Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Healthcare Theory Podcast. I'm your host, Nikhil Reddy, and every week we interview the entrepreneurs and thought leaders behind the future of healthcare care to see what's gone wrong with our system and how we can fix it.
Speaker: Welcome to the Healthcare Theory, I'm joined by Kevin kevin Bitterman, a partner at Atlas Ventures. Atlas has been building biotech companies for over 30 years and Kevin himself is one of the core people at the center of their story.
Speaker: Kevin was the very first grad student in David Sinclair's lab at Harvard. And he helped Citrus spin out of that lab, and GSK later bought it for $720 million. dollars And since then he's been a founding CEO far more than once.
Speaker: At Visterra he helped launch a company that Asuka acquired for $430 million. At Atas he took the ceo CEO role right as CRISPR was emerging. And at Atlas he helped build Marina Oncology.
Speaker: which raised over $170 million while still pre-clinical and Novartis bought it for over a billion dollars. And before i get repetitive, you can really see that Kevin's a serial entrepreneur building biotechs from the ground up and we are able to talk about spotting breakthrough science, Kevin's career, China's rise in biotech, and finally where is AI actually making a difference in clinical trials?
Speaker: Let's get into it.
Speaker: Hi, Kevin. Thank you so much for coming on today. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me Of course. And before we get into your time now in biotech, it's really interesting because you started off at a PhD in what I believed would be one of the most exciting labs at the time, which is David Sinclair's lab. um From my perspective, it's basically ground zero for Sertuan research and caloric restriction, aging, and things like that, which hadn't really been done elsewhere, but now it's pretty foundational when they think of longevity.
Speaker: So when you're in the middle of that, um what was that experience like being a researcher at Harvard? like What really brought you into Harvard in the first place? And what was it like being in that lab at the time and and learning what it is like to be a researcher within academia?
Speaker: Yeah, so um happy to go back. So i was finishing up college in ah the the late 90s and um you know I really found myself ah coming up here to to Harvard Medical School for grad school because I guess I had maybe too much fun in college and didn't really want to enter the real world and and get a job. So more school seemed like ah the solution to that.
Speaker: and not really knowing what I wanted to focus on specifically in grad school. Harvard Medical School was a great spot because there were just a ton of different PIs working across a bunch of different areas of both basic and and translational biology and The program I was in allowed you to to rotate through a number of different labs and um ah before you decided to commit to one for for for doing your PhD work. So um found myself in rotating through David's lab, um David Sinclair's lab, and ah it was a brand new lab. um He had just joined as a faculty member after finishing his postdoc at MIT. So it was a relatively unknown at that point. So I certainly didn't rotate through his lab because of ah any name recognition. It was more as ah I was going through sort of the the analog list of of PIs and what they were focused on, aging just sound like a really cool problem. which obviously it continues to be. But his lab was fairly unique from that perspective. And so it started to dig through some of his work, um met with him. And I guess sort of the the thread that has stayed with me from grad school to today is I kind of got bit by the the startup bug and and love the have' really joined in a startup lab. And so I was the the first grad student that that worked with David and um
Speaker: We didn't even have our own lab at that time. We're kind of borrowing a bench from ah a more established PI, you know, trying to get funding for the lab. There was one other postdoc that joined, but we were tackling very big problems, um doing work, sort of competing against where very well established, well funded lab. And I kind of loved um sort of that effort of, um you know, a small group of us um working in a a super compelling area of of science. And so, you know, did, I think, some ah some interesting work. um A lot of controversial work came out of of David's lab in terms of the ah the actual clinical and medical applications. But, um you know, it's been it's been interesting to watch, you you know, David emerges as, as ah sort of the personality he is in the, in the aging space. And yeah, you know, we we keep in touch, but, um but yeah, so that was, ah you know, that that was grad school and was, you know, fascinating to kind of work a lot on the biology of calorie restriction in some other areas.
Speaker: Yeah, I think he has his own like very unique personality in biotech and healthcare. care um Definitely one of the more well-known names. But I want to get into the like startup bug. So it seems like the you had that your dissertation and then, of course, worked at Sertaris before the GSK acquisition. And I think it sounds like almost too clean when you think about it linearly. You work at Davis & Clair, spin it out. But obviously, I imagine there's a lot more behind the scenes. But it seems like in past interviews, you've been pretty humble in terms of how you've you contribute that to yourself. So I want to ask like directly, i mean how do you think about can you walk through this role in your story? How do you think about your role here? And and what is it like i mean you at a bench ah borrowing another PI's bench with David Sinclair when he's starting off and now you're scaling something and eventually selling it to GSK for quite a large sum of money? What did that transition look like, getting from a startup bug to just seeing it actually unfold in front of you?
Speaker: Yeah, listen, I think there's, you know, and we'll get to what I do today working in an early stage biotech venture. But I think the reason early stage biotech venture exists is because of the the culture and philosophy and how scrappy a small group of individuals can be compared to um large pharmaceutical companies that have, you know, effectively infinite funding and, you know, orders of magnitude. you very smart and more scientists, but there's something about working in a startup vi environment, the ability to be agile, um the ability to do more with less. And so that was very much the case early on in David's lab. You know, you work incredibly hard because you have to um to compete against ah to compete against others. And so and the other element that was very Sort of similar to a lot of the startups that I now work with is when you're sort of in that environment, the lab, you know, ultimately more people join and there was four or five, six of us. It was a very sort of collegial team oriented atmosphere. And that's. not always the case for a lot of grad students or postdocs where um you're really focused on your work and making sure you're the first author and um ah you know far less focused on the success of the lab or the success of those around you. But we, I don't think, would have been successful early on in David's lab and and and in getting the publications out if we hadn't worked as a group. And um sort of that, again, that team dynamic is is kind of very seductive and addictive once you're in that once you're in that environment. So as I finished grad school, I actually, or as I was nearing to finish, I made a decision that I you know, probably did not want to continue in science and go down the path of least resistance to postdoc in academia. So was exploring different careers paths and actually never worked at Sertris. I helped Sertris kind of spin out of
Speaker: David's lab and but I wound up joining, as you mentioned, I think mentioned earlier Polaris, which was one of the investors in Sertris early on and got to kind of help the early days of Sertris from that perspective, but sort of blindly stumbled my way into the world. of of venture capital and you know had an opportunity to to continue to work or to go work in Sertris formally. But they and I sort of love the idea once I was exposed to it a place like Polaris and now where I i am a firm called Atlas where Rather than sort of committing yourself long term to a single entity, the ability to work across multiple companies with many different entrepreneurs across different areas of science, different therapeutic areas was so much more compelling to me. And I think it's probably you know some degree of ADHD that will get bored if I do one thing for too long. So um so I joined Polaris, Sertris, again, as you know the the success and the legacy there is certainly more attributable to to others than to me.
Speaker: And what drew you to Polaris? Because I know that you have, every career seems to have a path of least so resistance. For example, finance, you go banking, private equity, and and academia, you go do your PhD, then go work in another school. And then it's it's really easy to follow those paths. And I think going against the grain is difficult and requires a lot of conviction in what you want to do.
Speaker: So, I mean, you coming out of Harvard and you worked at a pretty prominent lab, maybe had some publications, PhD was very much probably or a postdoc work would be much very much readily available for you.
Speaker: So what was the thinking there? I mean, 2004 biotech was drastically different than what it was today. What did that path offer for you? Yeah, so, you know, they certainly doing a postdoc was an easier route. and And again, I think the decision I made was there was a lot of people in my lab that were just far better scientists and than I was. And, um ah you know, I found, you know, especially watching sort of the postdocs with the next step was just wanted to explore what else was available. So I actually had no idea what what venture capital was, to be to be perfectly honest. and
Speaker: Some of the um paths that advanced degrees, PhDs, or MDs will take is doing things like management consulting. And so I was actually had agreed to join one of large management consulting firms who they actually love individuals with science or medical backgrounds that really don't know anything about business, sort of the unmolded lump of clay. they can train and and those can be great training grounds. And so that was sort of a quick detour before you know Polaris kind of emerged backing Sertris. And I got sort of a crash course introduction into what venture capital was and right place at the right time. They were um looking for an associate to to join their team. And so to me, it was a decision between management consulting, learning sort of business, a very different set of skills, but doing that with
Speaker: much more mature companies, a very different set of problems or the type of activities that you do at a firm like like um like Polaris was staying very close to the science, working with startups, working with entrepreneurs. That was just far more exciting and interesting to me, even though I didn't really have a good sense of what the heck I'd be doing. But but that it just seemed like the right decision to make the time, despite, you know, no, no sort of planning or or intention to to enter this that career.
Speaker: Yeah, what I love about investing is that you still have the problem solving and analytical thinking you'd have in consulting, but you have like an ownership stake. So you feel like an owner, an operator, you're helping out a team, whether it's private equity or early stage, you're actively contributing. And I think when you join Polaris,
Speaker: the biotech landscape was really at an inflection point. We had the Human Genome Project kicking off, CRISPR still hadn't happened yet. um And the idea of like building a company around a lot of the platforms today that we take for granted probably sounded speculative at best back then. So, I mean, at Polaris, you're trying to speak to founders, really understand what's going on seeing where you want to take conviction. ah What were your conversations with founders and researchers like back then? And How did that really contribute to what you believed and what you didn't about the future of biotech? Because to me, I think VC is really a bet on the future, and that's hard to deal with a space where it's changing so quickly.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I would say in the in the early mid 2000s, you know, there was a long sobering recovery from the the genomics bubble boom, burst, excuse me, the the boom and the burst of the bubble, which coincided with the tech bubble, you know, early, very early 2000s. So it was really riding the wave of of human genome project and and hype around that. And I don't think anyone at the time realized it was going to take 20 years to really start to be able to take advantage of the fruits of of that sequence scene. And so when I got into the world and I didn't realize it at the time, it was an incredibly challenging time to fund an early stage biotech company um for ah a whole host of reasons. And so um it did sort of sharpen your focus on only backing um the best pieces of science, the the most promising entrepreneurs and
Speaker: ideas that you know weren't incremental that you think could be you know transformational for patients and and have an impact. So I think we were you know taking very fairly big swings. We also had an aversion at that time to investing in opportunities that um carried binary risks, so single programs that would hit an inflection point and work or not work. And so we were we really embraced platform technologies, product engines that could deliver multiple shots on net. We have we i'll come back later to our our strategy today, which is a very deliberate mix across those deal phenotypes. But yeah, so it was a very, very challenging time for biotech. um And I think the when i you know when I entered the industry,
Speaker: really um biotech and medicine in general, there were sort of two flavors of of of medicines. There were small molecules like you know aspirin or you know small molecule chemotherapeutics, and there was biologics, which were you know still sort of turning into the field of biologics we know today. There were you know replacement protein therapies. There were you know starting to be more and more antibodies.
Speaker: But fast forward to today, we have, you know, you know, innumerable different tools across cell therapies, gene therapy, ASOS, SI, RNAs, you know, 12 different types of small molecule chemistries and biologics. And so um back then it was just a very limited tool set. Biology was, you know, felt still relatively immature. Genomics wasn't coming of age. So it was challenging to to pick opportunities that were were going to be successful.
Speaker: Yeah, I can imagine. I think that the modalities we take for granted today obviously weren't present back then. But I mean, setting the ground for Atlas, I think one example to really situate that is you were an investor, but also for Visterra and Genocia, where you were not just an investor, you were also a builder too. Writing a check from the outside, were kind of shaping the company from the ground up. And with Visterra, I really want to get into that because for that, you were the founding CEO.
Speaker: And it seems to be built around something very specific, the idea that traditional antibody approaches are missing basically disease targets. They weren't really looking at the right epitopes. So, I mean, I would love to hear more about that platform.
Speaker: It seems it's very computational, experimental to like identify these targets. But could you walk me through what the core instead of the platform actually was? well Why were these... traditional antibody approaches leaving that gap? and And what was the need for you to not just be an investor, but step in, be a CEO, and eventually scale this platform to and an acquisition?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, to answer that question first, I mean, the the the CEO job often at an early seed stage biotech is is about the least glamorous thing you can do. And we, as a company builder, you know earlier at Polaris and now at Atlas, it's really just about plugging a gap on on the team on a temporary basis. And so a lot of these companies, they start you know their science projects. It's 95% of the work is just running the right set of ah of experiments and making sure you have the right scientific team. And so we'll often step in to an interim CEO role or or you know board chair role just to help from an operational perspective, make sure the trains run on time, et cetera. um the blocking and tackling of building the company, getting financing, et cetera. um But you're also obviously intimately involved in in in how the science is progressing. And so this terror is a really interesting story and a great example of sort of how um and and and when to to pivot in our industry. You know, yeah initial the initial technology we came out of Ram Sassi Sapiens Lab at MIT, um and he was highly focused on what was a very hot topic at at the time of of bird flu and and some of the strains emerging emerging from the Far East, so for very long before COVID.
Speaker: There was a very significant concern about mutations in hemagglutin epitope on influenza that would allow them to bind, both bind more readily to um human airway receptors um and then spread um ah in an aerosolized fashion. And um what the problem is with current flu vaccines or flu therapeutics is that you're making them to the circulating strains, the existing um ah hahas that are out there.
Speaker: um What Rahm wanted to do was, you know, the old Wayne Gretzky, don't skate to where the puck is, you skate to where the puck is going. And so he was using computational tools to try to predict how could a currently circulating bird flu virus mutate in such a way that it could then bind um human epitopes. And so you can start to make therapeutics or vaccines before it's too late, before a pandemic emerges. um So there's some very ah interesting tools that ah that were developed um you know for business reasons. We don't have to get into you know developing sort of a prophylactic stockpiling like um approach like that is is challenging.
Speaker: Ultimately, the company was successful, of all things, developing ah an antibody against a target called April, which was really important in kidney disease. And they were acquired by a company called Atsuka. But it was really the learnings, the tools they developed in those infectious disease efforts that allowed them to make some really important antibodies for you know a completely completely different indication. so You know, after I was ah sort of found someone more competent to replace me as a CEO, I was on the board of that company. It was you know very interesting to watch that that technology develop, the story develop, and and really the business develop and get um sort of repointed to something that was was much more commercially viable, but also, you know, I think really clinically important as well.
Speaker: Yeah, I think pivoting is such a hard part, especially when you start with infectious diseases. You sell with, um like I think, in the prosthopathy, kidney diseases. It's like it's a very um different space, but it's important because you're hearing one side, or it's like, keep doing what you're doing. hearing the other side that don't listen to what people tell you.
Speaker: And then you're hearing people that you have to switch. So it's like kind of a whole circus of things that you're kind of listening to at the same time. But before we get into, I mean, Alice, I think there seems to be one final step in this journey beyond Genosia. But really, Editas seems very interesting to me.
Speaker: And I think it's the timing that's worth pausing on. Of course, like late 2013, which is around the time that Jennifer and and Feng Zhang really The first papers on CRISPR seem to have landed. So the community, from what I understand, maybe before my time, was debating whether this technology was capable or not.
Speaker: And um you stepped in as founding CEO. So, mean, what did you see in this window that made you move so fast? Like, what were you looking at this technology? What did you believe in? And how do you think about, i mean, building a company here before it was even figured out at the bench level, too? so Yeah, there's there's a ton to unpack with the Editas story and um you know i and I'm still big believers in the the you know the power of of CRISPR and think there'll be important medicines over time, even though you know that that company and some others aren't you know viewed as favorably by the market today. but
Speaker: I think if I if think back then, I guess what originally caught my attention as those papers came out was obviously I think everyone immediately got how this could be a sort of a step change in how we approach genetic diseases.
Speaker: But um all the time, you know, we would see fascinating cell science nature publications um that promise to do really interesting things. And as we all know, a huge or as we know, as I don't know if your audience does, there's a huge issue with replication of academic science. And so many, if not most of those don't pan out. What was different about CRISPR was you were almost immediately hearing from academic lab after academic lab that they were able to recapitulate this technology and use it against, you know, target X, Y, Z. And it became almost overnight this indispensable tool for basic research. um And so put aside all the therapeutic applications, you know, A, what that told me was this is a robust technology. You don't
Speaker: It's not something that only works in the hands of this one postdoc in this one lab, and it's not going to be able to be replicated. um It was something that was was going to be able to be replicated. But it also um was reminiscent of the story behind RNAi and a i and the the emergence of siRNA, which know well before that became an approved medicine and now many approved medicines, a ah really powerful and and important new class of medicines. um It was ah a transformational research tool to be able to go in and and do genetics, quasi genetics on your favorite target of interest as a basic scientist. And so the impact of RNAi, SIRAs on basic research was immense ever before there was a medical impact and sort of saw the same path for for CRISPR, which I think has played out in the basic research and we'll see how it plays out from ah from a medical perspective. but It seemed like one of those areas and and discoveries that just didn't come along um very often. And so we put a lot of time and effort into you know working with a number of the founders, bringing them together, bringing some great investors together. And um and yeah, that was ah that was ah that was a very interesting period and exercise getting that company off the ground.
Speaker: Yeah, I know RNAi is very interesting. I know it's probably a closely tied to Alice with Jason Rhodes um at El Nilem, which was definitely really interesting. So, um i mean, that's really cool. I think CRISPR then became like hotly contested. We had the the patent disputes between Broad and then Berkeley, but it did seem to be, and I think still is a revolutionary technology, although...
Speaker: Yeah, for whatever reason, I mean, CRISPR seems to be their stock isn't doing as well. But I mean, regardless of that fact, um I mean, you had a good stint as CEO from November to to June of 2014. twenty fourteen And it seems like um eventually you ended ah it ended up scaling one public on the NASDAQ. but I mean, now you're at this point, you were at your initially a VC, you had a couple operating stints, and it seems like maybe you wanted to merge the two a little bit, and there's only a couple places where you could do that, but Atlas seems to be one of them. So i'd love to hear a little bit more about your time now at Atlas. It's it's really unique to see a company where it's like you really creating something from the seed, so maybe you can explain it best.
Speaker: So what is what does Atlas really do? What is unique to you, and what and what really brought you there from your time being an operator and investor um beforehand? Yeah. um So, you know, ah all we do at Atlas is is invest and start companies around therapeutics. um Whereas at Polaris, I was sort of a piece of the strategy. They also invested in tech and and later stage businesses and different healthcare. is a very focused effort where we are.
Speaker: um You have a team of individuals that think about nothing but finding cool science, working with great entrepreneurs, developing medicines, all drug development. And, you know, we think of ourselves, you know, as much as as um sort of company creators and company builders as as investors. We are a traditional venture firm. We raise money from from limited partners. We raise funds. And we invest those funds in the companies, but about two thirds of the capital we deploy will go into Atlas founded companies. and And we have an incubator as part of our offices here.
Speaker: And we have a group of um entrepreneurs and residents, EIRs that we work with. and and that's a literal title they all are cohabitate this space with us so at any one time there's six to eight seed stage companies and a bunch of entrepreneurs that help us uh both find great science that uh the science who do diligence with us and then they'll often form the the nucleus of of teams that we we build around these companies and we do that very broadly within biotech so across therapeutic areas across every drug modality and you know, across the spectrum of what we think of as as the the business model ah spectrum of single asset, very focused companies trying to efficiently get a drug in the patients or back to the big build platform, product engine, new modality type of plays. We we strive to have a balance of of the enterprise our portfolio. And then yeah apart from the two thirds of in-house company creation, the other third is more very traditional arms length venture capital looking for all of the great ideas and and entrepreneurs that are outside our four walls.
Speaker: Yeah, and since joining, it seems like you've had access to Novo, Novartis, and also worked across a a lot of hosts of exciting companies like Dysmedicine, and I think Judo Bio. But I mean, there's a whole lot of stuff, doing some different technologies from hematology to epigenetics, and I could probably go on and on on the type of things that you guys explore, but I'd love maybe if you could give an example, like one of the most interesting or it I guess interesting in the way that it's not so clear, it's those ups and downs. Like what are some of the stories that you've had being an investor and founder at the same time, scaling a company in-house?
Speaker: Is there something that sticks out to you that maybe best illustrates like the philosophy behind Atlas and how you guys add value? Yeah, um I don't know which one would would best illustrate it, but I'll pick the first one that comes to my head. so um So a number of years ago, this was probably maybe 2019, where we started thinking about the space, we started to get excited about um targeted radio pharmaceuticals. and um Most people that are familiar with with treating oncology will understand that sort of the two, you know, 50-plus-year-old mainstays of oncology are small molecule chemotherapy, so developing very toxic drugs, and then external beam radiation, so trying to hit the tumor with you know high doses of radiation. um
Speaker: External beam radiation, you know, can be effective, but you know, that beam that comes from outside has to travel through a whole lot of healthy tissue to get to the tumor. And it's hard to be very precise. um And so both from a safety hitting healthy tissue and from an efficacy, getting all of the tumor can be very, very challenging. So the idea behind targeted radiopharmaceuticals is, well, what if you could put a radioactive molecule on a drug that can home to the tumor, to all tumor cells, no matter where they are in the body, and then kill that tumor very selectively from within. And this isn't a new idea. There were the first radio targeted radiopharmaceuticals were developed in the early 2000s, but they weren't great drugs. um They weren't very specific. um They were you know very complicated in terms of how you actually deliver that to the patient. So a long time went by and and in um kind of around again 2018, 2019, we started to recognize that there was potentially this next generation of radiopharmaceutical drugs being developed, driven by a whole bunch of different innovations, this sort of confluence of different advances. And one was
Speaker: The targeting modality, um you know, I talked about antibodies before. Anyone that knows anything about antibody drugs, usually their benefit is that you inject them into the body and they circulate for weeks or months at a time. yeah That's good for a lot of drugs that you don't want to dose frequently. But if you attach a radioactive molecule to it, that's actually not something you want circulating in the body.
Speaker: So this company, we had the idea of using these lower molecular weight, more peptide-like drugs um ah to do more of a hit and run strategy on on the tumor. And I won't get into all the other technical details. There different radioisotopes that were emerging um and new targets, new biology, maybe most interestingly, that you could start to go after. So you know we we started this effort. we there's um we We recruited a great entrepreneur named Simon Reed to help lead the effort.
Speaker: um We started a company which became Mariana Oncology. to hopefully build what sort of put these different pieces together. And I you know i guess it's the one that sticks with me because radiopharmaceuticals are completely, well like are very, very different in a number of meaningful ways from traditional drug development, just the logistics of sourcing radioactive material, making a drug out of that, getting it to the patient, a lot of different attributes you need to be thoughtful about.
Speaker: But in our opinion, it was worthwhile because these could be really impactful for for cancer patients. um And so we we seeded the company with a couple of other investors that we we know and like and had a similar vision for this company and in a very difficult, uh, challenging time. um they went out and and then were able to, based on the promise of this approach, raise $175 million, dollars even though we were still preclinical.
Speaker: And then we were planning to put our first drug into the clinic and, um, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, who is a leader in this space, sort of recognized the innovation and the promise of our drugs, even though we hadn't dosed a single patient yet. they They bought the company for for a billion dollars, which which was a nice outcome. And, you know, while it was a little bittersweet because, you know we were excited to to continue to build the company and and put it into patients. you know, it was, we were putting it in the hands of a very capable a drug developer in Novartis that had a lot of expertise and experience in the space.
Speaker: So that was, you know, that was ah an exciting story and there's many ups and downs I could go to along the way. It was a very challenging, from a technical perspective, fundraising was challenging, building the team was was challenging, but, you know, we're we're proud of where where that one came out.
Speaker: Yeah, I think precision radiopharmaceuticals is just like a it's a difficult for many ways. It's the same way that biotech is, but also in its own ways because it's there's like great inherent radiation in that. so But I would be curious, within your role within this, where did you see yourself as the investor contributing most? Was it within fundraising, building the relationship with Novartis and other companies?
Speaker: with farmer companies or was it more with the team building, helping find leading entrepreneurs to help come on here, build the A plus team that you guys want? Where was your role throughout all of this? Through all the ups and downs, where where did you see yourself the most?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, or it it and evolved over time. Certainly early on, it was team building. And so, um We recruited Simon, who ultimately became the CEO as an yeah EIR, um not to work specifically on this. and and And I remind him of this all the time. He's a good friend now.
Speaker: When we first pitched the idea of radiopharmaceutical company, he had zero interest in it. Thought it was bad idea. So we had lot selling to do to get him excited enough to be able to to jump in with both feet and actually lead this effort. And then we hired some other just exceptional people on that team, Linda Bain,
Speaker: um was the CFO of the company, some terrific scientists. So a lot of people building um building relationships with investors ultimately for fundraising was important.
Speaker: And I give a lot of credit to my colleagues at Atlas. I certainly was not the only one here working on it. And so colleagues of mine like Urine Godek, what becomes, you could have the you know most incredible technology and the great team, but if you pointed at the wrong thing, and then it'll be a massive failure. So figuring out what are the targets that we wanted to apply this technology to that would become our first programs with the most important set of decisions we made. And so ah a group effort led by some of my colleagues at Atlas to do a very deep dive on the target landscape and how we wanted the company's pipeline to play out. I think that was probably the biggest driver in ultimately getting getting an early exit. So I think the investors collectively you know rolled up their sleeves quite a bit with the team.
Speaker: Definitely. Yeah, I think that's always how it will be. But i am curious to hear a little bit about how you see the future of biotech. mean, of course, you've had so much experience seeing transformational technology, but and even the industry structure behind biotech and biopharma.
Speaker: Now it's a much more symbiotic relationship. Even that has changed in the last 20 years. And there seems to be a couple other trends, like the patent cliff, but also China and AI seem to be a really big one. And I'd love to, mean, first of all, China, i think Endpoints a couple of days ago published an article saying that There's surge of small startups with all you need is a small team, a large check and one or two clinical stage assets from China. And i don't know. i think it seems like um this has been a lot of successful. Even recently, Bain Capital's Calera Therapeutics kind of followed that shift.
Speaker: But it seems like around Chinese assets are quite a bit cheaper than American assets in terms of these originated programs. So where do you see this shift really happening? Do you think that'll change the way that you guys at Atlas do your deals are the larger industry as a whole?
Speaker: um I think it's interesting. There's great scientists there, but there also are here too. Yeah, that's probably the the most significant, you know tectonic shift in our industry and in a very long time is what's happening in China. And, you know, we've now done on five or six, you know, China affiliated investments over the last just three years. We were co-founders of Kyler with Bain. So okay we were heavily, heavily involved there. That ah investment in taking a portfolio of metabolic assets out of hungry pharmaceuticals followed prior investment we made with bain and a company called aolos which license a tslip from ah tslp anybody for asthma from from that same provider in china and you know i'm i'm particularly excited about exploring different models of well let me take a step back i think when a lot of people hear about china and the rise of chinese biotech all they think is
Speaker: you know, threats to American dominance and national security, yeah national national security and just, you know, are threatened. I'm much more interested in exploring novel models of how you know what the opportunities are. and And we've certainly and many other investors have taken advantage of all of the very high quality assets and innovative work being done, license out an asset, bring it here, put it in the hands of a US based team. And we've done that and and have had some nice outcomes there.
Speaker: One of the more recent investments in companies that I helped stand up just last year, still in stealth mode, so I won't be able to go into too much detail, but we started a company with ah an interesting set of ideas around next generation siRNA molecules, very different than any of the approved molecules today.
Speaker: and found out that there was a company in early stage company in China doing something very similar. So rather than thinking about how do we compete with the dramatically lower cost structure um that they have there, we actually merged our company with the China company. okay We are building a management team here led by one of Atlas's entrepreneurs and residents, but we're um We have an R&D facility in Suzu and in in China. And so they're doing all of the discovery, late preclinical work there. And so we are taking advantage of what is just um incredibly high quality, you know innovative work, some great technology that they've brought from that effort. But the ability to do things massively quicker and massively cheaper than they can be done here.
Speaker: um And then sort of building this multi hemisphere, small biotech is has been really interesting and it's been, you know we're not even a year into it yet, but it's been fabulously successful and they'll actually hopefully have their first drug into patients and in the not too distant future. So very excited about novel models like that, but um they're the the volume of of of companies, of drugs now in the pipeline, coming out of China is you know something that we're going to have to reckon with because it's going to be a permanent transformation of of you know how we think about building companies, investing in developing drugs.
Speaker: Yeah, it's going I'm curious to see how it'll change the industry. i think that i mean I'd be curious to hear for you. it just seems like AI is the thing that people talk about the most. that There's been a lot of stuff with automated chemistry. I know there's been a couple of trials that um a couple of things, assets like Schrodinger's but platform is in late stage trials. But I've also heard that a lot of recent trials have not really worked out or pilots haven't really worked out. So in AI, China, Padding Cliffs, there's so much more going on. um What keeps you up at night the most in terms of it's being scary, exciting, maybe exciting because you're an inventor, but what keeps you up at night the most within how biotech and biopharma might change in the next five five or so years?
Speaker: Yeah, I think China's going to have the biggest impact. The the impact of AI we will will be there, and it already is there. Companies like the Schrodinger, that's a 20-year-old company. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: and And so AI is not new in our industry. The idea that AI is going to revolutionize all of our new drug targets are going to come there from there. you know You're going to get things, you're going to contract the timeframes. I think that's been, you know at least today, demonstrably proven not true. The vast majority of AI-centric companies that have gone and raised billions of dollars you know, I wound up in licensing an existing molecule for some something else. That at some point, a true de novo AI discovered molecule on a true de novo AI discovered target, that will happen, I'm sure. There's just so much money in compute being thrown at it. But the return certainly has not been anywhere near what the expectation has been um given the amount of time and capital. So we're not Luddites. All of our companies are using AI, but they're using AI, I think, in very sort of smart, focused ways. to make incremental improvements in many different places along the drug discovery and development
Speaker: path. um So, ah so it really is sort of the impact, you know, how, um how we think about China over the next, um you know, five to 10 years and um sort of readjust our, our model as an industry. um You know, I would say the other just biggest source of turbulence in, in our world recently has been regulatory uncertainty. So there's been a lot of, yeah a lot of change at the FDA and, and, and, What I think the industry used to view as an ally that was there to help get innovative drugs to patients as efficiently as possible has been far more capricious and unpredictable than anyone would like. And so that is certainly from a practical day-to-day perspective, keeps a lot of people up at night. um And, you know, fingers crossed there's some changes afoot that'll bring back kind of the visibility and and clarity and predictability of of regulatory decisions our industry and stop you know pushing companies to to be primarily doing early clinical studies outside the US and and in other geographies.
Speaker: Yeah. Hopefully the FDA is more of like a short-term thing. I know it's been really turbulent in the past two years, but hopefully next few years it shouldn't be there on too much longer. But China is definitely exciting in terms of the new targets we'll see. And then I think AI definitely more in terms of like um systematic, like screening compounds, predicting structures and more like automatable things. And we'll see 10, 20 years of now how many Denova targets you can come up with. But supers have see yeah The last thing I'll say about AI, where I think it has and and will be more impactful, most people think about discovery, finding new drugs, where it's going to have the more near-term impact is on clinical development. So once you off find drug, allowing um sponsors to find the right patients, enroll the right patients, keep the wrong patients out of the study. And I believe will make trials more efficient, more cost effective, but you know most importantly, more successful because you're getting the right drug to the right patient. So I think that's front of mind for a lot of companies right now. And and that's where emerging technologies can be really impactful.
Speaker: Definitely. I think that there's been a huge issue about like you have a good molecule, but finding the right patient at the right time with the right predispositions is so hard. But I think patient we're recruiting, we've had a couple companies working with AI in clinical trials, and I think that will help that because that's something that maybe isn't talked about as much, but it's such a huge barrier in terms of this industry. So I'm super excited things to see where things go there, but really appreciate your time again, Kevin, just walking through your entire background, but also what you guys are doing today at Atlas.
Speaker: um really unique model with really unique assets that you guys have scaled out. So um thanks again for walking us through that. Yeah, my pleasure. Nice to talk to you. Thanks so much. Of course. Yeah, I just ended the episode.
Speaker: But thank you again. um i really appreciate the time. I'm actually going to be at Bain Capital this summer. So in Boston, which will be, I won't be on the life sciences team, but like kind of the private equity credit side of things, but would definitely love to stay in touch. um Probably will be in Boston long term. So um it's great to talk to you. Really appreciate the time again.
Speaker: yeah Definitely. Yeah. Excited for it. Have a great day and everything. Bye.
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