Carlo Farina, PhD, is something of an armchair theoretical physicist, if there is such a thing. While heading up the medicinal chemistry services company NiKem Research SRL , Farina told START-UP, he was also reading several books on string theory, which at its core is built on a mathematical concept called a brane. When it came time to name the CNS-focused NiKem spin-out he now helms, the logical choice was Brane Discovery SRL, an homage to string theory with a very obvious homonym.
The concept behind Brane isn’t nearly as complicated, and follows a well worn path to relative success among European biotech...