These “mentoring sessions,” as Colin calls them, continued over the years, even after they left home (in Indianapolis) and Justin earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry in San Francisco and Colin, a JD in Madison, Wisconsin. “I was able to have my cake and eat it, too,” says Colin (shown, above left). “Without having to go through the rigors of a six-year Ph.D. program, I got to keep learning about science.”
Throughout their respective undergraduate and graduate school experiences, the pair often daydreamed of a way to channel their shared love of science into a career that allowed them to work together. As Justin’s molecular biology background showed him the potential of gene editing and cell therapies, and Colin’s philosophy and law degrees sent him down a path of conceptualizing big ideas into discrete actionable steps, the pair decided to launch Serotiny in 2014. The San Francisco-based company designs new cell therapies that can be used to treat a broad spectrum of diseases, and it does so at an unprecedented pace.
At the intersection of biology and technology
For years now, scientists have been developing cell and gene therapies, which involves taking a patient’s cells and tweaking them in such a way that gives them a new version of a gene they need to function optimally or fight disease—like in the case of CAR-T cell therapy. With CAR-T, the cells of a patient’s own immune system are changed so those cells can find and kill cancers.
The Farlow brothers were fascinated by this technology and noticed how slow and expensive it was to discover new therapies. “Scientists are often only able to test just a few therapeutic genes at a time, which means you can’t be as creative or ambitious as you might like to be,” explains Justin.
Thinking there had to be a better way, Justin and Colin got to work building custom software and new lab techniques that would enable them to design and test upwards of 10,000 genes at once—what Justin likens to a “cage match” of thousands of cancer cells squaring off against thousands of re-engineered immune cells in a single tiny vial. Thanks to the technology they developed, they can analyze the data from these matchups and quickly identify the most promising new designs to treat cancers such as multiple myeloma, prostate cancer and lung cancer.
“We saw the potential and a path to get there,” says Justin. In 2019, Johnson & Johnson saw the potential, too, and invited Serotiny to join JLABS—the company’s startup incubator whose mission is to find scientists and entrepreneurs with cutting-edge healthcare innovations that Johnson & Johnson can help bring to the next level. In 2022, Serotiny entered into a research collaboration with Johnson & Johnson. Earlier this year, the company acquired Serotiny.
For the Farlow brothers and their team of scientists, being at JLABS with the chance to work with mentors and other founders who are helping them continue to grow their company has felt encouraging—much like Justin’s mentoring sessions Colin still remembers fondly. “What we’ve learned as founders is that startups thrive in a shared ecosystem where they can bounce ideas and experiences off of each other,” says Colin.
Read on to learn more about the Farlow brothers and how Serotiny has become part of Johnson & Johnson’s mission to change outcomes for people with cancer and other deadly diseases.
Q:
Did a particular person earlier in your life inspire you to go into biotechnology?
A:
Justin: There wasn’t one person in particular. I was interested in science for as long as I can remember. I have vivid memories of being a kid outside in the woods, with all of this life around me, thinking that I could spend my entire life learning about this stuff. I was always drawn to the complexity of the sciences, and I wanted to continue to get to the edge of what we understood.
Q:
What’s the biggest misconception people have about scientists that you’d love the chance to call out?
A:
Justin: People hear about scientists making discoveries, but the truth is that there’s plenty of stuff we can never know. This is especially true in biology, where there are a lot of “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns.” Scientists have to be comfortable wading through that, and we spend a lot of time contemplating how to do that.
Q:
What’s the most gratifying—and the most challenging—aspect of working with your brother?
A:
Colin: We’re immediately productive. There’s no facade. There are no formalities. We can get straight to work and get a lot done. The challenge for us is that we’re still learning how to turn work off. We end up hanging out, doing cook-outs with our families—and our conversations can quickly turn to talk about work.
Q:
What part of your work do you enjoy the most?
A:
Justin: When I see that our work has actually produced new discoveries that could become productive and useful for so many people, that’s a great day. When we run an experiment and the things that are supposed to be on top are on top and the ones that are supposed to be on the bottom are on the bottom, it’s proof that the system worked. That’s pretty rewarding.
Q:
What’s the best career or life advice you’ve ever received?
A:
Colin: One of the major challenges of a startup is the need to go all in. That idea is at first quite daunting, but if you dive into the deep end, generally you’ll figure out how to swim.
Justin: To reach out to people for help or advice, even if you think they won’t respond. It takes a little bit of guts to hit “send” on the first email. But eventually, you get used to it—and the community you’ll develop will be so helpful and rewarding.
Q:
As you dive deeper into the work at Serotiny, do you think about the people who will benefit from the work you’re doing?
A:
Colin: Absolutely. We’re on the very early side of the discovery process, so those patients are like a North Star for us; they remind us that what we’re working on day in, day out, is substantive and meaningful.
Justin: One advantage of being upstream of the patients is that we’re making contributions to the progress of the treatment modality. There’s a scalability to what we’re doing that will affect many drugs.
Q:
What advice would you give to young people in school or just starting out in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) space?
A:
Colin: Act with purpose. Keep asking the question, “What am I trying to accomplish with a given set of activities?” And make sure that if you’re doing something, you’re doing it for a reason.
Justin: Stay open to interdisciplinary interactions. Science is moving so quickly that something you thought wouldn’t be relevant to your work could have a big impact at some point later on in your career.
Q:
What’s your idea of a great day off from work?
A:
Colin: Trail running with my German Shorthaired Pointer, Dota. Where I go depends on how much time I have: If I’ve got a weekend free, I’ll hit the trails in the Sierras and try to go as far up a mountain valley as I can before my dog is dying of dehydration—or I am!—and then we turn around.
Justin: I don’t have a dog, but my idea of a great day off is similar. I’ll get in the car and drive up to the Sierras with my family.
Q:
Who in your field—and outside your field—inspires you?
A:
Colin: Every founder we’ve had a chance to speak to has inspired me in a unique way. Seeing others trying to create a really big movement around something—and then chatting with the founders and realizing it was total chaos as they were building an amazing company doing amazing work—has helped me realize, Oh, we can do this complicated, messy thing, too.
