Photos courtesy of Zygogen
Of Zebrafish and Men
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“It was just so obvious to me that this was a CONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE FALL 2007
technology that absolutely could help drug discovery. Whether I did it or someone else did it, it would happen.”
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hen a scientist told Nina Urban Sawczuk ‘80 that he wanted to build a biotechnology company based around zebrafish, she knew his idea was solid. He had filed a patent, but had no idea how to start a business. So Sawczuk tried to find someone who could help him. “I looked around and just couldn’t find anyone,” she said. “The more I looked, it was just so obvious to me that this was a technology that absolutely could help drug discovery. Whether I did it or someone else did it, it would happen.” Sawczuk had a master’s in molecular and cellular biology from Harvard Medical School and an MBA from Duke, and had worked in drug discovery, biotech consulting, and business development. At the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) in Atlanta, she helped establish biotechnology incubators in Georgia. She wanted to work in the business side of science, but never saw herself as an entrepreneur. “At first I said, I have no experience, this is ridiculous, why would I do this? Talking to a couple people, they said, sure, why not, look at your background, you’re perfect for it.” So Sawczuk and her scientific partner started Zygogen, a business built on the bodies of zebrafish — which are about as similar to humans’ as a fish can be. The genes and proteins of zebrafish resemble those of people, and the fish have a two-chamber beating heart and other characteristics that make them, in many cases, as good as mice for testing drugs. “Mice are expensive and time-consuming,” Sawczuk explained. “If you can get valuable information from a living system that’s cheaper and faster than mice, that can be a useful tool.”
NINA URBAN SAWCZUK ’80
Excited to be on the frontier of a new science, Sawczuk first raised funding from family and friends, then applied for grants, which supported much of Zygogen’s early technological development. “If I’d had more money and started bigger I wouldn’t be around today,” she said. Zygogen’s lab opened in 2000, a year after Sawczuk met her cofounder. The company today collaborates with several pharmaceutical companies, providing zebrafish for drug research, and was the first to receive a grant from the Michael J. Fox Foundation, for which it models Parkinson’s disease in zebrafish. “After the last eight years working with different groups, we can see where we were in 2000 and where we are now, and the level of interest and understanding around the model,” Sawczuk said. “Signals from the marketplace are clear that this is a valuable technology.” Nevertheless, failure is an important component of her entrepreneurial venture. “Every day we take failure and try to turn it into success,” she said, referring to the trial and error involved in scientific discovery. “We’ve been focused on developing zebrafish for drug discovery and applying it. How you do that changes. How you get it into the established pharmacy and biotech companies that are doing drug discovery, how you get your information out has to shift. There are all kinds of ups and downs in terms of funding and interest.” Nevertheless, both the science and the business continue to intrigue Sawczuk. “I didn’t really want to start a company,” she said. “I just thought this was something that was important to do and really valuable.”