Serge Saxonov: uniting different disciplines on the frontiers of biology

Serge Saxonov plays science teacher and draws cells on a white board for a confused clbad: me. With a pen, he draws a large circle to represent a droplet, with a cell inside. Then, a point to represent a gel bead that labels each cell as an individual.

General Manager of 10x Genomics, 42, explains why scientists are so excited about the new technology of his genetics start-up: they can now examine how genes work in
each cell.

The single-cell badysis seems simple, but it's the beginning of a revolution, according to Science magazine, which named the capacity to badyze each cell as a breakthrough in 2018. The 10x technology makes it possible to better understand these elements. fundamentals of life by sequencing their ribonucleic acid, or RNA, which translates DNA into protein. There may be more than 20,000 genes in the body, but only a few thousand are expressed in each cell.

"Until we arrived, people measured RNA by taking tissue and mixing the contents of all your cells to get an average," he says. "But the cells are supposed to differ – that's the whole problem."

Scientists have published more than 350 articles detailing their new discoveries with 10x products. Scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University have discovered a new type of rare cell in the lungs last summer, which has turned out to be responsible for cystic fibrosis. They are now looking for drugs to target. "This shows that basic biology can have rapid applications in therapy," says Saxonov.

He co-founded 10x in 2012 in the Bay of California, to be at the crossroads of biology and technology. His challenge has been to work together extremely different disciplines – computer hardware and software engineers, chemists and biochemists.

advisable

Mr. Saxonov thinks we are entering a new era of exploration in biology – and he co-founded 10x to sell the "picks and shovels" to the scientists who are leading the way. The first human genome may have been sequenced almost 20 years ago, but it is only a "first step" in understanding biology, he says.

"If you really only understand the complexity, you realize that we understand very little about biology," he says. To change health care, build new diagnoses and medications, you have to go back to basics, he says.

For 10x, developing the first product was easy because a team could fit into a conference room and cooperate well. But as they grew, Mr. Saxonov had to turn the company into a network of small groups to keep pace with innovation.

A bioinformatician, a chemist and a mechanical engineer co-founded 10x. Mr. Saxonov, PhD in Bioinformatics – using software to understand biological data – has partnered with Ben Hindson and Kevin Ness, colleagues at his former employer, biotechnology company QuantaLife.

This unusual combination of founders from different disciplines allowed the company to quickly create its first product, which looked at the entire genome structure, rather than simply sequencing it in ranks. He entered the market in 2015.

Hardware engineers had to work with chemists to create a machine capable of handling many parallel reactions in very small volumes. If they could not solve a problem because it was meeting the strict limits of physics and chemistry, they could consult biologists computer scientists, who could tell them if they would be able to compensate for it with the help of algorithms. Biochemists might not find the appropriate enzyme – but chemists could then intervene with their "bag of mischief," says Saxonov. "My learning of working with people like this is largely due to the fact that they bring out magical ideas that you know you could not have yourself and that it contributes to the end product."

A year after the launch of the first product, magic began to die. "We have managed to evolve in this kind of indestructible fashion, and have gone very far, I think, thanks to the talented people we have. It gave me a bad lesson that it worked well, "says Saxonov.

It did not work well for everyone – some talented employees started to leave. "The success of the company depends largely on our employees," he says. "Once you have great people starting to leave the company, it means something is wrong."

The departing employees could not always pinpoint the problem, says Saxonov. "In the end, you realize you have to be the first to understand it," he laughs. "In a sense, it is an essential challenge of scaling up."

Instead, he sought advice from the 10x executive chairman. John Stuelpnagel founded Illumina, the dominant genome sequencing company, which, according to Saxonov, was known for his "product development prowess".

10x has therefore adopted the strategy of small teams, often with only one representative from each discipline. Chemists can seek advice from a bank of other chemists, or software engineers can consult their peers, but the central team focuses on collaboration.

Mr. Saxonov has chosen to entrust the juniors with the responsibility of the teams. Without decades of silos, they are often more willing to develop new solutions. "There is a crazy amount of greedy talent and they have a lot of energy. More often than not, they surprise you with everything that they can accomplish, "he says.

Two years after the transformation, 10x shipped six different products in 2018. Revenue doubled in 2018 to reach $ 146 million a year. 10x has reached a value of about 1.3 billion dollars. He raised $ 35 million in January as part of a Meritech Capital-led tour with the participation of Fidelity and Wells Fargo.

Back from a meeting with his scientific clients in Europe, Mr Saxonov is excited about everything he can still build at the "frontiers of biology".

"What's cool is that once you've won a few wins, everything builds on itself because you have internal ambbadadors who see the value of these multidisciplinary teams. And they find that it's fun to work in this type of environment, "he says.