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Ep. 30 The Tiny Cargo Company's Milk Exosomes Could Shape the Future of Oral GLP-1 Delivery
32 Plays4 days ago
We talk with Alan Gourdie and Spencer Marsh from The Tiny Cargo Company, the team commercializing one of nature’s most elegant delivery systems, milk-derived exosomes.
We dig into what makes milk exosomes uniquely suited for oral delivery of peptides and GLP-1’s, and beyond. From biologics and monoclonal antibodies to skincare actives and nutraceuticals, the implications reach across human health.
Spencer and Alan break down the biology, the scalability, and the data behind their platform; high loading efficiency, barrier penetration, long-term stability, and natural biocompatibility, and what it takes to turn a naturally evolved system into an industrial-scale solution for pharma and consumer health.
A conversation about precision delivery, sustainability, and how sometimes the most advanced technology has been in nature all along.
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Transcript
Introduction to Sparktime Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Sparktime, where biotech's thought leaders, investors, CEOs, and industry experts break down the evolving story of life sciences. Hosted by Danny Stoltzfus and Will Riedel, two scientists and strategic communicators, we dive deep into how biotech leaders can shape the narrative, win investor confidence, and communicate breakthrough science in ways that truly resonate.
00:00:21
Speaker
From emerging trends and cutting-edge technologies to what investors and partners really want to hear, we go beyond the usual echo chamber, bringing you fresh insights, unexpected perspectives, and the strategies that set biotech's top players apart.
00:00:34
Speaker
If you want to sharpen your corporate messaging, decode industry shifts, hear from voices shaping the future of biotech, and get inspired, then you're in the right place. Let's
The Tiny Cargo Company and Exosome Technology
00:00:43
Speaker
get into it.
00:00:45
Speaker
Exosomes are everywhere, and based on today's conversation, they're going to be found in even more places than your nightly skincare routine pretty soon. The tiny cargo company joined us today and spoke about industry standards like GLP-1s, drug delivery, but for the most part, they talked about milk.
00:01:05
Speaker
Trust me, it's not an episode to miss. Okay, roll episode. Today, we're joined by two visionaries from the Tiny Cargo Company, which is pioneering scalable milk-derived exosome technology for therapeutic, cosmeceutical, nutraceutical applications. We're joined by Alan Gordy, the Chief Executive Officer of the Tiny Cargo Company, and Alan brings 30 years of multinational and startup executive leadership with a track record of founding and scaling innovative ventures, most notably as founder and CEO of the AI-driven Quantiful platform.
00:01:38
Speaker
He also serves as chair and director across both public and private companies. As CEO of the Tiny Cargo Company, Alan leads the strategic vision and commercial expansion in harnessing exosomes as the next-gen delivery systems.
00:01:51
Speaker
We're also joined by Spencer Marsh, who is the Chief Scientific Officer. Spencer is the world's leading expert on milk-derived exosomes. As the Chief Scientific Officer of the Tiny Cargo Company, he steers the scientific direction and operational execution.
00:02:08
Speaker
Spencer achieved a
What are Exosomes?
00:02:09
Speaker
remarkable milestone in December 2023 when Tiny Cargo successfully industrialized the isolation of exosomes, processing 3,000 liters of milk into 200 liters of exosome concentrate, a true world first in scalable manufacturing. So together, Alan's executive expertise and Spencer's scientific and engineering leadership uniquely positioned Tiny Cargo world.
00:02:30
Speaker
to transform how we think about oral drug delivery, particularly for therapeutic peptides such as GLP-1 agents and beyond. It's a privilege to welcome you both to SparkTime. How are you doing today?
00:02:41
Speaker
Oh, very well. Thanks, Will. Nice to meet you all. Yeah, doing great. Glad to be here. Awesome. Well, I'd love to start out on basics. um We're seeing exosomes all over the place in nutraceuticals, cosmeceuticals.
00:02:54
Speaker
um This is a really exciting frontier in a lot of different places, including in biotech. So from your perspective, why are exosomes such a powerful and versatile delivery system?
00:03:07
Speaker
Exosomes have been a research field for quite a while now, going on about 40 years. But it's really more recently that people have ah understood the value from, as you mentioned, the cosmeceutical, the nutraceutical, and perhaps most importantly, in the pharmaceutical fields.
00:03:24
Speaker
the The reason that these are so well positioned goes back to the evolutionary ah source of exosomes, which frankly goes back billions of years.
00:03:36
Speaker
Exosomes are how all of the cells in your body communicate. And this, I mean, it goes down to bacteria. It goes to every living thing produces these in order for the cells to have communication between each other.
00:03:49
Speaker
And that means that this isn't just a drug delivery system. It's nature's messaging system. So
Exosomes: Nature's FedEx for Drug Delivery
00:03:58
Speaker
because of this and because of the billions of years of evolution that have led to ah what exosomes are today, this means that they have unique properties that otherwise aren't found in delivery vehicles.
00:04:11
Speaker
You have nanoparticles, you have ah liposomes, you have a number of human engineered drug delivery systems. But that means that the humans are going out of their way to do something that isn't found in nature.
00:04:25
Speaker
And what we like to say is that we're leveraging these billions of years of evolution to utilize a system that's been really hiding in plain sight all along. So, because exosomes contain ah proteins, nucleic acids, a lipid bilayer, all of these components that enable it to be a communication system for cells it from mammalian to to plants and beyond, means that these are a a the naturally occurring drug delivery system in nature.
00:04:56
Speaker
And that lends itself incredibly well to delivering cargos and delivering therapeutics, um as well as being used in other industries such as nutraceuticals and cosmeceuticals.
00:05:08
Speaker
Yeah, we we
Why Milk for Exosome Production?
00:05:09
Speaker
like to call it ah na ah nature's FedEx service because it's ah it it is a an amazing delivery system. And with a number of drugs now, and we're going to get on and talk about GLP-1s, the weight loss drugs, monoclonal antibodies, but these drugs are very difficult to administer.
00:05:35
Speaker
And they the the major companies that are working on these drugs are looking for oral administration rather than injectables, for example. And milk exosomes provide a ah path for that.
00:05:46
Speaker
And so they're not only, yeah from an evolutionary point of view, amazing in terms of their ability to deliver cargoes, but right now they're very valuable to a number of industries, and including pharmaceutical, nutraceutical and and cosmetics.
00:06:04
Speaker
so In my previous life and a little bit in this life, I work as a drug developer and I want to understand something because I spent, I don't know, two years looking for a delivery system for something that looked like a nucleic acid. And I remember seeing a lot of kind of early stage exosome science happening, like but it was not advanced. It wasn't commercialized. It was still very early. So,
00:06:32
Speaker
if If this literally is like nature's delivery system, nature's communication system, like, first of all, why has it taken so long to get to this point? Because it's it's like, it it just seems like the chemist to me goes, this is a no brainer.
00:06:48
Speaker
But then again, but then on top of that, why on earth did you guys go to milk? Like what's like you could if that if everything has them, why did you choose milk? So I know that's a lot in one question, but I'm fascinated to hear what your your experience on these answers.
00:07:04
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's a good point. and I think there's there's sort of two major questions that you had in there, which the first is, why is it taking so long? that that's, that's an area I think that's probably a little underappreciated, ah in both the research field and in the commercial in that yeah exosomes. And I tell people this all the time, they are, are literally smaller than a wavelength of light.
00:07:26
Speaker
So it is physically impossible for a human being to see an exosome as it, as you know, a photon that creates a light beam is never going, isn't going to hit the exosome because, because the wavelength is larger. So it's, it's, it's,
00:07:42
Speaker
incredibly ah technical approaches that require um indirect analyses of exosomes in order to assess them being transmission electron microscopy, nanoparticle tracking analysis, which uses Brownian motion to detect particles in a solution. So they're very cutting edge approaches that people have developed in order to simply understand that exosomes are there.
00:08:08
Speaker
um When they were first discovered, they were actually considered extracellular lysosomes by those in the field, and they thought that they were trash compartments, that the cell was just shedding off these things to get rid of stuff. So it it took a long time for people to understand that it was this intricate communication system that the cells were using.
00:08:29
Speaker
And and it's it's a testament to really the decades of work that that scientists have put into this that we now understand what exosomes are. Now, the the second part of that is, you know, why milk?
00:08:41
Speaker
And I think that's a really good question. ah Exosomes right now, there there actually are a few companies who have commercialized the use of cell-derived exosomes for therapeutics.
00:08:54
Speaker
ah There are other groups that are looking at using what they call plant exosomes. And what we what we really decided on and what we were trying to do was create a scalable supply of exosomes. And there's there's a great anecdote. Back when I was post-docing in Rob Gordy's lab, who's our founder and president,
00:09:13
Speaker
we We ran, we cultured up hundreds of millions of cells. We we were using liters of cell culture supernatant. And we ran through the process. we We isolated for a week and got out and and we held up this little ah test tube and saw a tiny translucent pellet in the bottom.
00:09:30
Speaker
And the consensus was this isn't scalable. This isn't something that's going to be able to be done, and not in and especially not in a financially reasonable method. So ah we actually decided to try milk out um because the lab manager in in Rob's lab at the time, Jane Jordan, had had read something that said milk might have exosomes in it.
00:09:52
Speaker
And then once we did our first tests, we saw that it was about 10% of the volume was exosomes. And so so the the volume that we were able to get from one liter of milk was 10,000, 100,000 times what we're able to get from 50 liters of cell culture supernatant. So you're talking about a scale of of you know hundreds of thousands, if not millions of times, of different densities of exosomes between these two.
00:10:22
Speaker
sources. There are other sources um that that don't have the benefits that milk exosomes do. So we we first got on it because it was scalable and that we saw how much is in there. But what really makes milk exosomes so compelling are a number of other but variables and factors about them, which include that they're orally administered. They're designed by nature to be administered orally.
00:10:47
Speaker
They are designed to carry cargoes into the gastrointestinal tract, survive the acidic environment, transfer through that endothelial lining into the bloodstream.
00:10:58
Speaker
So, it's in it's in the the design and the makeup of a milk exosome. And beyond that, the the safety profile is just unmatched. If if you drink milk,
00:11:10
Speaker
In particular, any anybody who drinks raw milk, you're getting a huge dose of exosomes. And we've found in our studies that there are no safety concerns in using daily doses of exosomes or large doses.
00:11:25
Speaker
These exosomes
Exosomes' Role in Infant Development
00:11:26
Speaker
from milk... they They have no safety concerns that we've noted to date, and and you know the runway is long, but they're extremely safe.
00:11:36
Speaker
They're in incredibly scalable. And the in the inherent ah nature of milk exosomes mean that they can be loaded with drugs, they can transfer through, and they can deliver therapeutics systemically into the body, which These factors are just truly unmatched when you look at other sources of exosomes. So it really appears that milk exosomes in specific, so exosomes are very good, but milk exosomes have these additional factors that that make them a truly ideal drug delivery system for for what tiny cargo is trying to do.
00:12:11
Speaker
So let me just ah let me just let me just add to that and you know talk about ah the the scalability aspect of it. So as Spencer mentioned there, you know original ah processing of to get exosomes from any source, you're getting milligram quantities.
00:12:33
Speaker
So one of the breakthroughs that the Gordy Lab, which is the lab that Rob, who Spencer mentioned, and Spencer, <unk>s it's where they've developed all of the IP of the business and that Tiny car Cargo commercializes.
00:12:52
Speaker
One of the ah patents that we have is around ah processing of milk so that we can get kilograms and tonnage, ultimately tonnage quantities from from milk.
00:13:05
Speaker
And so, well, what does that mean in terms of the industry today? Well, so about a billion litres of milk is processed in the U.S. um each year. ah That's about 38,000 tonnes of exosomes if you use the maths around the percentage.
00:13:22
Speaker
ah Now, everything every single one of those exosomes today in commercial products, because yep people are probably wondering, well, you do are exosomes in the milk that I'm drinking? And the answer is yes, but in relatively low constant quantities because pasteurization, spray drying, and so on.
00:13:45
Speaker
In other words, traditional dairy processing, the heat and the pressure destroys exosomes. And so ah whilst not all, a lot of the the value, the nutritional value of exosomes is lost in processing.
00:14:01
Speaker
And so, yeah, certainly what we're thinking about is, one, that availability and scale, if we can – work with the industry and the sector to essentially use our technology to rescue or upcycle exosomes out of traditional dairy processing, then you've got to really got a win-win situation.
00:14:23
Speaker
As Spence has talked about, you've got this amazing a drug delivery platform. and We'll get onto it, but it has incredible nutritional ah value as well. And And if we can start to isolate that from traditional processing and and reuse ah that those exosomes you know back into drugs and and supplements and so on, then you know I think it's a it's it's a real contribution to you know nutritional health.
00:14:50
Speaker
So um
Improving Drug Bioavailability with Exosomes
00:14:51
Speaker
ah yeah that that's ah another reason why you know milk is ah an obvious and valuable source for for us to ah focus on.
00:15:01
Speaker
And in fact, this is why we're setting up our ah manufacturing plant in Roanoke as we speak, in order to further develop this manufacturing and ah exosome isolation technology, ah you know, so that we can ah start to use it ourselves, but also yeah share it with the industry so that they can start to ah access this ah see these incredible moodies as well.
00:15:28
Speaker
Wow. Well, I have a lot of like thoughts running through my head, but I want to like rewind five minutes and say that I love how from the very beginning you were like, it has to be scalable.
00:15:41
Speaker
it It was like built into your thinking because it's so often in biotech you find that people have a great idea and they do the translational science, but they don't think how am I going to do this at scale? How am I going to make tons of this stuff? And that it's always one of those CMC problems gets pushed into development. It's not thought about from the very beginning. So first of all, congratulations, because it's very rare that I hear that.
00:16:06
Speaker
And it's so refreshing to hear it thought about so thoughtfully. It's it's really cool. And I mean, i don't know, like, i just I need to sit on this for a second, Will, you should ask a question because my mind is like spinning with the possibility of what this could do So I have a question about, Alan, something you mentioned, but maybe it's also a question for Spencer.
00:16:30
Speaker
How do exosomes behave when they're combined with drug product and and they go through, you know, maybe not spray drying or pasteurization, but are they sensitive to um desiccation and, you know, how can these be used for oral delivery in that context?
00:16:46
Speaker
Yeah, they they're very sensitive to shear. So that's why those classical milk processing approaches tend to damage them. we We don't use spray drying.
00:16:57
Speaker
ah Spray drying tends to induce a lot of shear as well as heat, which excessive heat, um namely in pasteurization, tends to have a negative impact on the structure of the exosome.
00:17:10
Speaker
These hold up remarkably well following what's called lyophilization or freeze drying. ah This is an approach used by ah a lot in in traditional science and in research, but it's it's actually used quite a bit in in the food industry as well, where it's a bit of a different approach where you freeze the composition and then you exert an extremely low pressure on the solution at that point.
00:17:39
Speaker
And that then sublimates the liquid away from the solution and it leaves it as a powder. But it's done at at low temperatures. So this is done at at minus 80 as opposed to traditional drying, which is done at ah you know plus 100 temperatures. So this this works very well um in lyofilization and they so they work very well in desiccators.
00:18:02
Speaker
ah They store incredibly well on the shelf. We're we're currently at about two years of shelf stability at ambient temperatures ah with our lyophilized milk exosome composition.
00:18:14
Speaker
Yeah, maybe I could just add there, they because ah again, you know a question that may spring to mind is given the size and scale and the length of time that you know these dairy processing yeah has been underway, it's 150-year-old industry,
00:18:32
Speaker
hundred you know hundred and fifty year old industry And you you may be wondering, well, why haven't, given the the percentage of exosomes in milk, why wouldn't the world's major dairy companies have have not been harnessing this? Because so something that we'll come onto in a moment, I think, is ah You know, milk obviously is a developmental biofluid.
00:19:02
Speaker
It's critical for, you know, infants and and it's how mother communicates with baby and sends signals to the infant. And of course, things like infant formula would benefit enormously from having, ah you know, exosomes in them. But as I mentioned, they're destroyed during processing.
00:19:21
Speaker
So levels are very low. And so the the answer to that is that it's it's really the and in terms of how, ah you know, exosomes, we're able to isolate them, is that the the the the exosomes themselves are very tightly bound into the protein, the casein in milk.
00:19:43
Speaker
And so most traditional techniques, mainly scientists, as Spencer mentioned, try and physically shake that exosome out of that, it's stuck to the casein. And so they they try and physically separate. And of course, that destroys a lot of them.
00:20:00
Speaker
And so again, in a piece of um you know IP that we've developed in our patenting, rather than using physical means to to separate those exosomes from that casein matrix, ah we we use a chelating agent, which actually competes with the binding of the exosome and the casein micelle.
00:20:24
Speaker
And I don't know, Spencer, but it's it's it's probably the the the the the means by which naturally ah ah ah exosomes are released from that casein milk structure.
00:20:38
Speaker
And once that's floating free, we're it we then able to gently ah filter it off. And so that that's why we get such high yields. ah and And really, that that was a breakthrough piece of thinking which ah came about because, as ah Spencer mentioned, ah he and um Professor Robert Gordy were looking for a way to harness or isolate more exosomes for drug delivery work.
00:21:08
Speaker
and and as a and and in thinking it through, identified that these chelating agents could be used to separate them away.
00:21:19
Speaker
and And coming back then to the major dairy companies, ah that they the bite they they ah many of them knew ah about exosomes and probably not how important they are.
00:21:33
Speaker
Certainly the ones that we speak to are very early on in their stage of understanding what exosomes are and their value. But, you know, they they now are starting to understand and their importance for some of their major products and infant formula and ah muscle supplements, aged care ah supplement products and so on, ah all would benefit enormously from, ah you know, having the exosomes essentially put back into them.
00:22:04
Speaker
So, you know, there's a lot of energy around it from a dairy company point of view. And despite not having a lot of, you know, had a lot of exposure to them, are now starting to, you know, get quite interested, as you can as you might imagine. Yeah, I can imagine that an alternative revenue source sounds pretty interesting.
00:22:24
Speaker
ah Well... I have to interrupt you just real quick because i personally spent like five years of my life as a milk factory and a dairy production facility.
00:22:35
Speaker
And everyone tells you that mother's milk is like liquid gold. And I think I just understand why now it's about the exosomes. Like just, I hadn't, I have always wondered what it was that was so special. And i it's, I think you just answered it. Like,
00:22:50
Speaker
ah it seems so critical that this should be something that's put back into baby formula. Like as a mother, I just had to say that, Will.
Exolacta: Radioprotectant and Cancer Therapy
00:22:57
Speaker
Sorry to cut you off, but that's truly phenomenal. Yeah. I mean, that's i mean and I'll invite Spencer, who's you know got um a depth of um expertise in this.
00:23:08
Speaker
and That's probably worth discussing. But the the role of exosomes in the developing infant um And everything from immune development, GI ah development, neural density, in other words, brain formation, is is critical.
00:23:21
Speaker
And so, yeah, um it it is a um it is likely to be you know ah a very important addition to infant formulas in future.
00:23:32
Speaker
For those mothers, of course, that can't breastfeed, and you know there are a number that aren't, obviously, ah but for those that can't, then this is ah you know an important advance. Yeah, I think it's a really important note that you mentioned. And that's certainly our belief is that that's the missing ingredient.
00:23:49
Speaker
ah there There are a lot of companies that work on trying to make infant formula as good or or even you know within the the range of of what breast milk is known to be able to do. and from, as Alan mentioned, from neural development to immune development to gastrointestinal development, the the effects of milk exosomes when they are in the the milk. and And many of these are animal studies, so grain of salt with it. But the results are are just absolutely phenomenal. and And it suggests that that really is a major gap in our current nutritional landscape
00:24:27
Speaker
is is the difference there um between currently available infant formula powders, which go through all of those those processing techniques, and then ah those that that are able to have exosomes in it, which is is really limited at this point to simply just just milk, just breast milk, really. So it's it's a huge component and and something that we're certainly interested in as we move forward.
00:24:50
Speaker
So I'm hearing a few threads being pulled through this conversation. So I just i just want to give them ah a big tug now. um And that's oral bioavailability.
00:25:02
Speaker
And, you know, one of the toughest problems in ah biotech right now is is making large molecules orally available. So, Spencer, could you just walk us through how milk-derived exosomes especially overcome the barriers of digestion and absorption ah to carry those large payloads?
00:25:22
Speaker
Yeah, and that actually, segues pretty perfectly from the last topic in that Milk exosomes, their evolutionary role is to deliver information ah from the mouth into the gut, across the gut, and deliver those signals into a developing infant.
00:25:40
Speaker
um In particular, one of the roles that we believe that these play is in delivering immunity, i.e. antibodies. and Antibodies are a huge area in pharmaceuticals right now, and and milk exosomes are designed to do this. so How is it that they do this? well Exosomes and and milk exosomes in particular, following oral administration, they bypass through the stomach into the gastrointestinal tract. And then the proteins present on the exosomal membrane, ah namely tetraspanin molecules, enable these to be taken up by the endothelial cells in the lining of the gut.
00:26:18
Speaker
and transfer through the endocytic pathway. um Or alternatively, ah because they are smaller than the desmosomal plaques, they can pass directly through the desmosomes, or what are known as tight junctions, through the cells into the bloodstream.
00:26:32
Speaker
So it's it's the characteristics that that exoone that milk exosomes innately have, which are their size and their composition, that allow these to then transit directly through that endothelial lining in the gut and get into the bloodstream.
00:26:49
Speaker
But getting to the bloodstream is really just part of it. um Oral bioavailability of the vast majority of drugs is limited to about 1% to 2%. if If you're at 2% to 3%, generally that's considered quite good.
00:27:02
Speaker
um But 1% is very, very typical for most oral therapeutics. Why is that? That's generally because you have what's called first-pass metabolism, where the liver will filter out foreign materials in the bloodstream. And directly after absorption into the bloodstream, you go into the liver, and much of this is then filtered out or filtered through the kidneys.
00:27:25
Speaker
Milk exosomes avoid this, and really the the liver removal is limited to about 10% as opposed to over 90% for most just orally administered drugs.
00:27:36
Speaker
So because they're able to innately pass through that lining, because they are not registered as foreign or or large molecules, they're not then filtered through the liver, because your bloodstream is chock full of exosomes from cells all through your body naturally, the liver doesn't see these as anything that it needs to remove.
00:27:57
Speaker
So then these are able to deliver their cargos to the cells systemically throughout the body and deliver their cargo. And one really interesting note about this that we'll probably touch on a little bit later is that milk exosomes appear to naturally target into injuries. And that's not targeting like a bloodhound sniffing out and and directing itself directly to the injury.
00:28:20
Speaker
But ah conversely, it's an increased propensity to be uptaken in injured or inflamed tissues. So we have three major components here, which is their innate ability to pass through the gut lining,
00:28:33
Speaker
their ability to not be taken up and filtered out of the bloodstream by the liver. And then the third of that is then their ability, the innate, again, ability of these exosomes to concentrate in areas of injury inside the body, which position them incredibly well and and quite uniquely as a drug delivery vehicle.
00:28:52
Speaker
Oh, yeah. don't Don't stop there, Spencer. This is great. So, you know, how how how is Tiny Cargo, you know, harnessing all three of those or, you know, one of them, all three? we Yeah, I mean, it's that's one of the things that really got us was was the oral ah part of this, where they're naturally capable of passing through the gut.
00:29:11
Speaker
um We're really leveraging this for, at the moment, ah systemic therapeutics. So we have a an internal ah product known as Exolacta, which is a small therapeutic peptide that's loaded into our milk exosomes, ah then lifelized, stored on the shelf, and then orally administered.
00:29:31
Speaker
ah Because these are systemically effective, we use this as a radioprotectant for in instances of lethal ionizing radiation exposure. As of current, there are no ah systemically effective therapeutics to treat the effects of lethal radiation on the body.
00:29:49
Speaker
And we are currently underway with animal rule clinical trials in order to assess the therapeutic efficacy of this. Because that's a systemic disease um that that needs a therapeutic delivered everywhere, including the brain, this is, we believe, a perfect indication for the use of milk exosomes.
00:30:08
Speaker
That's as ah for use of exolacta as a strategic medical countermeasure. And so this is in the event of war fighters in, God forbid, but in ah in a theater where these weapons are deployed or again for civilian use um ah in in the event of either a ah nuclear accident or or again an attack.
00:30:35
Speaker
And so the the the the breakthrough here is ah the use of, or the availability now of this radio protectant to ah protect both war fighters and and civilians in the a event of that exposure to lethal ionizing radiation.
00:30:52
Speaker
and um ah And Spencer will talk about now also its clinical use as a radio protectant for patients undergoing radiotherapy. Yeah, and and that's really the interesting thing about this is that because the therapeutic that we use, it's a peptide known as alpha-CT11, what it does is it tamps down something called the bystander effect or the abscopal effect.
00:31:16
Speaker
This is when cell death radiates from a central location and you get apoptotic signals spreading throughout the cellular environment. We don't stop the radiation from breaking DNA in individual cells, but that individual cell, when hit with radiation, then cascades into cell death that spreads from an area far outside just that cell, and we're stopping that spreading.
00:31:39
Speaker
The clinical use case for this is then obviously in the use of radiation therapy to treat cancer. But the question always arises, you're protecting the healthy tissues from the effects of radiation, but what about the tumor?
00:31:50
Speaker
And if you protect the tumor, then it's effectively useless in the clinic. And we're really happy to say at this point um that what we've shown is that when we administer exolacta alongside clinical radiation, again, these are in in and preclinical models, we see that we are protecting the gastrointestinal tract, the brain, the bone marrow from the effects of radiation, and we're not protecting the tumor.
00:32:15
Speaker
and And that we could go down a ah ah molecular biology rabbit hole with this right now explaining what that mechanism is, but but the fact remains is that We are not protecting the tumor from the effects of radiation, but we're protecting all of the healthy tissues around that tumor.
00:32:30
Speaker
So we can reduce the side effects of radiation while not protecting the tumor, allowing radiation to be leveraged more effectively in the clinic to treat cancer patients who are undergoing this treatment for their cancer. And that goes
Exolacta's Potential in Heart Disease Treatment
00:32:44
Speaker
throughout the entire body, even if it's brain cancer, which it's It's infamous how difficult it is to get drugs past the blood-brain barrier, and we can do that.
00:32:52
Speaker
Using milk exosomes, we innately pass through this barrier, and we can deliver these cargos to the brain. So in the instance of glioblastoma or metastatic HER2 cancer, where you have a brain tumor, ah radiation is very commonly prescribed in these cases.
00:33:08
Speaker
And this is a perfect indication that that we can say, look, we can provide this alongside radiation. We can reduce that the cognitive decline, the brain fog, while not protecting those tumors.
00:33:18
Speaker
And so we see this as as a really interesting ah two-part scenario where it's the same mechanism, it's the same kind of injury being radiation designed, but it has very different implications, whether it's through DOD or BARDA or in this most recent case, in the clinic.
00:33:35
Speaker
So Exolacta then is, yeah from a ah drug ah platform point of view, ah it got some very you know interesting and and exciting ah applications where in the early stages of the process, um as Spencer mentioned, well we're under what's called the animal rule, which means that we're likely to have this to market effectively.
00:34:01
Speaker
2029, 2028, 2029, the clinical trial work with for its use as a radioprotectant is going to take a little longer. But I think one of the the the third indication, and again, I'm going to get Spencer to talk about the underlying science ah of this,
00:34:21
Speaker
ah Yeah, from a ah personal point of view, I think is, ah for me, the most exciting. And that is as a cardioprotectant for those people that ah you know have the misfortune to have a heart attack or a myocardial infarction, then the the the leading cause of death ah ah globally is some heart disease.
00:34:45
Speaker
And so I think every year in the US alone, for example, there's about 800,000 people that suffer from um heart disease. And, you know, as of today, there's few, if any, in fact, I think, again, there are none, actually.
00:35:04
Speaker
ah There are no drugs that can help with the underlying cause of disease. that heart disease, ah which is scarring of the heart. And again, you can quickly come to the conclusion that yourself, that if you've got a drug that is stopping that bystander effect um and that that yeah ah seek that radiation out which of cell death, which in turn causes scarring, um then you've got ah something which
00:35:36
Speaker
which again ah is a first-in-class drug for to help but you know that leading cause of death. So maybe I'll just hand it back over to Spencer to talk about you know how that works and some of the results that we've had there.
00:35:50
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's's it's interesting. I think people listening to this will probably think, okay, so there's the the radiation medical countermeasure, and that's that's used in the clinic as well. And then they hear cardioprotectant and probably are assuming, okay, this is a different drug.
00:36:05
Speaker
But in fact, it's not. It's it's the same non-amino acid therapeutic that we're using to treat the effects of radiation injury are still applicable in ischemia or perfusion injury or a heart attack in the heart.
00:36:18
Speaker
And that's because of the mechanism. It's it's the same spreading cell death From that ischemic zone, when you reperfuse, and this is classically used in in the treatment of of of a heart attack, you have to unblock that artery.
00:36:32
Speaker
And that's called reperfusion. And when that happens, the blood goes back into that zone of cells who have now been without oxygen for an extended period of time and who are now dying. And it spreads that cell death from that central area.
00:36:46
Speaker
So it's the same underlying mechanism that we are acting on that's applicable from radiation to heart disease. and And what we found, it it really is remarkable, that we can administer a one dose of exolacta um immediately after reperfusion.
00:37:02
Speaker
And we see, again, these are preclinical models, we see a reduction of about 60%. of the scar size in those hearts. So you go from and what they call an area at risk or the scar size in in an untreated heart would be somewhere in the 25% range.
00:37:18
Speaker
We take that down to about 6%. six percent We're seeing a 60% reduction across there where we're heavily reducing the scar size in these hearts. And really interestingly, we can delay that treatment.
00:37:32
Speaker
In these preclinical models, um these these are done in mice, we administer the therapeutic an hour after reperfusion, and we see about a 60% reduction in scar size.
00:37:44
Speaker
And in both of these cases, you see that the ejection fraction, that's the the left ventricular function in the heart, that ejection fraction returns to an uninjured baseline. That means that that left ventricle is functional to the degree that it was prior to an injury, which is really just stunning that we can rescue enough of that heart muscle to where it's functional to the level of an uninjured control. And
Scaling Exosome Production
00:38:10
Speaker
frankly, I'll shout out real quick.
00:38:12
Speaker
um Like many of our projects, these are done with academic collaborators and our academic collaborator at Virginia Tech um in collaboration with the University of Virginia are just about to publish these results.
00:38:24
Speaker
ah in ah in a scientific journal. And maybe we could even include that in the notes or something. But that that manuscript is going to be out very soon. And it shows just profound ability to to rescue cardiac muscle after an ischemia or perfusion injury.
00:38:39
Speaker
Yeah, and just ah just to make it crystal clear, so, you know, what happens with a ah heart that's scarred is that the muscle can't pump uniformly.
00:38:51
Speaker
And so ah over time, it just it gets weaker and weaker. And so you've got the right ventricle pumping normally, and then you've got the left ventricle, you know, which is scarred and it's ah its ability to pump and and therefore pump.
00:39:07
Speaker
you know obviously oxygenate the blood, et cetera, et cetera, as pump oxygenated blood around the body is gets weaker and weaker. And so but you know that's what we're trying to ah trying to avoid. And in fact, but it's that this is the the peptide that Spencer mentioned previously. You might be thinking, oh, this is something that's just really come about in the last um a couple of years.
00:39:35
Speaker
This is actually the end product of about 35 years of um research, which um ah started ah ah out of ah Rob Gordy's lab at MUSC, where he first identified this peptide and arrests the abscopal effect or the bystander effect that Spencer was talking about.
00:39:55
Speaker
And then it was really his drive to understand, well, because of the instability of that peptide, it degrades very quickly on the skin or if once it's in the blood, um it within, I think, minutes, it's it's gone.
00:40:12
Speaker
And it was really his drive with Spencer to understand how he was going to be able to get that peptide to organs such that it could have this ah ah impact on on on tissue on damaged tissue like that, that drove the whole milk exosome discovery process and and the use of it to deliver these you know drug cargos.
00:40:40
Speaker
And, you know, we're we're kind of wrapping up a little bit now on what Exolacta all about. And we've sort of alluded to other drug cargos like GLP-1s and monoclonal antibodies and um antisense oligonucleotides, all of which are very, very powerful new classes of drugs, but all have the same issue of delivery, ah particularly oral delivery.
00:41:05
Speaker
And so, you know, there's a ah whilst we're not going to do the work on those drugs because we've got our hands full with ExoLacta, certainly you know collaborating with ah ah companies, both startups and and big pharma companies to help them ah deliver their APIs, their drugs more effectively is ah is also an emerging aspect of the work of the tiny cargo company.
00:41:31
Speaker
Wow. It's an interesting time to be offering that service because as you' no you're no doubt aware, there's been multiple underwhelming and disappointing clinical trials in the last 12 months or so trying to solve this challenge of oral delivery of GLIB-1. So, i mean, I think...
00:41:51
Speaker
whilst you know that that whole market has revolutionized the landscape for obesity and metabolic disease you know that that that's still that's like the next mountain that's no one's kind of really successfully kind of um overcome so it sounds like there there could be some exciting collaborations for you coming in that in that domain um i Yeah, I mean, I think the, you know, just ah again, ah we'll talk a little bit about the underlying science here again, but, the you know, just about every day, you know, you can open up the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times or, you know, any publication and and they're talking about this race or this battle between ah the major
00:42:40
Speaker
um you know, Lilly and Novo, Nordisk and so on. And a lot of it is around oral delivery, but particularly the efficacy versus the injectable, you know, where there's a sort of a difference of between about a 20% weight loss with the best of the injectables, but that drops by half or less.
00:43:01
Speaker
for the orals and there's a reason for that. and yeah And again, this is an area that, you know, we're starting to unpack with ah the use of milk exosomes to, you know, to support that, which ah again, Spencer can get into.
00:43:15
Speaker
And and that's that's entirely tied to how we, I think, how we opened this on what's the struggle with oral administration. And and it comes down to incredibly low oral bioavailability because these molecules are not designed to withstand the pH in the stomach or the GI tract. They're not designed to transit through the endothelial lining in the gut.
00:43:40
Speaker
i mean, 1% to 2% is generally considered quite good. And so if you're dealing with 1% to 2%, the costs go through the roof. You have different formulations you have to put it in. you have to figure out how to protect it.
00:43:52
Speaker
So it's really not surprising that these other Some of these companies are trying to translate an injectable to an oral pill and having these troubles.
00:44:03
Speaker
And that's really where we see us positioned as. And that's honestly, that this conversation is quite well-timed. we We just did an initial loading assessment with a fluorescently tagged GLP-1 peptide.
00:44:16
Speaker
And we found that we were able to load it at about 90% efficiency into milk exosomes. And those were loaded into about 90% of the exosomes. we had a nice broad distribution. We had really high efficiency loading. For for contrast, many nanoparticles or liposomes will see 20% would be good, maybe 30%.
00:44:38
Speaker
and And we're able to get that up to about 90. And we have have this specially designed for oral administration. So I think it could really change the game on the GLP-1 use currently by a lot of different companies.
00:44:51
Speaker
Yeah, and i i mean I imagine not being someone who's taken these medications, but that it must be much more convenient and preferable to take a pill you know once a day than having to give yourself a shot once a week.
00:45:05
Speaker
That's how I would feel about it. Do you have any thoughts about if it would be more convenient and that sort of thing? yeah
Cosmetic Applications of Milk Exosomes
00:45:12
Speaker
Yeah, we one of the metrics that ah that companies use to define their drug is patient compliance.
00:45:19
Speaker
And oral administration is considered the most patient compliant method of all. IV injectables are really considered pretty far down the list. And because many people don't like needles, they don't like injections.
00:45:32
Speaker
um we We were just talking to somebody earlier today who said he has his wife do the injection for him because he doesn't like doing it. um there There are a lot of people who would greatly prefer an oral route.
00:45:44
Speaker
And that's what we think we offer with milcoxizomes. Yeah, I think if I can just you know expand on that a little, the compliance well, you know do you have to take it while fasting ah or or can you just take it you know at any time convenient for yourself? um what's the tolerability What's the tolerability like ah in terms of um you know side And so, ah you know, al our hope, and, ah you know, and I need to stress that, you know, we're at the early stages of this, but just ah just to make the point, the exolacta,
00:46:29
Speaker
the the active that we're loading into that is a peptide. GLP-1s are peptides. And we're starting to see, up peptides, and so we're starting to see ah from our clinical trials some very, ah ah you know, interesting and exciting results in terms of the performance against the the the targets that, ah you know, we're we're aiming for.
00:46:55
Speaker
Then, you know, whilst we've got some very, very good loading ah data now starting to come through, the the next stage for us will be, you know, to look at the efficacy, both in terms of obviously the weight loss ah and, you know, the the opportunity there, I think, is that we can we think we'll be able to load ah you know most of the major GLP ones that are in use you know and available commercially now.
00:47:26
Speaker
and And that's been a challenge for the existing drug companies is ah you know they can get one into ah and an oral, but not both.
00:47:37
Speaker
And so, for example, and so that's going to have an impact on, ah you know, the performance of it. but But also there are some, you know, there are some side effects such as nausea and so on, which, you know, we would like to think that with high efficiency loading, but also the ability to use smaller quantities because of the bioavailability of the GLP-1 that we can avoid, we can improve the tolerability of them.
00:48:02
Speaker
ah But as I'd like to stress, again, you know, that works ahead of us. But, you know, we've we've got some, you know, we've got some positive indications that, you know, we might have some success there. right, Spencer, I've got a science question for you to follow on from that.
00:48:16
Speaker
So... we all understand the the weight loss piece, but the other challenge that this industry faces is the loss of lean muscle mass. And how do you think oral delivery via an exosome, if at all, will impact lean muscle loss?
00:48:36
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's generally due to the the way that GLP-1s work is that they bind to a receptor, the in in the body, and this causes you to feel full quicker.
00:48:49
Speaker
So you get those I'm full signals before you maybe be used to, um before the the stomach expanded to the point where then it began producing the the the the molecule that then goes to bind to that receptor.
00:49:02
Speaker
So as people reduce their caloric intake, fat is one thing to go, and but muscle is also going to be used by the body as energy as you are working on a calorie deficit.
00:49:14
Speaker
So, the I think what's what's partly tied up in this is that these drugs do have half-lives. And if you take an injection of it on day one, and then it's a weekly injection, you're going to have a peak and a trough of the molecule in your body.
00:49:31
Speaker
And this this is going to cause greater extremes of of how your body is reacting to the therapeutics. So, over you know the first couple days, it's going to be above the working concentration, and then it's going to dip down to just below it probably before you take the next injection.
00:49:50
Speaker
And that that kind of seesawing of drug concentration causes a ah change in your body. And I think that results in people going to more extremes during certain days of the week and not on other days.
00:50:02
Speaker
And that's going to impact your lean muscle ah in your body. With an oral formulation, and and i wouldn't I would still attribute this to other oral formulations of GLP-1s,
00:50:13
Speaker
it's going to be a more consistent level. So, as if let's say, we deliver these in milk exosomes and and we're able to deliver this to the therapeutic level, they take it every day, you're going to have far less extremes. you're going to be able to take a lower dose that's effective over a shorter period, and and you'll initially have some taken up, and then it'll climb back down, and it'll be a natural cycle.
00:50:36
Speaker
um the The one then difference then between the proposed milk exosome delivery of these versus a pill-based delivery or a classical formulation is going to be the dose administered.
00:50:48
Speaker
in In these others, if you have 1% oral bioavailability versus 30% in a milk exosome, you're going to be able to dramatically reduce the amount administered. And because that oral bioavailability is at an estimated 1%, some people, it might work a little better. Some, it might work a little worse.
00:51:07
Speaker
So you're going to have a greater swing because you have more drug in there. Whereas those same people, if you're using ah milk exosome where the bioavailability is higher, You have a reduced amount in there, and you have less of a shift. So milk
Testing Exosome Compatibility with Therapeutics
00:51:21
Speaker
exosomes orally would then push it even further past other oral formulations, and you'd be able to maintain a very ah classic stable level of the drug in your body versus that seesawing that you'd see with IV administration.
00:51:35
Speaker
All right. So obviously GLP-1s are the bell of the ball right now, right? um What else can milk-derived ectosomes work with? I mean, what other kind of therapeutic categories, what other kind of modalities um are you are you excited to put the technology with?
00:51:54
Speaker
maybe yeah Maybe I could just have a bit of a shout-out here to they the cosmetics industry. which um were get with yeah we're going to shift off, um ah you know, pharmaceutical and and drug delivery ah and into, you know, an area which I think from a, ah you know, and speaking now more from a commercial point of view, a, you know, a market opportunity ah it is the cosmetic sector. And so here ah the very same,
00:52:30
Speaker
ah features of milk exosomes which you know provide that ready absorption and availability also apply to ah you know formulations where which are topically applied.
00:52:45
Speaker
ah because the exosomes will quickly move through the ah you know they ah epidermis and and through into the subdermal layers of the skin and deliver their cargos.
00:52:58
Speaker
but They have a natural um healing or ah skin repair effect anyway. ah but also they can be, again, loaded with um cosmetic peptides and so on to like accelerate repair. And of course, this is mainly for use in things like ah anti-aging products for ah better skin hydration, wrinkle reduction, ah firming and smoothing and so on.
00:53:24
Speaker
And so the use of exosomes in serums can ah fa skin repair serums, particularly facial skin repair serums, so is another area that, you know, we've started to ah develop and and work on. So we so ah Spencer and I have been um ah turning up at cosmetic shows.
00:53:45
Speaker
And... and like Suppliers Day in New York and Incos, the biggest cosmetic show in Europe. And yeah, there's a ah growing momentum. We started this podcast talking about ah exosomes and how they're quite ah you know a hot topic at the moment. and And that's mainly actually because of the cosmetics industry and ah plant exosomes and their use in that sector.
00:54:13
Speaker
ah But I can tell you that milk exosomes, um you know, are ah much more efficacious, um ah particularly for the types of ah indications that I just mentioned, ah you know, than many plant exosomes. And so that that's ah another area where you can apply this technology and, and again, harness the um amazing features of, you know, of this product.
00:54:38
Speaker
Yeah, well, honestly, we could have an entire podcast just on the different therapeutic categories that milk exosomes could benefit. So I'll try to be ah bit succinct with this. But as of current, we've talked a lot about peptides. That's been the focus here. And and we've seen that the milk exosomes are very well positioned to be used for peptides.
00:55:01
Speaker
But beyond peptides, Milk exosomes in our hands have been loaded with small molecules, which are one of the biggest drug classes in the world. Monoclonal antibodies, which are one of the hottest therapeutic classifications anywhere.
00:55:17
Speaker
And they i i mean, the markets for monoclonals are absolutely massive and they can't be orally administered. They they can't be stored on the shelf. We've loaded antisensitl ligonucleotides. This is a more up-and-coming area, but these are being hailed as the next generation of therapeutics.
00:55:34
Speaker
None of these drugs on their own in their in their standard formulation can be orally administered. There's been some progress on small molecules, and you can compound these differently and and change the formulation and enable it, but but at that 1% bioavailability level.
00:55:51
Speaker
Monoclonals can't be orally administered. Don't even try. ASOs, same problem. So our approach, it can be applied to all sorts of different pharmaceutical compounds. And I like to tell people, I haven't found anything that I can't load into a milk exosome yet.
00:56:08
Speaker
um I'd love to find it because that would tell us where the where the ceiling is and what the bounds are. But at this point, everything that we've tried to load, we've loaded to very high efficiency. So the the impact that milk exosomes could have pharmaceutically...
00:56:24
Speaker
Not to mention Alan's points about the cosmetics industry, which is another massive area. But they the ways that milk exosomes can be leveraged in pharmaceuticals is really at this point, we haven't found the limits.
00:56:38
Speaker
I mean, the the limit is the size of the molecule that you're going to load. And so, ah yeah, obviously, for I think we're at about, ah for those of you that sort of are down at the um measurement system of kilodaltons, we're at about, is it 200 kilodaltons?
00:56:57
Speaker
that's That's the highest we've loaded yet. So that's that's a big molecule. And so, you know, there's going to be a limit, of course, because the, you know, the you're in the end, you're having to ah move the the molecule through the, you know, the the lipid bilayer of the exosome and into the... um and into the exosome itself. So there's going to be limits, but you know they the that even at that level, there's a vast array of ah APIs or drugs that we think are going to be a benefit from milk exosome use.
00:57:34
Speaker
and And one totally out of left field, we are really trying to push the bounds. We have an an academic collaborator right now ah who is looking to try to see if we can load a plasmid.
00:57:47
Speaker
ah A supercoiled
Replacing Traditional Drug Delivery
00:57:49
Speaker
plasmid in its smallest and its smallest size is about 20 nanometers. Our exosomes are about 100 nanometers. So we're we're getting to the range where we're really pushing the envelope and seeing if we can get the biggest stuff in in the therapeutic industry in there.
00:58:05
Speaker
and And so far, we've been quite successful. Wow. That's incredible, the range of... ah for lack of a better word, things can fit into exosomes. I mean, with all of that range, what what do you think is, what's the vision for exosome-based delivery?
00:58:25
Speaker
um You know, not not just right now, but five, 10 years from now. And obviously, you folks at Tiny Cargo are involved at the forefront um with all of these collaborators and and the work that you've been doing along the way.
00:58:40
Speaker
You know, what role is Tiny Cargo going to play in that charge? I think firstly, just for many R&D labs and so on, you know, they they they need a supply that is available, um ah you know, cost affordable.
00:59:00
Speaker
And ah and then they can start to experiment with, ah you know, without having the the the challenge of, yeah yeah you know, sourcing milk exosomes for that work.
00:59:13
Speaker
And so, you know, step one is just making the milk exosome even just for you know experiments to determine whether it can be loaded ah and or and then to start in vivo studies and vitro studies on it.
00:59:29
Speaker
That's really the first step. And having the ah production facility, and ours will be up and running in February next year um as we're sitting as we're sitting here talking. um you know the yeah The site works for our manufacturing plant are underway.
00:59:48
Speaker
um And the you know the equipment is being assembled to really take the first step in scaling production up to you know ah hundreds of kilogram ah level and just put in that, you know contrast that with the milligrams that are available today.
01:00:06
Speaker
So that's really the first step is making milk exosomes widely available to as many groups, academic institutes, obviously pharmaceutical companies and so on who are interested in exploring the potential of you know these ah ah ah mighty little products. products And so that that that's the first step. And for us at Tiny Cargo, i think how yeah you know we started –
01:00:38
Speaker
talking about Exolacta, you know, for us ah ah our as a company, our ability to address and provide, you know, a drug for these major pathologies such as heart disease and so on.
01:00:53
Speaker
um is very purposeful for us. And you know if we can save that suffering, then you know I think as a vision, that's that's compelling, notwithstanding the other applications that we've we've talked about in Radio Protectant and um as a strategic military countermeasure.
01:01:12
Speaker
So bringing those to market is a obviously our primary goal as a pharmaceutical company ourselves, first and foremost. But secondly, just providing the enabling capability for use ah of these milk exosomes by as many collaborators as possible is probably our second major goal.
01:01:34
Speaker
Mm-hmm. When this started, the purpose of Tiny Cargo was to enable the use of Alpha CT11 inside the body.
01:01:48
Speaker
And that was the limits to what we saw as as being the goals. And as Alan just walked us through, that that vision has evolved and expanded a lot over the last few years. And I would say at this point,
01:02:04
Speaker
our vision and and definitely my vision of milk exosomes in the next five to 10 years is displacing traditional nanoparticles and liposomes.
01:02:15
Speaker
These are the classical drug delivery vehicles that have been engineered in labs and in companies around the world. And milk exosomes, as we've seen,
01:02:27
Speaker
work better, they load better, they're patient compliant, they're orally administered, they they target into injury. They are the best engineered and the best designed system that, in in my opinion, obviously I'm biased, but it's the best system that's been discovered for delivering drugs. And
Tiny Cargo's Vision for the Future
01:02:49
Speaker
so with that being said, I think Tiny Cargo is very well positioned because of our manufacturing ability, as Alan talked to.
01:02:56
Speaker
to lead the way into setting milk exosomes as the standard for drug delivery. And in the next five years, as we look to exit our first indication,
01:03:08
Speaker
And we'll move into our second and third. And and by 10 years, we'll have multiple exits of multiple drugs and indications. And we'll be able to enable other like other a very ah positively effective therapeutics.
01:03:24
Speaker
And because we're positioned to do that, I think in about 10 years, milk exosomes will be seen, and certainly exosomes, as the standard for drug delivery. and While that vision has certainly evolved into a fairly bold place, I think that given what we have in hand, ah this is this is certainly an attainable goal for Tiny Cargo, and that's the trajectory that we see ourselves moving on.
01:03:51
Speaker
ah By the way, we've we've talked about ah use and and obviously in humans. um Obviously, it can extend into animals, but amazingly also into um agriculture and plants.
01:04:04
Speaker
ah That's again another story. What? Yeah. It just keeps getting better. yeah It does. And so, um ah yeah, I think, yeah, there's, there's you know, ah a lot of ah opportunity ah to unpack and and in terms of most, you know, active ingredient delivery, ah you know, so beyond even drugs, ah you know, because of their its modality.
01:04:34
Speaker
Well, I can't wait to be ah taking this on my trip to the moon to protect me from all the space radiation. That's where my mind went. I don't know about anyone else.
01:04:46
Speaker
That's another one. That's another one. Yeah. Yeah. yeah we we we won Let's not go there and start and open up another chat. Yes, yes, absolutely. yeah weve We've certainly talked about, ah you know, for anybody that's exposed to high levels of background radiation, and so here we're talking about anybody that takes a flight or or has ah yeah an X-ray taken or a PET scan or something like that.
01:05:09
Speaker
um We'll save that for the next podcast. so yeah We've been we've been talking to ah talking to a company that's involved with NASA and and what they'll need is astronauts spend more time in space. What's the big problem? yeah Yeah, yeah. It's radiation. so um Absolutely.
01:05:26
Speaker
It's all ahead of us. Wow. It's been so, so good to hear you tell this story. And I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us today, Spencer and Alan. And we can't wait to to hear updates as things unfold.
01:05:42
Speaker
Absolutely. Wonderful. Lovely talking to you. Well, thanks again to our listeners for joining Sparktime. We welcome you to join next time as we continue to explore the ideas, the thinkers and the innovations that drive biotech forward.
01:05:55
Speaker
We hope to see you there.