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Ep. 8 David Lucchino On Solving Serious Problems In Biotech
58 Plays9 months ago
David Lucchino, former Chairman of Mass Bio and CEO of Frequency, has seen every situation from the helm. Join us as we discuss his strategies for communication, and how teamwork and relationship building fuels his successes.
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Transcript
Introduction to Spark Time and Mighty Spark Communications
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, everyone, and welcome to Spark Time. I'm Dani Stoltzfus. And I'm Will Riddle. Of Mighty Spark Communications. Our mission is to use scientific innovation to drive transformative change. We believe that compelling storytelling is the most effective tool we have in our arsenal to motivate and inspire audiences to invest themselves in audacious goals. We are scientists by training, storytellers by experience, and entrepreneurs by nature. Let's get started.
Learning from IPO and Reverse Merger Experience
00:00:28
Speaker
David quite literally has seen it all. He's taken a company from its earliest stages through an IPO with a valuation of nearly $2 billion, and then finally into a reverse merger. What a great person to learn from. Will, what were you most interested in from today's discussion?
00:00:46
Speaker
I agree. This was such a treat to pick David's brain.
Body Language Tips for Investor Meetings
00:00:49
Speaker
He gave us a body language pro tip, let's call it, about how to ask investors for money that we haven't discussed on the show before. And I think it can be applied even more broadly to take pressure off of what are usually high pressure situations.
00:01:05
Speaker
Yes, I loved that advice and no more spoilers. We always love hearing the advice to founders that gets investor conversations without a warm intro and I really think that that advice fits into this category.
Achieving $1.9 Billion Valuation at Frequency
00:01:19
Speaker
David also told such a great story about how Frequency made it to their $1.9 billion valuation
00:01:25
Speaker
And he even described in detail the experiment that catapulted them there. It's really interesting to hear how that data set kept getting them through the next hoops as they repackaged it for different audiences. Right. And he spoke a lot about the pieces that built on each other to get frequency to its IPO and those increasing valuations, and also how communicating their story to the outside world was important during those moments.
00:01:50
Speaker
We did also get to hear about how they recovered from some seriously heartbreaking news. But anyway, let's dive in.
00:01:58
Speaker
Today we're joined by David Lucino.
David Lucino's Career in Life Sciences
00:02:00
Speaker
David has been a leader in the life sciences for more than two decades as an executive, an entrepreneur, an investor, and a policy and economic development leader. Most recently, he was the president and CEO of Frequency Therapeutics, a company he co-founded in 2014. David brought Frequency Public in 2019, having secured three rounds of institutional funding, including a crossover round with Deerfield Management, Perceptive Advisors, and RTW Investments.
00:02:26
Speaker
Frequency's $89 million initial public offering was co-led by Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. The company completed an M&A with Coro Bio and David now sits on its board of directors. David worked at the Boston-based venture capital firm Polaris Partners, where he focused on healthcare investing and recruiting board members to portfolio companies. He's also the past chairman of MassBio, a 1500-member biotech trade association based in Cambridge.
00:02:53
Speaker
David earned a BA from Denison University, an MS from the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse, and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management, and is also an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow. So David, it's really wonderful to have you here today. How are you doing?
00:03:09
Speaker
I'm doing well. Great to be connected with you all and look forward to some storytelling. Yeah, awesome. So would you mind starting by telling
Skills for Success in Life Sciences
00:03:19
Speaker
us a bit about your journey? We'd love to hear how you've managed to be an exec, an entrepreneur, an investor, as well as a policy and economic development leader. I mean, so many different paths that you've taken.
00:03:32
Speaker
Well, there are a lot of different paths. It's kind of my nature. The life sciences is an interesting, at the level that I've been operating in, an interesting realm because it really takes the ability to have two distinct skill sets. One, there's obviously a deep understanding of science, biology, chemistry, whatever it happens to be.
00:04:02
Speaker
But then it's your ability to be, you know, solve riddles, think creatively, think in a nonlinear fashion. So the skills that a lot of people get when they're going through their academic training, you're dealing with some of the smartest people in the world.
00:04:20
Speaker
are important, but are only half of the story. The other half of the story is how do you solve riddles? And I'm particularly good at building teams, looking to solve riddles, not being daunted by things I haven't done previously, just believing that I'll be able to find the resources and the insights I need to do them well as I go along.
00:04:46
Speaker
And that's probably been my hallmark as a leader. I think as it relates to policy issues and, you know, the thing I always start with is, you know, we're here to help patients.
Patient-Focused Policies in Biomedical Innovation
00:04:58
Speaker
You know, I myself am a patient. I'm a cancer survivor. You know, I know the importance of biomedical innovation at allowing people to live longer, healthier, hopefully happier lives. And you can never lose sight that, you know, it's the patient that, you know, drives everything that we do.
00:05:16
Speaker
I think if you do that, then policy is a natural outgrowth of that because you're advocating for an industry that is so important and you need to communicate that to state and federal regulators and legislators on understanding why continued support for this industry is important. Because I guess the final thought is,
00:05:44
Speaker
You know, this is an industry where failure is more likely than success, but that shouldn't stop us. And in the successes when they occur, you know, are transformative and all you have to look is no further than what Pfizer or Moderna did, you know, for the pandemic and figuring out in a year how to come up with a vaccine.
00:06:05
Speaker
to really be able to functionally manage this pandemic that we were all under. And I see it as a cancer patient. You could see it with obesity drugs, being able to help people who are diabetics. And so this is why our work is so important. And it's really hard work. It requires a dynamic team of thinkers and collaborators who have basic fundamentals across the sciences.
00:06:36
Speaker
Wow. I don't even know where to begin to respond to that. There's so many good nuggets of advice and things that I really, really resonate with and hold dear. And I love that you bring in the concept of if you just have to keep going and persevering and there's going to be a lot of failure and you just have to keep pushing through it. I mean, that's really, really valuable in this industry, as you say. And, you know, I can only
00:07:03
Speaker
relate to that in a small way in my own career so it's really interesting to hear you talk about it and I love that we're beginning in this place and I guess you know transitioning from that thought I would really love to hear a little bit about
00:07:18
Speaker
your experience as an investor as well and how you help to drive change from that perspective. One question we like to ask all the investor people that we interview is, what are the three critical things that you need to see from someone who's speaking to you in a pitch deck that really makes you want to engage further
00:07:42
Speaker
And the reason I want to know this is we want to understand how important is it to you as the recipient of that deck to have the critical information in it be both easy to find, access, and digest. So does the organization and the flow of the information within a pitch matter to you when you're reviewing one? And I know that I put a lot in there, so feel free to pick it apart.
00:08:07
Speaker
Yeah.
Investor Engagement Strategies
00:08:08
Speaker
Well, I think there's a fundamental as an entrepreneur perspective that I have, which is it's more of a tone, it's more of a body language than anything else, which is when you want advice from an investor, ask for money. And when you want money from an investor, ask for advice.
00:08:34
Speaker
That's great. And that's all body language. And that assumes you have the package so to speak behind it to back it up with your idea. But if you approach somebody and say, hey, here's my business plan, will you look at it?
00:08:50
Speaker
More often than not, it's going to get tossed on the pile. If you approach somebody and say, listen, I'm at a point where I may raise money. I don't have to raise money right now. And I'm just looking for advice from great investors. Do you have 20 minutes for me to ask you a few questions?
00:09:10
Speaker
And that doesn't mean the person is going to run out and want to invest in your company, but it's a body language issue. And I think people will find they'll generally be more apt to connect with people that way than the other way, particularly if you don't really have deep relationships with investors.
00:09:34
Speaker
Listen, my biased is, you know, you always, you know, will back a great team. And the one truism that holds is if it can go wrong, it will go wrong. You know, there are companies that, you know, there's a company, Millennium Pharmaceutical.
00:09:54
Speaker
that was around 20, 25 years ago, super successful, but in nothing that it told investors when it IPO it was going to do. It wound up getting a drug called Velcade thrown in on a deal at the last minute and
00:10:10
Speaker
And the drug turned out to be the only thing in this arsenal that worked it was a drug that was super successful for people with multiple myeloma and and eventually got sold or purchased by Takeda.
00:10:25
Speaker
And so you just don't know where success is going to come from. So you need leadership that can be able to pull a rabbit out of the hat, where you just know your pipeline is never deep enough. But now that doesn't mean you overspend and you have a thin pipeline. It just means that you have to approach this in sort of a way where
00:10:50
Speaker
You know that it's going to be a hard journey to get to something that's really going to give you traction. So I think to answer your question, I'm looking for the leadership and the people who work well together, who understand that and are adaptable enough to get to where they need to go, even though they're not exactly sure where that is at that moment.
00:11:13
Speaker
Yeah, I totally understand that and there's a lot of paths that can be taken and it's a matter of choosing the right one at the right time and assessing all the options. And one way that Will and I like to talk about that is terms of de-risking, right? So how you want to de-risk as much as possible.
00:11:32
Speaker
And I think that having a team that's been through that process and validated that they do that well is obviously really important. And that makes a lot of sense. And I guess thinking about it from the perspective of the pitch deck, how do you like to see that represented?
00:11:50
Speaker
I think it just depends on where someone is in their journey. You could be a first time entrepreneur and you can present yourself to an investor with a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of savvy and openness to getting to the right outcome. One of the best compliments that was ever paid to me was I had an investor tell me that I was the type of person that they believed
00:12:17
Speaker
you know, if our back was against the wall, and we were running out of money, I would still figure out a way to, to sort of, you know, figure out how to, you know, keep the company going and advance it. So for me, you know, that is the ultimate skill of what you do for being a biomedical biotech
00:12:35
Speaker
you know, leader and CEO. I think obviously doing clinical study design, the stats work that you have to do, you know, doing all the preclinical work, validating animal models. I mean, all of that's important, blocking and tackling.
00:12:50
Speaker
But at the end of the day, it all has to be driven by somebody who has the perspective of knowing that what can go wrong will go wrong. And at the same time, keeping everything going, not in crisis mode, but with a sense of urgency.
00:13:08
Speaker
Yeah, I really like that and really great advice. One other thing I wanted to touch upon that you mentioned just now was the fact that asking investors for advice as opposed to money and vice versa is like a strategy where you can get engagement from investors without seeming like you're asking them for money all the time.
00:13:33
Speaker
We've talked a lot recently about how to get warm introductions. Sorry, let me say that again. How to get an introduction if you don't have a warm one. That's a really elegant strategy that we haven't discussed yet, so thank you for sharing. Yeah, you're welcome. I think that
00:13:55
Speaker
You know, like anything in life, it all gets down to the people you know and your network that you have and the credibility that you put forward. And so, you know, that's I think what people need to remember. It's a long journey in this business, as in any business. And you always want to conduct yourself in a way that
00:14:19
Speaker
you're going to make friends who respect you, success or no success, but for doing things the right way and want to help you along that journey. Yeah, I want to jump on that a little bit, David. So back at Frequencies Inception back in 2014, what was the story you were telling everyone around you to get people to jump all the way in feet first, which ultimately led to it being a big success?
Securing Early Investments for Frequency
00:14:49
Speaker
Well, I think for a lot of early investors, and I raised about $10 million, $12 million from friends and family to get the company going.
00:15:00
Speaker
And we had a pretty, I think, powerful message. And it really was, I think people's take was, I don't know if this is going to work, but if it works, it's going to be really, really big. And, you know, it was just kind of an intuitive thing. And I think when people are putting money into early stage companies, I think, you know, that
00:15:22
Speaker
opportunity is a very powerful one for a lot of folks because they're taking the same level of risk, whether they put money into frequency or another biotech startup. But this one would have almost had an unlimited TAM, if you will. And for a lot of those investors that payoff came,
00:15:44
Speaker
Though the company ultimately wasn't able to scale the early data that we achieved, it did achieve about a $1.9 billion market cap and people were getting 13 to 15X early investors on their money. That's one of the ironies of this business, which is people can make a lot of money without a drug ultimately being successful. My goal is to always make a drug successful.
00:16:08
Speaker
though, the nature of the financing environment provides windows for people along the way to have a successful outcome. So when the company started, they were friends and family, and then investors beyond that group.
00:16:23
Speaker
I think they were attracted to the possibility of a great payout, of course, but also that story of let's make a great drug that changes patients' lives. So I'm curious, as the company evolved, you went from Series A to Series B and then a crossover round. How did that pitch change to secure those later rounds?
00:16:40
Speaker
Well, the fundamental value proposition didn't really change most of the journey. I will tell you that we had a term sheet from a VC, from a highly credible VC early on, and I wound up turning that term sheet down.
00:17:02
Speaker
because they were going to replace me, they're going to replace my board, they weren't going to honor the financing arrangements I made with all these private investors and friends and family. And I just couldn't, you know, it held no interest to me. And even though it was a harder path for me to get the financing that I wanted,
00:17:22
Speaker
Um, you know, that was a real gut check moment for me and I was ultimately successful, obviously getting the series a done and then the series B and then the crossover eyes to IPO. Um,
00:17:35
Speaker
You know, the other thing that happened along the way is we did, and I really pushed forward doing a phase one study, which is typically a safety study. But I did this safety study in a, let's call it a phase one house. It was a place where
00:17:53
Speaker
Um, they do safety studies all the time for many different companies with various different drugs. And so we did one at a, you know, at a facility in Texas, but we did a double blinded placebo controlled safety study. And, uh, it was that early data where we didn't see any, uh, safety issues, but we also did see, uh, efficacy improvements in patients in the phase one.
00:18:21
Speaker
in the phase one. And it was that early data that we published in a top peer-reviewed journal in the space. It was that data that we used to do a deal with Estellas where they paid us $80 million upfront and a total deal value of about $650 million.
00:18:42
Speaker
It was that data that we used to do the crossover rounds and then led to an IPO and ultimately drove the stock up to 1.9 billion dollars. So you always need to look for any little edge you can find and having the, in hindsight, genius of doing a phase one double-blinded placebo-controlled study,
00:19:06
Speaker
was made a big difference for the company and so as you're telling the story, it went from here's what we could be to here's the early data that we have to telling people the biggest concern that people had is this is too good to be true.
00:19:24
Speaker
And I would explain to them our clinical study, why we're doing the clinical study as we are, to be able to address any soft spots that there are in the small sample size that we had. And that resonated well. And so I think being disarmingly direct and thoughtful about what you're doing and where you are and not trying to overswing or oversell provides a lot of
00:19:53
Speaker
a lot of benefit to the company ultimately.
00:19:56
Speaker
Yeah, we talk about that concept a lot as well, David, is that having goals that feel both realistic and tangible is really important. And what you're able to achieve with that phase one study is pretty amazing. That's such a great story. And we don't hear about that type of phase one study being done very often. And do you have any thoughts as to why that may be? So yeah, I think people, a phase one unit
00:20:23
Speaker
lend itself very strategically for the type of therapy we had and what we were testing. For other therapies, it may not be as straightforward or flexible. And the one thing the phase one unit was very valuable for, ultimately, was helping us understand this issue of objectivity, or really subjectivity, which is there was no expectations for our therapy.
00:20:53
Speaker
And this is something that we struggled with in later clinical studies which was when a patient knows there's something that the company thinks works and you're giving them an injection and they know what ear it is. Now they don't know if it's a placebo or if it's the actual drug can throw off
00:21:14
Speaker
someone's ability to accurately or even honestly represent what they're hearing as opposed to what they think they're hearing. So every step of the way you learn something both from an offensive and defensive standpoint that you have to try to account for.
00:21:32
Speaker
Yeah, it also sounds like this phase one data that we've just been discussing was really critical in that Estella Steel. Will and I talk a lot with our clients about the fact that that type of story or pitch that you give a BD audience is usually quite different to an investor one.
00:21:52
Speaker
Aside from that wonderful data that everyone obviously found very exciting and promising and showing a lot of traction, what else do you think really changed when you were trying to get that deal with Estellas done versus getting your crossover funding? I guess we did the deal with Estellas in 2019. I had been dealing with Estellas since 2015.
00:22:17
Speaker
And, you know, they had an effort looking at assets in this particular space. They had a strategic partnership with a local VC firm here to help them look at potential assets. And and they turned they turned frequency down as they were doing that evaluation. And, you know, and so I stayed I would go to Japan quite frequently and I stayed in touch generally with their team.
00:22:47
Speaker
And as the company matured and we had the phase one data, that really allowed us to have a more meaningful conversation. I think beyond the data, it was the maturity of the team that I'd put together and creating confidence of our ability to have the expertise to do what we say we can do was probably the other big factor.
00:23:16
Speaker
After you did the deal with Estellas and sometime later, I should say, you took frequency through an IPO process and that's obviously a very challenging time in a company's life and I'm wondering about the preparation for the
00:23:31
Speaker
process for an IPO. That begins a long time before the announcement and I'm curious about interactions with the outside world leading up to that point of IPO.
Preparation for Frequency's IPO
00:23:41
Speaker
So what kind of communication tools and cadence of communications were you utilizing prior to taking frequency public?
00:23:48
Speaker
So in 2019, we had to have a number of things fall into place for our IPO to come together. We had to get the crossover round done and line up the investors. We had to get an industry partnership in place because this is a, there is no hearing therapeutic. We were the first company of its kind to focus on sensory, you know, sensory neuro hearing loss and in doing, you know, meaningful clinical work in the space.
00:24:14
Speaker
And so it really was about a six to eight week period where we had closed the Estella's deal, then we closed the financing, and then we announced our IPO, and then we did our IPO. And they were all contingent upon one another, and we had to get them all done. And we did. And it was a little bit of a building block effect. But so as far as communication,
00:24:40
Speaker
It started internally with the board and the team and I think people could put two and two together as this company frequency did this transformative deal with Estellas and then we do a big financing with top tier investors and they all know where this is leading to.
00:25:02
Speaker
There's the direct signaling and then there's the indirect signaling that took place. I think it's any formal communication. I brought in somebody who had the maturity and the experience of dealing with managing public companies before on the corporate affairs side. He was a very helpful partner to me as we were thinking about
00:25:25
Speaker
messaging to Wall Street and letting the world know where we're coming out. So getting the right team in place, communicating internally and externally, and hitting our mark with the stated goals. It sounds like you didn't get a lot of sleep in that six-week period. That is a phenomenal amount of work to do in such a short time and kudos to you for executing upon that. That's really, really phenomenal.
00:25:51
Speaker
Yeah, no, thank you. Yeah. Not, not a lot of sleep, but it was a, um, it was an exciting time and, you know, a real testament to the team, uh, being able to collaborate and, um, and work well together. You win in the life sciences with a team. No one person, you know, builds a great company. Uh, and I believe that wholeheartedly.
00:26:12
Speaker
Absolutely true. I 100% agree with you that the team is everything and that amazing teams do amazing things and terrible teams don't. So I'm on board with that statement. And I guess I want to transition to maybe something that was, you know, slightly less exciting as an event. And that was the phase two readout that Frequency had that wasn't so great. And of course, you know, you had to be as a public company that had to be communicated. And so
00:26:40
Speaker
How did you think about that communication strategy and especially how did you think about demonstrating to investors that despite the data that wasn't what you'd hoped for, there was still hope for the future? Yeah, always a challenge. We had run two phase two studies. The first study was handled by one person in particular, someone who had experienced clinical
00:27:10
Speaker
experienced clinical design leadership and the study just didn't hit the mark that we needed for a number of reasons. And that was a real disappointment because you spend so much time and I think we said pretty publicly that we weren't able to
00:27:32
Speaker
really learn anything from a clinical study because of just how it all didn't come together. And I think you'd have to be, yeah, it really was. And so you have to be honest with everybody in a reasonable way and you have to tell people that you still have enough money to do another study and here's what we've learned. And one of the things that we focused on
00:28:02
Speaker
was dealing with this issue of subjectivity. We brought in somebody who was a real expert at dealing with doing clinical design for programs that have subjectivity. Specifically, his background was designing clinical studies for people who have schizophrenia. As you can imagine, there's going to be a lot of subjectivity you have to navigate. I thought we really had
00:28:29
Speaker
you know, turned, you know, lemons into lemonade and gotten some key insights and, um, you know, to allow us to prepare for our next clinical study. The other thing I did was I took the responsibility out of this one person's hands. I could have fired them and, um, which would have been certainly within my purview and
00:28:49
Speaker
not a bad choice in itself, but instead I just created a clinical sub-team so this person didn't have singular control over what was happening. And I had five people around the table, including me, that could all brought a lot of experience and good critical thinking to the process. So when the second clinical study read out in February of 23,
00:29:17
Speaker
That was a real tough one because it was a much better study, but we still had issues around subjectivity and a placebo response that was just large enough to give us fits.
00:29:36
Speaker
You know, and so it was really honestly shocking. We, CBS News had done a whole profile in one of our patients that had their hearing improved. They interviewed, you know, his audiologist. They went to his place of work. I mean, when you're hearing declines, it never gets better.
00:29:54
Speaker
But this person who got our drug in the phase one study, their hearing got better. And so did, you know, a few other people. And so we know that the drug, we believe, I believe the drug has an effect, but really filtering out
00:30:11
Speaker
how to get to that in the right patient population was really the issue that we ran into. We had a backup program and we actually had a term sheet from a top-tier investor to keep the company frequency independent and going because you never want to be flat-footed in this business.
00:30:32
Speaker
And they loved our story. It was the same basic technology, different modes of action in the multiple sclerosis space. But we ran into some ill-timed, tox study issues that caused the investor to withdraw their term sheet.
00:30:51
Speaker
And, you know, so what, when I say what can go wrong, will go wrong, you know, this is a, this is a perfect example of that. And at that point, you know, we didn't have many options and many good options left. And so we started down the reverse merger process and, um,
00:31:10
Speaker
I wound up selling off the MS asset to another group and you're always telling a story. You're always adjusting the story. You're always being honest and forthright while putting the best message forward that you can. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
00:31:27
Speaker
It sounds like you're in an incredibly tough situation and it sounds like you handled it so elegantly. I wish everyone who listens to this can learn something from that process.
00:31:43
Speaker
I love the honesty, I love the expression of sadness around what happened and the hope that the data was real and you just kind of didn't have quite the right study in this leaves hope for the future. I think that's a really, I feel really optimistic hearing you talk about it. I know that the reverse merger probably wasn't the first strategy that you're looking for, but it sounds like you took a really tough situation and landed the plane really well.
00:32:13
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, since we did the reverse merger, the stock is up, you know, as high as sort of seven X it went out at four 12 or 14 and it's been as high as 70. So, you know, all you can do at the end of the day is I have a fiduciary responsibility to return as much capital as I can. And that has to rule the day. And, um,
00:32:35
Speaker
You know, but you know, you can't get too high. You can't get too low. You need to just continue. Um, you know, one day at a time and it sounds trite, but it really is the, um, you know, the only way I've come to understand how to do what we do.
00:32:51
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. David, I think hearing your story, we can confidently say that you've seen just about everything. So we have one final question for you that we ask all of our guests at the end of the podcast interview. And that is, if you could give one piece of advice to an early stage biotech management team, what would that piece of advice be?
00:33:12
Speaker
If you can't trust the people you're working with, don't work with them. You know, this stuff is so hard that you can't trust the people you're working with. Um, you can't be worried about looking over your shoulder, who wants your job, who saying what to what investor, um, you know, it's, uh, you know, it, my experience is it's not worth it. Yeah. Don't do something else. What's up with other people. All about the team, supporting the team. Totally agree.
00:33:39
Speaker
It has to be, it's too hard otherwise, unless you get lucky. And there's nothing wrong with luck, but, you know. Can't count on it, right? Yeah. Yeah. He can't count on it. Well, David, it's been such a pleasure hearing about your experiences. You've seen it all and you told us about so much of it. So thank you so much for joining us. Yeah. My pleasure. Really, really enjoyed it. Thanks, David. Thank you guys. Take care.
00:34:05
Speaker
Well, I can definitely relate to the concept of if it can go wrong, it will go wrong. David's clearly an incredible problem solver and has a lot of grit and determination when it comes to solving riddles or putting out fires is the case maybe. Yes. We hear it from every direction that if it can go wrong, it will go wrong.
00:34:24
Speaker
And investors want to know that you have a backup strategy, even for your backup strategy. Speaking of things going wrong, I was super interested to hear about how they handle a frequencies phase two readout. There was such a devastating moment for the company, but I do hope this treatment eventually makes it to approval because it sounds like in the right patient population, it can make an incredible difference. And that's what David started the conversation off with, right? Is it's all about affecting change for the patient.
00:34:49
Speaker
Yeah, so true. Well, and I apologize because everyone's going to get so sick of hearing me say this, but I loved how he talked about the team and how team focused David is. You win in life sciences with a team. It reminds me of that saying it takes a village to raise a child, except in this case, it takes a village to develop a new drug. Yeah. I'll also jump on the team bandwagon anytime.
00:35:14
Speaker
I especially liked hearing David speak to how it was getting to know the team at Estellas that helps get the BD deal done. So that sort of speaks volumes to the importance of building and maintaining those relationships with separate teams. So speaking of relationships, let's continue this one. Join us next time as we talk about powering scientific innovation with storytelling to drive transformative change so that we can solve our most demanding challenges. Tune in next time to continue the journey with us.