Ep. 367 - FDA, obesity targets and the rise of DACs

Marty Makary wasn’t the only official on the outs at FDA last week in another tumultuous turn of events for the regulatory agency. On the latest BioCentury This Week podcast, BioCentury Washington Editor Steve Usdin discusses who’s in, who’s out and what’s next at FDA — and why the changes may mean more conservative decision-making at the agency in the near term.
BioCentury’s analysts also discuss the new obesity targets that came to light at last week’s annual meeting of the European Congress on Obesity, the market for biotech IPOs, and the emergence of degrader-antibody conjugates. DACs pair the tissue-targeting logic of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) with the catalytic activity of protein degraders. 3C Therapeutics is the latest entrant to the field, pitching its TriCore platform as a modular backbone for DAC generation. This episode of the BioCentury podcast is brought to you by Jeito Capital.

View full story: https://www.biocentury.com/article/659510

#FDA #ObesityDrugDevelopment #BiotechIPO #DACs #Biopharma

00:01 - Sponsor Message: Jeito Capital 
02:53 - FDA Leadership Shakeup
10:35 - Obesity Target Hunt
16:07 - Biotech IPOs
20:02 - Degrader-antibody Conjugates
28:42 - Serif: Non-viral DNA

To submit a question to BioCentury’s editors, email the BioCentury This Week team at podcasts@biocentury.com.

Transcript

0:00

[Autogenerated Transcript]

Voice Talent: 0:03

BioCentury This Week is brought to you by Jeito Capital, a leading global independent private equity fund with a patient-benefit driven approach, aimed at financing, and accelerating the development of ground-breaking medical innovation. Jeito’s unique investment strategy combines significant capital and collective expertise to support biopharma companies and their management teams-ranging from clinical development to market access for cutting-edge innovations—with one main objective: go faster for the patient. Learn more at jeito.life

Jeff Cranmer: 0:39

Changes at the top at FDA, who's out, who's in, and what's next? We'll take a look at the drug regulator on this week's BioCentury This Week podcast. Plus, obesity targets, biotech IPOs. We'll check in on both, and then we'll dig deep into the degrader-antibody conjugates, which appear to have moved past a rocky debut. I'm Jeff Cranmer, host of the BioCentury This Week podcast, and joining me to discuss all of this are my colleagues.

Selina Koch: 1:19

Selina Koch, Executive Editor.

Steve Usdin: 1:21

Steve Usdin, Washington Editor

Stephen Hansen: 1:23

Stephen Hansen, Director of Biopharma Intelligence

Danielle Golovin: 1:25

And Danielle Golovin, Senior Biopharma Analyst

Jeff Cranmer: 1:29

Okay uh before we turn to FDA, we are a few weeks away from BioCentury Grand Rounds. It's the third installment of our Conference that looks at solving translational bottlenecks, bringing together VCs, academia, and early stage biotechs. we will be in Seattle, and we have a few slots left for academics, biotechs who would like to present posters on what they're working on, or to take the stage as a presenting company and tell your story on stage, and we also have some delegate slots. if you're a podcast fan and you're hearing this and you wanna go to Grand Rounds, if you're up in Vancouver or Victoria, or if you just happen to be in Seattle or Portland it's a quick hop over to get there. And you can mention that you want the podcast discount code. Send a note to me via LinkedIn or to our conferences email, conferences@biocentury.com.

Steve Usdin: 2:37

A secret code.

Jeff Cranmer: 2:39

Secret code, Steve.

Stephen Hansen: 2:41

You should let Steve make up the secret code, I'm sure he'll have some good ideas.

Jeff Cranmer: 2:44

I think that's a good idea, Steve. All right. Well uh the code is secret, but you'll know it once you email us to get. Steve well, that didn't take long. Last week on the podcast, we were talking about President Trump's displeasure with Marty Makary, and that it seemed that he was uh going to be out the door, and uh now he is out the door, and uh quite a few other people. Bring us up to speed

Steve Usdin: 3:12

So yeah. So as everybody knows Makary has left FDA. You know, putting euphemisms aside, he was fired. As I wrote last Friday, very few people are gonna mourn his exit. The difficult task now is to help FDA recover from one of the shortest, most chaotic, and most corrosive tenures in its history. Rebuilding staff morale, restoring scientific authority, and purging ideology and politics from regulatory decision-making have to be the top priorities, right? Chris Klomp who's effectively running HHS on a day-to-day basis, engineered, you know, a clean sweep. He installed Kyle Diamantas, who was acting deputy commissioner for food, as acting commissioner. We can talk about Diamantas and who's likely to become commissioner later if you want. Out as acting CDER director, Tracy Beth Høeg, another one who I'd say few people will miss. Her replacement, Greg Davis, he's an FDA veteran. He served as clinical team leader at CDER from 2016 to 2022, then he was CMO of a nonprofit that was developing psychedelics for mental health. He returned to FDA in 2025 as CDER's deputy director. Out as acting CBER director, Kathryn Szarama. In, Karim Mikhail, one of the few Makary appointments to remain in a senior position. He's a former pharma executive. Out as chief of staff, Jim Traficant. In on an acting basis, Lowell Zeta, who has also retained his positions as deputy commissioner for strategic initiatives and as special counsel for FDA in the Office of the Chief Counsel Out also, Jeremy Walsh, chief AI officer, to be determined who's gonna replace him. And I would venture to say there will be more exits probably this week.

Stephen Hansen: 4:59

are all of these replacements better than a cactus like we talked about on our uh panel at Bio€quity?

Steve Usdin: 5:06

Yeah, yeah, they're all better than cactus. They're, they're, they're, for the most part, they are people who are, have, have experience at FDA. none of them are, as far as I know, ideologues who are associated with uh the MAHA movement. I think they're all people who are steady hands, safe hands. They're not likely to do anything surprising or, exciting one way or the other. And I, I think a period of stability um is something that certainly FDA staff and, and regulated industry would welcome. I think kind of the biggest unknown really is what Diamantis is gonna do with the job of acting commissioner. He owes his job to Klomp and reports to Klomp. And Klomp's loyalty seems to be to Trump rather than to Kennedy. My impression is the White House doesn't want drama from FDA right now. It wants quiet competence. I think that means that until there's a new commissioner, career staff are gonna be making decisions, but they've been hollowed out. The most forward-looking staff have been fired or left. so I think you can expect more conservative decision-making, more rigidity, at least until, new permanent center directors are appointed.

Jeff Cranmer: 6:22

Steve who, who might uh be up for the next FDA commissioner slot?

Steve Usdin: 6:27

the short answer is I don't know. I'm not sure that anybody really knows. I can say that, you know, there's a, there's a movement, um... So a lot of people in industry signed onto a letter endorsing Richard Pazdur for the position. I think he's very unlikely to be offered the job, and if he was, I think it's very far from clear that he could be confirmed. The White House wants somebody who's gonna be pliable, who's gonna be reliable, political person who's gonna, respond to their um to their requests. I don't think that Pazdur would fit that bill. MAHA is demanding its own candidate. Pazdur's built his career on scientific integrity and in putting the needs of patients first. That would make him an excellent commissioner, but I think it also makes it very unlikely that he would be nominated Or confirmed. I also have to say that I think that the endorsement of a very large number of biotech leaders isn't gonna help him. You know, the White House is listening to Dave Ricks from Lilly and Albert Bourla from Pfizer, not biotech CEOs, and if the Democrats win um control of the Senate, industry support would be disqualifying for anybody trying to get confirmed. So my guess, maybe it's gonna be somebody from a small or a mid-sized biotech. Somebody like George Tidmarsh, who was briefly CDER director, Whoever it is, is gonna have to have conservative credentials. They're gonna have to be strongly anti-abortion in order to get confirmed um if the Republicans are in control of the Senate. They're gonna have to have credentials in a kind of like anti-pharma or, or, or at least pro drug price reform, to get through under a Democratic Senate. So it's gonna be, it's gonna be a difficult situation for anyone to get through. I think that it means that even if we see a nomination soon, that because there's a lot of rumors that we're gonna see a nomination soon, that whoever's nominated is gonna take a very long time to get through, and Kyle Diamantis will be running it on an acting basis for some time.

Jeff Cranmer: 8:21

Yeah and Steve uh on our morning editorial standup, you mentioned uh Senator Cassidy, Cassidy unchained is going to have quite a role

Steve Usdin: 8:31

Yeah, well, I think so. Look, so yeah, Cassidy, he, he doesn't, he's, so he's the chairman of the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee, which has jurisdiction over FDA, and pretty much is a gatekeeper for who's gonna be the next FDA commissioner. He doesn't owe the Trump administration anything at this point. He's the first incumbent U.S. senator in twelve years to lose a primary. He lost it because the president, ran a candidate against him and denigrated him uh relentlessly, humiliated him publicly. Look, Cassidy was doomed the day that he voted for Trump's impeachment in February 2021. I think he's kind of a, it's kind of a tragic situation. He, he could have blocked Kennedy from being HHS secretary. He knew that Kennedy was gonna be disastrous for public health. It seems like he believed that voting for Kennedy would somehow save his political future. At the time, I, I didn't believe that. A lot of other people didn't believe it, but it seems to be what Cassidy was calculated. That decision, the decision to allow Kennedy to be HHS secretary has inflicted immense harm on America, including on FDA and, patients who rely on FDA. Cassidy could have sunset his political career with pride by saving the country from Kennedy. he didn't do it. Now he's got nothing to lose. he's publicly said that he was going to demand that a commissioner to be confirmed while he's still in the Senate, while Cassidy is still in the Senate, which is until the end of the year, will have to hew to his anti-abortion stance. He, he may have other requirements, and um he's certainly in no mood to to do the administration any favors or to do anything that would tarnish his reputation going forward

Jeff Cranmer: 10:17

Alright, thanks for that update, Steve. Steve's story on what's happening at FDA is out now, and he'll be uh keeping his ear to the ground, and for the record uh I, I actually hold cactuses in, in quite high regard, being a, being a California guy. All right, Stephen uh you had your eyes on the European Congress on Obesity, which took place last week, and you dug through over 300 abstracts to see what you could find in terms of new targets. Well uh what did you find?

Stephen Hansen: 10:54

Yeah. Thanks, Jeff. Yeah. So I got uh got some inspiration from, you know, my colleague, Lauren Martz, who does this regularly for other cancer conferences like AACR. And I think, you know, we had this on a couple of weeks ago on the podcast where she found one hundred and seventy-two new targets, and so I was like, wow, if she can find that many targets in cancer, maybe I can dig up some really interesting ones in obesity, looking at one of the obesity conferences. So that was sort of the premise for doing this. And yeah, as you say found three hundred and thirty-two abstracts that I went through. Maybe the-- I mean, maybe I should have expected it, but what I was a bit maybe disappointed with was the fact that eighty-eight percent of those abstracts were related to incretin-based therapies. So that being GLP-1, glucagon, or GIP. We only found six new targets that hadn't been in development for obesity in our BCIQ database. So I was a little disappointed, I guess, at the fact that there weren't a lot more other targets there. but uh you know, in, in kind of reflecting on it, I guess I kind of had two takeaways from that. You know, one being m-maybe I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was given the fact that, you know, obesity's really only been a commercially successful market since, what? 2021, when Wegovy was first approved for obesity. So I mean, it's a very young, very nascent market from that respect. And so it doesn't have the decades and decades of, you know, basic research and sort of investment in basic research kind of piling in. So, so it's still very young in that respect. So I think that's partly reflected in what we see. And just also the fact that, the commercial market being so, so young, there's still minimal penetration, you know, in terms of the number of patients that are actually on GLP-1 therapies and the fact that, these are highly efficacious targets. You know, it's maybe no surprise that there's still a lot of people piling into incretins.

Selina Koch: 12:47

I interesting, Stephen, we re- recently was looking at the sales of um the two approved therapies, right? And we saw that tirzepatide, that, that franchise is kind of far and away top-selling drug of all time on, like, a quarterly or annual basis.

Stephen Hansen: 13:07

Right.

Selina Koch: 13:07

Um, blasting through Keytruda and Humira's top sales or whatever. Yet when people talk to us about it, they're like, "Oh, this is so under-penetrated. There's so much room for growth."

Stephen Hansen: 13:18

Exactly, and that's, that's, that's the thing that, that I think that's the reason why Lilly is valued at what it is, right? Is that there's this, there's this feeling that it's taken over and done so well commercially, yet there is still so much further that it could potentially go. I think this was maybe a year ago, but there was, you know, talk, I think Novo was estimating that maybe one percent of the addressable obesity population was on therapy, and so even if you can get that into the you know, just think of getting into twenties, thirties, forty percent of patients on, on treatment. And, and this is the, this is the issue though, right? Is obviously, maybe taking this a little further than just the new targets here, but these are drugs that are not well tolerated at the moment, and that's, that's the issue. And so you've got patients kind of coming on and going off therapy, and so I think that is what, it's that opportunity that people see out there that there's still more, you know, that, you know, if we just get a dual or triple combo that is as good as what's out there, you know, if you can supply the market there's maybe a big, big commercial opportunity.

Jeff Cranmer: 14:21

Yeah, and I see Cerevance working on THIK-1 , Stephen. Uh, seems a missed opportunity there to spell it uh T-H-I-K rather than T-H-I-C-C. And of course, looking up that term in the dictionary as a colleague uh sent over to me, you've got a great picture of a corgi from the behind. So

Stephen Hansen: 14:45

Okay.

Jeff Cranmer: 14:46

tell you, new targets. You got another new target for me though, don't you?

Stephen Hansen: 14:49

Oh, I did. Well, it just-- So it stemmed when we were at Bio€quity, you know, we had had that sort of just-- I'd asked Lauren on that uh AACR targets podcast about, you know, were there any cool new targets that you found? And I think she had mentioned SEAL1 as being kind of one of the new ones that was a cool name that she'd found. And uh so I think I'd mentioned that Hedgehog was my, was my favorite or whatever. So anyways, I had someone approach me at Bio€quity and say, "Hey, you know, heard you talking about the targets on the podcast. You should hear our new target." And their new target is called DARKFOX, which I thought that was a very cool target name. So DARKFOX is a um it's a cancer-specific dark antigen. Uh, it's alternative reading frame within FOXM1 discovered by the U.K. biotech Enara Bio. And so they're developing a bispecific T cell engager against DARKFOX. And so I thought that was a...

Jeff Cranmer: 15:42

Oh, I'm, I'm all, all in on that one. That one sounds like... I mean, we were talking about secrets and whatnot. That sounds like kind of a, a, a ninja-esque uh code name there for you.

Stephen Hansen: 15:53

I feel, I feel like

Selina Koch: 15:56

definitely beats Sonic the Hedgehog feel like with DARKFOX

Stephen Hansen: 15:57

I feel like I've seen a, you know, a Disney or Pixar movie in which a fox is a ninja somewhere in some way or something. But um

Jeff Cranmer: 16:05

We'll have to delve into that. Uh, before I let you go, Stephen, I know it's into your evening there in the U.K., but I did wanna get your take on how the IPO market has been looking for biotechs.

Stephen Hansen: 16:19

Yeah, no. So it's we, we wrote about it in the in our second quarter preview about how potentially challenging the second quarter was gonna be for IPOs given all of the upheaval and uncertainty in the markets and the geo- geopolitics. And um I have to say uh so far it's been pretty good. You know, the IPOs that have got out in the second quarter uh we had Kailera, which was one of the biggest biotech IPOs in terms of money raised. And just also on performance, it's been pretty good. I mean Kailera so far is up 32%. Alamar is up 27. I think the best performing one from the first quarter was Veradermics, which I don't think we gave a lot of attention to because it's the um it's for male pattern baldness, but they actually had positive Phase III data. They're, they're actually up about 500% from their IPO price in three months. So that was one that, I'm sure insiders were quite anxious about that having a Phase III readout within the six-month timeframe. So essentially they just had to hope that the Phase III readout positively. But I mean, that's a great setup, you know, that they had that positive readout. They're now trading at about $100. So, you know, that was a good story I think for generals to see cause I think there obviously people think that just from a commercial perspective, there's a lot of guys that look like me and might be interested in uh you know, may- maybe don't have the self

Jeff Cranmer: 17:38

by that you mean dashing Stephen,

Stephen Hansen: 17:39

maybe don't have the self-confidence I do in terms of that I can-- I'm, I'm fully, you know, happy with my uh baldness and uh confident with it, but maybe there's others that are a little less uh less certain and, and willing to take a pharmacological uh fix. But, um...

Selina Koch: 17:55

Speaking of large markets, yeah.

Stephen Hansen: 17:57

Speaking of large markets, exactly.

Jeff Cranmer: 17:59

It's a, it's a long day in, in Turkey getting those hair implants, but uh they, they work. They work. So... Or the Philippines. Don't sleep on the hair specialists of the Philippines. All right, Stephen, thank you very much for that hot take. Uh enjoy your evening. We'll be back to dig into some nicely nerdy topics with uh Ms. Golovin.

Voice Talent: 18:24

This episode of BioCentury This Week is brought to you by the 3rd BioCentury Grand Rounds in Seattle. Advancing drug development requires more than discovery. It requires the right partners. The 3rd edition of BioCentury Grand Rounds U.S. convenes venture capital, biopharma decision-makers, and academic innovators in Seattle, June 3rd to 5th. This R&D-focused forum brings together leaders at the forefront of translational science to examine the breakthroughs, bottlenecks and strategies shaping the future of drug and diagnostic development and how to make early-stage R&D investible. Discover cutting-edge disease, biology, and platform technologies. Gain insights from emerging biotechs and academic pioneers. Schedule partnering meetings with VCs, pharma, and leading academics who can accelerate your path forward. Grand Rounds U.S. is where rigorous science meets strategic capital and where the right conversations move discovery toward development. Join us in Seattle and discover what's next in biopharma and who's driving it. Secure your spot. Register at BioCenturyGrandRounds.com.

Jeff Cranmer: 19:38

All right, we are back. You heard it there, Grand Rounds. it is coming up right around the corner. There's still some spots left to show off your poster get on stage, tell your company's story in front of investors, or just listen to some hyper-smart folks like David Baker drop some science. All right, Danielle, you uh had a very busy week. I think you single-handedly put out one of our, I still call it papers, one day it was the Danielle Show uh all stories by Danielle. And I really enjoyed reading about the degrader antibody conjugates. we've seen a couple of deals, Roche-C4 Gyre-Cullgen last I checked in on DACs, it kind of seemed like it was off to a rocky start. what you got for us, Danielle? Bring us up to speed So we need

Danielle Golovin: 20:37

Yeah. Let me just start with what a DAC is. So a degrader antibody conjugate, that's when you take a targeted protein degrader, like think a PROTAC or a molecular glue, you chemically link it to an antibody. You might be visioning in your mind an ADC. So it's analogous to an ADC. You have an antibody and you link something to it, but instead of a cytotoxic drug, you're linking a degrader. By doing that, DACs combine the long half-life and cell type selectivity of antibodies with the catalytic activity of degraders. So this could potentially widen that therapeutic window versus a standalone degrader, for example.

Jeff Cranmer: 21:14

So when did DACs come onto the scene, Danielle?

Danielle Golovin: 21:18

In my research, the sort of earliest deal that I found was from June 2021, and this is between Ubix and DebioPharm. But the catch there is they don't call it a DAC, they call it an ADeC, unfortunately, an antibody-drug conjugate and an antibody-degrader conjugate would have the same initials, so they had to come up with a DAC instead of ADC, but this particular company called it an ADeC. So that was 2021. By 2022, Orum Therapeutics had a DAC in the clinic. But many cite the first sort of marquee DAC deal as the one between Seagen and Nurix in September 2023, which was then followed by a collaboration between Merck and C4 Therapeutics in December of that year, so 2023. And the deal pattern here is that degrader-focused biotechs were partnering with big biotechs or pharmas that have antibody or ADC expertise. Then coming to 2024, that was a big year because DAC pure-play Firefly Bio made its debut with a $94 million Series A round. Firefly claims to have optimized linker technology that limits the release of the degrader payload in circulation, although it has been pretty tight-lipped about its targets, programs, and partnerships since. Um, also in 2024, 3C Therapeutics was founded. Talked to the CEO recently, and they aim to offer partners a ubiquitous backbone to make DACs plug and play. So their platform, dubbed TriCore, has three distinct conjugation points, one for the ligand that binds the protein of interest, one for the ligand that binds the E3 ligase, and then a third handle for antibody attachment. The CEO told me that companies often start with an optimized degrader, and then they have to search for ways to bolt on an antibody handle, ultimately, this can alter its physiochemical properties and impact the degradation activity. So their whole thesis is to offer, you know, a ubiquitous backbone for DACs, and you can check out that emerging company profile published May 13th.

Selina Koch: 23:21

In your timeline though, let's get to the rocky bit

Danielle Golovin: 23:24

Yeah, so also in 2024, unfortunately, Orum Therapeutics announced a fatal serious adverse event in its Phase I study of the first clinical DAC, that was ORM-5029. It targets HER2 and delivers a GSPT1 degrader payload, and the company has since announced discontinuation of that program and pivoted to next-generation constructs. They showed positive data this year at AACR for ORM-1153, which has a different target but delivers the same degrader, which makes me think, you know, they thought the problem was with the target rather than the payload. Although we don't have much information about, you know, what the cause of... I think it was liver toxicity that caused the death. Um, but yeah, the company expects to submit an IND or a CTA for that molecule that they presented at AACR in the fourth quarter

Selina Koch: 24:16

Okay. Well, you talked a little bit about um you know, this is one of these complex modular modalities, the antibody, the linker, and the warhead. This case, the warhead for the ADC is a degrader. So you can imagine, okay, you, you have all these degrader companies out there, and you have tons of ADC companies out there. Is there a more natural path into the degrader antibody construct? Like, do you... Is it more natural to segue in from degrader expert- expertise versus ADC expertise? Does it not matter? Um, and how important-- It seems like now there are at least a small handful of these, like, DAC-first companies, like, thinking specifically about the DAC issues. Is that gonna be an area of growth? Like, how do you think about that landscape?

Danielle Golovin: 25:03

Yeah, honestly, it's coming from all directions. So there are degrader companies moving into DACs, but the way they're doing that is partnering with, you know, ADC or antibody experts. And I think it's because what the 3C CEO told me is, like, it's not that easy to just bolt on an antibody to a degrader that you already have. And then I think it could go the other way as well. Maybe... But there's also, like, ADC companies moving into DACs. There's less of those so far. But then in the middle are these DAC pure plays that are trying to solve these issues or, like, come up with DACs from the beginning. So I do think we'll see an increase in that sort of middle category, like the DAC pure plays.

Selina Koch: 25:41

So because there are so many different parts that can be tinkered with in these modular modalities and this is a, a new kind of version, iteration of an antibody drug conjugate do you think that what we're gonna see is, companies trying to mitigate risk by going after like established antibody targets where more of the, like, risk might be on the degrader end or, or how are they gonna manage that?

Danielle Golovin: 26:07

Yeah, I think definitely so far people are using established antibodies, and the, again, the 3C CEO told me that their TriCore platform is made to, like, bind to common, you know, already established antibodies. So, you know, as any new modality, I don't think people are jumping to innovate on what... This is sort of a delivery, right? And I don't think people are innovating yet on what to deliver or how to target it. It's more like... It's so early. There's only one DAC in the clinic right now, so I think we have to wait to see data from that first. This, the one in the clinic targets CD33, and all the ones that I've talked about so far deliver a GSPT1 degrader. So zero and, like, zero diversity on the, on the degrader part so far.

Selina Koch: 26:57

gotcha. But in theory, you would want, say, a selective and kind of well-understood surface target for the antibody, and then maybe a target for the degrader where you're gonna get some benefit out of either better localization through the antibody or that catalytic activity that might give you something more efficacy over a small molecule, say.

Danielle Golovin: 27:24

Definitely. Yeah, the one that had the fatality targets HER2, which is, you know, very established, so I'm not sure what went wrong there. But since then, there was a lull in deal activity. I mean, we can't say for sure it was due to that, but from mid-2024 until March of this year, there was really a lull in, you know, both deal activity and, and really company creation. But in March Gyre acquired Cullgen, and Cullgen's a targeted protein degradation-focused biotech with a DAC platform. And then a month later, so in April, C4 and Roche struck a deal to combine C4's degrader platform with Roche's antibody design and conjugation expertise. So again, that, like, degrader biotech partnering with a pharma that has ADC expertise. Yeah, it appears the rocky start didn't derail the field entirely, and I'm excited to see how it plays out.

Selina Koch: 28:15

Well, it's one to watch, and we'll keep an eye on it as it develops.

Jeff Cranmer: 28:20

Definitely. And, and despite that setback, Orum uh definitely has a lot of momentum. that's SJ Lee's company doing lots of interesting stuff. They're out of Boston and Daejeon, Korea. But check out Danielle's story. Check out her 3C emerging company profile. I'll drop links in the show notes. Danielle also In addition to her regular column the Science Spotlight, where she uh delves into what's happening in peer-reviewed papers she also cranked out another emerging company profile Serif. Quick word on Serif, Danielle?

Danielle Golovin: 29:02

Yeah, so Serif is, you know, Flagship's newest company that's trying to make modified DNA a modality. and they claim that it has Goldilocks durability. So they really like that it's lasts longer than RNA or mRNA, but it's not quite as permanent as, like, a gene therapy. yeah, check it out.

Jeff Cranmer: 29:22

Yeah, I, I sort of wondered a- as I was editing this, like, is Goldilocks sort of a universally understood term, like, around the world? I wasn't quite sure, but uh I don't know. Maybe,

Danielle Golovin: 29:34

It, it really... Yeah, I mean, it's u- I don't know. I guess it's universal

Jeff Cranmer: 29:37

I'll have to... Next time I'm, I'm in uh in Taiwan or China, I'll run it by people and, and, and see. Uh, maybe they have their own uh their own term. I'm sure they have their own uh equivalent term. It's, it's a very useful term. well that's it for BioCentury This Week. We've got lots for you to read on biocentury.com. thanks for tuning in. We will be taking a break next Monday as it's a holiday here in the US, but we'll be back next Tuesday, we'll be talking about some ADC technology that's uh quite interesting, and I'm sure Steve will have an update for us on what is happening at FDA. special thanks to Kendall Square Orchestra, which provides the music for BioCentury's podcast.

Voice Talent: 30:30

BioCentury would like to thank Jeito Capital for its continued support of our BioCentury This Week podcast and our 26th annual Bio€quity Europe conference this May in Prague, Czech Republic.