Founder Spotlight #32: Alice Melocchi @ Multiply Labs
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Alix Ventures: Supporting Early Stage Life Science Startups Engineering Biology to Drive Radical Advances in Human Health
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Alice Melocchi is Co-Founder & CSO @ Multiply Labs — Utilizing robotics to fabricate personalized drug products.
After graduating cum laude in Pharmacy, Alice Melocchi was selected for a Ph.D., during which spent 9 months at Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a visiting student, working within the Novartis-MIT Center for Continuous Manufacturing. She earned her Ph.D. from Università degli Studi di Milano and currently she is a researcher at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences of the same University. More recently, her work has also been focused on the use of 3D printing. In December 2018, thanks to her unique expertise at the intersection between academia and startup foundation, Alice was also nominated among the Inspiring 50 Italy, the most inspiring Italian women in technology.
Multiply Labs’ mission is to be the gold standard for robotic manufacturing of advanced medicines. Today’s most advanced drugs are tailored to the needs of each patient, but making these drugs efficiently is a big challenge. The goal of our robots is to make lifesaving, personalized drugs available (and affordable) for all patients. Multiply Labs’ customers include some of the largest pharmaceutical and research organizations in the world, and our robots are already being deployed to manufacture life-saving drugs. We are a Series A-funded startup based in San Francisco, and backed by top-tier tech and life sciences investors — including Casdin Capital, Lux Capital, Founders Fund and Fifty Years.
To learn more & view videos of our robots in action — visit: multiplylabs.com
Challenges in inclusion, diversity, and equity in startups and venture capital (VC) are not new. Women led startups received just 2.3% of VC funding in 2020 (source: Harvard Business Review). Black and Latinx founded startups represented 2.4% of VC funding since 2015, despite making up 18.5% of the US population (source: Crunchbase). We see similar data and challenges on the investor side, further perpetuating unequal representation.
The AWS Healthcare and Life Sciences Startups Team provides dedicated resources, expertise, and credits to help healthcare and life sciences startups of all stages excel and grow. We work alongside industry partners and strategics (including accelerators, investors, enterprises), match AWS/Amazon capabilities to the needs of startups, and help them build for scale, overcome technical and regulatory challenges, and accelerate time to market by opening doors and creating opportunities. To learn more including how to access $25k in credits through our partnership with BIOS community, email: hcls-startups@amazon.comwith subject: BIOS.
We’re excited to showcase Multiply Labs’ inspiring story below…
“Our partnership with AWS was critical to building an advanced cloud-based software solution that complements our advanced robotic solution for the manufacturing of personalized therapies at scale. In fact, our team was able to access significant technical resources and support, working closely with AWS solution architects as well as account managers focused specifically on the life sciences startup space. This was very helpful when defining and building our secure and scalable turnkey software solution. AWS offers multiple services — from Greengrass to AWS Control Tower — that helped not only speed up our development but also simplify the deployment and remote management of our cloud controlled robotic system. This key partnership has definitely helped accelerate bringinging our product to market and will continue to be critical for our growth and technology development.”
Zahra Badey — VP of Software & Chief Software Architect @ Multiply Labs
Personal Spark
What prompted you to pursue a career in Life Sciences? Was there a specific moment in time or influence you can remember? What drives you to work in this space?
I always wanted to pursue a career in the field of life science, with the idea that my work would have a positive impact on the daily life of people. I do not remember a specific moment for this decision, it was just something I knew from the end of high school.
How did you get your training, if any, to be able to build your company? Life Sciences increasingly has interdisciplinary academic backgrounds, while other founders take the plunge and jump straight off the deep end. Which one are you & why?
My co-founder Fred and I met at MIT when he was doing his PhD in Robotics and I, thanks to my experience in Pharma tech, joined the Novartis-MIT Center for continuous manufacturing as a PhD visiting student. We had completely different expertises and this, in my opinion, was a great advantage. Indeed, we have benefited from the interdisciplinary academic background the life sciences startups need from the very beginning. This difference allowed us to discuss, to confront each other’s opinions and point of views, and to build a comprehensive perspective of the problems we were trying to solve and the strategy to build our company. Y Combinator partners were our first mentors and the other advisors we met during the journey of founding Multiply labs were key in finding the right path for us.
Can you tell us a little bit about your background & career thus far? What were you doing before you started running a high potential venture backed startup?
After graduating with a MSc in Pharmacy cum laude, I was selected for a Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry to study production and formulation of medicines. During graduate school, I had a chance to spend 9 months at Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a visiting student, working within the Novartis-MIT Center for Continuous Manufacturing. There, I was working on innovative formulation and manufacturing of immediate release tablets. In particular, we were trying to adapt the techniques used in other fields such as extrusion and injection molding in plastic manufacturing, to the biopharmaceutical industry to increase production speed, reduce the vaste, and further optimize medicine production.
During my time at MIT, I met Federico Parietti, my future co-founder, who was then doing his Ph.D. in Robotics, working on artificial limbs. I then returned to Italy and in 2015, I earned my Ph.D. from Università degli Studi di Milano. In 2016, together with Fred, I co-founded the startup Multiply Labs, in which I currently hold the position of Chief Scientific Officer. The company was selected for taking part in the 2016 summer batch of Y Combinator. Making use of Fred’s and mine expertise, we aim to fabricate personalized drug products with use of robotics. Besides my role in Multiply Labs, I am also a researcher at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences of the University of Milan.
Company Overview
What problem is your company solving?
Multiply Labs works on production of personalized medicines through the implementation of robotics and advanced automation
How did you become motivated to tackle this particular problem?
Availability of custom-made drug products, which are currently unfeasible with traditional manufacturing approaches, is essential in order to improve the life of patients and to enable the treatment of specific pathologies. This motivated us to create Multiply Labs.
Quite simply, what does your company do?
Multiply Labs enables the manufacturing of personalized medicine at scale, making them finally available to patients
Now in technical language, what are the specifics of what your company does?
Our company builds robotic clusters dedicated to and validated for the production of specific drug products. Thanks to this approach, it will be possible, for instance, to fine-tune the type and dosages of the active ingredients conveyed and to tailor their amounts to the needs of a specific patient. Our system also allows one to combine multiple drugs usually administered separately within one shell.
Why does your solution matter for the world when you get it right?
Our solution should improve the therapeutic outcomes of different treatments, by enhancing patient compliance and reducing the costs associated with poor drug adherence and side effects. We are working on making personalized medicines available at scale to reach every patient.
Genesis
What is your company’s founding story? How did everything come together?
It all started when Fred and I met at MIT. Initially, we were working on very different projects: Fred was focused on artificial limbs, whereas my research was concentrated on personalized medicines. Together, we discussed the feasibility of making personalized medicine at scale upon using innovative engineering techniques such as 3D printing. We then wrote our first patent and started applying to different accelerators.
How did you meet your co-founder?
I met Fred during the launch of the Italian students association @ MIT.
Was there a specific moment when you knew you should pursue this as a business idea? If so, what was it?
Fred had a vision. He understood almost immediately that we could transform an idea into a business. We won the MIT SandBox competition, which was reassuring of our potential.
Timing is everything — how did you know the timing was right?
When we started MultiplyLabs, we were working on a disruptive technology that nobody had approached before. We realized that we had a competitive advantage in terms of timing but also in terms of expertise, as our backgrounds were very different but complementary and essential for the idea that we were pursuing.
Originally, we were producing personalized nutraceuticals, or dietary supplements, as the regulatory barriers are lower in this field compared to pharmaceuticals. It thus presented great opportunities for developing our proof-of-concept, after which we switched to our current focus on personalized pharmaceuticals.
Accomplishments
What are some of the notable milestones your company has achieved thus far? (Funding, Animal Data, IND, Team, etc.)
After being backed by Y Combinator, we closed first a seed round in 2016 and recently a series A in 2021. We had the chance to present our tech at different international conferences as well as to the regulatory entities and to start collaborating with several Pharma companies. Getting our approach validated and approved for the nutraceuticals was also a huge milestone, and we hope to have it extended to pharmaceuticals in the near future.
What are some of the biggest hurdles ahead? How do these create points of value inflection?
As mentioned above, we need to validate our approach with pharmaceuticals and convince Pharma companies to implement it in their manufacturing routine.
Pay It Forward
Throughout the journey, what have been some of your biggest takeaways thus far? What advice/words of wisdom would you share from your story for other founders?
I think that one of the most important things is to discuss and confront different perspectives and to trust your co-founders. It is from different ideas that innovations are born.
You also have to know your product in every possible way and make sure you can communicate it with different stakeholders. Seek advice and feedback on how to do so from your advisors and the wider like-minded community.
What are some of the must haves for an early stage Life Sciences startup in your eyes?
I think that the founders of early stage startups in life sciences need strong motivation, perseverance, and willingness to learn. They should not be afraid of challenges, as implementing innovation is always quite hard. However, the regulations (that sometimes seem too strict and designed to limit your progress) are fundamental to ensure safety and there are always good reasons behind them. Try to understand them and then you can improve your idea by taking safety and other regulations into account and approaching the problem in the most efficient way.
What are some of the traits that make a great founder? What type of risk profile/archetype does someone need to have to be a founder in your opinion?
I don’t think that there is a perfect recipe to becoming a great founder. Each startup has its own story and the same founder could be well-equipped for working in a specific area and less suitable for another field. Overall, a great founder has to be strongly motivated and to deeply believe in their idea to make it real.
For folks coming out of academia, what advice would you share?
Academia is a world of its own, with specific rules. Outside of it, everything is different and you need time to understand it and start making the most of each environment you find yourself in. Keep in mind that, like in academia, whatever path you decide to take in entrepreneurship, you have to work hard to achieve your goals. Similarly, both in academia and entrepreneurship, it helps to maintain a positive attitude, to be open to new challenges and opportunities for growth.
Not everyone knows everything. Often founders have to learn either the science or the business side better. What advice would you give for someone picking up a new skill set such as this?
Be hungry… try to understand each aspect of your company and to learn as much as possible. Utilize the differences in your team’s points of view to enhance your growth and development — and for this, make sure you maintain the trusting relationship with your co-founder and the team. This is especially important if many of your communications are online and not face-to-face, which is the case for Multiply Labs with its transatlantic C-Suite.
Can you demystify the process of what it was like to raise VC funding? What were the highlights & low lights? Any advice or words of wisdom for future founders?
Try to take the most from every conversation with VCs. They have a different perspective, especially if you are a tech founder, and could help you see the pain points of your idea and to make it better. It is also helpful to understand that different investors have different perspectives on risk.
What advice for managing and hiring a great team can you share?
Try to find the people with the best competences and those who are enthusiastic to work on the problems your startup is trying to solve. Moreover, make sure that they feel comfortable and could fit in the team culture you already have.
AWS/Amazon Programs for Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
A small part that the AWS Startups Team plays in driving diversity, equity, and inclusion in the community is creating, deploying, and backing initiatives to level the playing field and increase visibility for underrepresented founders (URFs). Specifically, this means providing mentorship, community, access, and business and technical resources at scale and delivered programmatically. Here, we’d like to highlight a few programs supporting women, Black, Latinx, and LGBTQ entrepreneurs.
AWS Startup Day Women Founders Edition featured topics including how to overcome biases in fundraising, tips on juggling your personal life while building a business, and how to sell your startup to backers who may not identify with the market. Our first AWS Healthcare Accelerator cohort featured 10 startups: 90% had diverse leadership and 70% were female founded. AWS also partnered with StartOut to support LGBTQ entrepreneurs and with Black Ambition, an organization launched by Pharrell Williams to catalyze entrepreneurship by investing in Black and Latinx founders. Lastly, the Amazon Alexa Fund partnered with Blavity’s AfroTech and All Raise to drive inclusiveness and equity for entrepreneurs of color.
This is just the beginning. We know we have a long way to go, but we’re committed to continuing this important work.
If you have questions or would like to get in touch, please email hcls-startups@amazon.com with the subject: BIOS.
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