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From Stem Cells to Biosensors: 3 Trends To Watch at This Year’s First Look Startup Showcase
Keerthi Vedantam
Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.
Some 15-odd years ago, the Alliance for SoCal Innovation put on a workshop for academics looking to wade into the world of commercialized technology.
Fast forward to 2022 and the Alliance is gearing up for the latest edition of its annual First Look SoCal Innovation Showcase, taking place Tuesday at the Skirball Cultural Center. This year’s lineup of 24 early-stage life sciences and tech startups—tapped from the Alliance’s network of universities and incubators—will have the chance to pitch their ventures and meet with potential investors, mentors and industry executives as they look for what, in most cases, will be their first round of commercial funding.
The life cycle of biotech and medtech companies often starts at the academic level, where universities like Caltech, USC and UCLA pump research dollars into PhD projects and incubate them for a few years until there’s proof of concept. Others are incubated at research institutions like the Lundquist Institute or City of Hope. From there, those projects that choose to become startups are spun out into standalone ventures and begin their hunt for venture capital money.
“This is often a perilous journey from lab to market,” Steve Gilison, the Alliance for SoCal Innovation’s chief operating officer, told dot.LA. “So we don't just think of this as an investment pitch, but as an opportunity to really make the right connections.”
It also gives the rest of us a peek into what kind of cutting-edge technology is most interesting to early-stage SoCal investors. Here’s what we can glean from this year’s cadre of startups at the First Look showcase.
Stem Cell Therapy Could Replace Current Invasive Treatments
Stem cell therapy continues to be one of the most prominent trends in disease treatment. Some of the largest biotech companies working on stem cell therapies are based in Los Angeles; the Food and Drug Administration recently approved Santa Monica-based Kite Pharma’s CAR-T cell treatment for some forms of cancer, which could reduce or even eliminate the need for extensive radiation or other treatments loaded with dangerous side effects.
A handful of biotech startups at the First Look showcase are utilizing stem cells to tackle diseases in a similar manner. Chimera Therapeutics, a startup out of City of Hope, uses “mixed chimerism”—where stem cells from a donor and the patient are mixed together in the patient’s tissue—to treat autoimmune disorders like multiple sclerosis. The goal is to use donor stem cells to help boost a weakened immune system and potentially halt the progression of a disorder.
Simurx, another showcase participant that’s a product of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, is following local biotechs like Kite and Appia Bio in deploying CAR-T cell therapy—in Simurx’s case, to address solid tumors.
Despite how promising these cell therapies have been, the technology is still rather new, largely cost-prohibitive and comes with long wait times for patients. UC Irvine’s Cellecho aims to make the process of creating these therapies faster through precision engineering. Most existing tools on the market require great care to precisely engineer cells, which make them hard to scale and can lead to longer wait times to receive treatment. Cellecho’s tool—called the Acoustic-Electric Shear Orbiting Poration—is able to deliver genetic coding molecules into several cells at once. It can be automated and the disposable cartridges can be mass-produced, which should drive down costs.
Cultured Meat May Do Away with Unsustainable Meat Farming
Lab-grown meat promises to bring humane, environmentally-friendly disruption to a global meat market that is projected to be a $2.7 trillion industry by 2040, according to CB Insights. Some of the largest meat manufacturers in the U.S., such as Tyson Foods, have already invested in cultured meat that only requires a few animal cells to cultivate a protein. If embraced, these technologies could eventually do away with the need for factory farming, which accounts for 70% of the U.S.’s ammonia emissions.
Bluefin Foods, a UCLA spin-out, is entering the foray with lab-grown seafood cultivated from animal cells. The company says its technology, if borne out, could replace commercial fishing, which contributes to fish depopulation and ocean habitat degradation.
At this stage, lab-grown meat is still more expensive than its factory-farmed counterpart. But if startups like Bluefin are able to gain traction and scale, that may not be the case in the future.
The Biosensor Sector Could Pave the Way for Preventative Health Care
As the American health care industry struggles to provide a preventative model—one that would help patients avoid illnesses and ailments while lowering health care spending overall—a few nascent ventures are attempting to leverage technology to make out-of-reach tests and treatments easier to access.
UCLA’s ViBo Health is in the backyard of one of Apple’s preferred biosensor manufacturers: Pasadena-based Rockley Photonics, which makes sensors that track blood pressure, hydration and a slew of other biomarkers. Wearables like the Apple Watch and Google’s Fitbit are among the largest customers for biosensors that were once reserved for the doctor’s office.
ViBo’s trajectory, however, is slightly different. Rather than affixing its biosensors to the body, its scanners—which track cholesterol, glucose and cardiac biomarkers—will be in pharmacies, clinics, gyms and offices. Lowering the barrier to entry and allowing patients to more quickly and easily check their own biomarkers may unburden the diagnostics space, as routine tests can be cost- and time-prohibitive for labs that often have more pressing tests to run.
Zoetic Motion, a startup in the physical therapy space, is taking a different approach. Physical therapy attendance among patients after a stroke or injury is notoriously low, yet critical to ensuring a full recovery and preventing a recurrence. Through an interactive and gamified platform, Zoetic allows physical therapists to prescribe exercise routines that promise to improve patients’ engagement and help them build habits that keep them out of the hospital. One L.A.-based startup and First Look alum, Moving Analytics, raised $6 million in seed funding last year with a similar philosophy toward improving patient engagement at rehabilitation centers.
Besides Moving Analytics, several other startups that previously participated in the First Look showcase have also gone on to raise funds from investors. One notable success story is San Diego-based RNA therapeutics firm DTx Pharma, which has raised more than $100 million since it first appeared at the showcase in 2019.
This year’s crop of ambitious young companies will hope Tuesday’s event can be a platform that helps them replicate that kind of success.
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Keerthi Vedantam
Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.
https://twitter.com/KeerthiVedantam
keerthi@dot.la
Viral Fame Pays Off — Coachella Has Become A Gold Mine for Influencers
05:01 AM | April 20, 2023
Evan Xie
If someone attends Coachella and doesn’t make a TikTok about it, did they even go? Scrolling through any social media feed over the past few days, it seems like the answer is a firm “no.” Instead, people document everything from the food they ate to the cowboy boots they wore. The is even a genre of video dedicated to complaining about Coachella.
On TikTok, videos tagged #Coachella2023 have already amassed over 1.6 billion views—already up from #Coachella2022, which had 1.5 billion views and the second weekend has yet to begin. On Instagram, the hashtag has almost 37,000 posts. Sure, some of the content is posted by people attending the festival for fun. But a quick scroll through either platform shows that influencers have created the vast majority of the posts.
Content isn’t even limited to the two festival weekends. In the months leading up to Coachella, people share survival tips and outfit inspiration. And, afterward, the outfits reviews judge who captured the current trends and who fell flat.
This flood of content has led many to deride the influencers swarming Coachella. Critics say that the focus on fashion has ruined the festival and that influencers ushered in this change. A recent video by the singer Loren Grey, who rose to fame through TikTok, only confirmed these issues. Grey dubs Coachella “the influencer Olmpyics” despite the fact that many don’t even attend the festival. Instead, she says they film outfit and lifestyle content from the desert to make it look like they were in the thick of things.
So how did Coachella transform from a music-centric event to a TikTok content farm?
The influencers aren’t entirely to blame. Instead, people should point fingers at the brands Coachella works with to sponsor the festival. Brands like Neutrogena, H&M and Casetify—three of this year’s sponsors—all work with influencers to produce content from the festival and promote their products.
But the biggest player in Coachella’s influencers world is Revolve. Since 2015, the fashion company has produced the Revolve Festival concurrently with the first festival weekend, where they invite social media influencers and celebrities to network while watching trending artists perform. And, though influencers made Coachella content prior to Revolve Festival, the new event was a clear turning point in how brands could benefit from social media stars.
Revolve also works with influencer marketing agencies to gift clothes to attendees prior to Coachella. Evidently, the strategy works—back in 2018, the company said sales from the Monday before the festival were higher than Cyber Monday. The music festival has only become more crucial for the brand’s sales since then, with Revolve likening the festival to a retail Superbowl.
But it’s hardly just Revolve that’s capitalizing on the festival. Last year, one influencer said she earned $2,000 per Instagram post featuring Coachella content. Another influencer was paid $2,500 for three Instagram stories and a Reel in addition to a free ticket compliments of one of the brands she partnered with.
The reliance on influencer marketing during the festival is just a reflection of a wider focus on social media marketing. In recent years, brands are leaning even further into the presumed authenticity of micro-influencers who attend the festival. Which of course, means more content from more people.
So as annoying as some people find the unending stream of content, it’s time to accept that Coachella has long been a networking event for those whose livelihood depends on creating a glut of “get ready with me” videos.
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Kristin Snyder
Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
https://twitter.com/ksnyder_db
You Can Now Find Nearby Bird Scooters on Google Maps
02:39 PM | August 17, 2021
People navigating via Google Maps can now easily see Bird scooters available along their routes. Google also added San Francisco-based Spin to their app this week.
The move is the latest in Santa Monica-based Bird's partnerships with mobility-as-a-service platforms around the globe, such as Skipr and Tranzer. The company said in May that it plans to go public in a SPAC valued at $2.3 billion.
In addition to Spin and Bird, vehicles from micromobility giant Lime may also show up on the Google Maps app when searching for bike-friendly routes. The integration of Spin was announced just yesterday while Lime has been integrated in Google Maps since 2018.
To use the new feature, users can type in their location and destination into the Google Maps app and then opt to see bike-friendly routes. Then, if there are Bird scooters nearby, the app will display the Bird logo in those locations. If a user wants to use a scooter, they will be taken to the Bird app to complete their transaction.
Derek Paley, director of the Maryland Robotics Center at the University of Maryland who has done work in micromobility, pointed out that this could make scooter use easier, as it not only helps users find nearby scooters, but also scooter-friendly routes.
The announcement comes on the same day that the company is installing its scooters in New York City for the first time, along with competitors Veo and Lime.
Bird did not respond to a request for comment.
Deirdre Oakley, a professor of Urban Studies at Georgia State University who has done research on micromobility, said she is skeptical that a feature like this could prompt a significant number of non-Bird users to start using Bird vehicles. But, she is optimistic that it could increase the number of rides among those who are already Bird users.
Lime spokesperson Russell Murphy said that the company has seen "great user acquisition through Google Maps as it's one of the most widely used trip planning apps available."
Adding to the environmental benefits of e-scooters, Murphy also said that electric scooters are a preferable pandemic travel option: "With the Delta variant spreading, we also see riders once again turning to micromobility to travel as it's open air and you can socially distance naturally."
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Caitlin Cook
Caitlin Cook is an editorial intern at dot.LA, currently earning her master's degree in mass communication from California State University, Northridge. A devoted multimedia journalist with an interest in both tech and entertainment, Cook also works as a reporter and production assistant for MUSE TV. She got her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Filmmaking from University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
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