Team of UC San Diego Entrepreneurs Pushes Biomedicine Forward with Virtual Reality

The team also participated in entrepreneurial contests on campus—including UC San Diego’s Entrepreneur Challenge and Triton Entrepreneur Night—honing their pitching skills, receiving valuable feedback, and winning more than $30,000 in startup funding.

Math in 3D

As the summer of 2016 began, Nanome spread out in the co-working space of The Basement, a UC San Diego incubator that had launched a year earlier and now occupies part of the new Design and Innovation Building.

At the time, though, the space happened to be located on a different part of campus, near the Mathematics Department. The proximity was fortuitous, as the Nanome team had received a grant to pilot a math class using VR. Working closely with math professors and graduate students, the group developed a 3D graphic calculator called CalcFlow (still available for download from the Oculus Store).

In a video (below) providing an overview of the tool, you can hear McCloskey’s enthusiasm for making an impact by providing a new perspective. “The reason we made CalcFlow is that we want to give math to as many people as possible,” said McCloskey. “In engineering, we talk about flow and vector fields. All these concepts that are inherently three-dimensional, and we are limited to doing it on a 2-D surface. But now with CalcFlow, we’re getting down to the mathematics so you can generalize it to whatever field – engineering, finance – you want, but we’re doing it all in 3D.”

Funakawa noted the calculator was the team’s first post-prototype work, as well as a useful tool for scientists and engineers who would later use Nanome’s molecular visualization products.

Once the summer was over, The Basement began filling up with other students and more Nanome team members officially became alumni. A more permanent and dedicated space to continue developing the company was needed.

Milestones in the QI Innovation Space

Funakawa knew about the QI Innovation Space, QI’s startup incubator in Atkinson Hall, from his time as a student worker—in fact, he photographed its official opening in May 2015. The QI Innovation Space seemed like the logical next step.

It became Nanome’s base for two and a half years.

“It was awesome,” said Funakawa. “We got to do our own thing without sharing intellectual property [per QI Innovation Space policy]. And one of our key advisors [Jurgen Schultz] was across the hall, so we could chat often. We also worked with student interns. That was a key part of the early foundations of the company. Being on campus and having access to the talent pool was unparalleled.”

The firm’s location also facilitated a major milestone—the establishment of Nanome’s relationship with pharmaceutical giant Novartis, or more specifically with its innovation division, the Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR). One NIBR organization, the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF), was just down the street from QI’s UC San Diego location.

When GNF Director of Structural Biology Glen Spraggon used Nanome’s beta software and Oculus headsets with his team members, he found VR helped them better understand 3D protein structures and visualize how drugs needed to bind with them to modify disease.

“There was a certain point where [team members] grabbed the protein and stretched it out and peered inside,” Spraggon said in an interview for one of Nanome’s case studies. “And that was it. We realized that VR is a great solution for turning people from passive observers to interacting participants… That’s game-changing for what we do. Visualization in real 3D versus a flat screen transforms things, and it helps accelerate the process of discovery.”

Recognizing that many millions of dollars could be saved by making better decisions about where to place resources in drug development, NIBR began working closely with Nanome to evolve the startup’s software. “We would meet with them on a bi-weekly basis to closely collaborate, iterate the product,” said Funakawa. “Since they were literally across the street, they would even walk over sometimes.”

And the relationship was a game-changer for Nanome’s status.

“Having Novartis as a paid customer made a huge difference in terms of the legitimacy of our business,” Funakawa noted. “That allowed us to get venture investment—not just angel investors, but also strategic investors, like [Taiwanese consumer electronics company] HTC, which makes headsets.”

In 2017, the team raised almost $1 million.