Ashwin Nandakumar and Ashwin Jainarayanan were working on their doctorates at adjacent departments in Oxford, but they didn’t know each other. Nandakumar, who was studying oncology, one day stumbled across a curious dataset for prostate cancer, with which he needed sequencing help. “I reached out to a few friends asking to help me analyze this data,” Nandakumar said.
“They said,’ There’s another guy with the name Ashwin, you should connect with him.’” The two Ashwins instantly clicked, and soon after their meeting, they began working in the lab of Jainarayanan’s academic adviser, Michael Dustin, a professor of molecular immunology. When Nandakumar and Jainarayanan were getting ready to graduate, they initially planned to get jobs with large pharmaceutical companies.
But they were also fascinated by Dustin’s research. “Mike discovered a whole new feature of the immune system that people didn’t know existed,” Nandakumar said. Nandakumar and Jainarayanan decided to explore the idea of turning that research into a company.
They were introduced to Y-Combinator’s bio partner, Surbhi Sarna, and she convinced the two Ashwins to apply to the storied accelerator. “That conversation changed our lives,” Nandakumar said. “We decided we’re not joining Big Pharma.
We’re going to make our own Big Pharma.” Nandakumar, Jainarayanan and Dustin formed Granza Bio , a biotech startup working on a novel approach to delivering immunotherapy and other “attack.
