Beer & Biotech at RoVA Labs

Join us for a TED-style journey through the growth of one of Roanoke's homegrown biotech companies. Spencer Marsh, Chief Scientific Officer at The Tiny Cargo Company, will trace the Tiny Cargo’s path from its founding out of the FBRI Gourdie Lab and its early days in the RAMP incubator, through more than $5M in federal grants (NIH, NSF, DoD) and a seed round led largely by local investors including VTCV and Virginia's VIPC.

Spencer will share how the company scaled manufacturing alongside regional partners like RVDC, GRVDF, and RRP, and break down their current business model spanning the pharma and cosmetics markets.

Spencer Marsh is Chief Scientific Officer & Chief Operations Officer of Tiny Cargo and the scientist who achieved the first successful isolation of milk exosomes from bovine milk in 2020 — the founding discovery of the Tiny Cargo platform. A principal investigator on NSF, NIH and DoD funded research programs, Spencer has acquired more than $5M in non-dilutive funding for Tiny Cargo research programs and has been a member of both the JLABS and Blue Knight Incubators. Under his scientific leadership, Tiny Cargo has developed the world's first industrially-scaled milk exosome facility, achieving kilogram-scale production of highly purified exosomes to a fixed cGMP-aligned commercial specification. Spencer has led the first demonstrated loading and oral administration of peptides, miRNAs, antisense oligonucleotides and other therapeutic molecules within milk exosomes. He oversees all scientific operations, analytical standards, and the ongoing development of the Tiny Cargo platform. He holds a Ph.D, MSc and Bsc.