Professor Denis Migliorini is a busy man. Not only does he head up the neuro-oncology unit at the University Hospital of Geneva while also running an academic lab, but he also recently co-founded a company that develops engineered immune cell therapies. This month, Denis took some time out of his packed schedule to tell us about how the three pillars of his professional activity give him an invaluable overview of the field.

Doctor/professor/entrepreneur isn’t the most common of career combinations. Especially since, as things stand, it’s not easy for medical doctors (MDs) in Switzerland to become entrepreneurs, as they are subject to regulatory restrictions when it comes to setting up companies. Moreover, various members of the Swiss medical community have expressed scepticism about and/or resistance to the idea of ‘docpreneurs’, preferring to cleave to traditionally separate spheres of activity in healthcare.

Here at Biopôle, however, we believe it is essential that we break down the barriers between different parts of the life sciences community. Otherwise, as Denis Migliorini commented, you find ‘doctors, academics and industry stakeholders operating in silos, as they see themselves as having different missions and disparate roles’. This holds up the development and production of new treatments: in this system, it can take over 10 years for an observation by an MD or researcher to be translated into an actual product.

Healthcare, academia and entrepreneurship go hand in hand

By wearing multiple different hats, Denis is seeking to overcome this bottleneck. In this, he joins an impressive roster of docpreneurs at Biopôle, including Professor Patrick Schoettker, Professor Thomas Hügle and Professor Giuseppe Pantaleo, who combine patient care and/or medical research with entrepreneurship.

According to Denis, straddling different spheres in healthcare comes with manifold benefits: ‘All of my current professional activities go together very well, because my experiences as an MD in the clinic make it clear to me what solutions are needed. I can explore these ideas further in the academic lab, before pushing the best ones forward by means of a company. Before long, I hope to propose new treatments to patients in clinical trials.’

Denis made it clear that his patients are his primary source of inspiration, especially because in his chosen field, neuro-oncology, prognoses are often poor and treatment options limited: most patients with primary high-grade brain tumours today are being treated with the same therapies as 15 years ago and facing survival rates of less than two years.

As a result, Denis is emphatic that new treatments are needed – which is exactly what his company, Cellula Therapeutics, aims to provide. His team has developed a novel brain tumour therapy that involves taking lymphocytes, a specific type of immune cell, from the given patient, engineering them in a controlled lab environment and then re-infusing them back into the brain to fight the disease. Cellula Therapeutics is planning to scale up production and submit a clinical trial application to Swissmedic by the end of 2025, with the aim of treating its first patients in early 2026.

As Denis put it: ‘What brought me to entrepreneurship is the realisation that, as an MD, if I want to bring innovative treatments to patients, I need to understand the drug development pipeline  – which I can only do within a biotech company. All the pieces must fit together, from testing the drug, to manufacturing it, to reproducing it to a high standard, all while generating funding. It felt like a natural transition for me to follow this from the clinic through the academic lab to a start-up.’

What’s more, as Denis touched upon, starting a company also opens new doors in terms of funding. When you’re an academic researcher, it is often difficult to raise funds for a clinical trial. You might have access to competitive grants for preclinical research, for example from the Swiss National Science Foundation or the European Research Council, but you’re unlikely to receive enough money to run a trial, which requires a multimillion-dollar investment. Having a company helps you to overcome this hurdle, as it allows you to connect with private funders.

Diving into entrepreneurship feet first

Denis expressed how daunting it was to move into a job he hadn’t been trained for. In his words, ‘I didn’t have a clue how to lead a biotechnology company. But once you jump into the water, you have to learn how to swim.’

Thankfully, Denis benefitted from support from both his colleagues and employers. Fellow doctors who had pursued entrepreneurial ventures provided much-appreciated mentorship and advice. Denis also expressed how encouraging the University Hospital of Geneva and the University of Geneva were regarding his ideas. He asserted, ‘I had to jump through a variety of administrative hoops to co-found Cellula, but the motivation behind the company – which is very much related to my clinical activity – shone through to the administrative and academic authorities of both institutions. As such, they were very supportive of my entrepreneurial mission.’

In addition, Denis commented on the value of working in the Swiss Health Valley, which is home to a plethora of life sciences companies and world-leading academic institutions. In this environment, there are many opportunities to partner with local stakeholders, such as Professor George Coukos, Director of the Department of Oncology at UNIL-CHUV and Director of the Lausanne branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. Coukos set up a cutting-edge cell manufacturing facility a number of years ago, which Denis and his team could access. As the docpreneur affirmed, ‘to get off the ground, building partnerships is absolutely crucial’.

Lessons to be learned from across the pond

Still, Denis feels that Switzerland could take a leaf out of the United States’ book when it comes to entrepreneurial culture. During his time working at the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at the University of Pennsylvania, in the labs of Professor Carl June and Professor Avery Posey, Denis was impressed by how his US colleagues moved seamlessly between academic and industry roles, turning research findings into impactful products. As he relayed to us, his bench neighbour at the time, a postdoc researcher working on CAR-macrophages, co-founded a company called Carisma shortly after the end of his traineeship. It is now a publicly traded company on Nasdaq treating patients in Phase 2 clinical trials. Denis told us how ‘inspired’ he was by this success story, leading him to wonder whether he too might be able to ‘culture cells that would eventually make their mark on patients and the medical community’.

After returning to Switzerland in 2020 to set up his own academic lab, Denis was keen to harness this experience to push himself out of his comfort zone: ‘Having seen multiple examples around me of doctors and researchers becoming entrepreneurs, I said to myself, if I’m in a position where I have developed a therapy that I believe in, I have to go for it and found a company.’

Without a doubt, there are challenges to overcome when combining medicine, academia and industry. Denis made no secret of the fact that his workload is intense, requiring rigorous timeblocking and delegation. But his passion for the different parts of his job was clear. In fact, he felt his impact on patients had only been amplified by his simultaneous work as an MD, researcher and entrepreneur, as he leverages these different perspectives to give his patients the best possible care – which gives him ‘a lot of satisfaction as a caregiver and a human’.

Having trained for years to be an MD, which he still hopes to do for the rest of his life, entrepreneurship has now become an integral part of his career – though it remains to be seen how long he can keep his three different plates spinning at this rate. Still, for now, he is motivated to keep fighting across all fronts ‘against this terrible disease’, with the hope of making a breakthrough. As he asserted: ‘It’s hard not to be energised when you see the different parts of this ecosystem working together. It gives me hope of a better future for cancer patients.’