Jana Schuettpelz: From Lab Bench to Boardroom

Status: ActiveCohort: Fall 2024Industry: Cleantech

Aug 25

Some days Jana Schuettpelz is refining a clinical development plan, while other days she's in front of investors, or reworking a market strategy. As Director of Business Development and Operations at TATUM Bioscience, she’s a long way from the lab, and from her initial comfort zone.

TATUM is an early-stage biotech built on one of oncology's greatest challenges: the cancer patients that current immunotherapies don't reach. Some tumors learn to hide from the immune system, and once they do, even the most advanced immunotherapies stop working. TATUM's "nanofilament" technology is designed to make those tumors visible again, drawing multiple types of immune cells in to attack. In a 2025 paper in the Journal for Immunotherapy of Cancer, the approach drove strong antitumor responses in preclinical models. The company is now working to build the data needed to move it into clinical trials, and steering that effort means no two weeks look alike for Schuettpelz

Following the science out of the lab

When Jana Schuettpelz first arrived in Montreal to complete a PhD in mitochondrial biology, she never imagined business development might be part of her path. What she wanted, once her doctorate was done, was to see what research looked like beyond the university, and to get nearer to the point where discoveries help patients. But a professor whose pharmacology work fascinated her offered her a first opportunity in entrepreneurship. She became the first employee of his startup, Telescope Therapeutics, and learned how the company worked from the inside, at the stage when it was an idea with few people betting on it.

That's where she started closing the gap she felt most. Like many scientists, she assumed at first that she didn't have the business vocabulary to contribute much beyond the science. Taking part in the Quebec Scientific Entrepreneurship Program (QcSE), along with other programs at Concordia’s District 3 and the McGill Dobson Centre for Entrepreneurship changed that, and being in a room full of other researchers making the same move made it feel less unusual.

"QcSE gave me the confidence to step outside my comfort zone," says Schuettpelz. "Today, I'm much more comfortable speaking with investors, challenging assumptions, and thinking about scientific discoveries through the lens of unmet medical need, commercial potential, and real-world impact."

Having built Telescope Therapeutics' business strategy from scratch, Schuettpelz felt ready for a bigger operation: a larger team, a therapeutic program further along toward clinical trials, more experienced colleagues to learn from. TATUM had all of it, a collaborative team, scientific credibility, and a mission she believed in.

Building biotech in Quebec

Asked about Quebec as a place to build in life sciences, Jana Schuettpelz is clear-eyed and convinced. The province's universities generate strong research, and a layer of public funding, grants, incubators and entrepreneurship programs helps carry a discovery from the lab toward a company.

Canada isn't the easiest place to build a biotech, she admits, with no large domestic pharmaceutical companies to anchor the field. But for early-stage work, the collaborative community and the support available to founders make Montreal, in her view, a good place to start.

Her message to anyone caught between academia and industry: "Leaving academia doesn't mean leaving great science." Industry opens paths where the research stays meaningful and the discoveries move closer to patients. Don't be afraid to explore, she adds. You may find something that suits you better than you expected.

Find Jana Schuettpelz and TATUM Bioscience