Non-toxic rat-control gives purpose to start-up-staff
Getting rid of rats without harming the environment is a meaningful first target for Danish biotech start-up TriptoBIO. The company is a spin-out from Innovation District-partner University of Copenhagen, and its purpose is just one feature, that made it easier for them to attract staff. We talked to a recent graduate, a foreign talent and a leader drawn from big pharma about working for a start-up. By Jes Andersen.
Useful but rare ingredient
Rats cause major harm to societies worldwide when they damage our health, food and infrastructure. In US alone they destroy crops worth more than 27 billion dollars every year. They are hard to control with traps and poison, so the American company Senestech developed a birth-control pill for the pests. This is great, except they extract the active ingredient from a rare plant. TriptoBIO wanted to produce industrial amounts of the scarce ingredient in bioengineered yeast. This effort enabled them to persuade their head of research & development to leave his safe and lucrative job with a major pharma company.
I was responsible for bringing late-stage pharmaceuticals to market. This position was far removed from research and decision-making. When TriptoBIO’s CSO, Johan Andersen-Ranberg, called with an offer to truly help people, while working at the centre of scientific as well as commercial decisions, I jumped at the chance, and it has been even better than I dared hope”: Kenneth Kongstad, PhD, COO and Head of Research & Development, TriptoBIO.
Based on UCPH-research
In the long run, TriptoBIO hopes to replace a wide range of valuable ingredients that are currently sourced from plants of limited availability. Their current focus on the rat-contraceptive Triptolide stems from CSO Andersen-Ranbergs’ work in synthetic biology at University of Copenhagen published in 2022. Today, in late summer 2024, the company is just months away from shipping its first product, but Quinn Heck started working just as the project was transitioning from academia to commerce. Entering a start-up was risky for the young American. But worth it.
I don’t know if my next job will be in a start-up, but I have gotten a ton of skills out of working in this one. I have been allowed to work on the many-many steps of the whole process and to wear many different hats. I have taken over projects where I didn’t know a whole lot about the subject and most importantly, working in a start-up has taught me to be a much sharper judge of whether a scientific problem really needs solving, or is just nice to know”: Quinn Heck, MSc., Scientist, TriptoBIO.
Sharing lab-space with other domain experts
Biotechnology can be broken into two fundamental challenges. Breeding and feeding. You need to breed an organism, such as yeast, so that it produces the compound you need. Then you fine-tune the flow of nutrients till it produces a lot. TriptoBIO investigates both issues in labs at the University of Copenhagen. For recent graduate Andrea Siegl, this has made the transition from bio-engineering student to start-up staffer easy.
I came to Copenhagen to write my thesis and got a research-assistant-job as a strain engineer with TriptoBIO. Because the company shares lab-space with the university’s researchers, the line between academia and commerce has been very blurred for me and that’s nice. I am a real lab-rat at heart. Our location has allowed me to keep feeling like a researcher even though I work for a company”: Andrea Siegl, MSc., Scientist, TriptoBIO.
An introduction to Danish work-culture
Very few scientific founders have the business insights needed to launch their start-up. TriptoBIO had the good fortune to be admitted into incubation and acceleration programmes with the Innovation District Copenhagen-located BioInnovation Institute. For Austrian Andrea and American Quinn the Copenhagen location has given them a positive introduction to Danish work-culture.
I like that the Danish work-culture is less hierarchical than in Austria. I never have to worry about saying the wrong thing to my boss. We can even be silly together”: Andrea Siegl, MSc., Scientist, TriptoBIO.
And:
Having to un-learn American work ethics has been difficult. A US boss will expect you to stay at the workplace for a lot of hours. My Danish boss gets annoyed if I don’t go home. What I discovered is that I get more work done in fewer hours here. Maybe that whole US “Put In The Hours” ethic is more theatrical than useful”: Quinn Heck, MSc., Scientist, TriptoBIO.
International staff is vital
For the innovation district it is highly valuable, that international talent is attracted by the work/life balance and other aspects of Danish work-culture.
Research-based companies face global competition for highly trained staff. For us, the availability of hard-to-find specialists is a key argument, when companies or founders from abroad look towards establishing themselves in our city and our district”: Kristoffer Klebak, Head of Secretariat, Innovation District Copenhagen.
Ready to scale up
The international R&D team at TriptoBIO has made great progress in the last two years and a scientific breakthrough in the last two months has dramatically improved productivity of the proprietary TriptoBIO yeast strains. With more product from each production batch, the company is now getting ready to scale up. For Andrea, Quinn and Kenneth, the prospect of finally replacing environmentally harmful rat-poisons makes the years outside their comfort zones worth the whole journey.
