After co-founding a Chicago biotech startup with a product that is now FDA-cleared, manufactured and launched, engineering entrepreneur Adam Jakus wants to take on more of a mentorship role with his next venture.
In 2017, Jakus helped found Dimension Inx, a Northwestern spin-out that has developed advanced biomaterial and 3D-printing technologies and products for implants that can repair human tissue and organs. Last year the company raised $12 million in Series A funding and signed a new lease at Fulton Labs.
Jakus served as the chief technology officer at Dimension Inx from 2017 to 2023.
While he remains as an advisor for the Chicago biotech startup, Jakus has since launched a new consultant and advisor business — BioThera3 Advising & Consulting LLC — focused on new therapeutic technologies that integrate combining advanced materials and advanced manufacturing, cell and tissue therapies and pharmaceuticals.
"Everything was and is going well [at Dimension Inx], and at the end of 2023 I started thinking to myself, 'What am I really passionate about?,'" he told Chicago. "I spent the last seven or eight years with my head down building Dimension Inx, and I started to realize that I miss going out into the world and talking to people and solving new problems."
With BioThera3, Jakus wants to help accelerate small- to large-size organizations advance their technologies and products and help them with the industry landscape. Jakus hopes to go back to universities and regional tech hubs, Chicago being one of them, to link up with their innovation and entrepreneurial programs.
"I still think of Dimension Inx as my baby in many ways," he said. "It's a lot of work to start and build a startup. But when I sat back and thought about what I really personally enjoy doing, it was getting out there and meeting people and solving a wide variety of problems. I'd love for Dimension Inx to be the leader in the industry, but the industry also has to grow. Now I can take on this new role and get out there and do what I've always really enjoyed, which is solving problems."
Jakus wants to help companies figure out things like what their first product should be and how to manufacture it. Or solve problems like what their regulatory pathway should be, or the best way to get funding, or which organizations in the cell and pharmaceutical spaces they should be looking at for partnerships.
Jakus was named the winner of the 2024 Excellence in Engineering Award by mHub this month for his "visionary thinking, technical prowess and unwavering commitment to driving innovation and transformative ideas."
What's next for Chicago tech
While he hopes to help build BioThera3 into a national and global consultancy, Jakus remains based in Chicago, and after launching a spin-out at one the area's top universities, has seen firsthand how Chicago's entrepreneurship has grown and where it needs to improve.
"What I'm excited to see, that I did not see when I launched Dimension Inx, was this deep commitment from the universities to supporting entrepreneurship. That includes actively educating, teaching and encouraging students, postdoctorals and faculty to launch startups," Jakus said. "There's an opportunity here with all the great technology coming out of these labs, and it historically has not been supported from the entrepreneurship or business side."
In the past five years, with the emergence of Portal Innovations and other tech hubs, Jakus has found that is beginning to change.
"Chicago is on the up-and-up. I may not have said that 10 years ago, but it's very active, and I'm going to remain very active across Chicago," Jakus said.
One of the biggest improvements he's seen from the Chicago tech and startup ecosystem has been the support that now exists to better integrate science, engineering, business and finance and bring them together.
"Science and business have always been great in Chicago, but what's really caused this recent growth is the recognition that science needs to be paired with engineering, needs to be paired with finance, and so on," he said.
