Giovanni Maglia’s pioneering work in nanopore-based sequencing led him to overcome ‘impossible’ scientific problems and found Portal Biotech. As one of the keynote speakers at the 6th edition of ‘Revolutionizing Next-Gen Sequencing’, he sat down with Sarah Geurs, Technology Expert at the VIB Tech Watch Core, to share his journey through academia, research, and entrepreneurship.

Maglia originally started his academic journey in Bologna, Italy, where he studied pharmaceutical chemistry. As part of his master’s degree, he spent time at the University of Pennsylvania, an experience that would open up a new world of possibilities.

Maglia: “Not only did I immerse myself in an English-speaking research environment for the first time, but I also saw how science was done at a top-tier institution. So after graduating, I went looking for a research-intensive environment and moved to the UK for my PhD at the University of Birmingham, where I focused on enzymology and biophysics.”

He spent some time in a biophysics group in Leuven, Belgium, before heading back to the UK for a postdoc at Oxford. “That was where I first worked with nanopores, combining my passions for proteins, enzymes, and single-molecule research. Working with Hagen Bayley, a pioneer in the field, was a defining experience for me.”

“When I first started working on nanopores, sequencing DNA this way was considered impossible. People would ask, ‘What’s your project?’ and when I told them, they’d laugh and say, ‘You know that’s impossible, right?’ Honestly, I thought so too. But I started because I thought that’s what academic research should be about: to do something which can have a big impact, but is very hard to do, and to find out if it’s possible or not.”

After four and a half years at Oxford, Maglia was ready for the next step. “I secured an ERC grant to start my own group and returned to Leuven, now with two children and, luckily, still the same wife!”

Four years later, he moved to the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Fast-forward a few years (during which he is appointed a full professor, obtains another ERC grant, and obtains plenty of other competitive funds), and we land in 2021, when Maglia founded Portal Biotech to commercialize his group’s proprietary nanopore technology, securing $10 million in seed investment later that year.