Ohio University alum Dr. J. William Efcavitch was featured in Chemical and Engineering News in a story headlined “C&EN’s 2018 10 Start-Ups to Watch: Discover new companies connecting groundbreaking chemistry to pressing problems.”
Dr. J. William Efcavitch (photo from Molecular Assemblies)
Efcavitch earned a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the College of Arts & Sciences, where he studied with Dr. Thomas E. Wagner.
Efcavitch is co-founder and chief scientific officer of Molecular Assemblies, which is featured in the story under the subhead “Harnessing an enzyme to make long DNA strands.”
“If all the world needed was 20-mers or 30-mers, phosphoramidite chemistry really excels at those,” says J. William Efcavitch, who was involved in the commercialization of phosphoramidite-based DNA synthesis. “But we’re looking for longer oligonucleotides or modified oligonucleotides that are difficult, if not impossible, for the phosphoramidite chemistry.”
That “we” refers to Molecular Assemblies, a San Diego-based company that hopes to use enzymes to circumvent the problems of phosphoramidite-based DNA synthesis. Efcavitch cofounded the firm in 2013 and serves as its chief scientific officer.
Before co-founding Molecular Assemblies, he spent 18 years at Applied Biosystems, where he was a co-founder and built the company’s R&D group and managed the development of biotechnology equipment.
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