ACES profile: Get lots of advice early on – and question all of it

Andrew Lynn says he’s not a risk-taking person and doesn’t fit the profile of a crazy inventor. But he knows a good idea when he sees one. The University of Cambridge graduate is founder and CEO of spin-out company Orthomimetics Ltd.

The company, which began operations in January 2007, is moving on a fast pace. It received CE-mark approval for its cartilage regeneration product in December 2008, and plans to start clinical trials this month with 15 patients in Budapest. It also expects FDA 510(k) medical device approval for a bone repair product in the third quarter of this year.

“An opportunity presented itself, and it became obvious it was too good to pass up,” said Lynn, 31, whose company grew out of a UK-government sponsored collaboration between the University of Cambridge and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Cambridge-MIT Institute. Lynn got involved in the project as a PhD student in the laboratory of William Bonfield, professor of medical materials at the University of Cambridge.

 

Lynn won an inaugural ACES Academic Enterprise Awards Europe 2008 from the Science|Business Innovation Board last December in materials/chemistry, one of the six award categories. ACES is the first pan-European programme to recognise enterprise in universities and research institutes.

Entrepreneurs: born or bred?

Whether entrepreneurs are born or made remains a topic for debate, but Lynn possesses the right stuff to work on his own when he can and seek help when it is needed.

“I like working for myself,” said Lynn, who admits he doesn’t necessarily do things exactly as expected by others. “I like going into a situation I don’t [fully] understand.”

That involved taking roundabout routes that led to new opportunities. As an undergraduate at Queen’s University in Canada, he originally wanted to study archaeology, medicine or history. The university told him he could transfer into any of those three disciplines from engineering, and he ended up with a degree in materials and metallurgical engineering.

“I wanted to design cushioning systems for running shoes,” said Lynn, who doesn’t run but who is an avid volleyball player. “I wanted to be able to explain to a five-year-old kid what I do and have them say ‘wow’.” He says that’s not so much a priority any more, but it did get him into science.

After his third year at Queen’s University, he took a chance on a placement at the Department of National Defence (Canada), where he became a junior research assistant, coordinating fatigue testing on used F-18 Hornet fighter aircraft.

“It was a fun project,” he said. “I was lucky to be working under a guy who gave good guidance, but knew how to get out of the way.” Lynn’s work went beyond aircraft: he initiated, designed, and implemented a test programme related to coated titanium hip-prosthesis materials.

That led him to his next stop in Japan, where he was a Japanese Ministry of Education Foreign Exchange Fellow at the Kyoto Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences. He worked with surgeons in a preclinical development programme for a nerve-regeneration product currently used by more than 500 patients.

Lynn then went for his PhD at the University of Cambridge, where his research was the design and development of novel tissue-regeneration scaffolds for repairing articular joint defects. That’s where he initiated, designed and coordinated a product and preclinical development programme sponsored by the Cambridge-MIT Institute that led to the founding of Orthomimetics, the first spin-out venture from the Cambridge-MIT Institute.

Know when to seek advice

Lynn counts himself fortunate to have had access to talented people with sound business advice when he was spinning out the company.

“The best and hardest lesson is to get a lot of advice and go meet people early in the process,” he said. “When you start a company you can do what you can on your own, but you need to know when to seek advice. I’ve been lucky enough to have had access to people as a sounding board.”

He said start-ups have the unique advantage of saying “I don’t understand” and getting lots of advice. At the same time, he advises questioning each piece of business advice offered.

Taking soft tissue regeneration technology and a template from MIT, and hard tissue technology for bone repair from the University of Cambridge, Orthomimetics plans to bring a series of medical device products to market to treat articular cartilage, ligament, and tendon injuries.

The company’s product puts three natural materials—a nanocomposite of bovine collagen, glycosaminoglycan and calcium phosphate—in a dual-layer porous matrix implant. It is inserted in a plug shape during minimally invasive arthroscopic surgery to repair tissues and reduce the risk of the osteoarthritis after joint injuries. Each plug can be pulled apart and placed in many locations during surgical repair of a joint.

The technology does not require cell culturing, and it takes one surgery to implant. The materials are as similar to bone and cartilage as possible, Lynn says, so the joint heals well and the attachment of cartilage to bone is strong.

The company has one key patent granted, which was licensed from the Cambridge-MIT Institute. It also has three patent applications licensed from the Cambridge-MIT Institute and four of its own patent applications.

Focusing on tangible outcomes

Lynn says there is a big potential market for his company’s products: osteoarthritis and the degeneration of articular cartilage is one of the most prevalent conditions facing healthcare providers in the world today. It is the leading cause of limitations in daily activities and second only to heart disease in causing work disability. More than 46 million adults in the United States – some 21 per cent of the population – have arthritis, and nearly two-thirds are younger than 65.

There’s a big cost target on all that. More than $30 billion is spent annually for total joint replacement. Lynn said there’s a pressing need for new first-line procedures to treat damage and prevent or delay the degeneration that leads to joint replacement. The product is targeting a $500 million segment of the sports medicine market. The price for two cylindrical plugs of the product per patient is $2,000.

The first three products in Orthomimetics’ portfolio address a combined market of $1 billion annually.

“The real outcome of clever technology has to do with something tangible, the patient feels better, it saves healthcare system money, and it gets patients to the point in life where they need total joint replacement,” he said. Joint replacements usually aren’t done before age 65.

Although the company has moved quickly to build on its preclinical data to establish ISO 13485 certified commercial-scale manufacturing, Lynn says it will spend two years gathering clinical data rather than ramping up sales. The reason? He says providing data to surgeons will get them to use the product in the long term.

Orthomimetics, which closed a 5.6 million Series A funding and received an additional 1.5 million in grant funding, is currently seeking £6 million for its Series B round and a top-name partner company.

It’s a tough time to be looking for money, Lynn admits, but he doesn’t shy away from challenges. “I enjoy that I am learning something new every day and can apply it for something real and good.”