“The CoMotion Postdoctoral Entrepreneurship Program allowed a year where we only focused on developing and proving out the technology for a commercial application.”

– David Younger, Co-founder & CEO of A-Alpha Bio

A-Alpha Bio, Inc. was founded by David Younger and Randolph Lopez as a spinout from the UW’s Institute for Protein Design and the Center for Synthetic Biology. A-Alpha Bio is launching a proprietary synthetic biology platform, AlphaSeq, to aid in the development of drugs that interact with multiple targets. This approach enables pharmaceutical companies and other research groups to efficiently characterize their drug candidates for efficacy and specificity and better predict how each will perform in the clinic.

David Younger co-invented AlphaSeq while working on his Ph.D. in Bioengineering at UW with scientific advisors David Baker and Eric Klavins. “I have been working on the technical platform for many years through my Ph.D, but the output is constrained in an academic setting,” David said. “The CoMotion Postdoctoral Entrepreneurship Program allowed a year where we didn’t have to worry about publishing, and only focused on developing and proving out the technology for a commercial application.” As a member of the PEP, David and his team tested the platform for applications involving small molecules, and got exciting preliminary data that led to customer discovery interviews and conversations with partners, which accelerated the business development work. Assisted and supported by CoMotion, A-Alpha Bio participated in and won the $25,000 first prize at both the Buerk Center’s Holloman Health Innovation Challenge and the Dempsey Startup Competition in 2018. These funds have allowed them to explore further business development, technology involvement, team building, and outreach to potential customers. David said, “[Joining the PEP] is a fantastic experience! It’s a self-directed year to be able to explore commercial opportunity of technology, and you can accomplish a ton within a year if you work really hard.”