DURHAM – LabCorp CEO David King stressed the need for innovation even in large firms, a panel of biotech leaders discussed why they’re in North Carolina, and three innovative startups from Durham’s Biolabs presented new ways to attack cancer and bacterial disease during a lively, fact-filled life science forum Thursday night that drew a big crowd to The Chesterfield building.

LaunchBio and WRAL TechWire  co-sponsored the event, which blended LaunchBio’s Larger Than Life Science with WRAL TechWire’s quarterly “Live” program.

King, in his discussion with WRAL TechWire Editor Rick Smith, said Burlington-based LabCorp, the diagnostics testing company that employs 60,000 people in 120 countries, realized in 2013 that the healthcare industry was undergoing changes that required it to change as well.

So, it moved into drug development and venture-funding new technologies in the diagnostics space because “Even being an exceptionally good business at one thing was not a sustainable prospect.”

It is very hard to innovate in a big company, King admitted, but it is part of LabCorp’s culture. “We hire talented people and give them a lot of latitude,” he said.

Meet David King: A WRAL TechWire exclusive

Data is becoming increasingly powerful as an aid to doctors and patients, he said. King noted ways in which LabCorp could use data from its 30 billion tests to help researchers enroll patients in clinical trials, which can be a drug development bottleneck. “We know when a patient is newly diagnosed with cancer.” And, through its contract research organization, Covance, it participates in half the world’s clinical trials, “So we know where the good investigators are,” King said.

“We need to bring these data tools to market,” he added. “Trials need to move faster. We need drugs to succeed or fail faster. We shouldn’t spend all that money on a drug that takes ten years to fail.”

During a panel discussion following his one-on-one, King elaborated on LabCorp’s venture arm. “We try to invest in companies we think are disruptive.” It has invested in companies working on doing tests with smaller sample sizes, painless blood draws, and different testing modalities (saliva, hair). It is also looking at home devices, point of care devices, and data platforms. “The idea is to stay abreast of developments that could affect our business positively or negatively.”

Other innovations from LabCorp include its partnerships with co-location testing spaces in drug stores, such as Walgreens. He said the number one thing we need to do now is “deliver healthcare via mobile phones,” which will be particularly important in the developing world.

Talent draws biotech to NC, panel of leaders says

A panel of biotech leaders moderated by LaunchBio’s Joan Seifert Rose, discussed why they grow their companies in NC. The panelists, Susana High, Bluebird Bio COO, Eric Linsley, BioInnovation Capital’s managing general partner, and King agreed that the state’s labor talent pool is a major reason to be here.

Bluebird Bio, which is developing technology to help immune systems battle cancer and gene therapy, is constructing a 125,000-square-foot manufacturing facility that will, High said, “need highly skilled individuals to run. We were attracted by the high quality professionals you find in NC. The community offers the level of expertise we need.”

Linsley said the Biolabs co-working lab space model, successful in San Francisco and Cambridge, is taking off in Durham as well. “We have 20 companies at the site already with three or four thinking about graduation space. Of our ten private labs, nine are already rented.”

Biolabs can help innovators from local universities succeed or fail faster to get ready for venture funding.

King called the state LabCorp’s “home.”  “To us, North Carolina is home. Burlington and NC have been good to us. The people here have a great work ethic and a great passion for our mission.”

LabCorp, he noted, not only employs technicians, and 1,600 MDs and PhDs across many areas, it also has 2,000 people doing billing and 3,000 couriers, which it will need, he quipped, “until we figure out how to do tests without drawing blood.”

The company works with Guilford Tech and other community colleges to train people. He added, however, “It’s a career in which the workforce has progressively aged and it is becoming a more complex task,” which makes it harder to find qualified people.

“Successful people attract successful people,” Linsley said. “Innovation is a contact sport. Put people in one space and it’s amazing what can happen.” The Biolabs space lowers the cost of getting an idea to succeed or fail more rapidly, he said. “The worst idea is one that never gets to the bench.”

The idea for establishing BioLabs in Durham evolved four years ago when Linsley said he became frustrated over the “bad press” the area received for not commercializing its innovations here, rather than heading to Cambridge, Boston, or San Francisco. “The bet we made was that we could take great ideas in this area and keep them here. We’re really bullish about the area. There is just more work to do to commercialize opportunities.”

High said Bluebird Bio studied a handful of potential locations for its manufacturing facility deeply before choosing NC. It was impressed by the fact that the state has more than 600 life science companies and 60,000 people in the industry. The availability of talent coupled with the ability to find an appropriate location for its facility cinched the decision.

Biolabs startups attacking cancer, bacterial infections

Three Biolabs startups presented brief descriptions of their innovative technologies at the event. Falcon Therapeutics is morphing skin cells into cancer fighters. Symberix is developing non-antibiotic drugs that “scold bad bacteria without harming the “good bugs” in the gut. Lociomics is developing systems that help pinpoint the molecular basis of tumors.

Shawn Hingtgen, chief scientific officer of Falcon Therapeutics, a professor in the School of Pharmacy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said the company convert’s a patient’s own skin cells into tumor-homing stem cells that hunt down and kill cancer cells. They not only kill cancer cells in the primary tumor, it also kills metastatic cancers that traveled to other parts of the body.

Falcon has raised $700,000 in private equity backing and is currently focused on a treatment for brain cancer, although the technology can be applied to any cancer with targeted delivery of chemo therapy drugs.

Jay West, founder of Lociomics, said the company, bootstrap funded by the founders to the tune of $250,000, can help pinpoint the molecular basis of tumors, revealing its RNA, DNA, and proteins. That, in turn, helps target specific treatments.

It developed its first prototype device in 2017 and expects to deploy one to a customer site in the first quarter of 2018.

Symberix, said Ward Peterson, co-founder, president and CEO, is developing first-to-market drugs that selectively target the human microbiome, the intestinal bacteria that play critical roles in digestion, metabolism, the immune system and vitamin synthesis, among other functions.

The goal is to modulate bacterial factors that impact human disease.

He said it is a platform approach but is first being tested against diarrhea. The company has secured more than $1 million in a Phase I SBIR grant and received a loan from the NC Biotech Center. It is seeking an additional $1 million to $3 million to accelerate development.