Turning Science into business

Chris Hatzis
Eavesdrop on Experts, a podcast about stories of inspiration and insights. It’s where expert types obsess, confess and profess. I’m Chris Hatzis, let’s eavesdrop on experts changing the world - one lecture, one experiment, one interview at a time.

Science and business. Business and science. It’s an ever-evolving relationship. And just like any relationship, it sometimes works well, other times not so much. What’s indisputable, though, is that the interaction between researchers and industry has never been more important. Scientists and businesses have a responsibility to work together to understand and inform the public.

In biomedicine and biotechnology, the research and innovation occurs in universities, yet most careers will be in commercial industries. Educating researchers to understand entrepreneurship, business models and the commercial contexts that they operate in makes complete sense today. But it wasn't always the case.

Dr Lynn Johnson Langer is Acting Associate Dean of Advanced Academic Programs and Director of Enterprise at Johns Hopkins University. She’s been instrumental in making this type of science-meets-business education mainstream. Lynn was in Melbourne recently to launch the new Master of Biomedical Science, Enterprise Specialisation at the University of Melbourne. It focuses on entrepreneurship and commercialisation within biomedical research and is in collaboration with the Business and Engineering Schools, the Wade Institute and Johns Hopkins University. Dr Lynn Johnson Langer sat down to chat with our reporter Dr Andi Horvath.

Andi Horvath
Lynn, introduce yourself. What's your role and where do you work?

Lynn Johnson Langer
I work at Johns Hopkins University, and I'm currently the Acting Dean of Advanced Academic Programs, which is a suite of master's degrees covering a broad variety of topics, everything from biotechnology, where I was just up until a month ago working for many years through writing and environmental science and applied economics.

But up until I became Acting Dean, I was the Program Director for Bio Entrepreneurship and Enterprise in the Center for Biotechnology Education. While you say that for those people working within biotechnology organisations that everyone should have some broad understanding of the business, that's not always the case. In fact, even today, there's very little education in - for PhD scientists in this broader field of the business side or even in the organising of clinical trials or regulatory science, et cetera.

So in the Center for Biotech Education, we've worked very hard to offer all aspects of education for biotechnology, whether it's the science or research directly or through regulatory science or bioinformatics or, in my case, I've headed up the bio entrepreneurship programs.

Andi Horvath
So are there still scientists that say, “look, why train me in business skills? I'm going to leave that to the MBAs and the businesspeople"? Why train in entrepreneurship?

Lynn Johnson Langer
Yes, there are many scientists who don't consider that understanding the broader aspects of how their science will be translated into possible therapies or diagnostics, et cetera, that will actually ultimately end up with a patient or even ultimately end up changing the way we eat or energy, et cetera. More and more, though, throughout universities I believe around the world, people are starting to understand that because biotechnology is so much more than the science, that the business components or these other components are equally important.

I'm of the opinion that it's all very important. I know there are some programs that try to train the business people in the science or train the business people to run organisations that are very science heavily based, but I believe you really do need to understand a bit of all of it. Not that you have to know how to do the science, but I think the business people really need to understand what's happening in their organisation, and the scientists need to understand what the businesspeople are doing. They don't always speak the same language.

Andi Horvath
What misconceptions do scientists sometimes have? Would they consider themselves the smartest people in the room, and how hard can business be?

Lynn Johnson Langer
Yes, you've read my mind there. Science is - and research - are really viewed as the highest intellectual pursuit, so to do science and to do research really is highly valued, and that's within the culture for hundreds of years in the United States, here in Australia, around the world, that basic belief that research is highest pursuit. So if you were to leave the science, leave the laboratory, leave your research, then you're really 'selling out' in many people's view.

Now, this has evolved over the years, so it's not quite the way it used to be, but there's still many who believe that. As far as scientists go, if they do have a discovery, if they've never had any business training, they may often think, well, how hard can it be? In reality, the statistics show that 95 per cent of start-up biotech companies fail. Now, this may be as small as a scientist - a single scientist or two have a good idea, and they're working out of their home to try to create a company that ultimately doesn't work or they have an idea that was acquired at a very early stage. But most start-up biotech companies do not continue on in the form that they began.

Andi Horvath
Ninety-five per cent is a very high number. Is that higher than other sectors of science or business?

Lynn Johnson Langer
My understanding is that most startup companies do fail, but yes, biotechnology companies are particularly vulnerable to not succeeding, and by this, I mean the reason the companies may fail is the science may fail. If the science holds up, if there's a scientist founder, it's often very difficult for them to let go. If you have a brilliant discovery, you want to carry it all the way through, and it's very, very different to lead a science laboratory and to be the head of the laboratory than to become the head of a small company that's, say, five or 10 people. That's also very different than leading a 20-person, a 100-person, 1000-person or a 50,000-person company. Almost no one has that adaptability, but if they continuously learn and are willing to adapt, they can be successful, but it's a difficult road.

Andi Horvath
So, why is biotechnology different to other industries?

Lynn Johnson Langer
It's quite different, and for a fundamental reason. Those scientists often go into the science because they have a deep desire to help humanity and potentially to cure some disease. So often, many scientists may think they want to discover a cure for cancer, for instance. As they get into the laboratory and begin to do that sort of work and maybe they do have a good discovery, when they go into the business side, it's a different mindset. They have to meet financial milestones that are different and difficult for them to make, to have to work on a very tight timeframe, as opposed to maybe searching for grants and writing grant applications is very different than this, by this Friday, we have to have this product ready to go onto marketing, et cetera.

Andi Horvath
From the Australian context, there have been decades of discussions about how good we are at research but hopeless at the development, and the missing part was the D part of R&D, so give us some insights into the transformation from R to D, from research to development.

Lynn Johnson Langer
There is a definite path that scientists go along to go from the research to the development, but again, it takes a very different mindset than many of the scientists may have. So at each stage along the development process, it requires different expertise, right? So if we took, for instance, a biopharmaceutical, a drug that's ultimately being developed, and I should say that in US dollars it costs over $1 billion now to develop from start to finish a new drug. But that drug, if they find a target that appears like it's going to be useful in a disease, then that has to be tested in the laboratory. Then it's tested in animals. Then it goes through phase 1 clinical trials, phase 2, phase 3, and those are all trials that test in humans increasing numbers of people.

So you start off with a very few number of people just to see if it's safe. You don't want to kill anyone. It may have worked well in an animal, but we don't know for sure. Once it goes through phase 1, it goes into more humans to see if it's not just safe but efficacious, and then on through until we know if it ultimately will do what the desired - have the desired outcome.

Most drugs fail at some point along that process, and that's in fact why it's so very expensive, because that $1 billion really is covering the cost of all those failures until it ultimately is fully developed and can reach a patient.

Andi Horvath
Scientists sometimes advocate the value of pure curiosity-driven research, and that its application will be later evident and later and perhaps even taxable. Now, they would say that science shouldn't be tainted by commercial profit-making agendas. That's not the right way to leverage knowledge. What's your response to that sort of thinking?

Lynn Johnson Langer
Certainly science and research for knowledge sake is critical, and I would never say that it should not be done. However, we won't be curing patients unless we get that new idea out of the laboratory and through that process, and through that development process. So for those people who have that innate desire to help humanity, they have to think a little bit broader, a little bit bigger, that it won't be helping humanity unless you get it out of the laboratory.

So I would say the field of engineering is probably farther along that path, in that they have a more applied view of the world. But in the life sciences, it's only been recently that we've really been thinking about what can we do with this biology and turn it into usable outcomes.

Andi Horvath
That was actually one of my questions. Are you really just advocating what actually engineers have done for ages? They're the great problem solvers of society. So we've just cottoned on to the fact that they're perhaps the premier faculty.

Lynn Johnson Langer
I think you might be right. I don't want to say quite that. I could get a lot of people unhappy with me, although I am the daughter of an engineer I should say, but it's very true. I think the thought of applied science is a new way of thinking, and back in the day, applied life sciences really might have meant more along the lines of winemaking.

Andi Horvath
I'm going to tackle the other side of the coin with you. There is a criticism that scientific research in academia has lost its way. The research direction is geared towards “what can I research to publish in this pressure to publish or perish, in career-advancement models of the world.” So it's lost its way.

Lynn Johnson Langer
Now, I can't speak to Australia, but I do know in the United States, it's very much the research is now being more focussed on what can - what are the applications for it. So I know, for instance, this is a slightly different path, but when we offer, say, a certificate, which would be an accredited body of knowledge with a certain number of subjects that people take, now, to offer a new certificate, we have to prove that there is an applied outcome, that it's not just knowledge for knowledge's sake.

Andi Horvath
Tell me about Johns Hopkins University. It's Johns Hopkins, isn't it? You've been there for over three decades.

Lynn Johnson Langer
Have I really been there that long? I think I was a student there, and I've been in this - in the School of Arts and Sciences in this capacity as a faculty member since 2001, so prior to that, I was a student, but I'd hate to think it's that long. You might be right.

So the name Johns Hopkins, that's an unusual name, and we get many, many people who say John Hopkins. Johns was his first name. It was his great-grandmother's maiden name was Johns, although a funny little story is that within our group in the Center for Biotech Education, every now and then, if we get frustrated, we decide we're going to spin off our own university and call it John Hopkins, and no one will notice.

Andi Horvath
Has teaching biotechnology and business made a difference at Johns Hopkins University?

Lynn Johnson Langer
Well, we think it's made a huge difference. Johns Hopkins is the number-one research university in the United States in terms of spending for R&D. Today, Johns Hopkins has led for 38 consecutive years in research spending, amounting to $2.3 billion on projects, such as fighting dengue fever, finding the functional age of cells or even explaining why the universe is making fewer stars.

Andi Horvath
I didn't know that. That's interesting.

Lynn Johnson Langer
Yeah, it’s not just in the life sciences.

Andi Horvath
What's going on in our universe?

Lynn Johnson Langer
Yeah.

Andi Horvath
Lynn, talk to me about women and biotech. This is something that I know you've championed a lot. There's certainly been discussions over the decades of lack of diversity in boardrooms. Give us some more insights into this area, particularly in the biotech industries.

Lynn Johnson Langer
In the early 2000s, in the Washington, DC, and Baltimore area, several women came together and formed an organisation called Women in Bio, and they did that in part because many of the networking events, they found themselves the only women in the room. They felt like if women had an ability and a way to gather together and to support each other, that they could help advance women in their careers. Over the years, Women in Bio grew in that regional area to about 250 women. In 2010, I became the President of Women in Bio, and my charge was to grow the organisation and to make it a national organisation. So by the end of my term that year, we were almost at - we were about 1500 women. Everywhere we went around the country, more women were interested to come together to support each other, right?

So now, the focus of Women in Bio has really grown to support women to advance their careers at all levels, so we've been looking at helping women in the boardroom, right? There are very few women in the boardroom, but it turns out there's a lot of research on women in corporate boards and diversity on corporate boards. It - there's some very good, solid research that shows that of Fortune 500 companies, those with three or more women on the board showed a 73 per cent higher return on sales, an 83 per cent higher return on equity, and 112 per cent higher return on invested capital.

Another point about Women in Bio that you might find interesting is that we really believe you need to start women and kids at a young age to like the science and to want to go into the science. But there's much more - as we've been talking about - much more to a biotech company than just the science. So there's a group of Women in Bio called YWIB, or Young Women in Bio, and these are all around the country in the US that give young teenage girls, around 13 or 14 years old, the opportunity to visit biotech companies after school, and they tour the different - the laboratory or the regulatory spaces. So they go through the entire company, and then they give them pizza after school.

So when my daughter, who's now a young woman in her 20s, was 13, I took her to MedImmune, which is a very famous biotech company in the US. They made FluMist. I don't know if you've ever not had to take a flu shot, but the mist, that's their - was at the time their big claim to fame. So I brought my daughter, who was very good in science and math and also had a big heart, to MedImmune, so she could tour around, and she went with her friend. I thought she was going to come out and tell me she wanted to work in the lab and make vaccines to help people. But afterwards, when I picked her up, she came bounding out. She jumped in the car, and I said, “how did it go?” She said, “I want to be a corporate lawyer.”

Andi Horvath
Is she?

Lynn Johnson Langer
No, actually, she ended up going to Johns Hopkins and got her master's in public mental health, so a different path, but still.

Andi Horvath
An allied industry.

Lynn Johnson Langer
Exactly.

Andi Horvath
Let's talk about you, Lynn. How did the journey start off for you, for making the connection that this was hugely missing at the university teaching level, this notion of business and science together? When did it start for you?

Lynn Johnson Langer
Well, I started working at the National Institutes of Health as a microbiologist while I was still in college, doing my undergraduate work, and I worked there for about four years. Along the way, I was thinking - I was one of those people who wanted to help humanity. I wanted to cure cancer. That's really what got me - that was the drive that brought me there, but I realised that really working in the lab, doing the hand work, hands as they call it, really wasn't for me. I wasn't enjoying it as much as I could. I was taking graduate courses in immunology, but a woman came into the lab who was a sales rep for equipment, and I asked her a little bit about it. She said she was the only one on the east coast who did that sort of thing, and by the way, they were looking for someone.

So I thought I'd take a year off and see what it was like to work in the life sciences but outside the lab. I ended up loving it. Long story short, I ended up going back to school for an MBA to really learn the science, but I should back up a bit. While I was in the lab, I was just fascinated by the fact that the scientists didn't really respect the administrators and the administrators didn't really respect the scientists, and I didn't understand it. I thought if we could just figure out how do we get all these people to talk to each other - anyway, I did leave the lab, and ultimately, I started consulting with companies who were having some sort of management crisis in the sciences.

More and more, I learned that they just weren't speaking the same vocabulary. It's just a different set of people. So my career has really been focussed on how do we bring - bridge this gap between science and business and administration, et cetera. I've learned to a certain extent, yes, it's understanding vocabulary. It's learning to respect what each other does, but it's also learning to respect that some scientists will just want to stay in the science. Some business people just want to stay in business, and that's great, as long as they respect what the other does.

Andi Horvath
I think that wholesome approach to education is the key, not just to biotechnology but perhaps every faculty. Lynn, share your Rwanda case study with us.

Lynn Johnson Langer
Well, it's actually a letter that I just received just a few weeks ago before I came here to visit Australia and the University of Melbourne, and it came from one of our graduates, who was just reaching out to let me know that he had a new job opportunity and he just simply wanted to tell me about it.

He had completed our master's in biotechnology, enterprise and entrepreneurship a few years ago, and while most - I would say 80 per cent of the people in that degree are scientists who continue on to do science, but they are now connecting it to the business world, this young man was doing database design. He went into for - database design for mobile health applications, but he ultimately started working with the Rwanda Ministry of Health to record - to do medical record recording. It was just fascinating, because he realised that he was - he said to me, he's at his best when he's working on social justice-oriented projects that incorporated much of what he'd learned in the master's in biotech, enterprise and entrepreneurship. He said he wouldn't have had this Rwanda opportunity if it hadn't have been for that business degree.

Andi Horvath
Lynn, what would you like us to think about next time we hear the word biotechnology?

Lynn Johnson Langer
I would like you to think about the promise that biotech holds for all of us, that it's really not just about any one thing. It's not just about the science. It's not just about the business, but it's really about how do we take those discoveries and bring them to market to fulfil what their promise is.

Biotechnology is still relatively a young industry, and while there are universities and companies who have really made grade advances, there is so much more than can be done. So in the United States, we've got so many more schools that can become involved. Here in Australia, here with my work with University of Melbourne, what I've been so impressed with is how, yes, it's not as far along in the development as we are at Johns Hopkins, and there are other places in the United States that are even farther along than we are at Johns Hopkins, but it's all the same path. And so when you think about biotechnology, think about the promise and the opportunity that it holds to really offer all kinds of exciting ideas, not just in drug discovery but in energy and food and not to be afraid of it.

Andi Horvath
Dr Lynn Johnson Langer, thank you.

Lynn Johnson Langer
Thank you so much. I'm delighted to be here.

Chris Hatzis
Thanks to Dr Lynn Johnson Langer, Acting Associate Dean of Advanced Academic Programs and Director of Enterprise at Johns Hopkins University. And thanks to our reporter Dr Andi Horvath.

Eavesdrop on Experts - stories of inspiration and insights - was made possible by the University of Melbourne. This episode was recorded on July 18, 2018. You’ll find a full transcript on the Pursuit website.

Audio engineering by me, Chris Hatzis. Co-production - Dr Andi Horvath and Silvi Vann-Wall.

Eavesdrop on Experts is licensed under Creative Commons, Copyright 2018, the University of Melbourne.

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