Why Philadelphia for Chimeron Bio
September 9, 2019 | | 2 Minute Read
For an early-stage company such as Chimeron Bio, with an innovative gene therapy approach, the right ecosystem is pivotal for its growth and development; an environment that not only provides the right tangible resource such as infrastructure, but also the right talent and scientific advisory pool. Over the last few years, Philadelphia has emerged as a go-to destination for start-up companies. While premier academic institutions such as UPenn, Drexel, CHOP, Jefferson, Temple to name a few and top-tier pharmaceutical companies lend the city a rich R&D legacy, Philadelphia is now also seeing an increase in infrastructure spending and biotech investments that is attracting new start-ups such as us to the area. Modern and state-of-the-art office and laboratory facilities such as the Navy Yard, Pennovation Center and more recently CIC/BioLabs on Market Street have helped attract start-ups, especially the ones that find it challenging to spend big $ for lab space. At Chimeron Bio, we believe that Philadelphia allows us to more efficiently spend $ towards rental space and provide us the opportunity to be in a city, which some people refer it as the “Mecca of Gene Therapy.”
Sure, the city of brotherly love has some ways to go compared to more mature biotech hubs such as Boston and San Francisco. For example, in 2017, VC deals in Philadelphia was at $779M compared to Boston with $6.7B in VC deals. Chimeron Bio sees such statistics as an opportunity to grow. There is talent, there is innovation and there are world class biotech and multinational pharmaceutical companies. The right environment is there in Philly, and as start-ups, we need to play our part i.e. bring forth and develop novel technologies to benefit patients. This way we attract investors to Philadelphia. Innovation drives investments and provide opportunities for talent to stay in Philadelphia.
Chimeron Bio wants to play a part in this city’s transformation into the next major biotech hub. We are engineering a novel self-amplifying RNA platform technology to develop therapies across various diseases. Furthermore, we have established a culture that fosters entrepreneurship, ownership, collaboration, empowerment, and growth. A distinct advantage of working in a start-up company is one’s ability to interact without boundaries leading to unparalleled opportunity for gaining hand-on-experience that fosters growth and significant drug discovery and development learnings. We believe in developing talent to succeed not only within Chimeron Bio, but should a better opportunity arise, be successful in another biotech hopefully in the Philadelphia area.
We are very excited to be a part of Philly’s emerging biotech ecosystem and are committed to doing our part to foster an environment for growth, development and betterment of medical science in Philadelphia. If you are interested in knowing more about Chimeron Bio and the team, please feel free to introduce yourself to us at contact@chimeron.com.
In our next blog, we will share with you our technology and how we are developing novel therapies for diseases such as cancer, and liver and kidney disorders.