What to Consider Before Launching a Biotech Startup in 2022?
Luciano Santollani is currently working towards his PhD at MIT developing novel cancer therapeutics, and is also working as a venture capital associate at Pillar VC. He recently wrote an insightful analysis A Founder's Guide to Data-Driven Budgeting in Biotech, featuring survey data on biotechs ranging from 2-60 employees across various applications, and providing quantitative answers to questions like “How much money should a biotech startup raise?”, “How much should one budget for R&D?”, “How much does it cost to attract top talent?”, and other actionable information.
In the interview below Luciano expands on the topic of biotech startups, emerging trends in the biotech industry, and convergence of technology and biology.
Andrii: Tell a bit about your vision in life sciences. To start with, what is your research focus and why did you decide to combine research and venture capitalist careers?
Luciano: My biotech journey began towards the end of my time at Stanford, where I teamed up with 2 bioengineering colleagues to commercialize a hypothesis around targeted protein degradation for neurodegenerative diseases. At its core, the idea was to engineer designer E3 ligases that would selectively recognize and break down harmful proteins associated with neurodegenerative indications. As three naive undergrads, we stumbled our way through designing the key experiments to de-risk the idea and ultimately managed to raise a bit of money to get started in the lab. In the end, the science didn’t pan out, but the experience made one thing clear — in the long run, I wanted to be involved with starting early-stage therapeutic start-ups.
That realization pushed me toward grad school, where I’ve been working on developing novel immunotherapies for cancer treatment with Dane Wittrup and Darrell Irvine at MIT. Specifically, I use protein engineering tools to help improve the therapeutic index of cytokines, a class of immunotherapies that has always been promising but plagued with toxicity issues. Having such an exciting project and incredible mentors has made grad school the perfect sandbox for learning the ins and outs of pre-clinical development.
I joined the team at Pillar VC about a year ago as a venture associate, helping bridge the gap between translational academia and early stage biotech. I still see myself as being a founder in the future, but understanding fundraising from the investing side has been an eye-opening experience. Of course, I’m not proclaiming to know how to start a biotech company (yet!), but the pattern recognition has helped me build mental models of best practices when fundraising. Combining research and VC play very well into each other — my deep immuno-oncology and preclinical experience helps with diligence on potential investment opportunities. I hope to continue operating at this interface between academia and early-stage start-ups after graduate school.
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Andrii: Tell a bit about your vision in life sciences. To start with, what is your research focus and why did you decide to combine research and venture capitalist careers?
