🧬 Quin Wills - Ochre Bio - Part 2 | Pursuing Dual Masters at Oxford & Cambridge | Moving from Genomics to RNA Research | Balancing Academia & Entrepreneurship | The Challenges of Product-Market Fit in Biotech

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Part 2 of 4.

My guest for this week’s episode is Quin Wills, CSO and Co-Founder of Ochre Bio, a pioneering biotechnology company developing RNA therapies for chronic liver diseases. Using a combination of genomic deep phenotyping, precision RNA medicine, and testing in live human donor livers, Ochre is developing therapies for liver health challenges ranging from increasing donor liver supply to reducing cirrhosis complications.

In addition to his work at Ochre, Quin is also a highly accomplished academic with a medical degree from Witwatersrand University and doctoral degrees from Cambridge and Oxford in computational biology, mathematics, and statistical genomics.

Along with his academic accomplishments, Quin also co-founded SimuGen and has worked at the University College London, the Mayo Clinic, and Novo Nordisk before he went on to co-found Ochre Bio. Quin's diverse experiences offer a wealth of insights that everyone can draw inspiration from.

Join us this week and hear about Quin’s:

Early interest for bioinformatics and genomics
Pursuit of dual degrees in Computational Mathematics and Biology at Oxford University at Cambridge, respectively
Exploration of single-cell genomics, RNA, and gene regulation
Experience founding SimuGen during his graduate studies

Please enjoy my conversation with Quin Wills.

Find Our Guest, Quin Wills, at these links:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/quinwills/

https://www.ochre-bio.com/

Find Our Host, Jon Chee, at these links:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee

https://www.excedr.com

Timestamps:

00:28 Intro

01:52 Pursuing dual masters at Oxford and Cambridge in computational biology and mathematics

05:16 Quin’s experience at Oxford studying genomics

06:22 Studying single-cell genomics and gene regulation

09:16 Academia’s early views on entrepreneurship and spinning out a startup

11:19 Founding SimuGen as a graduate student, balancing studies with entrepreneurship

13:04 SimuGen’s approach to drug development, the lessons learned from a lack of product-market fit

14:35 Common mistakes of a first-time scientific founder

16:21 Lessons learned from 1st wave of bioinformatics, the importance of having a clear vision

18:19 The value of understanding complex systems and learning by doing

19:05 Outro

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Enriched Notes:

Topics Mentioned:

Oxford University https://www.ox.ac.uk/

University of Cambridge https://www.cam.ac.uk/

Bioinformatics & Computational Biology https://www.excedr.com/blog/what-is-bioinformatics-and-computational-biology

Single-Cell Genomics https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-016-0960-x

Single-Cell Epigenomics https://www.excedr.com/blog/single-cell-epigenomics

Gene Regulation https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Gene-Regulation

Spinning Out of Academia https://www.excedr.com/resources/how-to-spin-out-of-academia-and-into-a-startup

Product-Market Fit in the Life Sciences https://www.universitylabpartners.org/blog/understanding-product-market-fit

Common Mistakes of First-Time Founders & Biotechs https://www.excedr.com/blog/common-business-mistakes