Yolo County biotech startup TurtleTree has hired an experienced researcher as its new chief scientific officer.
The company announced last week that former Merck KGaA research and development director Aletta Schnitzler has joined TurtleTree’s executive leadership team.
“We’re incredibly honored to have Aletta and her expertise in both cellular agriculture and therapeutics with us,” said CEO Fengru Lin, in a news release. “We’re excited to see her apply her experience to creating innovation cycles that will kickstart our productization.”
Schnitzler has a Ph.D. in immunology and neuroscience. Her background is in cell therapeutics, where she spent the majority of her career working for MilliporeSigma, which was eventually acquired by Merck. Biotech giant Merck has an innovation center that invests in nascent research areas, including future food. Schnitzler built a team and received a grant to create the company’s cultured meat department. She was leading that team for a year and a half before joining TurtleTree.
“It just seemed like a really good fit,” Schnitzler said. “They are really focused on bringing a few key technologies to market that potentially have this broad reach to human health, nutrition, alternative protein sources, but also are developed with the environment in mind.”
TurtleTree is studying how to grow nutrients found in milk from various mammals in a lab. For its first phase of product development, the company will offer ingredients for other companies to use in food and nutrition products.
This summer, it opened its Yolo County headquarters at the Lab@AgStart incubator in Woodland. It is also planning on opening a 24,000-square-foot R&D facility in West Sacramento next year. The company was founded in Singapore in 2019 by Lin and Max Rye — two entrepreneurs who come not from biotech, but from information technology and business development.
“Even though Max and Fengru don’t come from scientific backgrounds, they get it,” Schnitzler said. “It’s been impressive working with them so far.”
Schnitzler will remain based out of Boston, but will help manage the company’s scientific teams across California and Singapore. In her role, Schnitzler will also bridge the gap between management teams and technical teams, manage its global scientific teams, and execute the company’s innovation road map.
“Why I think they have high potential for success is they are very strategically building up their pipeline. They are not just placing all their bets on developing one product,” Schnitzler said. “I think that the fact that they’ve already thought about a diversified portfolio is really clever.”
