Delta
G
New therapies from understanding ageing
Delta
G
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Professor John Caldwell, Dean of Medicine at Liverpool University and a leading European expert in drug development, once asked me, after a session where Aubrey had fired more science at him in ten minutes that he usually got in an entire conference, 'Where did you find Aubrey?' 'I found him on the Internet' I said.
Today Aubrey's face and ideas are gaining a worldwide audience in scientific circles and the general public, but in 1999 he was relatively unknown outside biogerontology when we exchanged e-mails, and then met in The Eagle pub, Cambridge, famously the place where Watson and Crick went to celebrate discovering the structure of DNA. He was interested in anyone who would talk about, and explore, the implications of his ideas on the nature of ageing, and what we could do about it. I was fascinated by someone who seemed to have read every paper ever published and with genuinely novel insight into critical questions of biology, and a 'systems biology' approach to understanding ageing, In 2000 we talked a lot about that, from gene therapy to medicines. We considered a commercial development route. We talked to Ian Holt, a mitochondrial cell biologist who Aubrey knew, who respected Aubrey's encyclopedic knowledge, and who was willing to do some experiments to test Aubrey's ideas. We talked to the Medical Research Council (UK) about a collaboration. But at the time I was being paid to set up and run Amedis Pharmaceuticals (which subsequently merged with Paradigm Therapeutics, which was itself bought by Takeda), , so we kept in touch, let the ideas ferment, and pursued more immediate career goals. Aubrey's ideas matured, his fame grew, and I learned about silicon chemistry.
In 2002 I moved on from Amedis, and connected up with Aubrey again. More Eagle beer was drunk.
Business planning.
(Actually, not the Eagle). Picture courtesy Poppy Berry
We defined a programme that would exploit Aubrey's ideas on the role of energy metabolism in the causation of ageing, but also be a tractable small molecule discovery programme and would target a clinical indication that could be taken into humans. It seemed do-able. We talked to Ian, and spent a lot of time refining the programme so that it actually could be done. But who would finance it? 'Leave that to me', I said, veteran of several biotech business plans by now, and wrote the first business plan, took it to Cambridge Challenge Fund and NESTA. To Ian's frank amazement, we got funding.
Moral for entrepreneurs. Enthusiasm for what you are doing is critical. A sharp suit, an MBA and a PhD in PowerPoint does not substitute for genuine enthusiasm. Patience is critical. It was 4 years plus between Aubrey and me first meeting and the first Delta G experiments being done. Beer is critical. Or your recreation of choice. And genuine novelty is critical.
William Bains, Autumn 2005
Postscript, Autumn 2008.
Of course, enthusiasm, novelty etc. is not enough, you also need luck and a financing environment that supports your endevour, and at the end of 2007 we ran out of both. While the basic concept behind Delta G's cancer programme remains sound (I am sure, and a number of leading scientists agreed when we presented it to them), the experiments did not turn up the results we needed, the cash ran out, and the 'credit crunch' happened. Our existing investors were very supportative and sympathetic (many, many thanks for Cambridge Challenge Fund and to NESTA, who were excellent throughout), but could not continue to support the Company. No-one else in the 2007/2008 era is supporting biotech in the UK. So the patience, energy and enthusiasm finally ran out and after 6 years of trying I closed the Company down.
Moral for entrepreneurs: Know when you are beaten.
I continue to work with Aubrey, and in the biotechnology start-up industry. NESTA and CCF continue to support innovative ideas when they can (alas, with negligible support from other investors). I learnt so much about starting companies that I wrote half a dozen papers and a heavy academic book on the subject, and ended up teaching company creation and funding at Cambridge on this course. Ian Holt at the MRC continues with world-leading research in the cell biology of mitochondria, and has all the compounds we made stored in a fridge for further testing. So who knows? One day the work we started may come to something, even if the Company doesn't.