Hendricus Hoogenboom is thinking small. After 20 years of juggling academic and commercial work in antibody engineering, his latest job takes him into the emerging field of 'nanobodies', antibody fragments that are smaller, more stable and easier to tailor to specific targets. (See CV)

Among his 20-plus patents are those on Humira, the first fully human antibody approved for therapy. Seeing that many problems with conventional antibodies remain unsolved after years of engineering, Hoogenboom feels that Ablynx's technology offers a possible solution.

But even if a technology is promising, make sure there's a market for it, he warns would-be entrepreneurs.

“In Europe, many academics are seduced by grant money to initiate commercial activities,” he says. “My advice is to ignore government grants until your idea has been truly tested by venture capitalists and local biotech experts.”

He speaks from experience. He co-founded the Dutch biotech Merus with a plan to produce cocktails of human antibodies, combining the simplicity of monoclonal antibodies (derived from just one cell line) with the potency of polyclonals. It turned out to be difficult to raise enough funds for this venture.

“That's probably because the industry is hesitant to get into more complex biopharmaceuticals, even if the potency can be improved drastically,” Hoogenboom says. “Be prepared to accept that you can be too far ahead of the industry.” Ablynx, however, has plenty of funding and is already planning clinical trials of its first lead molecule.

After gaining his PhD in agricultural sciences at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, Hoogenboom crossed the channel for a postdoc at the UK Medical Research Council in Cambridge. Working with “a great mentor”, Gregory Winter, he co-invented phage display technology for the isolation and engineering of human antibodies. That led to two years at Winter's biotech Cambridge Antibody Technology.

The urge to work on cancer took Hoogenboom back to academia. But realizing how long it would be before this research would benefit patients pushed him to set up his first company, Target Quest. Having explored R&D in both camps, he has now decided to stick with industry.

“Drug and technology development in industry are team sports, which is often very different from the working style in academic labs,” he says. “If you can adjust to this after a PhD, you are likely to do well in the biotech industry.”