Episode 93: How Startups and Universities Can Support Each Other and Thrive in Biotech

Wonder Twin Powers Activate! How universities and companies can work together.

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Hello and welcome back to Bio from the Bayou. I'm James Zanewicz from Tulane University School of Medicine and one of your hosts.

And I'm Elaine, the executive in residence at Tulane School of Medicine, the other host. And today we're going to be talking a little bit about how startups and universities can help support each other.

Right. I mean, because I'm in business development and technically an investor now. And you?

I do startups.

You do startups. So I guess we should talk about how we can help each other.

Yeah. And we've honestly been around a lot of different sides of the table around startups. And so, I mean, even if we weren't actually directly involved in startups, we've been tangential to helping make sure startups that come out of the university are successful. Way back in our first origin story of our friendship where we met in tech transfer, and don't give me that, don't give me that.

How'd we meet? No, okay, we're not telling it.

That's for another podcast. That's Bio from the Bayou After Dark.

Bio from the Bayou. Later. Selling stuffed animals.

Nope. Anyway.

Anyway, startups and academic centers are incredibly tied together.

I mean, they And it doesn't, I think a lot of people don't think that they are either, because it feels like they're on the opposite side of the table. And like academia versus industry, dark side versus light side, Jedi versus Sith, whatever you wanna call it.

Can't we all just be friends?

Can't we all just be friends?

Can't we hold hands like the Teletubbies and walk around? I feel like that's what we do.

I think that the Teletubbies reference dated you a little bit, but.

They're cute and colorful.

They are, and we should.

Much like mascots and logos.

Well, we need to find a way to be a little bit more friendly and cuddly and kinder because, you know what?

Especially given the current environment.

The current environment's hard.

We've always needed each other more now than ever.

Absolutely. It's a tough environment. And, you know, that phrase that I honestly at this point kind of hate where it's just like a raising tide raises all ships or a rising tide, one of those. It's still very, very true. It's like we can go faster together.

And maybe I should talk about what I view as startups bringing to the table. And you can talk about your perspective on what universities bring. We can supplement each other like that.

Ooh, we're going to go opposite. We're going to put on the other side of the fence.

It's putting ourselves in each other's shoes. I love it. How do you like that?

Tell me what you think about me.

Well, so, so my perspective about you besides being fabulous and having great shoes and a marvelous handbag is that startups really help us become more agile. They help us move science out into the world or any idea, quite honestly. But we're talking about biotech, so obviously it's science for us.

Yeah.

They're often better equipped and more willing to take risks because of the personalities they bring on. And they're focused on usually that one asset or two and really just driving that forward.

Yeah.

And that's where I see So much kind of value in partnering with startups. And plus, it can open up whole new rounds and streams of funding.

Yeah, I love that. And I'll come back to that. But I'm going to first give my perspective from the university side. I really do see it as the font of knowledge, right, where you have this source of intellectual curiosity that one day leads to the groundbreaking drug that will help cure, you know, disease in patients. But it has to start from that, that initial source of creativity and intellectual curiosity that scientists at academia naturally have.

Yeah, and it could even be, instead of just drugs, it could also be that bit of code or AI that helps patients understand what their bill actually means, which is super helpful. Like, oh, here's what they're charging me for.

Yeah. Well, when I was in tech transfer, I worked on weather technologies and radar technologies that actually help drive the evening weather report and tell you when there is a tornado coming, which is very, very helpful. So you really got to see this where people were really interested in understanding how radars work, how they could turn that into something that could help somebody on a day-to-day basis.

Well, and I think too, because academic centers have been around for ages and ages, most of them, and startup companies are generally newer, they do help lend credibility by working with startups, I think.

And vice versa too. I mean, honestly, like we rely on—

It's different kinds of cred. Scientific cred versus business cred.

Yep, absolutely. I mean, people want to see where did the science come from? Are the scientific inventors involved in the company? Because they really do bring that, that they know it better than anyone else.

So, you know, we've kind of established that we're both fabulous at academia.

That was very important.

It is. It is. It's setting the stage. What is one of the most important things we should do when we're considering helping each other and working together? How do we do that?

One of the first steps that I take is understanding my collaborator, because that's what they are. They are not like— once you've gone across the table, you've done the license agreement, you've done the option agreement, you've been on opposite sides of the table. Great. Now we need to be on the same side of the table in how we work together. And really, every university, if you know one university, you know one university, you got to figure out like, hey, when we deal with patent issues, who do I talk to? When we deal with contract issues, who do I talk to? You have to figure out like the communication. strategy within a university so that you can engage with them more efficiently. And, you know, I think at Tulane we help do that job of serving as a single point of contact and we can direct them where they are, but not every university is like that. So step one is just figuring out who they are and how they work.

And so I think we sort of exemplified that when we started by putting ourselves in each other's shoes.

100%.

But then, you know, I think that also helps setting your expectations for each other because when you do that and you look at it from someone else's perspective and then you talk about like, hey, here's what I think you want, is that correct?

Yeah.

People are like, oh, that's not what we want at all. Or yes, that is. And like we both added a little bit, oh, it's missing this and this. And that really does help set those mutual expectations early on.

Yeah. And it can be as simple as— I also like to explain sort of, you know, why we need something from them. So when it comes to like, hey, we really need to understand like what the patent prosecution is going to look like for the next 6 to 12 months. It's not because we just want you to do a bunch of paperwork for us. It's like we got a budget to plan for.

And so we want to make sure that when something comes up that we're not going to waste your time and that we can answer your attorneys and your office very I think a way a university can help, even in these tough times, is potentially helping to identify mutual sources of funding for the startup and the university to work on together.

Definitely.

And one of the creative ways that I love is, you know, we have our great colleague, Katie Acuff at Tulane, who is actually leaving.

Now, yeah.

And by the time this airs, she'll be the CEO and president of the LSU Health Foundation.

Yeah.

But we've worked together with her and with the entire advancement team for years, really, to say, hey, are there donors who might be interested in this space and would be willing to fund kind of a research project or inject capital into these companies that they could then use to do collaborative research drive these innovations, these treatments, these tests, these cures, these diagnostics forward.

Absolutely. And, you know, we serve this role to help, you know, find investors when we go to pitch. I'm not just, you know, pitching my companies, I'm pitching the companies that I'm associated with at Tulane. A lot of universities have those types of resources. We work with UC Riverside on one of our, on our multiple sclerosis drug, and he's actually gone out and talked to different investors on our behalf. And sometimes those can be better connections than us going and cold calling.

Yeah. And then I think another example is past funding. We can also look at, are there a lot of military programs that have biotech bets that perhaps we could go after together? But do we have folks in our network who can help us open those doors and get to places?

Yeah, because Tulane has the government relations piece where they've had conversations with Congress and senators of what their appropriations budget looks like. And I don't know as a startup how to access that, but you do. And that's amazing.

Shout out to Lauren Jardel and Ellen Pomontier on the team for all their help with us with that. And we're talking about people.

People.

Another great source at both entities is people, because both academic centers need advisors that startups and their boards can often offer to us. And startups need their scientific advisory boards and boards of directors, which we have a whole podcast on. Link that, right, Ian? Yeah, will do. Will do. But, you know, we can provide people for that. But Elaine, do you want to talk? Because you, you've developed a tremendous expertise in this area about people and how to— I don't want to say leverage because it sounds transactional, but how to build those proper relationships to plug them in at the right side either way.

Yeah, I think that you have it exactly right of not making it transactional. There's so many ways that you can engage with the university that can help really propel your startup forward beyond just like they have an asset, I license it, and goodbye, I hope I give you a check later down the road. I get to engage with their postdocs who are really probably the boots on the ground of doing the research. Oh, I did this to manufacture— like when I was synthesizing this compound, here's a little trick that I did to make it better. Well, the professor doesn't know that little trick because—

They didn't do it.

They didn't do it. And like—

I mean, they helped oversee it and install knowledge, but they didn't do it.

And there can be just little subtle things that you don't realize can really impact your manufacturing. If you didn't know that you had to vortex it versus, you know, pipette it, I mean, it can make a world of difference. It can cause a huge slow in your manufacturing process if you didn't understand that piece.

And you might choose the wrong CRO or CDMO to do the thing and you've wasted money.

Well, and a lot of times those professors have— their former students went and worked for a CRO. And so you can have a really nice handoff point. So it's not an asset that you're looking at. You're looking at sort of the many different ways that you can really plug into a university and leverage their talent and expertise.

Yeah, and vice versa. So, you know, startups can help improve strategic decisions at universities.

Yeah.

Because often, you know, they have an expertise, and they have an expertise in how to commercialize on a really, really insightful and deep way. And by serving on advisory boards or helping to review other technologies, and it doesn't have to be startups. That have licensed from your university. They can just be engaged with you because you have an expert they wind up needing down the line, or they've moved to your ecosystem, or one of their investors is from there, or they're an alumnus who went on and did their graduate research somewhere else. I mean, they maybe licensed something from somewhere else, but still has strong ties.

Yeah.

Pulling them in and really leveraging that, you know, that time and talent versus asking them for dollars can be an even greater giveback than cash.

100%. It's an easier ask for those foundations and people that are trying to raise money for the university of getting alumni engaged with the university versus give me a check and we'll come back in a year. It's, it's a way that they can give their time to a university. And those types of boards are becoming more and more popular because they're more and more relevant.

Well, and I think a big part of this is, again, universities making sure they're attractive to startups or as we like to say, you know, creating that startup-friendly campus culture.

Yeah.

So what makes you feel welcome? When you go to a university, because when you've licensed from one, it's obviously, or one would hope that it's gone well and the relationship is established, and it's easier because you have your access point. But say you're outside and none of your startups are actually from Tulane, but you've interacted with some of our faculty here. What makes a campus attractive to you to approach as a startup CEO?

That's a great question. And I always kind of go to, I have horror stories, which I would love to share, and we can share that at another date as well as our origin story. That involves a cocktail or two to tell those stories. And one of my favorites, at universities to work with is Duke because they really have this— that you see a lot of startups come out of there and they are supported. It is not, you know, go make it work and we'll see if you can do it and come back to us when you have a check ready for us and you got to go prove that you're a startup. They really support their entrepreneurs. They want them to try and give the startup the old college try. They have friendly—

Hahaha, college try.

Not an intentional joke. they have fast contracts that they're, you know what, we'll let you, you know, try this out for a year. It's a very— it's a known price. There's not a lot of negotiating. It's to try it on. They are really— they provide you with resources, not just at the university, but at the city level and the state level and the federal level. They really connect you to the ecosystem. And of course, obviously RTP is a great ecosystem to be in. So they do have that advantage, but they don't see it as adversarial or, you know, go ahead and give this a shot and come back to us. It's very much like, no, we want you to be successful.

And I think it's just, you know, welcoming you guys to campus as well. And especially, you know, now more than ever, as we said earlier, we do need each other and making campus, you know, a welcome space for companies to come on and making companies a welcome space for scientists to visit where you feel free brainstorming together and envisioning what might some of those new funding models look like. Because often from adversity, which, you know, Both sides are experiencing adversity right now. Often from that comes, you know, that real grit, that resilience, that innovation, and, oh, we've never thought about working together in these ways. How can we do it now? We actually, we were just doing that yesterday with a company.

Yeah, that we have this, you know, incredible resource at Tulane, the Primate Center is just this amazing facility. And from a startup, you know, drug development company, it's just a goldmine of opportunity. And we need to think about how we do drug development differently, but they need to think about how they They do research differently, and we stopped trying to cram it into this box. I think that was the biggest sort of takeaway is that we have our sort of standard procedures.

So it was blue sky?

Oh, I hate that word.

Oh, stab me in the eye.

Yeah, I put it in.

It was so great.

Such a tech bro move.

You basically said blue sky without saying it. That's all I'm saying. It made it warm my little heart.

Go put your puffy vest on. Go hang out with the tech bros. I have 4 puffy vests. I know you do.

2 of them are blue. They make my eyes pretty.

But it was nice to not just have this Like, oh, here's our standard process and we're gonna cram it into this box whether it makes sense or not. Like, we really like, you know, you want this, you want this, and let's try to find a way to come together and make this work and stop trying to just, oh no, this is how we've always done it.

Yeah. And then sometimes the struggle with the blue sky is getting it into a box, which is probably why you hate blue sky. 'Cause they're like, it's everything. And then you're like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. How do we get into, maybe we're spilling over the box a little bit, but can we at least fit in the box or at least get a foot in?

Can you tell me where the box is? Where is the box? I don't even see the box at this point. You do have to take— I love those blue sky moments. And then you have to feel like, okay, we have very little resources, both from a financial and people and resource. You know, it's— we have to be very nimble these days, as we say, and we have to find a way to do things efficiently. So blue sky, think of different ways to do things creatively versus the standard way. And that has a lot of bureaucracy and resource draining opportunities there.

And that's how sometimes having somebody with facilitation skills or a third party can be useful to help the two parties, you know, say, hey, Hey, we want you to kind of help us hear each other. And that can be a way that universities and companies can really work together too, is realizing that a third person in the room can be really beneficial.

Yeah. And that's where you start seeing the pop-up of executives in residence and entrepreneurs in residence, that they're not always on the— just the university side. They help sort of bridge that gap and bring people to the table, and that you can leverage that. Again, alumni, people within your community that can really help facilitate those conversations. So you're not going to be the, on the other side of the table against each other, that you're really on the same side.

It's all about that long-term relationship.

It is. And that takes time and talent. And you have to like people, unfortunately.

Or pretend to.

Or pretend to. It really does make things in life a lot easier. And especially now, we really have to band together and help each other out. We have a long road ahead of us.

And speaking of time and long roads, I think, yeah, Ian's like, we're getting the sign from our producer that it is time to end this episode.

It is.

Bio from the Bayou.

Perfect.

Oh, that was his dad's podcast voice.

I just—

yeah, I did other James. I did Dr. James McLaughlin podcast voice. Ian's like, no.

Well, you know, we had a perfect ending and now we don't have an ending. So.

Sure we do. Come visit us for a Bio on the Bayou, October 28th and 29th, 2025. Wrapping it up.

Perfect. You did it. All right. Thanks, guys. And we'll see you next time.

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