On the outside, Marty Schiller is a scientist pushing the boundaries of medicine. He’s laboriously tinkered with what makes us tick by exploring how our genetics enrich our treatment options.

But much like a strand of DNA, there’s more than meets the eye. Once you bust out the microscope and look deeper beyond Schiller’s lab coat, you’ll find the inner-workings of a businessman.

“When I was 14, I had a little painting business – and since then, I’ve always considered business operations as a part of what I like doing,” said Schiller. “Fast forward, and I think we’ve got something pretty special here at UNLV.”

That boyhood business diversion became destiny when he founded Heligenics in 2018, a pharmaceutical startup company focused on improving medicines or, more specifically, therapeutics. Those include household names such as Aspirin, Tylenol, insulin for treating diabetes, and Humira for autoimmune disorders.

”Every cell in our body has 21,000 genes, and figuring out how these genes work is the key to understanding how dysfunction causes disease and how to treat it,” said UNLV professor Marty Schiller. “I saw the commercial applications of our laboratory findings, which took me in a new direction.”

The mission at Heligenics is to make existing treatment options better – or create entirely new ones. For example, you could give less of a drug, resulting in fewer side effects. And instead of injecting once a day, it can be once a month. Or there could be multiple treatment options for a specific disease, and your DNA could be the key to knowing which one to choose. 

“To be able to stand on the shoulders of all these generations of scientists that came before us and build on all of this incredible knowledge – I have such an enjoyable existence,” said Schiller. “I owe it all to those researchers who came before me, to be able to give a small incremental step back to society.”

On top of that, he’s also the executive director of UNLV’s Nevada Institute of Personalized Medicine, an intiative supported by the Governor's Office of Economic Development's Knowledge Fund. During his nearly 15 years at the university, he continues to build a strong culture and reputation of excellence with the institute.

Crediting that tenure for the creation of Heligenics, Schiller maintains that he’s a scientist first — and the renewed businessman in him is the result of a good relationship.

“UNLV believed in me early in my career,“ he said. “They’ve done well by me and I’ve done well by them. I just hope that I moved the needle here, and I want to be someone that the university is proud of for years to come.”

When he first joined UNLV’s School of Life Sciences in 2009, Schiller created a brand new course: Great Biological Discoveries (BIOL 602). It discusses the top discoveries in biomedical science while critically analyzing the related literature. 

The class, using the benefit of hindsight and modernity, would talk about what was special, as well at the flaws in past Nobel Prize-winning research and how it could be enhanced with what we know today. The parallels between that class and Heligenics are not lost on Schiller.

“I ended up benefiting more from the class than the students,” he said. “That’s where the eventual idea of my business came from: it started with a class that eventually led me to the present. I follow the way the world tells me to go.”

And now, Schiller heads his own team of scientists at his own business, while continuing to hone his craft during his day job at UNLV.

“We have big scientific studies coming out in the next few years that will be some of the most important discoveries of the decade,” he said. “Stay tuned.”