AXIS: Mentor and Mentee Q&A

AXIS: Mentor & Mentee Q&A

Launched by BioCrossroads in 2025, AXIS mentoring program is helping Indiana life sciences startups kickstart their ideas and bring them closer to reality. Through strategic team-based mentoring with the best and brightest from across the state, startups are getting essential guidance and advice. AXIS has already supported two cohorts that have pitched their ideas and have been paired with mentors.

Below is a Q&A with mentor Kevin Donnelly, PhD and mentee Daniel Flaherty.

Kevin B. Donnelly, DVM, PhD, DABT, AXIS Mentor

What's your professional experience and where are you at today?

I am a veterinary pathologist and toxicologist. I have spent my 30 year career to date in the human pharmaceutical sector as a scientist contributing to the comparative biomedicine between animals and humans in biomedical research. I have been part of teams discovering and developing new medicines and I have developed deep expertise in the scientific and regulatory process involved. I have worked at a small biotech company, a contract research company, and now more than 20 years at Eli Lilly and Company in Indianapolis.

Why did you join AXIS and how did you hear about it?

I was recruited by other Lilly colleagues who had become AXIS volunteer mentors. I joined to help build the infrastructure around the growing biotechnology community in Indiana.

What makes Indiana a great choice for a startup, particularly in life sciences?

Excellent universities in Indiana are producing bright academic researchers, and graduating students with high quality degrees to enter the workforce. There already exists a strong base for pharmaceutical and medical device companies here. I have also been impressed with multiple nonprofit organizations here that promote success in biotechnology.

Why did you choose to pair with Dan Flaherty?

I generally look for mentees with some mutuality in my area of experience (drug development, such as in Dan's case) but since the main objective of AXIS is to help develop the professional pathway for the mentee innovator, their subject matter is not very important to my success as a mentor. Indeed, I have signed on to mentee with medical devices, and health care computer app development.

What are you doing to support them? Any pieces of advice or lessons that you think are applicable to other startups?

The mentor program helps innovators make big picture decisions to guide the progress of their initiative or start-up. Having the conversation as mentors regarding the multiple facets involved seems to very much help the mentees and is gratifying to the mentors. It helps that we mentors are independent volunteers with no direct stake or bias in the start-up enterprise.

Daniel P. Flaherty, AXIS Mentee

Tell us about your startup.

Carbonix, Inc is a precision antibiotics biotech company that specifically targets Enterococcus species with relevance to infectious disease and microbiome-related disorders.

What has your path to this looked like-personally and professionally?

Professionally, this path started with my academic lab at Purdue and technology developed during the course of two R01 awards. When I started my lab I was only interested in publishing quality science and making it to promotion and tenure. Now, our lab has developed high-quality molecules that we believe fill a large unmet need in the current medical landscape. The idea of starting a company has been on my mind for close to two years. I spent time reflecting and realized if I don't push this technology forward then likely no one will. I do not believe it should sit on the shelf. At that point, I took the step to form Carbonix.

Personally, this has been a large lift for myself and my family. I still have my primary appointment as a faculty member at Purdue with a lot of responsibilities including teaching, research, mentoring, and committee work. In addition, I have a family with four children who are all very involved in many activities. So, this past summer, there was a lot of personal schedule juggling and sacrifices to provide me with every second I could squeeze out of a day to push the new company forward.

What impact do you hope your startup will have?

I envision that Carbonix will not be the traditional antibiotic biotech focused on broad-spectrum antibiotics or on difficult to treat Gram-negative pathogens. Carbonix is explicitly narrow spectrum, targeting only Enterococcus species. This is somewhat of a shift from the past of antibiotic drug discovery as more research is published supporting the role of a healthy gut microbiome on many seemingly unrelated disease pathways. This provides a new opportunity for narrow-spectrum agents to be valued in the clinic while preserving patient microbiomes from being disrupted that can how downstream consequences. I believe we will be at the forefront of not only treating Enterococcus infections but in preserving and treating microbiome related disorders.

Why did you choose to participate in the AXIS program?

I have considered starting a company for two years, but I needed a spark and some outside accountability. I always had the excuse that I did not have time. But I knew I needed to have mentors that would essentially listen to me and provide feedback with expectations that needed to be achieved. This pushed me to prioritize the steps necessary to take the leap.

What has been the most important thing you've learned from Kevin?

With Kevin in particular, I have very much valued having him as a sounding board. Often, even though I believe in the mission and technology, I can often still question if it is really that exciting or potentially impactful. So having someone not associated with the technology at all there to listen and provide advice and feedback, as well as ask questions that I have not thought about, has been extremely important to me.