“The initial vision was always to develop new therapeutics to help patients especially for diseases that there were no treatments for, some of the more intractable diseases that pharmaceutical companies haven’t figured out a cure for. That has been the main mission, and it still is. That is where the underlying mission is.”
Today, the demand for technology capable of analyzing proteins at faster rates for drug discovery has never been more pressing. This is where companies can make a direct impact. ImmutoScientific serves as a transformative platform poised to revolutionize drug discovery and therapeutic development with cutting edge technology. With a mission to serve humanity, ImmutoScientific initially supported various companies with their drug discovery programs, leveraging their technology to validate their expertise and gain brand attention from major pharmaceutical entities.
After a year and a half of dedication, ImmutoScientific became fully validated in both the commercial and technical space and are beginning their own drug discovery efforts. Behind the groundbreaking work of this company are co-founders Faraz Choudhury (serving as CEO) and Dan Benjamin (serving as CTO), both Ph.D.s in electrical engineering who met as they both worked for the same Engineering lab at UW Madison.
“I always thought I would first get a job after I finished my Ph.D. and get some work experience under my belt. And then I would start a company at some point. That was always my goal. I have started several companies before, the first I started was in high school. I started a couple of others but they were not to the scale of this company”
Faraz, driven by the “entrepreneurial bug” has always strived to launch his own companies — the first starting in high school to what is happening now. As he was finishing up his Ph.D. degree, Faraz received a job offer from Fortune 500 company, Intel. This occurred at the same time as his team was developing market research and commercial viability of their current technology. He knew he was faced with two decisions. One, accepting the job offer from Intel and starting a company at a later time or second, having an opportunity to start a company right away. For him, the right decision was the latter.
On a typical day, ImmutoScientific focuses on two key areas. The first is enabling and empowering pharma partners to perform drug discovery with their platform. Through this, they are able to generate valuable data for them to inform their programs. Secondly, ImmutoScientific drives its own internal drug discovery programs, specifically to leverage their platform to develop particular antibodies for oncology drug targets in the market.
In this work, setbacks are inevitable. Faraz and his dedicated team will never quit. Faraz views setbacks as opportunities to pivot, emphasizing the importance of staying committed to your dreams. He states, “Really knowing what you are passionate about and making sure this is something you would do and whatever it takes. It is really hard because a lot of times when you start a company, you are working with little to no pay for a large amount of time.” The work that ImmutoScientific does is extremely valuable, both to the drug discovery community and to its researchers.
“I have pretty much been through all the different startup programs in Madison and they all have different things that they focus on which is very valuable as well. There is not a lot of overlap and they all focus on different areas. These are all free resources available to UW students and the Madison community which is great.”
Faraz attributes much of his success to the wealth of resources available at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Starting with collaborative efforts with teams from Department of Biochemistry to begin the development of technology that could analyze protein structures and interactions. Next, to getting their technology patented with the help of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF). Starting to get their company off the ground, he thanks Madworks Accelerator to help them with the initial legal aspects. In addition, he notes that he also used the Law and Entrepreneurship Clinic, which was free of charge to students and faculty, to help get their business structure in place, as well as Discovery to Product (D2P), with their business accelerating program.
Finally, after gaining a certificate in entrepreneurship, Faraz mentions the vital connections to his work – such as working and connecting with the Weinert Center of Entrepreneurship faculty, especially Dan Olszewski. Faraz emphasizes the importance of leveraging all the resources to turn an idea into a commercial product. Parts of their venture came to life as they both completed the Weinert Applied Ventures in Entrepreneurship (WAVE) program, Faraz in 2013 and Dan in 2018 with Dan also participating in the Morgridge Entrepreneurial Bootcamp (MEB) in 2017.
“There is a lot of really great research that happens at UW, especially at the life science and engineering schools. A lot of the research, unfortunately, doesn’t get commercialized because it is a different sort of skill set from being a scientist to starting a company. I would really encourage, not only the researchers, but also the departments as a whole to focus on translating university research out to the commercial world.”
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