INNOVATOR:
The Professor Becomes the Student

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By Amber Lepage-Monette

Molly Shoichet, PhD has travelled many roads in her life, all of which have pointed her in a different direction.
As a professor at the University of Toronto (Toronto, ON), she’s accustomed to working with students and running a lab.
As founder and president of Matregen Corp. (Toronto, ON), she is faced with having to use a whole new set of skills and working in a business environment.
Despite how different these roles are, they both provide Shoichet with the opportunity to do something she really loves: learn.

Curious Student
Having completed an undergraduate degree in chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute for Technology (Cambridge, MA), Shoichet had originally planned to enter medical school and get her MD.
However, an undergrad course in which she made a polymer ignited her curiosity and eventually pushed to her pursue a PhD in polymer science and engineering.
Deciding to change her career path had a lot to do with her innate curiosity, Shoichet says.
“I had some idea of what a doctor was, and I had worked for doctors in summers . . . but I didn’t really know was a scientist was,” she says. “I think partway through my PhD I thought, wow, this is exciting. The idea of advancing science that could be used in medicine and (in) the future seemed very exciting to me.”
Following her PhD, Shoichet worked at Cytotherapeutics Inc. (now Stem Cells Inc., Palo Alto, Calif.), a company that focused on encapsulated cell therapy.
It is one of many experiences that Shoichet drew on when she developed Matregen’s lead technology, SpinFX™.
“When I was at Cytotherapeutics, I realized that I was working with a lot of very talented biologists,” Shoichet says. “What they would do is they would take the material off the shelf and make it work somehow in what they needed it to do.
“It really opened my eyes to the need to design materials for specific medical applications.”
When Shoichet left Cytotherapeutics, she came to the University of Toronto (Toronto, ON) with the realization that she needed to pair her knowledge in polymers with what she’d learned at the company.
In her U of T lab, Shoichet is focused on spinal cord injury repair through a strategy called intubulation, which requires a porous tube. At the time, Shoichet was working with a post-doctoral student to create such a tube with soft materials.
At that time, “you couldn’t make tubes out of soft hydrogel materials with existing methods,” Shoichet says of the need for a new type of technology.
Shoichet and the student ended up developing a method based on centrifugal forces to create porous hydrogel tubes.
Realizing what she had on her hands, Shoichet decided to commercialize.
“(We) got very excited about the technology and the potentials of the technology . . . in many different commercial applications, and I realized that that’s not the mandate of a university research lab. And in order to take advantage of the potential of the technology, I wanted to start a company based on it.”

From Lab to Market
The process starts with a solution of molecules called monomers. Monomers are soluble, but once they grow or stretch in length, they turn into polymers, which are insoluble. During the spinning process of centrifugation, the solution becomes stretched and is drawn into a cylindrical mould. Removing the mould leaves behind a cylindrical tube.
Shoichet explains that by changing the formulation in some way, such as the composition of the monomers, you can control the tube wall structure.
“And it’s the tube wall that controls the release rate of your therapeutics,” she says. “The idea is that we can design the release strategy that is needed in a given application by controlling our formulation through the process.”
Matregen is applying this porous tube technology to existing molecules for drug delivery, an approach that could be beneficial to potential pharmaceutical partners.
The company is looking to pair its technology with generic molecules. The new delivery system offered by the porous tubes could either extend an existing molecule’s patent, or could assist those companies that have had molecules fail due to toxicity.
“The idea is that if we have a localized delivery device, you won’t have as much systemic toxicity as if you had to take something that was going through . . . oral delivery or IV delivery,” Shoichet explains.
Dealing with existing therapeutics is also a beneficial strategy for Matregen.
“Generics often are a nice model to start with because, in terms of getting into the clinic faster, we already know what a molecule does if it’s already a generic or if it’s already on the market. What we are trying to do then is really just have a better amount available at a constant release.”
Matregen’s porous tubes would be used as subcutaneous implants, offering a constant, even release of a given therapeutic. Not only does this help alleviate the ups and downs of drug levels experienced with an oral therapeutic, Shoichet says, but it also helps in situations where patients forget to take their medication.
Though this localized-delivery model could be used in any number of applications, Matregen is currently focused on the arthritis market.

Learning the Ropes
Though she says she is always learning and is by no means a business expert, Shoichet did have some previous experience that helped in creating Matregen.
Shoichet was also a co-founder of BoneTec Corp., a spin-off from U of T that develops bone tissue engineering products.
Through this, and her experience with Matregen, Shoichet says she has learned a lot about what it takes to run a business. She also credits her staff with helping her through the transition.
Her role as president at Matregen is more of a consultant position, she says, where she works very closely with Paul Chipperton, vice-president of business development, and Nathan Bryson, PhD, vice-president of research and development.
At the same time, Shoichet is a professor at U of T where she continues to run a 19-person lab.
Balancing her time and performing the mental switch between these roles is difficult.
“I will solve problems differently in academia than I will in a company. And that’s always a constant struggle,” she says.
“Probably the biggest challenge is that the mandate at the university is so much different from the mandate at the company,” she says. “At the University of Toronto, the mandate is to advance knowledge and to create knowledge. And we do that very well. But the mandate of a company is really to make products and to make money.”
These differences in mandate also translate into other areas of her work.
“In a university . . . you’re working with undergraduate or graduate students working on their master’s or PhDs or post-docs, but they’re here largely because they want to be,” Shoichet says. “Also, you’re training them to leave. At the end of the day, they’re not supposed to stay here.
“In a company, there’s a lot of training, but you want them to stay,” she says. “It’s a very different focus and mentality, because they can go work anywhere else.”
Ensuring she was creating an attractive workplace that would draw and retain the right kind of people was something Shoichet never had to face in a university lab.
“What I think about in my lab is making sure that . . . we have the right equipment we need to do the research, that the questions that we’re asking are really interesting and stimulating, so that they’re engaged intellectually,” she says. “But not about making it a fluffy place.”
Regardless of how different those roles are, Shoichet enjoys playing them both.
“I think what’s fascinating for me is, I love learning,” she says. “So I love learning all about the business and having a part in the commercialization of the technology.
“But I also love inventing and I love creating, and I think that’s where my great strength is . . . I really thrive in the pursuit of knowledge.”
Passing on that knowledge also seems give Shoichet satisfaction.
“At Matregen, I get to pursue how that translates to not just advancing knowledge, which we’re doing in the lab, but having some practical benefit,” she says. “So I think that’s very exciting.”