An Interview with Dina Radenkovic (CEO & Co-Founder of Gameto)

In celebration of Women’s History Month, Wharton Femtech Club is spotlighting extraordinary female leaders in the women’s health space.

Interviewed by Emily Chen (W’23)

Dr. Dina Radenkovic is Co-founder and CEO of Gameto, a biotechnology company using cell engineering to develop novel therapeutics for diseases of the female reproductive system, focusing on infertility and menopause.
Beyond Gameto, Dina is a partner at SALT Bio Fund. She has had research posts at King’s College London and the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. Dina was also co-founder and Chief Science Officer of Hooke, longevity research clinics in London. She qualified with a dual degree in medicine and physiology from UCL Medical School, London, UK, and did her residency at St Thomas’ Hospital in London. She has over 30 academic papers, 7 grants and over 40 scientific conference presentations. She is fluent in 5 languages and 3 programming languages.

EC: You come from an extremely impressive science and medical background, and from what I’ve read, it was through those early experiences researching longevity that you developed a passion for it and ultimately decided to start Gameto. Can you talk a bit more about your motivation to move from research to entrepreneurship?

DR: I’ve had an entrepreneurial spirit since I was young. I was born in Serbia and didn’t know about venture capital growing up, but when I moved to the UK for schooling I participated in the F Factor Awards, the science version of the X Factor. I presented an idea for an app that would help women with gestational diabetes reduce the progression of Type 2 diabetes, in front of a premier global community of tech investors and entrepreneurs including Sir Richard Branson, Eric Schmidt, and Simon Cowell. My idea became a part of the NHS’ national gluco- focus accelerator.

I already knew I loved medicine and healthcare, and from that point on I knew I wanted to pursue entrepreneurship as well.

Healthcare feeds my passion for taking care of people and entrepreneurship feeds my passion for solving problems. So I chose to become a healthcare entrepreneur and solve problems in medicine.

Finishing medical school and becoming a practicing doctor was important to me, as I wanted the education, knowledge and exposure that comes from these experiences, so I combined my studies and entrepreneurship while I finished medical school.

As soon as I graduated from medical school I began pursuing new entrepreneurial opportunities. I co-founded Hooke, an operating longevity clinic in London, began advising several companies, became a partner at SALT, and of course, later co-founded Gameto.

EC: Following up on that, in those initial years of starting Gameto, how were you going about selecting a co-founder, sponsor research lab, and therapeutic platform? What were you prioritizing for?

DR: Even though I had previously co-founded a business and was a partner at SALT where I saw many businesses being incubated, I knew that I still had a lot to learn when it came to building a big company, especially a biotech in the US. I wanted someone who could be a mentor to me as I took on building this company.

I was incredibly excited to unite forces with Martín Varsavsky. Martín is a serial deep tech entrepreneur who has had many successes and a few failures to learn from. He was a role model to me and I knew he was the right person to help navigate the entrepreneurial challenges I would face while building Gameto.

Not only did Martín have the entrepreneurial experience I was looking for, he also was an early winner in the fertility industry. He is the co-founder and chairman of Inception Prelude, the largest fertility network in North America. Given that Gameto’s first product is a fertility therapeutic, I felt that his deep knowledge of the fertility industry and relationships with fertility clinics across the globe would be incredibly useful for our business.

Biotech companies are very expensive to start. Oftentimes quite a bit of capital is needed to even see if an idea is possible before you can formulate a hypothesis to take to investors. Sponsored research agreements allow you to leverage the resources of academic labs and de-risk the science before a larger company is formed.

Gameto’s initial research was conducted through a sponsored research agreement with the George Church lab at Harvard Medical School and our computation work was started by Professor Pranam Chatterjee. These agreements allowed us to see if our ideas were possible in a cost and time efficient way.

EC: Similarly, you have successfully raised multiple investment rounds, and from several notable female funds and investors. What skills or traits were you looking for in a potential investment partner and/or have been most helpful in your company’s growth?

DR: I’ve learned that finding the right investors is a bit like a matchmaking exercise. Your company will not be the right fit for every single fund. You have to look at who is the right fit for you and your company.

Gameto is an atypical company — we operate at the intersection of deep tech and biotech, but we also operate in a direct-to-consumer industry.

Fertility is a consumer-driven industry. It’s not a life-threatening disease. It’s elective and people have to choose to use our products.

We wanted investors who had a deep understanding of science and technology, but also understood consumer-growth and building products people love. Most importantly, we wanted our investors to support our mission of being a company by women, for women, and empowering women.

EC: Can you talk about a particularly insightful or challenging conversation or pitch experience you had during the fundraising process? What are some of your biggest learnings from fundraising for a women’s health company, and especially one that requires so much technical knowledge and scientific expertise?

DR: It’s hard to explain the problem your company is addressing to an audience that doesn’t understand the problem. So pitching a female reproductive health biotech to male investors was a challenge.

You have to educate the audience on the issue at hand before you can get to your solution. For starters, the extraction of sex cells is very different for men and women. Then you have to cover the menstrual cycle, why you need to extract mature eggs for IVF, and the hormonal side effects from bloating and constipation to depression, anxiety and mood swings, to the risk of mild ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome.

When I first started pitching Gameto to investors, Jim McKelvey, the co-founder of Block (formerly known as Square) and an investor at our fund at SALT, gave me some constructive criticism on my pitch. He told me I was being overly scientific, academic and boring. He told me that every pitch should be entertaining.

As a young woman in the biotech industry, I felt the need to put my knowledge and medical experience on display.

I guess as a young woman I wanted to put more emphasis on displaying my academic and medical background. I was worried that adding an element of entertainment could make me look less serious and ended up with a dull pitch.

Jim’s advice helped me feel more in control of my pitch. I learned to be comfortable throwing a joke in and asking the audience questions and I made it a lot more engaging for investors.

I learned that making my pitch more interesting didn’t reduce my credibility or knowledge, on the contrary, it made me a better entrepreneur.

EC: In one of your recent interviews, you mentioned the early success of Fertilo pre-clinical studies and that because of this, you will be prioritizing this program over others. Eventually though, you see this as a holistic service to improving the entire journey of ovarian health. Can you expand on this and Gameto’s long-term vision?

DR: Gameto’s mission is to support women throughout their entire reproductive journey, and in doing so, we are developing a modern and robust platform of therapies to study and treat diseases and conditions of the female reproductive system. Our platform includes three programs:

1. Fertilo: Designed to improve outcomes of IVF and other assisted fertility methods
2. Deovo: Designed to test & develop drugs for ovarian disease
3. Ameno: Designed to address primary ovarian failure and resulting conditions such as menopause

While we’ve seen investment in women’s health on the healthcare services and consumer sides, there’s still an unmet need for treatments for diseases of the female reproductive system. Women want their reproductive problems, from infertility to PCOS to hot flashes, to be solved. Gameto is starting with infertility.

We are currently prioritizing Fertilo, our fertility focused program. Despite a growing global infertility crisis, female reproductive therapies have remained largely unimproved since inception decades ago. Current fertility therapies and treatments are hard on women physically, professionally and financially and don’t cater to the modern woman. Advancement in this field is needed now and we hope to do this through Fertilo.

We’re currently working with several partners to develop and test this treatment and we plan to partner with many more as we and the healthcare industry progress. Our hope is that healthcare will transition from sick-care to well-care, and more people will be seeking and accessing care for nonessential treatments like reproductive services. Fertility treatments should be accessible to all and we look forward to partnering with clinics of all models to provide these treatments.

EC: There are so few companies dedicated to female reproductive longevity because it does take a tremendous amount of highly specialized talent and capital. As Femtech club leaders at business school, we’re curious where you see young professionals with a non-medical background adding the most value in women’s health and biotechnology?

DR: The exciting thing about a company like Gameto is that it’s very multidisciplinary. You don’t have to have a medical background. If you’re passionate about women’s health, you could have a background in many other industries including business development, finance, operations, and law, and still play a valuable role in building a female-focused company.

For example, look at our co-founder Martín. Martín, he did premed but didn’t complete medical school — he pursued entrepreneurial opportunities instead and built Prelude Fertility and now is working on Gameto.

Our in-house legal counsel, Agustina Imfeld, is passionate about women’s health but studied law. Agustina spent time becoming an expert in reproductive health and IVF laws and plays an invaluable role at Gameto as the only person with this legal knowledge.

Emily Bosworth is our business development manager who studied neuroscience at Harvard before moving to a consulting role. She’s now using both of these experiences to help us build Gameto’s business strategy.

A biotech company doesn’t just need cell engineers, biologists, physicians and computational biologists. It needs business experts who can raise money, build financial models, promote the company’s product, lead and negotiate deals with pharma, and more.

Gameto is continuing to hire in these departments as we grow. We are currently recruiting a business development associate to join our team and anticipate further roles opening up in the near future.

EC: There was an article from a few years back where you described some of the healthy habits you try to follow every day. I’m sure you’ve only gotten busier and have more responsibilities to juggle since then and as Gameto has grown, so how do you continue to prioritize your health and wellness, both physical and mental?

DR: I think of four domains of preventative health: medical, nutrition, physical and mental.

For my medical health, I make sure my vaccinations are up to date and that I’m attending all my annual appointments — my physical, blood work (which I actually try to have done twice a year), pap smear, dermatologist skin check.

For my nutrition, I take supplements. I stick to vitamin D, a multivitamin for the immune system, and a probiotic. I travel with a box of my supplements so I can stay on top of my nutrition even during busy seasons!

For my physical health, I like to do a boxing workout twice a week. I used to run frequently, but haven’t been able to as much as I’d like since my schedule has gotten crazier with travel and long hours. I think we should all aim for a bit of physical activity everyday. Oftentimes this ends up being four days a week and that’s okay.

For my mental health, I try to get eight hours of sleep as often as possible. This has definitely been a challenge and is the area I could work on most because of travel, jet lag and long hours. But whenever I can, I try to get a good night of sleep! The mission driven company like Gameto definitely gives me a sense of purpose.

As a physician with a background in prevention and longevity medicine, I believe it’s important to balance our work life and wellbeing. Building a biotech company is a lot of work and sometimes that means we have to compromise on the things we may typically do to stay healthy — like sleeping or spending time with family and friends. It’s important that when work is busy we find time to reset and ensure that our career stress doesn’t become long-term chronic stress.

Physical and mental health are built into our values at Gameto. One of our core values is that our team’s health and wellness is just as important as our work. Optimal productivity happens when we are our best, healthiest selves. We want to make sure everyone is working hard, but also that we’re looking after each other. Gameto employees receive a monthly $100 wellness benefit to spend on their health. This benefit can be used for anything from a gym membership to candles to help us destress. It serves as a reminder each month to do something for yourself and for your wellbeing.

Gameto is a biotechnology company based in New York and Madrid. The company has developed a platform using proprietary combinations of transcription factors to generate engineered ovarian cell lines that mimic the functions of endogenous cells, producing and responding to all hormones.

Gameto’s team of cellular engineers is using this platform to advance a portfolio of cellular therapeutics for female reproductive diseases and applications including assisted fertility outcomes, menopause, and more.

To learn more, visit https://www.gametogen.com/