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The life sciences industry is entering a transformative phase.
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00:00this morning innovations in life sciences joining me now to help break it all down is
00:09dr andrew snyder he's a scientist and research and development leader and for full disclosure
00:16he's also my smarter brother andy so great to see you thanks for joining us on the program this
00:22morning yeah it's great to be here jeff yeah and uh you know dad has been on several times talking
00:28about life insurance i'm so glad you could come on to talk about the life sciences andy you've been
00:34right there in the middle of the r&d the development of new uh treatments so to so to speak
00:42where are things today what is what does innovation look like today in the life sciences field
00:48jeff uh really it's it's great to be here um i will say that right now we're at a crossroads for
00:56innovation we see a lot of early r&d slowing down um i'm here in the boston area where we see a lot
01:04of pre-clinical work being stopped or slowed down and so you know really we have concerns about what
01:11therapies for the future might look like and and what let's get into that um what what is causing
01:18the slowdown i would think i mean with the top diseases like heart disease cancer alzheimer's i read
01:25about new treatments those are at the very top of the diseases that affect so many americans
01:31why the slowdown today you know you're exactly right the unmet need is still there you know um
01:37survival rates and certain oncology indications haven't changed heart disease is the number one
01:41killer um what we're seeing is really one of these dips in the investment cycles right and we're seeing
01:48whereas um in the recent past biotechnology was a favorite of investors both uh private and public
01:55that's really no longer the case and so um a lot of the um impetus to move these therapies forward
02:01has been really slowed down yeah and that's obviously unfortunate if because candidly all a lot of us are
02:10going to have some level of disease in our lives we're going to need the treatment let's talk i want to
02:16take a step back there's a lot of work and effort and you have been in the in this field for a long
02:21time since you got out of college uh i'll remind you many many many years ago myself included i'm
02:27older than you are so i came before you but in all seriousness you you've seen what it takes
02:34right to develop a new treatment it's it doesn't take it doesn't just happen like that it's not going
02:40to be a year a month a day to find something new a breakthrough no it takes a long time and so i've
02:47been really focusing on academic discoveries that have been spun out into small companies and eventually
02:53you know our hope is that um these real key insights that have been delivered to us by academic
03:00medical centers we really want to see these blossom into therapies um uh for patients and so um it is a
03:07bit concerning that this pipeline has really been um you know i wouldn't say shut off but it's really
03:12been um uh slowed down in recent years so for those watch go ahead i'm sorry finish it's just you know
03:19it is it is a long process right and you have to really drill down especially for a lot of these new
03:25technologies where maybe they haven't been pressure tested as much and so you really have to drill down
03:30and it does take time and it is an iterative process of trial and error to get these you know
03:35new ideas into practice and ultimately into therapies and you've had that dual role i mean
03:41you're you're a scientist so you're doing the work but then you're also speaking to the c-suite the
03:47board how do you make the how do you make the pitch uh you know i don't want you to give us the inside
03:53baseball on how you make the pitch but you've got to be able to show i would imagine some level of
03:58results in order to get the board the investor to say hey i want to be a part of that that's important
04:05yeah and so oftentimes i am um you know pitching our results to the board you know we start each
04:13year with a list of goals and it's our job as the scientific team to meet those goals along with
04:19the senior management and ultimately when we do it's a pretty easy pitch to the board
04:23but um it does start with a high level and then we walk them through the detail as needed
04:28yeah i want to put you i want to get you to put your head on the other side pretend you're a board
04:34member how do you how do you validate i mean i know you are not a board member you're not an investor
04:39but what are some of the attributes and things you need to look at when evaluating some of these
04:44this research in order to support it i mean there have to be some key qualities that you look for to
04:51make sure that they're going to be successful if you're a what do you call this a venture not a
04:55venture is it venture capital is that what you call this yeah so um one model is that this industry
05:01relies on venture capital for its funding um these funds are often large there's often a syndicate of
05:08venture capitalists that come together and they catalyze the formation of a company and so um each of
05:13these investors has their own timelines right and so uh you know say there's a 10-year fund cycle
05:18we have to deliver uh some kind of inflection point on value within that cycle in order to make
05:24you know um their investment uh pay off for them and so what they're looking for is number one
05:30reproducibility but they're also keen on the competition right you know how could something
05:36that someone else is doing impact our results and so they really have a bird's eye view of the landscape
05:41it's not just uh the company they're investing in but the entire um indication space as well
05:47yeah so you look at something like a wagovi or an exemplic by the way they're not sponsors of the
05:52program just want to make that very clear but they those products uh were designed to to work
06:00towards diabetes people that had some type 1 type 2 type 2 diabetes and then it kind of grew from there
06:06but that didn't happen overnight andy no no it's it's years of research um it's trial and error
06:12it's sometimes the unexpected result um you know comes in and gives you a new avenue of research or
06:19a new place to put your therapy and look is there a role here for the government i mean you mean the
06:24government i mean the fda the cdc the health and human services the federal uh government the state
06:30and local governments do they have a role in some of the funding initiatives that we're talking about
06:35here do they help out yeah so uh let's i'm going to speak to both of those points jeff number one
06:40is the inception of the research and so obviously uh the federal government plays a large part a large
06:46part let's retake that lane all right yeah sure let me just hold on answer i'll do a three two one
06:51counting and uh then you can start your answer okay here we go three two one action that's that's a
06:58great question jeff let me start in the beginning obviously the federal government plays a large part
07:03in uh research funding in this country the national institutes of health and the um nsf
07:09um have a really large granting agencies where a lot of these um discoveries um are coming from right
07:16a lot of these are part of the nih extramural funding project which goes to academic pis on a
07:22highly competitive basis right and you know this spurs new ideas and ultimately new discoveries
07:28now um when you're talking about company formation there are indeed programs called the sbir and the
07:35sttr programs which again help us to um go into company formation here if a principal investigator
07:44from an academic lab has a really great idea they either don't want to seek venture funding or it's
07:50not available at the time there are blocks of funding available blocks of funding available through the
07:56sbir program to start um and fund a research company um and then when it comes down to regulatory
08:04i would say having a consistent regulatory environment um is uh is going to be critical for success
08:11we're seeing um investors pull back because it's not exactly clear how some drugs are going to get
08:17approved and so therefore having a very consistent regulatory environment uh is going to be very important
08:23to um the landscape as well andy how does the united states i want you to give me a macro view
08:30compared to its peers in europe china i would think would be a big competitor of ours how do we compare
08:37in what you're describing venture funding of new treatments and new research are we at a a low
08:45relative to our peers above our peers equal to the united states is the the world leader in this
08:53um type of venture creation i don't have statistics handy to back up uh my case but i will say
09:01that uh many many of the new technologies and therapies that were um you know have come on board
09:08in the last decade or 20 years uh are from united states um companies and united states um academic
09:16investigators this is really fertile ground for biotechnology in this country um and the uh ecosystem
09:22particularly what we have here in boston where we have great academic institutions great venture
09:28capitalists here to support that and ultimately um workers and a workforce to really bring that
09:34forward that's this ecosystem that we have here and i think it's unsurpassed now there are challenges
09:40from china and places like that um things that can go faster there things that can um you know
09:47uh maybe the regulatory environment is different right and so um there are challenges to this but
09:54um that's kind of where things are right now sorry i didn't mean to interrupt you i was going to ask you
09:58you mentioned the boston massachusetts ecosystem are there other hotbeds of of of of bio development
10:05i'm going to call it or the like the innovations that you're talking about around the united states when
10:09what comes to mind beyond boston you know the first one that comes to mind is going to be san francisco
10:15much like it is in tech it's uh really prominent in biotech in southern california san diego has a
10:21thriving scene um new york city has a scene philadelphia has a scene um the uh baltimore
10:28maryland area has a scene and of course um research triangle park there's always been um seeds of
10:34innovation there you know wherever there are academic medical centers um there are people ready to spin out
10:40these ideas they are um in houston and you know around md anderson they're in chicago around the
10:46university of chicago and northwestern and so where these you know innovations take place there are
10:51people ready and able to take these and form them into companies and hopefully make the therapies of the
10:56future you you mentioned earlier that maybe we're at an inflection point things are i'm going to use my
11:02terms i'm paraphrasing are kind of gummed up in the sense that there's not as much investment
11:06do you see that changing potentially over the next 6 12 24 months well um my training is not in
11:14economics i will say um this correction that we're seeing here i think we need it to even out and so
11:22um as we apply new models you know whether they are smaller companies with um you know lower burn
11:30rates or we're de-risking things in different ways before we launch companies um i think it's gonna
11:37change i think we've been in this down cycle for a bit of time and i you know i think we're due for an
11:43upswing there's a lot of um there's a lot of cash in these vc funds that needs to be deployed again i
11:50don't have statistics handy but um you know there i i i think we're right for a change where i think
11:58i'm really hopeful that um uh it's going to be coming in the next six months or so and let's talk
12:04about artificial intelligence it's everywhere manufacturing it's in my industry the retirement
12:09benefits industry everywhere you look we're talking about ai does that have a role in what
12:14you're talking about this morning it it certainly does uh first of all um a lot of investors are putting
12:20their money in ai and a lot of investors are putting their money in the intersection between
12:25ai and biology and therapeutics uh we saw a company um that was just granted several hundred million
12:33dollars the other day leela sciences here in boston i have a colleague whose company was recently
12:41funded by venture capital in california we're seeing things pop up we're seeing things explode
12:48obviously it's going to need to deliver results but it looks to be really promising um it looks
12:53to give us um an edge when um you know finding different pathways i think the real key would be
12:59can it shortcut some of the cycles here last question uh with the proper funding both at the venture and
13:06the federal level and and some of the things you were discussing earlier do you think we get to a point
13:10where we can treat the successfully treat chronic diseases like heart disease cancer so that we
13:18almost entirely i mean we know from a lifestyle perspective how to eliminate some of these chronic
13:23diseases but medically do you think we get to a point in the next few years assuming all things are
13:29stayed equal that we're getting investment we're getting the research that we can eliminate some of these
13:34chronic diseases and really lower the mortality count um i'm gonna just tell you that i'm optimistic for
13:41that i think that's a difficult question to answer i think we already see progress in um certain disease
13:49areas there are certain cancers whose survival rates are are way far out i think these these large
13:55diseases like heart disease and diabetes um it's going to maybe be a combination approach of lifestyle
14:02changes and also um you know novel therapeutics uh i think we can make some progress only time will tell
14:10yeah i didn't mean to put your put you to the spot but i you know i wanted to ask i think
14:14anytime you know if you just are committed to something eventually i think you you continue to
14:18make progress i think what you do is very in my mind very iterative andy we're going to have to
14:23leave it there always great to see we don't see each other enough these days although i'm in charlotte
14:28you're in north in uh excuse me in boston but uh this is one way to do it although we don't get to
14:33see below the waist um or our legs so go andy great yeah great to see you thanks for joining us
14:40and we look forward to having you back on the program again very soon you got it take care that's
14:44all for this morning until tomorrow i'm jeff snyder stay safe keep on saving and don't forget roll with
14:51the changes
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