MIT Biotech Program Turns 21 Professors Into $70M Startups

Twenty-one professors with groundbreaking ideas locked in their labs now lead biotech startups racing to save lives, thanks to a program that's cracking the code on turning academic research into real-world medicine.

The MIT-Royalty Pharma Faculty Founder Initiative has quietly become a launchpad for professor-entrepreneurs since 2021. The program doesn't just hand researchers money and wish them luck. Instead, it walks them through two years of workshops, executive education, and mentorship from successful entrepreneurs who've been exactly where they are.

The results speak louder than any pitch deck. Those 21 faculty members have launched 16 startups that collectively raised over $70 million in seed funding. That's an average of more than $4 million per company, money that's now funding labs, hiring scientists, and moving treatments closer to patients who need them.

Professor Sangeeta Bhatia, who directs the initiative, isn't resting on those wins. Her team just welcomed 12 new innovators into the third cohort, including six from MIT and six from the University of Oxford. It's the program's first international expansion, adding British biotech talent to the mix.

Royalty Pharma just committed $3 million to fund the next four years. That investment will support two more cohorts of researchers as the initiative chases an ambitious goal: 40 faculty-founded life science ventures by 2029.

The program culminates in a prize competition where participants showcase their startups. Past winners include Ellen Roche, whose heart repair technology won the first competition, and Anne Carpenter, who took the grand prize in the second round with her imaging platform work.

What makes this different from typical university tech transfer? The program creates a community of cofounders who support each other beyond graduation. Eight of the nine participants from the first cohort in 2021 are still building their companies today.

The Ripple Effect

This isn't just about MIT anymore. Brown University joined for the second cohort, and now Oxford brings European researchers into the fold. Other universities are watching closely, adopting similar models to help their own professors make the leap from lab bench to boardroom.

The real ripple extends far beyond Cambridge and Oxford. Each startup represents treatments that might not exist otherwise, discoveries that could have stayed buried in academic journals while patients waited. By 2029, if the initiative hits its target, 40 faculty-founded ventures will be racing to turn breakthroughs into cures.

"We look forward to enabling two additional cohorts of innovators to pursue bold ideas which can lead to transformative medicines," says Pablo Legorreta, Royalty Pharma's founder and CEO.

That's 40 shots at changing medicine, funded by professors who refused to let their best ideas die in the lab.