Paimun (PJ) Amini

It’s exciting to see Oregon policy makers eager to learn how the state can work to build and strengthen every level of the state’s biotech ecosystem. Our three big takeaways today were… 1) Venture creation often starts in academic labs after new intellectual property is filed. If the state worked to increase research funding to flagship institutions like Oregon State University, the University of Oregon, Portland State, and OHSU, we would likely see an increase in the number of patents filed in Oregon. Additionally, any funding used to reduce tuition costs or prevent further increasess would limit the burden of student-debt on Oregonians, making entrepreneurship less risky for young people who would otherwise be forced into a traditional career path. Either policy could increase the number of biotech (and general deeptech)companies in Oregon. 2) The Oregon Bioscience Incubator and OTRADI is a wonderful organization that provides an essential early-stage landing pad for startups in the form of low-cost laboratory space. However, there’s a lot of room for impactful growth for OBI as the steward of biotech in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. We identified a list of aspirational peers for OBI like MassBio, The Engine, and other government and non-government organizations around the globe. These organizations provide a template for success and roadmap for growing the biotech industry in Oregon. In my opinion, the legislature should adopt policies to increase OBI funding for improved facilities, increased SBIR/STTR-matching, and enhanced programming for entrepreneurial education and investor relations. Implementing these changes will increase the chance of success for Oregon-grown startups. Moreover, when coupled with Portland’s low cost-of-living compared to hubs like SF & Boston, these changes could attract other startups to the region. 3) Finally, we discussed what incentives there are for successful companies grown in Oregon to stay in Oregon. We discussed the recent example of AbSci, a 100 employee biotech company, which started in Portland but later moved to Vancouver, Washington for rational financial decisions — due in-part to Washington-state incentives. In my opinion, the state should work to assess and understand disparities between Oregon and other states’ (especially WA & CA) policies that incentivize companies to leave. Matching those incentives so Oregon companies stay in Oregon would be a great first step. More optimistically, the growth of biotech could be used to increase the number of companies in Portland’s urban core. Biotech companies, even those that leverage the latest laboratory automation tools, generally require their scientists be in-office 5 days/week to work in the lab. Policies from the state, or even the City of Portland, that support office-to-lab conversions would certainly be a boon for the industry and the City of Portland. Note, I’m biased here as someone working to grow an R&D team in Portland.

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Peter Kelly and I has the Honor to meet Prof. Venkatesan Sundaresan, 2024 Wolf Prize winner (often referred to as the "Nobel Prize of Agriculture) in Agriculture, at the Rice Functional Genomics Conference today. His groundbreaking work on synthetic apomixis aligns perfectly with Grow Further's mission to support innovative agricultural research. Prof. Sundaresan's discoveries have the potential to empower smallholder farmers globally, enabling them to produce high-yield crops more sustainably. It's inspiring to see how cutting-edge plant science can directly impact food security and farmer livelihoods - exactly the kind of research Grow Further aims to accelerate. #AgInnovation #FoodSecurity #GrowFurther #climatechange

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Click the link below to find out how to get amazing results from your grow with Advanced Nutrients!

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💊 Seattle Accelerates in Life-Sciences Sector Growth 💊 Seattle-Bellevue-Tacoma ranks among the top 25 fastest-growing regions for life-science talent, buoyed by significant increases in biological and biomedical degree completions. 🔹 Educational Growth: Seattle witnessed a 15.1% rise in life-science graduates from 2017 to 2022, indicating strong local academic support for the industry. 🔹 Economic Impact: Life sciences significantly contribute to Washington's economy, with substantial job creation and revenue generation. 🔹 Industry Infrastructure: The area hosts a dense cluster of life-sciences companies, benefiting from state-supported programs that drive innovation and development. The Seattle area's comprehensive growth across educational, economic, and infrastructural dimensions establishes it as a key player in the national life-sciences landscape, poised for sustained progress and innovation. #LifeSciences #SeattleEconomy #InnovationGrowth #UpendoStaffing #LoveWhatYouDo

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I am excited to announce that one of Access Discovery Bio’s first clients is Cache DNA based out of San Carlos, CA. Cache has an exciting new technology that allows for the “Caching” of DNA and RNA, allowing them to be stored at ambient room temperature. Caching can be done on a small scale with various tubes or can be completely integrated into existing automated technologies that handle plates for working at scale. This is a profound development in my eyes after decades of both working in biorepositories and shipping frozen samples all over the world. I have personally witnessed sample evaporation and loss despite long term cold storage. I’ve seen the dramatic rise in costs not only to create and maintain freezer farms but also to safely ship frozen samples which can often dip into the thousands for a single shipment. I have personally been on call and had to travel into a lab at 2am to recover samples in a failed freezer or during a power outage. I have also worked in the lab having to use various techniques to properly freeze or thaw samples to work with them. For many reasons, I see this as a transformational technology. Who doesn’t like to save massive amounts of money? Everyone does of course and this comes with the added benefits of reducing carbon footprints and helping the environment. Michael Becich and his team at Cache are a great group of scientists who have created something truly beneficial to basic science. Cache is presently offering free demo kits to select customers while supplies last. Given my network is made up almost entirely of people using or storing samples for research, please help me in giving this great start up a signal boost and please reach out directly to me with interest in either demo kits or more information. #biobanking #DNA #RNA #technology #biospecimens https://lnkd.in/eK9q9JQk

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Being a national leader in livestock production means being a leader in livestock disease prevention. New survey shows support for biotech & biomanufacturing, like what we do at Genvax, has never been higher. https://lnkd.in/ggw4aAM5

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Do we still need humans to innovate? The most recent episode of our Inside Innovation video podcast series featured my colleagues Amanda McClerren and Jeremy Williams discussing AI, and they left this question for the end of their chat: What do AI tools suggest for the future of climate-smart farming systems? Let me connect two pieces of this brief clip: Amanda's mention of "we still need humans," coupled with Jeremy's suggestion for AI "to automate tasks that, frankly, are boring or that we're not very good at." Scientists' time is best spent not on filling wells on a plate or inspecting lines of code, but instead in making the connections and leaps of logic that only human beings with intuition and creativity can do. A well-governed set of AI tools will make that more possible, not less, and I'm looking forward to seeing that true logic emerge as our tools mature. #AI #AgInnovation #RegenerativeAgriculture

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The Singular Genomics weirdo acquisition is moving along (ht Aseq 🙏): New Deerfield offer of $24 up from Tang's $12 and Deerfield starting bid of $10. Key thing here is that they have gone exclusive meaning Singular can't negotiate any other offers so seems likely Tang is out and this $24 deal will happen. At $24 the total price paid will be $60M and the company has about $100M in cash and not much debt; Deerfield owns about 10% so it's paying about $54M to get $100M so makes about $46M less costs I dunno let's say $40M cash plus anything else it can get for the company e.g. someone buys the IP, designs, etc. These deals are for some reason super interesting to me as they seem so unlikely - where else can you buy a $100M in cash for $54M in cash with (I think) zero risk - you don't hand over the $54M until you're sure to get the $100M 🤔🤔🤔 Of course there's another way to think about it that Singular raised say $150M in VC and let's guess that half of that came from Deerfield, so they put in $75M. There choice now is do nothing and so lose all $75M. Or they do this transaction and only lose $75M - $40M = $35M so they've halved their loses on the investment. Ye ha!

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