Please tell us one surprising or fun fact about yourself
I’m trilingual, and at this point have an accent in every language.
Tell us the story behind the founding of your company. What’s the personal and scientific inspiration behind the founding of your company?
My co-founder, Charly Chahwan, and I were in the same graduate department at the University of Toronto. Charly is a gifted geneticist, and I was more of a biochemist and structural biologist who later turned towards genetics and epigenetics. As we were discussing career paths, after many years of studying fundamental science, we were both interested in translating our skills and knowledge towards something that could directly benefit patients in our lifetime. This interest was driven by the fact that both Charly and I had close family members that were affected by cancer, and therefore cancer is the focus of our company.
Early in our careers, we noticed that a major problem in finding solutions was the limited definition of ‘druggable’ targets as constrained by existing drug discovery technologies. Often, through genetic screens, proteins would be identified that would make for excellent drug targets, but the lack of proper assays and modalities to target them would render them inaccessible and therefore overlooked by traditional drug development. To try to tackle this drug discovery problem, we devised strategies for engineering cell-based platforms that allow for a directed evolution approach to discover molecules that can accomplish complex molecular functions – mainly by modulating protein interactions – either disrupting interactions or bridging them in functional ways, to achieve targeted protein degradation. We are currently using our platforms to discover molecules that will hopefully translate into viable drugs for cancer and other indications.
How do you hope your start-up will impact or change the lives of patients?
Cancer encompasses a multitude of ever evolving diseases propagated by different founding and driving mutations. A precision medicine approach tailored to each patient’s unique tumor dependencies would be the best bet to beat it. We have set out to go after cancer targets that have long been known to be crucial for driving and maintaining cancer growth and progression, as well as new targets that scientists discover and characterize, but have been considered out of the reach of drug development due to their ‘undruggable’ nature.
At SyntheX, we hope to create drugs that target the foundational driving mutations for the majority of tumors by focusing on targets such as those in the Ras and various DNA repair pathways. We also hope that our technologies can reach patients beyond oncology and look to partner with large companies with established domain expertise in other indications.
What differentiates you from competitors?
与现有技术不同,我们依靠的力量of synthetic biology to simultaneously produce a wide diversity of new compounds (on the order of billions) and perform an in-cell functional selection for compounds that can accomplish the biological task we are interested in. Having cells do the discovery and initial chemistry also results in a fast and cost-effective process.
No two days are alike as a start-up founder – how do you organize your day?
I live by my calendar and digital to-do list. Each day I make sure the immediate time-sensitive tasks are completed before working on anything longer-term. It does take discipline to do the things that need to be done before doing anything else that might be more ‘fun’.
Do you like working from home? What tools do you use to be productive/what’s your WFH setup?
I’ve always been able to work from anywhere and I quickly adapted to WFH. I’ve been enjoying how much more efficient days have become since most meetings with existing and potential investors and partners have shifted to teleconferencing and are no longer at the mercy of traffic or geography. I did miss the human connection in the early COVID days and am glad to be back in the office now. However, I wish I had invested in a more ergonomic home setup early on…
What startup leader do you admire most? Who has been a role model for you?
I have gotten to know many founders and industry leaders (through communities like JLABS, IndieBio, MBC biolabs, and CLSI), and many are incredible people in unique ways, so it is hard to name just one. I particularly admire leaders that have deep integrity and empathy towards their colleagues and can maintain a rigorous and driven team that executes at a high level.
How do you read-in every day to know where the opportunities are, what your competitors are doing, where the next big idea might be?
There’s an avalanche of new relevant information daily. I catch up on industry and scientific updates in the evenings, but I don’t often have as much time as I’d like to read about new science in depth. I found that a helpful approach on this front is to rely on my team members.
We’ve created a “think-tank” system where different members of the company are in charge of keeping tabs on the landscape of their key area of focus. Our scientists and our fantastic head of finance and operations do a great job at keeping live documents on these different subject matters and quickly introduce updates the moment someone notices any news on the subject. It’s incredibly important to keep track of where the industry is moving and keep an eye out for neat science that could help us move faster and better towards the clinic.
What do you wish you’d known in the early days of leading a startup that would be helpful for your fellow founders to know? What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?
I was quite shy about reaching out to people early on. I wish I relied more on communal wisdom and spent less time trying to figure things out de novo in areas that are tried and true – accounting, payroll, healthcare, recruiting… although I did learn a lot.
Some of the best advice I got early on as an outsider to the space is to put yourself out there – apply for various presentations, attend relevant conferences and events, meet people in the industry at large. Life is long and serendipitous, many of our current opportunities at SyntheX started from very unexpected places.
What scientist dead or alive would you like to have coffee with?
What advice would you have for new JLABS residents on making the most of the time, opportunities, and mentorship at JLABS?
Take advantage of the opportunities available at JLABS – the various informational panels, VC and pharma office hours, as well as the fellow founders around you.
What is your advice on tailoring your pitch to different investors and tips for pitching to investors in the virtual era?
The virtual era has made pitching more efficient, but slightly less ‘human’ and difficult for relationship building with new investors. As for the pitch - I would slightly tailor the pitch based on the expertise and particular familiarities of certain investor groups and edit the content for the time allotment. However, I typically don’t stray much from the big picture vision of what we’re building at SyntheX. The goal isn’t just to raise money, but to build the company you want and find the right people to build it with you.
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