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The business of biotech is produced by

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. We're LifeScienceConnect and we're

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here to help . I'm

0:40

Matt Pillar . This is the business of biotech

0:42

, and my guest today is a repeater

0:44

. He last joined us in late 2021

0:47

, way back on episode 73

0:49

of the podcast , but he's welcome back

0:52

anytime because he's among the most thoughtful

0:54

biotech conversationalists I've had

0:56

the pleasure of sitting down with . Brian

0:58

. Finrow is a lawyer by training

1:01

and if that doesn't make him an outsider by default

1:03

, the work his company is doing surely

1:05

does . Finrow is founder

1:07

of Lumen Biosciences , a

1:09

company that's working in earnest to

1:12

democratize or improve the cost

1:14

and accessibility of biologics by

1:16

developing therapeutic molecules from

1:19

spirulina . That's a great

1:21

start , but even Finrow will admit that the safety

1:23

, replicability and availability

1:26

advantages of spirulina address

1:28

just a fraction of the democratization

1:30

effort . The bigger challenges

1:32

the cost of clinical and commercial activities

1:35

are much harder to solve , but

1:37

that didn't stop Finrow and I from addressing

1:39

them when we met in San Francisco to record

1:42

this episode . Let's give it a listen . Brian

1:44

Finrow , join me . I believe it was

1:46

episode 73 , which was a long

1:49

, long time ago . It was like , I

1:51

think , close to the end of 2021,

1:53

. It was my first exposure to Lumen Biosciences

1:56

, the company that you founded and served as CEO

1:58

. So

2:00

I don't know . Two plus years

2:02

have gone by , two and a half years . I

2:04

thought we'd start maybe just with an update . Long

2:07

time listeners may remember that episode . It was an

2:09

interesting conversation , but

2:11

maybe you could

2:13

probably go long on this right In

2:16

that in the ensuing two

2:18

and a half , close to three years

2:20

, give us an update on some recent progress

2:22

in Lumen .

2:24

Yeah , happy to just broght briefly More

2:27

of the same . Basically , if anybody

2:29

happens to remember that prior conversation

2:32

, Well , it's out there .

2:33

If you don't go , listen to that one first and then come back

2:35

. There we go yeah it's a prequel so

2:38

more of the same from us .

2:40

We've been in no great surprises

2:42

. It's all continued to work just like we expected

2:44

and if anything

2:46

, I'd say where we've learned

2:49

is that the breadth of application

2:51

for the platform is

2:53

larger , if anything , than what we were really

2:56

conceptualizing two and a half years ago . The

2:59

big dramatic thing of course that happened in the interim was

3:01

the COVID-19 pandemic came and

3:03

went and that was

3:06

important for us , particularly

3:08

because we do a lot of work funded by

3:10

the US federal government , the NIH

3:12

, the Department of Defense , barda

3:14

, and so a lot of

3:17

that pandemic defense work has been

3:19

happening at Lumen , as it has with a lot of companies

3:21

, and so that was really important , building out a lot of our infrastructure

3:24

. We built a much larger GMP manufacturing

3:26

facility , completed a couple more clinical

3:28

trials . We've got a bunch more trials teed up for this

3:30

year , added a couple of commercial programs and

3:32

several other clinic

3:35

bound but not yet in the clinic Charitable

3:37

I'm calling them charitable programs as

3:40

well . So just more growth , but more

3:42

all along the same lines of what we discussed

3:44

two and a half years ago .

3:45

Yeah , it's interesting , isn't it , how COVID

3:47

affected the business climate

3:49

in a positive way . In some cases . For

3:52

you it was more

3:54

federal engagement , probably more resources

3:56

along those lines , non-traditional support

3:58

For our business . People

4:01

weren't traveling , people weren't coming to conferences like this

4:03

. They just weren't happening . You couldn't . So podcasts

4:06

and live digital events really boosted

4:08

our business Now full transparency

4:11

. We felt that taper off a bit

4:13

, as we recovered , as the world has

4:15

gotten back to normal . Are you feeling any of the same

4:17

? Do you feel like that momentum that , perhaps

4:20

ironically , covid helped build

4:23

in biotech not just aluminum

4:25

, but biotech in general has

4:28

faded ?

4:28

Some of it has . Yeah , for sure . I mean it can discreet areas

4:31

, but there's been some real improvements , I think , to the way

4:33

the world works , something

4:35

that hasn't stuck around as well

4:38

. Basically , just to be honest , blunt about it

4:40

nobody cares about COVID anymore or pandemic

4:42

defense . It's like all these lessons we thought we

4:44

were going to learn once and for all . Yeah , we're

4:46

well within six feet , right now , that's

4:48

right , but

4:51

not just on the financial side

4:53

, of course . If you see , you're very excited about COVID-19

4:55

things for about a hot minute , but

4:58

even we see this with our federal

5:00

partners there's just a lot more challenging to

5:02

get that research funded Again

5:05

. I mean it's still happening . A lot of artists are doing a lot of work . Right

5:07

now , for example , dod continues to be very

5:09

interested for their own reasons

5:11

.

5:11

So yeah , I mean some of that came and went

5:13

, but I think there are some completely permanent

5:15

changes that have happened .

5:16

I'll just give you two examples that are relevant

5:19

to my life . Number one very

5:22

usually people used to go public and the

5:24

way you would public is you would charter a jet and you'd fly

5:26

around and do a roadshow . I don't think anybody does that

5:28

anymore .

5:29

I'll zoom .

5:29

Everybody just sit on , zoom in like 48 hours

5:31

and you're done . It's a much better way to

5:34

go . They're flying flocks of bankers

5:36

and accountants from city to city

5:38

on private jets , so I think that's here

5:40

to stay . It was forced on the industry and

5:42

I think it's a better world now without it

5:44

. The other thing that's even more directly relevant

5:47

to our work is there

5:49

was a big cultural bias against distributed

5:52

clinical trials before COVID , and

5:54

it was strange because it wasn't

5:57

like Zoom existed before COVID

5:59

. I mean , docusign didn't exist before COVID

6:01

, but it's a cultural bias against

6:03

it that people would say , well , yes

6:05

, no , of course you can use DocuSign to buy

6:07

a house , but for something important like

6:09

a consent form for a clinical trial , that

6:13

would be unethical . And then COVID happened and all of a a sudden it

6:15

became ether . A

6:17

lot of things that were technically feasible for a

6:19

long time but culturally impossible became

6:21

commonplace and I think that there's

6:24

some real potential for

6:26

product TV in our industry coming out of things

6:28

like that . Just one example . I think there's a lot of them like that

6:30

.

6:30

Yeah , looking

6:32

back on the progress that

6:35

you've made in the past two to three years

6:37

, I mean , obviously it's been a very challenging time for a

6:39

lot of biotechs . The

6:41

capital markets have been down , all

6:43

the index indices are down . What's

6:47

your reflection on that ? Like I know

6:49

, that's a big conversation , but can you point

6:51

to anything post COVID

6:54

that has maybe been

6:56

a barrier

6:58

to the pace of progress at

7:00

Lumen ? Anything in particular

7:03

? I mean , I know there are a number of things you could probably point to

7:05

.

7:06

Well , it's always raining somewhere

7:08

. During COVID

7:11

there was plenty

7:13

of money , but there's no supply . I mean

7:15

even crazy things like pipette tips . Remember

7:17

the pipette tips crisis ? It

7:19

just happened us too . Nobody could get pipette tips

7:21

of all the things in the world , but

7:23

it was everything Lab space big

7:25

companies that used CDMOs couldn't find

7:28

a CDMO space . They're about a year

7:30

or years out in the future . Cros

7:32

were overmaxxed because of all the

7:34

COVID trials and all the disruption and everything . So

7:37

pretty much every input into the drug development

7:40

process was hard to get your hands

7:42

on , except for money . There was plenty of money around . So

7:46

the economy did its thing right . So prices rise , drawing

7:48

new supply , and then

7:50

there was this look

7:53

, sort of low interest rate phenomenon happened . At

7:55

the same time . A glut of supply

7:57

came on the market and then now we

7:59

have the opposite right there's no money . I

8:02

mean , the Federal Reserve Bank took away all the money and

8:05

there's plenty of supply . It's

8:07

like lab equipment , lab space . Cros

8:10

are returning phone calls and everything , so everything's easy to

8:13

hold up . So there's

8:15

always headwinds , I guess , is the short

8:17

answer .

8:18

Yeah , cros and

8:21

CDMOs . Cmos like that's

8:23

an interesting , that's gonna be an interesting space

8:25

to watch . I think I'm interested in your perspective

8:27

on that . Like during and immediately

8:30

post COVID , I don't think a day

8:32

went by where hundreds

8:34

of thousands , if not millions , of new

8:36

manufacturing space

8:38

were being constructed Right

8:40

like I got probably says every single

8:42

day , just a giant , giant

8:45

thing . But in at

8:47

the same time , the biotechs

8:49

that I spent time with still

8:51

complained about the fact that they were

8:54

backburner and it was hard to get

8:56

time and space with those outsourcing

8:58

partners . Is that a

9:00

bubble ? Is that a bubble that's like gonna

9:02

come back and bite all the outsource

9:04

manufacturing capacity that was

9:07

built ?

9:08

I don't know man , Economists are very fond of

9:10

pointing out that

9:12

nobody knows how to call bubbles . Every time it seems

9:15

like there's a bubble , now sometimes there is some

9:17

dangerous , I don't know . But I would say from our approach , we

9:21

don't participate in a lot of these , we don't use CDMOs

9:23

, for example , so it's all kind of indirect . But it does seem

9:26

like it has a lot of characteristics of

9:28

real estate , which is famously bubble prone

9:31

. Because , why ? Because why they're very

9:33

capital intensive projects . Build , at say , a new office building

9:35

or a new apartment building . It

9:38

takes years , particularly because of the permitting , and

9:40

then you end up with this

9:42

sort of high cost capital

9:45

asset and it comes online just at the time

9:47

. All the other ones come online when

9:50

there's eventually an economic downturn . So

9:54

CDMO capacity , cro capacity , they

9:57

seem like kind of lab space capacity . Very , very direct analogy

9:59

. They seem to kind of have

10:01

some characteristics of real estate , which is a famously

10:03

bubble prone business where

10:06

people are always making and losing fortunes over and over again . So

10:08

, maybe , so maybe so I think I've

10:10

heard that .

10:13

Yeah , you're so . Remind me and our listeners you

10:16

don't use CDMOs , you're manufacturing clinical

10:19

supply and in-house .

10:20

We built our own GMP plan and then we

10:22

built the big expansion to the GMP plan which

10:24

we brought online last year . So it's also give me an illustration

10:27

of that space and what's going on

10:29

there .

10:30

It's very different from , I think , from most of your listeners

10:32

.

10:34

We use an unique bio manufacturing host . It's

10:37

a photosynthetic micro . It

10:39

doesn't require sterility . That's the key

10:41

to the scalability and safety of it . And

10:44

with this micro we

10:46

can express a variety of a very wide range

10:49

of therapeutic proteins and

10:51

therapeutic peptides . And

10:54

the easiest applications are all GI diseases , diseases

10:57

with some kind of an excess to the GI tract . Now

10:59

this has some implications for the GMP , the GMP

11:02

facility . One

11:04

of them is that well , they

11:06

are , you know , because

11:08

the roots of the company are in cell engineering

11:10

technology and so , just

11:12

like with Genentech and Amgen , and then in the 80s , they

11:15

also couldn't go to the CDMO industry . Why is it ? Because

11:17

of the brand new technology in the industry

11:19

hadn't been created yet . So , like them

11:21

then we now had really

11:24

no choice . But the

11:26

fortunate thing for us is

11:28

about two-fold . Number one , because

11:30

it doesn't require sterility for safe

11:32

GMP manufacturing . It's a way less

11:34

expensive to build out a facility like this , like

11:37

literally towards a magnitude cheaper

11:39

. And the other

11:41

second advantage we have is because of all of our

11:44

relationships with grant

11:46

funders and the US federal government and DOD in

11:48

particular , we were

11:50

able to convince them to support the

11:52

capital investment necessary to build the

11:54

facility , and so that's

11:57

how we were able to do this big expansion , and so that's a good

11:59

thing , because we're maxing

12:01

out the capacity of that

12:03

newly expanded facility already for

12:05

clinical trials this year .

12:06

Yeah , are there plans to expand or ?

12:09

We have plans to expand . We don't even

12:11

have the funding for that . So if you know someone in DC

12:13

, well , that's a good message . Any listeners

12:15

?

12:15

Yeah , beautiful segue you

12:17

mentioned . If you know anyone in DC , I

12:20

mean that's sort of been the go-to . Tell me a little

12:22

bit about that . Like , yeah , you and I have chatted about

12:24

this sort of the I

12:27

don't know the silo

12:29

I guess the lumen kind of finds itself into

12:32

in terms of its funding resources

12:34

.

12:35

Like what's what's ?

12:37

described why that is . Why is the traditional

12:39

biotech VC

12:42

community maybe isn't such a sweet spot for a lumen ? I

12:44

?

12:44

try not to take it personally . I

12:47

put a lot of them around the question . I

12:51

think you're calling me out on this , just

12:56

that that selling stock . The institutional investors

12:58

we have are all Seattle

13:00

based investors . We're based in Seattle and

13:03

we have a handful of angel investors as well , some

13:07

famous guys among the list . What they all have

13:09

in common is their , their friends of

13:11

mine and my co-founder from

13:13

the biotech world or

13:15

industry generally . So it's a very unusual capital structure . I

13:18

like to say it has more in common with the way innovation was

13:21

funded in the Renaissance . You know you

13:23

go to the Medici family rich

13:25

families and get that it's

13:27

your idea funded If you're Leonardo da Vinci

13:29

. And less in common with the modern , professionalized

13:33

biotech investor . You know

13:35

kind of model that's . That's mixed

13:37

blessings , the you know

13:39

the the modern biotech model has definitely

13:41

has a lot more capital , and

13:44

so you know you can accelerate

13:46

a lot of things with capital . On

13:50

the other hand , I've been at companies where

13:52

they had a lot of capital and

13:55

one of the things that happens

13:57

in my experience is that a lot of problems that

13:59

can't be solved with money people that's

14:01

their first tool , because it's just lying around

14:03

including a lot of problems that cannot

14:05

be solved with money People to first

14:07

go to . And so I wonder sometimes

14:10

, you know , if we were , like you

14:12

know , lavishly funded , it would be fun

14:14

to have a few hundred million dollars in the bank I'm not going

14:16

to lie but I wonder if we would

14:18

have made errors . There's a

14:20

, you know , a

14:22

necessity with breeds invention . We've been

14:24

incredibly inventive .

14:26

I mean , isn't that scenario a lot

14:29

of what's led us to

14:31

this ? I mean , let

14:33

us to the , to the brink of being overpopulated

14:36

, with biotechs and

14:39

the ensuing downturn . I mean , doesn't

14:41

that doesn't that sort of easy

14:44

access to capital and

14:47

that sort of bread , the situation that we found ourselves

14:49

in for the last two and a half years ?

14:51

Yeah , I kind of wonder , right . I

14:54

mean , drug development is expensive . It's

14:56

important to do it safely , so it's never going

14:58

to be cheap , right , like

15:00

starting starting a website . But

15:03

you know , does the ? You know there's this persistent

15:05

decline in our deep productivity

15:07

in our industry . That's been written about extensively

15:10

for you know , 10 or 15 years now by banks

15:13

and Scannel and other

15:16

researchers . And you

15:19

kind of wonder , I mean it does it sort

15:21

of tracks the growth in capital

15:24

abundance for the industry , at

15:26

least for the last 15 years ? And

15:28

is there a causal relationship between the

15:31

two ? Or is it just you know we need more capital

15:33

because it really is fundamentally harder ? I don't know

15:35

. I mean it's hard to disentangle cause and effect

15:37

. My , my scientist colleagues are always telling me

15:39

so well .

15:40

I mean it's difficult to add , is difficult to do . Yeah , it is difficult

15:42

to discern that , like we've seen a lot

15:44

of great , seemingly great

15:46

, you know , stated

15:49

great programs go by the wayside or be backburner

15:51

to Shell because of resource constraints . You

15:54

know , I guess the definition of

15:56

greatness and what gets money when

15:58

money gets thinner is up to

16:01

the , up to the investor . I don't know

16:03

. It sounds to

16:05

me like your approach is is

16:08

strategic . It sounds

16:10

to me maybe this is CEO spin . Be

16:12

honest with me . It

16:15

sounds to me like it's more strategic than

16:17

a matter of that VC

16:19

community . You know , institutional investors

16:22

just maybe shine away from

16:24

a

16:27

a different way of

16:29

developing biologics , or is there

16:31

some of ?

16:31

that too . Well , I mean , I can give you

16:33

some anti-spin , because I said it the outset . It

16:36

might just be that I'm a poor salesman of stock . I'm

16:38

trying to take it personally . I

16:41

have some theories about it , you

16:44

know .

16:45

One is one is very simple .

16:48

I was talking with the VC , I

16:51

know , and he's close guy and I'll

16:53

tell him what we're up to . You

16:55

know , it's kind of just working and it's all great

16:57

, just big markets , all this stuff . And

17:00

he says to me he says , brian , I

17:02

was like , well , why don't you join us

17:04

? And he says , well , here's the thing

17:06

, brian , I like a little bit of doing . It's amazing

17:08

, it's definitely going to work

17:10

. Love the sign , it's

17:12

all the things right . But he says look , I

17:14

got I got a department of self-therapies over

17:17

here and I got a . I got a department of oncology

17:19

. You know , oncology over

17:21

here . I don't have a department of whatever the hell you

17:23

are , because there's like literally no one

17:25

in the firm to do this , and it's

17:27

, I think of it as being a a kind

17:31

of a version of the innovator's dilemma . If

17:36

you're doing something really innovative , then

17:40

by definition there's not a market for your

17:43

product , because it's an innovative product that hasn't existed

17:45

yet , but there might not also be any investors

17:47

to invest in your thing . Before

17:51

the Netscape's IPO

17:53

, nobody ever heard of the internet

17:55

, for example . Somebody had to

17:57

be the trailblazer and then all of a sudden , a bunch of internet

17:59

VCs came into existence . The rest of

18:01

history . So

18:06

in my optimistic moments , I like

18:08

to think , wow , this is what we're

18:10

doing .

18:11

We're going to be the Netscape , but

18:13

in my pessimistic moments , I think but

18:15

how are you ?

18:17

How would you know any better ? We're just some guy

18:19

.

18:22

Do you consider Lumen in

18:25

the I guess , in the camper in

18:27

the sector of plant-based

18:29

biologics ? No , okay

18:32

, tell me what

18:34

discerns that you

18:37

guys are starting materials ? Spirulina you

18:41

don't equate that to some of these companies that

18:43

are developing antibodies from some

18:46

genus of

18:48

tobacco plant .

18:52

The reason I'm very specific about my word

18:54

choice is probably because I went to law school , practice

18:56

law for 10 years . Lawyers

18:58

are one of the few groups of people that will never say the phrase . They're

19:01

semantics , because the semantics are oftentimes

19:03

very important . In this case , they are very

19:05

important . Plants are a certain thing

19:07

and spirulina is a cyanobacterium

19:09

and cyanobacterium , even though it is photosynthetic

19:12

like a plant , it's definitely not a plant . Why

19:14

is this important ? It's important

19:16

for a regulatory reason . If you're going to make a

19:19

drug in a plant , then

19:21

the FDA more importantly the USDA

19:23

and more importantly than the USDA is the

19:25

farmer's lobby is going to care a lot about what's

19:27

going to happen with that plant , because plants

19:29

breed asexually and there's going to be a risk

19:32

that the gene for your drug is

19:34

going to go somewhere where

19:36

maybe it shouldn't . There's

19:39

a lot of technology out there . You can put protein

19:41

therapeutics in potatoes or

19:43

rice or tobacco . They

19:46

have their pros and cons . The tobacco leaf is usually

19:49

transient expression . It's almost always , I think , grown

19:51

in greenhouses . From

19:54

our perspective , we are very interested

19:56

in not being hard with the plant brush

19:58

, simply because we don't want to have

20:00

a second regulator in

20:02

the form of the USDA . More importantly

20:04

, we don't want to pick a fight with the farmer's lobby , which

20:07

is the most powerful political

20:09

force in the country .

20:12

So you don't run that risk .

20:13

No , where cyanobacterium it is definitely

20:16

. There's no mechanism

20:18

for genuscape like sexual

20:21

recalination or anything like that . It's

20:23

very important regulatory legal distinction

20:25

, I would say . The other

20:28

thing is more

20:31

conceptual . I say plant-based biotechnology

20:33

companies . When I come across them periodically

20:36

, to me it always seems like

20:38

they're just trying to do the same

20:40

thing everybody else is doing with E coli

20:42

or Cho Trying

20:45

to save a bit of money on the upstream processing side

20:47

. What we do is very different . It's a completely

20:49

different therapeutic modality . You

20:53

can actually make an

20:55

injectable monoclonal antibody

20:58

in tobacco leaves . They've done it and you're actually

21:00

got a GMP process approved a few

21:02

years back at Oxford . But

21:06

to me I don't understand the utility of it . There's

21:08

vast amounts of Cho manufacturing

21:10

capacity in the world . It's

21:14

not obvious to me that at scale , particularly

21:17

with the regulatory headwinds of a plant-based kind

21:19

of system , that you're going to be able

21:21

to compete with that enormous amount of sun

21:23

capital just because it's nothing

21:25

cheaper than the factory that's already been built and depreciated

21:28

. What we're doing is

21:30

wildly different . We're topically delivering

21:32

cocktails of protein therapeutics , to

21:34

be coastal , out of topical surfaces of the body

21:36

like the GI tract , intranasally skin . There

21:41

are almost all of the

21:43

distinctions , while they're

21:45

all unlocked by the unique scalability

21:47

and cost efficiency of our platform . All

21:50

that matters is the action

21:52

of the therapeutic proteins themselves

21:55

and how we design them . That's actually where almost all

21:57

of our time gets spent . The fact that it's just grown

21:59

and something that's photosynthetic is seven-year-old

22:02

news that is almost

22:05

irrelevant , aside from the fact that it's fundamental to

22:07

making it commercializable and scalable .

22:09

Yeah , okay , very good , I'm

22:13

glad I cleared that up . What

22:16

are you doing at an investor

22:18

conference ?

22:19

Given what you've told us about your strategic

22:21

approach to investment

22:24

.

22:25

What are you looking for here ? What's

22:27

your goal ?

22:29

Two things really . We have some pharma

22:32

partnerships and there is

22:34

almost a ritualistic meeting

22:36

of people . It happens at JPMorgan

22:39

. We're doing that and it's important to keeping

22:41

the relationship moving forward

22:43

. We have meetings here

22:46

in the city for that . Then there are some

22:48

of our government partners have

22:51

teams here as well . It's

22:53

a good opportunity to touch base with them , much in the same way

22:55

. Okay , A

22:57

lot of the rest of it is just going around and seeing old friends

22:59

and looking for serendipity . I

23:01

would say Just waiting in the

23:04

lobby of the St Francis and seeing

23:06

who wanders by A lot of times . That's the most productive

23:08

thing for me .

23:09

Yeah , you made a joke , I think , when we were

23:11

trying to get this scheduled and there was some jostling

23:13

that a lot of these meetings don't go anywhere anyway

23:15

this is going to be more fun .

23:18

Yeah , I don't know , some people do that . The

23:21

thing where it's like 30 minute time slots and

23:23

everybody's sprinting from building

23:25

to building through the ring . We

23:29

don't do that . Maybe we should , I don't

23:32

know . Am I missing out ?

23:33

I don't know . I

23:35

come here and I pull up in a room like this and do interviews with

23:37

folks like you . I don't know , until

23:40

it's reception time and the evening . I really don't know

23:42

what's going on out there , yeah , Fewer

23:44

fewer better meetings . I think that's the philosophy

23:46

I might be wrong about that . Another

23:50

thing we talked about last time we chatted was

23:52

sort of the , I guess , big

23:55

picture biologics development sort

23:57

of cost paradigm and

24:01

as a result of that and suing patient

24:03

pay or costs and just the way that business

24:05

has always been done . And I know that's

24:07

a great big , giant question

24:10

. But you had some opinions , if I

24:12

recall , on how that

24:14

changes and perhaps how Lumen

24:16

is contributing through what the work

24:18

that you're doing to drive change . Yeah

24:21

, let's talk about that a little bit Like I

24:23

guess first give me your perspective on the

24:27

sort of the status quo and

24:29

then some thoughts on where you see

24:32

yourself and Lumen affecting

24:34

that status quo .

24:35

Yeah , I think this is a fascinating topic . I

24:38

mean there's a lot of good data out there , in my opinion , the

24:42

data from Deloitte Touche . That is a big accounting

24:45

firm and every year they look at the productivity

24:47

, the R&D productivity industry , and they add up income

24:49

. What are the costs of making a new drug across

24:52

the industry ? So it's an average and there's exceptions , both

24:54

up and down . And then they

24:56

say , well , now let's do our best to estimate

24:59

what are the revenues going to be from

25:01

all the products that , all that R&D is . So you can say

25:03

calculate or return

25:05

on investment . So , very

25:07

simply , if you borrow your money

25:09

from the US Treasury , it's always , just a couple of

25:11

years ago , 2% to 1% and then you invest

25:13

it in bonds at 10% and you don't have

25:16

any defaults , then that's good because you made a 9%

25:18

margin , right , Makes sense , profitable . But

25:20

what our industry does , by Deloitte's

25:23

math , is they borrow money from shareholders

25:25

and bondholders at 11%

25:27

and their return on investment for

25:29

R&D is 1% . So

25:32

they're destroying capital , according

25:34

to Deloitte .

25:35

To my amazement , this is not a universally

25:38

held view .

25:39

I was at a perception last night talking with a

25:41

senior person , a very , very large CRO

25:44

, and she insisted that this couldn't possibly be true . So

25:47

not everybody believes that . I

25:50

think , though , it's hard to disagree with the math

25:52

. Deloitte's pretty good at running numbers

25:54

, and there's some other academics like Jack Scannnell

25:56

who's written about this extensively too . So

26:00

if it's true , it kind of puts you in a pickle if

26:02

you're running a biotech company , because

26:05

how is that appropriate , taking

26:07

money from investors and destroying it ? So

26:11

I spent a lot of time thinking about this . For

26:13

us it goes a little bit back to what we were talking about earlier . We

26:15

were fortunate . There's an awful lot of serendipity in

26:18

how lumen came to be and

26:21

sort of path dependency and random

26:23

introductions to the Gates Foundation

26:25

, the DOD with COVID and other things . A

26:28

little bit of it is that well , okay , it's much

26:30

easier to make a return on investment if

26:32

there's a public interest in the thing

26:34

, and so the federal government

26:36

helps build it out , a great example

26:38

being the COVID vaccines that Moderna made . A lot of money

26:41

went in there Fabulous deal

26:43

for the American taxpayer , even

26:46

despite the subsidies . But

26:48

mostly it's the fact that , of necessity

26:51

, we've had to be much more efficient

26:53

, and , by luck , our

26:55

biology because it doesn't require

26:57

sterility is just a lot cheaper . So

26:59

, at the end of the day , ultimately

27:02

, what it boils down to is everything up

27:04

to early clinical development

27:06

is between 10

27:08

and 100 fold cheaper on

27:11

our platform to put a single therapeutic

27:13

protein into the clinic . Where

27:15

we hit the wall , though , is in late

27:18

clinical development , where you're

27:20

on multi site trials for a lot of diseases

27:23

and there were thrown into the clutches

27:25

of the market price , and

27:28

then standing behind that is

27:30

commercialization , which I think is another

27:32

interesting and risky and

27:34

very expensive area that we haven't yet started

27:37

to unpick , but

27:39

I think there's . In my ideal world , we figure out a way

27:41

to make those two things also 10 or 100 fold

27:43

cheaper for the types of products we make

27:45

, and then we really have something on our hands

27:48

, wouldn't we ? But

27:52

how do you go about doing that in particular ? I

27:54

think it's pretty interesting . There was an article this morning

27:56

and I

27:58

think it was in either a stat or end points , and we're

28:00

talking about Beijing . Something unusual

28:02

about Beijing is they run all of their own clinical

28:04

trials and have a huge staff of people . They don't outsource

28:07

it to contract CROs

28:09

and the point of the article is their

28:11

view anyway is that this allows

28:13

them to run better trials

28:15

less expensively , basically reversing

28:18

the outsourcing trend . And

28:20

I think there's another interesting thing on the commercial side

28:22

going on right now . Did you see this news about Lilly

28:24

?

28:26

It's pretty funny actually they announced they're going to sell

28:29

Majaro basically direct to consumer .

28:32

But it was alongside an angry letter saying

28:34

look , it's scolding people that were getting

28:36

the GOP one . Analog drugs

28:38

for cosmetic weight

28:41

loss and everything .

28:42

Definitely don't do that . But

28:44

, by the way , here's our direct to consumer portal .

28:48

But definitely only use it if it's appropriate , not

28:50

for cosmetic purposes , which is sort

28:52

of an interesting example of speaking out of both sides of

28:54

your mouth . I

28:58

think it's an interesting experiment and

29:00

the GOP ones might be the perfect way to do this . If we

29:02

can figure out a way to disintermediate all

29:04

of those sort of middlemen

29:07

in the supply chain for biopharmaceuticals , could

29:09

that make a big difference in cutting

29:12

the costs potentially . Maybe that's

29:14

part of the productivity improvement

29:17

our industry needs .

29:19

What are I mean ? You're in the throes

29:21

of that CRO . You talked about the

29:24

cost of clinical development and clinical

29:26

activity . What

29:29

are you , I guess , finding or

29:31

taking away from that experience , where you think

29:33

you hinted at it ? Well , if we could address

29:35

that , how do we do that ? Would

29:37

you have any ?

29:39

thoughts on how to do that . I don't think we've

29:41

figured it out yet . I wish we had . For

29:46

an honest , I'm not a clinician . I

29:48

trained as a lawyer , so I'm a bit of an outsider

29:51

to all of this . That's an advantage and disadvantage

29:53

, because outsiders come into problems

29:56

with the fresh perspective and

29:58

you ask dumb questions and

30:00

it's acceptable . But

30:02

on the other hand , clinical development is a baffling

30:05

activity . There's a lot

30:07

of things that happen and many of these CROs

30:09

are very , very good at what they do , but

30:12

there are also a lot of crazy horror

30:14

stories about budget overruns or performance

30:17

lapses . I

30:20

think at the moment , the thing

30:22

that I'm sort of obsessing

30:24

about most right now is this fact that

30:27

legally , as a proud sponsor

30:31

, the organization , my company is

30:34

responsible for everything going right that the contractor

30:36

does . The difficult thing

30:38

is that it's hard enough to manage employees

30:41

and have transparency into what people are doing

30:43

and make sure everybody's got the resources

30:45

they need and thinking about it in an aligned

30:47

way and all of the management talent

30:50

that goes into getting an organization

30:52

to all row

30:55

the ship in the right direction . The

30:58

thing is , when you outsource it , all of those problems

31:00

become much harder . But your legal responsibility

31:02

, your ethical obligations to make sure it's all done

31:04

correctly are no different

31:07

, but it's just a much more difficult talent

31:09

management problem . I think I

31:13

don't know what the answer is . We'll

31:16

see how this unfolds . Maybe Beijing's right .

31:20

I was going to ask , not how credible , but how

31:24

realistic is that for a company

31:26

that's not Beijing ? How

31:33

realistic is it for a biotech , a clinical

31:35

stage biotech , that is

31:37

relying on outside funding to even

31:40

consider that ? I would imagine not

31:42

.

31:43

I don't know . Plenty

31:47

of people told us that it was impossible to build a

31:49

GMP plan . Then we built

31:51

not one , but two

31:54

. I don't know , it's

31:57

just something fishy about the facts

31:59

of the world which is the CRO industry . The clinical

32:01

CRO industry is pretty new , actually

32:03

. Really in its modern version , the

32:06

story I've heard is really originated

32:09

in the late 90s . How

32:13

were people running all those trials before

32:16

that existed ? It's

32:19

encouraging because new drug discovery R&D

32:21

productivity was much higher back then too

32:23

. It's a fishy coincidence . You

32:26

might say well , Brian , that's

32:28

a good news because thank God they

32:30

brought in the clinical CROs when they did in the 90s

32:33

, because imagine how much worse it would have been if

32:36

it weren't for that professionalization and

32:38

efficiencies of this

32:40

outside specialist function

32:43

coming into being . It could have been even worse . Like

32:48

I say , causation is a difficult

32:50

thing to nail down . There's

32:54

something to that , I think . I

32:57

wonder if Beijing might be in the right path .

33:01

Another thing that just occurred to me you and I talked about

33:03

the last time we chatted was

33:06

and I see it playing out so far here is

33:09

making us flash is AI . When

33:12

you and I talked about it

33:14

, you were , I'd say , decidedly

33:17

pragmatic about putting

33:19

AI at its best as a

33:21

tool . It's

33:24

just I'm exposed to a

33:27

lot of companies who are foundationally

33:30

AI , who are creating

33:32

a splash right during the pool waving

33:34

their arms around making waves . What's

33:37

your perspective on that ? Like , maybe even since you've been

33:39

here , is that a buzz that

33:41

you're catching ?

33:44

We use an AI ML

33:46

. I'm not sure exactly

33:48

where the dividing line is . We use these methods

33:50

pervasively in our business . We

33:54

publish some papers , we have a

33:57

string of collaborations with Google's

33:59

machine learning AI team

34:01

, and so

34:03

we . I don't think we're slouches

34:06

at AI or like

34:08

skeptical that it has utility

34:10

, but I think there's a lot of people interested

34:12

in how's anybody going to make any money in

34:15

that world that isn't like Microsoft

34:18

, like , for example , like you know , chat

34:20

GBT . It's very obviously

34:22

Microsoft's going to stick that in every office product

34:25

, right , and it's going to be amazing

34:27

. It's going to be great when they get that all done

34:29

, deployed and the drive to cost of

34:32

the processing down and everybody can use

34:34

it . No doubt about it . But

34:36

it's going to be the channel owners

34:39

. I think it seems to be the answer

34:41

. I know there's some questions about like

34:43

search and maybe AI is going to displace Google

34:45

. And nobody saw Google coming either , me

34:48

included . So I don't think I have

34:50

any great answers . But in our industry

34:52

I kind of vacillate back and

34:54

forth . On the one hand I

34:57

think there's so much utility

34:59

and so many things that we do , but then I step

35:02

back from it and I realized but wait a second . The problem isn't

35:04

like a shortage of new

35:06

molecules with

35:08

different attributes . The problem is that trials

35:11

are too risky and expensive and slow and that's

35:13

where all the capital gets gobbled up . And

35:16

while there are people talking

35:18

about AI is how it's going to help that

35:20

? There's precious little

35:22

evidence yet that

35:25

it's going to happen . But maybe there'll be , like the

35:27

Google thing , and it'll

35:29

happen . And I said I think

35:31

remember very clearly when the

35:33

law school librarian introduced me to Google

35:36

. It was a new website . I'm

35:38

like this is ridiculous . You know who needs a new search

35:40

engine ?

35:41

I can go to Alta Vista . There's Yalu

35:43

, you know .

35:44

If I want to ask my query

35:46

in the form of a question I can ask .

35:48

Jeeps Asked

35:50

why you may need to point some

35:53

. Put something in the show notes for reference to

35:55

our younger listeners when you bring up .

35:56

ask me I remember saying that before

35:59

there was Google and it just totally changed everything

36:01

. And maybe someone out there I hope they are there we're

36:03

going to find a thing that'll just make drugs

36:05

routine and amazing

36:07

, like Google made search routine and amazing

36:10

, and

36:13

I guess I'm not really betting in that direction . Yeah

36:15

, yeah , you would know better . You talked to all

36:17

the guys . Well , I talked to all the guys

36:19

and typically those conversations

36:22

revolve around molecular

36:24

identification and zeroing

36:27

in on targets .

36:29

It's not . I'm not in the clinical execution

36:32

around as much as I am . And

36:35

biologics , discovery , design and then process

36:38

development . So I'm

36:40

just curious about where

36:42

that's going to take . Conceivably

36:45

those

36:47

early efficiencies , like you said at

36:49

Lumen , your early molecular

36:54

creation is considerably

36:57

cheaper . Right , it's

36:59

when you get into the clinic that expenses

37:01

mount up like they do for

37:04

everyone . So

37:07

I'm as interested I guess what I'm saying is I'm as interested

37:09

as you are in and how

37:11

AI might contribute to a

37:14

change in the cost paradigm

37:16

across the spectrum , Right ?

37:19

Maybe . So I think the shortage in

37:21

early stage discoveries and molecules

37:23

. It's targets , good targets , and

37:26

you know this is true because anytime there's a good target

37:28

emerges , like PD1 , then

37:31

there's just flood of

37:34

great molecules and

37:36

GLP1 right now . Right , how many

37:38

GLP1 analogs are there out there ? Every

37:40

different flavor of ice cream is being

37:42

rapidly pushed through the clinic . So

37:45

there doesn't seem to be a shortage of

37:47

ways to go after

37:49

a target Like if only

37:52

we had a way to make a molecule like it go

37:54

after the GLP1 receptor

37:56

. It's not really the issue . It's

37:59

just that all of these companies have to spend

38:01

, depending on whose numbers you believe $2

38:04

billion risk and probability

38:06

and time adjusted

38:08

, or $7 billion

38:10

probability and time adjusted capital

38:13

to get one product through the

38:15

clinic . That's where all the money goes . Getting

38:18

a molecule to load into

38:20

that process is easy .

38:23

So , given the breadth and depth of

38:25

molecules and

38:28

targets , that perhaps

38:31

targets ? You tell me that Lumen

38:33

has . In the years since you founded

38:35

the company , you mentioned that

38:37

you've got a sort

38:40

of choose your own adventure path . How do you

38:42

like you've got a lot of opportunity there . How does

38:44

that play into your calculus around

38:46

target identification and the indications

38:48

that Lumen will pursue , is

38:50

pursuing and will down the road ?

38:53

Yeah , I'm a little talking about it . How do you kind of call

38:55

me out on this here ? Because we don't do any of that

38:57

In our business . We

39:00

have the luck of being the first

39:02

to the field , so it feels a little bit like being I

39:04

don't know genetic in the early 80s , where

39:08

they finally figured out how to make molecule antibody

39:10

and there was a list as long as you're on

39:12

, a great idea to go after , and I didn't mean

39:14

all of them worked , but

39:17

many of them were amazing products

39:19

and they prop up the

39:22

stock prices of some of these companies , and Amgen

39:24

, for example , to this day . Right Enbril

39:26

I think the first patent on Enbril was founded

39:28

in 1989 . So

39:31

the persistence of being a first

39:33

mover in a new field where you can do

39:35

anything that everybody knew would be a good idea for a long

39:37

time , but now you can actually scaleably

39:40

execute on it is huge . For

39:44

us , that means we really only

39:46

go after targets that have a

39:49

lot of not just animal data

39:51

but human clinical data , validating

39:53

the target , biology

39:55

and also in all the cases

39:58

, also the therapeutic modality , the mucosal

40:00

topical delivery , and

40:02

so for us , what

40:05

keeps ? others at bay at least at

40:07

the moment we've kind of got this base to ourself is

40:10

the scalability and cost efficiency

40:12

of our platform for this particular application

40:14

. If we could find a

40:16

way , if the AI guys

40:19

, as we're calling them , could find a way

40:21

to get the same confidence in

40:23

the target biology that

40:26

we're using these techniques , that we

40:28

get out of double-fashioned

40:30

reading papers from some

40:32

80s and 90s and then

40:35

they really have something . I mean , that would be a real gift to

40:37

humanity and I

40:39

think they've cracked that yet , but maybe

40:42

there's something there .

40:43

Yeah , so give

40:45

us an update on the

40:48

clinical activity element .

40:50

Right . So a bunch of activity

40:52

. We just wrapped up a trial

40:54

a few weeks ago in December . There's

40:58

a new area for assistance . Instead of delivering

41:00

our protein therapeutic cocktail

41:02

or antibody cocktails to GI

41:04

mucosal services , this case we were delivering into

41:06

intranasal passage and

41:09

what we're interested in that trial was

41:11

well , tolerability and safety . Obviously

41:13

we always look at that , but there's decades

41:15

of clinical trials on that therapeutic modality

41:17

so we weren't so worried about that , but still

41:20

happy to see that it's very well tolerated . The

41:23

thing we're more interested in we don't have the data on this yet

41:25

, but we did a staggered dosing . We dosed

41:27

some of these individuals who are dosing them daily , some

41:29

of them every other day and some of them every third day . What

41:32

we're really interested in is taking the mucosal

41:35

samples from the nasal passages so

41:37

we can build out a

41:39

rough measure of how long the antibody

41:42

cocktail persists in those tissues

41:44

. This is under the

41:46

COVID-19 program , the DOD funded

41:48

clinical trial , but very

41:50

obvious applications for not only for COVID-19

41:52

, which , as I mentioned earlier , nobody cares about anymore , but

41:54

there's a lot of other viral infections influenza

41:57

, rsv . This could have

41:59

great utility , for the

42:01

use case is really obvious . I

42:04

think a lot of people would be interested before

42:08

they go on an airplane , taking some kind of

42:10

antibody cocktail and just sort

42:12

of coding the mucosal membranes of your nasal

42:14

passages that were respiratory tract , to at

42:17

least reduce the odds of

42:19

getting an infection during that window

42:21

of exposure .

42:23

And so that's very exciting .

42:25

We'll have the PK data from that , I think , in

42:27

a couple of months . This

42:29

year we have a lot on deck . We're

42:32

running five trials

42:34

We've got funded , we've got three more

42:36

in various stages of getting funding committed for

42:38

. So we can pull that off . That's eight clinical

42:40

trials to initiate this year and

42:42

some of them will kind of extend out their

42:45

different lengths . So

42:47

that's where the huge growth is for us and it's

42:49

why we're hiring and thinking

42:51

so aggressively about clinical development costs

42:54

very salient and

42:56

also the manufacturing facility , because

42:58

that's a lot of clinical trial

43:00

material to manufacture in our GMP plan

43:02

. So we're hiring very aggressively . If

43:04

you're interested in a job , look out our website

43:07

. What sort of jobs are you hiring

43:09

for ? Clinical manufacturing , r&d

43:11

.

43:12

Yeah , those three areas . Lumen

43:15

, biosciencesorg , Lumenbio

43:18

All right , Lumenbio , Go

43:20

there and check out the job offers . Speaking

43:23

of jobs , so what you found ? You found the company when

43:25

2017 . 2017

43:27

. Looking back on the

43:30

years that have passed since then , what

43:34

offers some pointed advice for

43:36

companies ? I'm sorry for

43:38

folks who are in your shoes back then

43:40

for stipping a toe and founding

43:42

a biotech company .

43:44

Okay , okay , if you could walk on

43:46

this , I'm sure . No , no , I've tried the other

43:48

side , I was gonna say

43:50

. When I was selling overpriced legal services

43:52

as a lawyer at Cooley , I

43:57

used to tell people that advice

43:59

is worth roughly what you pay for it .

44:01

Okay so .

44:04

Free advice you gotta take with

44:06

extra grains of salt , sure .

44:09

So I don't know that I have any . It's like the gift horse analogy

44:11

, right .

44:12

The gift horse . The saying is you

44:14

don't look at it .

44:16

What you do like , if you're gonna take on that or

44:18

the horse that's given to you is the one you really wanna

44:20

assess . Right , you wanna take that

44:22

apart .

44:25

I think advice comes in matched

44:27

proverbs , and I think proverbs

44:30

are always matched right . There's always like look

44:32

before your leap . But it's also true

44:34

that who has the tastes is lost

44:36

. So a lot of advice comes in these

44:38

sort of mix and match things and I think of them as being more

44:40

like cones . There's just sort of

44:43

the things you wanna meditate

44:45

and think about and then you still gotta make

44:47

your own decision about what's

44:49

the right thing . So

44:53

two cones that I recommend is

44:55

thinking about that

44:57

were important to me . First of all , I

45:00

can endorse the lifestyle .

45:02

It's not for everybody .

45:03

So you gotta know yourself and make

45:05

the right choice . But

45:08

it's great fun starting a company . I

45:11

mean it's especially fun when it's winning . It's especially

45:13

agonizing when you're struggling

45:15

and you get plenty of doses of boats

45:17

. It's a very high emotional balance activity

45:19

running an early stage company

45:21

, but

45:24

it's great fun . I recommend it to anybody that

45:27

has the slightest inclination . And

45:30

then the second thing is

45:33

maybe related . Part

45:36

of what makes it fun is the unpredictability

45:38

of it . And boy

45:41

our experience is there's just been so

45:43

much serendipity driving

45:45

, so many critical events

45:48

in the company's development . There's just no way

45:50

you could have planned . I mean , just almost from the minute

45:52

we stepped out of the gates things

45:54

started happening Good

45:58

and sometimes challenging , but mostly

46:01

for the good . There's

46:03

this feeling that as you

46:05

start a new thing like this and it's not just

46:07

starting companies , it's starting new

46:09

art programs or

46:11

writing a book or something there's

46:15

a tendency of the world to just sort of it

46:17

looks like it's all closed up and impenetrable

46:19

. And then you , just you take the first step and everything

46:22

just starts opening up in front of you . That's

46:24

the kind of lived experience of it . So

46:27

I guess it translated into advice form

46:29

, it would be to keep

46:32

an eye out for the opportunities and don't get too attached

46:34

to the path you think you're gonna take

46:36

.

46:37

How do you enable that ? Like you know , serendipity

46:40

doesn't happen in a vacuum

46:42

. Like you can't have a great idea

46:44

, pull up in a space like

46:46

this , Take meanings .

46:47

You do just have an open

46:49

mind and a naive attitude

46:51

and kind of a learning mindset

46:54

and you take me . So very

46:56

short anecdote . We have time for a short anecdote

46:58

. Yeah , this is for sure . I like this one . My

47:01

co-founder , Jim . He's a scientist and we

47:03

started the company and he , with

47:05

Gates Foundation , found us . We're based

47:07

in Seattle , they're based in Seattle . I found us through a friend of

47:09

friend and they had this problem that they were interested in . So

47:13

they invited themselves to come over and they said well

47:16

, I said , Jim , this is great , the Gates Foundation

47:18

is gonna come over .

47:19

I don't know if you know this .

47:20

But they got all this money . It's great . So

47:24

he says , well , what do they want to do ? He says well . I said , well , they

47:26

want us to make antibodies in spirulina . He

47:28

said , well , that's a ridiculous idea . He

47:30

says spirulina is a prokaryote . You

47:32

know the male in the antibodies require a

47:34

glycosylation , all of this sort of complicated

47:36

stuff .

47:38

So that's a really dumb idea . You take the meeting

47:41

. I've got real work to do . That's

47:43

a little word . I've got real work to do .

47:45

And so I took the meeting , because that's kind of my attitude

47:48

, who knows . And

47:53

it was sat down and I said so what's going

47:55

on ? So we want you to help us . We got this problem we

47:57

need all these kids are dying in the developing world . We want to make

47:59

an antibody cocktail so

48:01

cheap that we can just feed it to these kids , stop

48:04

them from getting these enteric diarrheal diseases

48:06

and save their lives , and it's going to be

48:08

great . And I said , oh well , I do what I usually

48:10

do in this case , which is I kind of roll back in

48:12

my head Robotically . I try to remember exactly the

48:14

words Jim said there . You know the science

48:16

, not the words . He said

48:18

where ? I

48:21

explained well it's like a prokaryote

48:23

. I don't know this , but you can't . Glycosylation

48:26

and all these things . And I stopped and he

48:28

says no , no , no , no , no , no , no no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no

48:30

, no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no no no no , no , no , no , no , no , no no no , no , no , no

48:32

, no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no

48:34

, no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no

48:37

, no , no , no , no , no , no , no . And

48:40

so I was like , oh hey , I'm going to have to shift my mind

48:42

. So

48:45

I do know that somebody's saying , hey , you

48:47

got a million antibodies why

48:50

don't you make a camel antibody fragment and ? he

48:53

expressed a brain in prokaryotes , and I had dragged

48:55

one of my science colleagues with me who was

48:57

less rude than mechalophantic flowed from that meeting and

49:00

I tell you there's been 10 or 15 other

49:02

things like this , where just

49:04

random circumstances generate

49:08

the most spontaneously a path

49:10

forward , where , like I say , it just seems

49:12

impenetrable , an impenetrable triple ticket

49:14

, and it happens

49:17

so often To

49:19

answer your question , I don't know how to

49:21

create it While we're talking earlier

49:23

, when I come down here , I try to have

49:25

fewer meetings and more serendipity , and my way

49:27

of doing that is lurking in the

49:30

St Francis lobby or different places

49:32

and waiting

49:35

for things to happen and , god damn , it always

49:37

does yeah .

49:39

Well , it's always a pleasure to have you

49:41

. I'm gonna let you go make some of that serendipity

49:43

happen . I really enjoy talking with you

49:45

. Very thoughtful , excellent

49:47

conversation . I appreciate having you on and

49:49

we'll do it again . I hope so . Yes , man

49:52

, we'll keep it up . Okay , thanks , brian . I'm

49:54

Matt Pillar and you just listened to the business of

49:56

biotech , the weekly podcast dedicated

49:59

to the builders of biotech . We

50:01

drop a new episode with a new exec every

50:03

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50:05

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50:14

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50:18

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50:21

backslashbob . If

50:23

you have feedback or topic and guest suggestions

50:26

, hit me up on LinkedIn and let's chat and

50:28

, as always , thanks for listening .