ROCHESTER — “Two words. Curing cancer.”
That’s how Darren Phung answers when new people ask him “What do you do?”
Phung has worked as a viral production technologist at Vyriad for two years.
Even in the Med City, it’s a pretty impressive answer. Of course, a more detailed response hits a bit differently in the COVID age.
“I usually say that I engineer viruses to cure cancer, but I've gotten some strange looks because of that one,” says Elly Puckett with a sheepish grin. “Maybe just saying curing cancer would be a better, maybe much better way to go.”
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Vyriad’s mission? A single shot to cure cancer. Vyriad’s novel approach relies on viruses developed in labs in the Mayo Clinic that are engineered to destroy cancer cells directly while kick-starting and assisting the body’s natural tumor-killing immune response.
While Vyriad and its closely intertwined sibling Imanis both grew from Mayo Clinic, the vibe inside the joint offices and labs feels more like the energy of a 2000s Silicon Valley start-up blended with the unified drive of NASA’s 1960s moonshot team.
“I think that one of the biggest things for me working here is flexibility. We have the ability to adjust our hours and adjust where we set our priorities. At the same time, we, as employees, need to be flexible,” Puckett adds. “I feel like there's something new every day, and plans change within an hour. I do love the environment. Everyone's happy to be here and passionate about what we're doing.”
Puckett, a native of Kansas City, has been at Vyriad since she graduated in May 2021.
Phung and Puckett are part of a growing combined team of 75 scientists and support staff who are working in the labs at Vyriad and the closely linked Imanis on the Rochester Technology Campus, the former IBM complex.
Twin successes
Vyriad and its older sibling Imanis are two of the many biotech firms that have spun out of Mayo Clinic, since the Mayo Clinic started encouraging researchers to launch their own companies in 2013 under its then-brand-new Employee Entrepreneurship Program.
Imanis, founded by researchers Dr. Kah-Whye Peng and Dr. Stephen Russell, was truly the guinea pig for the Mayo Clinic program as the first one launched under EEP.
They put their own money into the business. Eventually rented an empty space on the ground floor of downtown's Bio Business Center. Built a small lab. Peng furnished the space with chairs and desks bought from the Salvation Army. They cherry-picked lab equipment Mayo was getting rid of.
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They followed that with creating Vyriad with co-founder Dr. Shruthi Naik in 2016. Naik created Vyriad’s key viral platform as a postdoctoral student in Russell’s lab at Mayo Clinic.
Now a decade later, the experiment of Vyriad and Imanis is still going strong, attracting young scientists from all over the world to work in Rochester.
In fact, despite being the first attempt, Imanis is objectively the greatest local economic development success of the companies that have launched via Mayo Clinic’s EEP initiative.
Growing pains
The young and diverse researchers at Vyriad/Imanis have seen their offices, labs, and virus manufacturing facilities quickly swelled since they moved into the Technology Campus in 2019. They started with 25,000-square-feet of space and 20 employees. Later 10,000-square-feet of virus manufacturing facilities were added.
Managing the physical growth was a challenge for Russel, Peng, and Naik, who are experts about viruses, but aren’t as knowledgeable about HVAC systems, electrical grids or break rooms.
“I know how that can drive science forward. I know what the concepts are. I know the agenda. I've worked on targeting all my life, but when it comes to building a company? What about the cleaning, the facility management, the rents and all of that plus then creating the culture so everybody actually wants to work here. So I was kind of surviving in CEO mode,” says Russell.
That changed in 2021 when Mayo Clinic administrator Scott Beck “retired” and joined Vyriad as its first chief operating officer. His first order of business was to deal with the companies’ growing pains.
“We’re almost doubling the R&D lab and people footprint. We’re aiming to build an even smarter, healthier company,” he says, walking through a large under-construction expansion. “We’re adding 50,000-square-feet and by the time that’s done, we’ll probably need more.”
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With a growing workload and snug conditions, there isn’t a real break room for Vyraid/Imanis employees right now.
That means Vyraid/Imanis buys and brings in lunch for its close-knit teams, who can be seen gathering in small clusters throughout the facilities to share slices of Toppers pizza on a Wednesday.
Russell, Peng, and Naik are not just passionate about the mission. They are also committed to carry out that mission in Rochester, even when moving to a coast would bring more investment money.
“People say ‘You can't build a company in the back of the beyond.’ Of course, you can. Maybe it's some kind of personal obstinacy. That's a part of it. But as far as I was concerned, this dream could be realized here in Rochester,” says Russell. “There's a subset of people out there in the world who do not want to be in a big city. They're the perfect people to come and work in a place like Rochester. I love the place, and I saw no reason why we should have to leave, but it was hard raising money and you can't build a company without money. Right? I fortunately was connected to people who were prepared to take a risk on what we were doing. So it was wealthy individuals, or sometimes not-so-wealthy individuals who thought, ‘Yeah, I'd like to put some part of my capital to work on something that looks like a good vision.’”
Staying put in Rochester
That approach has led to something Rochester has not often seen: A successful Mayo Clinic spin-off that has stayed and grown here.
In 2009 and 2012, Exact Sciences licensed technology for Cologuard based on research by the late Dr. David A. Ahlquist and his Mayo Clinic laboratory. That grew into a major colon cancer testing company with thousands of employees. However, that all happened in Madison, Wis., which lured the company from Rochester with economic development payments.
Most of the biotechnology firms are active on the coasts in cities like Boston or San Francisco. Those are the areas that traditionally have the money and scientific employees to fuel growth.
While Vyriad and Imanis found funding to stay in Rochester, the other necessary piece for a company to be successful is having talented and enthusiastic employees. In that aspect, word got out about what Russell and his team were doing in Rochester and people came to them.
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Of course, each team member has their own stories about what attracted them to Imanis/Vyriad.
“I grew up in northwest Minnesota, but I went to graduate school in Vermont. So it was the first time I'd been back in Minnesota in about 17 years," says Imanis Research Technologist Mattie Bauman. "So it was, for me, interesting to see that in the kind of small field of virology to have a company in Southern Minnesota that's doing this kind of work.”
“Before being here, I was in Maryland and I did not want to go to the coasts. That is the main reason that I initially applied," recalls Dr. Rianna Vandergaast, the principal scientist at Imanis. "I had never been to Rochester, but I thought, ‘That's in the Midwest. It's got to be nice.’ And I remember interviewing with Steve and Kah-Whye and Lukkana (Suksanpaisan) and asking them if the company makes it, are you going to sell out to a big company on the coast? And Steve said no, we plan to stay in Rochester. That was a huge relief, because I really enjoyed the interview. … It feels so nice to see how the company has grown. And rather than just moving out, we’re actually building things here.”
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