Forming the Future: Dr. Claire Aldridge's Journey at the Intersection of Synthetic Biology, Business, and Innovation
By Neha Suresh and Sanskriti Saxena from BridgeBio
Dr. Claire Aldridge’s Profile:
For the second interview of the Project BridgeBio’s “Leading ladies of Synthetic Biology” series, we hosted Dr. Claire Aldridge, Chief Strategy Officer at Form Bio. Prior to this role, she was Senior Vice President, Chief of Staff and Corporate Strategy at Taysha Gene Therapies, a company aiming to eradicate monogenic Central Nervous System (CNS) diseases. She is currently on the Advisory Committee for Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT). She has also served as Vice President, Venture Development with Remeditex Ventures, a biotech venture fund.
Translating science into solutions:
Dr. Aldridge’s career trajectory was not a traditional one, she acquired a variety of skills founded upon scientific curiosity. She created a mission statement very early on in her career, ‘Translating Science into Solutions.’ She pursued a combination of formal education,informational education and a breadth of skill sets. First, she delved into the depth of immunology and genetics with a PhD from Duke University.
“My career always founded on the idea that I wanted to do things that were challenging, where I would learn something new, always continually adding to my skill set, so that I ended up with a breadth,” Dr.Aldridge said.
She asks young scientist entrepreneurs to think of these two questions- ‘What kind of problem in the marketplace does this science solve?’ and ‘What is the path to get there?’ As a more business-oriented person, Dr. Aldridge identified and pursued some true market opportunities while adding to her skillset.
“I strategically added to my knowledge through things like I did a certificate of marketing at the local university, I did online courses, when I first started being a biotech investor, so that I could understand cap tables and dilutions,” Dr. Aldridge said.
Claire's journey, marked by her dual roles as an entrepreneur and a scientist, has been a thrilling, demanding, and ultimately rewarding odyssey.
Inception of FormBio
Colossal Biosciences, is a de-extinction company focusing on using synthetic biology to resurrect the wooly mammoth. To do this, they need to sift through 3.1 billion letters of genetic code and identify the target genes that need to be CRISPRed into an Asian Elephant’s embryo. No computational tool on the market was sufficient for the company’s needs, therefore a team at Colossal created a computational framework capable of analyzing vast genomic datasets. The platform houses data management, workflow visualization, analysis and collaboration.
Realizing that this framework bridged the gap between bench science and data science in a user friendly manner, Form Bio was spun out of Colossal Biosciences in September 2022 with a $30 Million Series A round.
“I was on the Scientific Advisory Board at the time, even before they knew they were going to spin out as Form Bio. We realized that we had built something really valuable. The platform is cloud agnostic, so you can have your data wherever you want,” Dr.Aldridge said, “ It also houses data management workflows, validation and execution.”
FormBio can be used to curate and creatively present data for grant proposals, publications and patent applications.
Some popular use cases of the platform are genome alignment and variant calling, gene and cell therapy vector design, and academic research. Making meaning out of gene expression patterns or customizing gRNA design per genome is sometimes code intensive and a cumbersome process. FormBio wants to make these applications easier for biologists. They integrated commonly used workflows like analyzing RNASeq data and designing guiderRNAs for CRISPR applications. The recent AI integration into the platform has helped make industrial biomanufacturing more time and cost efficient. The parent company, Colossal Biosciences, is Form Bio’s first customer.
“The work that we [Form Bio] did with Colossal is allowing them to do multiplex CRISPR edits on the cells that they're working with, in order to take an Asian elephant cell and evolve it into a cold adapted Asian elephant. Form Bio’s tools are used to complete genomic analysis, the variant calling, the genome alignment, the CRISPR design and all of those things. All of these tools are incredibly valuable across the entire space of molecular biology,” Dr.Aldridge said.
Guided by a resolute Business-Focused mindset, Dr. Claire Aldridge’s mission was clear from the start: “to translate scientific insights into practical solutions and bridge the gap that lies between them”. At each juncture, she faced the crucial decision of choosing between alluring scientific concepts and ideas that held market potential. Once that choice was made, she dedicated herself to meticulously orchestrating the intricate process of translating these ideas into reality.
