0:00

The Business of Biotech is produced by

0:02

Life Science Connect and its community

0:04

of learning , solving and sourcing

0:06

resources for biopharma decision

0:08

makers . If you're working on biologics

0:11

process development and manufacturing challenges

0:13

, you need to swing by bioprocessonlinecom

0:16

. If you're trying to stay ahead of the cell

0:18

or gene therapy curve , visit cellandgenecom

0:21

. When it's time to map out your clinical

0:24

course , let clinicalleadercom

0:26

help , and if optimizing outsourcing

0:29

decisions is what you're after , check out

0:31

outsourcepharmacom . We're

0:33

Life Science Connect and we're here to help . Dr

0:40

Brian Fisk wasted no time moving from

0:42

academia to industry . In fact

0:44

, his academic and industrial pursuits

0:46

show quite a bit of overlap . His

0:48

PhD work on cancer metabolism

0:51

made immediate impact on the clinical

0:53

development and ultimate commercialization

0:55

of at least two drugs , and

0:58

, judging by the entrepreneurial decisions

1:00

he's made since then , he seems intent

1:02

to double down on those wins , with

1:04

a current focus on antibody

1:06

drug conjugates . I'm Matt

1:08

Pillar , this is the Business of Biotech , and I'm delighted

1:11

to bring you Brian Fiske , who now serves

1:13

as Chief Scientific Officer at

1:15

Methic Therapeutics , the company

1:18

he co-founded in 2016

1:20

, and one that's currently embarking on a

1:22

phase one study of its lead ADC

1:24

in non-small cell lung

1:26

cancer . Dr Fiske , welcome to the show

1:28

, thank you .

1:30

Delighted to be here .

1:32

It's my pleasure to have you . It's

1:34

great to see you again . Dr Fiske and I first met

1:36

at JPM back in January

1:38

and made plans to get back together and record

1:40

an episode on what's going on at Mythic . So here

1:43

we go . Before we jump into the Mythic

1:45

story , dr Fiske , I want to get some background

1:47

on that mention that

1:49

I made about sort of your overlapping

1:51

academic and industrial pursuits

1:53

. It's unique , I think . I mean I've interviewed

1:56

hundreds of founders and CEOs

1:58

of small biotechs and

2:01

often there's a much more

2:03

clear line of demarcation between academia

2:06

and industry . You earned your

2:08

PhD in biology

2:10

from MIT in 2015 on

2:12

the heels of a Harvard undergrad in biochem

2:15

. That PhD

2:18

you're going to

2:20

clear this up for me During and

2:22

prior to that PhD , you gained

2:24

experience at Bain , massgen

2:27

, flagship Pioneering and Agios

2:29

Am I pronouncing that correct ? Agios Pharmaceuticals

2:31

, agios , agios , agios

2:35

Pharmaceuticals . So tell us about

2:37

that . Tell us about what looks to me like this pretty unique

2:40

combination and overlap of

2:42

academia and industry

2:44

.

2:46

Absolutely Well . You started

2:48

with undergrad , so

2:50

maybe we'll go there first . Yeah , and

2:53

in undergrad I studied biochemistry but

2:55

also did some work in applied math

2:57

and economics . And I think if

2:59

you had asked me back then

3:01

what I wanted to do with my life

3:03

, it would have varied week to week and I would have either said I wanted to do with my life it would have varied week

3:05

to week and I would have either said I want to go

3:07

be a scientist , be a doctor

3:09

or do something in business , and

3:12

I had the opportunity

3:15

to do an internship after my junior year

3:17

, ended up at Bain . I ended up going to

3:19

Bain after undergrad and

3:22

I think I chose

3:24

that direction , at least initially to go into

3:26

business you know , general management

3:28

consulting because I wasn't ready

3:30

to make a decision on those three things

3:32

and it seemed like the least committal

3:35

path . Yeah , realized

3:38

pretty quickly that I

3:40

wanted to go back . I wanted to go back to school and

3:42

get my PhD in science

3:45

and take that route . And

3:47

as a step on my way there

3:50

, I spent a year as a

3:52

lab tech in my

3:54

former advisor's lab , dr David Fisher

3:56

, who's the head of dermatology at MGH

3:58

. He's been a fantastic advisor

4:00

and mentor to me over the years , advisor

4:08

and mentor to me over the years and , yeah , left being left my six-figure job there and took

4:10

a giant salary cut to go schlep tissue samples around

4:12

MGH and make cell lines . And it was fantastic

4:17

preparation to get my lab

4:19

feet under me for a year before

4:21

going to grad school . Yeah , while

4:25

I was in grad school I decided

4:27

to join Matt Vander Heiden's lab

4:29

. Matt at the time

4:31

it was his first year as a professor

4:33

and I was his first student , so

4:35

maybe that speaks to some entrepreneurial

4:38

vision . Starting

4:40

a new lab in academia is not dissimilar

4:42

to a startup ?

4:44

Yeah , and did you ? Were you conscious

4:46

of that when you , when you made that decision

4:49

and found yourself in that situation ? Were you conscious

4:51

of of sort of the entrepreneurial parallel

4:54

, or was it just like , hey , this is a cool

4:56

opportunity , and that that acknowledgement

4:59

came later ?

5:01

I think so . I think so . I think you have

5:03

, um , you

5:05

know there's . There's an aspect when you go

5:07

into a new lab , there's an aspect of focus

5:09

, but also an aspect of flexibility

5:12

. I mean , in your PhD you're driving

5:15

a lot of the work , but I think in a new

5:17

lab you have a lot more flexibility and a lot more

5:19

impact on what the rest of the

5:21

lab is doing , because

5:23

you are the lab to start

5:25

. So , yeah , I think there are

5:27

a lot of parallels and I was probably attracted

5:29

for the same reason that I'm ending up , you

5:32

know , being a founder at Mythic .

5:33

Yeah , yeah , all right . So that lab experience

5:36

, I think you know , even along

5:39

with sort of that entrepreneurial

5:41

exposure of building

5:43

out a lab that didn't previously

5:45

exist , the result of the work

5:47

you did in that lab also , if I'm not

5:49

mistaken , if I'm reading this correctly , the

5:53

work that resulted from that

5:55

lab work also contributed

5:57

to , it seems to

5:59

me right , the acquisition

6:02

of the taste for drug development

6:04

and industry . Would

6:07

you say that's a fair assessment .

6:09

Yeah , absolutely To be clear , I ended

6:12

up consulting for Agios , and

6:14

so Matt was on Agios'

6:17

SAB and also contributed

6:20

to some of the programs

6:22

there , and I had colleagues who were

6:24

working on projects that were directly

6:27

related to IGOs . I wasn't

6:29

working on anything like that , but um

6:31

, I had a lot of skills

6:33

in um doing

6:35

so-called hot experiments , radioactive experiments

6:38

and doing um mass spectrometry

6:40

based metabolomics where

6:42

I got into some collaborations with Agyos

6:45

and essentially ended

6:47

up consulting with them for two periods and that

6:49

was super exciting . That was my first

6:52

taste of real entrepreneurship

6:54

, where when I did my first stint with

6:56

them , they were 30 people , mostly

6:58

chemists , working

7:00

on trying to find a lead drug , and then , when I came back

7:03

a year later , they were 130

7:05

scientists . They were in

7:07

phase one . They were seeing some fantastic results

7:09

for really sick patients and

7:12

it was so amazing to see what

7:15

had been done in only a year and just

7:18

got really inspired to do something

7:20

, get involved with something that looked like that .

7:22

Yeah , yeah , when did

7:25

? I ? Don't want to jump ahead if I

7:27

got the chronology wrong , but when did

7:29

flagship come into the picture ?

7:32

Sure . So , based

7:35

on my experience at Adios and again thinking

7:38

gosh , I really want to do

7:40

something that looks like that , get involved in some way

7:42

with something that looks like an

7:45

Adios and ends up having an impact

7:47

on patients and building a really exciting company

7:49

, I started to reach

7:51

out to my network because it wasn't clear

7:53

at that time that academia was going to be the right

7:55

thing for me , the right next step for me . So

7:58

what would it look like

8:00

to work in biotech ? And the advice that

8:02

I got was hey , as a junior person

8:05

, your career

8:07

is going to be inflected by

8:09

how well the company does right . So

8:11

if you show up at a small biotech and this small

8:14

biotech does super well , you're going to have a

8:16

ton of opportunities to grow . If you

8:18

show up at a small biotech and it fails , that's

8:20

okay because you're a junior person

8:22

and no one's going to blame you for the failure

8:25

of the biotech , but you're going to have to go somewhere

8:27

else to get those sort of growth opportunities . And

8:29

so that immediately

8:32

brought the question to my mind of okay

8:34

, how do I find and

8:36

start ? You know , figure out what a great biotech looks

8:38

like , and people would give me the answer

8:40

as well , you should go talk to the CEO , or

8:42

you should think about the science

8:45

and whether you think it's going to translate

8:47

into the clinic , and my

8:49

answer was gosh . I don't know how to do any of those things

8:51

. So I

8:53

got really interested in the question

8:55

of what makes a really great biotech

8:58

, and that led me to Flagship

9:00

, because I felt like Flagship was a place where

9:02

they were creating multiple biotechs

9:05

in the same place at the same time

9:07

, and that I would get some experience

9:09

to try to figure out what works well

9:11

and what doesn't work well when you go out and start

9:13

a biotech .

9:15

Yeah , definitely a good sort of

9:19

petri dish to play with those concepts

9:21

at Flagship A lot of opportunity for that . You've

9:24

mentioned , though , a couple of times so far in this discussion

9:26

. You've mentioned a couple of points where

9:28

it sounds like you

9:30

, you know , personally sort of had to pause

9:32

and think about what you were doing

9:34

, what you wanted to do next , like you talked about

9:37

at Bain , you know , I'm

9:39

not sure you know just

9:41

whether or not this is where I want to stay , or

9:48

it took you a while to determine . I want to go back to academia , and then you just mentioned

9:50

, you know , at Agios , like you know , or Agios , that is what's my next step going to be

9:52

. In those moments , the

9:54

question I have for you is like , in those moments of

9:57

what's next in your mind

9:59

, was there ever any sort of

10:01

anxiety or pressure

10:03

, or was it a little bit

10:05

more relaxed , like hey , I've got options

10:08

. Let me think hard about which options I

10:10

want .

10:12

Yeah , to

10:15

be honest , huge anxiety

10:17

, okay , it's huge pressure

10:19

, right , I

10:23

love my parents and they've been a fantastic

10:26

influence in my life , but my parents thought I was crazy

10:28

for quitting Bain and going to work as a lab

10:30

tech . Sure , yeah , I mean

10:33

, I was , you know , qualifying

10:35

for , you know

10:37

, like poverty related tax credits that

10:39

year .

10:42

But you had , I mean , you had some assurance

10:44

in your mind anyway , that this is part of a is

10:46

part of a step toward a greater plan , right

10:48

?

10:49

Exactly , exactly

11:00

, I can to something

11:02

that inspires me , right

11:04

, whether that's building

11:06

. And to me , what inspires me ? Building a company

11:08

, and building a company that is able

11:11

to have a really big impact on patients

11:13

who are sick , yeah , yeah

11:15

.

11:16

Actually , I can imagine I was there . I

11:18

have a son who's a freshman in college

11:20

right now and I'm just sitting here like

11:22

empathizing with your parents . We

11:24

sent you to MIT

11:26

for that degree so that you could do what

11:28

yes , that's

11:31

crazy . Um , so flagship

11:33

I want to get back to flagship . Like I said , like I'm a , I'm a

11:35

big fan of flagship . I've interviewed a

11:37

ton of their , their CEOs and

11:39

founders . Um , and it's interesting

11:42

, like most of the most

11:44

of this may be just anecdotal observation . I'm

11:46

not sure if there's anything to talk about here or not , but most

11:48

of the founders and

11:51

or you know , hired guns

11:53

that I've interviewed that are with flagship

11:55

companies now are execs

11:57

who came from big bio

12:00

, you know , and the stop atship

12:02

has been sort of part of their move

12:04

into emerging . I haven't

12:06

had occasion to

12:08

talk with execs that

12:11

did time at Flagship like early

12:14

in their career , right , like coming out of the experiences

12:16

you came out of , was

12:18

that unique ? Like to you to Flagship

12:21

, was that sort of a unique scenario ?

12:28

to flagship . Was that sort of a unique scenario ? Great

12:30

question . So one thing I would note is that flagship has

12:32

changed over time .

12:33

I can't speak for flagship anymore , we're just John . We're

12:35

just speculating right now .

12:37

There you go , I think flagship

12:40

flagships undergone a ton of growth and they

12:42

were growing a lot . Um , and

12:44

you know , when I was there as well , um

12:47

, but no , my , my role was not

12:49

unique . Um , I was a you know

12:51

associate and then a senior associate , and they had

12:53

lots of other associates

12:55

at the time , I think maybe around 10

12:58

. Um , but

13:00

you know , I checked a few years later and they might have had

13:02

30 or 40 . So they have a lot

13:05

of folks who are right

13:07

out of some sort of grad school , usually

13:09

PhD , who are working

13:12

now with many of those execs

13:14

who have been in biopharma and they're transitioning

13:17

back to

13:19

company creation , who

13:21

work together to get the companies off the ground

13:23

. Why did you leave ?

13:25

Flagship .

13:28

Yeah . So I

13:31

left Flagship with nothing

13:33

other than the idea that I

13:35

wanted to start a biotech independently

13:37

. So part of it was , you

13:40

know , I'd had two experiences at Flagship

13:42

co-founding

13:44

, or working on founding companies , creating

13:46

companies and I

13:48

wanted to seize the challenge to see if

13:51

I could do that independently . And

13:54

in my vision

13:56

for what that looked like , I

14:00

learned things at Flagship that were

14:03

indispensable for founding

14:05

Mythic absolutely critical

14:09

. So Flagship was an incredible experience for me

14:11

in that sense . But

14:14

my vision for what I wanted to build

14:16

was a little bit different than

14:18

a Flagship company . I think , at

14:21

least speaking about the time that I was there

14:23

. A lot of flagship companies tend to focus on

14:25

building a technology first and then

14:27

thinking about what are the therapeutic

14:29

applications of that technology . And obviously

14:31

that's worked out really well , sometimes

14:33

right , like Moderna Thank

14:36

you , moderna , for the COVID vaccines . But

14:41

Moderna was originally , I think , spent

14:44

a lot of time building a technology that enabled

14:46

them to go and do that . I think what

14:48

I was most excited about was

14:50

building a therapeutics focused company from

14:52

the start and that being the

14:54

primary goal and yes , you know it's

14:57

embodied at Mythic right . And so at Mythic

14:59

, yes , we want to use novel technology to make that drug that's going to benefit patients . We

15:01

know we need to . We want to be doing technology to make that

15:03

drug that's going to benefit patients . We

15:05

know we need to . We want to be doing something different than other

15:08

companies . But the focus at the

15:10

end of the day is how do we make the best drug we possibly

15:12

can for those patients ?

15:14

Yeah , when did

15:16

you feel most equipped

15:19

? And then I'm going to ask yeah , I might

15:21

as well just throw both parts of the question out

15:23

now when did you feel like most equipped

15:25

and where did you feel the least equipped in

15:27

terms of the

15:30

body of knowledge that would be

15:32

required to found mythic

15:35

?

15:38

I would say you

15:42

know one of the changes right off the bat . It's a very obvious

15:44

one . You

15:47

got to be able to bring

15:50

people on board who are not in

15:52

the flagship ecosystem . You

15:55

know , when you're at flagship doing company creation

15:57

, you're bringing in flagship

16:00

resources , you're bringing in people

16:02

who are in the flagship network , you're bringing

16:04

in money from the flagship

16:06

funds and you're working

16:08

with the partners to pitch them and do

16:10

that and all of that

16:12

comes . That whole ecosystem

16:15

obviously has a focus and a

16:17

certain set of goals , a certain

16:19

set of things that they're optimizing for , a certain set of

16:22

goals , a certain set of things that they're optimizing

16:24

for , and

16:28

it's been very successful . But it's very different from the wider universe . Right , it's got its own place in the wider universe and

16:30

so , I think , learning more about how

16:34

do investors other than Flagship think about

16:36

investing in a therapy use company

16:39

over different rounds because

16:42

you want to make sure you have a company that's investable at

16:44

every single stage , thinking

16:46

about , uh , you know , why

16:48

would somebody join , not a flagship

16:51

company , but a company that's just , you

16:53

know , two guys and an idea , and

16:55

how do you bring that , bring that team together

16:57

and build , build culture ? Um , and

17:00

so I think you know maybe I'll end there I think the most

17:02

challenging thing over time has

17:04

been how do you bring together a team

17:06

and how do you build a culture that allows

17:09

you to be successful in the way that you want to be successful

17:12

, and it's not only building

17:14

that in the first instance

17:16

, but also nurturing it and not

17:18

taking any of that for granted . I

17:21

feel incredibly honored to work with my colleagues . I'm

17:23

incredibly honored that they came to work

17:26

at a company that I co-founded , and

17:29

that's probably been the best part of this whole

17:31

experience .

17:32

Yeah , yeah , okay , and

17:35

we'll dig into that here in a minute . I feel

17:37

like I might've got ahead of my skis a little bit because

17:39

I want to hear the origin story and

17:41

if you're a listener , and you're listening to this point , lest

17:44

you be misled

17:46

into thinking like Mythic

17:48

is just this tiny little startup

17:50

Like Mythic's making great progress in

17:52

a hurry . I mean , the company has become sizable

17:55

, well-funded . We'll get into the details , but

17:58

you know you've done something from

18:00

nothing in a relatively short period

18:02

of time . But before we get any further

18:05

into that , I want to hear about , like the two

18:07

guys and the idea .

18:10

Yeah , let's do it . So I

18:13

co-founded . I left Flagship

18:15

. I had a office mate

18:17

and fellow Flagship associate

18:19

leave , Alex

18:23

Nichols , who was my co-founder

18:26

, and after we both left flagship , we

18:28

decided to team up and start something

18:30

, and for the first nine months it was

18:32

two guys around a living room table

18:34

. Funny enough , Alex

18:37

ended up moving in right next

18:39

to me without

18:41

even knowing it . It was just a complete accident

18:43

. And so we

18:45

somehow convinced our wives to let us

18:47

not have jobs and

18:49

just go order each other's place

18:51

and sit around the living room table thinking

18:53

about how to start a biotech .

18:57

Wow , that's pretty convincing . We'll spend

18:59

some time offline . Teach

19:02

me those . So

19:06

here you found yourself with the

19:10

grace of your wives , your wives graciously

19:12

giving you the opportunity to sit around and

19:14

brainstorm for a few months .

19:34

Where does that even start ? Like , did one of

19:36

you have a seed in a science ? Or did one of you have a motivation and a specific indication

19:38

? Or did one of you have some semblance of a target idea ? Like what was

19:40

the , I guess , nucleus of the conversation ? Like , where'd you start ? This

19:42

is something that Flagship had prepared

19:45

us well for . Right this stage of you know

19:47

what do you do

19:49

when you're at zero and how do you potentially

19:51

work , build something on paper

19:53

and then test you know is

19:55

that going to work or not ? I

19:58

think , at a high level , your job as

20:00

a very early stage

20:02

entrepreneur who's just starting out is

20:05

to take bad ideas seriously , and

20:08

what I mean by that is before

20:10

something is a good idea , like a CRISPR

20:13

or ADCs , for example , usually

20:16

before that . The reason why it's so

20:18

popular in the hot new thing is because before that it

20:20

was a bad idea . Maybe

20:22

it was a bad idea because no one thought it would work

20:24

. Maybe it was a bad idea because no one could do it

20:27

Right , but it wasn't

20:29

something before it was a big thing . It

20:32

was something that in a hot new thing , it was

20:34

something

20:37

that not a lot of was the process

20:39

of thinking about things that

20:41

weren't in favor , but trying to

20:44

understand why people weren't

20:47

super excited , why they weren't a hot thing already

20:49

, and then evaluating well , how

20:51

could we be part of and build a company

20:53

that could be part of changing that ? And

20:57

that's what we found . With ADCs , we became fascinated

20:59

with ADCs . On

21:03

with ADCs , we became fascinated with ADCs I think even back in 2017

21:05

, when we started working on ADCs . The clinical trials oftentimes

21:08

the clinical results were oftentimes nothing

21:10

to write home about , but

21:12

they did show that the drug worked . Oftentimes

21:14

the typical story would be , let's say , solid

21:17

tumor indication , 20%

21:19

response rate , but the responders

21:21

oftentimes were highly concentrated in

21:23

these patients that expressed very high

21:25

levels of the target . So

21:28

what's going on there ? Well

21:30

, eventually we became very excited

21:32

about that sort of data

21:34

because it suggested that if

21:36

you had a patient who could deliver enough ADC

21:39

to their own tumor by virtue of very

21:41

high target expression , then they would respond

21:43

, whereas

21:50

for even intermediate , especially low expressing patients , you couldn't get a response

21:52

because the antibody component of the ADC wasn't efficient enough at

21:55

delivering the payload to the tumor . And

21:58

so , with that realization of what was going on

22:00

, we thought clinically for a lot of different

22:02

targets , particularly in solid tumors , plus

22:04

the fact that the antibody side of the ADC

22:07

equation hadn't really been looked at very much

22:09

, we got very excited about . Hey

22:11

, you know , here's a

22:13

field that's a bit out of favor , but

22:16

by taking a new approach

22:19

we might actually unlock something

22:21

that's holding the entire feel back .

22:25

Was your co-founder a scientist

22:27

by training as well ? Yep

22:37

, so Alex is a PhD as well . You know you're you're having an intellectual

22:39

, uh , discussion about

22:41

a therapeutic area

22:44

. I don't . If , if he , if he , didn't have

22:46

chops to to understand the conversation

22:48

, uh , it'd be , it'd be a difficult one

22:50

to sell . You know , in those early

22:52

, intimate , one-to-one conversations , you

22:55

know it'd be , it'd be difficult to , I

22:57

guess , create a , an environment where you're both sort

22:59

of rallying around the same concept . What

23:03

were the concerns

23:05

? Like , to your point , the ADC

23:07

space was established

23:10

but not thriving . Like , adc has been around

23:12

for a while , but it certainly wasn't the ADC landscape

23:14

that we see today , back in 2017

23:17

. So you had a concept

23:19

that would change the paradigm , change sort

23:21

of the status quo of what had been

23:23

happening in the ADC space . But

23:28

what were the , I guess , maybe red flags ? Like what were some of the concerns

23:31

that needed to be overcome ? Right

23:34

, to put your stake in the ground and say

23:36

, yeah , you know what ? Like , let's go try to chase

23:38

this thing down . Sure , let's go try to chase

23:40

this thing down Sure .

23:42

I think there's a general

23:44

red flag when you're pursuing , maybe

23:46

a contrarian idea

23:49

, in that you're

23:52

going to have to tell your story

23:54

in order to make people get it , instead

23:57

of people coming to you and saying , oh , you're an ADC

23:59

company and it's five years later .

24:14

And , of course , I would join an ADC company

24:17

. Of course , oh , you're an ADC company and

24:19

it's five . I don't know how warm

24:22

the VC community is going

24:24

to be if we just pop

24:26

up and say , hey , you know these ADCs that people have been

24:28

struggling with for so long . We think we got to figure it out . Give

24:30

us some money .

24:32

Yeah , there's a good , there's a great story that our

24:35

lead

24:37

investor , Brian Roberts

24:39

at Venrock , tells that when he first

24:42

did diligence on us for the Series

24:44

A , he called up his oncology

24:46

experts and they said ADCs

24:48

why are you doing something in ADCs

24:50

, Brian ? This doesn't make any sense .

24:52

Yeah .

24:54

Go do self-therapy , go do something else . So

24:58

it's those sort of reactions . But I think people like Brian

25:00

were actually able to

25:02

, and willing to listen to

25:04

what we had to say , which , you know

25:06

, I'm especially appreciative of , because

25:09

we're not the 50 year biopharma

25:11

veterans coming and saying this is the next thing where

25:13

the you know guys who spent two

25:15

years at flagship coming to tell you , you

25:18

know , we were in the living room and we thought that this would be a

25:20

good idea and maybe a little bit

25:22

of evidence that goes along with that . But uh

25:25

, yeah , it is . It is something to overcome

25:27

. On the other hand , you know , I

25:31

think we're taking such a different approach

25:33

at Mythic . I still feel like we

25:35

have , you know , convincing to do . I think

25:37

the ADCs are hot right now , so

25:40

we're kind of in that category

25:42

, but we're not a linker

25:44

payload company , and when I think people think of an

25:46

ADC company , I actually think they're really thinking of a

25:48

linker payload company , and so I still

25:50

think we haven't quite hit our

25:52

hot moment yet .

26:00

So yeah , unpack guess , um

26:02

assumed uh linker

26:05

payload company , like the company that

26:07

everyone just assumes when they think ADC

26:09

. Like what's , what's different about you ?

26:12

Right , so maybe , as I was , I started

26:14

to introduce beforehand um in

26:17

this conversation . We focus

26:19

on the antibody component of the

26:21

ADC rather than the linker payload component

26:24

, and we

26:26

design antibodies that can deliver

26:28

more of that linker payload

26:30

. More of that payload , really , to cancer

26:33

cells where you want it , and less payload

26:35

to normal cells where you don't want

26:37

it .

26:38

Gotcha , Okay yeah , Whereas a lot

26:41

of like . I was just looking at some ADC companies

26:43

this morning in preparation

26:45

for a project we're working on that's going

26:47

to show up a little bit later in the year

26:49

, and I found that many of them , like you

26:51

know , their antibodies are coming in

26:53

from an outsource provider . Like . So

26:56

you're saying , like you're doing , that antibody development

26:58

in-house

27:00

Is the Linker technology , then outsourced

27:02

at Mythic .

27:04

Yeah , so for our first program we're using

27:07

the CMMAE , which is a well-known linker

27:09

payload . Our platform is fundamentally

27:12

agnostic , right . So we've shown our technology

27:14

works with the CMMAE . We've shown

27:16

it works with topoisomerase

27:19

inhibitor payloads . We've shown it

27:21

works with DNA toxins . So , regardless

27:24

of what we attach to the antibody , it will

27:26

deliver more . And

27:29

you're right , though , in that I

27:31

think the reason why no one

27:33

is really focused on the antibody up to this

27:35

point other than mythic

27:37

, is because some of the challenges

27:40

behind the linker payload historically were so difficult

27:42

to overcome , and I think having overcome

27:44

some of those challenges is why the ADC field

27:47

is experiencing so much success right

27:49

now . But

27:51

the question is what's the next generation

27:54

? What's going to solve the problems that we have now

27:56

? Not the problems that we had 20 years

27:59

ago .

27:59

Yeah , yeah , what are the problems

28:01

now ? Like you know the problems 20 years ago

28:04

, you know , I think we could reflect on that

28:06

toxicity and payload

28:08

, and trying to get the equation right , you know . So

28:12

, assuming that we've gotten to a point where that

28:15

has been figured out , what

28:17

challenges do you face now ? Like

28:19

, what are the problems now ?

28:22

Yeah , so .

28:24

Uh .

28:26

One of the most inspiring visions

28:29

for the field and it's not necessarily my

28:31

vision , but I will ascribe to

28:33

it is that ADC

28:36

should replace chemo , because

28:39

there are more efficacy , less

28:42

toxicity . I

28:45

mean just the word chemo . We try

28:47

to avoid even using the word

28:49

chemo in association with what we're doing with

28:51

ADCs , although many of the payloads

28:54

, technically , they are chemo . Just

28:57

the word chemo makes you think of maybe

29:01

someone who has cancer , who has the

29:03

potential to get better , but it's not going

29:05

to be a fun experience . So

29:08

I think that's one of the most inspiring

29:10

visions . But if we're actually going to do that and we're actually

29:12

going to replace chemo with ADC

29:15

, is we're going to have to get ADCs to

29:17

work for broad segments

29:19

of patients and many different targets

29:22

. And right now we're in a place where , at

29:24

least in solid tumors , ADCs

29:26

work really well for targets that are very

29:29

highly expressed . So HER2

29:31

in breast cancer and a couple of other cancers

29:34

, Nectin-4

29:36

in bladder cancer these

29:39

are very highly expressed targets . But

29:43

where ADCs don't work currently are

29:46

lower expressed targets and

29:48

, specifically , patients who have

29:51

a target but it isn't expressed at those super

29:53

high levels . And so

29:55

being able to treat patients

29:57

with intermediate levels of expression , low

29:59

levels of expression , being able to

30:01

look at targets that don't have

30:04

hundreds of thousands of copies per cell , like

30:07

a HER2 or a Nectin-4 , and being able

30:09

to look at patients who are inherently resistant

30:11

to the payload that's

30:15

really what's going to allow us to replace

30:17

chemo .

30:19

Yeah , and when

30:21

you so back up

30:23

a few years , when you were , you

30:27

gave a great example of

30:29

Brian , one of your lead investors , jumping

30:33

on board when

30:35

you were out there trying to raise that

30:37

Series A and in subsequent fundraising

30:40

efforts , I'm curious

30:42

about what were the keys to

30:45

winning that

30:47

favor . In a market

30:49

, especially in those early days , was , I

30:52

don't want to say , frowned upon ? That might be too strong , but

30:55

certainly not in favor . So

30:57

what was it sort of your vision

30:59

for where ADCs go

31:01

next and the way that you go about

31:04

putting them together ? What

31:06

were some of the keys to winning

31:09

that favor of the VC community ?

31:10

What were some

31:13

of the keys to winning that favor

31:15

of the VC community , I

31:25

think , telling a big story really well and very clearly and succinctly and

31:27

then not giving up Just

31:32

trying over and over and over again in the face of failure . So I think I've probably been in 500

31:34

investor conversations like distinct

31:37

investor conversations at this point , and

31:39

only a handful of those were ever

31:41

yeses .

31:43

Yeah , this

31:45

is totally out of left field . Just curious

31:47

, though , because you're young and because your co-founder

31:49

was young as well , like when you guys , you know

31:51

you're , you're still young . I don't want to , I don't want to age

31:53

you , but in 2016 , 2017 , like you

31:56

know , a couple of years experience coming out of your PhD

31:58

program , did you experience ? And , you

32:00

know , did you ever get any perception

32:03

from um , from some of the VCs that , like

32:15

, who's this kid , like what's he looking

32:17

to do ? You know , go around the block a few

32:19

times and then come back and see me .

32:21

Yeah Well

32:23

, during that process we definitely

32:26

went around the block many different times . I

32:29

like how you , you , you frame that . Maybe I'm

32:31

a little older now . I certainly have a few more gray

32:33

hairs . Oh well , the

32:35

business will do that to you , it will

32:37

Look . I don't

32:40

know , I can't say I can imagine

32:43

different places that maybe

32:45

have gone different ways . Maybe people were excited

32:47

that young folks with our background

32:49

were trying to do something new and maybe

32:51

made them listen and pay attention to what we

32:53

were doing more . But

32:56

I'm very thankful for having found

32:59

people like Brian , like

33:01

Graham Helmy at Viking , who's one of our

33:03

other lead investors , dan

33:05

Farrow at Omix , josh Koppelman at First

33:07

Round to start it all off in our seed round

33:10

who were willing

33:12

to listen to what

33:14

we had to say . And I would also

33:16

say , you know , a big moment

33:18

for mythic was when we raised our angel round

33:20

. Um , and so it wasn't just me

33:23

and alex , it was me and alex

33:25

and a group of angels who , for

33:28

some unknown reason you

33:30

know well , hopefully for good

33:32

reasons you know that that they saw something

33:34

here that , uh , they

33:37

wanted to invest in mythic instead

33:39

of doing anything else they could have done without

33:41

money . Um , and so during our angel

33:43

round , we raised about 750

33:45

000 in uh in

33:47

summer of 2017 . And

33:50

that was about nine different C-level

33:52

biotech execs , and so

33:55

, at that point again , it wasn't just

33:57

us . It was us plus these

33:59

. You know , we're borrowing the credibility and

34:01

advice of our angel investors in order

34:03

to , you know , grow and move forward , yeah

34:05

, yeah .

34:07

So tell us about what you're putting

34:10

the money that you've raised today toward

34:12

. Tell us a little bit about the clinical program

34:14

and or I mean you

34:16

tell me where you want to start . You

34:19

talked about how Flagship

34:21

sort of takes this approach generally

34:24

around . Let's build a platform or

34:26

a technology and then figure out

34:28

what we do with it from a therapeutic standpoint

34:30

. Or a technology and then figure out what we do with it from a therapeutic

34:32

standpoint . You kind of took the opposite route . Yet you've landed

34:35

on , you've got a platform right . I

34:38

mean , the company has a platform now , I guess .

34:40

tell us a little bit about the build out of

34:42

that and what it's producing

34:44

, and yeah , the

35:01

brick and mortar that's put together as a

35:03

result of your investment success

35:06

to deliver more payload to cancer cells

35:08

and less to normal cells across

35:10

about 20 different targets . We

35:12

inserted our engineering into over

35:14

a hundred different clinical stage

35:16

ADC antibodies and

35:24

we're on candidate number I think , 16,000 at this point . So

35:27

we've done this a lot and we built a platform and a team that's very good

35:29

at at , you know , doing this very quickly . Um , that's very good at

35:31

doing this very quickly . Out

35:36

of that effort right , because

35:40

I think what we saw was a potential for this type of engineering to result in a therapeutic

35:42

that would have an impact on these lower expressing , less sensitive

35:44

patients , we very quickly

35:46

found where that technology

35:49

worked really well , and

35:51

one of those was MET , which is the target of our lead

35:53

drug . We also found where it didn't work

35:55

, and I think that's part of you

35:58

know , in my vision at least , even if you want

36:00

to make just our interest in

36:02

making the drug , if you have some

36:04

sort of an insight on how to do that , you're

36:07

never going to avoid a messy car accident

36:09

between your technology and target

36:12

biology . Some

36:14

things science allows them

36:16

to work , some things it doesn't

36:19

, and so we went

36:21

very broad , very early to try to figure that

36:23

out . Where was it working the

36:25

easiest , the quickest , the fastest , the best

36:27

? And so that was MET , at

36:30

least initially . And so our

36:33

lead ADC is ADC

36:35

targeted against MET . It's currently in

36:38

a phase one dose escalation , dose expansion

36:40

trial as monotherapy a

36:42

non-small cell lung cancer and

36:45

we're nearing the tail end

36:47

of the dose escalation portion . We're

36:50

working with a number of sites

36:53

and I'm just incredibly

36:55

grateful to the sites and the patients

36:57

who have been on this journey with us

36:59

so far .

37:00

Yeah , how big is the company ? Now ? I

37:02

mentioned that your growth was pretty rapid . I

37:04

mean , once things got rolling , I mean you've got a pretty sizable

37:07

outfit now . So how many employees

37:09

are with Mythic ?

37:11

So we're at about 40 right now I'm

37:14

at our world headquarters here in Wolfham

37:17

.

37:17

Yeah .

37:18

Yeah , just one location

37:20

to date .

37:21

Yeah , what are the

37:23

I guess intentions

37:26

? I mean , obviously it's early , you're

37:28

in phase one , but what are the intentions

37:30

longer term ? And this is the question that

37:32

I always love to ask , because I can

37:34

can take to a certain point and actively

37:37

sell , or partner , or

37:39

we want to take this thing to

37:59

the finish line . You know we want to build

38:01

a full service biopharmaceutical company

38:03

that works in specific . You know a specific

38:06

area of indications and

38:08

you know , with the caveat that opportunity

38:11

presents itself and those plans can all change . So

38:13

I never hold I'm not holding anyone

38:15

to anything , but , like you know , this is

38:17

your first , your first go at

38:19

at founding a company

38:22

around a molecule and

38:24

an idea that you and your co-founder

38:26

, you know , kind of put together on your own . There's

38:28

gotta be a strong

38:30

sense of ownership right around around

38:32

what you're doing . I'm sure you've put a lot of

38:35

time , money , uh , and and intellect

38:37

into it . Um , what would you

38:39

like to see happen ? Like , let's put it that

38:41

way , like , what would you like to see happen with this company

38:43

? Where , where would you like to take the company ?

38:47

I'd like to see , I'd

38:49

like to cure some patients or

38:51

at least make make some patients feel a lot better

38:53

. Uh , and it's exciting

38:56

to be be in clinic and doing

38:58

some of that right now , but obviously we

39:01

have to go through a number of stages of

39:03

development before we have an even even bigger

39:05

impact . And so where I would want to

39:07

go with the company is building

39:10

an enduring multi-product oncology

39:12

company . We've

39:15

seen , we've

39:17

done a lot of engineering , like

39:19

I talked about , and we've seen the impact that

39:21

this sort of an approach can have . We started

39:24

out with so-called

39:26

pH engineering to accomplish

39:28

this effect of more delivery to

39:30

tumor cells and less delivery to normal cells . But

39:33

we have subsequent generations

39:35

of different types of engineering that we can also achieve

39:37

the same effect and combine it with pH engineering

39:39

, and

39:41

so it's

39:43

great to have a lead program , but we're building

39:46

a pipeline behind that . We have a second program which

39:48

will come to start , IND

39:50

, enabling work this year for a potential IND

39:52

file at the end of next year . And

39:56

so building an enduring multi-product

39:58

oncology company that

40:00

can have the full impact of

40:03

what we've discovered with our technology

40:05

and our approach .

40:06

Yeah , that technology , the

40:08

discovery , I mean . You mentioned 16,000

40:11

iterations

40:13

. Right now , one clinical candidate

40:15

, someone who

40:17

isn't intimately familiar with

40:19

the way that this business works and

40:21

discovery works , would look at it and

40:24

go if I made 16,000

40:26

widgets today and none

40:29

of them were quite right and walked out with

40:31

one , that'd be a pretty frustrating

40:33

experience and this is going to lead back to

40:35

. I mean , and obviously most of our audience

40:37

understands how this business works but

40:41

at the same time you build an organization

40:43

. You know 40 people now 40 people in growing

40:46

plus partners and you

40:48

know manufacturing partners growing

40:52

, uh , plus partners and you know manufacturing partners . Um , and you mentioned

40:55

this earlier , you know the , the culture of method . You know the , the team and

40:57

sort of the mission . Um , it

40:59

can be a frustrating industry

41:02

to work in if , if you don't embrace

41:04

those odds and that you

41:06

know quote , unquote failure rate . So

41:09

share , share with me a little bit about that

41:11

. You know it's a young company led by young people

41:13

. Um , you've

41:16

, you've built this organization . Uh

41:18

, it's a tough business to be in . What

41:21

does , what does Brian Fisk do to

41:24

maintain , to build and maintain

41:26

a culture of positivity

41:28

and momentum and and excitement about

41:30

what you guys are doing there ?

41:56

So , first off , it's

41:58

the't cost us much to do

42:01

multiple cycles of iteration with hundreds

42:03

and hundreds of candidates , thousands of candidates

42:05

on any given program , and

42:07

we keep a very

42:10

high bar for what we take in the clinic

42:13

. Essentially , it's got to be best

42:16

in class , it's got to be treating some

42:18

very sick patients , of whom there are a lot

42:20

of them in order

42:22

for us to get motivated to bring something into

42:24

clinic , and I think

42:26

that's very motivating for people . One

42:29

of the and

42:31

we may have talked about it before in general terms , but

42:33

one of our core values in Mythic is what we call

42:35

patient-centered science , in that

42:38

we get really excited about science

42:40

that's going to have an impact in patients

42:43

, and letting that impact in patients lead

42:45

like what that drug looks like and the effect it's going to have

42:47

, lead us to what sort of

42:49

technologies would we have to do in order to accomplish

42:52

that , rather than the other way around . And

42:54

I think that's been very motivating

42:56

to a lot of folks . A lot of folks have come

42:58

to us , come to work with us , from

43:01

other companies where maybe they had a really

43:03

exciting technology but it never really translated

43:05

into a drug that had

43:08

an impact on patients . And so that's

43:12

not everybody . Some people like to work on technology

43:14

, some people like to do other

43:17

things , but that's the folks that we've attracted

43:19

at Mythic and so keeping that really

43:21

high bar , being

43:23

really sure that we are giving ourselves

43:26

the best shot possible to have something

43:28

that could really impact patients when we make

43:30

that decision to put something into I&E

43:32

enabling studies that's

43:35

been a core part of who we are enabling

43:37

studies .

43:38

That's been a core part of who we are . Yeah , yeah

43:40

, Very good . You mentioned 40 employees . I said 40 employees

43:42

and growing . That

43:52

growth was recently marked by the addition of a new CEO . Yeah , so tell me a

43:54

little bit about that . What went into the determination that you needed

43:56

a new CEO ? Was there any you know ? Was there sort of an inflection

43:59

point around that , around that hire ? And

44:01

tell me about the hire itself .

44:03

Sure . So we're incredibly excited to

44:05

be working with George . So George Eliadis

44:07

joined us . From jazz he was

44:09

formerly chief transformation

44:12

officer and head of business development at

44:14

jazz of business development at jazz . Uh , brings a ton

44:16

of experience in commercial

44:19

launch , mna , um

44:21

, you know product strategy , et

44:23

cetera , um

44:31

, so I think he's the right CEO to take what we have , which is some interesting

44:33

proof of concept and a platform , and scale that into multi-product

44:35

, enduring oncology company . You

44:38

know , and yes , you know , maybe

44:41

I said he'll be doing that

44:43

He'll

44:46

be leading the team to do that ?

44:47

Yeah , yeah , yeah , definitely leading the team . I mean , this

44:49

is interesting to me as well , like

44:55

you're the chief scientific officer . Chief science officer scientific

44:57

or science , scientific , scientific Okay , chief science officer , chief science officer Scientific or science

45:00

, scientific , scientific

45:15

Okay . I don't know if there's anything different between those two words , if it's just semantics . But you're

45:17

the founder and chief scientific officer . What kind of goes into the thinking around that You've got

45:19

two founders . You say , okay , we're going to form up a company Like you just hired a CEO who you think

45:21

is going to be equipped probably better than you , you know , to , to , to go do those , you know , um , building

45:23

oriented things . What goes into the thinking around , like

45:25

, who's going to take what role when you , when you

45:27

found a company with a scientific background like yours

45:29

?

45:32

I in my thinking it's really about

45:34

so . So to my

45:37

co-founder , alex was

45:39

CEO for a period of time and then transitioned

45:42

out of the company about two years ago , and

45:45

so we had that as sort of an

45:47

open role . And then we had

45:49

a search open and then ended

45:51

up hiring George , who we're fantastically

45:53

excited about because he's really the right person

45:56

fantastically

46:00

excited about because he's really the right person . In terms of picking roles from

46:02

the get-go , we didn't have roles for the first

46:05

year or two , we were

46:07

just co-founders . And then , in

46:10

my thinking about how you pick roles , again

46:12

, I would go back to something I said earlier

46:14

, which is what's the role from

46:16

which I can have the most impact

46:18

on what we're doing ? And for me that

46:20

was a science . I had a background in oncology

46:23

from my PhD . I

46:25

felt like it was something I was

46:27

uniquely strong at , and Alex

46:30

had his own set of strengths that we ended

46:32

up deciding he would go be CEO

46:34

. Yeah , I .

46:36

I was just curious

46:38

. You know when you're forming things up , it's interesting

46:40

. You know who's going to play what role . George

46:43

you said . Is he

46:45

right there in your world headquarters with

46:47

you ? You guys kind of in lockstep

46:49

right now , like on the daily .

46:52

He is , yeah , so he's been here

46:54

for two weeks and then

46:56

this week he's in SF packing

46:58

up and moving .

46:59

Oh , very nice . Yeah , it

47:03

was a two-year period

47:05

between Alex's departure and bringing

47:08

George on Mm-hmm . Was

47:10

that an active search the entire two years

47:12

?

47:13

Yes , and

47:28

how did you go about ? Like what were sort of the strategy

47:30

and the keys to landing the right

47:33

person ? Someone

47:36

, maybe very secondarily to that , who had

47:38

a set of skill sets that was complementary to

47:40

our existing executive team ? So we

47:43

haven't talked about them yet as

47:45

much . But Sander , who's our chief operating

47:47

officer , also does the COO

47:50

thing but also runs manufacturing

47:52

for us , has

47:57

had an incredible career in that and very , very skilled . And then Gilles Gallant , who's our

47:59

chief development officer , comes to

48:01

us from Daiichi . Sankyo . Daiichi

48:03

is the company that created Inher2

48:06

, which probably kicked off the

48:08

current EDC craze , as it

48:10

were , and Gilles was actually

48:12

the program lead for a year or two , so

48:14

that went well

48:16

. And then he was promoted to head all of oncology

48:19

clinical development at Daiichi

48:21

and then came to work with us .

48:24

Yeah , yeah , building an all-star team . My

48:26

frequent guest , alan Shaw , says investors

48:29

don't bet on horses

48:31

, they bet on jockeys . And it sounds like you put

48:33

a pretty good team of jockeys together there

48:35

at Methic . Absolutely it

48:37

sounds like you put a pretty good team of jockeys

48:40

together there at Mythic . Absolutely , what's next ? Who's

48:44

next on your I shouldn't say who , don't name names , but what role is next on Mythic's , I guess , hit

48:46

list in terms of executive development or you know , for

48:48

that matter , even scientific advance

48:51

? Like , who do you need ?

48:55

I think we're . We have a pretty

48:57

complete game right

48:59

now . Um , you

49:01

know we are a private company

49:03

. I would bet that at some point

49:05

, you know , we're already starting to think

49:07

what it would take to become a public company . I don't

49:09

think we're committed towards that path at all , but

49:11

it's something you got to think about ahead of time

49:14

. Um , you know

49:16

, the thing that comes to mind is maybe there's

49:18

a chief financial officer in the works

49:20

if we decide to go down the public

49:22

company route . But right

49:24

now Sandra's running finance and doing

49:27

quite well at that . So no

49:29

immediate need there , and

49:31

I think we're going to focus on onboarding

49:34

George , working with him to figure

49:36

out next steps in the next

49:38

few months , and

49:41

then , yeah

49:43

, build and grow from there .

49:45

Yeah , any

49:47

big next steps or inflection points

49:49

on the horizon for the company on the whole

49:51

. Obviously , this trial is

49:53

probably keeping you pretty busy right now .

49:57

Yeah , it's an incredibly exciting time

49:59

at Mythic . So we're wrapping

50:01

up the dose escalation phase of our trial

50:03

. It was done in unselected

50:06

patients , which we know is not our patient population

50:09

, but we learned a lot of things about safety

50:11

, about PK , about dose and

50:15

some early signs of efficacy

50:17

. We were also able to go fast

50:20

. I mean , that was why we chose to go unselected

50:22

to begin with was to go fast , and we've achieved that

50:24

. We've

50:28

had incredible enrollment up to this point . That's also a credit to the investigators

50:30

and patients , very thankful for them . And

50:34

so there's that whole package of data that'll

50:36

come together this year . There's also the package of data

50:38

that we're going to use to motivate , starting

50:41

ID , enabling work for our program too . So

50:43

, uh , I'm incredibly excited about

50:45

that and what we're doing with program too

50:47

. Uh , and so , from a data perspective

50:50

, we're , uh , it's

50:52

a good time to think about another financing

50:54

and , with that financing , focus on

50:57

getting into the dose expansion portion

50:59

of our trial , funding a

51:02

path to pivotal for the lead program

51:04

and then bringing that second program to ind

51:06

yeah , and

51:09

I'm assuming you've shared all that you're

51:11

willing to share or can't share about that second

51:13

program for

51:15

now , yes okay

51:17

, all right , you know , but

51:19

I had to ask , of course , what

51:21

haven't I asked you that I should have

51:23

if I were a better interview

51:25

, brian . It's been

51:27

a fantastic interview , I think you

51:30

know . Maybe the message I would leave with

51:32

or that I would focus on

51:34

is again , or that I would focus

51:37

on is again , we're a very different type of ADC

51:39

company , focused

51:47

on the antibody component . We're not a linker payload company , but we're hoping to stand

51:49

on the shoulders of what's been done and what will be done on the linker payload

51:51

side to have this very unique

51:54

ability to deliver more tumors

51:57

and get a

51:59

broader set of patients to respond , so that we

52:01

can replace chemo

52:03

with something safer and with something more

52:05

effective .

52:06

Yeah , all right , so I lied . I

52:09

have one more question for you . Maybe

52:11

I didn't lie , I don't think I said that was my last question

52:13

, but you just brought up this . you know you brought up this point

52:15

, we and we alluded to it earlier the fact that , like

52:17

, the ADC space has sort

52:19

of exploded in in recent

52:21

months , you know , if not like you know a

52:24

short number of years , it's only only

52:26

recently just kind of blown up and and

52:28

because you just made sort of your final

52:30

, your final statement around you know reiterating

52:32

this , this idea that Mythic

52:34

is is a different ADC

52:37

company with a different approach . What

52:41

is your take on sort of the crowded

52:44

landscape and cacophony of

52:46

noise in the ADC space that's

52:49

happening at this very , very

52:51

moment ? What's your take on

52:53

it ? Is it good for Mythic and the industry ? What's your take on it ? Like , is it

52:55

good for Mythic in the industry ? Is it challenging

52:59

to be heard and noticed and

53:02

seen and differentiated ? Is

53:05

there a bunch of noise out there that needs to positive

53:07

clinical proof of concept data ? There are a lot of deals happening and

53:09

they're big

53:11

deals .

53:32

It's hard to find a deal that looks like that , that

53:34

is less than a billion dollars up front , and

53:42

that's because ADCs can address large indications and they're highly

53:44

manufacturable at this point . They're not a bespoke manufacturing

53:47

process like cell

53:49

and gene therapy , for example . The

53:52

other thing that's going

53:54

on is more in the preclinical space

53:56

, where there is a lot of I

53:59

don't know if I'd call it noise , but a lot

54:01

of activity . But there

54:04

in the preclinical space it's hard to

54:06

find a deal with an upfront

54:08

greater than about $50 million

54:12

. And thing that you have

54:14

to think of is you know , with like a cell

54:17

and gene therapy , particularly , let's say

54:19

, cell therapy , when those

54:21

deals were happening in the last

54:23

five years , very

54:27

few larger companies could

54:29

do cell therapy Right , and so they were looking

54:32

for partners to bring that as an expertise

54:34

. With

54:38

something like an ADC , farmers can do ADCs right . They , something like an ADC Farmers

54:40

can do ADCs right . They can make an ADC , they can make antibodies and they

54:42

can conjugate it to a payload . And so you

54:44

have to bring something different

54:46

or you have to bring clinical data

54:48

to the table , and I think that's what we're looking

54:51

to do . We're looking to bring both , but

54:55

I think that the preclinical spaces

54:58

, which is very frothy , is

55:00

inherently capped . We're looking to sort of

55:02

put that aside and take things to clinical

55:04

POC where we can generate that usually

55:07

value inflecting data set .

55:09

Yeah , yeah , very good , very

55:11

good . I like that response Thorough , honest

55:14

, um assessment of the space

55:16

and your role in it . Um

55:19

, yeah , we're , uh , we , we're . We got to wrap things

55:21

up here . I've been abusing your time , brian , but

55:23

it's been a fascinating conversation

55:25

. I appreciate you coming on and spending some time

55:27

with us and giving us an update on Mythic

55:30

and you know we'll be paying attention

55:32

. I hope to have you back on the show , you know , maybe

55:34

once you've got some more

55:37

data coming in from the clinical trial

55:39

, maybe when you can share a little bit more on

55:41

your second program , because

55:44

it's an exciting space and your approach

55:46

and the uniqueness of your approaches is

55:49

it's great fodder for the conversation . So

55:51

thank you for coming on , I appreciate

55:53

it and we look forward to doing it again . Thanks , matt . I

55:55

enjoy that . All right , I appreciate it and we look forward to doing it again . Thanks , matt

55:57

, I enjoy that All right . So that's Mythic Therapeutics

56:00

. Co-founder and chief scientific officer

56:03

, dr Brian Fiske . I'm Matt

56:05

Pillar . You're listening to the Business of Biotech

56:07

. We're

56:12

produced by Life Science Connect and available to hear anywhere you listen to podcasts

56:15

and available to watch at bioprocessonlinecom under the

56:17

Listen and Watch tab . Subscribe to

56:19

our newsletter at bioprocessonlinecom

56:21

backslash B-O-B and , in the meantime

56:23

, thanks for listening .