret? They’re junk!

There is only upside for Church, who will get a piece of every company. If they fail, he has nothing to lose.

One of A16z’s past biotech stars was uBiome. The science there was bad from the beginning but investors couldn’t tell.

I think a better article could be written about how many have failed, and how many will continue to fail. 5 years from now it’ll be even easier to write.

It's a direct consequence of an explosion of private sector / VC funding into "risky" biotech bets. Will be very interesting to see how this plays out!

A16Z also has a podcast with George Church (who sums it up as "multi-disciple" people who are taught to "fail fast" and explore low-hanging theoretical and experimental fruits) ;)

What’s in the Water at the Church Lab? A Conversation Between George Church and Jorge Conde

https://a16z.com/2019/02/26/george-church-genome-sequencing-...

I worked with Francois back in 2010. A few years later I turned down his overtures to join AbVitro. Even with the benefit of hindsight it was the right risk-adjusted decision.

As for the why, I don't think it's in the water. Church is a brilliant scientist and mentor, but he's also in a position to skim the cream.

George Church has put his name on a ton of questionable ventures over the past 5 years.

People in the know in biotech double check any deal with his name on it.

While I applaud the entreperneurship, there is something wrong with the numbers here. 16 spin-outs in one year, at least 16 "founders" of biotech companies...last time I checked most research labs have more than one PhD-trained scientist. We can't all be founders. Someone has to work in the lab!

Starting a company can be hugely educational but probably not if it's just an exercise in PR and fundraising, which all biotech companies are until they can actually start selling (usually years after inception).

So, not to be negative, but would like to see something a bit more critical and less gushing from Nature. It's a thinly veiled PR piece for the Church lab.

Most of these will be defunct a few years from now, they run on VC money. Becoming profitable in biotech is much harder than IT.

Very interesting article; well worth reading the whole thing. Exciting to see startups in the "hard tech" space!

Also, complete transcription of the conversation with George Church: https://bioengineeringcommunity.nature.com/users/20939-laura...

Some choice excerpts:

> Shendure feels the inflection point came in 2010, with the founding of AbVitro by Church and his then-postdoc Francois Vigneault. AbVitro may to this day hold a special place in the annals of startups from the Church lab. After starting from only a little over $3 million in startup funding from a single VC firm, Sante Ventures, in 2012, the company was snapped up by Juno for $125 million four years later. That was followed by Celgene’s purchase of Juno, and more importantly led to several cell therapies now in the investigational new drug (IND) phase, according to Vigneault. “[Church] never had a really big success until we decided to do AbVitro and that one ended up knocking it out of the ball park. That triggered a lot of people to start companies because it looks easy from the outside,” he says. “It’s not,” he adds. [...] Whether or not AbVitro was the bellwether, the pace began picking up around 2015, and reached a fevered pitch in 2018.

> [...] biggest change from the past is that lab members are stepping up to take the role of CEO, rather than chief scientific officer (CSO) or chief technology officer (CTO). He sees an upswing in entrepreneurial verve across the university, but especially coming out of the Church lab. “They really have a desire to take on that business challenge of managing the company and growing the opportunity, seeking out the financing, seeking out the collaborations, and really focusing on the business aspect [...]

> [...] the current startup environment is different from that of the past in several significant ways. There is a very rich ecosystem of infrastructure for startups to launch into. “Places like LabCentral or Alexandria LaunchLabs are where you have a full BSL2 [biosafety level 2] lab ready to go and you can rent a bench on and have access to equipment for relatively small amounts of money,” he says. Access to capital is high for these kinds of ventures, he says, adding that a new breed of scientific founder is also emerging. “They have grown up in the era of startups, and have technology, multidisciplinary backgrounds across biology, computer science and engineering,” [...]

> In addition, the technology may now be catching up with some of the Church “crazy” ideas of years past. Cain McCleary, of KdT Ventures, which has invested in two from this cohort and one a few years back, says, “I feel like he’s consistently been ahead of his time in creating tool sets, but all of a sudden, our analysis and manufacturing has caught up to it, so it’s a particularly special time for folks in his lab,” he says.

How many patents did this produce, and how many of them were essentially funded by public money?

how many of them were running away from academia? It's no secret that the academic prospect of perpetual postdoctry is unattractive.