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September 15, 2022

Cancer-fighting startups help cut ribbon on Elm City Bioscience Center 

PHOTO | LIESE KLEIN Avery Lafferty and her sister Lexi (center) help with the ribbon-cutting at the Elm City Bioscience Center in New Haven on Sept. 14, 2022.
By Liese Klein

The ribbon-cutting of the Elm City Bioscience Center on Wednesday afternoon featured a special guest – 10-year-old Avery Lafferty, a cancer survivor who is still in treatment to prevent the recurrence of a brain tumor.

Avery and her sister stood with their dad, Paul Lafferty, to officially open New Haven’s newest biotech node, at 55 Church St. One of Avery’s cancer doctors, Dr. Ranjit Bindra, was also there, speaking of his decision to locate two of his cancer-fighting biotech startups in the new center.

“We're now here and moved in, just excited to be a part of New Haven,” said Bindra, whose latest startup, Modifi Bio, recently closed a $6.4 million funding round. “It's been amazing to see this city just grow into what it is – I never imagined that we can have a biotech hub in the center of New Haven.”

Bindra, a Yale School of Medicine researcher and scientific director of the Yale Brain Tumor Center at Smilow Cancer Hospital, founded Modifi with colleagues to explore new technology to eradicate cancer by directly modifying the cancer cell’s DNA. 

After closing its current round of funding, Modifi expects to be employing 20 people in New Haven by the end of the year – administrative staff as well as scientists, Bindra said. He added that the company has had little trouble recruiting for New Haven jobs. “Surprisingly, or not surprisingly, this turns out to be the place to be,” he said. 

PHOTO | LIESE KLEIN
Dr. Ranjit Bindra of Modifi Bio speaks at the ribbon-cutting of the Elm City Bioscience Center in New Haven on Sept. 14, 2022.

Bindra searched for lab space in New Haven when founding an earlier startup several years ago, but couldn’t find anything suitable. “It broke my heart,” Bindra said, adding that startups do better when located close to their founders.

That company, Alphina Therapeutics, ended up getting its start in New York, but Bindra moved it to New Haven earlier this year. “We made a board-level decision that it’s time to come home,” Bindra said. 

Alphina, which develops drugs that target cancer’s metabolic pathways, has raised $40 million in seed funding and is expanding.

“It’s actually really fantastic to be all located here in one place, because we were really dispersed before that, and it was a big challenge,” Alphina CEO Mark Cockett said.

The ribbon-cutting featured three startups with links to Yale medical research that are currently operating in the center: Modifi Bio (formerly Aztek Biosciences), Alphina and Siduma Therapeutics. Modifi and Alphina are located on the building’s second floor and are using newly constructed lab space; Siduma, which moved to New Haven recently from Branford, is on the eighth floor with more new lab space.  

The 113,000-square-foot building that houses the new center is about half-leased and is undergoing ongoing renovation into more lab space, said developer David Goldblum of The Hurley Group. 

New Haven architecture firm Svigals + Partners has spearheaded renovations of the building that will be ongoing over several years as leases turn over. Built in 1972, the eight-story building currently houses a mix of offices and labs, including an Armed Services Recruiting center on the ground floor.

Svigals architects first saw the potential of the building at 55 Church as a great place for labs, and a place to fill the gap between when a company comes out of the incubator or university, Goldblum said. 

Addressing Goldblum, Siduma Therapeutics CEO Rebecca Velez Frey said, “Thank you for taking the leap to turn this building into labs because we desperately need them in our ecosystem. We cannot build and scale our companies and keep them in Connecticut if we don't have facilities.”

PHOTO | LIESE KLEIN
Siduma Therapeutics CEO Rebecca Velez Frey

Lab facilities like the Elm City Bioscience Center are key to the state’s strategy of turbo-charging biotech growth, said David Lehman, Department of Economic and Community Development commissioner.

“Thank you to you and your whole team for the vision here and the investment, especially recognizing the need for lab space and bio space at a really important time,” Lehman said, addressing Goldblum and the Hurley Group. 

Gov. Ned Lamont and the state’s economic development team see new startup spaces as key to growing Connecticut’s biotech industry, Lehman said. Other key factors are direct state investment in startups, venture capital efforts like Connecticut Innovations, recruiting of new companies through AdvanceCT and workforce development in STEM fields. 

“There is a dedicated proactive effort to grow bioscience,” Lehman said. “And we're going to continue that because we think this is a real edge that we have in Connecticut.”

The event also highlighted the networked nature of New Haven’s bioscience startup world, with many founders crossing over and founding multiple companies, many with direct links to Yale research labs.

That networked community is by design and results in ground-breaking discoveries, Bindra said. He compared the city’s startup scene to musicians in a band each perfecting their own instrument. “But ultimately, you need each band working together to create that next big hit, in this case in the cancer space,” Bindra said.

“I get annoyed about the traffic, but I remind myself that this is actually part of a bigger vision,” Bindra added, noting the ongoing construction at future biotech hub 101 College St. “New Haven has really been a mecca for biotech. And I think this is a turning point for us right now.”

Contact Liese Klein at lklein@newhavenbiz.com.

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