A Conversation with Spencer Marsh, Chief Scientific Officer at Tiny Cargo

Are you a transplant, a boomerang, or a lifelong Virginian? What brought you to the Commonwealth in the first place?

I’m a transplant — I was born in Missouri, then lived in Ohio, Georgia, and South Carolina. I attended Clemson University and, after earning my Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering, came to Roanoke for postdoctoral studies at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute. I had not planned to stay as long as I have, but I loved living in Roanoke and found I could start a meaningful career in the commonwealth.

To allude to question #11, I was recruited to Virginia because of the FBRI and the vibrant research environment that has been cultivated in Roanoke, which has paid massive dividends in relation to the dollar investment that built it. More of this needs to occur to continue to recruit high quality talent to Virginia.

Tell us about yourself and your company. How does Virginia support the Tiny Cargo Company and your personal life?

I joined Tiny Cargo in 2021 and was our first employee- I took us through a local incubator in Roanoke, known as RAMP, which allowed us to create our business plan, conduct market analysis and customer discovery, and integrate ourselves into the local ecosystem. Tiny Cargo is commercializing a new drug delivery platform comprised of milk exosomes loaded with therapeutic cargoes, which enables oral administration and long-term shelf stability of loaded cargoes such as peptides, small molecules, monoclonal antibodies, and more.

Virginia support has been critical to company growth- after we graduated from RAMP, we were supported heavily by local investors in Roanoke, who made up the majority of our ~$1m friends and family round. More recently, local investors have further supported Tiny Cargo with nearly $2m in investment from the local ecosystem.

Beyond incubator and investor support, the Roanoke Valley Development Council (RVDC) and the Greater Roanoke Valley Development Council (GRVDF) purchased a building through our engagement with the Roanoke Regional Partnership (RRP), which is our new headquarters in Roanoke; this facility will house the world’s first industrial manufacturing facility for GMP-grade milk exosomes. This development is critical to our clinical trial development, which began in earnest this year.

On a more personal note, Virginia (and more specifically, Roanoke) has been fantastic for me — I’m able to take advantage of the bounty of outdoor activities in the region and enjoy a wonderful quality of life in Roanoke, which is small enough to feel like a small town, but has all the benefits of being a large city. Perhaps the best benefit that Roanoke & Virginia has had on me personally is to introduce me to my Fiancée, whom I happened to meet at a local innovation networking event run by RBIA, which supports the RAMP incubator. So while I have a lot to thank RBIA for professionally, perhaps I have even more to thank them for personally!

How have you found success in Virginia with the Tiny Cargo Company?

Tiny Cargo has enjoyed support from around the country; we’re an alumnus of the DC JLABS incubator, as well as the global Blue Knight incubator, and been awarded federal grants including SBIR/STTRs through the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, but our most reliable support has always been within Virginia. We were awarded a VBHRC Catalyst grant during the Round 14 awards, which provided us with $350,000 in matching funds to continue to drive our research and development activities. We are alumni of the local RAMP incubator, and I currently serve as a board member of the Roanoke Blacksburg Innovation Alliance (RBIA), to help drive innovation in the region and across the commonwealth. Tiny Cargo has enjoyed a bevy of support locally, starting with local investment dollars from Roanoke, as well as support from Virginia based VC firms including VTC Ventures and VIPC. In addition, the building that houses our manufacturing facility was purchased by RVDC and GRVDF through engagement with RRP, which was perhaps the most profound support we’ve received locally to date.

What market have you found for your business in Virginia?

Our products have international markets; we’re developing a radiotherapeutic medical countermeasure, a cancer adjuvant therapy, a treatment for Ischemia-Reperfusion injury, as well as cosmeceutical products to enhance cosmetic treatments, among others. This being said, we seek markets throughout the world, as well as locally in the Commonwealth. Our goal is to bring revenue from international markets to Virginia, to further build the economy of the Commonwealth.

What have you done to help enhance your professional skills?

The business and innovation ecosystem in the Roanoke-Blacksburg region, led by RBIA, has done a fantastic job of providing professional development workshops and events for young professionals such as myself. I have opportunities on a near-daily frequency to attend events to further build my network and professional skills. In particular, the RAMP incubator allows for those without a business background to become entrepreneurs- indeed, one thing I had no chance to learn while getting my Ph.D was how to run an operate a business. That being said, the RAMP incubator provided me with a range of business skills necessary to being an entrepreneur and running a biotechnology startup company. In fact, nowadays I feel much more like a businessman than I do a scientist; which is a testament to the RAMP incubator and the business environment in Roanoke.

How can states, regions, and communities help workers match their skills with jobs on offer?

It’s a requirement for each level of government to work together to help build the complex ecosystem required to support biotechnology. Like most other fields, this requires a dedicated push from the state level to pass legislation and provide funding to the regions and communities to support the development of infrastructure and training necessary for the regions; fortunately, our state-level government has provided adequate support from the state level to the regions and communities to enable them to provide the support necessary to build a biotechnology ecosystem in our region.

This support could be buttressed by additional effort from the state level, such as that provided by Maryland & North Carolina to their regions. The Regional level is led by GO Virginia, who provides grant funding and professional support to help build new infrastructure and train people to perform the jobs required for biotechnology, and has done a great job in deploying funds to adequately support the communities in building innovation. Lastly, the community needs not only to deploy funds provided by the state, but they need to build an ecosystem that enables entrepreneurs and innovators to build their businesses.

I’m incredibly grateful that the Roanoke-Blacksburg region has done a fantastic job in building this community; indeed, they have created conferences that bring in hundreds of visitors each year, they have created ceremonies that highlight and recognize the contributions and successes of local small businesses (Such as TechNite, where Tiny Cargo was just awarded Leading Small Tech Company 2025!), and have invested not only dollars, but thousands of hours of personnel hours to developing events, activities, and avenues for entrepreneurs to build a cohesive ecosystem of startup founders who support one another through advice, time, and expertise.

This local effort has been crucial in training new employees with the skills necessary to fit the new jobs being generated in the region, including those currently needed to be filled by Tiny Cargo!

What keeps you in Virginia from a quality-of-life perspective? Is Virginia home for you?

I started my postdoc in February of 2020, and planned to stay for about a year. However, before long I was immersed in the environment and was rapidly integrated into the local entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem and have truly enjoyed growing personally and professionally in Roanoke. We have ample outdoor activities, as well as a thriving community that has made Virginia home to me. I met my now-Fiancée in 2023, who is a local Roanoker, and I have every plan to stay in Roanoke and grow not only my business, but my life as well. I am thrilled that I can say that I plan to stay in Virginia for the rest of my career.

What’s your ideal day in the community?

I live on a mountain, so I always look to open my day with a cup of coffee on my porch and look out over the mountains; I then enjoy a walk through the neighborhood, and get started with work over at our manufacturing plant.

I also work at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute and typically split my time throughout the day between the research institute, where I work alongside Research Technician Claire Beard, Doctoral Candidate Md Ruhul Amin, Professor Robert Gourdie, Research Associate Professor Laura Beth Payne, and a number of wonderful Virginia Tech undergraduate and graduate students. Ideally, I’ll get some time around the city during the day, where I also have an office at the Gill Building in downtown Roanoke, and will see RBIA employees such as CEO Erin Burcham, or RAMP director John Hagy. I usually try to set aside at least an hour or two to write, as much of my job is to write grants, manuscripts, and patents. Very often, I’ll also engage with RBIA for an event, perhaps a lunch & learn or a networking session.

By days’ end, I spend time with my Fiancée and animals (I have a cat, she has a dog- hopefully they’ll get along someday!), and tend to cook dinner at home while we prepare for the next day, ideally while sitting on the porch and enjoying the sunset. Unsurprisingly, I spend much of my day working at the company, the institute, or with the entrepreneurial community- and I love doing so.

What has surprised you most about living and working in Virginia?
The hands-down most surprising thing about working and living in Roanoke has been the immense level of support that we have from the local environment. We have financial support from investors, infrastructure support from RVDC, GRVDF and RRP, professional support from RBIA, but most importantly, the ubiquitous support from the local community and entrepreneurial ecosystem. Virginia is clearly angling to support small businesses, and in particular, biotechnology startups, which has been an unexpected but welcome surprise.

Virginia is clearly angling to support small businesses, and in particular, biotechnology startups, which has been an unexpected but welcome surprise.

Spencer Marsh Chief Scientific Officer, The Tiny Cargo Company

Is there a need for talent in your field of work?

There is always a need for more talent- I’m sure most would agree with that! We need scientists and engineers who can assist in the advanced manufacturing that we’re conducting. Local colleges have stepped up and are investing in GMP Cleanroom technician certificates, as well as biotechnology Ph.Ds, which will continue to advance our progress, as well as others in the area.

How do you think Virginia could best attract talent? What is Virginia doing right and what could we work on improving?

Virginia needs to continue to invest in local biotech & tech startups through a variety of avenues. Additional importance should be placed on full funding of VIPC, the major supporter of the vast majority of startups in Virginia. Tax incentives on par with Maryland and North Carolina would enable us to pull talent from those areas, whereas currently, they are outpacing the benefits provided by Virginia. While we have made a lot of progress, there are major steps that still need to be taken for Virginia to attract- and perhaps more importantly- retain- the best talent possible.

Cost of living is ideal in Virginia, and we have made some small steps forward, but we can make significant progress by providing competitive tax incentives, enabling aggressive investment by VIPC, and investing in deep tech and biotechnology at the university and college level by the state government. The most important thing a state government can do to ensure we attract and retain high value talent is by investing in that talent through seed funds, university funding, and tax incentives for small, pre-revenue companies.

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