Guilford incubator 4Catalyzer aims for game-changing medical products Business incubator 4Catalyzer focuses on game-changing medical products

4Catalyzer is the latest venture of biomedical engineer and entrepreneur Jonathan Rothberg, left, shown with incubator executive Dr. Mark Michalski. (Contributed photo) 4Catalyzer is the latest venture of biomedical engineer and entrepreneur Jonathan Rothberg, left, shown with incubator executive Dr. Mark Michalski. (Contributed photo) Photo: Journal Register Co. Photo: Journal Register Co. Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Guilford incubator 4Catalyzer aims for game-changing medical products 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

GUILFORD >> Inside a modest building on the shore of Long Island Sound toils a team with outsized goals: To revolutionize medicine and change the world.

“Put a dent in the universe,” business incubator 4Catalyzer’s website proclaims. “We aspire to create significant societal impact and are motivated by the idea that our products will change the lives of people we love.”

The hugely ambitious incubator or “accelerator,” as it calls itself, is the brainchild of New Haven-area native Jonathan Rothberg, a pioneering biomedical engineer and entrepreneur.

Rothberg is a leader in the fast emerging field of genomic medicine — the tailoring of treatment to each individual’s DNA. He is best known for inventing a machine that significantly reduced the cost of and time needed to sequence DNA, making personalized medicine possible, as well as enabling faster identification of flaws that cause or predispose people to disease.

Founded last year, 4Catalyzer is Rothberg’s latest venture — he has already started and sold a number of successful companies. It seeks to marry cutting edge computer technology and bioengineering to create game-changing medical products and bring them to market, incubator executive Dr. Mark Michalski said.

4Catalyzer’s business ambitions are nearly as audacious as its medical ones.

“Come build the next $100 billion dollar industry with us and change the world,” reads a pitch on its website to potential employees.

The incubator, known until recently as 4Combinator, provides not only expertise and mentoring, but also financial backing, Michalski said. That frees innovators from the tyranny of fundraising, he said.

“They can do the research without having to worry about raising money, which is a killer thing for many small companies,” Michalski said.

Chris Loose, executive director of the Yale Center for Biomedical and Interventional Technology, called 4Catalyzer one of the New Haven area’s “most sophisticated and potentially high impact” biomedical innovators. Loose, a successful biomedical entrepreneur, came away from a visit to its Guilford headquarters impressed by the energy and intensity of its employees.

“I think it has great potential to have lasting value to the state of Connecticut creating jobs and strengthening Connecticut’s image as a leader in biomedical innovation,” Loose said.

4Catalzyer’s ability to provide financial backing to innovators, who usually form companies and then beg for investment, is a key strength, he said.

“I think it’s a novel structure coupling proven entrepreneurship with resources and a big vision, big charter mission,” Loose said.

That big vision has already produced one significant success. Late last year, 4Catalyzer secured $80 million in seed funding — sources included Stanford University — for Butterfly, one of its companies. The money is in addition to $20 million committed to the company for a total investment of $100 million.

Butterfly’s goal is to create a cheap hand-held alternative to ultrasound machines.

If you’re thinking Dr. McCoy’s tricorder on Star Trek, you’re not far off, said Michalski, who is Butterfly’s chief medical officer.

“The goal of the tricorder, it’s a mantra of a lot of medical device efforts out there,” Michalski said. “One of the things that makes us different is we don’t just have a tricorder. We’re taking that data and treating people.”

Butterfly wants to take “tricorder” technology to the next level and apply it to treatment, Michalski said. The ultrasound waves that produce the device’s pictures potentially could also be used to treat diseases such as cancer. Such a treatment could replace radiation with a far less toxic and dangerous regimen, he said.

“Radiation causes cancer itself,” Michalski, a radiologist, said. “It can do damage to other tissues that aren’t cancer. Every time you irradiate someone, that tissue has a certain limit. With this, there’s no ionizing radiation to increase a patient’s cancer risk.”

Butterfly isn’t the only company in 4Catalyzer’s portfolio. Lam Pharmaceuticals is developing drugs that can be adapted to each individual’s DNA, Michalski said. Still more ventures are in the pipeline, he said.

4Catalyzer seeks to leverage three trends, Michalski said: the growth of medical devices, advances in a type of artificial intelligence called “deep learning,” and “the cloud,” the storing of huge amounts of data in central locations that can be accessed remotely. Increased computer power and so-called “Big Data” are on the cusp of stoking huge advances in medicine, he said.

4Catalyzer has attracted some of the nation’s leading experts in bioengineering, computers and other fields, Michalski said. Its goal of doing social good is a significant factor in recruiting many of its more than 30 employees, he said.

Some have come out of disillusionment with their previous fields, Michalski said. They include former “flash boys” — computer experts involved in the controversial Wall Street practice of high frequency trading — and ex-“Star Warriors” who worked on highly advanced military technology, he said.

“Our flash boys and our star warriors, they are both motivated at least in part by the opportunity to do some real good for people,” he said. “Why do they choose to come here? It’s because we’re doing something that’s really different and really has a huge impact for human beings.”