Building a research lab in your backyard? It’s easier than you might think!
This week, I had the pleasure of catching up with my former Vow colleague, Dr. Katie Bashant Day, from Media City Scientific. Full disclosure: Katie was one of our first hires at Vow, and I had a front-row seat to witness her growth and development as a leader, operator, and innovator over her four years.
Katie left her role as Head of Technology at Vow at the end of 2023, but by then, she had already caught the entrepreneurship bug 🐞 and knew she wanted to build something of her own. During her time at Vow, Katie frequently heard from colleagues at The National Institutes of Health 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?!). 🏡
Katie and her co-founder/husband, Christopher Day, had just finished building their house, so adding a lab turned out to be "a lot easier than we first thought." They now have a fully functional lab equipped with a biological safety cabinet, CO2 incubators, microscopes, and a liquid nitrogen tank. By sourcing equipment secondhand and doing most of the work themselves, they completed the entire operation on a remarkably modest budget. 💰
With the lab in place, Katie got to work, starting by isolating primary cells—beginning with chicken chondrocytes sourced from a supermarket-bought chicken. 🐔 One of the things I really appreciated about my chat with Katie was her clarity about the problem she’s addressing: "We need to get academics and R&D out of animal serum, which suffers from too much batch-to-batch variability and can be a regulatory nightmare." 😬
Despite her experience at Vow, Katie isn’t focusing on the cultured meat sector. Instead, she aims to eliminate serum use across all cell-based R&D, with the ambitious goal of accelerating the development, regulation, and availability of new cell-based therapies and products. As a technical founder, Katie has found this both a scientifically intriguing and fundamentally important problem to tackle. 💡
Seeing Katie talk about her life and work over the last six months, it’s immediately clear how motivated and happy she is. 😊 When I asked about her biggest learnings as a technical founder, Katie emphasized the importance of trusting herself more and believing in her abilities and vision. She also highlighted the significance of maintaining constant forward momentum: "You only need 1-2 conversations with the right people to change the course of your future." The challenge is to become ruthlessly focused on your mission and to create the right environment for those pivotal conversations—both of which Katie has achieved in spades. 🎯
One of the many perks of having a fully operational cell culture lab at home is the flexibility it offers to spend time with family. Katie and Chris have a young son, and Katie shared how much she enjoys introducing him to the world of science. 🧑🔬 He waves to the liquid nitrogen delivery team and loves the "phwoom" sound it makes when the tank is filled.
Katie has been building Media City Scientific in the open, regularly sharing her journey on LinkedIn. In addition to offering insights into building and running a lab, Katie also shares advice for academics and students looking to enter the startup world. Her key tips?
Don’t over-index on your technical skills. 🧠
Being an effective communicator is critical. 🗣️
Be agile and flexible—things change quickly, and you need to be ready to adapt. 🔄
Learn DoE (Design of Experiments)!
(JR note: This should be compulsory for all PhD programs. I’d never heard of it until working at Vow, and it’s an incredible tool for increasing throughput and accelerating learning.) 🚀
So, what’s next for Media City Scientific? Katie has already developed an FBS replacement—FRS (FBS Replacement Solution)—and proven its efficacy across a broad range of primary cells. The next step is testing its effectiveness in immortalized cell lines. Once that proof point is achieved, the focus will shift from beta testing to real-world sales—all within 12 months of starting. ⏳
Katie’s journey is a great reminder that not all startups need VC money. Just because you can raise external funds doesn’t always mean you should. 💼
Katie’s Asks:
"I'm always keen to speak with researchers who are eager to move away from serum. Right now, I have lots of data showing FRS works across a range of primary cell lines, so I'm particularly interested in connecting with Australian-based researchers who might be able to share some immortalized cell lines for testing—specifically HEK, C2C12, 3T3, and VERO cell lines." 🧫
