Out of this world science: Biotech Innnovation with Jun Axup of IndieBio

Jun Axup is the Chief Science Officer and Partner at IndieBio, the world’s leading biotech startup accelerator. Focused on turning scientists into entrepreneurs, IndieBio has funded and helped build 100+ biotech companies spanning the future of food/agriculture, consumer biotech, computational biology, digital health, therapeutics, medical devices, neurotech, and regenerative medicine. At IndieBio, Jun advises companies, runs scientific programming, makes investment decisions, and builds community.

She holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Biology from The Scripps Research Institute, where she developed targeted immuno-oncology drugs using genetically-engineered unnatural amino acids. She worked at several biotech startups, including Sutro Biopharma and Synthego, gaining experience in precision medicine, high-throughput drug discovery, automation robotics, and CRISPR. In addition, Jun co-founded two companies, including MYi Diagnostics, which develops proteomic tools for the early detection of cancer.

The Benefits of Academia and its Applications

Jun reminds us that academia often serves as the starting point for business development. For instance, CRISPR technology emerged from studying bacteria’s immune systems, and only years after scientific exploration did scientists begin to think about implications for human health and disease.

As much as there are people who are interested in understanding all the details of science and others who are passionate about using science to enact change, we need both ends of the spectrum. Jun describes the intersection of academia and industry as dance, which needs to be carefully balanced with complementary people and skills.

In the publication-driven world of academia, future applications of technology are described in the discussion section. Yet, Jun emphasizes that startups must begin with the discussion section, then make their way up through the paper’s structure.

What Makes an Idea Investable

At IndieBio, Jun and her team ask themselves a 5 big questions to determine which companies to invest in:

• What is the technology that gives it an unfair advantage?
• What is the product? You cannot sel science, it must be wrapped into a product.
• What is the business model? How does the money flow?
• A billion people (impact) or a billion dollars (profit) — Are big problems being solved?
• Is this the team to do this? Do they have the drive, passion, knowledge, and background for this to be successful?

Investments of IndioBio

Of the 160 companies that IndieBio has invested in, half of these are in human health and the other half are in planetary health. Some notable companies that have gone through this process include:

• Memphis meats, among the first cell-based meat company
• NotCo, plant based dairy products that now sells in Whole Foods
• Bee Load, looking at ways to prevent diseases going around in bees through supplements
• Catalogue, storage of digital data in DNA
• Fertility space: companies converting skin cells into egg cells and others trying to improve infertility diagnostics

IndieBio was founded after realizing a salient barrier in biotech innovation: lab facilities. While other types of startups can begin with just a computer, biotech ventures require robust infrastructure. At first, IndieBio provided lab facilities to their incubating companies for 4 months to help them develop and test prototypes. Yet now, they have built a diverse community of scientist-entrepreneurs. Just like in PhD programs, “Jun reflects, any innovation will be 95% failure. But somehow when you are part of a cohort, somehow everything feels less daunting.” It is the spirit of collaboration and camaraderie, mixed with “out of this world” science that makes IndieBio one of the leading biotech incubators.

Theia is a nonprofit dedicated to inspiring and empowering the next generation of entrepreneurs and investors in healthcare. Check out our website to learn more.

Story written by Katie Donahey and Luiza Perez