Company Turnarounds And AI For Infectious Diseases With Seek Labs' Jared Bauer

On this week's episode of the Business of Biotech, Jared Bauer, Cofounder and CEO at Seek Labs, talks about his adventures in company turnarounds, and setting up Seek Labs to improve patient diagnoses and to discover and develop new treatments for infectious diseases. Jared explains the technology convergence that was needed to build Seek Labs' AI diagnostic and CRISPR-based therapeutics platform, an African Swine Fever proof-of-concept study that reduced viremia in pigs, mapping pathogens for rapid target design, and engaging with the FDA and global regulatory agencies.       

Access this and hundreds of episodes of the Business of Biotech videocast under the Business of Biotech tab at lifescienceleader.com.  

Subscribe to our monthly Business of Biotech newsletter.

Get in touch with guest and topic suggestions: ben.comer@lifescienceleader.com

Find Ben Comer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bencomer/

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Background

Ben Comer 0:06

Welcome back to the Business of Biotech. I'm your host, Ben Comer, Chief Editor at Life Science Leader, and today I'm speaking with Jared Bauer, co-founder and CEO at Seek Labs, an AI-driven biotech focused on discovering new genetic targets for infectious diseases globally, as well as developing point-of-care molecular diagnostics and programmable therapies to treat those infectious diseases. Seek Labs is partnered with government agencies such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, through the agency's DARPA Connect program, and the U.S. Department of Defense's medical CBRN, or Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Defense Consortium, as well as the Global African Swine Fever Research Alliance. Speaking of which, Seek Labs published an interesting paper on a CRISPR-based therapeutic for African swine fever last November, which we'll talk about. Jared came to the biotech industry indirectly with a desire to turn around failing companies, a trick he managed to pull off previously with Exuro Medical. I'm excited to chat with Jared about what it takes to turn around a company, why he decided to focus on infectious diseases with Seek Labs, how a technology convergence helped create the company's gene ablation platform, and the role that corporate culture and service plays in a company's health. Thank you so much for being here, Jared. Pleasure to be here, Ben. Thanks for your time. Uh thanks for joining. Um, you did a short stint at Apple prior to ending entering your MBA program at Boise State U University. I don't have a lot of folks on the podcast that worked for Apple, even briefly. I wonder if you could tell me what that was like.

Lessons From Apple And User Focus

Jared Bauer 1:52

Uh so it was a brief stint at Apple, but it was cool. It was a bucket list item for me. I've always been, I am one of those Mac fanboys. Um I fall deep into that category, used to spend time on Mac rumors and Mac Daily News to see what they are going to announce next. So when I had a chance to work for Apple, I jumped at that opportunity. Um, I'll just give you kind of two quick anecdotes from my time at Apple. So I got to spend a fair bit of time in Cupertino. And on one of those trips, uh, we got uh, it was actually for the iPad launch. There was an email that went out late, late at night, and it was from Steve Jobs, and it was company wide. And so um, and and I opened the email immediately. I'd never received an email from Steve Jobs, so I was pretty excited about that, popped it open, and he was inviting us to a town hall. And so the very next morning, I woke up at probably 5 a.m. and drove over to the campus, the old campus, uh, and walked into their town hall, which is what they call their auditorium. Stood in line. I was probably five or number five or six uh standing in line and got to go in and hear from Steve directly. It's a pretty famous meeting. You might remember it. It's when he went to town on his thoughts on Adobe and his thoughts on Google with the do no evil uh statement that they make. And so he was he was pretty unhinged and it was epic and it was a huge opportunity, and I loved every minute of it. Um, it wasn't right for me long term. So immediately after I went and did my MBA. You were a witness to Apple history. Yeah, that's uh that's pretty cool. Yeah, I mean, who can how many people get to say that? I mean, there obviously there's a lot of people, I'm sure, who met him, but such an icon of innovation and of thinking about the entirety of a user experience. You know, a lot of the training that I received at Apple has been really beneficial to me for years. Even things like they would train us to train others on never talk about the number of USB ports, never talk about how fast the RAM is. Instead, focus on what it means to be able to store the pictures of your family and edit them and print them out into books. And you're talking about that user experience, but actually not just talking about it, but focusing on that as the goal. I think on the tech side, we often jump into how many features, how much functionality can we push into something? And we end up, we end up actually oftentimes missing the point. It's in the simplicity where we find usability. And so those are things I think Apple has been, under his leadership, has been good at for many, many years. And obviously, post his his passing, I think that has continued to be almost Apple one on 101. Um, so I enjoy the products and it was a it was a really great opportunity. I'm glad I was able to have it.

MBA Takeaways And Turnaround Spark

Ben Comer 4:46

That's excellent. I appreciate that. I mentioned uh you getting your MBA uh from Boise State University. Um how did business school prepare you, Jared, uh, for a career as a leader in life sciences?

The Burnfree Turnaround Story

Jared Bauer 5:02

Well, they probably didn't. Um, I think that uh so I did an executive MBA at Boise State, and uh it was it was a great program. And I uh big fan of Boise State, big fan of just kind of the mentality and and how they how they approach things. They have a little bit of a underdog syndrome, and so they fight to be amazing at things. And it was it was actually a really great program. Um, you know, my key takeaway is that unlike my undergrad, which is in economics at the University of Utah, during the executive MBA program, if we were studying a merger, for example, we studied the Albertsons American Foods merger, which was a disaster. Um, and when we were studying that, they brought in board members from Albertsons and they brought in previous board members from American Foods. And so you after you did the case study, you got to actually dive into it with them. And it was very hands-on, it was very tangible. Uh, and that brought a realness to it that we were able as students to embrace and really learn from. Um, it wasn't, it wasn't theory. We weren't saying, hey, if we'd been in the board meeting based on this armchair analyst type position, this is what we would do. But instead, we got to raise our hand and say, why didn't you do this? And they got to tell us the background story. And so that that ended up being pretty phenomenal. But of everything during my master's program, uh, what hit me the hardest was a professor who taught on turnarounds. It was a four-day module. That's it. So it was a Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And it was all on how do you turn around failing companies? What are the levers that you look for? What do you need to pull on? Uh, how do you think about metrics differently than a traditional startup? And I found it incredibly fascinating. I remember vividly going home and telling my wife that night, I know what I want to do. And she said, Great, what is it? Uh, she was she was as excited as I was that I finally knew what I wanted to do. Uh and I responded, I want to do turnarounds. And she responded, what does that mean? And uh, you know, and the reality was, I said, I think it means that we're gonna have to sell everything we own to try and sit on some cash so that I can go find a business that's failing so that we can try and see if I'm smart enough to turn it around and make it successful. And uh luckily I have an incredible wife, uh, her name's Sarah. And she said, Great, let's do it. And it was about that long of a conversation, super fast.

Ben Comer 7:34

Wow, that's a that's a big swing. You landed, I think, on Xero Medical was the company that you identified as one that you could potentially fix uh or turn around. I wonder if you could just start at the beginning with that, maybe how you identified it and you know what process you used, how you got started.

Jared Bauer 7:53

So Xero Medical, if anyone goes and does a Google search to see what it was, Xero Medical is not the company that we turned around directly. It's actually products lines, the product lines that we, that Xero Medical, which was my company, acquired. And so we were turning around those product lines. One of those product lines was a product line called Burnfree. Um Burnfree had previously been distributing its first aid burn care products internationally. It's an FDA medical device, um, but it was a really messed up company. And uh I was sitting at a after we had sold our home and after we were preparing to go find a failing business, I was sitting at a Boise State basketball game. And uh I was listening to, it must not have been a very loud evening in the stadium because I was listening to the conversation of the people directly behind me. And one of them had been an investor in Burnfree, and uh he was talking about the struggles that they were having. Uh, former CEO had been sent to prison for fraud, not related to the product line, but instead related to governance, uh, and actually not governance related to Burnfree at all, but actually other business dealings, though there had been definitely some issues at Burnfree as well, I would say, based on my observation. And uh and I remember turning around after listening to them talking for 15 or 20 minutes about this frustration that they had of this investment that they've made and how it just wasn't going well. And I turned around and said, tell me more. And we that began a conversation that ultimately led to the acquisition of Burn Free in June of 2012. And it was for me, um, what I had been entrepreneurial prior to Apple and then my MBAs. I had had a couple of small companies and some success, some that were definitely not so successful or successful at all. I've got a couple of epic failures under my belt. But we but I remember um jumping into this, I'm jumping into burn-free, creating Xero Medical and acquiring Burn Free, and I knew nothing about FDA rules and regulations. I knew nothing about the SEC. I knew uh nothing about manufacturing other than a short module in my MBA that had uh taught us a surface level, six sigma, those kinds of things. Um I didn't know anything about ISO standards. There, it was just a total lack of knowledge. And so, you know, I learned through uh having a fire hose blasting directly at my face. I wouldn't even call it drinking through a fire hose. It was just hitting me right in the forehead constantly uh for four weeks on end while we worked to figure it out. Ended up being uh tremendously successful. We were manufacturing uh in the United States and in Sweden and in Turkey. We ex we increased distribution to 58 countries, which is a story in and of itself. I'd only been out of the country once um prior to acquiring the company, and all of a sudden I was on a plane traveling from country to country to country to country to country, um, and uh waking up each day in a new place, meeting with new distributors who spoke a different language, who had different culture, and I would take my little business culture book and read it as fast as I could on those flights in between. But uh four years, 2012 to 2016, four of the best years of my life. That was an absolute blast. It was terrifying. We almost went under. We were barely folding it together at times. I have a great screenshot of 86 cents. Um, it's actually I've got a screenshot of every single one of my credit cards maxed out. 86 cents in the company checking account. My checking account is at zero, my savings account is at zero. And we made payroll for everyone but uh but me. And I remember saying to my wife, I'm not sure. And luckily, some orders came through in the in the following days and it held together and and we were able to continue on. But it was definitely terrifying, and it was everything that you kind of hope a turnaround story will be.

Building Teams And Working With Regulators

Ben Comer 11:58

That's amazing. Um, I'm curious about, you know, given that you when you started out were not familiar, as you said, you know, with FDA regulations, not to mention regulatory structures in in countries all over the world. How did you set the company up? I mean, how did you, I guess, put the team in place that ultimately, you know, was able to make all of that happen?

Jared Bauer 12:21

Yeah, we had one woman, uh, Karen, who had really, after the former CEO had had been incarcerated, she had done her best to hold the organization together. And she had um, and she had a lot of institutional knowledge. Were it not for her, there's no way we pulled this off. But she sat me down. I sat down with her and said, Hey, I really don't know anything about this. Let's partner on this. And we we cut her into a stock position so that she was a shareholder. And uh, and and then she was really phenomenal. You know, she had been with the business since the 90s, so you know, 90s to 2012. She'd been there for, I don't know, 15, 16 years, something like that. And um, she sat down with me and taught me a couple of really key lessons. One, these agencies are not our enemy. And I had heard that actually at a couple of the conferences I traveled to. These are our frustrations with the FDA, these are our frustrations with the SEC and what have you. And while there may at times be frustrations and tension, the goals of the agency is to protect patients and the goal of the SEC, or that's of the FDA, and the goal of the SEC is to protect investors. And so the purpose is real and uh partnering with these agencies, and this holds true around the world, but partnering with them, working with them. What are your concerns? How can we overcome those concerns? What data could we provide? Um, and I have found that those conversations have served me very well over the years. And I've actually come to a place where I'm very grateful for the work that these agencies do. Um, but of everything, that was the advice that was really eye-opening and I think a mental shift that I continue to operate on uh that has been really powerful through subsequent investments in life science entities. But from the manufacturing perspective and some of those things, you just learn. You know, Google was a great tool. Books were phenomenal. I had a lot of time on planes, and so you, you know, you just learn, you do the work.

Ben Comer 14:26

So you were able to get the these products back on track, expand their global footprint, and then that led to a transaction, I think, in 2016. Can you tell me a little about that?

Jared Bauer 14:38

Yeah, we had a great exit in 2016. Uh, we sold to our largest competitor. Uh, we had expanded so much internationally that it was as much about the distribution that that deal, that exit, was as much about the distribution and those partnerships and relationships that we had as it was about the products itself, frankly. Uh they had a broader product line, and so they were then able to push those additional products through those same distributor networks. And I think it ended up being a great acquisition for them. Um, it led them to being acquired by another group, much larger than them in the first aid space overall. So they were able to take that, build a stronger portfolio, and they also exited. So um, it's changed hands a couple of times, but each time moving up.

Ben Comer 15:23

So after taking yourself and your family all the way to the brink financially, uh managing managing to ultimately succeed, you decided after that exit that you wanted to to do it all again with Ionic Sciences. You wanted to try another turnaround. Is that is that correct?

Founding Seek Labs And Mission

Jared Bauer 15:43

Well, so we actually founded Seek Labs prior to my work at Ionic Sciences. Oh, you did? Okay. Yeah. So in 2016, we founded Seek Labs and um and we invested really heavily in it. A lot of the return that we had received um out of Xuro Medical, uh, we actually put really heavily into Seek Labs in those early days. I mean, granted, we bought a house, we replaced our car, we we had four kids, we had three kids at home, I guess. Um, and so there were some changes that we made in in our lifestyle for sure, but the vast majority of it, we were young. I was still in my early 30s, and Sarah was in her late 20s. And so we said, well, let's let's keep going. We're not gonna stop now. Um, and then in 2018, I had the opportunity to uh take on another turnaround um with Ionic Sciences. And Ionic was um was pretty messy. Uh there was a SEC investigation uh that had was ongoing. There were some lawsuits against the company, a shareholder consent dispute uh ongoing between the shareholders and the board. And I was first asked to join the board. Um, and I was on the board for about two and a half months before they asked that I come in as CEO for a period of time. And that was only supposed to be a four to six month engagement, um, but it turned into uh a few years.

Ben Comer 17:05

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's uh let's talk about um let's talk about Seek Labs. I'm I'm curious about how you became interested in infectious diseases uh specifically, and maybe I guess what opportunity from a business perspective did you see initially that that made you want to start up Seek Labs?

Jared Bauer 17:27

So Seek and so while today Seek Labs is very focused on business opportunities that are incredibly exciting, and some of the therapeutics and diagnostic technologies that we've built, we're now moving from really that early technology discovery phase into product development. And it represents a massive shift for our organization where we're talking a lot about the business and commercialization of those products, how do we get them to patients? That is not what it was about in 2016.

Ben Comer 17:53

It didn't, did it okay, did it not start off focused on infectious diseases?

Hiring For Culture And Principles

Jared Bauer 17:57

Well, it did it did for sure. But Seek Labs, um, from my perspective, and there's a couple of founders of Seek Labs, each who had the their own things that they wanted to accomplish, and we ended up working together. But for my brother and I, um, who's also one of the co-founders of Seek, he's our chief technology officer. For the two of us, Seek Labs was a hundred percent about working to solve the two issues related to the death of my second son, Oliver. So if we go back in time to 2009, um, my second son uh Oliver passed away at eight months and he died from a combination of a missed diagnosis, not missed, but entirely missed altogether, a missed diagnosis, uh, as well as lack of treatment for infants. Um that's terrible. I'm sorry. So what's on his death certificate is that he passed, thank you, is that he passed from influenza A. The reality of the story is with most people who succumb to an infectious disease, such as influenza, there's a number of complicating factors that ultimately led to that, um, to then to their passing. And that's true with my son. So we went from no money to we could do kind of what we wanted to do. And uh, and so we decided to take two paths. My wife uh started a nonprofit called the Oliver Fund. She works with refugees around the world in refugee camps on the education side, and I created Seek Labs to try and scientifically um solve for those issues that had led to the death of our son. So the Oliver Fund was created and Seek Labs was created, but both with our son in mind.

Ben Comer 19:34

What can you tell me, I guess, about the the initial founding and and building the company um, you know, as someone without a background in science?

Jared Bauer 19:43

Yeah. So um, you know, this one of my favorite things to tell people is uh don't worry about it. I took a biology class in the ninth grade, and I feel really, you know, I feel really good about that. Go Twin Falls High, you know, southern Idaho, uh, where scientists are born and raised. Um the uh, you know, the the reality is that during the burn for years, I had fallen in love with the science. I had fallen in love. We had developed a couple of products and I'd been in the labs and I'd worked with scientists, and I really fell in love with that innovation site, which is something I enjoyed about Apple. It's the reason I read Mac Daily News and Mac rumors. What are they coming up with next? And I think just naturally I think that way. I get excited um to go to scientific update meetings. Those are my favorite days in the office. I find it incredibly interesting. And so, you know, as my wife and I were talking about what do we do, I said, I'd love to just go start hiring scientists. I've met all these scientists all over the world, and and I have um I want to see what they can do. And I want to try and support that if I can. And what if what if we could, what if we could create the technology that makes it so that other parents don't have to experience what we experienced, other families don't have to have the same experience. There's less loss of life and less suffering. And that was a quick yes from from Sarah. And so we began hiring scientists. We had one internally that we had partnered with, one of our co-founders, and we hired other scientists from around the world um to advise some and consultants, some we brought in. But ultimately, uh we just began searching for good science. And it took us years. And I'll tell you that some of those early years were learning curves for me, uh, reading papers, uh, going into the lab in an actual capacity for the first time, like a true scientific capacity, sitting in those meetings, learning about diagnostics. I knew the experience that we had had and what we felt was missing, but actually building that broader, that broader depth and that understanding so that I could actually do a good job of this. And I'll tell you there's pros and cons to that. The pro is I view things differently. The con is it took years for me to actually be able to describe what was missing and to be eloquent. On the subject and to have a depth of understanding, a technical depth of understanding that actually allowed me to lead the company in a way it could succeed. So those first few years are ripe with lots of expense and struggle. Um, and the last few years have been phenomenal.

Ben Comer 22:16

So you had built out a network of scientists through your time at Xero, it sounds like you. And then you you brought, you mentioned you brought in your brother as chief chief technology officer. Is is he kind of a technology guy? Did he have any life sciences background?

Platforms: Diagnostics, Therapeutics, AI

Jared Bauer 22:32

So I would say that Brad's more of a technologist. He's been CTO of a couple of public companies. Okay. He's well known, I think, in the space for that, has historically been on the cutting edge from uh software development and from the tech side. And so he initially came on and actually stayed. He lived in Texas at the time, and we were based in Salt Lake City. And um, and he came on and just stayed in Texas and actually kept his J job and would program for us in the evening and would would would help us with things. And then ultimately that role continued to expand and now it's full time and he has a team and he's had that for many years now, actually. But um, ultimately that was one that started slowly.

Ben Comer 23:17

Yeah. I I wanted to ask a question about what you look for um in an executive uh or an employee, uh maybe aside from technical expertise. Um, you know, you you strike me, Jared, and I I picked this up some from reading through the website as someone who cares a lot about, you know, not just corporate culture, but but also um community activity, volunteering and service. Um, and I want to ask you about that a little more maybe pointedly toward the end of the interview, but I I wonder if what you could say, thinking back to kind of the the earlier days of Seek Labs, you know, obviously you're looking for technological expertise, you're looking for scientific expertise. Are there any other attributes or characteristics that that you prioritize, I guess, in in making hiring decisions?

Keeping Pace With Fast-Moving Tech

Jared Bauer 24:11

So yeah, it's a great question. Uh, and culture is culture is is the crux of it all. Um what we do, especially in the world of of innovation, what we do is really hard. And the question, if I could reframe, is how do you find the people and how do you build an internal system or an internal structure that allows people to have a safe place where they can come in every day, try new things, know that the majority of it is going to fail, leave with a smile on their face and come back the next day and do it again? And how do you keep the tension down with all of the pressures of investors, product timelines, um, just general internal pressures that people put on themselves, especially high-achieving people? So, how do you balance all of that? And I think it's um, I think it's a it's something we continue to work on every day. I do not think it's something we've mastered. Um, early on, we created our core principles. We began to define employee reviews and daily events, company meetings built really around our core principles. We rewrote our employee handbook so that it was more principle-based rather than a list of just rules and regulations. Don't get me wrong, legal counsel made sure that there was still plenty of that there. But it's it's a it's really more about can you find the innovators who are excited to change the world, who are highly motivated already, and then put them in a structure where they can succeed. Give them the freedom to succeed because they don't need micromanagement, they need a structure that allows them to be them. You hired them because you believe they're a certain type of person. And I think what companies do, and for sure I've done this in the past, and I'm sure I'll do it again, to be really frank. I think it's a lesson we learn over and over. But what companies do is they find the candidate that fills this gap that they have in their organization, and they hire them to go fill that gap and then force them into a structure that doesn't allow that gap to be filled. And this happens all the time. And I've done it, I watch other CEOs do it. I think it's I think it's very normal. But we actually found that there was there was a certain phenotype that had nothing to do with science, had nothing to do with business, uh, that uh that really excelled in the structure we were looking for. And so every candidate goes through, let's take a scientist, for example. Executive is going to be the same thing, it's just gonna be different interviews. Um, you know, different uh those early interviews are gonna be different. But every candidate goes through either the scientific interviews or the executive interview. This is 100% based on their resume, this is based on qualifications, what's your education, what work experience do you have, and the like. And then they come to me and I ask all candidates four questions. And I can't tell you what it is in case some high achieving candidate listens to this podcast. But everyone in this organization has been asked the same four questions, and it has to do a hundred percent with how you view the world, how you view your place in the world, what you want to accomplish, and either you're a fit or you're not. And we are ruthless on paper. You can be the absolute best candidate by resume. And if you are not a culture fit, you do not work here, period. And there are no exceptions to that rule. And so um, this has transformed us. Uh, and I'll just be really clear this isn't looking for any sort of ideology or anything along those lines. This is specifically just how do you view the entirety of the world and your place in it? Uh, and and that's been pretty phenomenal. We also are active, we do a lot with Biohive, um, which is the community organization in Utah. Um, we also um all of our team with the gets five paid vacation days per year to go volunteer anywhere of their choice. That can be a protest, that can be a church activity with youth, that can be you name anything volunteering at your kids' school. We absolutely want to support that. So we do have a different approach to things, I think, than most companies.

Ben Comer 28:20

Yeah, thanks for sharing that. That's great. And I'm gonna need to hear those four uh four questions after we stop recording. I'm happy to tell you offline. All right. Um Zeke Labs uh describes itself as a full stack AI company. And I wonder, Jared, maybe as an intro intro into kind of um how your technology works and how the company operates. I wonder if you could talk about the technology uh that was needed to create, you know, the platforms and and future product offerings um at Seek Lab. How did it come together?

Seekit Diagnostics: Extraction And Amplification

Jared Bauer 28:55

So, you know, first of all, anyone who's in our space, we are building on the backs of those who came before us. We just are. We're innovating based on the innovations that have come before. And and I think that's important to remember because we um we have some really phenomenal technology in diagnostics and therapeutics, but none of it can exist were others to not um develop addition, develop technology beforehand. So our therapeutics platform, CRISPR-based, LMP or PMP delivered a lot of innovation in CRISPR, especially out of Jennifer Dowdna's lab. We have hired out of her lab on the LMP and PMP side. There's a lot of innovation that has occurred for many, many years. And that allowed us to take those technologies and some of our own and develop an entirely new type of therapeutic, a new modality that others have not used before. And the same thing in diagnostics. You know, our diagnostic system is a portable, handheld, power-free um molecular diagnostic system. And had it not been for others who originally invented how do you amplify an analyte, we wouldn't have been able to move amplification from something that required a heat or some sort of heating element, heating and cooling for traditional um PCR, or uh steady heat if you're using an isothermal method, both of which are difficult to deploy in someone's house because it requires electronics. But we were able to take what was done before, really study it, understand it, and then innovate beyond it that allowed us to develop a new amplification technology that amplifies where the enzymes react at room temperature. And that then allows us to eliminate the electronics and move it closer to the patient, put it in the hands of the patient. So a lab quality test in the hands of the patient. So that's um with without others, we can't exist. And so we're grateful for that technology that's come before.

Ben Comer 30:53

How do you um keep up, you know, with an ever-evolving AI and technology landscape? I mean, you were you were just describing some you know fairly recent developments in the science that that you've now you know brought into to Seek Labs, innovated beyond, as you just described. But um, you know, are you uh are you constantly testing, you know, new looking into new technology, testing it, integrating it? Uh did you reach a point where you you know landed on this set of technologies that you know you knew could serve as the basis for what you were trying to do, and then you you kind of just move on from there as a base. How do you think about that?

Jared Bauer 31:33

Yeah, it's a really, it's a really great question. And and to be frank, we could spend hours on this subject. Um, but let me give you the 30 seconds of it. So we came both in diagnostics and in therapeutics and on our AI platform, and our AI system is is really what's moving quickly. And I should probably maybe in the next question or two explain what our technology is so the listener, so all of this has a little bit more context for the listener. Yeah, we'll do that. Um but but the reality is that a number of years ago, we came to this is our platform. These are the fundamental technologies that we have innovated that allow us to now develop diagnostic tests. And then the question with new technology is can we improve upon that platform? Can we build additional functionality on that platform that allows for an increased benefit to the patient, not function and not additional functionality because it's cool from a tech perspective, but does it add additional benefit to the patient? So we're really strict about that. And then on the therapeutic side, um, this is an area where this is just the entire CRISPR world, the entire AI therapeutic space, uh, LMP, PMP, all of the delivery technologies are moving so fast. And so what we made the determination of is there are portions of this that we are going to do. And there are portions of this where we are always going to partner with others, or our intention today is to partner with others. That could, I guess, change at some point. But what that gives us is the flexibility of where advancements are occurring with the stability of our foundational platform. And so we watch that really closely. We stay in constant communication with a number of companies, both in the CRISPR space as well as in the delivery space. And uh, that allows us to have flexibility in the platform, which we need on an asset-by-asset basis. Again, it's a platform, this is not a single drug, this is not, you know, one disease, one drug. We can talk about the complexities of that. But this is about us looking at disease after disease after disease, specifically starting an infectious disease. So primarily viruses, but virus after virus after virus, though we're doing more and more in the oncology space. Um and continuing to innovate through flexibility.

PTAP Therapeutics: Programmable Ablation

Ben Comer 33:58

I mentioned uh some of your partnerships in the introduction. And I want to ask you about, you know, kind of uh at a high level, what your partnership strategy is, you know, going forward, what you're doing currently. But before that, let's do get into um to Seek Labs products that you're developing. Um, what are your plans, Jared, for internal development programs? And I'm thinking of diagnostics as well as as therapies. Maybe let's start there.

BioSeeker AI: Mapping And Target Design

Jared Bauer 34:26

Yeah, so so let me explain the three pieces of our technology. So the three pieces, really high level, is our diagnostic technology that we call Seekit, Seek Lab, Seek It, cute, huh? Um, it's also our therapeutic technology that doesn't have as cute of a name. We call it PTAP or programmable target ablation platform, and then BioSeeker, which is our AI system that connects everything. And and I I would I'll start with diagnostics. So, our diagnostics technology, because that's really where we started as an organization, we were originally focused primarily on diagnostics. And what we innovated were two things, and they were based 100% on that whole patient benefit view. How do you get the right test to patients? I think for decades, people have understood just kind of almost universally that a patient being able to test at home or in a pharmacy or with telemedicine, that this was going to be the future. I think the hurdle comes from a technology perspective. And it's because most companies try and take what's done in the lab and they attempt to make it smaller, more efficient, and move it into the home. But we needed an iPhone-like paradigm shift, right? So iPhone really transformed over Blackberry and Palm Pilot in a massive way by saying, actually, what do we not need? What do we need? And how can we think about this differently? And then how do you develop something like an iPhone where, you know, test after test after test can be run on the same platform where an iPhone is able to do app after app after app. And so that is really the framing. That's how we think about things. And so on the diagnostic side, what we realized is that there were two fundamental technologies that were holding the entirety of the diagnostic industry back from being able to actually deploy in the home in an eloquent, inexpensive way that's good for the patient. And by the way, if you're not accounting for price, you're not thinking about the patient. Period, end of story, no ifs, ands, or buts. And so it's got to be something that's truly efficient. So keeping all of that in mind, we innovated, we we focused our innovation really heavily post about 2020 on two areas. One, it was nucleic acid extraction, pulling the DNA RNA out of a blood sample, saliva sample, swab sample, stool sample, whatever it was. But how do we get the DNA RNA out? And then the second piece was how do we amplify that at room temperature? And so we needed to be able to pull it out with get the DNA RNA out without the traditional lab-based methods, which are chemicals or bead beaters. There's a number of ways to do that, but it's complicated and it takes equipment and technicians. And then we needed to be able to amplify it successfully without any sort of electronics, or it became too expensive. So, how do we eliminate heat? And so those are our two key innovations. Our extraction technology, I can pull DNA RNA out of a sample saliva swab in sub 30 seconds by just dropping it into this vial, putting a sample in a vial and then dropping it back out. And we created this binding membrane that allows it to do that. And then on the amplification side, we were able to develop a technology that not only could it be, could it amplify at room temperature, but it has to be incredibly specific or incredibly accurate so that the user at home could actually read the result without any sort of technician needing to actually describe what that result meant. So, two massive hurdles. We spent all of our time and money on those two areas. We innovated in those areas and then we put it together to develop a testing platform. So that testing platform allows for us to now put any really infectious disease test or anything that can be tested by looking at the DNA RNA. We can actually build a test for that using our technology. So if I want to create a test for RSV, I can do that. If I want to create a test for influenza, I can do that. It's some oncology testing. All of those can be done on our platform. Some oncology can be done on our platform. On the therapeutic side, this technology actually came out of our diagnostic division. And um, we were working on a project with a professor, and one thing kind of led to another. And there was this idea of what if we used CRISPR? And for any listener that doesn't know what CRISPR is, CRISPR is something that bacteria in nature uses to target viruses and to cut up the DNA and RNA. Okay, so unlike unlike diagnostics where you're trying to create more DNA and RNA so that it can be seen in the diagnostic test, in nature, what CRISPR does is it tries to actually eliminate the DNA and RNA. So it chops it up. And it was harnessed a number of years ago by Jennifer Dowdna and her lab, and it created really this world of genetic editing that we live in today. Well, genetic editing requires real precision in targeting a specific gene, cutting that gene, which is the programmability that Dowdna's lab and others created. But when they when it makes that cut, then you replace it with another gene, and that completes the strand, and ultimately now you have something that's been genetically edited. And we took a completely different approach. What we said is couldn't we do something more along the lines of nature? Let's take the power of programmability where I can cut the genes I want. So it's not indiscriminate the way it is in nature, where it's just cutting randomly. But what if we could be very specific about what it's cutting? But what if we used it to actually cut the nucleic acid, the DNA and RNA, and actually chop it up and eliminate it altogether? Well, then we could target the DNA or RNA of a virus, for example, or an oncology fusion transcripts, and that would lower the viral load because we're chopping it up. Now we're not we're not modifying the host, we're actually working with the immune system. The immune system's doing everything it can to destroy it. And we're saying, hey, we're here to help. Let us destroy our part. And so we actually lower the viral load, antibodies kick in, and you have ongoing protection. So those are our two kind of fundamental scientific platforms. Where AI comes into this is that it took us four years to develop our first therapeutic, trying to decide. So the virus that we were looking at was 200,000 nucleotides long. So massive. And the question became was how do we actually target, like what needs to be targeted? How do we think about the structure? How do we actually get the CRISPR where it needs to be so the cuts can be exact among a whole slew of additional issues? Took us four years. And the question was you can't do that four years for every single virus because viruses are changing. So how do we do this faster? And how do we take in all this information? Well, just as we were asking that question, AI started to truly have its moment. And so we built from scratch our AI system that we call BioSeeker. It has now we've created a data set of nearly every major infectious disease on Earth. It's 145 infectious diseases that have been mapped. When I use the word mapped, what I mean is that BioSeeker has now in its database every known sequence across every mutation or strain of those particular.

Ben Comer 41:38

So influenza And is that regularly being updated as viruses evolve?

Oncology Ambitions And Focus

Jared Bauer 41:42

Yeah. It never stops. So 69,000 strains of influenza. Okay, so that's like that's just influenza alone. There's three billion data points across all the viruses that we currently track. And we track those now in real time. But what it what the output is, is the output is two things. First, it is from a it is it gives us the targets to target uh in our therapeutic what guides need to be connected with the CRISPR to guide the CRISPR to the right strand of the virus or the right genes on the virus to actually make those cuts. Okay, call them cut sites for just simplicity. And then on the diagnostic, it creates the primers and probes. And their sole purpose is to say, go look for this particular strand of nucleic acid, and this is what you're going to amplify. So that's the output of it. It's a massive data set. We mapped 170,000 organisms to make sure we don't have anything that's off target because we don't want to inadvertently target a human or a mouse or a cat or E. coli or anything else. Um, and that's about three trillion data points. And then we have about 3 billion data points on infectious disease, and now we're mapping oncology. So that's that is our system. But what it means is that BioSeeker can, within hours, create the guides for a therapeutic for any of those viruses and can create the primers and probes to develop a test for really anything that any of those viruses on our diagnostic system. So the output is truly functional and it's immediate. We're not using AI to go try and find something. We're using AI in a very tangible way to look at significant amounts of data, understand how diseases mutate, and give us targets. There's a lot of things.

Ben Comer 43:21

You say you've moved you're you're now looking at oncology. Is that oncolytic viruses that you're looking at? Or how are you approaching oncology? Yeah.

Jared Bauer 43:30

So, and I'm sorry to jump in. Obviously, I'm super excited about this particular subject. No, please. So I uh, you know, it's it's it's probably my favorite thing in life to talk about outside of my kids. Um, the uh I'm not I can't really tell you what we're doing in oncology. Um, we've got some IP that we're filing there, but we really believe, and the data would suggest that this is a modality that has the ability to transform some portions of how we treat cancer. Today. Now, your cancer is incredibly complex. And I'm a big fan of using multiple treatments to target and fight cancer. And I really believe in that. And we're not suggesting a shift away from that. But what we are suggesting is that there may be a better way to actually lower the cell count of cancer cells directly. And we believe we maybe have some answers there. So we're exploring that now.

Portfolio Focus And Development Status

Ben Comer 44:24

Interesting. I I want to ask about your kind of uh approach to partnership, but let me ask first, have you now decided at Seek Labs on a specific uh therapy or diagnostic that you're gonna now develop internally and and hopefully commercialize? Do you aim to do that through a partnership, or have you maybe you haven't identified specifically, you know, a an exact um program? I I don't know. Where where are you at there?

Jared Bauer 44:55

So we we have, and let me just you know, let me say high level, that's critical. We're I we have not announced what those programs are. We hold that close to the vest, but those are ongoing. Platform companies often fail because of lack of focus. You know, when you can do everything, what do you choose to do? Ends up becoming a really serious question. Or when you believe you can do everything, absolutely. What do you actually choose? And so this has been heavy discussion for for years. Um, we're targeting some very high profile viruses on the on the therapeutic side. We're we're targeting a couple of key panels on the diagnostic side. Um, we're not announcing that yet, but we're excited that that development has been ongoing. We're in um, we're moving to uh advanced models on the therapeutic side. We're moving to clinical samples on the diagnostic side. That's where we are today.

Ben Comer 45:49

I mentioned the the paper that Seek Labs published last November on our potential treatment for for swine flu. Um, I wonder if maybe just briefly, Jared, you could tell me kind of how you landed on on swine flu as a target and what the significance of that study was. So African swine fever.

African Swine Fever Breakthrough

Jared Bauer 46:07

Um swine fever, apologies. So there now there is a difference. So I I want to just uh make that piece clear. So uh African swine fever, I don't know how many of the listeners know about it. I didn't know what it was um when it first came up in a board meeting. Um, but African swine fever wiped out almost 40% of all the pigs on Earth between 2019 and 2022. So this is a massive problem. It it's my terminology for it, it's a hemorrhagic fever. My terminology for it, you can think of it almost like Ebola for pigs. And uh just kind of in really simplistic state. 100% death rate between days four and 14, depending on what strain you have. Um, at the peak of the outbreak, they were literally taking and culling or putting to death all of the pigs that were at a farm where there was any sort of cases. They were killing all the pigs. And then in some cases, they were doing things like tearing the buildings down or burning the buildings just to try and stop the spread of the virus. They were so desperate to try and put a stop to this. And it's horrible. The pig, if you can just kind of imagine, like these animals are convulsing within a couple of days, and then they're bleeding out their snout and their eyes. And it's it's just it's it's actually heartbreaking. If you have a heart and care about animals at all, it's it's heartbreaking to see. Um, and and so we were in a meeting and we were talking about our therapeutic technology, and we really didn't know if it was going to work. This idea, can we actually target the virus? When you lower the viral load, does it actually do anything? Right, great, we lowered the viral load, but does that just extend the virus or does that actually help the immune system? We didn't know. Um, we had a hypothesis, but we really didn't know. And so we said in that meeting, could we go take on a disease where there's guaranteed death for the animal if our therapeutic doesn't work? Because then if they survived, we would have real-world tangible evidence. And we don't want to take a human disease and put it into an animal because it's never apples to apples. We want an animal disease in an animal. We want to act, we want it to be specific to that host. That's what we want to do. Because that for us gave us it's not an orthogonal validation, it's a true validation. And so that becomes key for our ability to continue to invest and continue to advance the technology. So we took on African swine fever because we decided it was the hardest disease on earth at the time and that uh the 100% death rate would give us uh really great data if we could turn it around. And we did, um, as a it's the disease I was referring to earlier. It took us actually four years to determine what to target massive 200,000 nucleotides, why there haven't been successful vaccines for it, been vaccines, but very, very limited success because of the mutations that how quickly it's able to mutate. Um, and uh and we we advanced or we took survival from 0% to 60%. It's not it's not a small improvement. I mean, we took uh we we moved it from zero to 60%. And we now believe we can move that further. Um, and we believe we can move that further based on a significant number of additional enhancements to the technology and more understanding of how to look at viruses and what actually to target. It turns out it's like true deep science to be able to know what to target and why. And so um, what was most exciting about that study, though, to me, was that yes, we took a 100% mortality and increased it to 60% survival. That's awesome. But we saw the antibodies increase naturally during that period of time, not instigated by us. As we pulled the viral load down, the animal was able to have a faster immune response. So these animals within 48 hours were happy, kind of bouncing around the pen, those who had received the therapeutic. They were healthier, visually, physically healthier. And the the blood uh work that we did, the PCR work that we did to test and say, okay, antibodies and every other metric under the sun, what's actually happening to the system, what we saw was a cross-the-board improvement for these poor animals. Super exciting. And so we um we decided that we were going to, we were working with the university on this, and we decided that we were going to do a rechallenge. And so we took the animals that had survived who had received the therapeutic, and we brought in a new cohort, a new animal, a new group who had never been uh as a control group who had never before had the virus or our therapeutic. And we gave a dose of the virus via injection to all of the animals. So these are the animals that had survived the previous study, uh, now with antibodies, naturally created antibodies, and also um the uh the um the new control group. And what we saw was as expected, we did not deliver the therapeutic to any of them. None of them received the therapeutic a second time, but the control group all passed as expected. They succumbed to the virus, and then uh a hundred percent of the animals that had previously survived, survived. So this uh that's just phenomenal, right? Because their own virus, the own sickness that they had, in that particular case, you could make the argument in some ways is acting as its own natural vaccine, just simply by us lowering the viral load, increasing the speed to recovery, or in this case, giving them a chance at all for recovery. But at a minimum, we want to see an increased speed to recovery. And then we want that ongoing protection. And you just don't get that with a lot of traditional uh antivirals.

Ben Comer 51:50

It seems like a pretty clear uh and direct animal health application that you have on your hands there. Is that the intent or is it a proof of concept, you know, for human therapeutics? What are you what are you thinking there?

Rechallenge Data And Immune Memory

Jared Bauer 52:02

So we're definitely a human therapeutics company. Um, always the opportunity because we've mapped these 145 viruses, we could partner with animal health companies, and that's part of our strategy. But we can partner with them, they can tell us what virus they want to take a look at, and we can and we can we can organize studies that are appropriate to be able to move those products into uh commercialization or potential commercialization. But we are focused 100% on human as an organization. Uh, that was always the goal in the beginning, continues to be the goal today.

Ben Comer 52:34

Excellent. Well, in our in our final few minutes here, I would like to hear a little bit more about your um your partnership strategy. Um, you know, whether it's with the you know, the government health agencies I mentioned at the top with industry, uh, with animal health companies, uh, otherwise, you know, what how are you thinking about partnership and um and maybe give me a sense of like when you might announce like an initial drug candidate or uh or diagnostic?

Human Health Focus And Animal Health Options

Partnership Strategy And Upcoming News

Jared Bauer 53:02

So we uh we have a number of announcements coming forward. I'll answer that question right away. Um we've we've got a number of announcements that we'll make over the probably the next 90 to 120 days. So we're excited about those. Many of those are things that have been completed, but we're not quite ready to tell the world yet based on really our strategy as an organization, and and that's taking a number of things into into context. Um, but the partnering strategy to answer your question is actually really simple. We have a three-part strategy. Part one, there are a number of programs that we're going to advance and commercialize ourselves. If someone invests in Seek Labs, that's what they're investing in. And those are the programs that we're moving forward. They're defined, they're well known, we have data on all of them, and they're moving forward. Part two is partnering. You know, it's actually um, we're in a really solid position to do that because of the way BioSeeker works and because of its output, our ability to partner with animal health, our ability to partner with big pharma, our ability to partner with laboratories who are working even on more obscure diseases that have never had an answer or a lot of um or a lot of investment, we can actually partner with them. And so those partnerships then look a little different. Uh, some of them are a true co-development or a sponsored research project. And then some of them are just direct licensing. And so we have a lot of optionality in that. Um, from a government perspective, we've gotten really involved. We're part of a number of consortiums. You mentioned some of those earlier. And we want to be, we really believe in global health. In fact, you walk into the office, one of the very first things you'll see on our wall is global health is the barometer of progress. And that's one of our core principles. It's how we live, it's how we see the world. And so we have been really active over the last year with government health agencies, defense departments, um, and that's both in the United States and outside the United States, to make sure that we have these tools because really infectious disease is often more of a national security issue than it, then it tends to be thought of as a healthcare issue. Um, it is definitely both, but we we want to make sure that um that we are partnering with others and saying, hey, we have we have a new potential solution here. And let's investigate this and let's, you know, let's let's play this out. Because if this continues to perform as it has been performing, if that continues and if that works in humans the way we believe it will, we finally have answers for these viruses. I mean, how many times have you gone to the doctor and they said, Oh, you have a virus, we're just gonna send you home. I mean, that is the answer today. Antivirals have a very narrow window of when they can be delivered. They're phenomenal when you're in that window and it can be delivered. But we really need something that can directly attack the viruses, knock it down. And there's a lot of how we think about things differently. There's a lot of this because of the AI system that allows us to do this incredibly rapidly. So you think about new diseases coming forward. And that's where we've been able to partner with um and continue to work to partner with the Department of Defense and government agencies around the world. We we want to protect the global population.

Ben Comer 56:07

Jared, uh, thanks so much for coming on the show and uh sharing your story and telling us uh about Seek Labs. It's a really interesting organization, and um we'll be following you. My pleasure, and thanks for having me, Ben. I really appreciate it. We've been speaking with Jared Bauer, co-founder and CEO at Seek Labs. I'm Ben Comer, and you've just listened to the Business of Biotech. Find us and subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts, and be sure to check out our weekly video casts of these conversations every Monday under the Business of Biotech tab at life scienceleader.com. We'll see you next week, and thanks as always for listening.