Panelists at the April 30 gathering of the CURE/Yale BioHaven Entrepreneurship Series agreed that recent trends in genomics and stem cell research, as well as hospital recordkeeping, are generating business opportunities for Connecticut.
“In the near future, many children with any developmental disorder will be sequenced. All cancers will be sequenced," said panelist Edison Liu, M.D. “I don’t think you’re necessarily going to be sequenced at birth, but rather the first time you have a need. At that point, though, your entire genome will be recorded and the information will be stored in a secure place that you have the key to. It will be there when the time comes that you want another piece of information about your genome. So instead of taking a series of individual medical tests over your lifetime, we’ll see a model where you take one big test and then pay for accessing that information over your lifetime.”
Dr. Liu is president and CEO of The Jackson Laboratory, and independent, nonprofit organization focusing on mammalian genetics that pioneered the use of mouse models in medical research. Last January the company broke ground in Farmington, CT for construction of a new facility on the campus of the University of Connecticut Health Center. "The new Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine will help establish Connecticut as a global leader in biomedical research, spur economic development, and improve the health of Connecticut residents," Dr. Liu said.
The other panelists April 30 were Marc Lalande, Ph.D., who is professor and chairman of the Department of Genetics and Developmental Biology, and associate dean for Research Planning and Coordination, at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine; and Haifan Lin, Ph.D., who is professor of Cell Biology and of Genetics at Yale University, and director of the Yale Stem Cell Center.
Dr. Liu mentioned the emerging technique of building “cancer avatars,” whereby a patient’s tumor is sequenced in detail and at the same time expanded in a group of mice, so that “we can have a virtual clinical trial on that patient’s tumor, testing each and every therapeutic that’s there.”
Dr. Lin and Dr. Lalande reminded the audience that stem cell research, too, has reached the point where a patient’s individual tissues can be reproduced in a laboratory dish, in order to study them and their reaction to potential drug therapies. “We have the ability to edit a genome and see the effects of that in stem cell tissues,” Dr. Lalande said.
In an effort to foster interdisciplinary genomics research, the University of Connecticut’s Institute for Systems Genomics, which Dr. Lalande heads, will invest $1 million this spring among four pilot research programs that demonstrate collaboration among the Institute’s partners. The partners include the University of Connecticut, the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine, the UConn Health Center, Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, and other regional hospitals and health care organizations.
Towards a new bioscience environment
The regulatory environment has not always kept up with the pace of change, the panelists agreed. On the one hand, Dr. Lin pointed out, the FDA has been very cautious in regulating stem cell clinical trials, even compared with countries like Japan, which traditionally has a very high standard. Lin went on to show his excitement at CT’s breakthrough. “Yale New-Haven is the only hospital in the country approved for cell-based therapy for congenital heart disease, and though it took four years of regulatory approval process to get there, several trials are underway.
On the other hand, “the situation is much more wide open when it comes to the genome,” Dr. Lalande said. “You can send DNA you swab yourself directly to a number of companies without physician intervention. You can take blood from a first-trimester pregnant woman and send it into a company and get a genetic profile.”
Dr. Liu said that developing consistent and efficient regulation of emerging medical technologies was an important issue. “And it’s also a business opportunity,” he said. “What if you had a medical record environment that you knew was secure, the data searchable and retrievable in a well-cataloged manner. Isn’t that a business model that would increase efficiency in hospitals, and increase your autonomy with regard to your own medical information?”
“To succeed in these areas, you’ve got to develop a biotech infrastructure or ecosystem,” Dr. Liu said. “The ecosystem includes physical infrastructure, human as well as financial capital, and a social environment that allows entrepreneurs to get going fast.”
“We need to think strategically and we need to think globally,” Dr. Lin said. “Connecticut is in a good position to take a leading position as new technologies emerge. We are situated well geographically in the Eastern Corridor. We have a strong industrial heritage, a strong education system, and a culture of open-mindedness.”
The panelists were introduced by Frank J. Marco, J.D., a partner in the law firm Wiggin and Dana and a member of the CURE executive committee. “There’s been a sea change in Connecticut the last couple of years,” Marco said. We’re part of a national trend towards innovation and towards supporting innovation.”
The BioHaven event began with remarks from Susan Froshauer, president and CEO of CURE. She explained that outreach through programs such as BioHaven was part of CURE’s mission to ensure a sustainable, high-value bioscience and healthcare community that keeps the Connecticut economy strong, and she thanked the program’s co-sponsors, including Yale, Wiggin and Dana, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Elm Street Ventures, and the Economic Development Corporation of New Haven.