Strong says she felt the excitement from the day she set foot on campus. There was a feeling that, wow, these people think what they're doing is really cool, really important. Both have made some fundamental discoveries that could lead to the development of new drugs to treat cancer, arthritis, and inflammation. Quintessence's goal is to find and market those treatments. The name of the company comes from an ancient word for the fifth element of matter, along with earth, fire, water, and air.
Quintessence makes up the constituent matter of the heavenly bodies.
It describes the perfect distilled essence of a substance, perhaps the proper metaphor for a company trying to bridge the ethereal gap between lab work and real-world therapy. As a student, Strong sought her own quintessence, combining her advanced research in biology and chemistry with courses in business development and financial management. She delved into the rules of intellectual property and with Kiessling wrote some of the staggeringly detailed patents coming out of Kiessling's lab. I told Laura that I didn't want to go into industry and become a bench chemist. She said, 'Okay, go for it.