Bio19 World Insight June 2019

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Former Harvard students benefited from a $30,000 grant awards from Digital Science
Digital Science’s seedcorn capital
and mentoring sees firms flourish
Strategic and corporate
investor has become
a force to be reckoned
with through its
Catalyst Grants and
nurturing role for the
research sector
By Shanna Clark
When two science
students from Harvard
came up with an AI tool
to help researchers find
a job best suited to their
talents which was not
only automated but more inclusive –
it used algorithms to hide age, race,
gender, so prospective employers
could judge candidates only on their
qualifications – funding was the key
issue, as it is with all start-ups.
The founders applied for a grant
from the United Kingdom office
of a company which specializes in
investing in the life science sector and
benefits from being run by scientists
with a research background, many
of them PhDs, who then mentor the
fledgling companies.
Digital Science saw great potential
in the diversity-focused job platform
and awarded Scismic one of their
biannual Catalyst Grant awards
worth $30,000.
Another recent grant-winning US
company is Ripeta, the brainchild
of three Washington University of
St Louis faculty.
Ripeta tackles the thorny issue
for researchers of reproducibility,
providing the equivalent of a credit
score with more than 100 checks on
papers before and after publication to
ensure the research can be reproduced
to verify results.
Digital Science is unique in that
they offer not only seedcorn capital
by way of Catalyst Grants, but follow
each winner up with comprehensive
mentoring.
This can lead to a first bridging
loan and then the potential company
reaching portfolio status where its
products are proven and Digital
Science takes an equity stake.
One research company that has
joined the Digital Science family is
UK-based Writefull, which applied for
and won a Catalyst Grant in 2017.
This solution harnesses artificial
Karma Oncology boasts ‘best-in-class’ services
Karma Oncology is a unique,
oncology-specialized clinical
development company. The
company was established in 2012
by Dr Karen J Williams, who, at the
time, had 25 years’ experience in
both the pharmaceutical and
CRO industries.
The Karma Oncology core
services are bespoke clinical
development planning, clinical
trial design, set-up and execution.
Headquartered in Scotland,
with offices in The Netherlands,
Republic of Ireland and the US, the
virtual team of experts is based
across Europe and North America.
Karma Oncology partners with
sponsors in the late pre-clinical
stage to prepare their clinical
development plan. Such plans
provide options for the sponsor
and their investors as to which
route to take to get to their next
value inflection point (end of phase
II, IPO etc). This means multiple
clinical trial designs are provided,
each with timelines and budgets.
In addition, Karma Oncology’s
extensive oncology clinical
trial experience can help guide
sponsor’s regulatory strategy, build
strong investigator relationships
and execute the management
of clinical trials in Europe and
North America.
For clinical stage sponsors,
the Karma Oncology services
include design of clinical trials,
site and investigator selection,
regulatory and ethics submissions,
management and monitoring
of the trial, and medical writing
(protocol, IB, IMPD and final clinical
study report).
Additional services include
European Legal Representation,
Data Privacy Management and
provision of a Data Protection
Officer (through Karma Oncology
B.V. in Amsterdam or Karma
Oncology (Europe) Limited
in Dublin).
Through trusted partners Karma
Oncology provides full service,
and partners provide such services
as statistics, data management,
pharmacovigilance, medical
monitoring, central laboratory
and product packing/labelling/
Biannual Catalyst
Grant awards
worth $30,000
distribution. The Karma Oncology
partnership offers a “best-in-class”
approach. Each organization is an
expert in its respective field and
takes pride in its unique service
offerings and “best-in-class”
position. The combined specialized
service of Karma Oncology and
partner companies offers a high
level of oncology expertise and
operational proficiency, in addition
to sponsors being provided with
the senior members of each
company taking day-to-day
responsibility for a study which
gives a level of accountability,
responsiveness and attention that
cannot be matched.
Other differentiators that Karma
Oncology has includes stability
(staff turnover is < 5%), meaning
the same team will work on a
clinical trial from start to finish.
In this way there is no loss of
experience or knowledge and no
need for repeated training by the
client or the site staff.
Experience in oncology
encompasses solid tumors and
hematological malignancies and, in
terms of therapeutic approaches,
Karma has worked with all types of
anti-cancer therapeutics including
immunotherapies, autologous cell
intelligence trained on millions
of papers to improve researchers’
language usage and grammar.
Whereas this can be successfully
applied in English-speaking countries,
it will have particular appeal to
scientific communities where it is the
second language, such as China.
Digital Science was established
in 2010 and came out of the Nature
Publishing Group (now known as
Nature Research), which publishes
academic journals and magazines.
“We realized we were missing
a trick in that we were providing
content for scientists, but were not
developing any software solutions for
them, tools to help in their research,”
says Steve Scott, director of portfolio
development at Digital Science.
“So, we decided we would go out
and find clever people with good ideas
and give them money to make this
happen – and it has worked.”
Karma Oncology founder Dr Karen J Williams
therapies, CAR-T and CAR-NK trials
in Europe and North America.
While oncology is in the name,
the company has experience
in many other therapeutic
areas including cardiology,
respiratory disease, female health,
Steve Scott,
director of
portfolio
development at
Digital Science
Today, Digital Science as a strategic
and corporate investor, is part of
Holtzbrinck, the German-based media
giant with a track record in both
science and education.
This provides access to significant
funds which has helped the company
become a force to be reckoned with
in its investment and mentoring
role for the research sector, which
sees it not only work with startups,
but companies that are already
established.
dermatology, wound management,
renal disease and many others.
Karma Cardiology was established
in 2017 to offer the same, tailored
service to biotech companies with
cardiovascular products, and our
team includes cardiologists.