Tillman Gerngross
Dartmouth College

Dartmouth Engineering Professor Tillman Gerngross is a teacher, scholar, and entrepreneur whose company was recently acquired by Merck & Co., Inc. in the largest all-cash acquisition of a private biotechnology company in history.  Born in Vienna, Austria, Professor Gerngross joined a lab at M.I.T. as a post-doctorate before spending five years working in the U.S. biotech industry.  Subsequent to that time, he joined the faculty at Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering and launched his own company, GlycoFi, with the goal of revolutionizing the therapeutic protein manufacturing industry.  Six years later, GlycoFi is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Merck, successfully creating the world’s “Next Generation Biotherapeutics™.”

What’s next for Gerngross? “Find another problem to solve!”
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Profile
Although Dartmouth Engineering Professor Tillman Gerngross exudes an intellectual energy that is both exciting and intimidating, he tells his remarkable story with an air of modest matter-of-factness.

Today, Professor Gerngross is not only a teacher and a scholar, but also a successful entrepreneur whose six-year-old therapeutic protein manufacturing company, GlycoFi, was recently acquired by Merck & Co., Inc. in a cash transaction valued at approximately $400 million — ensuring it as the largest all-cash acquisition of a private biotechnology company in history.

His story begins in Vienna, Austria where, from the beginning, his parents instilled in him a deep respect for intellectual pursuits. He attended a “science-focused high school” and read extensively about biology, biotechnology, and the idea of engineering living things for the benefit of humanity.  After high school, says Gerngross, “I chose to study chemistry because I wanted a challenge.”  He attended the Technical University of Vienna and earned an M.S. in chemical engineering.  Thereafter, during his Ph.D. thesis work, focused in part on molecular biology, he received a Fulbright Fellowship and joined the laboratory of Arnold Demain at M.I.T.  "Working in Arnie’s lab introduced me to a whole new way of approaching science and, for the first time, exposed me to the thrill of being first at discovering something that could be important.  He’s definitely one of the big influences in my career.”

After earning his Ph.D., he remained at M.I.T. to complete postdoctoral work in the area of biopolymer synthesis, working in the laboratories of Anthony Sinskey and JoAnne Stubbe.  Gerngross then ventured out into industry and joined Metabolix, Inc., a small M.I.T. spinout that was working on the development of biodegradable polymers.  “I was there for five years,” said Gerngross, “and I learned a lot about how not to run a small technology company.”

He then returned to academia and joined the faculty at Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering with adjunct appointments in the Department of Biological Sciences and, more recently, in the Department of Chemistry.  His intention in coming to Dartmouth was to conduct research in the production of biodegradable plastics.  But soon, he found himself questioning the basic premise of his own work: that making biodegradable plastic from renewable resources would be better, or “greener”, than making it the conventional way in petrochemical plants.  He ran the numbers and published the surprising results in an article entitled, “Can biotechnology move us toward a sustainable society?” (Nature Biotechnology 17, 541-544, 1999).  His rigorous analysis was widely cited in the news media, becoming controversial in the ways in which it challenged the overall notion of sustainability based on renewable feedstocks.

With that, he became a man without a mission … but not for long.  And this time around, Gerngross proclaimed, “I wanted to make sure that the scientific problem I focused on next would really be worth solving.”  With the Human Genome Project well on its way to completion, Gerngross felt drawn to the challenges of converting such new information into real medicine.  In particular, the difficulties posed by therapeutic protein manufacturing caught his attention.

Today, more than half of all drugs in development are based on therapeutic proteins; yet conventional production methods are inefficient and unreliable.  The standard was to use genetically altered mammalian cells to produce these proteins.  With this method, the demand was significantly bigger than the supply, and capacity was projected to be outstripped as more and more preclinical development programs moved into clinical trials.  Gerngross figured there had to be a better way of producing these drugs.  Talking it over with colleagues and industry experts, he confirmed that this was, indeed, what he’d been looking for: a tough problem- but one that was clearly worth solving.

“Luckily, Dartmouth is a place where you can make major career changes,” said Gerngross, “because the culture of the place gives you that freedom.” 

Change he did and soon he began learning more about glycoproteins – proteins adorned with certain sugars needed in order for them to function effectively as drug therapies.  Gerngross knew that yeast worked well for producing large amounts of industrial proteins and proposed the question: why not engineer yeast cells to do the same for therapeutic proteins?

He soon learned that other groups had been attempting to do just that, for over 10 years, with little success.  Many people argued that it just couldn’t be done.  What they didn’t know, however, was that Gerngross was introducing a whole new perspective: an engineering perspective.

“Engineers are trained to focus exclusively on solving problems.  If something doesn’t work, we move on.  We don’t stop and wonder why at the expense of making progress.  You have to learn to assess risks and take approaches that improve your odds of finding a solution.”

In pursuit of just that, Gerngross began writing grants to fund such a research project, but was consistently turned down because he had no documented track record in the yeast genetics and glycobiology field and others ("experts") had tried for over ten years without success (i.e. the problem is too hard).  As a result, he turned to Charles Hutchinson ("Hutch"); former dean of Dartmouth’s engineering school and an experienced entrepreneur with whom Gerngross was teaching a course on emerging technologies at the time.  Hutch liked the idea, encouraged Gerngross to start a company, and helped secure the venture capital funding needed to get GlycoFi up and running. 

Gerngross attributes much of GlycoFi’s success to the ability to recognize raw talent.  “We didn’t overly focus on people’s previous experience and expertise when we hired them.  We just made sure we hired the most talented people, and then took it from there.”  Finding that level of talent was made easier by GlycoFi’s strong ties to Dartmouth.  Gerngross himself, as well as several other scientists at GlycoFi, still maintain their academic appointments and publish their research findings in academic journals. 

The other secret of GlycoFi’s success was developing what Gerngross calls a “scientific strategy” consisting of six well-defined project milestones to keep everyone focused and motivated with a sense of regular progress toward a common goal. 

It took them just six years to reach all six milestones.  During that time, GlycoFi grew to 60 employees and built a state-of-the-art laboratory in nearby Lebanon, New Hampshire.  “The time was right to tackle this problem because our success was so dependent on other work that has occurred in just the last ten to fifteen years… for example, all the genome sequencing is crucial because without having the genome for the yeast, we couldn’t have done our work as efficiently.”

For Gerngross, building GlycoFi into a successful company has been the most enjoyable phase of his career thus far, as well as what he considers his most significant contribution to society.  His new manufacturing process not only increases production capacity for therapeutic proteins, but also raises the quality of the product, and makes all of it less expensive, which ultimately helps lower the cost of the resulting drugs.  “Helping drugs become better, safer, and cheaper can have a broad positive impact on people’s lives.”