Faculty Feature: Dr. Jan Krumsiek 

For this newsletter’s Faculty Feature, Yanyang Chen (SVG Newsletter Editor), Nick Bartelo (SVG President), and Annalise Schweickart (previous SVG President) had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Jan Krumsiek, Assistant Professor of Physiology and Biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine and Assistant Professor of Computational Genomics in Computational Biomedicine in the Institute for Computational Biomedicine. Dr. Krumsiek specializes in the development and application of novel methods for the analysis of metabolomics and multi-omics data. He is a graduate of Technical University of Munich and was a group leader at Helmholtz Munich for more than 5 years before joining Weill Cornell Medicine. He became an assistant professor in 2018. He is a co-founder of iollo with Stanford scientists Dr. Daniel Gomari and Dr. Michael Snyder, and Brent LaRue from Y-combinator. The company strives to empower users with information and data about their blood metabolome and to provide evidence-based recommendations towards personal lifestyle choices.  

SVG: You recently co-founded iollo. Can you describe the mission of this company? What unmet need do you see in human health and diseases that iollo aims to address?

Dr. Krumsiek: We now know that circulating metabolites can inform you about various states of health, from diabetes, certain risk factors for mental health, cancer, etc. The goal of iollo is to be able to run a mass spectrometry grade metabolic profiling on the blood sample that was taken at home. New technology for blood taking and stabilization makes it fit to be sent in the mail to a location where it can be analyzed to give general and specific health recommendations. A lot of insights from metabolomics go beyond what the regular blood tests do.

For our competitors, you still have to go to a doctor for the blood draw. The fear of needles is big and real. There are a large number of people who will stay away from the blood measurement because it involves needles. With iollo’s device you won’t even see the needle or feel the blood draw, which makes blood measurement easier and painless.

SVG: How did you enter the entrepreneurship arena as a PI? Is it always something you wanted to do? Did coming to the US have any influence on your ability to create a company?

Dr. Krumsiek: So the answer is no to everything. I’m much more academically driven and naturally not a very entrepreneurial person. I thought of the idea of spinning-out and knew my colleagues had done that, but never acted on it. A few years ago, Daniel Gomari, my previous PhD student, came up with the idea of starting a company around metabolomics, and I had a lot of early discussions with him. After graduation, he focused on this idea and applied at YCombinator. He then approached me to be one of the scientific advisors and join the team. It wasn't a very complicated decision for me as the opportunity presented itself.

I try to apply my approach to science in the company, and at the same time adapt to the faster speed of the startup world. So for me, the academic research and startup work hand in hand. 

SVG: Do you see metabolomic screens like those provided by iollo becoming an essential addition to everyday healthcare? How do you see that integration happening?

Dr. Krumsiek: In terms of every day integration there's definitely a lot of opportunities. There's a lot of things you can measure just no one else can see. For example, indoxyl sulfate is a very interesting metabolite that is likely causally related to brain health problems that no one else can see since there is no existing lab test. This is a marketing angle for iollo. 

Convincing anyone that they need your test is a huge challenge. The hurdle is making it clear the consumer will get an added value beyond traditional lab tests from a doctor’s office. To do this, a startup has to assure its customers that what it is offering is novel without drowning them in the science.

SVG: What are the advantages of bridging your academic research to market? 

Dr. Krumsiek: One very clear simple advantage is that we have been developing the expertise needed to really digest these biomarker lists for over a decade now. What's really fun is the direct translation of our core expertise into the industry. It's not just some side product or scientific advisory. I have to be careful not to mix lab and company, especially when it comes to confidential knowledge. 

Also, the venture capitalists are extremely knowledgeable and can ask pointed questions on how they see the market and the field. Sometimes it takes an expert to answer their questions, so coming from academia allows for discussion and progression towards a successful venture.