Just be sure to pick a program that has a research topic that will be of interest. Easiest way to see if this is the case is by looking at previous students from that research group, and where they ended up.

I should say I am the only person I have ever met in the biological sciences that has done this so it must be relatively rare.

I know that at Texas, in engineering (where I got my PhD) we had many, many professors with previous industry experience. I remembered thinking it was not nearly as terminal a decision as I had expected.