Mammoth Biosciences CEO on Business Outlook

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00:00Trevor, good to have you with us. We've been talking about AI and the sell-off in the markets.

00:04How widely used is AI in your space? Yeah, I think it's very widely used. I think a lot of the focus

00:09though is on what we call pre-clinical works. That's developing new drugs. I think it's really

00:13cool, really exciting. But I think a lot of the impact will actually be on the clinical side.

00:18So how do you actually run clinical trials faster? How do you get more drugs actually

00:21into market, into hospitals, into people and improving their lives? It is about transformation,

00:26right? When you talk about AI, people talk about how AI will transform. How will AI transform

00:32your research, the area that you're involved in? Well, I think that's why AI and bio is so exciting

00:38is that it's not another chatbot, right? It's actually something where we can generate something

00:42physical, something that improves people's health using technologies like AI. So I think one of the

00:47under-talked about ways that that's going to happen is that if you're running a clinical trial, you're

00:51spending seven years, 800 plus million dollars. And that's something where there's tons of

00:56paperwork. There's tons of things that LLMs are already good at, that these generative models

01:00are already good at. So can we apply those to clinical trials to make those much faster,

01:03much more efficient, and hopefully at the end of the day, result in more drugs that help people?

01:07What will they be able to do in the future that they can't do right now? What are we

01:11underestimating? Yeah, I think we're underestimating a couple of things. I think, first of all,

01:15the number of drugs that we could actually run through clinical trials. And I think that's

01:19important because especially with now generative models from AI, like what we use at Mammoth Biosciences

01:25to generate new types of CRISPR technologies, I think being able to take even more of those and

01:30kind of putting them through that clinical trial pipeline will inevitably result in more drugs that

01:34help people and save lives. You talk about clinical trials. Are you anticipating that perhaps Asia

01:41could be the space for it? So I think that's an interesting point because if you looked a couple

01:44years ago, I think it's something like 25% of clinical trials were in China. If you look today,

01:49I think it's something like 50%. I think if current trends continue a couple of years from now,

01:53probably be 75%, 80% plus. And that's both a challenge and an opportunity, let's say,

01:59for countries like the United States, because I think we really are seeding a lot of that

02:03biotech ground to other countries, in China in particular. And I think that's something where

02:07we're kind of sleepwalking into it. I think this happened in other fields like semiconductors,

02:11energy, and now we're trying to claw it back in different ways. And I think that's an area where

02:16there really does have to be some real thinking about how do we think about clinical trials in the U.S.? How do we think

02:20about research funding for biotech in the U.S.? If we want to reverse that trend, because if things

02:25just stay on their current trajectories, China's going to be the biotech leader, not the U.S.

02:28But what does China have that the U.S. doesn't right now that's allowing it to grow at that pace

02:34pretty aggressive? I think it's a combination of things. I think, first of all, it's a more

02:37permissive regulatory environment. And that doesn't mean we have to replicate that in the U.S.

02:41maybe it's too permissive, but it exists. Second, I think it's a massive amount of funding for certain

02:46deep tech sectors. That's kind of a risk benefit of governments like China, is that they can back

02:52up the dump truck of cash in sectors that are important to them. And biotech's important.

02:55I don't think we've really made the decision on that in the U.S. yet. I think it should be important.

02:59I think that we should be building lots and lots of medicines that save lives in the United States at

03:04every part of the spectrum. And then third, the U.S.' superpower was that the smartest people on

03:09earth come to the United States. They get educated there. They stay there. They found companies.

03:13We still are the leader in that by far. But I think that's something that we take for granted.

03:18And we really, really, really should focus on how to make sure that people who are the best students

03:23around the world stay in the United States, because I can tell you that's the most frustrating thing to

03:26every country on earth, is that they want to found companies in the U.S. and how to make that as easy

03:30as possible. The problem is the Trump administration is actually putting a lid on the talent from

03:35overseas and also in terms of student presence in the universities. Might that play against

03:41the U.S.? How might that impact the industry?

03:44I think that's where you have to think carefully about these policies, because if we really are

03:47putting America first and we're trying to make America the country that has the forefront of

03:52AI research, biotech research, semiconductor research, that's going to be coming from people

03:57all over the world. And how do we make them want to come here, want to stay here, want to bring

04:02their families here? I think that's something that really would benefit from us being very

04:06focused on. And I think it's something that will really make America continue to be the

04:11kind of beacon on the hill for the rest of the planet.

04:13You pointed to the permissive environment in China. What's the downside to that? What have

04:17you seen that could be of concern to you?

04:20So clinical trials are always a risk reward benefit. On one end of the spectrum, you can approve

04:25nothing. And then, of course, you'll never have a drug that has any sort of risk. And on the other

04:28hand, you could not have any sort of regulatory environment. And then you'd have snake oil and

04:32just people dying from various diseases. So I think that the job of regulatory agencies is to

04:38really find the societal balance between those. And I think that historically, we've done a very good

04:43job in the United States of making sure that we're approving very safe and effective drugs.

04:47And for biotech companies like Mamek, that's actually a deal. Like, we want there to be strong

04:52regulators, because that's how you prevent snake oil and drugs that are going to harm people from coming

04:56into the market. Because it's very expensive and time consuming to build a drug. So you want there

05:00to really be a bar saying, this has to be safe and efficacious to actually get approval. Now,

05:05that being said, how do we make sure that good drugs don't get stuck in the process and that you can

05:10actually, at reasonable costs, do those initial tests? And if something's safe, see if it's

05:16efficacious as well. And I think there's a lot of creative ideas that people have for how to do that.

05:19And I think there's a really interesting opportunity in the current moment of time that I think is

05:23being grasped even today on how do we implement certain versions of that so that maybe we don't

05:29have the Chinese system, but we can kind of tune the US system so it has an even better risk benefit

05:35to it. Genetic diseases, you're pretty optimistic that they can be cured within 10 years.

05:41Why is that? Yeah, I think we're rapidly approaching the point where we're going to have the technology

05:45staff so that for a given genetic disease, we actually have a path on how we could cure it,

05:50which is an amazing statement. I think the task before us becomes, A, making sure we actually

05:55execute on that over the next 10 years, and B, what order do we work on all these diseases in?

06:02How do we prioritize them? Even for one company like Mammoth to do hundreds of drugs, that's a

06:06tall order, let alone multiple companies doing thousands of drugs. How do we think about what

06:11are the diseases that should come first in that priority stack? And then also, we have to think

06:15about this is a new model of healthcare. How do we want to pay for this? This is something where

06:20with CRISPR and what we're building at Mammoth, it's a one-time permanent cure. So you literally

06:24go into the doctor's office, you get a single injection, and then the promise of the technology

06:29so that for the rest of your life, you're truly cured of that disease. So that's a very different

06:32way of thinking about the healthcare system in general. So we have to think about how the healthcare

06:36system will look in a world that has these types of drugs.

06:38All right, so what breakthroughs, what milestones, what timelines should we be looking at?

06:44Yeah, so I think what's really exciting is that already today, for the CRISPR technology,

06:48there's an approved therapy in the U.S. for sickle cell disease. So it's a very sci-fi concept,

06:52but it already exists. And I think what's exciting is you're seeing a lot of what we call liver-based

06:57diseases that are having clinical trials for genetic cures, and I think many of those will be successful.

07:03And then one of the areas that we're especially pioneering at Mammoth is how do you then move beyond

07:07blood and liver and go to muscle and brain? When you think of genetic disease, you probably think

07:11of like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and Huntington's. How do we actually, how do we deliver on the promise

07:15of genetic medicine? And fundamentally what drives us at Mammoth is this idea of your genetics should

07:21not be your destiny. Like you should not have to play the cards that you're dealt at birth.

07:25And I think that's an amazing world that we can actually live in within our lifetime.

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