Gavin Samuels, M.D. found his work as an intensive care physician boring. After earning his M.D., he did that for a few years before moving into intensive care management roles. It wasn't until he left the hospital and entered biopharma that he found his footing, cutting his teeth in business development at places like Merck, Pfizer, Quark Pharma, and Teva. He even headed growth strategy at Lonza for a while. Now, he's Chief Business Officer and General Partner at CinRx Pharma, where a deep pipeline of early- to late-stage candidates keeps him on his dealmaking toes. Within minutes of our conversation, Dr. Sameuls' introspective reflections on biotech dealmaking and negotiations planted this episode firmly on the Business of Biotech podcast highlight reel.
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!
Gavin Samuels, M.D. found his work as an intensive care physician boring. After earning his M.D., he did that for a few years before moving into intensive care management roles. It wasn't until he left the hospital and entered biopharma that he found his footing, cutting his teeth in business development at places like Merck, Pfizer, Quark Pharma, and Teva. He even headed growth strategy at Lonza for a while. Now, he's Chief Business Officer and General Partner at CinRx Pharma, where a deep pipeline of early- to late-stage candidates keeps him on his dealmaking toes. Within minutes of our conversation, Dr. Sameuls' introspective reflections on biotech dealmaking and negotiations planted this episode firmly on the Business of Biotech podcast highlight reel.
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:I try not to play favorites but within minutes of our conversation starting, Dr. Gavin Samuels became one of my favorite guests on the business of biotech. Gavin, an MD, was an intensive care physician before he joined industry. Hard to wrap my mind around, but he joined industry because he got bored doing that, bored running an intensive care unit.
Matt Pillar:Can you imagine I'm Matt Pillar. This is the business of biotech and I had the absolute pleasure to learn about and learn from Dr Samuels, who's now chief business officer at CinRx when we sat down in San Francisco to record this episode.
Matt Pillar:Beyond his fascinating career journey, we discussed deal making.
Matt Pillar:In a tumultuous market, the unique buyer seller position that CinRx finds itself in, what healthy tension between drug development and business development looks like, what a responsible obesity therapeutic looks like, and a whole lot more. It's a good one. Let's give it a listen, and I learned that before you joined CinRx in 2022, you were in Lons a set of strategy and growth initiatives. You've held major roles, obviously there Pfizer, a host of other smaller biotechs what led you I guess sort of a two-part question what led you away from big bio and how did you land at CinRx?
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:Well, I think one way of explaining it is a little bit like the little Red Riding Hood story the one bit was too big, the other one was too small and the third one was just right. Okay, big Pharma was an excellent place to learn the industry and I was an advisor and then a tether. And if you want to learn how to do drug development, those are great places. Both of them are great places to learn, but they massive organizations, which means the bureaucracy and the process is challenging. Everything takes a long time in its big teams and innovation is difficult in big organizations. So that was one component of my career education, if you like.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:And then there's a lot to be learned by a very small, nimble biotech as well where decision making is very quick and things have to run according to a shoestring budget often and one can learn where you can trim down on certain aspects the challenge in a small biotech company is there's never enough money, so trimming becomes too much sometimes.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:Yeah, and you start cutting corners where corners shouldn't be cut, and I think CinRx is the right size institution. It's got a lot of what big pharma has to offer, meaning everything is done properly, there's no corners cut, but at the same time you have the rapid decision making and the innovation which allows for a very efficient and effective drug development process. It's kind of the best of both worlds, which is where I personally feel most comfortable and where I can feel, from a personality and an experience perspective, I'm able to make the most contribution in that science organization. Yeah.
Matt Pillar:That was the next follow-up question. I had for you on that was like what do you think it is that's different about someone who you know? It's not an uncommon refrain, right to start in a big bio and then to move to a smaller bio. Yeah, like you said, you found sort of a happy medium, but a lot of people land in a place like Pfizer or Lonza. They stay there for their entire career. They can't.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:And they can't. What do you?
Matt Pillar:think it takes differently within someone who says you know what, I want to take the risk of agility in a leadership position.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:Yes. So I think it comes down to a large extent to one's personality, which in turn informs on one's risk tolerance. Certainly, at when I was a Pfizer there was the possibility of a very long career trajectory that was not very stressful at all and very comfortable in terms of resources and large teams where everyone had their area of expertise. But I've always been someone who enjoys a challenge and enjoys learning something new, and I'm very comfortable when I don't exactly know how I'm supposed to do the thing, the task that's in front of me, and to kind of stretching myself to figure out a solution. So it's not so common in a big pharma company to do that. So I think the single most important factor in determining what the right size organization is for a person is their own personality, their level of risk tolerance, their desire to make a difference. It's difficult to make a difference in a big, clunky organization. It's much easier to make a difference in an agile, rapidly evolving, rapidly growing organization.
Matt Pillar:When you say you make a difference, do you mean like a personal contribution that you can sort of feel and measure toward the solution it manifests in?
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:various levels. At the end of the day, I went into healthcare because I'm passionate about wanting to make a difference in people's lives, meaning to improve quality of life, whether that means the ability to cure disease or at least improve the quality of someone's disease burden. That's the primary focus, that's what gets me out of bed in the morning and most of my colleagues at CinRx. So one can achieve that much more tangibly in a small organization than in a big organization. And then also, when you want many people working on a project, let's say a transaction, for example, when you want many people working on it, it's not that easy to really feel that what you're doing has a direct correlation with whether the deal is successful or not, whereas in a small organization it's all on you and either you make it happen or you don't. So I enjoy the challenge, the pressure, the challenge and eventually the success of knowing that these two hands actually made a difference.
Matt Pillar:Yeah, yeah, Rewinding even further you and sort of pulling the same thread of the decisions you made along your career trajectory. You earned your MD and you were a clinician, right.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:You practiced medicine. I did practice medicine. I was working in intensive care and I did that practice for eight years. The reason that I decided to change would probably surprise most people. I got bored with clinical medicine and I got bored with a particular branch of clinical medicine, which is intensive care.
Matt Pillar:It doesn't seem like that would do to a lander like me. That doesn't seem like it would be boring at all You're right.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:So it seems difficult to understand how that could be boring. But if you understand how intensive care works, it's all algorithm based. So you have a particular patient and they have a particular set of symptoms or sort of a particular presentation and you fall back on an algorithm. You do this test. If it shows this, you do this, and if it's yes, you follow this path, and if it's no, you follow this path and eventually, after a number of years, that algorithm becomes internalized and it's a bit like driving a car not actually thinking that much. It's kind of automatic.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:And what I found frustrating about that is that I felt that I was not thinking. There was certainly no creativity in the intensive care unit. It's all following an algorithm and I felt that I wasn't using my brain. And it happens to be that my wife was doing an MBA at the time and she said why don't you do a few subjects just for fun? And I did, and it was amazing because it was a completely different way of thinking to medical science. It was almost the opposite. In medical science you take a whole lot of data and you try and funnel it down into a diagnosis. In business studies you're almost doing the opposite. You take an idea and try and expand it out into something. What I really enjoy is the combination the medical science with the business component.
Matt Pillar:Yeah, so when you joined industry, you did so with the Because this was another, I guess, transitionary question in my mind Again, it's not uncommon for people who practice medicine, for doctors to join industry, often in chief scientific or chief medical officer roles.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:The chief business officer role is maybe less common for a clinician to get into. So when you made the decision to join, industry.
Matt Pillar:you did so fully intending to learn the business side and go into that side, or were you in more of a scientific role?
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:I started off in a more scientific role and then kind of moved into the intersection between clinical development and commercialization, meaning how do you set up a clinical trial that meets the endpoints that could also justify various regulatory indications that support the commercial aspects of the drug development? And then from that there was kind of a natural progression to move more to the transaction side. And once I moved into the transaction side I knew I'd landed. This is where I wanted to be, because the substrate of the transaction is still the drug, or often an early stage drug, which relies on a good understanding of the science, the medical science, which I enjoy.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:But also understanding risk and uncertainty over time in drug development and then constructing a transaction that is appropriate for both sides of that transaction, given the risk and uncertainty over time, and if you can crack that, that results in a transaction that's useful for both parties and ultimately can benefit the patients in treating positions as well. Yeah, it's interesting.
Matt Pillar:I'm going to ask you a theoretical or philosophical question about this, because I think that's a very important question. Thinking about it in simple terms, I'm thinking about this in sort of a corollary fashion to the business that I'm in. I'm in media and I've been for my entire career. So we create content, all sorts of different content. We have a BD team, obviously, a business development team, sales team. I've learned over the course of my career to become very discerning about when and how I make our BD folks aware of a new product, because BD folks want to sell before it's ready. So we think about that in terms of biopharmaceuticals. There's got to be at least some inherent friction. Yet you, with your background, you've come sort of to the apex of those two disciplines, understanding both. Does that benefit you? You?
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:understand what I'm saying. I do Does it?
Matt Pillar:benefit you and at times does it create even a hint of conflict or friction with other BD folks who want to move.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:It can create some, by the way, not my BD folks, or less than any others, it can create some conflict.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:I prefer to think of it as creating a good tension that finds the right balance between where a drug is in its development, what the risks and uncertainty are that are associated with that drug, between today and when it eventually gets to the market hopefully and then finding a transaction between the two parties that balances and shares the risk over time. Because when a transaction is signed and the ink is dried, that's not the end. That's the beginning of the relationship often, and there's a long path that needs to be traveled together. So if you've set up the transaction in a collaborative way and the entire negotiation has taken place not in a confrontational mode but rather in a collaborative mode, that sets the stage for the long-term relationship. That's good not only for both parties but optimizes the probability of a successful drug. At the end of the day, it's a win-win-win situation.
Matt Pillar:When, if ever, does the?
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:I get that.
Matt Pillar:I have a lot of conversations with chief business officers in biotech.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:And collaboration comes up often in negotiation and I get the sense that, that's the ideal. But I'm curious about if you'd be willing to share.
Matt Pillar:When there does, when conflict does appear or arise, even slight conflict, what is it usually centered on?
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:It often comes about because of certain issues, and there's usually more than one. There's usually a handful of issues that arise where people tend to be fixed in their position and not willing to move, and a suboptimal way of dealing with that situation is to simply compromise. So the simplest is around an economic parameter. I want to offer you $100. You will only receive $200. We compromise at $150. And that's halfway. Neither of us are particularly happy and neither of us are particularly unhappy. That's suboptimal. A much better approach to compromise is to say not why are you insisting on $200. Not that you are insisting on $200, but why? What is it about the $200? What is it about your position that's important? Is it really just about the $200? Or is there something else that gives us more substrate to be able to work with? So, instead of compromising, you come up with a creative solution that results in both parties being happy, instead of just both parties not being unhappy. I can see why algorithms would bother you.
Matt Pillar:Because there's no algorithms.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:There's no algorithms for that.
Matt Pillar:Another interesting challenge that you must face as CBO at CinRx is the diversity I'm assuming it's a challenge, I'll expere perspective on that, but the diversity of the CinRx is on that but the diversity of the portfolio of candidates and educations that you pursue. There are companies that are very narrow in focus on a specific molecule or a specific indication, maybe multiple molecules for that specific indication. Cinrx is not that. What sort of challenges does that present to you as Chief Business Officer? I imagine I'm going to project here a little bit.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:I'm assuming that your scientific and medical backgrounds lend to your ability to transact and do business across multiple products, but it's got to create some challenge, it is we're not focused in one particular therapeutic area. We have several therapeutic areas. We're not agnostic, meaning we won't take on anything that comes our way, even if it is a program that's attractive. In order for us to consider a program, it has to be matched to capabilities and experience within the organization. We have an advantage in that we have a strategic alliance with a very large CRO called MEPAS, which spans a number of therapeutic areas.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:We're able to tap into deep expertise in a number of different therapeutic areas. Even if we don't have a medical director in a specific disease area, we're able to tap in, often to medical people who do have expertise in that area. We go through a lot of trouble and a lot of effort to forming good scientific advisory boards with the best and brightest minds in that particular disease area. It's not agnostic, but it's not overly narrow either and we find a balance between the right number of therapeutic areas to work in, without spreading ourselves too thin, but always ensuring that we have, either through internal people or through the ability to hire consultants, or through the ability of very strong scientific advisory boards and, lastly, through our relationship with MEPAS, to have absolutely rock solid, cutting edge, world-class expertise on a particular program.
Matt Pillar:Getting back to your comfort level with a mid-range company being Centrax. The company demonstrates that when I think about them very simple terms, there's buy side or sell side, and biotech typically is we want to sell something, whether it's us or a product or a platform, and then there's big bio.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:That's on the buy side.
Matt Pillar:They want to buy them, or their product or their platform.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:Centrax is on both sides at this point.
Matt Pillar:You've demonstrated that recently with transactions where you're both buying and selling. I think a couple I noted here were your investment in VTV. You also negotiated a multi-billion dollar deal like the sell it's in-court AstraZeneca. It's exemplary of being on both sides of that coin Well one in your role as Chief Business Officer there. What have you had to learn? What challenges have you confronted to be able to recognize good strategic deals on both sides of that?
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:equation. Your question is excellent and it speaks to our particular model. What we typically do is we bring in early-stage compounds, that's, late preclinical or early clinical stage compounds. We nurture them for a period of time, usually until phase two or midway through phase two. Then we exit. We've got a particular area if you'd like to think of it as adolescence where we take it, we bring in a toddler, we give them a very loving poem for a period of years, then we allow them to go out into the big white world.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:The strategic transactions occur at bringing in the asset at the early stage through a licensing agreement or an acquisition. That's the usual way that we do that. Then we develop the program up to a predetermined inflection point. We have no intention of commercializing the drug. We don't take the program through to base, through into commercialization. We not set up for that, we don't have the expertise for that. The big pharma companies are much better suited to that. Once we have usually human proof of concept somewhere in phase two, then we start looking at either the company being acquired or licensed to a big pharma company or going in IPO, which is what happened with. Sinport became a completely independent company through an IPO Then, as an independent public company, did the transaction with AstraZeneca.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:I'd love to stay creative for that transaction, but I wasn't involved at all because it was a completely independent public company by that stage.
Matt Pillar:You had mentioned earlier that you're not agnostic. Centrex is not agnostic. I want to dig a little bit into the selection criteria. Recently you've illustrated interest in metabolic disease. You've got four early phase mono and combination therapies for the treatment of obesity in the pipeline. Not coincidentally, you've built your scientific advisory board with quite a bit of metabolic expertise in recent years or months. That's an indicator that there's a hot area for you. Looking at that maybe as an example, wondering how does that become a focus area for CinRx?
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:The general focus areas where we had deep expertise within the company is cardiovascular, metabolic and renal disease. That's the main, the core where our expertise lies, to some extent common thread flowing through those areas. Metabolic disease leads to cardiovascular disease and renal disease. It's different facets of an overall bad Western diet, growing obesity levels that plagues our society. Metabolic disease is the kind of linchpin that holds many of these disease areas together and is the initiating pathology that leads on cardiovascular and eventually renal disease as well. It's an area of deep interest for us. Until recently, the treatment of obesity has been very furious. There haven't been effective and safe drugs. That has, of course, in the last several years been completely revolutionized. Yeah, the GLP1 drugs.
Matt Pillar:Was SINRX focused there before this GLP craze took off?
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:There was interest always in obesity and diabetes, which is the sister disease of obesity. Once the obesity area, once this great new world where obesity is a disease that can be medically treated very safely and very effectively, then it certainly was kept up a few notches.
Matt Pillar:How do waves of innovation and a disease area affect a company like SINRX in terms of its pipeline and perhaps influencing where you focus? I'm not insinuating that the GLP craze is. I mean, when COVID came about, everybody was developing a COVID something for various reasons, perhaps because there was something to be treated, perhaps because there was a lot of money available to go treat that. I guess I'm just wondering, in a position like yours, where you have a direct influence on what comes in and what goes out, how much market forces and factors influence you or sway you in different directions.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:I said earlier that what gets not only me but most of the people at the company out of bed in the morning is thinking of the patient, the context of obesity. Where this miracle drug or category of drugs is now available, what we try and do is say this is fantastic, but you know, a disease area is now very treatable. What's next? Where can this area be improved? What are the shortfalls in the current disease, in the current treatment options, and where is it going? So to illustrate, with obesity, the GLP1 drugs are fantastic but they have several problems. One when you start taking the drug, people put the weight right back up. About 60% of the weight comes back in the first year and then often people overshoot where they started off. So they'll land up, if they start taking the drug, you know, in a more obese state than before they started taking the drug.
Matt Pillar:Yeah.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:Second issue is tolerability. The drugs have in not everyone, but in a lot of people they have tolerability issues Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and some people cannot tolerate those effects. Trying to get up in the door, starting on a small dose and working out slowly, is one way of dealing with it, but a percentage of people will not be able to tolerate those drugs. And lastly, when one loses weight, there's bad weight, which is adipose tissue, which is fat, but there's also muscle and bone mass which is lost as well. And if you're 20 or 30, that's not terrible, but if you're 50 and 60, learn losing muscle mass or lean body mass.
Matt Pillar:You're accelerating something that's already happening, exactly so that's a problem.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:So what we do? When we sit around CinRx and and talk about obesity for the future, the discussion goes what are the alternative approaches that we can take to obesity? How might obesity treatment similar to hypertension cancer treatment? It's not one drug, it's a combination of drugs to manage tolerability issues. How might that evolve? How can we look at focusing on weight loss that is, predominantly adipose tissue fat weight loss, while preserving lean body mass? And there are various approaches to that. So the patient is the starting point, the science is the pathway, and then we scour the earth looking for approaches that make sense, that could meet those scientific objectives that we've set, looking back at the patient of the future and how treatment might be optimized for him or her.
Matt Pillar:Can you give us a bit of an update on where CinRx is in terms of clinical activity right now?
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:Sure On the metabolic front specifically.
Matt Pillar:Sure yeah, since we're talking about that, but feel free to discuss any notable clinical activity.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:So the portfolio company that the metabolic drugs are housed in is called SINFINA, and the four drugs that we have, there is two novel mechanisms. The one is called GDF15 and the other one is PYY the alternative approaches to treating obesity to the GLP ones. They work in a different way, and then we're looking at the possibility of combining those two drugs, each with the GLP1 analogue, the idea behind it being can you improve tolerability for patients and can you maintain lean body mass while reducing the bad fat, the adipose tissue? Yeah, and that's the focus of our ongoing clinical study.
Matt Pillar:That's interesting because another question that was swimming around in the back of my mind while we were talking about GLP1 and your approach to obesity- is sort of the displacement of old approaches to even non-therapeutic approaches, To a specific indication, by new indications.
Matt Pillar:For instance, before GLP1, gastric bypass was the trend, a surgical intervention which comes with perhaps maybe less risk of losing lean body weight and bone density. But similarly I'm not sure what the word for it is, but when you fall off the wagon you fall hard, even with gastric bypass. So with new technologies that perhaps address some of those shortcomings, perhaps you can displace the previous approach, the previous standard, but you're saying that's not necessarily the approach to center axis.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:Well, indeed it is because one of the drugs that we're working on, the GDF15, may well and this is something we interrogating in the clinical trials, in the development of the clinical trials could a drug like GDF15 be the maintenance part of the patient's therapy? So the GLP1 are excellent at dropping weight significantly and quickly, but if the GLP1 are continuing to cause one to lose lean body mass, that's not a great idea in the very long term. So might a drug like GDA 15, which may not have the lean body mass loss. In fact there are some data that suggests it improves lean body mass. So might that be an appropriate strategy for one person who has lost the weight enough to improve their health outcomes significantly but then doesn't necessarily want to stop and put the weight right back on, but doesn't necessarily want to be on the GLP one for the rest of their life either? Might a drug like the GDA 15 be the maintenance therapy part of the question?
Matt Pillar:Yeah, we should have showed that work. It plays beautifully. It seems to the adolescence analogy that you gave me earlier, right Like there should be an ample opportunity to market that to big buy all.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:So it's early days. We're understanding how these drugs work and what the effects are on lean body mass and adipose tissue. But it's very exciting because the armamentarium that will be available to treat obesity is just exponential and many, many therapies will be available, and Mugio would be able to be tailored to exactly what a particular patient needs.
Matt Pillar:Any other notable clinical progress of late.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:We have two gastrointestinal companies. We're working on a disease area called gastroparesis, which is a disease that can either be idiopathic, just happens for no apparent reason, or is very commonly associated with patients who have diabetes and that's a bloating, inability of the stomach contents to move, causes pain and nausea and vomiting and can be very debilitating, and we're working on the drug that's currently in phase two on that. We have another program that's for irritable bowel syndrome. The diarrheal form, irritable bowel syndrome is by far the most common reason for referral to a gastroenterologist. A very high number of people suffer from that and there's certainly significant improvements that need to be made in the treatments that are available. We have an early stage oncology program and we also have, as you said, btb, which is another metabolic company. That's an investment that we made. So a number of different areas and we constantly looking for new interesting opportunities. Jp Morgan's a great place to catch up with people, progress transactions that are in the making.
Matt Pillar:Yeah, when you come into an engagement like JP Morgan or any investor conference for that matter, this being sort of the granddaddy of the mall but when you personally come into an event like this again, similar to the challenges that you have as a company who's transacting on both ends of the spectrum, how do you sort of what's your amount? How do you sort of come into this event like with a mindset that you've got goals to achieve, when I mean, really it can move in any number of directions?
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:for your company. There's three big things that we've been doing all the time. We're looking for new opportunities.
Matt Pillar:We're raising money to feed the hungry children through their endless Someone must have coached you and said listen when you go talk to Matt, he likes really simple analogies. That's a good one.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:That's the way my brain works very simple analogies and then you know the exit, be it an IPO or a strategic transaction with the big pharma company. So any one of these partnering conferences, we generally do all three. We meet with potential investors and investments can happen at the top coat area at the CinRx level, or investments in the various portfolio companies at the appropriate time and constantly looking for in licensing opportunities. And constantly talking to big pharma companies about potential strategic investments or talking to bankers about IPO, if such things ever come back to us. But always doing those three things at every conference.
Matt Pillar:Yeah, so you mentioned IPOs, and, from what I understand, in late Q423, the M&A market started to pick up again. Interest rates are coming down. You know there's a reason for optimism, and I'm feeling it. It's hard not to feel it at this event. Like you can come into a bear market and no offense, but the chief business officers of the world come in with their best foot forward and smiles on their faces and everything's sunshine and roses. The sense here, though, is that there are some real indicators that things are turning around. What's your take?
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:I do think there that we've turned a corner. The last half of Q23 was absolutely brutal for all three of those areas that we work in. It was very difficult. This seems to be in addition to the hard indicators that you mentioned the interest rates and the number of transactions improving. There is an era of optimism and the conversations are a little freer and, at the end of the day, there is money. People have been reluctant and cautious to part with their money in the form of investments particularly the last half of Q23, but can't hold on to money forever. So, with interest rates, with the softer and harder indicators of gradual improvement, it feels better even this early on in this year.
Matt Pillar:Yeah, and sentiment creates inertia. It sounds like soft or fluffy to say well, it feels better, but there is truth, feeling the sentiment does move the needle. Yes, absolutely, yeah, excellent. So I often like to ask seasoned veterans of this space to share advice with perhaps first time founders and leaders of biotechs. I'd like to kind of win all that question down for you a little bit, based on your experiences and your past. So if you're speaking to someone who perhaps is coming from the scientific or medical side, and has an interest in getting involved in the business side of biotech.
Matt Pillar:Speaking specifically to that person, what advice would you offer?
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:I would say that the transactional side of farmer and biotech Is to a large extent, an apprentice type of education. So while it's very useful to have formal education in the form of an MBA or whatever you decide to do, that definitely is useful. But the only way of really learning it is to sit at the table and observe and gradually increase your participation. So find someone who you really respect and respect. In this context, I think has two components one, that the person Genuinely has the patient as a center of their focus, and that's for two reasons. One we're not we're not selling widgets in this industry. We actually have people's health, that they're interesting to us, and that's a. It's a very Important and heavy burden to bear that comes with a lot of responsibility. But there's also a good business reason to have the patient at the center. Because if you do that and develop your drugs to specifically help patients, either in terms of their disease burden or the quality of their life, the the financial reward comes automatically as a part of that. And do you think that?
Matt Pillar:that gets gets lost at times. I think it does, yeah.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:I think it does, because, particularly, you know, in in a year like 23, where money is so tight that the focus drifts away from that to budgets, and cutting your cutting Corners and and trying to save Money and do things quicker impacts cutting a few corners that should not be cuts. So, yes, I think that the focus is lost when when times are tough. And then the other is to find someone who transacts in a collaborative way. And there's two reasons for for that one, the end product that the Transaction is a much better transaction for all parties involved. And secondly, it's not a particularly pleasant line to spend your entire Workday fighting the people. It's much better, it's much more, it's much more fun and it's much more pleasurable to spend your time working together with the party on the other side of the table To find a true, truly innovative, collaborative solution to a problem, rather than just slogging out the compromise.
Matt Pillar:The most recent conversation that I had with a chief business officer on this topic, on negotiation on I'm transacting Was nila Patel, and it strikes me that you're. She's also an ending, maybe a PhD, because she came from the science side, right, and you have a similar demeanor, like you both. You're both very Even keeled. You both come across as very intelligent, but you know, thoughtful. Do you think that's key, like from a personality standpoint, coming into a position like yours?
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:I think being even killed and not, and you know, not having an ego is helpful, because everything takes so long in drug development. It's a. It's a you know, 10, 15, 20 year process and if, if the person's going to get all flustered and and rates and, you know, throw temper tantrums in motion, yeah, it's just doesn't work. You have to be able to just Take a step back, really turn off your own ego and Look at the process, look at the data in a very critical way, see what makes sense and just work at it. This I Think of every transaction as having 20 demons to slay this, 20 problems that are coming away on every transaction. Each one of them could derail the Transaction completely and you have to do very systematically and very patiently deal with each one, find a solution and then move on to the next one and you get to a point 15 demons in where you you over the hump. You know that the deal is going to happen, but there's still the, the last remaining issues that need to be solved.
Matt Pillar:Yeah, what I asked you, dr Samuels, that that I should have right. If I were a better interviewer, what would I have asked you, what would you have shared, what would I have pride for? That You'd like to have a conversation, I think what?
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:what I am particularly proud of about scenarios is the model, the, the notion of having a Holding company the scenarios company with the portfolio company six at present. Underneath that, what I like about that is there's tremendous inefficiency in the biotech and and file space where, you know, a typical small biotech company has a full-time CEO and a full-time CFO and there's full-time CMO and CSO and the C-suite and they're working on one particular drug and it always puzzles us what you know many of these people doing for eight or ten hours a day, um, the. The CINRX model is different. It's about fractionally promoting services, uh to the portfolio company.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:So One portfolio company may need my full attention this week, you know, for five days, ten hours a day, um, but next week may not need any of my attention and then I can move on to another company. The same with the CEO Services that are provided, the same with the medical services and the scientific services. So what I like about the CinRx model is the efficiency, because People who work in biotech are generally expensive people that many, many years of education and experience behind them and If you can efficiently use those resources across multiple portfolio companies To make sure that every minute of every person's time is being used in an effective and efficient way. I think that's not only good for CinRx, but it's good for drug development, because it improves the efficiency and consequently the cost of developing drugs.
Matt Pillar:Yeah, I mean so, theoretically, totally get it, um, but in in practice, uh, it Occurs to me that it would take a special person to be a fractional CMO or CS or CBO for that matter, across multiple companies, multiple modalities, multiple indications. So I'm not, I'm not, you know, I'm not challenging the notion, I'm suggesting that perhaps CinRx has found some unicorns to fill those positions. You know, a lot of folks come out and I'm like well, I'm an, I'm an anabombe guy.
Matt Pillar:I can. I can transact all day long in the world of monoclonal antibodies. So tell me a little bit of that.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:I don't think it's as rare as unicorns, but I don't think it's for everyone either. It's some way between this. There's a particular personality At at CinRx. One anecdote Every one of us will be on a conference call two minutes early. It's, it's a big.
Matt Pillar:You were. You were in my makeshift recording booth before I was, so you couldn't you proved that.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:So so that's a. You know it's a little anecdote, but every single person is Is is one or two minutes early to every single meeting. We all are very passionate people. We, we, we want to make a difference and we all enjoy tremendous diversity. We, we get bored doing the same thing every day. So you know, those are some of the characteristics that a person needs. Again, not a unicorn, but certainly not for everyone, but either yeah, okay, so take note.
Matt Pillar:Well, awesome, I I appreciate this. You've you've been a joy to talk with. It's been a very insightful conversation. I'm glad you made some time for me. It's a very busy week, so I'm honored that you took some time to spend with the business of biotech.
Gavin Samuels, M.D.:Thank you very much. It was a pleasure talking to you. Thank you for standing with us.
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 podcast, spotify, google player anywhere you get your podcasts. You can also subscribe to our never spammy, always insightful monthly 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.