A.J. Mellott, CEO of Ronawk
An in depth interview with A.J. Mellott, PhD, CEO and co-founder of Ronawk on how his research led to products to make cell culture better.
About Founding Bio: It is becoming increasingly common for academic trainees in the life sciences, both graduate students and postdocs, to found and lead companies based on their academic research, a movement termed founder-led bio. The idea of starting a company when your whole career has been in academia can be overwhelming. I want this Substack to be a resource for aspiring founders to read about the experiences of people who have been in their shoes. These interviews will go into detail on topics like the tech transfer process, when to spin out, and getting initial funding.
“One skill I learned in academia was setting the culture... That was transferable and highly useful in the company. And that's why it was easy for me to step into that role (of CEO).”
-A.J. Mellott, PhD, CEO and co-founder of Ronawk
A.J. Mellott, PhD, is the CEO and co-founder of Ronawk, a company selling 3D tissue mimetic “Bio-Blocks” to make cell culture easier, more reproducible, and more tissue-like. A.J. did his PhD and postdoc at University of Kansas, where he focused on regenerative medicine. He continued to work in this area as an assistant professor at the University of Kansas School of Medicine, while also developing the technology that would be the basis for Ronawk. In this interview, A.J. shares his journey from professor to CEO, and shares how he creates an environment where employees feel empowered. We also discuss the biotech community in Kansas City and how Ronawk is supporting other scientists in the region through the launch of a new contract research organization.
1) Hi A.J., can you give some background about yourself and tell us about your company, Ronawk?
I'm Dr. A.J. Mellott. I am the CEO and co-founder of Ronawk. My journey in science starts when I was a little kid, my mom was a nurse and my dad was an engineer. They gave me this hybrid upbringing of biology and engineering from a very young age. My dad got me interested in thinking about problems and innovating unique solutions. When I was little, my dad and I worked on this contraption for my great-grandmother that we could attach to her cane, and it made it easy for her to go down steps without having to lift her cane. Experiences like that gave me my initial interest in innovating to help people.
When I went to college at University of Kansas, I had an interest in biology and I loved working with stem cells. I started moving towards regenerative medicine because one of my friends joined the military and I wanted to use my brain and what I was learning to try to come up with technologies to help him and our service members. As I went into grad school and got a PhD in bioengineering (at University of Kansas), I focused more on regenerative medicine, using adult stem cells in unique ways to tackle really hard problems, like trying to regenerate the mechanosensory hair cells in the ear that allow people to hear. After I completed my PhD, I did a short postdoc at University of Kansas and then got a faculty position at the University of Kansas Medical Center.
During all that time, I was working on projects where I had to grow billions of cells, and it was really hard. Anyone that's done cell culture knows that the current way we do it, of growing cells starting in a 2D format in a petri dish or flask, that’s not what it's like in the body. And then having to passage cells where we detach them and split them into additional cell culture vessels also does not happen in the body. One day I got frustrated and thought “There's got to be a better way to do this and make it a little bit more like it is in the body.”
Through the years, first as a postdoc and then as a professor, I started tinkering with this idea, first focusing on a way to grow cells without ever having to subculture them. I was inspired by Legos, I grew up enjoying playing with them. I wanted to make a substrate for cell culture where we can add additional cells and keep the cultures propagating without having to subculture them. Using my background in tissue engineering, I started thinking, “How can we make cell culture more natural?” All of this led to a technology that would become the core technology for what Ronawk is today. Ronawk is a company that has a mission of accelerating next-generation therapies. We focus on developing technologies that are going to be enabling for scientists and help them pursue different research projects across a whole myriad of diseases so that they can then push their research forward and translate it faster for patients. Our main product is Bio-Blocks, which are tissue mimetic substrates, with a similar consistency to jello, that is more tissue-like and natural-like. If you are growing cells on a Bio-Block, you can just add another Bio-Block to continue growing your cells instead of subculturing.
2) You have a unique pathway to becoming an entrepreneur. You were a professor at University of Kansas Medical Center, spun out your company, and then went full-time with the company. What made you decide to go full-time with Ronawk and why did you feel that you were best suited to be CEO?
I'll just start off by saying I actually had no intention of starting a company or even going down that path. I was pretty focused on going into academia and being a PI. While I was using my startup resources to build my lab, I still had this passion for what would become the Bio-Block technology. My co-founder, Heather Decker, and I have been colleagues for over a decade now. Before Ronawk, she was working at a core facility at University of Kansas, and she decided that she needed a little bit of a career change. She's the one who decided to leave the university system first. When she did that, that created the opportunity for us to form a company where one person was outside the university and one person was in. From there it was really fun because we got to work together again in this brand new context.
While we were working on the technology, we shared it with some friends, family, and colleagues, and we started getting this push, for lack of a better term. They were saying, “This is a really cool technology and what you guys are trying to do could help people” We got some of our first angel funding from those early believers and that led us to setting up a really small office. Right around when that happened is when COVID hit. So everything shut down and we didn't know what was going to happen academically. But we were still able to continue building Ronawk because it was outside of the university system and it started getting more and more momentum, which was exciting. I was finding that I could work with more community members and I could reach further than I could inside the university. I had a really supportive department and they said, “You know what, this is really cool and we think you should pursue this.” They gave their blessing but they still wanted to work with me. I basically got to step outside of the university to go run the company while still maintaining an adjunct role with my department.
As the company started to grow, the reason I decided to step into the CEO role is that I really enjoyed setting the tone, the culture, and the vision of the company. I really looked at my job as being the one to empower people. And my co-founder, Heather Decker, is also a phenomenal scientist. So we were able to tag team the science. I felt that she fit better as Chief Technology Officer and I really liked the CEO role, it just fit me better. We decided together that we would leverage each other's strengths to minimize each other's weaknesses and that then has allowed us to attract more and more people and grow our team. And it's been really fun because everyone's very supportive, but I get to do what I love best now as the CEO, which is empowering others, trying to put out different fires, and encouraging the team. I look at my role for the team as chief tactician and coach.
[For setting the tone and culture, what are your core values for Ronawk?]
One of our core values is empowerment. We work really hard to support each other and to make sure that we are respectful when we give feedback. We also make it a point for everybody to be able to ask anyone in the company questions, regardless of their role or department. We value teamwork and we value diversity of thought and experience. By bringing people in that have had different experiences, come from different backgrounds, different upbringings, we get the advantage of being able to approach a problem from multiple perspectives to find a solution and a pathway forward faster. And I can't tell you how incredible that has been because our team has become so diverse and we really are able to then encourage each other and it's created a super positive environment. One of our other big values is what we call ambitious learning. Just because we're in industry doesn't mean we stop learning. Every quarter, our management team puts a book out there for everybody to read. We're always passing papers back and forth. In a lot of ways, we still resemble an academic lab. Allowing everyone to ask questions creates a really collaborative culture, and that is where we get the most productivity. It becomes a really fulfilling place to work. And I can already say that some of the scientists that have joined us over the past year and a half, they have helped to improve what we're doing because they have contributed and they have voiced their opinion, and it's only made us stronger.
3) Are there a few people in particular that inspired you or encouraged you to spin out your company and work on it full-time?
My co-founder, Heather. Both of us had been working really hard in different areas of academia, and we both, unfortunately, had each suffered health issues which gave us each this wake-up moment with some life-altering realizations. She and I both basically thought we were working really hard without much fulfillment. She and I talked about whether our careers were aligned with what was important to us. I think working with each other and being open about that helped push us toward starting the company.
Besides Heather, I was really fortunate that I had both family and friends and colleagues that thought this is a really unique technology. And because of that, they said, “Would you consider forming a company?” I got a little bit of a push, and I'm glad I did. My colleagues, even my mentor, really pushed on me to go pursue this. One, because they said, you will probably regret it if you don't do it. And two, you might just have a lot of fun. And they were all right. I would not change anything. We have an absolute blast at Ronawk.
4) Did Ronawk license intellectual property (IP) from University of Kansas? How important was the initial IP?
The initial patent was owned by the university, and it was more conceptual in nature. What the Bio-Blocks are today is nothing like what they were nearly eight years ago. We did license that initial IP, but after a year, we started developing our own technologies that got much deeper and more defined, and away from the original patent. We ended up actually not needing our license because we abandoned the initial technology, because we ended up learning so much that the technology fundamentally changed. We were able to terminate the license and then work on our own tech and refine that. Having licensed IP did help us with raising some of our initial money. At the time, we didn’t have any published peer-reviewed papers, so we were able to rely on our provisional patent to show there was something there for our technology.
5) What is the biotech community like in Kansas and how has Ronawk changed that landscape?
We're based in Kansas City, we straddle the state line for Kansas and Missouri. I would describe the Biotech community here as more grassroots. On the Kansas side, we have BioKansas, and so Biokansas is really good at being a voice for biotech and bio-related entities in the region, all the way from life sciences to agriculture to animal healthcare, which we have a lot of in Kansas. And then on the Missouri side for Kansas City, we have what's called Bionexus KC. They also are meant to be a voice more specifically the life sciences, healthcare, and biotech community within the greater Kansas City region. They both throw events, bring in speakers, and try to generate funding opportunities.
We have about 35,000 employees that are employed by some type of life science, animal health, or pharmaceutical company in the greater Kansas City region. So it's actually pretty big, but I don't think the general public knows a lot about what's here. We have satellite locations for some really big pharmaceutical companies here in the Kansas City area. So from that perspective, I would say it's a pretty dynamic and thriving community that is really anxious to grow.
[On how Ronawk is supporting the local biotech community]
What Ronawk is trying to do as far as the region, we're currently building a brand new lab, and this will allow us to expand our manufacturing and we are also setting up a brand new contract research organization (CRO), called Stella. Stella is going to focus on cell and tissue characterization and is set to launch on June 1st. Stella and Ronawk both mean illumination. These two companies are both meant to illuminate and help others with discovery. For our CRO that we're opening, our goal is to help all the wonderful startups we have in the area and even some of our colleagues in academia to access our capabilities. We're going to have services in cell culture that include your traditional 2D cell culture, 3D with spheroids, and then our own Bio-Block technology. We're offering full bio-characterization of cell lines as well as histological services. And then finally we are building out a full microscopy suite with several bright field microscopes, fluorescent microscopes, and even a confocal microscope. So our hope with this is when it comes to the biotech region here in Kansas City, as we are growing our company, we can help our neighbors and friends with their technologies by providing them with an option to complete their studies in a more timely manner. That way, they can attract investors and actually show off the really cool things they're doing, and we can bring more resources to the region.
6) Let’s talk about the logistics that went into getting the company up and running.
[What resources did you utilize when first starting Ronawk?]
My co-founder Heather and I are very driven individuals. When we were first forming Ronawk, we both recognized that we really didn't have any business experience. So in that first year where things were more transitionary, we actually focused on soaking up as much business knowledge as we could. We were fortunate that the university had a biotech boot camp that we both went through and then we got into an NSF I-Corps program. I also became a Pipeline Fellow, which is a Midwest entrepreneurship program, and that was a transformative program that really exposed me and my co-founder to this wide network of entrepreneurs and financiers. From there it made it much easier, at least made us aware of the different resources in the region.
[On finding a law firm]
We looked at the different law firms and we ended up going with one of the larger law firms in the area. Mostly because we thought, we were going to pay more money in the beginning, but they had such a good reputation and they'd be able to help us with our business development and that was the right choice for us. They've been phenomenal.
[On find Ronawk’s first employees]
Our employees in the beginning came from Heather and my network. We were looking for people that had knowledge we were missing or skills we needed and so that's how we recruited employees. Once we had more exposure, we were able to go the traditional route of putting out some job postings and whatnot and attract people that way. But I have to credit our success with going through those different educational courses to give us the foundational knowledge we needed. So we learned just enough to be dangerous and to find the experts that would help us grow as a company.
[On finding Ronawk’s first space]
Our very first location was essentially an office that had a really heavy-duty bench. We had two small desks in that office and we were then able to use the bench to fit a computer, our first 3D printer, and a microscope. That's all it was. After we got our next round of funding, we moved into that veterinary tech training facility. It was actually a huge leap for us because we went from a 300-square-foot office to a 4000-square-foot facility. It had traditional lab benches and then we were able to purchase some equipment. Ironically now we've been there about three years and it is just bursting at the seams with supplies and lab equipment. I mean, it looks like a very productive lab.
7) You could imagine using bio-blocks as the basis for a lot of types of companies, potentially for drug discovery. What factors did you consider in deciding to have Ronawk focus on producing a product that is sold to labs?
I'll start with a little bit of the tech. Bio-Blocks themselves are 3D-printed hydrogels. Using a hydrogel formulation gives us a lot of control on what we can do with their physical and biological properties. So they're about the consistency of jello and they look like these cube, jigsaw puzzle pieces. Microchannels permeate throughout the entire block and within the microchannels are where cells attach and grow. We initially conceived the technology as an easy and efficient way to grow cells and scale them very fast without subculture. We thought of all sorts of uses, regenerative medicine, toxicology drug discovery, et cetera. We've found over the last year and a half with the technology, where it really shines is when you use it as a biomimetic microenvironment for creating more physiological-like conditions.
Because the Bio-Blocks have so many potential applications, we decided the best route was selling this to scientists to enable their projects. If you want to study tissue formation and be able to scale it, these are ideal because you can just keep putting blocks together. When the cells grow in this more physiological-like environment, they behave like they do in the body. They're talking with each other and they're secreting exosomes, extracellular vesicles, growth factors, proteins, et cetera. The cells double what they secrete compared to 2D cell culture, and that can be analyzed and become the basis for new therapies or for developing diagnostics. As long as the media formulation is not too different between the two cell types, you can blend them together and you can start to form interfaces where the cells interact, so it's a 3D co-culture. You can do 1, 2, 3, 4, or however many cell types you want to bring together in a controlled manner.
Bio-Blocks themselves are a vehicle for these new things that you can do with cells, these new experiments, or for manufacturing. Bio-Blocks make it easier, they're more efficient, and it takes the human factor out of that because we've reduced the space, we've reduced the consumables needed, and we can do more with less. We sell the blocks, but our goal is also to collaborate with people. Because it is such a new technology, one of the first things we will always tell people is if you have a project, this is not meant to be one-and-done. We want to work with your team because, ultimately, if your research succeeds, we succeed. When you buy the Bio-Block, we're here to offer our time, help with the development of the protocol, and, ultimately, get things right.
Our hope is in the long term with this technology that we are able to reduce a lot of the animal work that's needed and help accelerate the development of different therapies so that there's more accurate evidence before going into a clinical trial.
8) How did you work on finding product market fit for Ronawk and how has the product changed over time?
Thanks to the feedback we've gotten from our customers, the way we've positioned it is not really towards any one specific disease or cancer. We took a step back, and looked at it more as an enabling technology. We try to position ourselves like any other consumable in lab you would routinely use. But through collaboration, there are customizations we can do to the block to help it fit more directly in a particular research project. Most of our customers are pharma companies, but we also form collaborations with academics, because having them publish using Bio-Blocks provides more validation for our technology. For product market fit, we really talk to the customers about how we can be something that enables your research. We have strong technical and customer service relationships that I think has helped us immensely.
Lately, we’ve been asking customers, “How many tissue culture flasks do you need to form tissue? But we only need one Bio-Block to do that.” And from that one Bio-Block, you can use it for so many different analyses simultaneously.
9) Bio-blocks create an environment for cell culture that matches closer to what cells experience in vivo. Is there a specific example you can give from yourself or one of your clients where the results from growing cells with bio-blocks varied from traditional cell culture?
We had one client working on a cell type that normally is very difficult to grow in 2D. In fact, it's also very difficult to grow in 3D, usually. And when it does grow, it doesn't survive very long, on the order of a few days. The client sent us their cells and we were actually able to grow their cells in the Bio-Blocks for up to 20 days. We could have kept going, but we terminated the experiment just because proof of concept had been reached and the cells were able to thrive because the environment was so different than a normal 2D cell culture vessel or being encapsulated in 3D. And so that was a really cool, unexpected thing that happened and it was really exciting with that particular client. Those are the things that make it all fulfilling. So we can help people with their research while we're bringing revenue and working on new technologies.
10) How did you meet investors? How has your experience been raising capital?
Our initial investors were friends and family, but after that, we pitched at as many local events as we could. We utilized our network to reach out through some of the programs we went through that helped widen our network and expose us to a lot of different business individuals. Even if they weren't in our sector, they’d say, “I don't understand what you're doing, but I know somebody over in your area.” And we’d use that to get to different investors. We pitched quite a lot and we were fortunate that we had a handful [of investors] in that initial round where we really connected and then they went through their due diligence and funded us, and then it's been like that as we've proceeded with our subsequent round. For our next funding round, we had refined our pitch and had gotten used to the process, but it was still very intensive. You have to reach out to a lot of people, you pitch a lot and there's going to be a lot of no's, maybe next time, or tell me more when you're down the road.
11) What skills from academia have translated best to being a CEO and what’s a skill you had to develop?
One skill I learned in academia was setting the culture. I started out wanting to empower the next generation. But the second thing, when I was a PI, there was so much I had to manage in the lab; lab equipment, accounts, reporting to HR, and all those business administration-related skills. That was transferable and highly useful in the company. And that's why it was easy for me to step into that role.
What I really had to develop, once I became a CEO, was my ability to say no. I had to flex that muscle and exercise it. Probably the first year and a half I still had a lot of overhang from academia, of wanting to say yes and put myself out there. What I've really had to learn that's different here, but still applicable even back to academia, is how I should focus my time, say no, and really structure my time to get things done. And so that's been helpful. And then once I embraced that and utilized some of the organizational skills I brought from academia, that allowed me to really grow as a CEO so I could be there more for my team.