Serial Biotech Entrepreneur to Helm Biotech Startup FogPharma After Retiring From Harvard

February 23, 2017
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff

Harvard University chemical biologist Greg Verdine has an impressive resume. In addition to his academic pedigree, Verdine co-founded eight startups and two non-profit institutions. With university retirement coming in about three years, he’s not planning to settle in with a fishing pole and a cabin in the woods—he intends to head FogPharma, one of his startups, full-time.

In 2015, Verdine and his business partner, Weiqing Zhoug, formed Fog and another company, LifeMine Therapeutics. Both companies work out of a lab in Cambridge, Mass. Fog has a $10 million Series A financing, and LifeMine has a $5 million seed round. Verdine is currently president of both companies. When he retires, the plan is to head FogPharma full-time and take on a less involved role at LifeMine. Zhou directs business development at Fog and is the chief operating officer of LifeMine.

Probably the company Verdine is best known for is Warp Drive Bio. However, five of the eight startups went public—Variagenics, Enanta Pharmaceuticals, Tokai Pharmaceuticals , Eleven Biotherapeutics , and WaVe Life Sciences . Gloucester Pharmaceuticals was sold to Celgene . None have gone out of business, but Variagenics, Eleven Bio and Tokai merged with other companies. The two non-profit institutions are the Gloucester Marine Genomics Institute and the Gloucester Biotechnology Academy.

FogPharma’s website doesn’t say much about the company, but an April 2016 Xconomy article indicated it was developing a new class of molecules called “cell penetrating mini proteins.” That sounds like miniature biologics, which are typically larger molecules.

Verdine acknowledges that as an academic scientist, there was an enormous learning curve to running startups and he’s grateful for the support and patience his venture partners have provided over the years. Ben Fidler, writing for Xconomy says, “Verdine says he was ‘blissfully ignorant’ of the business aspects of biotech before heading up Warp Drive, and that he made his share of mistakes there. Without discussing specifics, he says academics running a lab tend to ‘hyper-delegate,’ whereas when running a business, you need to ‘own every single thing.’ He didn’t really know how a budget worked, or how to work with corporate attorneys to structure a company. He credits Third Rock and Sanofi , which along with Greylock Partners formed Warp Drive with an unusual alliance, for being willing to give him a chance to lead the company.”

With some of those lessons in mind, he wants to take a slightly different approach with FogPharma. He notes that venture capitalists have a need for returns on their investments sooner than later, and this shorter timeline can put pressure on biotechs to make compromises on what they want to do. He mentions Eleven Bio as an example. It began as a protein engineering firm in 2010, but narrowed to an experimental eye drug. The tech platform was de-emphasized. The drug, isuankinra, allowed Eleven Bio to go public in 2014, but failed in clinical testing. As a result, the company merged with another company. “If the company didn’t need to achieve [a] liquidity [event],” Verdine told Fidler, “you might have really continued to put capital into the platform itself.”

So, when the time comes to head FogPharma full-time, he plans to maintain “ferocious independence,” hold on to more equity and strategic control, and, presumably as a result, give himself and Fog longer runways to pursue both drugs and technology platforms. Fidler writes, “Fog is taking a more unusual path. It’s currently financed by an atypical mix of high-net-worth individuals anad institutions, and Verdine aims to keep the company very closely held and to control its strategic path.”

Fog’s investors include WuXi Healthcare founding partner Ge Li; Leerink Partners CEO Jeff Leerink; former Pfizer and Biogen executive Robert Cawthorn; the general partners of Boyu Capital, an investment firm in China; and William Poorvu, co-founder of The Baupost Group, a hedge fund. Deerfield Management and WuXi Pharmatech’s corporate venture fund are also backing the company, but are not taking board seats.