Latest / The BioHub - by Avetix / Episode 160 - Elizabeth Jeffords - CEO at Iolyx Therapeutics

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Episode 160 - Elizabeth Jeffords - CEO at Iolyx Therapeutics · The BioHub - by Avetix

0:06
So welcome back to the episode of the Biohub.
0:08
Today, we're delighted to be joined by Elizabeth Jeffords,
0:11
who serves as President and CEO of Ilik Therapeutics, where
0:15
she's leading the development of innovative therapies in
0:18
ophthalmology and rare diseases. Prior to her CEO role, she held
0:22
she held senior leadership positions, including Chief
0:25
Commercial, Commercial and Strategy Officer at Alcahest.
0:28
And early in her career, she spent almost 2 decades at
0:31
Genentech and Roche. So join us today as we'll
0:34
discuss her journey through the field, Ielix's pipeline and how
0:38
it fits into the broader ophthalmology space, as well as
0:41
the next major milestones that Elizabeth's looking forward to.
0:44
So look, thanks so much for coming on.
0:47
How are things? Great.
0:49
Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
0:51
Look, it's a pleasure. So look, let's just start with a
0:54
little bit about your journey through the field.
0:56
So you began your career in research before moving into
0:59
strategy, commercial leadership and now becoming a CEO.
1:03
Can you walk us through your journey through the field and
1:06
and how you got to where you are today?
1:08
Sure, absolutely. I don't, you know, my journey is
1:10
probably not all that unusual, but I was a geeky science kid
1:14
doing weekend labs in high school because that's what a
1:19
geek I was. And I heard a lecture from a
1:22
Genentech scientist about recombinant human insulin, and
1:26
something just went poof, you know?
1:27
And I was like, this is what I want to do with my life, except
1:30
I wanted to do the more business side of science.
1:32
So I kept going with the science and worked in a couple of labs.
1:36
Did you know, did the RA experienced and realized that I
1:39
probably was not a great PhD candidate, but what I was was
1:44
more of a good sort of MBA and strategy consulting candidate.
1:47
So I went that path and then because I had learned about
1:51
Genentech, I just kept applying to Genentech until they let me
1:54
in finally, and that was in 2001.
1:57
So I went through a number of different roles at Genentech and
2:02
worked on analytics, worked on pricing and then got into more
2:06
of the commercial and the sort of business unit experience.
2:10
Ran Roche Norway, which was probably one of the most fun
2:13
jobs I've ever had, and then came back to run US
2:16
ophthalmology. Very good.
2:19
And you've obviously worked across different therapeutic
2:21
areas for your career. So I guess I mean oncology,
2:24
neurology, immunology, rare diseases, but ophthalmology has
2:29
become more of a central focus. What was it about eye diseases
2:33
that captured your attention and convinced you that this was an
2:36
area where innovation could truly change patients lives?
2:40
Yeah, it's funny. Once you get into ophthalmology,
2:42
it's really hard to leave. I started my career in oncology
2:46
with the cool kids. I called it like the cool kids
2:49
because it was, it was clear we were doing so much good, right?
2:52
I was part of the Herceptin team and KED Sila and Perjeta and
2:57
Rituxan and Oh my goodness, just the impact you made on patients
3:00
lives. But then my first experience
3:02
with ophthalmology was being somewhat tangentially related to
3:07
the Lucentis launch. And Lucentis was of course, the
3:10
first of the, well actually was the second, but it was the best
3:13
of at the time, the drugs for age-related macular
3:17
degeneration. And hey, there's something about
3:21
the, the KOL audience there. They just love to be involved.
3:25
They want to do the science. So it's such a great pull in
3:28
like this is community. It's a small community and they
3:31
just pull you in. But also there's so much unmet
3:33
need, right? It it's like there's diseases of
3:36
the end of life when your eyes are getting a little more
3:39
obsolete, like an AMD, like, you know, anything like Dr. or
3:45
anything like that. But then there's also the things
3:48
that get you middle of life or even early in life.
3:52
And and so it's this wide range of opportunity to help people At
3:57
the end of the day, having sight is probably one of the things
4:00
that patients remark on the most, right?
4:03
They patients will tell you they'd rather have cancer then
4:08
have lost their sight, and that's a pretty big statement.
4:12
But if you think about the impact on your daily life and if
4:15
you think that you've got 4050 years to go, having your sight
4:20
is probably one of the most important things to you.
4:23
So I got sucked in, but I never forgot the lessons that I
4:28
learned in oncology and immunology and everything else.
4:31
And I think oncology actually gives us so many lessons for
4:34
ophthalmology that we're not using it.
4:36
One is to treat early, one is to treat the right patients.
4:40
Really get precise about who you're treating, right?
4:43
Treat with combos if you need to, right, you might need more
4:46
than one drug and, and really treat locally as well, right?
4:51
So early local combo and then be precise.
4:55
And I, I, you know, I've tried to use those lessons in
4:58
ophthalmology and certainly in ILX.
5:00
Those are some of our biggest core values of how we approach
5:04
drug development. Like what specific need or
5:07
scientific insights sparked the creation of of Iolix and how did
5:11
you experience launching and commercializing therapies at
5:13
scale? Inform your view of what
5:16
existing ophthalmic treatments were missing, particularly for
5:20
immune immune driven eye diseases.
5:23
One of the early conversations I had with Dan Estes at Frazier,
5:26
who was founded the company was about what we needed in
5:31
ophthalmology and with Lucentis and Leah and Vivismo and all of
5:36
the things I got to work on in my sort of part of my career
5:40
were coming back to me now. And there are so many companies
5:43
out there working on more durable products for AMD, for
5:48
Dr., for RVO, and yet there's not a lot happening on the
5:53
immunology side. So our conversation started like
5:56
this. It's like what, what
5:58
intersectional ophthalmology is there out there that it still
6:01
needs to be done? And immunoophthalmology was the
6:05
one that really sung for us, particularly if you think about
6:09
the fact that we talk about eye diseases that are that are
6:12
coming from autoimmune diseases all the time, Sjogren's dry eye,
6:16
diabetic retinopathy, thyroid eye disease, we say these
6:20
things, but we don't put together the fact that they're
6:22
actually immunological diseases as well as ophthalmology
6:26
diseases. So we said why don't we start
6:28
working on making local therapeutics that would target
6:32
or harness the immunological process.
6:35
So the IO in ILX is immuno ophthalmology.
6:40
And instead of immuno oncology where you're trying to turn it
6:44
up, we're trying to turn the thermostat down a little bit on
6:47
some of the immune system that's trafficking through the eye.
6:51
And so the commercial experience that I had gave me the sense of
6:56
like what do people really need? Sometimes we talk about they
6:59
have steroids, they have immunosuppressants, etcetera,
7:02
but do they need something else? And the answer is yes, right.
7:05
This ophthalmology in in particularly the front of the
7:08
eye ophthalmology. So the things about the sort of
7:10
ocular surface, the cornea, etcetera, we're still treating
7:14
those like it's the 50s, right? We've had immunosuppressants
7:17
like cyclosporines and steroids that we use on the eye for
7:21
decades and yet we don't have much that's new.
7:25
So we really wanted to say, hey, what is that unmet mean and
7:30
what's the commercial opportunities?
7:32
That's not even an answer. That's those are huge diseases
7:35
like dry eye, uveitis, etcetera. There's tons and tons of
7:38
patients that need something better, particularly my mom, the
7:42
mom of my Chief Development officer, They all have
7:45
autoimmune ocular diseases. I think I probably have one too.
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If I don't now, I will in another couple of years.
7:52
So it's, it's personal as well. It's like, let's make something,
7:55
let's not make the 4th or 10th more durable anti angiogenic
8:00
agent. Let's do something that's new to
8:03
help the patients that maybe aren't getting as much attention
8:06
or maybe where the investment isn't quite as sexy, but that we
8:09
could really, really help people.
8:12
And that's what we saw in our phase two.
8:13
People were so happy and it was just heart warming.
8:17
This is why we do this right? Crazy industry.
8:20
Why would we keep going? And so, and at the end of the
8:23
day, it has to be about patients and making their lives better.
8:27
And if you look back to like the earlier days of ILEX and
8:31
compared to where it is now, you've obviously been through
8:34
through quite a journey. I guess what do you believe the
8:37
company's path would look like and what do you think has
8:40
changed most dramatically since since the earlier days?
8:45
I came to ILX in early 2020, so you could imagine we were so
8:50
naive. I thought we would be rolling in
8:53
money. I thought we would be coming
8:55
back to work right away into an office instead of this virtual
8:59
model. And, you know, I thought that we
9:01
were just going to be like rolling through all these good
9:04
big trials. And at the end of the day, of
9:06
course, none of that happened. We stayed virtual, right?
9:10
We did not roll in money because things really shut down after
9:13
21. And then we, we really though
9:17
kept succeeding. We just kept persisting.
9:19
And I think what was amazing to me, what surprised me about all
9:23
of this, especially coming from a big company like Genentech or
9:26
Roche, we've spent about 20 million to get to the end of an
9:32
Ind discovery, Ind phase one, phase two, right?
9:37
And then licensing out our first product.
9:40
I could have spent 20 million at Genentech on sort of a marketing
9:43
campaign. What a cool thing to be able to
9:46
build a company, start a culture, right, get good people
9:51
and get that out there and, and really access for patients to
9:56
something novel and new. And I, I, I think it's just
9:58
amazing along the way. I have to say, I have to thank
10:02
the CEO Sisterhood. It has been an amazing resource
10:08
because if you need to know how to get something done, it's just
10:11
a Slack channel post away to say, hey, ladies, anybody know,
10:15
you know a toxicologist or anybody know where was the one I
10:19
asked yesterday how to get gently used office furniture for
10:23
a new office? You know, it's, it's been an
10:26
amazing resource and it's really helped us get there.
10:28
But to me that was such a surprise is what you can do with
10:32
a small team and a mighty team. Yeah, for sure.
10:35
And I'm glad you mentioned the biotech CEO system.
10:38
We've had quite a few people on from that community and I won't,
10:43
I won't name anyone, but we've had a lot of people on.
10:45
It seems like such a a tight knit community, like you said,
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like people are so quick to pass around favours.
10:51
People have been through a similar sort of experience and
10:53
journey. So I know we're going a little
10:55
bit off topic here, but it's just seems like a really amazing
10:58
community that that's been built there.
11:00
It actually is very much something how I think about
11:03
leadership, right is like one of the things we do when we hiring
11:06
as we say, no egos, right? And then as we go along, anybody
11:10
can be wrong at any time, right? So the best company is, is going
11:14
to be a company where people come together and, and make each
11:18
other better, make make what we do better.
11:21
And I think that's very much the, the ethos of the CEO
11:24
sisterhood. When Sheila and, and Julia and
11:28
Angie got it started, they were just like, hey, what if we just
11:31
said there's no competition, right?
11:34
Nobody's trying to win. What if we just tried to
11:37
maximize all of our companies and what we could do for
11:39
patients? And that is such a productive
11:42
thing. When you get into tough times,
11:44
there's nothing better than that because it's like, oh, I'm
11:46
having this incredibly tough time. 18 other people have had
11:50
the same tough time, right? So why not leverage their
11:53
experience and their uses? We actually had in the middle of
11:56
the, the, the bad times, let's say 2023-2024, we actually had a
12:02
CEO sisterhood event about how to gracefully wind down your
12:05
company. And that was probably the best
12:09
attended meeting we had because there are so many lessons there.
12:13
But if you, if you're willing to share, then you're going to make
12:16
somebody's life better every day and just make people feel better
12:19
too. Like I said, this is a hard job.
12:21
It's a lonely job to have. That community is breathtaking.
12:25
Just just walk us through the current IELIXIS pipeline and how
12:29
each program fits into the broader immuno ophthalmology
12:32
strategy. And as a small company with big
12:34
ambitions, how do you decide where to double down versus what
12:37
to say no? Obviously given that you're in
12:39
large pharma, you probably have the the opportunity to take on
12:43
as many projects as you want, but how much different is that
12:46
in a small biotech? A great question.
12:49
So I love the small but ambitious.
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That is true. Our first product was Alex 02
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and that was as I mentioned, we got it through phase two and
12:57
then we worked really hard to find a wonderful partner.
13:02
And we just in December announced that we did a
13:06
partnership licensing deal with Taya.
13:08
And Taya is an ophthalmology company in Europe and the US and
13:12
others. So it's wonderful.
13:14
It's, it's sort of like an old adage that we learned in
13:17
Genentech, which is you probably need to give away your first
13:19
baby and then you need to maybe give away your second baby, but
13:23
maybe your third baby you get to keep and commercialize.
13:26
And I maybe it's because I was in a commercial role with
13:30
ophthalmology. I think the best thing is to get
13:33
an agent somewhere with people that can take care of it.
13:36
So really excited for the partnership with TEA.
13:39
We're working with them over the next couple of years to get the
13:42
Phase Threes done and get this out on the market.
13:45
And then we turn our internal face goes now towards retina.
13:49
So that was more of a topical the eye product, Ilex 004 is our
13:54
next product that's a retinal product.
13:56
And so we're working towards the Ind on that product.
14:00
And then as you mentioned, yeah, there's so many opportunities.
14:02
So ophthalmology has been particularly hard hit over the
14:06
last couple of years. And so there's many
14:08
opportunities to take on assets of companies that maybe don't
14:12
have the resources or maybe they turn to their attention in a
14:15
different direction. And so we've been evaluating in
14:18
licensing opportunities as well and some other ideas that we
14:21
have internally to say. What else do we want in the
14:23
pipeline? But you're right, it's a, it's a
14:25
decision because everything that you take in has an opportunity
14:29
cost that you'll miss something else or maybe that you won't do
14:32
whatever you have internally as well.
14:34
So we're being very careful about it.
14:36
And, and one of those criteria as we rank is, is can IELIX
14:40
help, right? Can IELIX be a force of good for
14:43
that asset? And is it something that really
14:46
fits into this intersectional ophthalmology concept so that we
14:50
stay on strategy? Nice.
14:53
And I never like to use the word competitors because I think
14:55
ultimately what you're doing, it's for, it's for the patients.
14:58
But if you were to look at like other companies just generally
15:01
at the market, who are some of the companies that are doing
15:04
similar sort of work to you guys, just curious?
15:08
I think there's some great companies like Ocular
15:10
Therapeutics had news yesterday, Ashwatha, I point are all
15:15
working more on the retinal space and particularly on these
15:18
sort of more durable solutions for AMD.
15:22
I think it's wonderful. I also really love the companies
15:25
that are in the front of the eye space and looking at things a
15:28
little differently, like I loved Horizon had Tapeza and thyroid
15:31
eye disease. Now part of Amgen Tarsus is a
15:35
wonderful example of a company who found an unmet need and, and
15:39
Demodex blepharitis and found a good unique solution, got the
15:43
product out there fast and is now doing 6 extremely well in
15:47
the commercial markets. So like you said, I think it's
15:51
all like the, the more the better, the merrier.
15:53
You know, the more the merrier here, the more we can help
15:55
patients and particularly have successes in the front of the
15:59
eye as well as the back of the eye.
16:01
I think just lifts the whole tide for ophthalmology.
16:04
Definitely. And then so like the many eye
16:07
diseases are still treated with broad inflammatory therapies
16:10
like steroids. What do you think of some of the
16:13
limitations of using those approaches and how is OLX aiming
16:16
to address the underlying immune drivers more precisely?
16:20
What aren't the limitations of steroids?
16:22
My goodness, I boy, I think you know, steroids are sort of like
16:26
the drug we know we shouldn't be using, but we use all the time.
16:30
And for some reason we're OK with using them a lot in the
16:34
eye, which is probably one of the most dangerous places to use
16:36
steroids. Steroids cause cataracts.
16:39
They cause glaucoma, they cause corneal and retinal thinning.
16:42
It's just the the the list goes on.
16:44
And what's probably the worst about steroids is the labels are
16:48
all to use them four times a day.
16:50
And yet we're often using them 12 times a day.
16:52
People are told to wake up in the middle of the night to use
16:54
their steroids, right? Like put on your alarm, wake up,
16:57
put more steroids in. And it's such a toxin.
17:00
And I, I'm going to, I always talk about oncology and I feel
17:03
like I'm a broken record. But if we went back to oncology
17:05
and said, hey, we're going to use Adriamycin and Platinum
17:09
agents and you know, Toprai summer races all the time for
17:14
all the patients and that's good enough, people would think you
17:18
are crazy, right? Instead, we need to be looking
17:20
for targeted therapies and getting the right patients into
17:25
the right mix, right? And I think that's one thing is
17:27
if if we still treated breast cancer like it was this giant
17:30
monolith of a disease and everybody got the same
17:32
treatment, we would be doing such a disservice to breast
17:36
cancer patients. And yet we're still doing it for
17:39
diseases like dry eye. So why?
17:41
It doesn't make any sense, right?
17:43
Like, so let's find precise categories of patients.
17:46
In our case, it's those autoimmune patients and then
17:48
treat them locally and not use steroids ever again.
17:52
It's just my my soapbox, but I'll stick with it.
17:56
Steroids shouldn't be used anywhere in the body,
17:58
particularly in the eye. For sure, you've obviously spent
18:02
the bulk of your career on on a commercial side.
18:05
You've ever seen product launches global P and LS.
18:07
How does your sort of commercial lens shape the way that Alex
18:11
designs clinical trials and defines success?
18:14
Yeah, I love that. You know, I, I was obviously
18:17
Genentech was a blessing, my best place in the world to get
18:19
trained. One of the best things about
18:21
Genentech was to have this what was called a project core team
18:24
system. So there were commercial people
18:26
on from even preclinical days and I was that commercial person
18:29
several times, right. So Katzai was the first
18:32
commercial person on while it was still in preclinical stages.
18:36
That is incredible because you can talk about what patients
18:40
need, what payers need, etcetera while you're developing the
18:44
product in a time where it's really flexible.
18:47
If you get into phase three and we say, hey, we need to change
18:49
something commercially, it's really tough at that point to
18:53
change it. But early days we can have
18:55
conversations and we did this at ILEX.
18:58
We were developing an ointment and an eye drop.
19:00
And The thing is, commercially patients hate ointments.
19:04
They're greasy, they're gooey, you like have it all over your
19:07
eye. It's disgusting.
19:09
And so patients won't use them even if it's a good product.
19:12
So even though the ointment was a great route, I was able to say
19:15
like commercially an eye drop is so much better.
19:19
Let's spend another cup 3 months, six months, whatever it
19:22
was perfecting the eye drop so that it's more commercially
19:26
relevant. And I think that's where you get
19:28
that, that early commercial sense of what's what's going to
19:31
be right for the product. On the flip side, ideally we
19:34
could even look at things and say this is going to be hard to
19:37
get reimbursement. But I don't know, maybe we're
19:40
just silly, but we keep, we keep going after those.
19:42
It's like a Don Quixote like you just keep tilting at that
19:45
windmill and saying, eventually, yes, steroids are cheap, but we
19:49
have things that are better. And if we keep proving that
19:51
they're better, eventually the reimbursement will come.
19:55
So. Those are just two examples of
19:57
how we think about commercial. I also think about like what's
20:01
the sales force look going to look like, etcetera.
20:03
And it's so nice to have had that experience of running a
20:06
sales force, right, to understand what kind of messages
20:09
you'd want, what kind of positioning you'd want, what's
20:12
the size of the field force, etcetera.
20:14
Those are really great, wonderful things to have when
20:16
you're modeling the future. And is your looking ahead like
20:20
what are the next key milestones inflection points that you
20:23
focused on over the next year to two years?
20:26
Yeah, I guess from a funding clinical, scientific strategic
20:30
like what are you guys most looking forward to?
20:33
I don't even want to say this out loud because I feel like
20:35
it's like unlucky to do so, but we have the money we need right
20:38
now given the licensing deal and our Series B to get to those
20:42
next steps. So 4 big ones for me are one,
20:46
help Taya and our partnership and get those phase threes going
20:49
and, and see what we can do with this first product. 2 Ind for
20:53
ILIX O 4 and retina indications. 3 Look at in licensing and
20:58
seeing if there's anything we need to bring into the Ilex
21:00
family. And then I think 4 and probably
21:04
very important is do not screw up our culture, right?
21:07
How do you keep growing like that and not screw up this
21:10
wonderful tight knit, no egos, no drama culture because it's so
21:15
productive? Definitely.
21:18
You've obviously been at pharma for most of your career now
21:20
leading an early stage biotech. What's been, I guess, some of
21:25
the biggest surprises having been in two very different types
21:28
of environments. How do you maintain momentum and
21:31
morale during periods where progress is slow or or
21:34
uncertain? Like how was that transition
21:36
from pharma to to small biotech? Oh, that's a great question.
21:40
I, I think I was lucky in some ways that I had done some
21:44
European jobs like running Roche Norway, which was a small
21:47
organization. It was only 70 people running an
21:50
entire country of everything from clinical trials to finance
21:54
to, to safety. And so I got used to running
21:58
things in a sort of a scrappy way, low, scrappy, low budget
22:02
way. And that has been wonderful for
22:04
biotech. So that wasn't so much of a
22:06
surprise. I think maybe what was more of a
22:10
surprise was like how, how much, I think I said this before, but
22:15
how much you can do virtually, right?
22:17
How much you can get done without all the committees,
22:20
without all the hoops to jump through.
22:23
I think that the biotech model is such a great source of
22:26
innovation. And so it has been tough the
22:30
last couple years, I'm not going to lie.
22:31
I mean, a lot of biotechs have struggled without, there's not
22:35
been a lot of funding. There's been a lot of work, but
22:37
not necessarily a lot of payout or sort of payout in the sense
22:42
of like moving things forward. And there were times even in the
22:45
last couple of years where I had to say to the team, look, we got
22:49
to slow things down a little bit or we can't start those new
22:52
experiments because we have to save cash right now and just
22:55
preserve our runway so that we can get to the next deal or the
22:59
next funding or whatever it was. And how we did that was just
23:04
utter transparency. And I've used this in big
23:07
companies and small companies. When you're going through a
23:09
period of change, people want to know what's going on.
23:12
If we don't know what's going on, we're smart people and we'll
23:14
start to invent things in our head, right?
23:17
So you can remove a lot of drama and a lot of like angst by just
23:21
saying, here's what's happening. We're still looking working on
23:24
this partnership, but it's going to take another four months.
23:27
So in the meantime, let's not do that experiment or let's, let's
23:30
hold on this. And I think people really
23:32
respond to that because as humans, we just want to know
23:35
what's happening. I it's, it is what it is, right?
23:38
Biotech, it's has its UPS, it has its downs.
23:42
Sometimes things work, sometimes things don't.
23:44
You know, science will tell you some things.
23:46
Murphy, we always talk about Murphy comes out, you know, when
23:49
things can go wrong, they do. So there are times when things
23:53
are rough and it really just transparency and then the
23:57
highest possible ethics you can do with everything, right?
24:01
So if something goes wrong on a trial or whatever, you just say,
24:04
wow, OK, we're going to fix it. And, and that's what we really
24:08
do. And, and biotech.
24:09
And I think this is a a lot of unsung heroes trying to get
24:12
these drugs out to, to development for, for patients.
24:16
But we keep going because we're just addicted to it, right?
24:19
We're addicted to the certain chance of maybe that trial goes
24:22
well, or maybe we get to launch a drug that helps people.
24:25
That is a wonderful feeling. Now my, I think my
24:28
brother-in-law thinks I'm evil because I'm a biotech CEO, but
24:30
like, you know, it is what it is.
24:33
We do, we do what we do and we're a little bit
24:35
misunderstood, but that's OK. Look, and this is just a
24:38
question that we always finish with, and I know I wanted to
24:41
give you a bit of a heads up with it as well, but if you were
24:43
to sit down and have dinner with any free people, past or
24:46
present, who would it be and why?
24:48
It doesn't necessarily need to be people in biotech, although
24:52
it can be if you like. But yeah, free people you'd like
24:54
to sit down and have dinner with.
24:57
I see enough people in biotech all the time job.
24:59
I don't have dinner. I shouldn't say that there's
25:03
wonderful people in the industry.
25:05
I was thinking about this and I was thinking that a really fun
25:08
dinner conversation would be with some past first ladies that
25:12
had a particular lot of power in a either a subversive way or a
25:17
sort of like in a unformal influence kind of a way.
25:21
And so always have loved Eleanor Roosevelt.
25:24
So I would love to have dinner with her, but then I would, I
25:26
was thinking about who else and I think Edith Wilson and Betty
25:29
Ford would be just an absolute screaming, laughing dinner.
25:35
But it would also be fascinating because regardless of their
25:38
politics, the influence these women had early on without a lot
25:42
of direct power and and the changes that they made in the
25:46
world and the impact they made on the world was really pretty
25:49
impressive. And so I'd, I'd love to do that.
25:52
I also, I have to admit, like a secret.
25:56
I used to do some costuming in theatre and my, my daughter's a
25:59
costumer. So we always go to the
26:00
Smithsonian First Ladies exhibit and look at the outfits, their
26:04
inaugural outfits. And so I would love to just have
26:06
a good discussion about how uncomfortable those corsets
26:09
really were. Definitely.
26:11
Well, look, thanks so much for coming on and helping us out
26:13
with this. It sounds like some of the
26:15
progress that you're making at the company is is amazing and
26:18
I'm looking forward to following the next major inflection points
26:21
for you guys. So thanks again, Elizabeth.
26:24
It was a pleasure and look forward to keeping in touch.
26:27
Thanks, Tom. Really appreciate the chance to
26:29
talk about Alex and the chance to talk about how we can use
26:32
immune approaches to help the eye.