Get these analyses to your inbox — https://axialobservations.substack.com/ This is a newsletter for rough-around-the-edges ideas. More well thought out work can be found at — https://axial.substack.com/ I figured that there is a diversity across desire for frequency of emails.

Axial invests and partners in early-stage life sciences companies. If you or someone you know has a great idea or company in life sciences, Axial would be excited to get to know you and possibly invest in your vision and company — info@axialsprawl.com

A set of ideas and observations from a week’s worth of work analyzing businesses and technologies.

Investing in defense

I read a short article on a Kleiner Perkins 2006 vintage fund focused on pandemics — https://www.axios.com/the-legacy-of-kleiner-perkins-2006-pandemic-fund-1ffab3d9-0923-4cdf-ab08-2588c38742cb.html The fund invested in five major companies:

BioCryst Pharmaceuticals for antiviral medicines (via a PIPE) Breathe Technologies for a portable ventilator (Series B) Novavax for vaccine design (via a PIPE) Juvaris BioTherapeutics for vaccine design (Series A) BARDA — Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority to “develop and buy drugs for public health medical emergencies, including pandemics and bioterrorism”

I know Kleiner Perkins had sub-funds like the iFund and so on. This pandemic piqued my interest not only because of COVID-19 but the ability for venture capital to invest in defense and businesses/technologies for preparation of a problem. What thesis needs to be used to successfully invest in defense? What diligence processes work? Who are the founders who can build these types of businesses? Maybe the founder profiles that have built up Distributed Bio? — https://axial.substack.com/p/axial-distributed-bio

For Kleiner Perkins’ pandemic fund, the largest exit was Breathe Technologies for $128M. The biggest impact of the fund was probably helping form BARDA, which has proven essential in the response to COVID-19 — from former Kleiner Perkins partner Beth Seidenberg:

“I was in D.C. one or two times per month talking to Congressional staffers, so that there could be an agency that would have the authority to take a systematic approach to looking at vaccines and diagnostics… A big part of it was getting the model right, so we tried to model it after DARPA [an R&D unit of the U.S. Department of Defense], which had managed to really embrace the idea of a public/private partnership.”

So what fund structures can successfully invest in defensive companie because defense wins championships:

Speeding up antibody development

Brian Kelley from Vir — https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-kelley-3389375 — wrote a pretty useful article on what levers can be pushed to speed up antibody development for COVID-19 — https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-020-0512-5 The key insight is that:

The “current best-in-class timeline from lead identification to IND timeline for antibodies is 10–12 months” but to get that timeline to ~5 months, Kelley argues that mL bioreactors or microfluidics that a company like AbCellera uses — https://axial.substack.com/p/axial-abcellera as well as as accepting manufacturing risks (i.e. CMC, GMP) are the two most important features.

What’s interesting here is have antibodies become commoditized enough where an investor can optimize to speed to market and accept quality/supply chain risks? Maybe a company like EQRx can explore this. The FDA has been shifting more toward post-market approvals for drugs (bring the model from devices) so a new generation of antibody companies could be tried to show efficacy and figure out manufacturing later?

Microplastics and biology

Where can biology really be used to solve the microplastic problem existing in our ocean right now? Plastic was actually first invented in a lab within the British company Elkington & Company. Now it is a critical material for everything in our world. It’s produced from simple inputs. And plastics are easy for consumers to use. More plastic is being produced and recycling methods just can’t keep up. Microplastics infect our soil and get into water sources and ultimately the ocean. A 2018 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report — https://www.unenvironment.org/resources/un-environment-2018-annual-report — found that 99% of seabirds have ingested microplastics and by 2050, over 600 marine species (15% of the population) will be threatened by microplastics; think turtles caught to soda holders. Discoveries on microplastics’ impact on human health are probably next.

There seem to be 3 major ways for biology to play a role in recycling or reducing plastic use:

Making biodegradable plastics. Petroleum-based plastic waste degrades very slowly. The idea is to replace polyethylene and polyethylene terephthalate with materials generated from sugar and potatoes. Bio-synthesizing polymers to be integrated with existing plastics to minimize the environmental impact. Polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) is a useful biopolymer: biogenic short-chain polyhydroxyalkanoate made via fermentation.. Designing organisms to degrade petroleum-based plastics

The first option would need a manufacturing/operations breakthrough, the second would need a business model focused on JVs and co-development, and the last option needs a technical breakthrough.

Theory of the firm in life sciences

The theory of the firm has been a pretty powerful driver for new businesses, technologies, and progress:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm

https://rootsofprogress.org/funding-models-for-science-and-innovation

Is there an argument to design corporate structures for the type of work a business wants to pursue? Maybe a defensive business needs a more R&D-like model and less of a corporate structure? What are the key considerations here?:

Culture — the beliefs that originate within the firm that extend out to the environment Coordination — the incentives to do great work Control — hierarchical, flat, or something else; this has implications for autonomy of a given individual and how knowledge is shared

The future of medicine — bifurcating mechanics and knowledge

Nikhil Krishnan tweeted a simple example of Jack Nathan Health clinics in Canadian Walmarts — https://twitter.com/nikillinit/status/1229879837365604357?s=21 The clinics place a registered nurse (RN) in each one to do the legwork (i.e. blood draw, tests) where a physician chimes in remotely:

The idea is simple but profound. Doctors act in a command center and their knowledge can be scaled with software and the spokes are the RNs in the clinics who are empowered to take control of patient care — https://drugstorenews.com/news/jack-nathan-health-center-opens-latest-clinic-walmart-canada

Right now in the US and most places in the world, doctors are required to be physically co-located with actual care. What is that doesn’t need to be the case?