MIT’s Collins on Startups, Second Chances
Summary
Gone are the days when a bevy of high-profile startups like Sapphire Energy, Solazyme, and J. Craig Venter’s LS9 offered hopes of renewable, eco-friendly fuels made by engineered algae.The “clinical space,” he says, has become a dominant focus for synthetic biologists—meaning tools that could be used for medical research, diagnostics, or even “living” therapeutics like the ones Cambridge, MA-based Synlogic, a startup from Collins’s lab, is trying to develop.Despite winning of numerous scientific awards and a MacArthur fellowship, getting tapped by Eric Lander and Lee Hood to help with the Human Genome Project in the late ’90s, and being one of the more established company creators in synthetic biology—a few recent spinoffs from his lab include Synlogic, Sample6 Technologies, and EnBiotix—he’s keenly aware of what he can’t do.Along with friend (and later, Hollywood actor and writer) Mike O’Malley, he “devoured” a business book called In Search of Excellence, which centered on lessons learned from a number of successful companies.For example: Atlas Venture, a Boston biotech VC firm, was interested in the work Collins and postdoctoral student Timothy Lu were doing and arranged a meeting.
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