Recombinant DNA Technologies

10/09/2026

Making more product isn't necessarily the same as proving you can manufacture it economically.

The right scale-up strategy starts with understanding what you're trying to accomplish.

On Wednesday, I wrote about what a biotech company needs to own, control, or access as it scales. But there's a more fundamental question: What is the company actually trying to prove? Producing samples for customer evaluation is very different from demonstrating that a process can operate economica...

10/07/2026

Does a biotech company really need to own everything it needs to scale?

New shared biomanufacturing infrastructure raises an interesting question about ownership, capital and competitive advantage.

10/05/2026

Could ibuprofen interfere with muscle repair?

Research presented at a recent microbiome conference suggests an intriguing connection between ibuprofen, carnitine and pelvic-floor muscle recovery - and raises a much broader question.

New Field Note:

At last week’s 14th Microbiome & Probiotics R&D & Business Collaboration Forum, I heard Lindsey Burnett of UC San Diego talk about something I hadn’t encountered before: ibuprofen can form a conjugate with carnitine that is excreted in urine and may reduce carnitine availability. This work, done...

09/17/2026

A new technology doesn't have to completely replace an existing one to succeed. It needs to create enough value in the right application to earn a place in the product.

Alternative fats provide an interesting example of why it can be better to start with the problem rather than the technology.

Don't Start With the Technology

A new technology doesn't have to replace what came before to succeed. It has to create enough value in the right application to earn a place in the product. A recent discussion about alternative fats reinforced something I've been thinking about more broadly: start with the problem, not the technolo...

09/14/2026

A power outage, a medtech conference, and another Iron Triangle.

Sometimes the most interesting thing you see at a conference isn’t something you went there looking for. Yesterday I attended a bicoastal medtech conference connecting groups in San Diego and Baltimore. A power outage interrupted the program, leaving those of us in San Diego with a couple of hours...

09/08/2026

Alternative meat has had a rough few years. But perhaps we've been asking the wrong question.

Instead of asking whether plant proteins, precision fermentation and biomass fermentation can recreate animal-derived foods, what if we ask what these technologies are really good at - and where they create the most value?

Read more: Just Okay Isn't Okay: Rethinking the Future of Alternative Protein.

I’ve said it before. “Just okay isn’t okay.

08/27/2026

R&D can be making real scientific progress and still be moving away from what the company needs.

Priorities change. Requirements change. New findings change what we know. Staying aligned means periodically checking whether the work still matches the destination.

The right priority today may be the wrong priority six months from now. Not because the project failed. Not because it was a bad decision. But because the assumptions that made it a priority changed. Six months ago, a company had 24 months of runway. There was enough time and money to pursue several...

08/25/2026

R&D can be making real scientific progress and still be moving away from what the company needs.

Priorities change. Requirements change. New findings change what we know. Staying aligned means periodically checking whether the work still matches the destination.

One of the hardest things for scientists to accept is that an interesting question isn't necessarily a useful question. New findings point in an unexpected direction. It's interesting, potentially important, and worth understanding. So you follow it. One experiment leads to another. Before long, you...

08/21/2026

Computational drug discovery has come a long way in 20 years. The models are dramatically more capable, but prediction still has to survive contact with the experiment.

The tools have changed. Biology still gets the final vote.

08/19/2026

Every screen has limitations. The key isn't always building a better screen - sometimes it's knowing which question each screen should answer.

A lesson from antimicrobial discovery that applies broadly across R&D.