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The organization announced on Friday that for the first time in its 70-year history, the San Diego Blood Bank spun off a life science company to use blood cells to treat cancer, autoimmunity, and other deadly diseases.
Community Bio will operate as an independent for-profit company. The company plans to provide other life science companies and research groups with the materials they need to develop and test so-called cell therapies, which use cells instead of tiny molecules or huge proteins to treat diseases.
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David Wellis, chief executive of the blood bank, said that this is a way to reshape medicine, noting that the Food and Drug Administration has approved certain forms of cell therapy for specific cancers.
"Who is better suited to support cell therapy than a blood bank?" Wellis said, adding that the organization processes approximately 120,000 units of blood each year, and each blood is packed with cells. "This makes sense."
Wellis will leave his current position and become the new CEO of Community Bio, although he will not go too far. The 19-employee company will initially rent and operate space in the blood bank headquarters on Gateway Center Avenue.
San Diego people who donate blood can agree to use part of it for Community Bio research. In return, the blood bank gained ownership of the company. Wellis will not disclose the exact percentage, but he said it is important and in the double-digit range.
Although providing blood to the hospital is still a top priority, a small tube of blood is sufficient for most of the company's work except for the standard 1 pint donation.
This work will include analysis in the laboratory, purification and, in some cases, the cultivation of specific cell types. The company has also received training and certification of genetically modified cells that can be used in clinical research. This is the core method of CAR-T therapy, which is a cancer treatment strategy. Researchers use the patient's own immune cells to allow them to recognize and attack specific cancers, and then return these cells to the patient.
Community Bio's services may be in high demand, as San Diego is rapidly becoming a hot spot for cell therapy. Companies such as Shoreline Biosciences, Fate Therapeutics, Poseida Therapeutics, and Artiva Biotherapeutics are developing cell therapies for various cancers, inflammatory diseases, and other diseases.
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Shoreline Biosciences is one of several local companies that design immune cells to effectively find and destroy cancer cells.
Wellis is very familiar with the world of biotechnology. He has been a part of it for decades. He came to San Diego in 2002 to start a company that is designing better DNA storage methods. Wellis later joined Illumina to lead the product development team of the sequencing giant, and then became the president of BioAtla, a biotech company in the Torrey Pines area dedicated to developing new methods for disease-specific antibody therapies.
Since joining the blood bank in 2013, he has expanded his role in supporting biomedical research. Thousands of San Diego blood banks are now part of a national research project called "All of Us", which is promoted by the National Institutes of Health and uses data from 1 million volunteers to reveal our environment, genetics, and How lifestyle affects our health.
The blood bank also provided samples to a series of medical device companies and biotechnology companies conducting clinical trials. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization worked with life science company Genalyte to screen for coronavirus antibodies in blood donations, hoping to find people who have recovered from the virus, and their antibodies can help treat people who are currently fighting infections .
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"For me personally, the legacy is, how do we use the work done by the blood bank to further improve health?" Willis said.
According to public documents, the 58-year-old is the highest paid employee of the blood bank, with a total salary of $456,000 in 2020. Doug Morton, the organization's chief operating officer and chief information officer, will become interim chief executive officer, and the blood bank is looking for a new chief executive officer. Morton received a total salary of $230,000 last year and he will be one of the candidates.
Wellis is not aware of any other blood banks that have spun off the company. But he pointed out that this kind of thing happens from time to time in academia. The biotechnology industry in San Diego is full of companies from the University of California, San Diego, the Salk Institute, Scripps and other local research institutions.
The blood bank already supports cell therapy research, but Wellis said that forming an independent company will make it easier for Community Bio to raise funds. A statement issued by the two organizations on Friday noted that cell therapy startups raised nearly $20 billion in 2020, a 50% increase from the previous year.
The new company is funded by a venture capital firm in the Bay Area, but investors prefer to remain anonymous and reluctant to disclose how much they contributed. If Community Bio goes public or is acquired, the shares of the blood bank may bring considerable returns to the organization.
Wellis counted on it, and pointed out that most blood banks barely break even.
The San Diego blood bank is no exception. Documents submitted to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service show that the organization's income last year was slightly more than $41 million, but it spent more than $40 million. This is a profit margin of approximately 2%.
"Can I make the financial situation of the blood bank stable for another 70 years?" Willis said. "I will be happy."
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