From CRDMO to BioInnovation Venture Accelerator: A Conversation with XL Lin, CEO of Esco Aster

In this feature interview, Dr. Wei-Xiang Sin, Treasurer and Head of Communications at Biotech Connection Singapore, sits down with XL Lin, CEO of Esco Aster, to revisit a conversation BCS and Esco Aster first had eight years ago. Back in 2018, XL spoke to BCS about a vision for Esco Aster centred on serving biopharmaceutical manufacturing needs. Today, that vision has evolved considerably. Esco Aster has grown beyond a CRDMO, adding on a vertically integrated bioinnovation venture accelerator, offering “idea-to-exit” support that spans consultancy, CMC development, manufacturing, testing, clinical development, business development, and strategic investment. XL shares how this evolution came about, what sets Esco Aster’s Metamorphosis program apart, and what advice he has for Singapore’s next generation of bioentrepreneurs.

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BCS: Let’s start where we left off eight years ago. Back in 2018, you spoke about Esco Aster’s direction for the next five years, particularly around serving biopharmaceutical companies in CAR-T and AAV gene delivery. How has that vision played out, and how has your thinking shifted since then?

XL: The original vision in 2018 was to produce bio-based products, especially vaccines, at the highest yield and lowest cGMP commercial cost, in a way that’s linearly scalable and quality-by-design. Vaccines remain our largest technology commercial client base today, still using our patented Tide Motion® bioreactors. Since then, post-COVID, we’ve expanded into LNPs with partners such as Hopewell for both animal and human prophylactic vaccines, as well as cancer vaccines and in-vivo CAR-T, peptide cancer vaccines, and peptide pulsed immune cells.

We’re also first-in-class in several emerging modalities — for instance, we hold a US FDA track record for clinical manufacturing of HLA-G-targeted exosomes, and we have ongoing work differentiating induced pluripotent stem cells into RPE cells for age-related macular degeneration. On the manufacturing side, we were the first in the world to be certified for commercial sales of cell-based foods, and in 2021, cultivated meat followed.

So while we don’t yet have a US FDA track record in CAR-T or AAV yet, though we have CRDMO work for immune Cells, CAR-T, and AAV in Singapore, we’ve been deeply engaged in frontier biology, helping many new modalities translate toward the clinic.

BCS: That’s a very diverse range of modalities. Is Esco Aster still mainly a CRDMO/CDMO across all of this, or is the company now pivoting toward being a bioinnovation venture accelerator?

XL: I’d push back a little on the word “pivot.” Although the modalities look diverse — from clinical nutrition to clinical medicine — the underlying IP and core technology is the same: our patented Tide Motion® bioreactors. The specific analytics differ, but we rely on third-party CROs for quality control and testing rather than building everything in-house and depending on the modality e.g. in cell-based foods we usually produce the cells and derivatives for further manufacturing as opposed to doing large scale food product manufacturing.

As for the venture accelerator side, we’ve actually been doing venture creation since 2015, starting under Esco Ventures X (EVX), which ran a biotech fellowship program called Morphosis. What’s happening now with our new Metamorphosis 2.0 program, just like a butterfly which comes out from its cocoon, is really a formalisation of that — an evolution, not a pivot. We learned that venture creation — taking equity and building companies from scratch — had real gaps. Many of the companies we helped create ended up either spending huge amounts of money building their own capex-heavy infrastructure, or outsourcing to very expensive CDMOs, which diluted us as early investors without giving good returns. So we shifted to an equity-free venture accelerator model instead, one that keeps biotech companies knowledge-intensive and capex-light, and ties them more closely to Esco Aster as a CRDMO partner and avoiding conflict of interest in taking equity stake.

BCS: You mentioned EVX. What’s the actual difference between the Metamorphosis program and EVX, beyond being equity-free?

XL: With EVX, we were mostly focused on first-in-class single base mutation platform gene therapy such as red blood cell and red blood cell-derived extracellular vesicles (CarCell/Carmine) and AAV (Nuevocor) and looking for very experienced operators — seasoned C-suite talent, which is in short supply and high demand in Singapore. Metamorphosis instead provides mentorship and paid for fractional talent: our own people or people who we know from our networks (in this case they typically work for sweat equity) step in as fractional C-suite support for the startup. That solves the human talent gap in a different way. Rather than expecting a first-time biotech CEO to be knowledgeable across GMP process development, CMC, clinical and non-clinical development, fundraising and team-building all at once, our model suits a small startup team that outsources most of its work and focuses on IP creation, business development, fundraising in partnership with us and managing clinical trials — the parts we, as a CRDMO, don’t get directly involved in since we’re not the product owner or sponsor. Singapore is a small country; we won’t necessarily be able to produce seasoned bioentrepreneurs quickly enough on our own, and relying purely on foreign talent has its limits too. So Metamorphosis lowers the bar by letting founders plug into fractional expertise as and when they need it, paying per use rather than carrying a full-time hire before they’re ready to lead independently.

BCS: Given how many functions Esco Aster now touches — consultancy, R&D, CMC, manufacturing, clinical development, enterprise support — where do you contribute most, and where do you rely on partners?

XL: Because most of our collaborators are on our patented Tide Motion® bioreactor platform, we’re genuinely end-to-end in biomanufacturing and the analytics tied to that technology. Clinical development is different — we act more like an interim Chief Medical Officer sitting alongside the sponsor, but we’re not a CRO ourselves, so we work through our network of accredited clinical research organisations. A good example is our relationship with CROs in Australia, which has among the fastest times to clinic for Phase 1 trials and qualifies startups for R&D tax incentives there — often around 40% or more. The startup needs its own Australian entity to work with the local CRO and claim that incentive, but the clinical trial material itself is still produced by us in Singapore, since HSA and TGA recognise each other’s standards. That keeps production costs lower while the startup still captures the tax benefit — a genuinely synergistic setup. On the BD side, we can matchmake startups with licensing partners, co-development partners, and strategic investors, but we don’t decide on their behalf, and we don’t try to become a full CRO ourselves — that would mean hiring twenty or thirty specialists for a one-off need, which doesn’t make financial sense. So overall, I’d call us a one-stop shop for coordination, mentorship, and guidance, rather than one that tries to own every specialism in-house.

BCS: There are other venture accelerator and incubation programs in Singapore and globally. How does Esco Aster differentiate itself?

XL: A few things. First, we’re not a virtual accelerator — we have physical cGMP facilities and research, PD/AD labs right here at the Launchpad by JTC. Second, we’re equity-free, whereas some accelerators take significant equity, which I don’t think motivates founding teams. Third, we have a proven US FDA track record, so anyone building on our biomanufacturing platform gets a fast track — and that platform isn’t limited to our own bioreactors. Through our MSAT (Manufacturing Science and Technology) department, we can also automate a startup’s existing process, whether they’re using roller bottles, T-flasks, G-Rex, or bag culture, to bring it up to GMP scale. We also have our own bioengineers in-house, including an ISO 13485 medical device factory in Taichung, Taiwan, which is useful for combination drug-device products. That combination — physical infrastructure, equity-free structure, a proven regulatory track record, and in-house engineering — makes us fairly unique as a private, vertically integrated player in Singapore’s ecosystem.

BCS: Could you share a case study where an Esco Aster partnership meaningfully accelerated a startup?

XL: I can share two. The first is Plasma Bioworks (formerly known as Wasna), which used our suspension bioreactor infrastructure to develop a platelet lysate-based serum replacement platform for cell culture media. Their raw material is animal-derived, so most shared wet-lab spaces wouldn’t accommodate them — we ended up building them an isolated BSL2 lab within our facility just for that purpose. That gave them the space to develop a patented cell line, and they’ve since graduated from our program and moved to the US. The second is ImpacFat, an A*STAR spin-off that developed patented fish stem cell and fat technology for medical aesthetics, nutricosmetics/nutraceuticals/longevity supplements, and omega-3 food applications. We helped them close their first Singapore investor in a seed round, which gave confidence to other, mostly Japanese, investors to join. We also connected them to family offices, lead investors, and follow-on investors. At the same time, we are also helping them find off-takers for their products — many of their current leads came through our network. Beyond lab infrastructure, we’re working with them on cost-of-goods reduction using our bioreactor technology and helping shape their exit strategy.

BCS: How do you measure success across such a broad program? Does “exit” mean funding, M&A, or an IPO?

XL: Honestly, it’s all of the above. We’re watching closely what SGX is doing to build more liquidity in the local stock exchange, so a listing is one potential path as that develops and that could be a stepping stone to dual listing in Nasdaq/HKEX. M&A — either to a listed entity or a larger brand or product owner — is another. A partial exit through licensing or co-development, creating new foreground IP while keeping the core IP private, is a third. The clearest example we point to is Hummingbird Biosciences, where EVX was one of the earliest angel investors; the company later spun out Callio Therapeutics to develop antibody-drug conjugates on newly created foreground IP, while Hummingbird’s original programs continue independently. There’s no single right answer — it really depends on each company’s strategy.

BCS: What was the moment you realised the market needed this kind of vertically integrated model? Was it tied to RIE2030, or did the thinking predate it?

XL: It built up over time rather than arriving as one eureka moment. Running EVX through the biotech winter was formative — portfolio companies that had built their own infrastructure, especially in Boston, were hit hardest and had to retreat. We realised that pushing every startup to set up in the US just to raise money or find an exit didn’t necessarily hold up, and as early-stage investors we were getting heavily diluted with little prospect of returns. What works in USA as well due to mixed-model or multi-payor insurance and medical reimbursement may not necessarily work for us in Singapore.

That’s a vicious cycle, especially in Singapore, where investors are already cautious about biotech. Around the same time, many of our existing bioreactor clients in the IHLs and research institutes needed more support to spin out and access grants — most RIE2030 grants are geared toward GMP-ification, IP development, and clinical development, and grant recipients need track-record partners to help deploy that funding well. We also saw tailwinds, like Enterprise Singapore’s Startup SG Tech grant raising its POC/POV ceiling to S$1.2 million combined. Put together, all of this pointed toward formalising a program that helps our existing research clients spin out with non-dilutive grant funding first, before connecting them to strategic capital.

BCS: This clearly ties into Singapore’s broader RIE2030 push for stronger industry collaboration. How do you see Esco Aster’s role in that national picture?

XL: I’d trace it back further, honestly — to the vision the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew in 1985 under advice from the late Sydney Brenner and in 2000s by Mr Philip Yeo set for transforming Singapore into a biotech and biomedical hub. Singapore has since till date invested billions into biotech and biomedical research, and in some ways, we’re still waiting to see the full return on that investment in terms of startup biomedical companies, jobs, and a genuine startup bioeconomy. We see Esco Aster’s role as helping to be part of that backbone — helping startups become globally investable and reach exits that generate returns not just for founders, but for the grant agencies and the broader research and scholarly community that made the underlying science possible. It’s taken Singapore decades to get here, and we’ve learned plenty of hard lessons ourselves along the way, but I think we’ve now arrived at a workable, sustainable model.

BCS: Looking ahead, where do you see this Metamorphosis bioinnovation venture accelerator program — and Esco Aster more broadly — in the next five years?

XL: Esco Aster became fully independent from Esco Life Sciences Group in 2022, so I’ll speak just to our own trajectory. Within the RIE2030 window, we hope to see more of the biotech companies we’ve accelerated become genuinely globally investable, with real exits. On the CRDMO side, we now have a clinical US FDA track record, and the next milestone is a commercial one — particularly for exosome-based products that could benefit Singaporean patients within the government’s medical subsidy cap. We’d like to become the first homegrown Singapore biotech company with a commercialised product that’s born, developed, and manufactured here for the region, while hiring more Singaporeans along the way. Esco Aster is also considering SGX listing as a potential exit within this RIE 2030 and we are raising our pre-IPO round.

BCS: Practically speaking — what kinds of startups are you hoping to work with, and how should they reach out?

XL: We’re happy to talk to any Singapore startup — coffee is free! We work across modalities, and we are quite agnostic as to what specifically we are focusing on, though our track record naturally leans toward biologics like exosomes and cell-based nutrition. We’re strong in nanoparticle platforms — secretomes, exosomes, extracellular vesicles, cell-derived nanovesicles, and lipid nanoparticles, including exclusive regional access to a patented LNP library from a US collaborator. We’re less active in areas like nuclear medicine or antibody-drug conjugates, where Singapore already has strong dedicated players. We are also interested in platform technologies that can be used in different applications. Startups can reach us by email, LinkedIn, or through Biotech Connection Singapore. Even where we can’t help directly, we usually know someone in our network who can. And we’re not limited by funding stage — we also work with researchers at a very early stage through our research-use-only offerings and contracted development services, even when that’s really just consulting. The start-ups however must be or intend to be incorporated in Singapore with at least 30% Singapore shareholding and down the line willing to incorporate in Australia for R&D Tax incentives.

BCS: Finally — what advice would you give to academics or early-stage founders thinking about spinning out a biotech company in Singapore right now?

XL: Find the right product-market fit, especially for a platform technology, and work backwards from what a potential acquirer or investor would actually want. Have a clear exit strategy from day one, along with a realistic sense of the capital needed to hit each milestone. A lot of founders we meet don’t have that clarity, and it’s often what holds back early investment — not, as people sometimes assume, a lack of early-stage biotech investors in Singapore. It usually comes down to an unclear exit strategy or an unrealistic valuation. I’d also encourage founders not to fix their sights only on human health. Many platform technologies can first be commercialised as reagents first and then in animal health, which has a lower barrier to entry, before moving into the far more expensive and demanding human health space. Proving efficacy and cost-of-goods in animal health first can also make investors more comfortable putting in the larger sums needed to eventually reach human patients.

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XL Lin is CEO of Esco Aster, a cGMP CRDMO and vertically integrated bioinnovation venture accelerator based in Singapore. Esco Aster provides “idea-to-exit” support spanning consultancy, CMC development, manufacturing, testing, clinical development, business development, and strategic investment, in alignment with Singapore’s RIE2030 vision. Startups interested in connecting with Esco Aster can reach out via LinkedIn, email, or through Biotech Connection Singapore.