#StartupsEverywhere: Mitchell Castetter, CEO, BioReact
This profile is part of #StartupsEverywhere, an ongoing series highlighting startup leaders in ecosystems across the country. This interview has been edited for length, content, and clarity.
Enhancing biotech innovation with data solutions
The biotech industry is responsible for many modern discoveries. Yet, many scientists rely on outdated software to analyze their data. After spending years in biotech sales, Mitchell Castetter found a solution to the problem. He founded BioReact, a technology company dedicated to improving the data flow and infrastructure system for biotech companies. We sat down with Mitchell to discuss his company, AI, and the Indianapolis startup ecosystem.
Tell us about your background. What led you to BioReact?
I have a background in biotech sales, selling all the equipment used to make vaccines and biopharmaceuticals. I started at the bottom of the totem pole and gradually worked my way up to become an Inside Sales Manager, responsible for selling the consumables needed to run biotech equipment and visiting large pharmaceutical companies on-site. While I witnessed the advanced work they were doing firsthand, I also noticed a lack of strong data flow and infrastructure systems.
They were doing advanced work. They had advanced equipment, but they lacked an effective way to manage and interpret their experimental data. I realized that despite running highly advanced experiments, many scientists were still using Excel to manage millions of data points across hundreds of trials. It quickly became clear how inefficient and overwhelming that process was, and that’s what inspired me to start BioReact.
I don't have a coding background, so I'm more on the business side of BioReact handling everything from sales to marketing. When I first had the idea for the company, it was a unique challenge to find someone with a background in software development skills and biotech.Luckily, I found my co-founder Joanna Lipinski, a PhD-level bioinformatics software developer.
What is the work you all are doing at BioReact?
BioReact deals specifically with one type of biotech data—growing cells in a bioreactor. Think about it like brewing beer, where brewers feed yeast various components—wheat, barley, water—and produce beer. Bioreactors are similar, except scientists use organisms—often genetically modified—to produce various compounds. The compounds are then used in cosmetics, cultured meat, or even pharmaceuticals.
When growing these cells in the bioreactor, it’s hard to find the right conditions and optimize them. If cells are dividing and thriving, they’ll produce more products and ultimately drive higher profits. Our software manages all the experimental data scientists gather while trying out different conditions. We then use AI and machine learning to determine the best way to grow cells at scale.
How is your company building AI?
We’re building our AI using a few different available models and combining them to create a model to specifically look at how different cell types and strains perform under different conditions. To do that, we brought on a few pilot users—about 15 companies—to train our models. AI and machine learning is how we get customers in the door. Once they start using our tool, they realize we can also help to manage and visualize their data.
On the data side, what has your experience been with customers concerned about their data being collected? And how do you handle that, especially when it comes to training on specific datasets to improve the system?
Our system is encrypted, and you can’t do much with the data without having the strain and organism names. The back end of our system is split between two parts—the data we’ve collected and the way it is tagged within the system. If someone were to access one area, it would be extremely hard to access the other and connect the information. The connection between the two data sets is encrypted and only accessible to employees at the company. That's really the only way that our customers’ data might be leaked—if someone internally on their team is sharing the data.
What has your experience been raising capital in Indianapolis?
Living in Indianapolis allows us to extend our run rate because the cost of living is so much cheaper compared to other major tech hubs. Since the pandemic, more investors are okay with virtual meetings rather than in-person connections, which has helped expand the reach of traditional tech hubs and allowed founders in areas like ours to raise capital.
Last year, raising capital was particularly challenging for several reasons: political uncertainty, lingering effects of the pandemic, and high interest rates.There is more activity in the VC space after recouping from the previous year. I’m optimistic and looking forward to continuing to raise capital.
What are your goals for BioReact moving forward?
I'd like to start acquiring or building adjacent businesses within biotech. Right now biotech software is very disjointed, where organizations in the space have to buy twenty different software tools to do an entire workflow.
My dream is to create one platform that can do everything and allow the leadership of biotech organizations to forecast what will happen with their product. Having software that can tie-in all the scientific data so that the leadership team can understand it would help both large corporations as well as startups. We want to be the one-stop shop for the biotech industry to understand their data, freeing up more time to innovate.
All of the information in this profile was accurate at the date and time of publication.
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