Crain’s Chicago Business selected our PhD alumnus Ryan Clarke as one of Chicago’s top 40 under 40
40 UNDER 40; Ryan Clarke
As a kid growing up next to Lincoln Park Zoo in the '90s, a few things fascinated Ryan Clarke: plants and animals, especially those exotic ones across the street; music, first classical, then rock; science fiction, a la "Brave New World"; and science facts, as the Human Genome Project came to life, mapping and sequencing all human genes.
All of that combined "set a pretty intensive mindset," he says, "which is why I guess I became obsessed with research projects," first at the University of Wisconsin and then at the University of Illinois Chicago - a school he describes as "super scrappy" as it sometimes works in the shadow of other big-name academic research universities in town.
Even after earning his doctorate in biochemistry and molecular genetics, his fascination persists. It was at UIC that he, professor and mentor Brad Merrill and others started to look at the nascent technology of CRISPR, or "clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats," which research scientists use to selectively modify the DNA of organisms.
What Clarke came up with was a way to modify the technology around CRISPR to get cells to perform sequential activity, because "if we can track cells over time, maybe we can control the cell over time, sequentially," he says. The work turned into Syntax Bio, the company he formed in 2021 with Merrill and former colleague Niko Balanis. Its "cellgorithm technology" mimics human cell development to rapidly generate a huge diversity of cell types for a wide variety of therapies and related products.
Now, beyond working on the science as Syntax Bio's chief technology officer, Clarke spends much of his time - as all startup co-founders must - fundraising and inking deals with larger biotech companies. He actually started thinking about how to commercialize his science when he began brewing and selling beer out of his UW fraternity, which, luckily for him, was full of business majors. Clarke is able to talk science, business - and metal music. He's responsible for Syntax Bio's rather un-biotech, distinctly metal logo.
"He's a great leader and a genius scientist, hidden in the body and hair of James Hetfield of Metallica," says John Flavin, managing partner at investor Portal Innovations. Syntax Bio was one of the first companies in the Portal portfolio, and Flavin says one reason is the exciting prospects for cell therapies and uses of CRISPR.
"Another reason is it's so rare to find an individual with such science and technology chops, with such a capacity for business acumen," he says. Clarke also has a knack for breaking down the science for people who aren't as familiar with it, Flavin says, and "not in a condescending way, but in a passionate way."