Biotech Dealmaking with Regeneron's Nouhad Husseini

When it comes to landing and executing strategic partnerships, Regeneron puts on a clinic. Partnerships, acquisitions, licensing agreements, and other deals large and small with Intellia, Decibel Therapeutics, BARDA, Alnylam, and Sonoma Therapeutics are just a sampling of those making news this year alone. The man behind much of that dealmaking is none other than Nouhad Husseini, SVP and Head of Business Development and Corporate Strategy at Regeneron. He’s a guy who’s deftly married the art and science of biopharma dealmaking, and on this episode of the Business of Biotech podcast, we’re getting introspective with this legend in the making, who our friend Allan Shaw says “turns the deals he touches into gold.” Strategic dealmaking is central to the biotech business, and today’s episode offers a master class. 

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Transcript

Matthew Pillar: 0:00

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Matthew Pillar: 0:40

When my buddy, Allan Shaw, says, hey, there's someone you should have on your show, he gets my attention because he's usually right about this business of biotech stuff. When he says this guy turned stuff he touches into gold, I'll admit I get a little skeptical, but then again, alan's never given me a bum steer. I'm Matt Pillar. This is the business of biotech and I'm pretty sure I've already made today's guest a little uncomfortable. But Nouhhad Husseini deserves that high praise. As SVP and head of business development and corporate strategy at Regeneron, he's established and orchestrated a pretty solid record of winning strategic collaborations and licensing deals. On today's episode we're going to get to know Newhad and we're going to learn as much as we can about strategic partnership success in biopharma. Newhad, welcome to the show. Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me. Nothing like putting you on a pedestal from the outset, right Well yeah, turning things into gold.

Nouhad Husseini: 1:35

That's about as high a bar as you can strive for I'm still trying to do that, but I'm capable of that.

Matthew Pillar: 1:42

Yeah Well, like I said, alan speaks super highly of you and I trust his word. So I want to begin by getting to know your pedigree, your background, a little bit and sort of the mix that set you up for the position you're in today and the work that you're doing. And if I go back to college, your college years you graduated from Princeton with a BA in molecular biology and then made the transition into investment banking and equity research at Roberts and Stevens and Morgan Stanley. So whenever I see that sort of transition from like a science sort of undergrad or academia into investment banking or equities, it makes me curious about sort of where your head was at during that time, what your strategic sort of approach was.

Nouhad Husseini: 2:35

Well, I guess I wish I was more strategic back in those days, that definitely there was no strategy involved here. It was when I was whatever 18 or so kind of starting my world in molecular biology. I didn't really know anything else. I thought I was going to grow up to be a scientist. That was just kind of what I did and what I like doing, and I was planning to go to a PhD program or maybe an MD, PhD or something like this and it was, I think in my junior year.

Nouhad Husseini: 3:04

We had to spend a year in the lab, really kind of on getting our hands ready with a full on thesis project that eventually we'd try to publish and it was like a legitimate research endeavor, partnering with one of the faculty members in the university, and that was a disaster on many levels. One, I learned that I just really wasn't very good at the practice of science, as much as I loved it, and I actually didn't really enjoy the laboratory experience just in terms of the individual nature, at least the way I kind of wasn't very much of a team sport. You went back, would go into the lab and set up my experiments, wait a couple of days, cross my fingers, hope they worked. Usually they didn't. I'd have to repeat them and I found that process to be a little demoralizing and not very rewarding. So it was kind of an oh crap kind of moment. Now, what am I going to do with myself that this isn't the path that I thought I was going to be on? And then I kind of figured out okay, what am I going to do next? And a lot of my friends, a lot of my classmates, had kind of run off the Wall Street, which was not atypical for Ivy League undergrads to just go do that for a couple of years. And so I figured what the hell, I'll give that a try.

Nouhad Husseini: 4:13

Actually, Alan Shaw, one of his friends, a guy named Mark Simon, who was a well known person in the biopharm I wanted to be early, early bankers and researchers in the field. Back in the 90s Maybe you know Mark he had hired me, you know, and kind of took a chance on someone with literally no business experience, just as someone who was hungry and wanted to learn. So he, I, was lucky enough to get that opportunity to kind of co-work with Mark and his team at Roberts and Stevens. And back in 2000, when this all happened, you know, these were the days when biotech was kind of booming around the sequencing of the human genome, and it was just a really exciting time. Companies were raising lots of money and it was a great time for me to kind of enter the field and just start, you know, drinking from the firehose as they say.

Nouhad Husseini: 5:00

Yeah, so that's kind of how I ended up there.

Matthew Pillar: 5:02

You made it, you know you made it through those labs further than I did. When I was in my undergrad I was I think it was my freshman year I was an undeclared, you know, undecided and I was taking a class called anatomical physiology, very, very basic sort of anatomy class, and there was a lab for that class. It was when they wheeled the cadaver in for that lab that I said no, no, no, sciences are not for me, I'm not going to go that route. Do you find yourself in, and especially like early on, like you know, when you, when you got into the investment scene, did you find yourself leaning at all into your molecular biology background or knowledge, or did you find that advantageous, having that background?

Nouhad Husseini: 5:49

Yeah, I mean it has proven advantageous for sure.

Nouhad Husseini: 5:52

But I mean, you know, early on in my career, you know I was could not be more green. You know, in terms of just understanding business, finance and even just the industry, I mean you know what you learn in the lab about how enzymes work and DNA and the biochemistry of amino acids et cetera. You know just that has no applicability to the world of cynical trials and the FDA and intellectual property. And you know Medicare reimbursement dynamics and J codes, all these things that you know drive stocks of publicly traded companies. And so that was, you know, a just crazy learning experience. You know, as I've gone through my career for sure, you know that foundation. I've kind of looked back on that and you know it gives me the vocabulary and the basic understanding of why can kind of ask intelligent questions about mechanisms of action and areas of science and target biology. You know it gives me the ability to ask better questions and understand the answers. I'm by no means an expert, but it's, it's been a big advantage, I think, over the years.

Matthew Pillar: 6:52

Yeah, when you, when you added a Wharton MBA in 2004 at that point, was there, I guess, a little more intentionality behind where, where Newhad wanted to take his career?

Nouhad Husseini: 7:06

A little bit, but not really. I mean to be honest. I mean I I was still at a crossroads of, you know, do I stay in, you know, like financial services or investing, right, but that was kind of them. I was at this moment I could go work at a hedge fund and I just thought that was like that was pretty exciting, because you know, you, I'm sure you meet a lot of these folks. I mean, these are the kind of the smartest of the smart in terms of people that are in our industry, just incredibly bright, high energy people, and I just was amazed by these people as a young professional wanted to be part of that and so I thought maybe that was a path I might just continue down, because that's kind of where I started. But then there was a big part of me that wanted to be part of a mission driven more of a team, you know, building something, building an organization, and I wanted to at least have that experience and give that a shot.

Nouhad Husseini: 7:51

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and, you know, as a kid, you know, even then I kind of knew of Genentech, you know, partly because some of my, my friends, their parents, worked at Genentech. It was a kind of a known entity, at least in my sphere, and I always thought of Genentech as like this you know, amazing place, the pinnacle of really biotech, which it was in a lot of ways in the 90s and early 2000s, and so I kind of had that in my head. You know, when I went to Warden I had this goal. I said, okay, I'm going to Genentech after Warden, that's the reason I'm signing up for Warden, so let's see if that works out.

Nouhad Husseini: 8:25

And I actually applied for an internship that summer at Genentech and got denied and I was devastated and I was like, oh my God, this whole reason I went to war and end up at Genentech, this may not happen. I ended up at Amgen over that summer and had a good experience there and fortunately, when I graduated I kind of said I'm putting all my cards on the table. I'm applying to Genentech and only Genentech. Please give me an offer. And fortunately I did and I did end up back in California after school. So that was really the only intentionality to it was to kind of, you know, pivot, you know, into industry and specifically at Genentech.

Matthew Pillar: 9:01

Yeah, what did you want to like? What did at that point? What did you want to do at Genentech? What did you envision yourself doing when you set foot in there?

Nouhad Husseini: 9:08

You know that's a good question. I didn't even know, you know, because I was just ignorant to really what the roles and career paths even were in biopharma. I didn't have. I wasn't one of these people that had a lot of mentors. You know, at a young age, you know, I didn't know people in industry. My family wasn't part of the industry, nothing like that. So I had no clue. You know even what people did. You know I didn't know what business development really was. I didn't know the different functions within finance. I didn't know really what the difference between marketing and market access and pipeline planning and portfolio planning and all these different functions.

Nouhad Husseini: 9:41

So part of my goal, you know, when I went in industry was just to expose myself to you know what is out there, and that's part of the career advice I give to a lot of.

Nouhad Husseini: 9:50

Now you know younger people entering the workforce is take a couple of years and just explore and figure out what you don't even know is there for you.

Nouhad Husseini: 9:57

So I was fortunate enough to be part of a rotational program that Genentech had set up that allowed me to kind of move through a bunch of these different functions and through that experience I think it quickly kind of realized that business development was really kind of the path I wanted to be on, almost, you know, it was just. That was one of the few places where a business person like me could be super close to the science and occasionally flex some scientific muscle. And you know which is what I really wanted. You know, when I was in marketing teams and with in finance teams, sometimes I was feeling like, you know, I could be working at Pepsi and it wouldn't really be all that different. You know, whereas in business development I'm sitting here back to what I kind of thought about and knew and enjoyed when I was in the equity research world, thinking about science and medicine and trials and data analysis, and you know that's really kind of got me jazzed up.

Matthew Pillar: 10:49

Yeah, yeah. And when you think about that stuff, you know, in the context of a business development role, you think about it. I mean I almost picture it. Correct me if I'm wrong here, like tell me if this is way off base. But I almost picture it like from a business perspective. When you're studying all those spaces, you're looking at all these different parts and pieces like puzzle pieces to determine what might fit within the next steps at your company or the portfolio company. Like what sort of the mindset there? Like you know, you're, you're, I guess, the fact that you were jazzed about the opportunity to look at science and medicine and clinical trials In those early days. What did you learn about? Like to what end? To what end are you doing that?

Nouhad Husseini: 11:34

I mean it sounds, I guess, a little cliche, but I mean it I think was very real and it motivated me and motivated a lot of people was just this feeling of like, hey, you know, this technology it's probably not going to work, but if it did, man the impact of being able to cure this disease or the impact it's going to have on the world. And while I might play some small part in that, you know, and just that feeling, you know, even though it is a teensy, teensy part of like actually seeing something come to the patients, it's still a role in doing something that like has this amazing impact on the world and a lasting impact. So, like, that emotional piece of it and that satisfaction was like really got me excited. You know, just to be in a room and sitting here, like you know, if we're going to cure cancer right, it's like it might happen. You know, in this room and I'm part of that team, even if in a small way, and it just was that opportunity felt special.

Matthew Pillar: 12:28

You know you developed this, as I said intentionality to join Genentech, to go to Genentech. You made that happen. You're at Genentech and then in 2011, you joined Regeneron. Was that the transition? Did you go from Genentech to Regeneron in 2011? Or was there something in between?

Nouhad Husseini: 12:50

Oh, that was it yeah.

Matthew Pillar: 12:51

It was it, yeah. So why do you? You wanted so badly to be at Genentech in your formative years. Why'd you leave?

Nouhad Husseini: 12:57

Well, it was not part of the plan, believe me, it was, you know, also being in San Francisco. Right, we were there. My wife and I had moved there, we just had our first two children, or only two, but they were just born and it was home and it's like, okay, I'm back in California, this is biotech hotspot, you know, I'm at the greatest company in biotech. Like, why would I ever leave? This is like mission accomplished in terms of my early, you know, life goals. You know, but stuff happens, right. I mean, it's like you know, opportunities come your way and I guess the constellation of events that kind of came together I mean, maybe one of the big ones was the acquisition of Genentech by Roche. So, you know, when that happens, companies change, people that I really enjoyed working with leave. You know, culture changes. That's part of that, was part of it. Part of it also was, you know, I had been doing the job for, you know, two or three years as a junior person, learning, learning, learning, and I was ready, you know, to kind of challenge myself take that next step, be a bigger fish in a small pond, you know that kind of thing. So I just felt kind of hungry to do more in terms of my own personal role.

Nouhad Husseini: 14:02

And then there was a personal connection I actually had at Regeneron, the guy I used to work with on Wall Street at Morgan Stanley, the guy by the name of Michael Abramon. He had joined Regeneron about a year prior. He had been a successful equity analyst and was one of the very first equity analysts to kind of leave Wall Street to go work for a company. That kind of started a trend. But Michael had, I had known him and always had tremendous respect for him. And when he reached out and said, hey, we're looking for someone. You know, if it had been someone other than Michael I probably wouldn't have been so interested. But you know, you know how things are in life, it's about people. And when Michael reached out I was like, oh okay, working for you, that's something I would seriously consider doing. And then, the last thing I had known Regeneron well. You know, just from covering them as an analyst, I knew the company from afar at least.

Nouhad Husseini: 14:50

And then even within Genentech there were a couple of interesting moments that kind of always put Regeneron back on my radar screen as like this force to be reckoned with and this potentially you know super exciting company to be part of. You know, we were sitting in meetings talking about Lucentis, the retina product from Genentech, and I remember sitting in there and listening to the team and the team was like, you know, there's this little company called Regeneron with this VEGF trap thing and we think we should be pretty worried about it because these guys invented a really good molecule and they're doing a good job with the development. So I just put it in my head I'm like, oh, these Regeneron guys, you know Genentech respects them. And then there was another moment where people were talking about you know, oh, you know Genentech wants to get into PCSK nine.

Nouhad Husseini: 15:34

And oh, these Regeneron guys, you know they're leading the way there. Like, oh, again, regeneron again. And then it's antibody technology. Genentech needs to up their game and antibody technology. You know what we should do. Let's call Regeneron because they got the Regeneron again. So it was like in my head that these guys that were Generon were really onto something big and so that was exciting. Like, can I go to a small company that I thought was just on the verge of some, you know, exciting growth?

Matthew Pillar: 15:57

Yeah, and it was, and we're going to get into that next. But before we do you mentioned something just a minute ago about sort of this, this trend, this trend of the departure from Wall Street and working in BizDev for a biopharma Tell me about that transition Like what, what I don't know. Just give us some highlights on sort of the differences and sort of what that transition required and felt like, because you, because you're right, I mean, we see quite a bit of that and I'm just curious about, like, the work that you're doing now. You know how that differs from your time on Wall Street and what you lean into. Or you know, take away from that Wall Street experience that serves you well today.

Nouhad Husseini: 16:40

I mean, in a lot of ways it's like the exact same discipline where you know you need to look at all these different factors scientific, business, legal, macro, competitive landscape synthesize that all together. In one case it's an investment thesis, right? Do I think I want to invest in the stock and the equity of this company? And the other it's an investment thesis. Do I want to invest in the product and the drug? And so the analysis and the data you look at and the process you go through and the diligence and the modeling, like it's really the same discipline in a lot of ways. So that was very comfortable and I could lean on that. So that gets you to like you know the decision point.

Nouhad Husseini: 17:25

From there it really diverges a lot, I mean, because then you get into the transaction aspects of it and the deal making aspects of it and the negotiation aspects of it, which is a whole nother art. You know that you need to learn, and I needed to learn and I'm continuing to learn. I mean that's one of the fun parts of the job is you never really master that aspect of deal making and it's always a different deal, always a different set of counterparties, different issues come up, but that is something that you know. Life in Wall Street cannot and does not, you know, prepare you for. You know how to learn that art of the. You know deal making and the transaction. You know technical points.

Matthew Pillar: 18:02

Yeah, yeah, when you all right, let me stay there for a minute. When you look at the potential for a deal, we'll use deal. I mean, I'm going to get to the question where I kind of want to learn your vernacular and I want to learn, sort of like what you name the quivers or the arrows that is in your quiver. When you're looking at a deal, potential deal, do you like typically treat it sort of as a custom exploratory, let's see where this ends up, sort of thing? Or do you have sort of structured approaches? You know whether that's a, you know, a life licensing deal or an acquisition, or, you know, do you go into it with like sort of intentional plans, drawing from the tools that I don't know I'm using a lot of words here but drawing from the arrows in your quiver that have been, and you know, maybe tried and true and proven, or is it? Is it truly sort of ad hoc? Let's see where this ends up and what makes the most sense. For me it's a pretty sloppy question.

Nouhad Husseini: 19:11

I know what you're getting at. At least I think I do. For me it's more, I would say, 80-20 of trying to leverage and utilize prior experience, knowledge, deal models and apply those, versus the truly. Let's just sit down and make it up as we go along. I would say that maybe is a non-traditional answer. I think most people in my seat would say oh no, we do everything bespoke and from first principles, but I don't know. There really are certain deals. Again, it all starts with?

Matthew Pillar: 19:45

what are you trying to?

Nouhad Husseini: 19:46

get out of this deal? What are they trying to get out of it? What are we trying to get out of it? You can know that pretty early on. Things fit patterns. We know the type of deal. If we're doing a deal to collaborate around, let's run a clinical trial to test the combination of RPD-1 inhibitor with some novel agent that this company has as an example. We've done 10 of those types of deals.

Nouhad Husseini: 20:07

When you know that's the deal, you know what the issues are and how to make that deal successful. You want to learn, based on past experiences, what worked in these prior models and how to optimize that. That's how I start is let me understand what we're trying to get at. I have a solution for that. Then I try. Sometimes that is a shortcoming of mine. I get stuck in these mental traps of being a little bit too wedded to prior models. I always try to step back and say, okay, let's just let that go and let's try something new. Occasionally we've done deals that are fairly unprecedented for the company or just generally speaking, in the industry, where we're making things up as we go. Those are fun. I enjoy doing those. It's not that I try to avoid that. That just is like a situation when we're really trying to achieve something. That's unusual.

Matthew Pillar: 21:02

Rick, I'm a Regeneron when you came on the scene, I guess from a business development perspective. When you came on scene in 2011,. What did you walk into?

Nouhad Husseini: 21:12

Well, I knew what I was walking into I guess I think I did which was a company that really didn't need to do any business development.

Nouhad Husseini: 21:21

It was kind of a strange job to be taking taking up this head of business development type role where the company wasn't doing any business development. What I mean by that is that they had done a really one-of-a-kind type of deal with Santa feedback I think it was 2007, which essentially just fully financed the company and its R&D for the next decade, which was highly unusual for a company at that stage. There was no more deal making. That had to happen to keep the lights on, which is what typically small biotechs are doing selling asset here. They didn't have to do that anymore. They were kind of done box checked. Then the other kind of deal was like well, let's buy other people's stuff. Regeneron didn't need to do that because Santa Fe just gave them billions of dollars to basically turn the crank on the antibody discovery platform, this philosophy technology that Regeneron had invented. They were more than busy just trying to generate clinical candidates and there was no need to bring other stuff in. That was going on. That was just the business reality.

Nouhad Husseini: 22:27

Then there was also just more of a cultural reality, which was Regeneron had been around for 25 years. This was not some startup, new company. The leadership and many of the employees had been there from the early early days. There was this deeply, deeply ingrained culture of how things were done for 20 years. For 20 years there wasn't a lot of external innovation as a core part of the strategy. There was a big need to try to influence the hearts and minds and open people's eyes that hey guys, we're kind of at a stage now where, yeah, it didn't make sense over the last 25 years. That was perfectly appropriate to be laser focused on internal stuff. The companies evolve and we're getting ready to launch our first major commercial product in ILEA. We're growing in financial resources, capabilities, clinical resources, our regulatory expertise, everything. We're big boys now or we're trying to become big boys. We need to change our thinking.

Nouhad Husseini: 23:26

I walked into that moment of the company. That's what I spent doing the first two or three years through a lot of just trial and error and exposing people to different companies and banging my head against the wall just trying to get people to see and appreciate what is even out there, because people weren't even really looking as people started to be getting more and more exposed to this and we had a couple of small early wins. It was the experience. This is actually interesting. I like this. I can see the benefit of doing more of this stuff and it just slowly snowballed slowly time until where we are now.

Matthew Pillar: 24:05

What does that motivation look like? You bring up a really good point. When you're a small biotech and the cash runways running short and you need some money. Maybe a partnership or a licensing deal creates an opportunity to demonstrate some validation. There's very clear scenarios for new small, early clinical stage biotechs to seek partnership to sell assets, whatever it's often directive. We need to do this to do the next thing we want to do In a company like Regeneron. When you walked in to your point flush with cash, just about commercial stage, things are going well. What is the motivation? What was the motivation at that point to invest in business development and invest in a role like yours?

Nouhad Husseini: 25:05

Again, what was unusual about the role and what attracted me to it, frankly, was the company was at the stage where it was doing transactions on the sell side still as a small boss making company and also emerging to be on the buy side. It was both sides of the deal making table, which is pretty unusual and was exciting for me as a deal maker. I want to be able to have that variety of different things to think about and work on On the sell side of things. At the time, in the early days that I was there when Ilya was just getting launched, there really was not Sure. People tell different versions of history, but my recollection was nobody was going to say Ilya was going to be a $10 billion product. If it was going to be a billion-dollar product, we were going to jump up and down and give each other high fives as a huge success. At that time there was still this big notion of let's make sure we don't bite off more than we can chew as a company, let's not overinvest in big trials for some of our pipeline, let's find partners to help us share that risk and share that burden because, again, we just don't want to get too bullish about our future, that we wake up and say, oh my god, we just overdid it. That was part of the motivation to continue to be on the sell side and find partners for some of our products and bring in other sources of funds On the buy side. Again, my motivation and it wasn't the organization's motivation, it was like we needed to bring people along to this kind of thinking. It was with a very long time horizon in mind, which in my thinking at the time was Regeneron. At that point in time, I think most people would acknowledge was the world leader in antibody technology and capabilities. There were other people in the game, but it really had distinguished itself as really proven the best quality antibodies, the fastest turnaround times, blah, blah, blah, blah, et cetera, et cetera. The thinking was let's leverage that and turn that crank and turn that into the most value and most drugs that we possibly can, which was correct.

Nouhad Husseini: 27:15

I think that one of the mistakes companies make and at risk is you get so focused on executing on the here and now stuff you forget about investing in. Well, what's the point? That's going to be that thing in 10 years from now, because the world catches up to you. That's just the nature of our industry. When you have a technology as successful as Regeneron's Velocity technology was, there's going to be people that come in and copycat and try to follow what you do, and then inevitably there becomes commoditized.

Nouhad Husseini: 27:43

Are we there today? I don't know, but we're getting close. That's the nature of competition and technology. It's unavoidable, and so for me it was really like we need to not lose sight of that, but we need to start positioning ourselves for what is going to be the next Velocimmune-like super platform that Regeneron is leading the way in 10 years from now, and you got to make those investments along the way now and start planting those seeds, and so that was a lot of motivated kind of. My early thinking was what are those areas we need to start planting seeds into so we can wake up in 2023 and be a real player and kind of a new field beyond antibodies?

Matthew Pillar: 28:25

Is it the same team on the buy and sell side at Regeneron and is it typical for the same team to work on buy and sell side transactions?

Nouhad Husseini: 28:37

Well, I mean, it's atypical for companies to even do both of those.

Nouhad Husseini: 28:40

I mean Big Pharma for sure does divestitures right, cleaning the portfolio. We've shelved this program and I don't have a lot of visibility to how they organize that. I believe most of those guys have dedicated groups that are just out there shopping the garage sale stuff they don't want anymore. So the way we do it at Regeneron which was kind of how I learned it at Genentech, frankly, and maybe why we do it this way is we have one team that kind of does everything we do the scouting, we do the due diligence, we do the negotiations, we do the internal strategy, and part of it is just to have that continuity throughout the process so you don't lose stuff when you're passing the baton from kind of one silo to the next. And part of it is necessity. Just because we're a lean and mean company, we can't afford to have 50 people in business development that have 10 scouts and 10 due diligence leads. So that's atypical. Most of our bigger peers are more siloed and expert in how they organize the VD teams.

Matthew Pillar: 29:45

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Matthew Pillar: 30:25

So you talked about like on the buy side. You talked about pipeline like longer term pipeline development and asset acquisition and making sure that you've got stuff to work on the next big thing 10 years down the road. But we know in Bio Pharma that pipelines they turn over, assets come and assets go. As that happens, sort of the normal cyclical playing out of the science and the clinical trials and the money that dictate, sort of what assets remain in the pipeline and what don't. What else creates like, I guess, a catalyst for you to go out on the buy side, to go out and hunt. I'm just looking for, I guess, like other indicators of partnership necessity or buy necessity.

Nouhad Husseini: 31:23

Well, necessity is an interesting word. I mean, that's kind of where I was going to go with the answer. Sometimes deals are motivated by necessity. There is a gap, or there is a revenue goal or there's a therapeutic area, leadership, whatever, and you're trying to get somewhere and in order to get there, there's a necessity to acquire something, because the internal stuff are perceived necessity and that motivates a lot of deal making.

Nouhad Husseini: 31:51

For sure, that is not really how we organize ourselves and even run the company in a grander sense. We don't really have long term five year financial goals or pipeline goals. I mean, regeneron strategy is follow the science and we kind of really mean that in the sense that we invent a lot of drugs we don't even know which ones are going to really work. We look at the data, we decide which ones to invest in, not based on some grand overarching therapeutic area strategy. It's just this drug looks like it's going to work and help the most people, so let's do that one. It's really not this big top down master plan, it is purely let's look at data together and figure out what those data tell us to do, which has running in all kinds of crazy directions. It's difficult to manage a company that way, but you got to credit to our leadership over the years. They've done a pretty impressive job.

Nouhad Husseini: 32:44

So what does motivate our deal making is a little less about necessity. It's kind of more about, like you know, being opportunistic and looking at what is it that we are doing, maybe better than the rest of the world, like, as an example, you know, five years ago, maybe eight years ago, I can't remember now we made this decision to invest in a dramatic way in human genetic sequencing and the vision was like let's not dabble. We want Regeneron to be the number one place in the world in terms of, you know, numbers of samples, quality of data, access to patient data, and let's make the greatest discoveries based on large scale human genome sequencing. And we've done that. You know I don't know we're number one, number two, wherever we are. I mean, it's like we're at the top of the world now.

Nouhad Husseini: 33:32

So some of the deal making stuff comes from. Okay, now that we're there, we have this resource, this asset, this capability. Can we be opportunistic and think about how do we leverage that? And that led us into things like gene editing and RNAi as modalities to drug some of these novel targets that come out of that. You know it led to, you know a lot of conversations we have. We did one transaction with AstraZeneca, as an example, to discover, you know, small molecules against a novel target. How do we take advantage of this unique, these genetic targets, and turn them into drugs through interesting collaborations? So it's kind of this necessity versus opportunism which we end up playing a lot more in this kind of opportunistic mindset than a lot of our peers do.

Matthew Pillar: 34:19

Do you find yourself constantly being courted? Like are you? Are you like constantly being courted by companies who want to offload assets or partner or be acquired wholesale?

Nouhad Husseini: 34:32

You know it's interesting. Yes, I don't know how that compares to you know, my peers at Amgen or J&J. Sometimes I wonder they probably get 10 times as much as we do. I mean, regeneron has a reputation and like rightly earned. We're not out there like shopping and buying other people's stuff. That's not. You know, we don't sit here and say we have an aspiration for our pipeline to be, you know, 55% source through external innovation, which a lot of other CEOs say, you know, with pride. That's like that is a good badge of honor. Look how good we are of accessing external innovation. We're kind of the opposite If you listen to you know Len and George talk it's homegrown assets and we're very proud of what we've generated. So you know we have this reputation and in practice, like we're not out there shopping much and buying much and people know that. So you know we get not. People approach us for sure, but I'm sure it's nowhere near what we would get if we were big spenders like you know the Gileads and Seljines used to be.

Matthew Pillar: 35:30

Yeah, yeah, when, when you do enter into a partnership agreement. I want to talk about some, some nuts and bolts, maybe some mechanics like what is that? And again, I know, you know, as we've ascertained there's there are plenty of different recipes, plenty of different scenarios, but what are some of the, I guess, basic kind of bolt it down, contractual, you know, partnership contractual elements that are common.

Nouhad Husseini: 35:56

I mean semantics is like I find that to be kind of sometimes frustrating when we talk about these deals. Is this a out licensing, in licensing, is this a collaboration? You know what is this thing? So I tend to try to not use that type of verbiage because, like you know, that's not a great descriptor for what's really going on. Some of our kind of loaded terms I find. You know, we were talking the other day with some of our senior R&D guys and we're saying, hey, we're thinking about an out licensing deal for project X and people, well, out licensing deal, no, what are you talking about? You know, no, no, no, we want to be involved in that program, don't out license it. I'm like, no, no, no, that's not what I meant, you know. I meant we're going to find a partner who we're going to grant a license to to conduct certain activities. You know, blah, blah, just relax, you know.

Nouhad Husseini: 36:39

So these are kind of, you know, loaded terms. That's why I try not to use them or at least encourage people to think a little bit more sophisticated, you know, lee, about what's really going on. So like, for example, when I look at these deals and this is technical stuff and that's why it's hard for like lay people and you can't even see that sometimes these deals aren't even made public because a lot of these contracts are redacted or people aren't going to take the time to download a you know filed transaction agreement from some 10 Q. But the things that I think really matter, that kind of you know put these transactions into different categories and different buckets. It really boils down to you know which party in that transaction has the contractual obligation, meaning if they don't do it they're going to get sued to do stuff. Who has to use commercially reasonable efforts to develop and commercialize the drug? Right, that one party will be assigned that obligation. Right, and that is the lead party in the deal, right, whether that's an in license, out license, because what licensing means? Right, licensing just means I wrote down on this piece of paper you're allowed to do activity A, b and C and I won't sue you. And these are the activities I'm licensing you to do, that I'm not going to sue you, okay? And there's licenses that go in every direction, because parties are all doing different things and you need these licenses to do things. So I don't even really look at that so much, as the license grants To me it's who has the obligation contractually to do things right, to vote resources, to be diligent, to execute stuff like that's really important.

Nouhad Husseini: 38:18

The other is decision making right, the governance right. It's like at the end of the day everyone says, well, we're going to sit down and we're going to agree on what to do, you know, but always I mean maybe one out of a hundred times you know there's an exception, but 99 out of 101 party at the end of the day gets to decide what to do. If there's a dispute over the budget, there's a dispute over a plan, you know you've escalated. Whatever someone ends up deciding, if you can't function without you can't really live with this stalemate. Sometimes you see deals with that, but again it's weird and it's very rare. And so that you know really I look at that okay who really is the final, final say at the end of the day.

Nouhad Husseini: 38:59

You know that really matters a lot to me in terms of you know what the deal is right, and then it just is there, are there, even in the last bucket is like are there even ongoing activities by the seller? Right? Because the seller sometimes is like, hey, here's a license to my patent, right, come with it. You guys don't need us anymore. You know, you know how to synthesize this thing, you know how to conjugate this thing. I'm doing nothing, you know. I just am giving you, I'm just collecting a check, and you know that that, to me, matters in terms of it's just really a collaboration. Right, the word collaboration gets thrown around a lot, but to me, what collaboration means is the seller is actually doing stuff of real importance and criticality to the project.

Nouhad Husseini: 39:45

And that's not always the case, right? Because when we want to do a collaboration, then we need to really look hard at the people. You know who are. Who's going to be doing the work? What's their track record? Do they have the resources? Do they have the aligned vision? Or they got 50 other things they want to be doing? Are they motivated, you know? But if it's not a collaboration because they're not doing anything, then that stuff doesn't matter, right, it's just. Then it's about like, how good is the technology? What kind of deal are we getting? Are there other risks? What's, you know, blah, blah, blah. So, like those three, I guess I don't know dimensions to me, you know, if you study a deal and you think about it that way, it's a much more you know, clear way to think about. What is this, what's really going on in this deal?

Matthew Pillar: 40:29

Yeah, yeah. How much foresight do you apply, like you talk about collaboration and what collaboration truly means, and if the if the seller isn't really really collaborating, is that a potential pitfall where you can find yourself in a bad deal? Like, in other words, like you know, there's a intended, obviously an intended outcome to this partnership, this collaboration, and should we go commercial, you know, should there be a ton of money to be made on this collaboration? But you know the collaboration isn't a truly collaboration. Does that, does that sit wrong?

Nouhad Husseini: 41:05

No, I don't think so. I think a lot of it where things get screwed up is misaligned expectations, like in so many things in life. You know, people enter into these deals thinking it's going to go one way and we thought we had this agreement at the beginning that this is how it's going to all work out, and it turns out like oh no, no, actually I had a very different intention. I never intended for you guys to play a big role here. We were always going to lead this particular activity and when you get that kind of misalignment of what people thought they were either buying or getting in return and what they actually get, like that's when the friction really starts happening, and that's something I see all the time.

Nouhad Husseini: 41:42

You know that doesn't get enough attention. Time is just like let's just get in management's together, let's just go through this somewhat mundane activity of why are we doing this? Can we all just be on the same page? What are we trying to achieve? You know, because sometimes you just start running, you do the deal and you run into it and you find out we weren't even really on the same page all along.

Matthew Pillar: 42:02

Yeah.

Nouhad Husseini: 42:03

You know. So that's a big one for sure. It's just the misalignment of expectations, more than anything.

Matthew Pillar: 42:10

How involved are you, like sort of post contractually? How involved do you remain in collaborative? You know whatever, when you want to ascribe to it right Certain collaborations or partnerships or whatever.

Nouhad Husseini: 42:22

Not very much. I mean, like most groups, we have a dedicated function. It's like full time job is just to make sure these collaborations work well and we're communicating and everyone's doing what they're supposed to be doing and resolving dispute. I mean that really is a full time job and takes a dedicated set of expertise.

Nouhad Husseini: 42:38

You know, having said that, you know these deals are. You know living things. You know things change, people change, data emerges. We want to do this, so we never contemplated. You know this would ever happen. You know good, sometimes good, sometimes bad. You want to expand, you need to. You know shut down. So that was one interesting learning for me, you know, just in my career, is just, you do these deals and they never stop evolving. And you know living and so, in some ways, you know it's when those moments happen, when it's like we need to pivot, we need to reassess this, where you know I or my team will get back involved and try to think about how to revise the deal, how to improve the deal you know, what have those experiences taught you about the actual business development part of it, like the way earlier stage?

Matthew Pillar: 43:26

how have those experiences sort of formed up or shaped your approach? You know pre pre deal, yeah you know what I mean. Like what, yeah what do you look into? What have you learned to look for or to be on the lookout for?

Nouhad Husseini: 43:43

Well, I mean, when, when you're doing these deals and certainly in my early days, I had the strong tendency and there's always this tendency as a dealmaker to try to think about, you know, when you're sitting down writing these contracts, what are all these different scenarios, what could happen, and how do we contemplate that, how do we solve for that? You know what, if you know in, you know these corner cases like that terminology gets used all the time and dealmaking oh, this is a corner case, stop solving for the corner case.

Matthew Pillar: 44:11

And well, for those of us who aren't dealmakers, describe the corner case.

Nouhad Husseini: 44:16

What even know where the heck that terminology comes. I think it's a consulting term. But like. What it means is like, I guess, if you think about a box of possible outcomes, like it's way in the corner, like it's highly unlikely to ever occur, that's what it's Okay. Yeah, it's funny because I hear that's thrown around so often. I assume that everybody just uses that word all the time in their everyday life.

Matthew Pillar: 44:34

I make no assumptions.

Nouhad Husseini: 44:36

No, I'm sure some console invented that word once upon a time. So we'll blame the Kinsey or whoever BCG for that. But my point is there's this tendency often in dealmaking to try to solve for every eventuality, every corner case, whatever. Which great, fantastic. If you can try to do that, like great. It paves the way in the future.

Nouhad Husseini: 44:56

But what I've learned, you know, to your question is like that's impossible and it's a waste of time and in many ways it's counterproductive to kind of getting the deal done in the first place. You know, because these deals have a cadence, they have a momentum, they have an energy and, just like anyone who's done deals buying a house or whatever you know, time is your enemy right. People lose interest, they get distracted. Other things, you know, look interesting to them. So when you spend, you know, nine months trying to solve every possible little scenario, which none of them are going to likely happen, the deal may not happen in the first place.

Nouhad Husseini: 45:30

So trying to get more comfortable with some of that ambiguity and leaving things a bit open, knowing that we're going to have to come back together anyway to renegotiate and agree on stuff, that's been a kind of, I think, an evolution in my approach and thinking as a BD person is just, maybe we don't need to solve everything right now. You know we'll take some risk, right, we'll take some risk knowing that we might get some suboptimal solution later. Right, because as a buyer, that's when you have the leverage you want my big check, you know. Agree to all my provisions. Now it's like, well, all right, I'm willing to take the risk that I'm going to get a worse deal on this future unknown point, but that's okay, you know we'll solve it, you know. So just that mindset has changed for me.

Matthew Pillar: 46:12

Who do you, who do you want at the table, like from a, I guess, a persona or titles perspective, who do you want at the table to really do the due diligence that you expect of yourself when you're exploring a deal?

Nouhad Husseini: 46:28

So specifically around the due diligence piece of it, Well, yeah, maybe walk us through the progression.

Matthew Pillar: 46:34

You know what I mean. Like when you first engage, when you engage in conversation, you know at all, like with a company that you're interested in partnering with. You know, and again, I'm sure that there are several different permutations, but generally, like, who do you want at the table?

Matthew Pillar: 46:53

Well, like I said, that might change as you go down the line, right, You're like it's the point where you want to talk to some like lead scientists, maybe I don't know but like walk us through sort of that progression of who's involved and who. Who who's involved in an ideal new head Hussaini situation.

Nouhad Husseini: 47:08

Yeah, I mean, I don't know who coined this, but it's apropos where a lot of people use this. This kind of want, find, get is like the you know rubric that you know all BD groups do. Right, what do we want? The strategy, the fine, the sourcing, the diligence, the get, the transaction piece of it. The hardest part and what I spend most of my time and energy doing, and the most important part is the want. Right, it's the internal conversations of like, what are we even doing and why are we doing it? And especially at Regenerals, where we don't have these master strategies and goals and we need this many phase three products and this much revenue, it's purely opportunistic. It's what are we even doing? And so to your question of like, who do I want to need at the party for that part of the process? It's a champion. It's an influential person that can help me and my team like drive, alignment of. Yeah, this is what we want and we really mean it.

Nouhad Husseini: 48:09

We're serious, right, because what happens a lot of times in deal making it's like you know, you're half serious and that's the worst thing possible. You run down the path with only half conviction and you change your mind. You don't know why you're doing it in the first place and it's a disaster. The other side's pissed off. He wasted their time. They could have been doing another deal, you know. So avoiding that to me is like goal number one. You know what are we doing? Let's be damn sure we know exactly what we're doing and why, and we all love it and we're all going to be pissed if we don't. If we don't get this deal. We're going to be really sad, right? So how do we find those kinds of opportunities? So, finding a senior R&D person that's who it is in Regeneron. Those are the influential people. It's not going to be the commercial director that says we have to do this. It's some leader in R&D that says I believe in this science, this is game changing stuff and the team is really really good on the other side. That's who I want there.

Nouhad Husseini: 48:58

Yeah, the diligence piece is fairly straightforward, right, there's a lot of people in the industry that kind of know what they're doing and been there, done that, developed drugs. So if you run a good process there, you know you're probably going to discover and find out what's there. I'm not too worried about the diligence piece and then the transaction piece. I think the key element there, honestly, is like decision makers, because in the moment you know you have to make these tough calls about am I going to give on this point? Or you know what matters Right and who has that level of judgment, who has that level of seniority and decision making authority.

Nouhad Husseini: 49:38

Sometimes you negotiate with people that are kind of go-betweens, which is, I can't agree to this, I can't agree to this, I need to go check with my management, and you can't get anything done in that kind of situation. So you need empowered people that have the judgment and the authority to kind of sit there. And you know, sometimes there's a deal point that's so big like, hey, we're going to add $100 million. Okay, I can't agree to that, I got to go back to the executive team or whatever. But having somebody that can be a real decision maker at the table, hey, we can agree to this. If we come to a solution. The answer is yes, right, having that kind of a partner on our side that can do that, I think, is critical.

Matthew Pillar: 50:17

Yeah, we're running short on time here, neuad. I just looked at the clock and I was shocked at how much time we spent talking already, and I feel like we could go on and on and on, but I have a few more questions for you. I just want to wrap things up here. So one of them would be advice. You know the majority of our audience is new and emerging leaders of new and emerging biopharma companies, many of whom perhaps have not experienced any opportunity at partnership or collaboration. So what advice would you have I guess you know high level advice would you have for leaders of new biopharma companies who are either dabbling in or perhaps even being approached? What's your advice for them heading into a potential discussion around partnership?

Nouhad Husseini: 51:09

Well, one thing I would say is just kind of self-awareness, right, and just having a very objective, try as much as you can. It's hard, especially for kind of founders, to think what they're working on is the greatest thing in the world and it's going to. And you have to be a cheerleader and a fundraiser, and that's kind of part and parcel for emerging biotech CEO. Right, you don't take that job unless you're in that kind of cheerleader, optimist kind of mindset. But when it comes to kind of deal making, I think you need to kind of check some of that at the door and just have this honest assessment. Because sometimes that's right, sometimes you really are working on something that is in the top 10 percentile of stuff that buyers want, and if that's the case, it's going to be a different experience and a different process and maybe different answer to your question in terms of like what to do. But in the other 90% of the case, where you're onto something it's good but like, let's be honest, and you should be honest with yourself it's not the top 10% crown jewels of what's out there. It's good, it's useful, but when you're in that kind of situation, my advice would be like, just get started right. Just get something going because you want to.

Nouhad Husseini: 52:20

These partnerships are as I was talking about earlier. They're living things. If it's going well, they're going to expand. There's going to be more opportunities. So one thing is like try not to sell the farm and bundle all this stuff together. If you can, in your first deal, start small. Get to know a partner. You're going to find maybe some of these partners aren't the right fit for you guys in one way or shape or form, and so I guess that boils down to that Narrow scope for that first deal. If you're in that other 10% category, okay fine, go big. You're going to do your big auction You're going to find get Merck to pay you $10 billion for your ADCs or whatever, but that's a, I think. So that's the first thing. Just figure out where you are on that spectrum and have that honest assessment.

Matthew Pillar: 53:08

Yeah. Are there resources for companies that may not have like good season business development chops heading into conversations like this or opportunities like this? Like is this? I mean I often have conversations with CFOs for hire for lack of a better term like contract. Are there contract brokers, negotiators and biotech that can help small companies?

Nouhad Husseini: 53:33

You know, I think a lot of these small companies just can benefit a lot from. I mean, there's some tremendous external legal counsel out there that are really, really sophisticated and good, and, you know, not just from the legal side, but they've done so many deals, they know the business aspects too. So I think a senior you know executive, a CEO or whoever partnering with one of the you know top law firms that does a lot of these deals, that can go a long, long way. You don't necessarily need to have you know a beady person there, because with that legal expertise what they need is guidance from the business. You know, what are you guys trying to achieve, ceo? What are your goals here? Can you help me understand what you want out of this deal and I can kind of get that for you?

Nouhad Husseini: 54:22

You know so the beady person obviously is instrumental in terms of like building these relationships to begin with right and trying to, you know, pitch the story and build connections and build credibility. You know all that's important for these small companies. But if you're asking like, hey, I'm already past that and I'm at the moment where I just need to get a deal done and get a good deal done, well I don't know that you need to go hire like a beady for hire negotiator. I think you can hire a top legal firm and then have the CEO just partner with that you know attorney to work out the deal.

Matthew Pillar: 54:58

You mentioned earlier the scenario where you know maybe a founder has an emotional attachment to his molecule or his project, his technology. You know there's that emotion. You also mentioned earlier that you want to get involved on projects where there's energy and momentum and excitement on your team and you said you know I want to be involved in the deals where we're going to be sad if we lose them. You're talking about emotions. This is a very basic and fundamental question. But how do you do this? What advice do you have for folks to, I guess, shelve emotion when necessary in deal making? You're, you strike me as an. You know you're energetic, you're animated, like when you get a role in this subject matter. You're energetic and animated, like there's passion there. I imagine there are times where you need to set that aside before you step through the door. What do you do to just kind of chill out and do business? It's funny.

Nouhad Husseini: 56:10

A lot of people you know kind of say something different than what you just said. They kind of look at me as very cool, calm, like almost to a fault, like they don't know how to read me. You know, I get that kind of.

Matthew Pillar: 56:20

Well, the first time, full Disclosure. The first time I talked to you, you know, as I said, alan was adamant that I spent time with you, and the first time I talked to you I was like you know, I don't know. This guy seems like he's. I think you were walking like on the streets of New York when I was talking.

Nouhad Husseini: 56:34

I was kind of a half-thrilled by that.

Matthew Pillar: 56:36

A bit preoccupied, I know, but I was like I don't know. But now, like now that we've kind of gotten into the role of this conversation, like I said, I see this passion and this animation. So are you saying that generally you're just my?

Nouhad Husseini: 56:49

general demeanor, I think, is like more of a cool. My emotions don't really come through in a lot of moments. Sometimes I get, you know, upset if I feel like someone's being unreasonable or unfair or deliberately trying to cause a problem. And it's sure, like anybody, I'm a human. So, anyway, I think part of it is just like it comes kind of naturally to my personality. But I don't know that emotions are so bad. I don't know that it's so critical that you check that at the door, as long as you, you know they're coming from the right place, right? That's where a lot of it's about.

Nouhad Husseini: 57:20

You know what is the motivation here? Is this a selfish motivation? Are you trying to? You know look, you know tough, are you trying to look smart, like that kind of stuff? You don't need that. But if you're trying to really get the best outcome for your company and you just pat, that's fine, welcome, that you know. So I try to look beyond that and it's just like what is the really? What's driving this person? You know what's driving us. What is our motivations? Pure and noble, you know. Like that I can owe a lot if that's the case.

Matthew Pillar: 57:46

Yeah, very good you, are you? Not that I expect you to disclose this publicly on this podcast, but do you have any immediate plans for Newhad and Sany? Are you going to stay at Regeneron for a while? You're going to go lead your own, lead your own biotech. Someday, become a CEO, a founder.

Nouhad Husseini: 58:08

Yeah, well, I mean it's interesting. I think at the beginning of the discussion we talked about when I came to Regeneron and my plan. You know, when I first got here I thought I'd be here for like two or three years. I didn't think there was any chance I would still be at Regeneron and my thought was I'll go there and I'll end up going to some small biotech and rise up the ranks and, you know, be a CEO of a small biotech one day. That's kind of the natural evolution for a lot of people in my shoes. But you know the way things have gone at Regeneron just the growth of the company and the unique culture here and the unique opportunity to be creative and the kinds of Like I was describing if I was at a company where it was. These are the four things you know. And I was handed a playbook. You know, go get these four things. I would be bored by now, you know. But that's not this, you know.

Nouhad Husseini: 58:52

And the job here is like you have this blank canvas, you have this incredible, you know substrate of R&D and we have all kinds of challenges and opportunities. Help us solve those in the creative way, you know, most creative way possible. So, like as a deal maker, it's like, you know, dream come true. I'm kind of in, you know, in a playground here. So from that standpoint it's fun. You know I'm not bored and I'm always challenged, which surprises me. You know, at this stage, after doing this, you know for over a decade and kind of the same job. So I guess, with that aspect in mind, like, yeah, I'm not eager to leave because this is a really rewarding and fun, you know place to be. You know long term, you know I can see myself, you know, in a senior role at a company. It's got to be the right situation.

Nouhad Husseini: 59:36

You know I don't look at myself as, like you know, the true entrepreneur that's going to take some technology out of Columbia and bootstrap my way to it. You know, $5 million seed round and, you know, build the first employees like that's not what gets me jazzed. I'm not a creator from scratch. You know I like solving business problems and helping science move forward right, helping science move forward by finding the right, you know, financing sources and partnerships and complimentary scientific expertise Like that's what gets me going.

Nouhad Husseini: 1:00:10

How do I help, you know, see some science actually get to the end because of my ingenuity and creativity, and you know if I can, you know if I can have a bigger impact on doing that. You know, and it feel like, hey, my impact is even bigger, you know, than I can have in my role at Regeneron and something like that came along. Yeah, I might be interested in doing that, but it's again it'd be like not. It'd be kind of like how I ended up at Regeneron. Something would fall in my lap and it's like this is the perfect set of circumstances. I can't say no to it, so it's possible.

Matthew Pillar: 1:00:42

Yeah, very good. I didn't expect you to tell me that you had imminent plans to go do something else, but I appreciate the transparency there. This has been terrific Like this has been a great getting to know you conversation and I think you've also shared a ton of good insight just into the thought process, thought processes around deal making. I thank you one for entertaining my often ill formed questions and I think I'd like to have you back on the pod sometime, sometime soon, and talk a little bit more strategically about some of the things that new and emerging biotechs can be taking advantage of in the market right now or, you know, discussion around some of the market conditions that are impacting the decisions that they're making, if you're game for that. But in the meantime, I think this is terrific Like this is super, super insightful conversation. I appreciate you coming on.

Nouhad Husseini: 1:01:38

I appreciate you having me. Hopefully the audience thought it was interesting here a little bit about my background and hopefully there's some good tidbits in there. But I'd be happy to come back on and keep the conversation going down the road. That'd be fun.

Matthew Pillar: 1:01:52

I appreciate it. Thanks, new hat. All right, thank you. So that's Regeneron SVP and head of business development and corporate strategy. Nouhad Husseini. I'm Matt Pillar and this is the business of biotech. We're produced by bioprocess online and sponsored by Cytiva, whose support of new and emerging biopharma companies is on full display at Cytiva. com/emergingbiotech. If you like listening in on conversations with leaders like new had, subscribe to the business of biotech podcast and sign up for our newsletter at bioprocessonline. com/bob. Also, be sure to leave us a review, let us know how we're doing and, as always, thanks for listening.