While you might be aware that Sail Biomedicines was just formed up in Q4 of last year, the product of Flagship Pioneering’s decision to merge Senda Biosciences and Laronde, two of its programmable medicine platform companies. What you likely haven’t heard is the inside story on how the merger was executed, how the two companies are integrating their talent, IP, and resources, and what Sail Biomedicines CEO Dr. Guillaume Pfefer and team are currently doing to take the fruits of the company’s platform into the clinic. On this episode of the Business of Biotech, Dr. Pfefer takes us under the hood of Sail Biomedicines and its mission to marry evolution and AI to develop programmable medicines based on eRNA.
You've listened along for years -- now you can watch along, too! Go to bioprocessonline.com/solution/the-business-of-biotech-podcast, where you can put faces to voices as you watch hundreds of interviews with the world's best biotech builders. While you're there, subscribe to the #BusinessofBiotech newsletter at bioprocessonline.com/bob for more real, honest, transparent interactions with the leaders of emerging biotech. It's a once-per-month dose of insight and intel that you'll actually look forward to receiving! Check it out at bioprocessonline.com/bob!
While you might be aware that Sail Biomedicines was just formed up in Q4 of last year, the product of Flagship Pioneering’s decision to merge Senda Biosciences and Laronde, two of its programmable medicine platform companies. What you likely haven’t heard is the inside story on how the merger was executed, how the two companies are integrating their talent, IP, and resources, and what Sail Biomedicines CEO Dr. Guillaume Pfefer and team are currently doing to take the fruits of the company’s platform into the clinic. On this episode of the Business of Biotech, Dr. Pfefer takes us under the hood of Sail Biomedicines and its mission to marry evolution and AI to develop programmable medicines based on eRNA.
You've listened along for years -- now you can watch along, too! Go to bioprocessonline.com/solution/the-business-of-biotech-podcast, where you can put faces to voices as you watch hundreds of interviews with the world's best biotech builders. While you're there, subscribe to the #BusinessofBiotech newsletter at bioprocessonline.com/bob for more real, honest, transparent interactions with the leaders of emerging biotech. It's a once-per-month dose of insight and intel that you'll actually look forward to receiving! Check it out at bioprocessonline.com/bob!
The business of biotech is produced by LifeScienceConnect and its community of learning, solving and sourcing resources for biopharma decision makers. If you're working on biologics process development and manufacturing challenges, you need to swing by bioprocessonlinecom. If you're trying to stay ahead of the Cell or Gene Therapy curve, visit cellenginecom. When it's time to map out your clinical course, let clinicalleadercom help, and if optimizing outsourcing decisions is what you're after, check out outsourcepharmacom. We're LifeScienceConnect and we're here to help.
Matt Pillar:On my swing through San Francisco, I had the pleasure of sitting down to record episodes with a handful of flagship pioneering CEO partners, including today's guest Sail Biomedicines CEO, dr Guillaume Pfefer. You're likely aware that Sail was just formed up in Q4 of last year, the product of flagships decision to merge Senda Bios ciences and La Ronde, two of its programmable medicine platform companies. What you likely haven't heard is the inside story and how the merger was executed, how the two companies are integrating their talent, ip and resources, and what Dr Pfefer and team are currently doing to take the fruits of the company's platform into the clinic. I'm Matt Pillar. This is the business of biotech and on today's episode we're getting under the hood of Cell Biomedicine's with Dr Guillaume Pfefer. Let's give it a listen. When did you come here from France?
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:23 years ago 23 years.
Matt Pillar:Yeah Well, you're holding on to that accent nicely, I know.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:Unfortunately we die with the accent, but I decided to become American. The kids speak beautiful remote accent English, but I would travel with my wife with some very big French accent.
Matt Pillar:Yeah, I know a lot of folks who have come over from various places, who have lost it over time.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:For some reason it's not in me.
Matt Pillar:That's good, hang on to that. I'm going to ask you questions about you and how you got into science and that kind of thing in a bit, but I want to start with the more recent news. Well, we'll start with the Q4 news. So in Q4 flagship which, by the way, I'm a huge fan of flagship- Great. As someone who covers the space, it's just such a target rich environment and the people are terrific, friendly, easy to work with, transparent, so good company.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:There's a ton of energy at time in the ecosystem and we are a few less what it comes to trying to make an impact in this world, not only on the F side, but probably aware of the sustainability effort we are looking to get into sustainability of pesticide and pesticide and contribute to health, and not only human health. Yeah, so I'm very excited by how bold and why we are in all views of bringing science to the benefit of humanity and health. So it's exciting to be part of the ecosystem.
Matt Pillar:Certainly, is yeah. So in Q4 last year it was Cenda and Laurent right, that's right, Mine to form cell biomedicine. So let's start there. What was the back?
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:story. We were just talking about being bold and being science and having a fearless and big ambition of making an impact in humankind. We have come to the realization of being in the field as flagship for quite some time. But we are as an industry we want to bring, of transforming deeply what we can do for patients with fully program of medicine. If you look at the arc of industry, we've been as an industry trying to do more. We forgot to raising the productivity of our discovery, to development, to license product through different ways. But last one, we've accessed in the genetic codes and building companies such as Moderna. That's program today, part of medicine In the case of Moderna and RNA.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:But you can see over in the island. You can mention obviously biotech and now Pfizer on the mRNA side just announced we as a first CRISPR medicine on the market, also coming from this era of programming molecule. But we just cannot program medicine just yet. But it's just a matter of time now. It's not a matter of if anymore.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:With that context in mind I'm knowing that we've been in this biotech industry for quite some time and contributing and leading some of his transformation we come to the realization that we had in the portfolio already the maturing technology that, if combined, could create this acceleration into the future, into this era of program of medicine. And we made a bold move to combine two of the largest and most promising companies around and sender biosciences. We decided to put it together because they have reached the maturity and we thought the time had come to play a very big move into accelerating our industry into the era of program of medicine. And I will give you much more of the technology of stacking, if you want. Or science advance, yeah, we'll get into that, into that for sure.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:But maybe one word and one sentence more exactly summarize the bold ambition. Here is vision statement of the company that now you can appreciate with what I'm telling you with regard to this arc of the industry that led us to this industry being at the verge of fully program of medicine. The statement for vision is generating tomorrow, medicine today, through the language of life, and we're seeing medicine, not just part of medicine, and we're not even exploration, looking at discovering, but generating. Give you a sense of productivity, predictability, acceleration of number of programs that can move and actually and we're very excited diversity of disease that can get into down the road.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:So yeah, very big move, amazing opportunity, and we hope to be contributing to making this industry a more productive one with really portable medicine.
Matt Pillar:Amazing opportunity, but a lot of work to. I mean, anytime you bring two companies together, there are going to be things that are there and abundance or maybe too much right, and there are going to be things that are missing. So let's talk from your leadership perspective. Let's talk a little bit about that.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:What was?
Matt Pillar:we'll start with, maybe, the upshot what was synergistic and what did you have in abundance by bringing the company?
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:Yes, that's a very good question. Well, what I can tell you is it makes sense for everybody involved Board member, all of the investor, of course, or ecosystem and decision maker and flagship. But so team and I'm mentioning the team last but importantly as you merge, company doesn't make sense, you're fighting against. It doesn't make sense to put this thing together. In this case, alpha, the battle is already won because for everybody involved it makes sense. Why it makes sense? Because we are synergistic more than overlapping.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:One company was advanced with one of the best next generation RNA proposition on market, with circular RNA that we coordinate and that's RNA. We're going to give you much more details about it, but it explains the programation of RNA vastly beyond what is followed today with linear RNA. This company was looking at delivery of RNA, which is the basic LNP. That again, we can maybe cut back to the future. So commoditize delivery, very advanced RNA with and less RNA. On one side, which is the long side, the center side, we had exactly the opposite the very novel way to actually program deployment of RNA or delivery of RNA. We have a very commoditized mRNA technology attached to it. All together now we have the most comprehensive and most advanced entirely programmable RNA medicine in the industry, with linear RNA, serocular RNA, lnp and natural nanoparticle all together.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:So that makes sense. Where we have actually synergy is some of this position. Obviously that's where we have in redundancy and we've been able to organize ourselves to move through that transition quite swiftly and we are now very much in position of executing the integration. Three month in is almost behind us at this stage. Yeah, we're quite excited to be going after this. It makes sense vision that we all have and put the energy into building more than integrating. So the battle is born when you are actually a purpose that makes sense for everybody. We have been quite excited to see that everywhere in the organization.
Matt Pillar:You use the keyword integration. So when two companies merge, integration needs to happen at every level systems like operating systems, office systems, people and when that integration happens, that's where sometimes what's missing reveals itself. That's where the sweat actually comes in. You got to roll up your sleeves and make things happen and so walk us through that. When you began that integration of the companies in earnest two part question I'd like to know what it looks like. Did you bring these people and facilities physically together? And then two how did you muscle through that actual marriage? I'm married. I know you got a muscle.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:It is a work of every day on both sides of the table. It's a work that requires two ways of collaboration, which actually brings me to something which is important here is when you have a common sense of purpose that is clear for everybody and you manage to unite energy behind it, again you cover a lot of the very necessary energy that you need to absorb the change and have people, including myself, involved in two fees transaction and integration, putting the extra effort to bring it together because you believe it. You believe in what we're trying to do. So that was very important to appreciate. As we announced to the team, both company announced at the same time. To bring you into the story and what happened exactly that day where we make the announcement, we engage separately. The two teams explained that we were merging and brought the same day two teams together and celebrated and started asking the question and, of course, starting with our own energy beyond the purpose and realizing we had won that battle. It makes sense for everybody we talked to.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:I went through another merger situation at the start of my journey with flagship where it was making not as much sense and had to fight for months and months actually more than a year to be able to even reschedule the vision, to ignite the energy of one team behind one single purpose. Here it was, at the beginning, pretty clear for everybody. So now of course, you have a mini greedy of integrating system. We have, of course, two different system. We have two different human resource policies. We have a bunch of legal policies and documents that needed to be harmonized. We have two sites and we won one site. All of that is certainly being done and prosecuted today, but again by a team of people that believe in the vision and want to get at it and actually want to get done with it.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:That's why, I got mad To move forward into building the company.
Matt Pillar:Right yeah, when you're trying to do great things in science and medicine and you have a disruptive business challenge to solve, ie a merger. Just give us some pretend, like you're speaking to someone who is on the cusp of seeing that for the first time Right. Yeah, some advice on how to maintain that mission driven focus and not lose sight of that while you're distracted by this disruption of a merger.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:Yes, so I'm over a sense of purpose, which I think is absolutely critical. So I'm going to put it on the other, on the side, and get into another key element Directness, transparency or communication, and over communication is key. You have to make yourself and the leadership team available to the entire team and it has to be a two way street as fast delivering what we're trying to do and receiving from the team what they are actually experiencing. You also need to build these highly collaborative which we have been in the two companies. So that was very nice in place, but it has to be a collaborative work all the way.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:You just cannot integrate from the top down, every putting into a gauge and you don't want bystander to sit in the arena and look at what's going on on the field.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:You want everybody to basically get at it. So now from that it become harnessing the energy of people willing to put the X-ray to get it done with integration, while actually keeping building the organization. So the key additional point that I want to bring to you beside a very strong sense of purpose and make sure that everybody said, is directness, transparency and over communication and creating a very at least as my style as a leader and highly collaborative engagement that give a voice to everybody and create these ways to listen to everybody, especially when you bring new team members coming from two different organization. But actually we have to work together so the sooner you start is processing or listening and discovering each other and respecting what everybody bring to the table and engage with team to building together a company. That we have now decided to merge is a critical part of, and over critical part of, what you hope to be kept as we move from integration to building the company Right Right to work.
Matt Pillar:Yeah, how many people are involved in the right now?
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:we are about a little bit less than 200 people, which is significant higher than what we had on two companies. And of course, I bring the challenge of two sites and we have now announced, actually, that we can be moving once in a side, which I'm really looking forward to because it's going to continue to jump the organization to one organization right once, your site right now. Right now, when I'm very happy to see, as I go into the two different sites of the legacy company, I'm seeing familiar face from one company in the other side and vice versa. So I'm already seeing that this really collaborative work is already happening on the ground and I just cannot wait to see everybody on the one roof. Yeah, fortunately, we made the decision now that we're going to be one single site and already preparing to move.
Matt Pillar:Yeah, so will you utilize one of the existing facilities?
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:or it's going to be a new one for us, but one that is very well known in your ecosystem. Flagship, which is also one of the things that I want to bring to the table, is being part of his ecosystem is absolutely unvariable in so many dimension, including site selection, and to very, quite quickly bring a team into one fantastic site with a lot of capabilities and amenities that are needed to a purpose or science, into a product and and medicine for patients.
Matt Pillar:Why were you chosen to be the leader of the new entity?
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:It's a tough question, you know. I can use it as a positive or negative way to answer question by question. Why me, in a guilty kind of way. I'm not insinuating that it's a question you ask yourself every morning, when you wake up.
Matt Pillar:No, Well, I mean you can get into a little bit of your background, if you'd like. I mean, you came to flagship in 2020, is that correct? 2020,? Yeah, as a partner and CEO.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:Being a partner, which is how we set up this world.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:Now, to be CEO and partner get you to precisely be able to be involved in looking at the full ecosystem and when we saw opportunities, we can have a voice and engage the rest of the ecosystem and flagship to see how we could collaborate between companies, for instance, or in this case, could companies together.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:So I do remember that discussion more than a year ago that it may make sense to bring these two companies together. We were probably over thinking that the combination was so extraordinary and synergistic, but at the right time it would have made sense to do it. As we went through the process, again in a very collaborative way with several colleagues in the flagship ecosystem, I could have been dropped from being the CEO of the organizations and I feel very humbled and trusted and fortunate to be coaching the journey in this merger organization. For sure, but it had made sense for quite some time and we had a long way into putting these companies together, Maybe when I bring to the table, especially in these circumstances of igniting energy and being contagious, but I believe that we have to start in great it's needed.
Matt Pillar:I get that sense very much. It's very. Your enthusiasm is I am.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:It's only one life, so we're trying to live it with fun and an impact, and we're so fortunate to be in this industry where the impact is better in life of everybody, including ourselves, and we get to the point of becoming patient.
Matt Pillar:For sure. As I mentioned, you were with GSK prior to coming to flagship. What prompted the move from? I always ask this question. It's not uncommon at all for executives to lead big bio for new emerging, exciting opportunities but at the same time, regardless of the fact that it's not uncommon, it's still leaving a very relatively safe place where you can stay there for life if you want to. So what was in you? What was in you that prompted you to join flagship? It's the second time.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:I'm doing it. I was raised at Sanofi or what had become Sanofi from on Poulenc I want to say Sanofi. I then jumped into a biotech and brought back to the industry A little bit, despite what I really wanted to do. I was very happy in this small, fast moving environment. But I discovered all of my 15 years at Sanofi with my first biotech. But I could see the impact we would make at GSK and we can come back to that With this very unique opportunity we had. But after four years I was really looking at getting back to something a little bit more speedy, if you want and energy.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:I think to me, having done it twice, the balance is a little bit of a pendulum. I think we've said we're getting into something else that I didn't experience before because of the size of the organization and the capital available to the organization. But your trading impact or speed in my own experience, having done it twice, big impact in large pharma, especially when you get into the late stage, commercialization close to market, close to patient. The science that emerge from externally or internally becomes a way to impact massively shareholders and patients, obviously, and you would. Biotech most of us are stuck at the early stage before, most of us failing and a few of us have turned over 10, 15 years having the chance to put one product maybe on a market platform company and much more to offer, but very few have multiple products going to. So you have speed, but without being packed on biotech and you are absolutely not speed but beautiful impact on the pharma side of it, at least from my experience.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:I don't want to claim that it is a general rules, but it's what I experienced. I've been a little bit in this pendulum and I'm very happy with my opportunity to join flagship, to be back to speed and with sales. I really think we have impacted speed in one single company and I'm really looking forward to impacting the industry with this transformation into fully programmed medicine, and I want to do that with speed, which is the two more medicine today, which is actually indicating a very strong sense of urgency why patients will wait to be treated if you could bring science to them. Why don't we try to do it faster, increasing the predictability of the outcome which is solving for their needs?
Matt Pillar:You mentioned your time in Sanofi and, from what I understand, you spent quite a bit of that time, or at least a portion of that time, in Mexico. That's right. Yeah, french, obviously, so you did work in France. Now you're here in the States. You've been all over the world and I worked all over the world in this industry and I remember I had a Vakavijian on the show a few months ago. He's fantastic and he spent quite a bit of time talking about the immigrant mentality and that culture at flagship.
Matt Pillar:I mean you sort of have that in Spain. Given that you've done work all over the world in this industry, how does that sort of shape, that global perspective, shape your leadership style? Why is it important?
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:First. I'm also an immigrant to these countries, maybe like I'm back at many others, including you all in the US, past generation. We're discussing about your route as well. Either way, being immigrant and first generation bring you in that space where you need to somewhat reinvent yourself. Through my experience, besides being an immigrant and first generation in the US my experience in Mexico, for instance, and also professionally and I would also bring my start in the US there's something very again for me that happened as I put myself in a totally different environment starting with and it was Mexico, but it was the US somewhat. I would use Mexico as an example no language, you don't know the food, you don't know the people, you don't know the culture. You start. You have two ways to do it. You want to bring what you come from into the mix and you're trapped into walking and living in an island, which is where you're coming from, or you open up, and you open up through the pressure of not knowing what to do, and for me, it was exactly what happened in the US as well.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:When I immigrated, I had no clue what I was doing. Language was not so great. I had a very French accent that I lost since I was a child, you could say, but Mexico I didn't speak the language. Even my first day, and my first day actually I was introduced to my predecessor for a firewall party and we had 250 of my future team members in front of me and I was expected to speak in Spanish.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:I have no clue and I actually had to decide am I going to speak in French and English and impose that to them, or am I going to say I don't know your language? I'm going to need your help to grow into being able to be part of you and part of this team? And I decided I remember Vivi Dive, it was me and I was somewhat frightened but, on the other hand, welcoming the opportunity, and I said I feel like a baby. I'm going to reborn into an environment, into a language, into a culture that I want to appreciate and go into. And it's very refreshing. It gives you a probability, it gives you a sense that, especially in leadership, that you need people more than they need you.
Matt Pillar:Right, yeah, that's what you would say. I mean, it had to be daunting.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:And you put yourself in that situation. So you I've been tested for this several steps and you have to find in you how you address the adversity and the novelty of a situation. And I found my way. It's just my own way of processing and leaving the experience, but it gives me today, and what I hope to be, a very open mind and welcoming mind to any voice. I have no problem with diversity. I don't even understand why I'm making an issue. I do understand that we're biased, a big problem to solve. But I'm not at all, from my experience at the beginning, coming with a fully not too many biases. I probably have my biases there, but for pressure, please experience a lot of my initial bias that's been broken down into pieces and I hope I can bring the sense of inclusiveness in the team. And again, if you bring that plus a clear sense of purpose and you have a talented experience industry veteran around you, it's kind of the limit.
Matt Pillar:Yeah Well, your English is proving itself right now. How's your?
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:Spanish. How's your Spanish?
Matt Pillar:I was proven. All right, I want to spend some time talking about the technology and the platform. So and I guess I'd preface this part of the conversation with the RNA craze, right? You guys are calling it endless RNA, or it seems circular in RNA. It seems as though it's sexy right now to put a shape or a letter in front of RNA and go to market. That is not M like messenger.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:We need another letter messenger.
Matt Pillar:Tell me. Let's start with that. Let's start with a fundamental understanding of why endless RNA. Why endless RNA? What is it and why?
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:We answer with the context of programming the entire medicine. It's also mean that we need to improve the programming of mRNA. We do program mRNA, don't get me wrong. We can encode through a sequence, the translation and ultimately the secretion of given protein by cells by virtue of entering a sequence into the construct of the messenger. Rna linear, but it's act like a switch in and of very fast. So you have a burst of protein expressed and then you don't. Which pharmacology to be speaking limits the applicability in terms of therapeutic area. You can get into two IOC marks and get you in some program that limits the disease you can get into. The quick in and outs may not be enough for a long expression, but you may need a mosephal chronic disease, for instance.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:What we've done with the RNA is adding a dimension of the programmability by prolonging the expression of protein that can still encode into the RNA. So we extending the program of the probability of RNA and improving the theoretical power of RNA the beauty of what we've done at cells. And by combination of these two companies now we're stacking in the same company mRNA and RNA. We can program for quick in and out. We can also with mRNA. We can also program, a more prolonged and trainable pharmacokinetic by virtue of programming in RNA. But it's only part of the story and I hope we can discuss about deployment as well, which is also part of the stacking technology for stacking bacteria. Stacking.
Matt Pillar:Yeah. So what I picked up from reading about you is you've got these three pillars. We were just talking about programmable payloads of endless RNA, programmable nanoparticles and proprietary AI technologies, so does stacking fit in somewhere?
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:Absolutely 300%, because right now what we can do with RNA in general is programming the molecule itself. The 15 years is one of this molecule on the market. So something is missing. We're talking about extending and prolonging the pharmacokinetic of expression of protein. That certainly will help accessing over disease area. That, for one, vaccines that, fortunately, we've been able to crack with mRNA. There is something else going on here. We just cannot bring RNA to the right cell, and that is where we have, also by virtue of combining the two companies, brought another programmable solution. But I'm excited to talk to you about it. Let's do it.
Matt Pillar:Right, get out.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:First, everything is sources of nature, so vision statement is full of language of life. It's all used for us today. That genetic code gives us the ability to program molecules and cell RNA, which will be linear, or endless RNA, as we call it, at cell. But we also found in nature a programming language that helps us to deploy the RNA, or deliver RNA to different cells in a programable way. It turns out, species from all kingdom of life have evolved to do what we're trying to do, theoretically speaking, communicate with each other at cellular level. Species have evolved to defend themselves, to grow and make their ecosystem vibrant, to send molecules to cells, to other species in their immediate surrounding. It's true, in our body we talk about the microbiome as one area. There's a lot going on also in the primary area.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:But we're not able to defend themselves by doing exactly that as a defense mechanism to inject toxins in cells of the pathogenic attacker. They don't run away, they just have to defend themselves. So if these interspecies, intercellar communications everywhere and coming from the views of evolution, and when we looked at it we realized that these communication are enabled with a nano-sized vesicle secreted by species to enable this communication. Guess what these vesicle are chemically encoded, to bring the directionality of the communication, targeting the aspect of it, and they repeat those. So what we spent three years doing in one of our legacy companies is extract this molecular composition from natural nano-vesicle coming from 5pnm of life.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:We have 75,000 absolutely novel molecules in our Atlas that we systematically build and curate and we're playing AI and machine learning to fit very vast design domain, that 5x3 what is possible today with synthetic lipid that are being used for classic LMP, used for any mRNA medicine today. So we're bringing this over the dimension. So all together now you can program everything about the medicine RNA, deployment, RNA. So your AI, machine learning become an integrative generation of medicine, not just generation of RNA. So now the world is fully programmed with the disease it's happening and the idea that we can go faster, bring predictability and get into disease that we cannot go into by bringing RNA or mRNA to cells we cannot reach or repeat those for chronic disease. Open water administration or water administration is not any more efficient. It's becoming a reality.
Matt Pillar:Yeah, the elite, from the scientific part of what you're discussing, you know, molecular discovery across the animal kingdom, to computational biology, ai and machine learning. For some companies, for some people, that's a big leap on many fronts, for many facets. Right, like I mean one. You're marrying science and technology that haven't necessarily played well or at all together historically. So tell me a little bit about that. Like, how have you or how are you at cell sort of integrating those two disciplines of thought? You know you've got to have computational biologists and artificial and technical experts and machine learning folks working in lockstep with you know scientists who get excited about the discovery of, you know, nanoparticles, right, so how do you manage to do that?
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:We do already have a AI machine learning team embedded into one of the legacy companies that has already started to bring the power of these capabilities into the more traditional way to hypothesis driven experience driven way to discover, turn the discovery into generation through computing, and we are bringing this team now to the support of generating transportation or deployment over the day and, ultimately, we want this team to help us to integrate the design and generate the entirety of medicine. There's no reason why to stop at component level. You have to do it like a cell phone in a very integrated level. Yeah, but you're raising a very good question and here I'm going to tell you that I don't know.
Matt Pillar:You're a lot of time away, yeah.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:But I can also tell you that I checked with several other flagship companies that have already went through the process. Yeah, and they certainly culture an adaptation to accepting, as a scientist, a computational scientist coming at you and said I have a totally different way to think about this problem and I don't necessarily need to know deeply about the science. I need to be able to have access to the data and sample and explore very fast these hand domain that actually you have in front of you. But what you don't have is a lifetime of exploring every single combination Right and accelerate this process and give you some rules, some handles that get you to understand better what's going on here. It's a bit of a deceit I see for deceit ringer. I mean you're decoding, if you want, in your case, what is actually available coming from beyond views of evolution. I mean you're going at the generation, the other, the opposite way that we will do with discovery.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:You're accepted as the solution is probably there and you're trying to find the right combination of elements nuclear gas in the nanoparticle and natural, natural nanoparticle component that together give you a performance that you're looking at delivering as a medicine. So reverse, define the performance. You want design to reach performance, yeah, which is kind of a very interesting in engineering term. It's something we do all the time because the technologies much more advanced. We basically do performance by design everywhere, but in medicine it's been quite complicated to do that because we're missing knowledge and ability, or we were missing so far knowledge and ability to explore large design domain that we very much in learning and what we're bringing to the table at CEL. We have a very large design domain on both hand. Think about the combination. It's even faster and now we're bringing it to help us decipher and ultimately generate novel medicine.
Matt Pillar:Yeah, Whenever I talk with companies who are deploying AI to work through large data sets and help get closer to the ideal, it's difficult to sit back and imagine in your head okay, like the traditional birth of a biopharma company. A biotech happens this way and it's kind of easy to follow the continuum the molecule, the viability of the molecule, the CMC assessments, and on and on down the line. You introduce a whole lot of molecular data to machine learning and AI and suddenly you have a company that it's not so easy to follow that trend line. So can you share?
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:it. It's sort of a vague question.
Matt Pillar:but where do you are right now? I want to learn if a pipeline is in the works to the degree that you can share, but sort of give us an idea of where your work sale is on that continuum in terms of having a therapeutic yeah, absolutely Maybe stage of a company and what we have the aspiration to deliver in the next, let's say, 30 months or so.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:We will be new men in the next 30 months with at least two programs, don't more. We will and have set the objective to nominate five growth candidates in the next 18 months and, as you may have seen, we have engaged through two partnership sales and you're very humbled and excited to be working with these two foundation that represent the best expert and most dedicated foundation against two very important disease Malaria and CFF, or CF and CFTR. In particular, we have announced the partnering with the Gate Foundation and joined the fight against Malaria with two different programs. We like their commitment, we like their expertise. We want to be part of the journey to make a difference. We're not trying to sample, we're not testing one technology or another.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:We want to engage in making an impact and we're very proud to be part of this partnership and hopefully bring a solution to Malaria, which is still a very deadly disease unfortunately to these days, and we also have announced the work with CFF or CFTR, with absolutely striking data generated last year with the INA. But to your question, and one of the things that you evoke with your question is, maybe wrongly, but if you are in debt into your generation AI, you may have to give up somewhat. What are you going to generate?
Matt Pillar:I mean that's great for second view because it's actually more concise than the way that I posed that very roundabout question, but that's exactly the point which is a good problem to have right? Yeah, it is.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:And the beauty of it is we do have a lot of possibilities from an application viewpoint. It's kind of amplified with AI, which brings us to the real question. As for me, operating with company is number one. Do we want to do all of that ourselves? And the answer is absolutely no, and I was going to partner already with that in mind. We want to work with the best experts and it's going to take a village, an entire industry, to embrace fully-programmed medicine. We are one of the many companies that are trying to do it. We are bringing a unique set of technology. We think we have the most comprehensive, entirely-programmed, only-enabled medicine, but it's only part of what is needed to solve for patient needs, and we're very humble about the world. So bringing expertise, bringing capabilities we don't have, is something that we welcome. So if you think like that, you can generate whatever is generated and make it available to companies that want to work with you. That's one. But for internal problems, which we do have, it's raising up a question where do you want to start and what area do you want to start with? So here we have a few principles. Number one anything where the biology is not known at the stage of a company. It's a risk we don't want to take. So we want to be in front of proving that our technology works on top of the biology. That is the risk. So that is absolutely clear. We may take as we create a portfolio if you risk the biology side. But as an overwhelmingly principle for deciding what to bring to humans, we're going to avoid to take the biology risk. But certainly we want to prove a platform. We want to prove a platform in multiple axes of value creation.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:We have opened and I'm thinking about it for three different things. So, if you give me a minute, is broader administration, classically for RNA medicine, iv, im with vaccine for sure we are opening right now sub Q and have a line of sight for maybe four. So broader administration proving that the platform works in human by sampling and selecting program that helps us to check various broader administration. Then we have what we call modality. Where do we express a protein? Within the cell, outside the cell or at the membrane of the cell?
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:Here let's give us also a way to sample. What the technology can do by deciding to sample the by virtue of a program we select is pre type of modality. And finally, where do we bring our DNA, which kind of cells and tissues we can access. And today we can access four different tissues and cells which, when you think about this pre dimension, we have already a lot to do in rare disease, metabolic disease, which is very unique, and chronic disease in general. Obviously, vaccines, including cancer vaccines, we have started to crack monoclonal antibody and coded into RNA, possibly with sub Q.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:think about bringing the field of monoclonal antibody, the RNA technology that is already going everywhere from an application viewpoint and of course, here is bringing us to the learn with a gene. I would say we play enzyme replacement or approach to a disease which is worded into a genetic defect. So we are here looking at, at the stage of the company, enabling the de-risking of some of the key features we want to do for treatment medicine. More than trying to open one single therapeutic area and becoming the best in this therapeutic area, we will have to pick up a fight going forward. For sure, at this stage it's a lot about demonstrating that a platform can reach many different areas and sampling the space at the support of time.
Matt Pillar:I mean, it's not been smooth sailing from a financial market stand. In the market in general, it seems like a lot of companies are realizing that they've got to have either a bulletproof platform or products to appeal to investors. More often than not what I'm hearing product is key. Is that been a you guys launched in Q4 of last year? Maybe?
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:to sum up the ideal time, although other people have told me the best companies are born in the face of adversity.
Matt Pillar:First, many years experience, though, in terms of where the company is in its on this phase of its continuum and its reception by the investor market.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:So first, we are very well capitalized. The two companies were very well funded, so none of these companies had to raise money immediately. So, combined, we have the mean and the runway to bring the technology to you and we were having necessary to raise money. The partnership that we have announced, plus likely another one at least by mid-year, will bring us extra non-duty funding to even prolong the runway and open up possibilities for applications in the future program. It certainly has been very difficult for the entire industry and probably remain for a good part of this year. Not that I have a crystal ball, but it's going to take time to bring back.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:These things don't generally change with the foot on the switch.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:No, it takes a little bit of time, but a few success will bring us back to being confident and excited about what this amazing industry that we're part of can do to patient, and that is going to come back for sure, I have absolutely no doubt, and you're going to see a next generation of technologies, such as what we're doing at Salesforce and releasing, coming up from a page and front and center to generate significant value and attract significant capital as well.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:We don't have to fundraise right now. I think the first pass for us is to attract a partner and work with experts and co-relate strategic partner that's want to play along with us and that will bring money in the bank, to be very clear. But we don't need right now to raise to deliver our first human. Again, it's a very enjoyable position, but very few right by a top of my friend in the industry I have right now as a luxury. I do agree with you that it's important to translate. I'm an engineer by background, so maybe my head is into the concreteness of what we do, what sort of engineering idea I have a chemical engineer, chemical engineer as your PhD?
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:No, my PhD was in material science. Oh, okay, yeah, but I'm also part of this industry for impact to patient and I value and love science, but I want to see science making a difference and being part of this industry. Translating, building pipeline and ultimately bringing all of medicine to solve patient needs is what it's all about for all of us, and quite sure it's important for us to demonstrate that we can productize and not only build an amazing engine, and that's fortunately where we already are with many different potential problems. I generated, on the application side of it, line of sight for five per candidate in the next 18 months, two for senior men in 30 months, and I'm going to get back to revision. It's a tour of medicine today, yeah.
Matt Pillar:Well, I was going to say you made it clear that you want to do these things quickly, because speed is tomorrow, tomorrow's medicine. Today, when you so you say partnerships are sort of a key, absolutely, you know, not too concerned about the runway partnerships, you come to a place like San Francisco, durain, jpm, we, what's the goal? Is it sort of explore these?
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:partnerships loaded with partnership discussion. Also investor discussion on or investor already committed to a success who have invested in both companies separated company. We have full support. I think that's how I feel we are based on reception as we process for the transaction. We had enthusiastic support behind FISA transaction. It makes sense for everybody, including our investors.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:So I think we're invested, probably looking at, know what I want to see that moving in the right direction. I want to see program and data and that's exactly what I want to see as well and I do hope to unite his sense of energy beyond the. So what we put together here by engaging this week at JPM. I will be tomorrow at the conference at 2 pm presenting sales and I do hope to be able to communicate to our energy action around what we're trying to do and bring reassurance that some fees merge come from two growth company match your technology. That's stuck. What we need to move us to FISA have fully program or medicine and I'm quite excited for what it means to patient and shareholder. It's a tremendous value for shareholders and patient.
Matt Pillar:Yeah, well, we'll be. You know you set the bar. We've talked about how speed is important and patient benefit will be we'll be paying attention to trying to hang on for the break back ride. So I appreciate you coming and spending some time with me. I know it's a very busy week for everyone involved and I really appreciate that you made the time to stop.
Dr. Guillaume Pfefer:Thank you so much. It was a pleasure meeting you as well. Thank you for the opportunity.
Matt Pillar:I'm Matt Pillar and you just listened to the business of biotech, the weekly podcast dedicated to the builders of biotech. We drop a new episode with a new exec every Monday morning and I'd like you to join our community of subscribers at bioprocessonlinecom, apple podcast, spotify, google Play or anywhere you get your podcasts. You can also subscribe to our Never Spammy, always insightful monthly newsletter at bioprocessonlinecom. If you have feedback or topic and guest suggestions, hit me up on LinkedIn and let's chat and, as always, thanks for listening.