Media City Scientific

Growing up and going through undergraduate research experiences and a PhD program, I was lucky to see a lot of women who looked like me completing PhDs, post-docs, and moving into PI positions. ➡️ And as much as it would be really nice if that didn’t matter, it did make me feel that little bit more confident. Then I began to get exposure to the world of venture capital, private equity, and startups. The first time I spoke to a room of private equity investors, the ratio in the room was something like three women to forty men. ➡️ And as much as it would be really nice if that didn’t matter, it did make me feel that little bit less confident and that little bit more hesitant to speak up. It's tougher to be what you can't see. Five years later, my confidence has grown. I’m still trying to figure out how to balance toddlers and startup companies, and I wish there were more obvious examples of scientist-founders or founder-moms with young kids out there who I could look towards, and I definitely don’t have it all figured out. But I do know that even my imperfect attempts are exactly what Katie-five-years-ago needed to see as she navigated from academia to startup-land. ➡️ And that was the impetus behind deciding to write online about my learnings from 1) working at a fast-growing startup and 2) resigning to found my own company. As well as hopefully being useful/interesting for others, WOW! It has been so rewarding to meet folks around the world who are also trying to balance science and startups and parent-life. That's why I’m planning on doing a lot more of this next year - on Linkedin, but also with other forms of media. To help with that goal, I am very grateful to be named as a SuperStar of STEM alongside some other very impressive Aussie women. This program will help me reach a much wider audience, while I continue to share my excitement about the ways in which we can use science to make the world a healthier, more sustainable, more positive place for all of us to live. ☺️ 🧪 #SuperstarsOfSTEM

Behind the scenes of building a biotech company: A big milestone unlocked and supply chain dramas 🥳 😵💫 The highs: 🥳 1️⃣ I’m so pleased with how our FBS-replacement solution, FRS, is looking. I’ve been working out the final shipping format over the past months, and every time I go into the laboratory and see a wide range of cells growing in FRS after weeks and months, it just makes my heart happy. 2️⃣ Product is being shipped to scientists doing important work, who want and need to replace FBS in their cell culture. Some of these folks have worked alongside me in the past, and it feels really special to share this moment with them. Frankly, I probably need to pause and celebrate this milestone a bit more. I think it just doesn’t feel real yet. The lows: 😵💫 1️⃣ Gosh, life sciences supply chain can be so tough in Australia. Reagents might come with a quoted 6-8 week lead time...but sometimes I’ve seen that become 4+ months if it arrives at all! Sometimes I wonder if I should just fly to the US to visit family & pick up reagents at the same time! (Would this make the flight a business expense? Not sure what the import implications would be, so please don’t interpret this musing as a recommendation!) 2️⃣ The last 2 months have brought some personal life challenges. One of my jobs as company leader is to constantly assess “what are the biggest risks to the business right now?” Reality is, at this tiny stage of company growth, if something slows me down even marginally, it’s going to slow down company progress as well. Something I’m keen to de-risk as we move into 2025 and figure out what scale-up looks like. Overall, it feels good. I’m a cautious scientist by nature, but I’m becoming increasingly excited about the potential FRS has to replace a great deal of FBS out there - making cell culture more sustainable, consistent, and contaminant free. Photo: Shout-out to my co-founder for designing these labels! It’s getting real 😍 _____________________ 👋 After my PhD, I joined a biotech start-up that grew from 8→80 people. Now, I’m building Media City Scientific to eliminate Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS) while sharing the behind-the-scenes online.

When I was thinking about establishing a small biotech company, I was quoted 30k to rent a lab bench for a year in an academic laboratory….which is pretty reasonable, but then I realized I could purchase most of the equiptment for half that price! In Part 2 of outfitting a cell culture lab for 15k, here’s how the rest of the lab equipment budget for Media City Scientific’s first R&D lab space was spent. The purchase of that first batch of consumables does break us past 15k though! I’m always excited to hear from others who have “lab equipment hacks” they swear by to cut costs or improve lab sustainability with no scientific impact. Personally, I love that my -80 freezer is so tiny; it saves so much electricity!

Fitting out a mammalian cell culture lab for less than $15k!? Building an R&D lab doesn’t have to break the bank, but it’s important to know when it’s okay to hack something together (e.g. a sous vide stick water bath) and where you need to invest in higher end equipment. In a new video series, I’m sharing how we fit out the first Media City Scientific R&D lab space for less than $15,000. 🎥 If you’ve ever imagined starting your own biotech company or establishing your own lab, watch to see what’s possible without huge amounts of funding! Part 2 coming tomorrow, always happy to answer any questions 😊

👩🏻🔬 “It’s hard to beat someone who’s learning faster than everyone else and refuses to give up.” – Katie Bashant Day After earning her PhD at the University of Cambridge and leading a team of scientists as Head of Technology at Vow, Katie founded Media City Scientific. Now, she’s tackling one of the biggest challenges in biotech research: replacing fetal bovine serum (FBS) with an ethical and reliable alternative. What’s wrong with FBS? FBS has long been a staple in laboratories. But, its use raises serious ethical, financial, and scientific issues. With demand over 800,000 litres annually, it involves countless animals and has seen prices surge by 300% in recent years. FBS is also inconsistent and prone to contamination, and due to its animal-derived nature, it can affect the reliability of research outcomes. This challenge became the catalyst for Katie’s entrepreneurial journey. Moving from academic research to the fast-paced startup world and eventually founding her own company, she navigated a series of mindset shifts. In our conversation, Katie shared insights on adapting to biotech entrepreneurship. Here are some takeaways: 🚀 In academia, perfection and deep understanding are prioritized. In startups, speed and efficiency take the lead—you need to move fast and iterate quickly. 📈 Success in entrepreneurship isn’t necessarily about major breakthroughs; it’s about showing up consistently and making small, steady progress daily. 💡 The ability to question assumptions and pivot based on new information is key to staying ahead, especially in a fast-paced biotech environment. 🧠 Moving from academia to a startup and then into entrepreneurship requires a big mindset shift—from precision to agility, from theory to action. 🔨 You can build your own lab space at home! 🤝 Scientists transitioning to startups should be confident in their expertise but open to learning from colleagues in different disciplines to solve problems. Learn more about Katie's journey and insights: https://lnkd.in/gUUc2BBt

Eshan absolutely nailed this write-up on the Media City Scientific story (so far!) Highlights: ➡ How our long term direction sprung from a scientific journal article I’ve been thinking about since age 14. ➡ Reflections on moving between academia, early-stage startup employee and founder. ➡ Developing an animal-component free, chemically defined and sustainable supplement that can replace fetal bovine serum (FBS) for culturing primary MSCs, chondrocytes, fibroblasts (plus a handful of immortalised cells tested to date!) Check it out! And expect more on the science soon 😊

Let me take you inside of a biotech company that’s building in the 0→1 stage! I’ve been involved with several early stage companies as they designed, built, and began experimenting in their first laboratory spaces. Some hacks that will save you money: ➡️Sous vide stick + plastic bin = waterbath ➡️A tiny -80 freezer costs less and uses much less energy ➡️Using a 3D printer to DIY basic laboratory essentials like centrifuge tube holders More below 📽️ P.S. CapCut (a short form video editing app) was not a challenge I expected to take on when I decided to build a biotech company but here we are - the real “build in public” stuff 🙃

Before I built my own cell culture laboratory or launched a biotech company myself, I spent four years in the absolute best entrepreneurial training ground. Straight out of my PhD, I was a super early employee at Vow - which has unsurprisingly made Linkedin’s list of top Australian startups for the second year in a row! 🎉 Vow is using cellular agriculture to create food that’s good for your tastebuds, your health and your planet. (Another claim to fame: they were behind that crazy mammoth meatball a few years ago 🦣) Over four years, I saw the team grow from T75 flasks in a high school laboratory to 2000L bioreactors producing meat for fine dining in Singapore. The hustle was real and it taught me more than I could have imagined. It also gave me the courage to launch Media City Scientific. So, if you’re interested in founding your own company someday, there’s no better training than being an early employee at a startup - where you’ll learn firsthand how to turn vision into reality. More of the story below 🎥 #LinkedInTopStartups #LinkedInNewsAustralia

This week in "behind the scenes of building a biotech company", it's IP protection, manufacturing and marketing! And - of course - a lot of cell culture. Scientists, don’t believe anyone who tells you starting a company is glamorous 🙃 Here’s the fun part of building a company ➡ You'll work across all areas of the business as you build the version 1 of all major processes. Here’s the reality of starting a company ➡ Initially, those self-developed V1 processes won’t be all that great. Where we’ve needed to upskill over the last month: 1️⃣ Forming a well-researched opinion on intellectual property strategy 2️⃣ Website design, company branding, and sales 3️⃣ Manufacturing, supply chain, and distribution strategy for scale and geographies 4️⃣ Financials big and small: from stress-testing our funding strategy to improving our accounting Where I’m confident: ✅ The science behind the product: As we would hope, given how long I’ve been a scientist! ✅ The market: Arguably the most important area to nail as an entrepreneur. ✅ Hiring, growing, and leading a technical team: It’s critical to make the right hires at the right time. I’ve done enough of this previously to be confident we’ll do a great job. ✅ Our ability to figure it out: Look, I’m naturally a little bit skeptical and a realist, probably “too much of a scientist” and not quite the ambitious, overly confident entrepreneur that plenty would argue I need to be in order to launch a company of this magnitude. But we’ve built a laboratory, made the necessary technical progress, spoken with hundreds of potential customers, built V1 pipelines in all the critical areas, and have done so on a shoestring budget. This time last year, all of those goals felt insane. Turns out that Katie-one-year-ago was capable of more than she thought she was. So manufacturing and scale-up strategy, let’s bring it on. ________ 👋 After my PhD, I joined a biotech start-up that grew from 8→80 people. Now, I’m building Media City Scientific and sharing the behind-the-scenes online. Hopefully it’s interesting & useful for other scientists!

Edition #4 of The Biorevolution is out! This week I chat with Katie Bashant Day from Media City Scientific about serum free media and building a lab in her backyard (if you are not familiar with Katie's story, go and follow her right now!). I also share a quote from one of my favourite leadership books, and some of the awesome things I've been reading this week. Here is a quick teaser from my chat with Katie: "During her time at Vow, Katie frequently heard from colleagues at the NIH about the urgent need for serum-free media. Given her experience in developing serum-free media at Vow, she felt uniquely positioned to tackle this challenge. At the start of this year, the only thing standing in her way was access to a lab. Based in regional NSW, the idea of commuting several hours each day to a lab in the city was impractical. So, Katie decided to build a lab at her home (why not, right?!). 🏡" Sounds pretty wild right! Go check out the full interview for more. 👋 Hi, I'm James, an advisor, operator, and facilitator with a passion for leveraging biology to tackle some of the world's biggest challenges.. 🚀 I work with early stage biotech founders (bootstrap to series B+) to help them identify, protect and communicate their value. 👍If you find my content interesting then sign up for my newsletter and visit my website. #newsletter #biotech #startups