Yale Ventures opens doors to entrepreneurship

When Yale scientists found a monoclonal antibody that can temporarily disable the blood-brain barrier, they knew they were onto something big. A network of tightly packed cells in blood vessels and tissue, the barrier prevents toxins and pathogens from entering the brain—but also blocks the entry of therapeutic drugs. Anne Eichmann, PhD, Ensign Professor of Medicine (Cardio-vascular Medicine) and professor of cellular and molecular physiology at Yale School of Medicine (YSM) and the leader of the team that made the discovery, saw the antibody as a potential drug delivery tool—one that might make the brain more accessible to drugs and thereby revolutionize the treatment of brain tumors and infections, Alzheimer’s disease, depression, and other brain disorders.

Eichmann was eager to patent the antibody and develop its commercial potential. But as a basic scientist, she knew she needed help with the nuts and bolts of starting a company. She reached out to the robust technology transfer team that in 2022 became part of Yale Ventures, a newly launched initiative designed to provide faculty and student innovators with legal assistance, market research, financial analysis, and access to lab space—in addition to mentoring and cash awards. The new initiative can even help researchers connect with venture capitalists and assemble the teams needed to form successful startup companies.

“Yale Ventures makes the transition from bench science into entrepreneurial life really easy for all parties involved,” said Eichmann, who was able to secure two patents and was awarded $400,000 in seed money to advance her enterprise. “They guide you through all these different steps and accompany you along the way … they’re rendering a huge service to basically the world because scientists get their things out into the medical field and doctors get access to new medicine.”

Eichmann now heads up the New Haven-based startup D2B3 (D squared representing “drug delivery,” and B cubed representing the “blood brain barrier”), which is conducting animal experiments to gauge the safety and effectiveness of the antibody while seeking additional funding from venture capitalists. A clinical trial of the antibody, which would be delivered intravenously, might begin within the next two years, she said.

Yale has been patenting and licensing intellectual property developed at the university since 1980, when passage of the University and Small Business Patent Procedures Act (also known as the Bayh-Dole Act) allowed universities to claim ownership of inventions supported by federally funded research. But Yale Ventures, which consolidated the university’s Office of Cooperative Research and other innovation and entrepreneurship programs at the university under a single umbrella, supercharged Yale’s support of technology transfer.

“The university decided that it really wanted to increase its focus and support for Yale innovation and the people who are looking to translate our research discoveries and ideas into new ventures and into corporate partnerships to see those technologies developed into new products,” said Josh Geballe, senior associate provost for entrepreneurship and innovation at Yale and the managing director of Yale Ventures.

Yale Ventures has “a number of programs that support faculty who are seeking to build a startup company to develop their research discoveries,” Geballe said. “The one that is most central to serving faculty at the Yale School of Medicine is the Blavatnik Fund for Innovation at Yale,” which provides awards of up to $300,000—and sometimes more—for promising ventures.

Geballe sees Yale Ventures not just as a mechanism for facilitating innovation and technology transfer, but also as a powerful tool for recruiting and retaining talented faculty members and students. “There are many students today who aspire to careers in entrepreneurship or in early-stage disruptive companies,” he said. “And to be attractive to them, it’s important that we have programs that they seek out as well.”

Yale Ventures is also seen as a big win for the broader community.

“From an economic development perspective, these companies import hundreds of millions of dollars in investment capital,” Geballe said of the dozens of businesses the initiative has fostered and which operate in and around New Haven. “That capital goes back into the economy. It creates jobs. It creates tax income for the state. It’s good for our host city, and it fuels economic development around our campus.”

It’s also helpful if the startup companies can be close to their founding scientists at Yale, he said, so that principal investigators “can walk across the street on their lunch break and spend time with their startup company. It increases the chances that the company will be successful, particularly in those early years when they’re still trying to advance the early science and get into the clinic.” With a staff now totaling 60—up from 42 at the time of its launch—Yale Ventures operates out of multiple offices on campus. As of September, it will be headquartered at 101 College Street, a 10-story $300 million state-of-the-art life sciences building completed in late 2023.

Yale Ventures aids faculty and students across the university—including those in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School of the Environment, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. But most of its work involves members of the YSM community. “There’s a lot of potential at Yale, especially in the life sciences,” said Stephen Knight, MD, president and senior managing partner of F-Prime Capital, an investment firm with offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts, San Francisco, and London. “Yale has a great opportunity to both bring its wonderful discoveries faster to market, faster to patients … and to do it within the New Haven ecosystem rather than exporting it to Boston or the San Francisco Bay area,” both of which are centers of biotech entrepreneurship. A 1990 graduate of Yale School of Medicine and the Yale School of Management, Knight joined the Yale Ventures board of advisors in March 2024. F-Prime Capital has invested in several Yale startups, including RIGImmune, which aims to develop a new class of therapies for viral infections and cancer, and Rallybio, which is pursuing clinical trials of new treatments for rare diseases.

Other entrepreneurially minded Yale researchers who have received critical help from Yale Ventures and its predecessor initiatives include Sidi Chen, PhD, associate professor of genetics and of neurosurgery; and Rohan Khera, MD, assistant professor of medicine (cardiovascular medicine) and of biostatistics (health informatics). Khera is the director of the Cardiovascular Data Science Lab (CarDS) at YSM, which he says is one of the few programs in the country that is developing artificial intelligence for cardiovascular-specific applications.

With help from the university, Chen has launched several companies in recent years that are pursuing new treatments for cancer. Among them are EvolveImmune Therapeutics, launched in 2019 and based in Branford, Connecticut; and Cellinfinity Bio, launched in 2021, with operations in New Haven and San Francisco. He praised the Yale Ventures team for assisting with so many different aspects of the startup process, going far beyond protecting intellectual property and helping arrange licensing agreements.

“They won’t start a company for you,” Chen said. “You have to start it yourself. But they are well connected … they can help introduce you to investors and improve your pitches, which are used to raise funding. And they can help you find people who are the industry fit for starting companies, which is very different from doing research or clinical activities in the Yale School of Medicine.”

Chen called Yale Ventures “the perfect bridge and incubator” for taking potential new therapies from the lab to the marketplace. He said he made new connections at the Yale Ventures Innovation Summit held at the university in late May. Now in its 10th year, the annual event brings together researchers, investors, and industry representatives—and this year attracted more than 2,200 attendees. Two hundred sixty researchers gave presentations at the event; 31 were awarded a total of $350,000 from the event’s sponsors, which included the Blavatnik Fund.

Khera’s startup, Ensight-AI, is developing AI software tools, including one that can perform advanced diagnostics of often-undetected heart problems. It does this by using machine learning to analyze photographs of electrocardiograms. Khera said the tool can detect the electrical “signatures” of cardiovascular anomalies that even experienced cardiologists have trouble spotting. These include cardiac amyloidosis, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and valvular disorders of the heart.

“It’s augmenting human capacity in ways we didn’t imagine before,” he said of the tool, adding that he hopes it will enable cardiologists to diagnose problems earlier in the course of disease than is now possible—when treatment is likely to be more effective. “I think we’ll get these tools to the FDA in the next six months to a year, and then they’ll be used in practice,” he added.

Working with Yale Ventures is a “very seamless” process, according to Khera, who was awarded $300,000. “They’re ready to meet multiple times a week if you want them to,” he said. “Different members of the community—they’ll make time for us.”

Of course, there’s no guarantee that startup ventures will succeed or that their backers will make money. “The reality is that at this very early stage,” Geballe said, “even the best investors in the world are wrong nine times out of 10.” But that may not be much of a deterrent to researchers. “My dream is to make an impact with my research,” Eichmann said. “I mean that’s every scientist’s dream. It’s not about the money. It’s about doing good.”