Business Of Biotech

Serial Success With Triumvira's Rob Williamson

March 11, 2024 Matt Pillar
Business Of Biotech
Serial Success With Triumvira's Rob Williamson
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Rob Williamson's mind and hands have shaped more than 20 biotech startups, leading some to IPO and landing others firmly in Big Bio through acquisition by companies like Merck. Hanging around as many successful exits as Williamson has seen, one might become expert via osmosis. But Williamson isn't passive about honing his vision for progressive therapeutic dealmaking. He's an active leader, and for this episode of the Business of Biotech, he took a breather from a hectic agenda at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference to share some introspection on the work he's done, the work he's doing at Triumvira with T-cell therapeutics in oncology, the big opportunities in cancer therapeutics, and what's coming next.


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Matt Pillar:

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:

With some 20 Life Sciences startups under his Triumvira belt, President and COO, Rob Williamson is the definition of a serial biotech entrepreneur. An economist by training, he's led companies developing virtually every biologic modality and cumulatively addressing perhaps the broadest range of indications I've yet to see. Why does he take on the projects he takes on? How do his battle scars, deals won and deals lost, inform the decisions he's making now? Why does he think he's got a winner in Triumvira, a car T-cell company trying to crack the solid tumor nut, and with so many new approaches to oncology therapeutics, some disparate and some complementary, what's gotten most excited for the future?

Matt Pillar:

I'm Matt Pillar. This is the Business of Biotech, and I caught up with Williamson in San Francisco to learn about his biotech leadership thought process and where he sees cancer therapy going next. Let's give it a listen. Robert Williamson, president and CEO Director of Triumvira. I want to start with you before we get Triumvira what is doing, because you've got to. I always, you know, I dig through the LinkedIn profile and do an assessment in the CV and what jumped out of me is very interesting is the fact that you studied economics. You worked for Alan Greenspan before dipping your toe into biotech back in the early 90s.

Rob Williamson:

So you're studying economics, you know, you're working in the federal government.

Matt Pillar:

Just give me a brief synopsis of how you came to be a biotech founder, Robert Williamson.

Rob Williamson:

President and CEO Director Triumvira era. So I was an economist. I was supposed to get my PhD in economics and I was at the heart of monetary policy. So when you hear the Fed is raising or lowering interest rates, there's a handful of people working on that. And I was the junior person in that group and my bosses all looked at me and said you know, you can go get your PhD, you can publish, you can go to MIT or Stanford graduate school and get your. And then I said, well, what do I do after that? So you can come back here and do more of this, or you teach and you try not to teach because you really need to publish. Yeah, I said that just sounds awful. And they said we thought you'd think that. So we really suggest you get a business school because you're really a, you're an entrepreneur at heart and you should go do that.

Rob Williamson:

So I went to business school and I got into. I kind of spelled DNA. But I got recruited to a big consulting firms and the head of the healthcare practice was in my two doors down my summer internship and he recruited me to the healthcare practice and I learned all about pharma and devices and fun stuff like that. Just learn as you went, Learned as I went. Yeah, yes, and you know, no, no, no, you've already ascertained, as we met this morning, that it's already been an active morning for you here at the JP Morgan show.

Matt Pillar:

But, but, but apparently, look to your CV is embraced, because you've been 20, 20 life sciences companies that you've either launched, led or directed since that time when you, when you made that decision to come into the space. And what keeps a guy like you going, like what keeps a guy like you going and just doing that over and over again and signing up for it? It's a great question because sometimes I ask myself and what keeps us going?

Rob Williamson:

and my wife is a biotech CFO and she and I were really, really she and I were in Hawaii last week and I was getting calls at four in the morning for a couple of different companies working on things we were announcing this week at JPM, and she said we're going to keep doing this. You know how long are we going to keep doing this? And I joke with her, say I just want to be involved with curing one more disease and then I can call it quits, just one more. And and you just when you have success, it's so intoxicating the impact you have that you want to see it again. You may never see it keeps you going, but it's just fantastic when you're, when you see patients benefit from what you're doing. So that's what keeps you going.

Matt Pillar:

Yes.

Rob Williamson:

I mean, and obviously, if things work out, you do well economically, you do well, you have bragging rights with your friends and all those you know, things that sure give you some surprise. But sense of pride and accomplishment. But it's really, it's true, you hear it, it sounds tried, but when you really impact patients it's kind of life changing.

Matt Pillar:

Yeah, yeah, I believe it, your way back to a note. You're not sure right now, if you don't want to, but I think that she works for. But perhaps I'll have Mrs Williamson on the two.

Rob Williamson:

She has a different name, but yes, yes, yes, she is a CFO and another biotech.

Matt Pillar:

I'll look her up and hopefully, when I ask her to come on the show with me, you'll give her your highest recommendation.

Rob Williamson:

Oh yeah, she's smarter than me.

Matt Pillar:

The interesting thing about the companies that you've led is that I mean, if you kind of tick through the boxes, you you've covered all. You've led companies that cover all sorts of modalities for a giant range of indications like and to me, like I'm a very, I think, very statistically, I think boy, if you're stage in life having all that experience with multiple modalities, multiple indications, from recombinant proteins, the antibodies, the ADCs and vital genomics, like you've covered all, now you're the point where I mean the world is in terms of what we do next.

Matt Pillar:

Yes you've got the experience to say, okay, well, you know I don't want to do that because I don't see that as where things are going, or so tell me a little bit about that, why you joined, just joined, trying to be like what you're a little over here, yeah, I made that decision with a backlog of incredible experience. Why try and Vera? More importantly, why right now?

Rob Williamson:

I With Triumph Vera, one of the key investors. While I was friendly, was just said hey, we're seeing some interesting data.

Rob Williamson:

A guy like you could help us out and caught me in a moment of weakness, whereas willing to take a full-time job, and so I jumped in on it and I do have a very broad set of experience. I tend to gravitate towards companies that are close to getting in the clinic through about phase one, phase two. That's sort of my sweet spot. When I was a consultant I did commercial launches and everything like that, but I really I liked, and I've started a couple diagnostic companies, you name it, some tool companies you know classic, you know tool companies. But I've really gravitated towards therapeutics in that range and if the clinical data is reading out or there's thinking to be done on how you sort of optimize the product and get it to the patients as fast and best you can, that's where I get the most excited.

Matt Pillar:

Why is preclinical through, you know, early clinical, new cured phase?

Rob Williamson:

one your sweet spot, it's just my happy place. There's a lot of prioritization that needs to be done. So if you're a company and you've got most, biotechs would really give science a lot of opportunities, but not all the resources and you need to prioritize which opportunity you're going to spend most time on and what's your second and third. There's a lot of second, third and fourth order implications to decisions and it ends up being incredibly strategic and complex and, if you get it right, it varies for drilling. So that's why I really and I also enjoy interpreting clinical data.

Rob Williamson:

My statistician background from being an economist and a statistician really looking at the data, thinking about hey, is this real or not, or what's real, and it can be parsed through. It's really. It's what I like to do. And the flip side is often there's a lot of partnering and financing around these. This data and the dealmaking side is the other grades where my portee can be and fundraising the dealmaking.

Matt Pillar:

How is that? That's a segue I can't ignore. How is that portee been playing out the past two and a half years, when dealmaking has been?

Rob Williamson:

coming at a premium.

Matt Pillar:

It's been tough.

Rob Williamson:

Right when the market was starting to fall apart, I snuck in a hundred million crossover rounds for a company and got that done and it was brutal near the end, investors pulling out, term sheets being withdrawn and just wrapping, everyone's getting an arm in arm and saying, just do this and get it done. It was very brutal and since then it's been very tough Not going to lie.

Matt Pillar:

That being said, there are certain spots that have been brighter than others.

Rob Williamson:

Probably for the last 12 months nuclear oncology has been incredibly hot alpha particles. I'm involved in a public company there and I've seen a lot of interest in cashflow and recent dealmaking. Bms just bought a company for $4 billion that had only recently got public at $1 billion. Before that was private at a couple hundred million, so just astronomical valuations. So there are bright spots, but it's been really tough and the key there comes back to the previous point I was making, which is then you're a company, you have X dollars. You need to make the wisest choice you can but the money you have and make it and invest what few precious dollars you have in these storms, these nuclear winters, as we call them.

Matt Pillar:

You have to make the right choices and I've been through a couple Do you indication and modality, especially in a time like this, when resources are thinner? Do those play into your calculus?

Rob Williamson:

They do.

Matt Pillar:

But they also anyway don't.

Rob Williamson:

So everyone got worried about small molecules with the IRA act and everyone said, oh, we don't want to do small molecules because we're in person and stuff. But if you look at private investment, small molecules continue to dominate the private investment. So to some degree, if you are, in my mind, addressing an unmet need and a need that isn't about to be met by everyone else, being the 30th CD, 19 CAR T companies is not exciting.

Rob Williamson:

And they've all pivoted to saying now we're going to do lupus, which has its own issues. So I think you want to be differentiated, but you can be differentiated in the space. That's maybe not sexy right now, but you will persevere and ultimately be successful. I think it would be your technology pants out.

Matt Pillar:

Yeah, all right. So that's another nice segue to talk about the technology. So I'm hoping you can spend a little bit of time without going too deep into the canned JPMorgan pitch, right? Sure, spend a little bit of time talking about what trying various working on or how it might differ from other piece of therapies.

Rob Williamson:

Yeah, time era is a really interesting technology. It's a CAR T but with a more regulatory built-in regulatory mechanism. So CAR-T the T cells that are engineered essentially do not self-regulate, so they it works really well on liquid tumors but they exhaust, they're not durable. And Tri-Envira, adam McMaster in Canada, worked on a way of basically trying to mimic natural T cell mechanisms with the engineered T cells that you put back into people and there are these regulatory domains on the cell surface and inside the cell that they've replicated from a natural T cell environment and that's keeping it at a super high level. So it looks and acts more like a real T cell. So you don't get some of the liabilities, the toxicologies and also the super hot and then die that you get with a CAR-T traditional CAR-T therapies. The other thing Tri-Envira is doing that's different than most CAR-T companies, or at least historically, is going after solid tumors and not liquid tumors. That there's pros and cons to that.

Matt Pillar:

Not many people are going after solid tumors. The reason is it's hard.

Rob Williamson:

It's hard to get the T cells to really get into that tumor microenvironment and kill the solid tumors. I think Tri-Envira has seen some very interesting clinical data and we're gonna turn a couple more CARs this year and see what happens, Okay.

Matt Pillar:

Can you share it all? I don't wanna get too deep into the science here. You share it all. What the strategy is to overcome that challenge, Is that not being so hard?

Rob Williamson:

Yeah, it's. There's a couple of things. One is you hope that sort of our natural or mimicking of a more natural T cell response gives you the repeat kill and the durability. We also, and other companies are doing this as well, but we're able to do it more aggressively as we can redose with our therapy too. So there's you have to do one foot depletion and you dose, and there's a lot of liabilities with cell therapy in terms of toxic, a certain traditional curtes of toxicology.

Rob Williamson:

We don't have that with our abstract in our approach, or at least most of them, and or if we do see, like cytokine release, we have very, very low levels of it versus really high. So our therapy is so safe that it can be. Unlike other cell therapies, it can be an outpatient procedure. You don't have to stay in the hospital or in the ER to make sure you don't have an adverse reaction. We've had patients get in this, mild beers walk out, so redo, saying highly safe, and the safety allows us to give more cells and et cetera and so forth. So we'll see how it ends out. We've had some nice tumor responses and we're currently focusing very aggressively on a target called clotting 18-2, which is a increasingly exciting target in the space. There's been some data out there with an antibody that's compelling and we're really, you know the front of the pack, certainly with cell therapies going after that target.

Rob Williamson:

Yeah, it's all tumors.

Matt Pillar:

And that's because we're gastric and gastroesophageal tumors.

Rob Williamson:

It's a very underserved cancer area when are you on the clinical continuum. We have a phase two with our HER2 program and we're at the phase one with the clotting program. The clotting program is actually probably becoming more of a priority given market evolution.

Matt Pillar:

Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, a lot of interesting to watch then. Yeah, we'll see where Rah Williamson ends up next.

Rob Williamson:

It's going to be interesting. 12 months We'll see. Yeah, you never know. And I'm very excited about that company and I'm involved with other companies too. It's very, for better or worse, my the companies. I've been helping some startups, a public company I'm on the board of and trying to be there. They're all oncology. So I'm looking at it from all these different perspectives cell therapy, degraders, radio oncology and it's amazing when I look at how we're all coming at all these companies are coming at cancer in different directions, different ways, but experiencing a lot of similar challenges, and the body is incredibly complicated.

Matt Pillar:

Yeah, do you? I mean I thought I'm going to ask you to place any public bets, but it's a great point. I mean, oncology is being cancer is being attacked from so many different perspectives and obviously trying to be there and any other approaches that are exciting you Right now.

Rob Williamson:

I really like the radio oncology space for probably couple years now and I'm on the board of the Public and Mental Perspective Therapeutics. We just announced a deal with another company today, lampius, with a couple of our programs. I looked at radio ecology when I was in an antibody company in the 2000s where we had very popular areas conjugated antibodies, sorry ADCs, antibody drug conjugates and we were developing ADCs. But we're also looking at conjugating nuclear isotopes, not to worry about antibodies for delivery. And now people are coming back to that again. But now we're using them much safer or better, tolerated nuclear isotopes and people are attaching them to different targeting mechanisms to go after cancers. And so I really do like radio-ecology. I think it's gotten very crowded and very frothy in the last six months, 20 months, but I think for certain cancers it's going to be a game changer in the very near future, which is because it's going to be interesting to see. So I think a lot of patients are going to benefit from it.

Matt Pillar:

It just had here as a matter of fact, so it'll be a couple of episodes before this one. Airs ratio, therapeutics, jackpot. It's an interesting base for me because we're rooted in biologics, I think in ratio's case together attaching radio isotope to a small molecule. But the delivery mechanisms are.

Rob Williamson:

You're just trying to get that isotope to the tumor and only to the tumor, ideally, and then you have a kill and get out of the body.

Rob Williamson:

There are different ways of doing it. The other really interesting thing that I love and I've seen different companies doing this is it's the same concept but a different use. You see so much gene editing going on and the challenge is an in vivo and the human body editing. So not ex vivo but in vivo editing, and there's an in vivo carti, which I think has strengths and weaknesses. But the trick has been, and continues to be, getting that editing mechanism to the right part of the body at the right time, in fact, not only the right organ, but the right cells in the organ, ideally, and the liver tends to grab things. So you have liquid nanoparticles, lmps, and everyone's trying to target those. I think over time we're going to see and a lot of people are working on this Over time, the real killer app is going to be being able to deliver that gene editing to the right cell and the right organ at the right time, ideally.

Rob Williamson:

And that's evolving. I see lots of companies working on it. I don't have a clear winner, but I know that that is incredibly important as we think about therapeutic intervention going forward, and there are people, a lot of people are going after it in different ways, but it excites me. When I see a company who's got something, I say that's really, that's impressive.

Matt Pillar:

Yeah, another hand-thick where Rob will go.

Rob Williamson:

He might be going. I see those things and I get very excited. I get. And if there's a startup and they say oh, we've got this, but we can't raise money. I'm like here's, go this way, go there and go do this and go do that yeah.

Matt Pillar:

And the time we have left. I know you're on a tight timeframe here and I don't blame you. This is the place to be busy. It's crazy. Yeah, I just want to touch on a few more things regarding your, I guess, strategic and financial objectives. So in your role, you're charged with strategic partnering, financing and future IPO efforts for Triumph Vira, so I guess just share with us a little bit about your strategies in each of those like starting with partnering.

Rob Williamson:

So partnering it's great. I Tell my teams this, and I've been saying this for so many years now it gets around. I say you can't, you won't get a partnership or an acquisition until you don't want one where you love what you have so much you might keep it for yourself. The partners come running in. And where the acquisitions come running in, I say you because it's low.

Rob Williamson:

Yeah, I know they say as well yes, I wonder why when I, early in my career, when I was a junior Consultant, and their senior partners, that, rob, you got to be confident because the clients can smell fear and I think in partnering they can smell success. You know people, we, you know the in a room. It's not what said, it's what's exuded by body language, by tone, by attitude, and so much when you have something that you know is great, it comes across incredibly well and and and so in.

Matt Pillar:

that's even more under the microscope and In a top market like this.

Rob Williamson:

Yes, it is, and and it's a big farm I have been calling their own pipelines. They've been reductions. It's changing right now where I think I feel the pendulum swinging, but no one in the last two years would take a risk on an unproven technology and even try and bear. We talk to people. They say we want to do deal with you as soon as you have unequivocal data, efficacy data in your phase two. You know, sure, yeah, and I say when we have that we're gonna go public. Yeah, right, right, so, uh, thanks, you know, if you want to partner now, you maybe you can get, you can get it. You know a piece of that piece of that.

Matt Pillar:

Yeah, so it's it's Partnering is.

Rob Williamson:

Generally happens when you don't want a partner or you don't need to partner.

Matt Pillar:

Mm-hmm.

Rob Williamson:

And that's how I've always looked at it and that's generally in the in the market. Recently it's been having, I call it, virtually unequivocal efficacy data in the clinic, which we haven't had yet. We had a phase one with some hints of efficacy. That was exciting, yeah, and really other other data points that were pointing in a good direction and and it's probably gonna stay that way. But I do feel it shifting a bit where people may and in fact the deal we announced today for my nuclear ecology company, the partnership, was around assets that are relatively unproven but they were willing to Make some investments to have a first dibs on it as it as those assets mature.

Rob Williamson:

Mm-hmm, I think you can see that happen more broadly, as people are willing to take a little more risk and you have to structure it as a win-win for both parties. Sure, absolutely. You need to sit there and say, well, we get upside, you get upside. I mean, let's figure that out and that win-win change like the.

Matt Pillar:

Are you feeling any pressure around terms Deals right now related to maybe what you were experiencing four or five years ago?

Rob Williamson:

Yeah, yeah, sure it's, it's. I think we've gone and again I think we went. The nadir has passed, I hope at this point my suspicion is that. But again I, with investors and the partners, I try to put myself squarely in their shoes, understand what they're thinking about and understand what risks I would be willing to take if I were in their shoes.

Rob Williamson:

And it's certainly a year ago there was an enlarger farmer. There was no risk taking it off, it was on all the deals you saw. The few deals you saw were True plug-and-plays into a commercial pipeline, direct plug-and-plays where there was a clear commercial path. The zap are developed, you know well, into phase two data. You know, get not in phase three if not a launch post-launch, and then say, okay, we see your launch, we see the traction, we're gonna buy that. So but I do think it's the, it's pivoting back and I Hope it gets. I don't want it to get too frothy, I don't. I think there's was an overabundance of biotech funding and and the like, but it would be good to see it be. Certainly not a desert, yeah, as it was in the last year, right, all right.

Matt Pillar:

So, before I let you go, give us your, your best pithy, wisdom or advice, folks who are in your shoes. 20 companies ago and getting into Biotech foundations for the first time Sure, sure but I was just talking to my one of my colleagues.

Rob Williamson:

We were talking about regrets on the walk over here. No, really Career regrets, things we wish we'd done.

Matt Pillar:

We'll do an episode on that down the road when you've got more time for it. Yeah, and his was interesting, his was.

Rob Williamson:

he wished he had stood up to fight a deal that he thought ended up tanking the company he was at, but his CEO told him he thought his CEO was about to fire him so he didn't speak out for any further. My first biotech I went to. I left my high-paying consulting job, made partner and I left. No one ever makes part of it, so I'm out of here. Yeah, I was the first to do it, apparently, and forever, and it started a trend. For a while I went to the company and it was one of the first companies to coding the human genome.

Matt Pillar:

Insight.

Rob Williamson:

Solera and a couple other companies are out there Within eight months. I helped raise a bunch of money. I'm not bragging, just saying it was that kind of environment. Then Insight came in and put a trend sheet down for $415 million to buy us. I thought, done this is easy. Yeah, do it. I was going to make a lot of money, have an exit, have a win. One of the board members said I'm going to say who they were. I want double that because my partners and my firm are tech partners and they're getting really big returns. So I want to try to match A long story short. That deal went away. The next offer we had was half that and then the board said can you get back to the first offer we had? Then there's Andrew and Charlie on my board. Just the downward spiral of valuation and ultimately just selling it for parts.

Matt Pillar:

I guess my lesson is if you have a deal, that looks pretty good, just take it.

Rob Williamson:

I don't second guess it. The other one is when you have money, don't think you're going to get anymore, treat it like it's your last raise. But, even more importantly, think about how you're going to create compelling, if not game-changing, data with the money you've just raised. Make sure and you have buffer for failure. Many biotechs we say this all the time, but most people, some companies raise, they get these crazy raises and brought the environment and then they just hire up and they get really dopey and they become effectively I don't want to say it too negatively they become the problem that they're solving, they're saluting. They become big pharma like as a small biotech. They're not nimble, they're not making the key decisions on rationing and prioritization.

Rob Williamson:

My advice is always act like it's the scarcity principle. I had an investor slash strategic investor group probably seven years ago. Make me buy the book Scarcity and say read this, this is how we want our partners to act. It's a little brutal at times, but it makes a lot of sense. And then, frothing times, bank the money for something not working, if not the financial market, your science, your technology, so you can live to fight another day.

Matt Pillar:

You pick up on that? Any positive indicators here for the?

Rob Williamson:

coming. I was on a panel in the December timeframe and someone asked me what's next?

Matt Pillar:

you're going to be like.

Rob Williamson:

Rob is it going?

Rob Williamson:

to get better than this year and I said two things. I said why don't you feel the M&A is picking up and it has exploded? And I said I feel like it's going to start picking. I said the key for biotech is interest racing to come down. We need to not have another war. That night I'm awesome, I made it Israel. So everyone on the panel is texting me the next morning saying I guess we're going to have another war. And I said gee, I really hope it doesn't go global. But I think, despite the global issues that we see and hopefully they stay no worse than they are now certainly Asia, we don't have conflict over Taiwan or something I think we will biotech feeling a whole lot better this year than it did last year in my opinion.

Rob Williamson:

I think a lot of it has to do with the willingness of people to take a little more risk. Do you deals? People are just. There's more movement. I can feel the gears moving. I think in bathrooms we're getting exits that they need to redeploy capital. So I think we're going to have. It won't be I hope not probably but I think it will be an environment that will sustain great science Excellent.

Matt Pillar:

Well, here's the 2024.

Rob Williamson:

Here's to you for joining me, I know it's very busy. I appreciate it. No, I appreciate it. Thank you for your time and it's been a tough morning, just with a couple of things.

Matt Pillar:

I know. No, we met. We planned some Seeds for Future episodes. Perfect, I'll have Mrs Jacoby on. Maybe you can come on together. That will be a really cool episode, though, absolutely. That's a really nice dinner time conversations between two we had a lot to talk.

Rob Williamson:

Yeah, yeah, well, it was fantastic, so you'd love her. Yeah, we'll do it. Well, thank you, I appreciate it.

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 bioprocessonline. com, apple Podcasts, spotify, google Play or anywhere you get your podcasts. You can also subscribe to our Never Spammy, always insightful newsletter at bioprocessonline. com/bob . If you have feedback or topic and guest suggestions, hit me up on LinkedIn and let's chat and, as always, thanks for listening.

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