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Ep. 13 Simon Goldman on Transforming Hard Science into Global Impact
82 Plays8 months ago
Simon Goldman manages the UCL Tech Fund’s life sciences team through Albion VC – he’s especially interested in cell and gene therapies, and shares with us his perspectives on translating science out of academia and into the clinic, as well as what selling means in the US versus the UK. Finally, another Australian joins the podcast!
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Transcript
Introduction to 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.
00:00:28
Speaker
I'm so excited for this discussion. Simon had so many interesting perspectives to share with the regard to communication styles in the UK and Australia versus the US. I think it was especially cool to hear why shifting communication styles is so important when you're looking for US funding and why you should be looking for US s funding at all.
00:00:50
Speaker
Yes, and that's definitely your lived experience. Although I'm from the US, you, Danny, are obviously the much better salesperson, so somehow I miss that American boat. Anyway, it was great catching up with Simon about his thoughts on ASGCT this year. It had a much different feeling from last year in LA, and he spoke about a few different elements at play in that feeling.
00:01:12
Speaker
Yeah. And also, like one thing that just really struck me was that I've never heard such a good explanation about why and how academics should be thinking about commercialization. like I wish I had known that all those years ago when I started out as an academic, and I'm really excited to share that information with our listeners today.
Simon's Career Journey from Finance to Neuroscience
00:01:32
Speaker
So let's get into it.
00:01:34
Speaker
Simon Goldman is currently a partner at Albion VC through which he manages the University College London Technology Fund's life science team focusing on therapeutics, delivery systems, diagnostics, and medical devices arising from UCL knowledge ecosystem. He completed his PhD and his postdoc in neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, prior to which he worked for seven and a half years at Goldman Sachs in Melbourne.
00:01:59
Speaker
predominantly on the healthcare, biotech and portfolio strategy research teams. He worked in several roles across the yeah UK and Australian biotech startup sectors before joining Albion in 2015. Hey, Simon, welcome to the podcast. How are you today? I'm well, thank you. How are you? Fantastic. Thanks.
00:02:19
Speaker
Yeah. So Simon, I want to start by talking about your journey to where you are today, because I see that you've you know you've been an analyst, you've been a neuroscientist, and now you're a partner at Albion VC. So tell us how you got there. What was that journey like?
00:02:35
Speaker
ah Very winding and and a lot of unexpected things happened on the way. I originally started off ah back in Melbourne, Australia at the end of the Earth. um right great Great place for science, commercialization in Australia is um is is is an ongoing ah work in progress. But some I actually started off working at Goldman Sachs.
00:03:00
Speaker
back in the day. um Actually, I started in the printing and stationary department, shifting desks and changing light bulbs. um But kind of got ah into private wealth management, worked on the healthcare and biotech team because my undergrad was in science, um and then ended up on the portfolio strategy team. And to be honest, the only reason I left was because I threw a very random set of circumstances, but a bit bit sliding doors.
00:03:26
Speaker
I got an opportunity to come to Cambridge in the UK ah and and and study study neuroscience here. I hadn't really done any science since my undergrad, so I was really quite keen to do some more. um Actually, it's it's a funny story. I ran ah couldn't find a parking spot on on Sturt Street in Melbourne for a choir rehearsal and sat next to somebody who I otherwise would never have sat next to who actually gave me the name of the guy who was eventually my PhD supervisor. so Very cool. ah If I'd found a parking spot probably wouldn't be here 18 years later.
00:04:01
Speaker
Very cool. But I moved to the UK 2006, did a PhD in in neuroscience here in Cambridge post-doc. And then did a lot of things, I guess, in the Cambridge ah biotech startup ecosystem. One of the great things about Cambridge here in the UK is that it's a really physically small place. And so it's very easy to get around. It's very easy to meet people. um It's very easy to be face to face with people, which i I certainly value a lot.
00:04:28
Speaker
um And so got involved in a lot of ah love various ah various antics with various biotech startups. And the great thing about Startup World is when you really are in that ground up venture building stage, you get to do a bit of everything. So yeah um I was doing project management. I was doing business development. I helped to run a clinical trial um for a medical device to help locked in patients communicate.
00:04:52
Speaker
um Actually, that's something that I think ah Gen AI is going to be enormously useful for now is helping people to communicate with each other. um And then ah my last role before my current role at Albion was actually an Albion-funded spin-out from University College London.
Role in Ovarian Cancer Screening and Healthcare Impact
00:05:10
Speaker
um So I kind of got to know the ecosystem a little bit through through that role. That was an ovarian cancer screening company.
00:05:17
Speaker
um called Abcodia. I'm very pleased to say that that product is now available for high-risk women on the NHS, which is a fantastic outcome for um in in terms of impact, ah in terms of preventing ovarian cancer. um And then I guess joined the mothership in 2015 and twenty fifteen um and when basically when the UCL technology fund was set up um and and have have been there ever since.
00:05:42
Speaker
Wow, that's quite the journey. And there's so many different branches of that conversation that I could go with. But I just want to say like ovarian cancer is one of those things that I've always historically thought you can't predict. So the fact that there's a diagnostic tool at a screening tool is really awesome. And it's actually it's actually a lesson, I think, for the biopharma industry. The way that diagnosis is done is is very, I guess, cross-sectional. You go to a doctor,
00:06:09
Speaker
um you you Often because you've got a problem of some sort, um and you say, I would like a diagnosis, and they they they they find a biomarker, whether that's an imaging but biomarker or a blood biomarker, um and and and take a snapshot at a point in time. But unfortunately, it doesn't work very well.
00:06:27
Speaker
One of the great things about what we were doing at Abcodio was taking serial diagnostics and looking at the longitudinal progression of a biomarker because different people have different baselines. And so what constitutes deviation from your baseline might be very different from what constitutes a deviation from the next person's baseline. And actually, I think, you know, ah it's it's something that's quite hard to do, obviously, particularly for screening um at at a general population level is to convince people to come and get tested. i mean ah We do do that for mammography, we do do that for PSA, um but even then it is still just a snapshot in time and I think um we're going to get a lot ah better at doing that over time as we can kind of gather data and more data about people across time rather than it simply by snapshots and actually the quality of the diagnosis will improve. We showed that um at Abcodia and as I say, I'm glad to say that that's now available for um people in high-risk categories here in the UK.
00:07:25
Speaker
Absolutely. And that's such a great success story. um And after that success that you had, or Abcodia had, ah you transitioned to working with UCL through Albion. And so you're working with a lot of early stage scientific founder companies. And one of the challenges we face when working with academic founders of biotech companies is they typically think very much like a scientist but like as you would expect. And so we spend a lot of time working with early scientific founders to talk to them about their science in a way that's compelling from a business perspective. So given your experience in connecting academic research to commercialization outcomes, you no doubt have similar experiences. Could you share with us some of the ways that you help scientific founders think about their business?
Commercializing Science for Global Impact
00:08:17
Speaker
Sure. It's actually really interesting that um we think about things from a scientific perspective or a business perspective, but ultimately success is going to come from impact, both from a scientific perspective as well as a business perspective.
00:08:33
Speaker
And I guess that's a lot of the that's that's a lot of the basis for the conversations that we have with academics who are focused very, very deeply on their small area of science um and a lot of whom do want to have impact and the very traditional way in academia of having impact is publication.
00:08:52
Speaker
career progression in in academia is often, ah for better or worse, driven by publication. We do think about this a lot and we do think about how we can how we can optimize various people's careers within academia. um and so ah A lot of the conversations that we have um with academics is really to say, look, ultimately, you're doing what you're doing because you want to have global impact.
00:09:17
Speaker
and um Particularly in and yeah in in in biotechnology, and and and I don't just mean therapeutics there, that could be diagnostics, could be medical devices, but ultimately, there's a group of patients out there who have some unmet need that the standard of care is not reaching at this point in time, and that is resulting in some form of morbidity or mortality.
00:09:37
Speaker
And that's not just an individual impact and of course morbidity and mortality in an individual ah level can be can be devastating for the individuals involved for their families. But also from a policymaker perspective, yeah that morbidity and mortality can be damaging from a ah broader um economic and and societal perspective. And so, ultimately, there is a drive for scientists, even though they're working at that very, very basic level, to have impact. I guess what a lot of a lot of our academic colleagues um don't, I guess, experience in their day-to-day life of being buried um in in in their area of science and in that grant kind of publication cycle.
00:10:26
Speaker
um is that ultimately, and particularly in biotechnology, globalizing your treatment and getting ah an intervention, whether again whether it's a diagnostic or therapeutic ait device out there into the world, is ultimately not something that's the responsibility of governments.
00:10:42
Speaker
um Biotechnology investing, as as as as I'm sure you guys know, is is incredibly risky. I mean, we fully fully expect that 9 out of 10 things that we invest in are going to fail. And 1 out of 10 is going to go gangbusters, as we say in Australia, um and really you know have not only impact, and it has to have impact in order to generate revenue, but then generate revenue, which is going to enable us as an investor to exit and you know fulfill our fiduciary duty to our investors of making them lots of money.
00:11:11
Speaker
um And so impact and ah generating returns do go hand in hand. In the biotech industry, ultimately, the private the private sector, so pharma and biotech, have the wherewithal and the capacity and the risk appetite to commercialize and globalize these impactful interventions.
00:11:31
Speaker
um Government really you know taxpayers I think would be rightly furious if government was was gambling billions away on ah on on on biotech commercialization where a lot of that money will be lost when really the responsibility of government is to do the things that we expect governments to do like build schools and hospitals and infrastructure and so forth.
00:11:51
Speaker
And so I think the private sector is actually um but yeah quite a critical part of that commercialization pathway. And I think the discussions that we have with academics is really helping them to understand that the biotech and pharma industry is really just a piece of infrastructure.
00:12:07
Speaker
There are pieces of infrastructure that has the wherewithal and the capacity to take those risks, to do the manufacturing, to run those clinical trials, to distribute those interventions globally in a way that an individual academic sitting in an academic institution couldn't and certainly wouldn't be able to get all the way um with grant funding or government money.
00:12:28
Speaker
I guess the the issue is, and I guess the tension comes, where ultimately, pharma and biotech have shareholders who want a return. and so you know They're looking at what the impact and the adoption of those interventions is going to be because that adoption is going to drive their revenue and therefore their profitability.
00:12:46
Speaker
And therefore, they return to their shareholders. And so, ultimately, at the academic level, when we're thinking about how we can translate our science into globally impactful interventions, we need to understand what the appetite of pharma is. And certainly, in biotechnology, that often involves filing patents.
00:13:05
Speaker
um which is yeah often the responsibility of tech transfer officers within the universities. But that's where the discussion with the academics come comes because ultimately they're very focused on publication and certainly as a fund that's investing in early stage university venturing,
00:13:22
Speaker
um We want people to publish. We ultimately want the you know impact in terms of dissemination is very important, just as it is in terms of drug development and and medical device development and so forth. But ultimately, we need we we need to understand um at an academic level that pharma and biotech, which is going to be the means by which these interventions are globalized, need to make a profit. They are going to make a profit by having a protected space, which is protected by a patent. And so therefore, the conversation at the academic level is
00:13:53
Speaker
We're not saying you shouldn't publish, absolutely you should publish, but just come and talk to us before you do because yeah ultimately from a patenting perspective, once something is in the public domain, once something is quote unquote obvious, you can no longer patent it and then therein becomes the problem because if you can't patent it, then a biotech or a pharma company can't make a profit and therefore your intervention is much more unlikely to be globalized to that patient population in need. and so That's a discussion that we have every day. um It's very much ah not something that's in the purview of a lot of the academics that we talk to. um and so That realization, I think, is really quite important for a lot of the academic community um you know within UCL, across London, across the UK, across Europe.
00:14:38
Speaker
that ultimately from the earliest, earliest stages of concept development, we really need to be thinking about how impact is actually going to happen and to make sure we do the right things at the earliest stages to ensure that we've got the best chance of making it happen.
00:14:54
Speaker
Wow, that's like the best description of the process I think I've heard because I can tell you, for I spent nearly 15 years working inside a university and not once did everyone anyone talk to me about the importance of impact and thinking about impact before publication. like It was all focused on publication, and I was working on technology that had a great capacity to be, you know, commercialized, but it wasn't even a consideration. So, yeah, really, really insightful, Simon. Thank you for that.
00:15:29
Speaker
um Now, I want to change topics because Simon, for the first time, there's like two Australians on this. And normally in my everyday world, I'm outnumbered by the Americans, right? So I want to talk about your approach to adapting from communicating like the Australian way, which you know we know is very kind of we're very like conservative about the way we talk about ourselves and what we're doing, to a style that's effective in the US, which is much more bold and in your face for one of a better way of describing it. so For me, when I first came to the US, that was a huge learning curve. so
00:16:11
Speaker
When you talk about communication styles, especially with people in the UK who are going to be really similar to Aussies, what sort of advice do you do you tell them? um It's a really interesting question, and it's a live problem, I would say, Danny, particularly in a tough biotech market now, yes where you've got a lot of companies that are trying to raise money, um and it's a it's not a local market for funding. It's not just that you're going to get funding in the UK. It's a global funding market. The the great weight of funding is in the US, ultimately, for better or worse, whether you're an Australian company or a UK company or a European company.
00:16:50
Speaker
the big revenue opportunity is in the US and that's where you're going to go. and Also, as a venture investor, yeah know NASDAQ remains ah the the the deepest and most liquid and frankly most well analyzed from ah from an investment bank perspective.
00:17:06
Speaker
ah market in the world. and so That is you know for the foreseeable future, and I'm talking decades at least, um going to be where a lot of biotech companies and and and technological ideas end up going. and so There is a great pool of capital in terms of VC in the US market. That is a market that we do need to be tapping and working with, as I said, because that's where we're going to end up.
00:17:31
Speaker
um we so I talked to myself, we as a fund you know talk to our US colleagues from an investment perspective all the time um because we want to be tapping that market from the earliest stage. But it does mean, as as as you said, that the communication style needs to be different because we're competing in a global pool um And so you know there are people who are going to be ah much more out there ah and ah and ah ah less subtle, shall we say, um ah in in in saying what they want to say. I had an experience recently. I was at a conference in Baltimore um and somebody somebody introduced me to someone. Let's just call this person Steve ah for want of ah for for for for want of a better name. Steve came over and said,
00:18:19
Speaker
Don't listen to anything anyone's telling you at this conference. I have this fantastic idea. I'm raising 100 million. ah Do you want to invest in me?" And it was that simple. um And ah for better or worse, I think we do have um a tendency in the UK, in Australia, in Europe to say, look at my fantastic data. My fantastic data is so wonderful. um It should speak for itself. Unfortunately, it doesn't.
00:18:46
Speaker
um And so keeping the message very, very simple, having you know a a slide deck a slide deck, an on comp slide deck that's 10 slides that just gives the message very clearly and very simply without you as the founder having to be there in the room to explain it, I think is very, very important.
00:19:04
Speaker
um And I think ah we do need to be more, frankly, confident about ourselves. um I think we you know we're're we're we're we're competing with other people who will sail much closer to the wind than I think we feel is the right thing to do. And I'm not saying that we should do that either. um But I think we do need to to say, look, I have some fantastic globally impactful science. This is amazing.
00:19:29
Speaker
This is really exciting. And even just using words like exciting, people shy away from that a little bit. Now we should be very, you know, it's exciting science. We've got a potential for exciting impact. And I think we should be excited about that. And I think we need to communicate that excitement to to our potential investors because others will. And if we don't, we're not going to be able to compete.
00:19:50
Speaker
Absolutely. and And Simon, you mentioned that you were also in Baltimore for for ASGCT this year. That's right. we We were there. And unfortunately, we we didn't meet at that time. So it's great to you know catch up after the fact. Absolutely. Yeah, for us, ah you know with the background in cell and gene therapy, we were excited to see that the the vibe of the 2024 meeting was more upbeat than 2023. So I'm curious, you know what were you looking for at the meeting? Do you have a particular interest in the cell gene therapy space?
00:20:22
Speaker
ah So the fund ah that we've been investing over the last 10 years ah is is very London focused. There is a lot of cell and gene therapy ah in London. um And part of that is the specialist hospitals that are located there and associated with the universities that we're working with. um Places like Moorfields Eye Hospital, and I'm probably one of the top two ophthalmology ah ah ah hospitals in the world.
00:20:52
Speaker
um certainly Certainly the most important in Europe. and Great Ormond Street Hospital is a pediatric hospital, a great focus on rare disease. And so there's a great, I guess, demand pull in London from the clinicians who are working with these patients in these specialist areas day in, day out um to find solutions. I think one of the things that they that that the UK does very well is the is the clinician scientist career path.
00:21:21
Speaker
So ah people who who are medical doctors, who are practicing clinicians, who are seeing the patients every day and understanding the unmet need, um and then being able to apply apply that in a scientific context and to develop solutions. um asic So I think London has been a great ah driver of and beneficiary of ah that cell and gene therapy revolution over the last 20 years. um So companies like Autilus,
00:21:49
Speaker
um companies like Orchard Therapeutics, I guess what we'd what we'd call cell and 1.0, the autologist CAR T therapies, the lentiviral and AAV gene therapies um you know that that had had a great basis in the the academic research base in London. so Given that focus, clearly, our portfolio is biased quite a lot towards that, um say, as opposed to to up in Cambridge. Just to take an example, you know it's always been one of the the the the foundation ah institutions globally ah for biologics. I mean, they discovered the antibody ah in Cambridge. And so you know that there's been a great focus on biologics there, whereas in London, um ah cell and gene therapy has just been a major feature. And so obviously, that's that that that's a big focus for us.
00:22:40
Speaker
I guess what's been interesting over the last 10 years ah is that there was a lot of excitement, I guess, in the 20 teens about these novel one-time-only therapies and the ability to modulate disease ah in a much more sophisticated way than with small molecules um or traditional antibodies. And so I think that caused a lot of excitement. I think there was a a view that going in ah Going into say rare diseases or oncology where there was an extremely high burden ah of unmet need in those diseases was a good place to start because it would be much easier and more, I guess, efficient to go in with an
Challenges in Cell and Gene Therapy
00:23:28
Speaker
intervention that the patients were far more likely to immediately adopt. right um you know ah yeah that the the the The archetype being
00:23:37
Speaker
A patient has six months to live because they have a lymphoma. An autologous CAR T ah ah therapy is offered to them. they they get Their T cells taken out, they're reprogrammed to recognize the cancer. the The T cells are re-infused into the body. Those autologous CAR T therapies are quite dangerous. You do have a one, two, three, and 10 chance um of dying from from the therapy. um But you also have a seven, eight, nine,
00:24:05
Speaker
intense chance of being completely cured of your horrible cancer. and so For somebody who's facing immediate mortality on a six-month timeframe, that's the sort of gamble that they're willing to take. Similarly, for some of these devastating rare diseases, ah it's a very, very compelling ah personal and economic argument when you've got a disease ah that is costing the healthcare system vast amounts, tens of millions so per patient to keep them alive even just for a couple of years with some some some monogenic disorder. And so the ability to be able to cure these patients clearly
00:24:43
Speaker
is very, very compelling from from a societal perspective and from a healthcare care ah economic perspective. and so About 10 years ago, a lot of those cell and gene therapy 1.0 type companies really came onto the scene and we were we were a big part of that. um I guess what's changed over the last 10 years is I think there's been a recognition that And the one-time only therapies really need to be ah needs to be seen in the context of what the alternative standard of care are. So while they have been successful in rare disease, unfortunately, rare diseases are rare. And so making money has been quite difficult for a lot of the manufacturers of those products. um I think now something like 30, 35,000 people have been treated with autologous CAR T. It's still a very expensive process.
00:25:33
Speaker
um We haven't yet gotten there in terms of it being a really profitable franchise for some of these businesses. Similarly, in rare disease, it's been quite difficult despite the that that the the big price tags that we've seen for some of these um therapies. and and for Unfortunately, the media tends to focus a little bit too much on on on the sticker shock. and Indeed, I think I saw on the BBC yesterday someone talking about their 2.6 million panel pound treatment that's in their blood.
00:26:00
Speaker
um Let's recognise it's costing 2.6 million because it's saving the healthcare system many multiples of that amount in terms of lifetime burden of mortality and morbidity. and so it's It's a genuine saving to the healthcare system, but unfortunately, rare diseases are rare. and so Actually, the number of patients who are being treated is relatively low despite them being a high-cost treatment at the same time. so I think that's been quite difficult.
00:26:27
Speaker
for the cell and gene therapy industry, and particularly for the academics who have been working on a lot of these therapies for the last 10, 20, 30 years. And so actually, ASGCT the last few years has been ah has actually faced quite a tough time. A lot of people developing these curative therapies and then wondering why is it that pharma and biotech aren't taking these on? we know Can't they see that we're curing these patients of their awful diseases?
00:26:54
Speaker
And I think what we but but i i guess that whats what's really shaken out over the last few years is a recognition that those one-time only therapies are relevant where there really is no alternative and no other standard of care ah in a particular disease. And I think some of those therapies will be very successful.
00:27:11
Speaker
And I think we saw that this year as well. um The other thing I guess is ah is novel modalities coming through. And it's really quite interesting to see that even as some of those cell and gene therapy, I guess 1.0 type therapies, the autologous CAR T's, the AAV gene therapies, the lenti gene therapies,
00:27:31
Speaker
as those have have now come, some some of them to market, some of them are still in pivotal trials, but really very much getting closer to that impact that we all want. um The hype cycle around novel modalities, things like gene editing, prime editing, base editing, um it's not even just one hype cycle ahead. That was really interesting to me at ASGCT this year, is five years ago, six years ago, when CRISPR Cas9 really burst onto the scene in a big way in the late 20 teens. um There was a lot of excitement about that. Those programs, a lot of those programs are only just now getting into clinic. um And actually the hype cycle has moved has has already moved on. There was very little at ASGCT on prime editing and base editing aside from three aside from David Liu's big talk.
00:28:20
Speaker
yeah um But, you know, everyone's moved now onto things like in vivo CAR T, epigenetic modulation, and a lot of talks on epigenetic modulation. But yeah but but it's interesting that that the hype cycle is just so far ahead in terms of what VCs are interested in and and and are investing in versus where the reality of ah of ah of drug approvals actually ah is at this point in time.
00:28:41
Speaker
And I think some of those ah first hype cycle products, as I said, the the the gene editing modalities have actually taken a lot longer to get into clinic than I think a lot of people were expecting. I think the regulatory authorities have had a much greater focus on safety, off-target effects, et cetera. So and it'll be interesting to see more of those programs actually coming into clinic and seeing um both the efficacy and the safety signals over coming years.
Trust in Mountaineering and Business
00:29:08
Speaker
Yeah, well, we both came from working in the gene editing space. And so we know all about how long and how difficult it is to develop a therapy in that industry. But it's so interesting. Absolutely. Just to think about how quickly people move on to the next thing. Absolutely. And it does take a long time. Yeah, really, really cool perspective. And I'm going to completely switch topics on you now, Simon, because we did a little research on you. Oh, dear. And we know.
00:29:35
Speaker
that you have a really strong passion for rock climbing and mountaineering. yeah's it I love both of those things, so we have that in common. Aside from it being a passion, like I think about it as though there's some really similar qualities of someone who's successful in mountaineering and rock climbing and successful in business. and That quality that I'm specifically referring to is trust, because you know to be a really successful mountaineer, you need to trust your partner. And I feel like business is very similar. So when it comes to trust, how do you think about it when deciding to invest in a really early stage idea? lake Is trust an important factor in that decision for you?
00:30:19
Speaker
Absolutely. i couldn't And I couldn't actually can't overemphasize how important it is. um ah ultimately and and Trust ultimately is actually built on good communication and I think we need good communication at every level when we're investing, even at the earliest stages.
00:30:36
Speaker
um and That's communication a e between the academic founders and us as pre-seed seed investors um trying to convince an investment committee ah to give us the money. i mean There's a lot of trust and communication involved in making those early stage investments. But ultimately, great science does not commercialize itself, Danny.
00:30:57
Speaker
um You know, a team of people who can work together and who can execute is what is going to take something that might just be an an idea in somebody's head and turn it into an impactful intervention. And so, working with each other together, trusting each other, as say, as a founder team, I think is absolutely crucial. Giving people honest and immediate feedback where it's relevant is hugely important.
00:31:20
Speaker
um you know well it's It's a very high pressure ah high-risk, intense industry. and so we need to be yeah if if if If it's going to be high-risk and high-pressure externally, then founding teams really need to make sure that internally they are working together well.
00:31:38
Speaker
that they're communicating well, um that any problems are being discussed and dealt with as soon as they can because because time is short and cash runways are short and nobody can really afford to kind of, um to to to to let things fester only to find out later that there was a problem that they could have dealt with a long time earlier. So trust, I think within founder teams is incredibly important. We at Albion VC think a lot about this and when we're building our founder teams, actually work very closely with our founder teams to ensure, to to not only to to measure, um but to implement ah methods of ah enabling founder teams to trust each other. I think it's hugely important to that that we're all just honest with each other. Second of all, VC, I guess, is a very long game.
00:32:23
Speaker
um It's not like public market equity investing where you're in and out. A VC investor is going to put money into a project and you are going to be working as a founder ah with a VC for a very, very long time. Goodness me, do you need to trust each other? Oh, yeah.
00:32:39
Speaker
and so And so that trust and communication I think is very important. I think it's very important for founders when they're going out into the market to raise money is to really do their research on on the potential investors ah for for their project or company. um I think they really need to understand that once they take money from these people,
00:32:59
Speaker
i Do they trust them? Can you communicate what value is that investor adding to you personally as a founder in your career development for your team and your team's development, but also for the success of the company? Do they have a good network that's going to bring in trusted advisors, experts, board members, ah potentially infrastructure providers like CDMOs and CROs? And so I think having those those open discussions as early as possible for founders with their potential investors, I think is crucially important.
00:33:29
Speaker
As is probably evident, you know all of this comes back to
Academic Commercialization Before Publishing
00:33:32
Speaker
communication. This is a people business. We've got to work together to have success and to have impact. um and you know it's It's like a personal relationship. you know these these These are long-term relationships and they're absolutely founded on trust and communication. So we think about that a lot, Danny. We're coming to the end of the podcast and and I'm curious, what are you excited for for the rest of the year?
00:33:54
Speaker
I do moonlight as an economist and I think a lot about ah about macroeconomics and how it's going to affect the market. um I think for the rest of the year and for biotech markets, unlike tech, which is much more driven by what's happening in the real economy, biotechnology is a very long dated asset. The returns are going to come 5, 10, 15 years down the line. And so interest rates and what happens to interest rates are very important in terms of the success of the biotech industry.
00:34:21
Speaker
um I think part of the reason that ASGCT was a bit more lively and exciting this year is because interest rates have stopped going up precipitously yeah um and you know a kind of flattening out, potentially coming down. We'll see where that goes. And so I think for me, a big focus on what's happening in the macro economy is very important when we're thinking even about the earliest stages of investing. ah There's that.
00:34:43
Speaker
As I said before, it will also be interesting to see some more of these clinical trial results for some of the more novel modalities um in things like gene editing. um A lot of the earlier stage, and again, this just belies our focus on that area, um a lot of the earlier stage programs have kind of had their share of safety scares and problems, um but also showing their benefits. And it will be really interesting to see how these um ah how how these novel modalities um actually fare in the clinic. And then actually, um I am also very much intrigued by the fate and future of um quite a big ah ah area of focus recently in biotechnology, which has been the GLP-1 receptor agonists.
00:35:31
Speaker
yes um Fascinating to see and kind of in hindsight a little bit obvious the reductions in diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease that we've seen in some of these cohorts cohorts of patients. Clearly, the less that patients are in a chronic ah inflammatory state, the less that they're going to experience these diseases that result from a chronic inflammatory state. um But I think we' we've also seen that actually a lot of the patients don't stay on those drugs.
00:36:01
Speaker
um ah And so it's ahs it's going to be interesting to see how that market develops. There's a few more of those products come through with a better safety profile. um I think there's also a policymaker challenge there too, is actually changing people's behavior. It's not just about taking a pill. It's about taking a pill that actually enables you to do more exercise and to eat better in order to have a long-term positive effect. And so it will just be interesting to see how that plays out, not only at the actual company level and the drug level, but also at the policymaker level too.
00:36:31
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. In hindsight is 2020, of course. Absolutely. So if you could leave one piece of advice in the minds of early stage first time founders, what would that single piece of advice be?
00:36:44
Speaker
just come and talk to us. Talk to your TTO, talk to the infrastructure that you have within your university around commercialization. It comes back to the point that I made earlier. Sometimes people come to us with a fantastic idea, and then the first thing I do is go and look and google on Google and find that it's been published.
00:37:02
Speaker
Yeah. um That is very unfortunate for fantastic innovations and their potential impact because you can't then file a patent. um And unfortunately, it's much more difficult for us for those innovations to get commercialized and have the global impact that you'd want them to have.
00:37:17
Speaker
So the one bit of advice is come and talk to us, talk to your TTO, talk to your university. Just just simply ask the question. And you know the if the answer may be no, but the answer might also be yes. um And you might have saved yourself a lot of trouble ah in terms of ensuring that your, not what's often very, very early stage innovation or idea can actually have global impact.
Reflections on Biopharma and Communication
00:37:41
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, Simon, it's really been such a pleasure having you on the podcast. So I want to say thanks again for for coming and and sharing your perspectives. Yeah, thanks so much, Simon. Thanks both. So I found it really valuable to hear Simon's explanation of why biotech and pharma have the ability to globalize impactful science. It's obvious to me that Simon explains this to new people on a daily basis. And what it comes down to is that academia and government can't and shouldn't be leading the charge here.
00:38:12
Speaker
because biopharma has the capacity to handle that enormous risk associated with drug development, which of course ultimately puts therapies in patients' hands. Yeah, it's a really refreshing perspective and one that we don't hear very often. um So I really enjoyed you know his thoughts around that. And I think it's really critical information to to share and to think about it it with a refreshed perspective.
00:38:36
Speaker
I also really love the conversation, as I always talk about, about the difference in communication between you know the Commonwealth, like yeah the UK and Australia, as well as the US. So my personal experience is that in Australia as well as the UK, we tend to say the data just speaks for itself. you can You can get the importance of it without me having to tell you. And of course, we know in the US it's much different. You really do need to talk about what you're doing in a really positive, strong manner. And that shift in communication is so critical for getting funding in the US. And I really enjoyed hearing Simon talk a lot about that and why it's such an important consideration from ah another Australian's perspective.
00:39:19
Speaker
So Simon walked out of ASGCT with a similar conclusion as us is that we're finally at the point of seeing how CRISPR treatments and modalities are really going to benefit patients. But at the same time, the hype cycle has moved on and these modalities were overshadowed by in vivo CAR T and epigenetic modulation to name a few. So a nice recap of ASGCT.
00:39:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's always good to hear someone recap a conference for us because it's such a big one. We didn certainly didn't get to see everything there. Yeah, moving on to talking about trust again. I really liked how Simon just hit the nail on the head and that trust is built through good communication, of course, not only within the team, but as well between external partners in the team.
00:40:04
Speaker
And really being clear in how you present your plans and intentions to the outside world helps you get traction along the way and becomes a mainstay of your communication strategy. And we think about this really deeply with our clients on a daily basis. So again, it's always reassuring to hear someone else thinking about that problem with us. Having said all of that, join us next time as we continue to power scientific innovation with storytelling to drive transformative change and solve our most demanding challenges.