Latest / The BioHub - by Avetix / Episode 235 - Paul Hastings - CEO NKarta

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Episode 235 - Paul Hastings - CEO NKarta · The BioHub - by Avetix

0:07
So welcome back to another episode of the Biohub and
0:10
Avetics podcast. Today, I'm joined by Paul
0:13
Hastings, CEO of Encarta. Paul has spent more than 4
0:17
decades in biotech and has LED multiple companies across
0:20
therapeutic cell therapy and rare disease.
0:23
He's also been a long standing patient advocate, bringing a
0:26
very personal perspective to how medicines are developed and how
0:29
the industry should serve patients.
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In Carter, Paul is leading the development of allogeneic NK
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cell therapies designed to make cell therapy safer, more
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accessible, and more scalable. It's a pleasure to have you,
0:41
Paul. How are you?
0:43
Good, good, Max, Nice to see you.
0:45
Yes, it's it's been a little while in the making getting you
0:49
on. So really appreciative to to get
0:51
you here. Happy to be here.
0:54
But so I want to start with you, your background, you started
0:58
your career in biotech back in 1989, is that right?
1:03
1984. 1984 and and since you know, you've LED multiple
1:08
companies across very different stages of the industry, looking
1:12
back, like what have been the biggest changes you've seen in
1:15
biotech? Well, it got so 84 to the first
1:21
goal was at Hoffman LaRoche in the 80s when biotechnology was
1:25
first emerging. So I was the product manager on
1:30
an emerging program called Alpha Interferon.
1:34
So this was in 1986 or 1987 and Alpha Interferon was the first
1:40
biotech product that Roche had introduced.
1:41
And that's what created my career because as a trainer and
1:46
then as a product manager in the field of oncology and
1:50
immunology, to be able to work on Alpha Interferon put me in
1:54
this position where when these biotech companies started
1:57
popping up in the 80s, that I was one of the few people from
2:01
pharma that had actually worked on a biotech program.
2:03
So that's what propelled me into the first company I went to and
2:07
then subsequently all the six or eight companies I've been to
2:10
ever since. But the changes I think that
2:14
started in the 80s were the open mindedness of the industry to
2:21
genetic engineering, to DNA technology to deliver payloads
2:28
and drugs that were injectable drugs versus pills.
2:33
And for the longest time, pills were the only thing that pharma
2:36
wanted to develop in terms of outpatient care.
2:40
So this whole sea change of developing interferons as well
2:44
as human growth hormone as well as human insulin led to this
2:49
what is today an incredibly huge industry focused on now even
2:55
beyond recombinant DNA technology, but now cell therapy
2:59
like we're doing in Encarta. So the changes that I've seen
3:02
have been the number of startup companies to development
3:09
companies to mid sized companies that are now in the biotech
3:13
space versus the pharma space. And when I, when I identify
3:17
biotech, it's usually, you know, from zero to, you know, a couple
3:21
100 employees. And then once they launch their
3:23
product and start commercializing, they become mid
3:29
sized to big biotech. And eventually a lot of biotech
3:33
companies get acquired by pharmaceutical companies to
3:36
become part of the infrastructure of the
3:38
pharmaceutical company, which then identifies itself as a
3:41
biopharmaceutical company. So those these are some of the
3:44
changes I've seen the number of people that are actually
3:48
entrepreneurs and focused on wanting to be in this business,
3:54
which frankly, you have to be somewhat crazy to be in because
3:57
of the risks and rewards that are associated with this
3:59
business. One out of 10 companies
4:02
succeeds. And so, you know, you have to
4:04
play the odds and you have to be cognizant of that.
4:09
You know whether the company fails or succeeds, it's how well
4:12
you perform and how much truth you tell when you're performing
4:16
that will allow you to go on to your next gig and see the
4:20
absolute honor of being involved in developing new, innovative,
4:28
groundbreaking technologies that come with this profile.
4:32
I think you can really see from your mindset the way you talk as
4:35
well, like this privilege of doing this job is, is really
4:39
impressive. And we were talking about this
4:40
before we jumped on over 40 years in the industry and still
4:45
super motivated, passionate about what you want to do.
4:49
Like how do you keep that energy during all that time?
4:53
That's. A good question.
4:57
Well, I have to say I go back to my roots as a patient and being
5:03
diagnosed as a person with Crohn's disease at the age of
5:05
13, when Crohn's disease, by the way, this would have been 1973
5:10
before many of your listeners were even born.
5:12
But to have been diagnosed with a very, what was what was at the
5:18
time a very rare disease and to have lived with an autoimmune
5:22
disease from the age of 13 to 19, when at that tender age I
5:27
had my colon removed and part of my small intestine.
5:31
The thought that I would have ever been able to work in our
5:37
industry, whether it was in sales when I started or
5:40
eventually in research and development and general
5:43
management, I didn't think I was going to ever have the
5:46
opportunity to work. I was thinking I was going to be
5:49
somewhat disabled. So the the honor of being part
5:55
of developing new therapies for people now with autoimmune
6:00
disease, but throughout my career with so many different
6:03
therapeutic areas, orphan diseases, enzyme replacement
6:06
therapies, cancer, blindness, I was part of a company that
6:11
launched the first drug for age-related macular
6:13
degeneration. You know, it's been an absolute
6:18
pleasure and now in my 4th decade in the industry is the
6:24
first time that I've been involved in a company that's
6:27
actually developing a drug in diseases for which I suffer from
6:30
and so or did suffer from. I don't suffer anymore because I
6:34
have adjusted and had surgery and I'm stubborn as all could
6:39
be. I mean, so, so yes, I have never
6:42
been bored one day and continue to not be bored by the changes
6:49
in the innovation that is occurring in our business and
6:52
the people that want to be in this business who tend to be
6:55
smart, open minded, incredible risk taking people,
7:01
entrepreneurs. So it's it's hard to not stay
7:05
energized by all this. So that's that's really the only
7:09
answer I can give you. Yeah, that's right.
7:12
You know, this, this industry is not for the faint hearted.
7:14
No, you know, that probably brings on quite nicely to the to
7:19
the current project in Carter where you've been since 2018
7:26
just for for people less familiar with the company, You
7:29
know what, what makes you guys different and what are you guys
7:33
doing? Yeah.
7:35
Well, it's, it's a fascinating question.
7:38
And in the area of cell therapy, you know, you have CAR T and you
7:42
have CAR and K right now there are other cell types,
7:46
macrophages and other things that people tried to engineer.
7:50
We haven't seen a lot of those cell types out there.
7:52
But in terms of cell therapy, this CAR T and this CAR and K,
7:56
you know, there's other gene therapies that are out there
7:59
that have found their way through.
8:01
But in the field of cell therapy, what's fascinating to
8:06
me about CAR and K is that these cells are very well defined.
8:13
They act like drugs. They go into the patient, they
8:15
have a short a relative residence time about the
8:19
residence time that a drug has maybe longer.
8:22
And you can you can engineer them to be in the body longer
8:26
before they get removed from the body.
8:29
But they go in, they do their thing and they leave.
8:30
And since they're natural killer cells, they tend to kill things.
8:33
And So what they're killing in the field of autoimmune disease
8:38
are the bad B cells that are associated with auto antibodies
8:42
and bad autoimmune effects like swollen joints, like skin
8:49
rashes. And I'm not talking about a
8:52
typical skin rash. I'm talking about a debilitating
8:54
skin rash in Scleroderma, for example, that actually hardens
8:58
the skin so that the patient can't even open their mouth,
9:01
they can't even lift their arms. They can't do any activities of
9:05
daily. They can't walk, many of them in
9:06
wheelchair. So, so these NK cells go in,
9:10
kill the bad B cells, reset the B cell to a memory B cell, which
9:15
is the original B cell you had so a good B cell before it
9:18
transformed into a bad B cell. And so they do that in a very
9:22
rapid way and then they leave. And so they don't expand.
9:27
And the traditional CAR T's, which by the way, expansion is a
9:30
really good thing, particularly in cancer, because you want that
9:32
long term presence of the T cells.
9:35
The NK cells go in, do their thing and leave.
9:38
So the things that are created by the expansion of the T cells,
9:44
cytokine release syndrome, neurotoxicities.
9:49
Yesterday we heard about two CAR T companies which discontinued
9:53
programs because of unfortunate deaths that occurred in the
9:56
trial because of the hyper immunity that occurred after the
10:00
expansion, the fantastic, you know, wild expansion of T cells.
10:06
So the thing about NK cells that makes them different from T
10:09
cells is that they don't have that rapid expansion.
10:11
So while that may be a benefit in autoimmune disease, it may
10:16
not be a benefit in cancer where you need that.
10:17
So there is always a place for each of these therapies.
10:20
But I think the niche for CAR NK is a disease where you need
10:24
rapid B cell depletion, rapid reset of B cells and and the
10:29
reset of the B cells to good B cells so that one can get the
10:32
symptoms of the disease under control in a rapid fashion.
10:35
And the one beautiful thing about NK cells is that they go
10:39
in and rapidly attack B cells. So, so this is a good thing for
10:44
NK cells and where it differentiates ourself and
10:47
whether you know, we're best in autoimmune disease and CAR TS
10:51
are best in cancer or both therapies are good in both.
10:53
I'm fine with both of that, both of those things, but we're in a
10:57
very nice position to be differentiated as a cell therapy
11:01
that looks like and has the safety profile of a traditional
11:05
drug versus a cell therapy. It's off the cell shelf, it's
11:09
allogeneic. So when you go in to get your NK
11:11
cells, we don't aphoris you, which means we don't draw your
11:15
blood and then take your own NK cells and engineer them.
11:18
We give you someone else's NK cells that come from healthy
11:21
donors that have already been engineered, have already been,
11:23
have already been produced and manufactured.
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So it's just like you're going to the hospital or to a clinic,
11:29
which is how we administer these cells in an outpatient clinic to
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get a drug that comes right off the shelf, has to be thawed,
11:37
comes off the shelf and then injected in you and then doesn't
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'cause these long term effects of an expanding cell.
11:44
So if you're a pharmaceutical company or a big biotech
11:47
company, you can see that these cells look more like a
11:50
traditional agent that you're using versus a cell therapy
11:53
that's autologous or comes from self, so that you have to take
11:58
the blood aphorescent over the course of 1428 days and then
12:03
reintroduce it into the patient. So, so a nice safety profile, a
12:06
nice accessibility profile. Right.
12:09
That's interesting, yeah, because they're obviously if you
12:12
think about where cell therapy has struggled, it is those
12:16
aspects, right, that we spoke about the the safety, the
12:19
accessibility, the scalability. So you, you guys tackle all of
12:23
that. We were attempting to and I
12:25
think we're we're seeing the light there and accessibility is
12:32
really important and the and the manufacturability of these cells
12:34
is also very important. And I would put cell therapy
12:38
where antibodies were in the 90s when people were looking at
12:44
antibodies. And I remember the president of
12:47
Hoffman La Roche saying to me, let the biotech companies do
12:50
those recombinant proteins. We can make small molecules and
12:53
people were not open minded about these proteins.
12:56
But when you look at the landscape of the most successful
12:59
drugs on the market today, many of them are a common in DNA
13:02
proteins. And so these, you know, now next
13:06
generation cell therapies, we're learning where they belong.
13:10
We're finding a place for them and being a part of that's an
13:12
honor, yeah. The cell therapy market has been
13:16
crazy like since, and I mean you've seen it gone like that,
13:21
where the craze went and then people realize the struggles and
13:25
the, the generally the biotech market was just tough anyway,
13:28
right? So that because of the cost of
13:30
cell therapy that that sort of low and now you've seen it jump
13:33
back up again, which is the exciting part.
13:36
Yeah, I'm not sure that it hit a low because of the cost of cell
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therapy. I think it hit a low, a low
13:41
because of misperception about how the cells work.
13:44
But when you look at Gilead who acquired Kite, which was the
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first company to get one of these car TS approved and they
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did a fantastic job getting their CD19 autologous car T
13:54
approved. And look at the sales of that
13:57
product, by the way, which is not on a voluntary hold.
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So they're doing quite well with their CAR T and it's being used
14:04
to treat autoimmune disease as well as oncology.
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So the safety profile may not just be it's a car T versus a
14:09
CAR and K, it might just be the different kinds of manufacturing
14:13
processes you use to manufacture themselves, who knows.
14:15
But those companies that have introduced these autologous CAR
14:21
TS, J&J, EMS, Novartis, Gilead, Kite, they've done very, very
14:28
well. And so I think, you know, one
14:31
has to have a thick skin to get through this because you can be
14:33
a hero today and a bum tomorrow and biotech and become a hero
14:36
again and the day afterwards, just depending on your data, the
14:39
safety profile and what's happening around you.
14:41
So right now there's all this noise about, well, can T cell
14:44
engagers or bispecific or trispecific antibodies do What
14:47
Car TS and Carmen case do? We don't know.
14:50
And we've seen a lot of data that point to the fact that they
14:52
don't have the same B cell depletion that we're seeing.
14:57
And if B cell depletion is the mechanism that's needed to, you
15:01
know, get under control an awful lot of immune disease, then this
15:05
is what's going to be really important.
15:07
And data always generates excitement once everybody
15:12
understands the full landscape. And it takes time and effort.
15:16
And sometimes you've got to weather through these, you're a
15:19
bum today. And you got to keep persevering
15:21
and saying, hey, you know, I might be a bum, but what I'm
15:24
doing is really cool and it works, right?
15:27
And so watch this space. And that's what I tell people
15:30
all the time, Watch this space. Watch how we're going to
15:33
generate data. When we generate data, you can
15:35
judge it. I love that mindset.
15:38
Have you got sort of case studies at the top of your mind
15:41
where you feel like you've gone through big challenges and then
15:43
come through the other side? Yeah, I mean, that's been my
15:48
entire career and it's what makes it so interesting.
15:51
So I tend to be one of these people that have ADHD, right?
15:55
I'm I get bored easily. And and when I started at
15:59
Hoffman LaRoche in the 80s, I kept moving from job to job to
16:03
job, and people in the company thought I must be the nephew of
16:06
somebody. It's just that I worked my butt
16:08
off and worked really hard and I got this opportunity to do this
16:11
biotech stuff, which I thought was really cool.
16:13
And I get to work with a scientist.
16:16
But so the the constant changing is something that actually
16:20
energizes me where I know a lot of people that are afraid to
16:24
change. I mean, there's a lot of people,
16:26
no matter what industry you're in that, hey, it's comfortable,
16:29
I got a job, I can work 9:00 to 5:00.
16:32
You know, that is not biotech. And you have to have an appetite
16:36
for that to actually succeed in this.
16:38
And so so yeah, that I think that's a really important point
16:42
about personal happiness, and personal happiness leads to
16:46
career success. If you like your job, you're
16:49
going to stick around and work really hard.
16:52
I agree. Yeah, I'm going to completely
16:55
change the the topic now because it's something we wanted to talk
16:57
about. We wanted to talk about the
17:01
current clinical trial system, what works well, but but but
17:06
mainly where do you still think there's areas that that make
17:14
drug development unnecessary difficult or slow in the current
17:18
clinical trial system? Yeah.
17:20
And thank you for asking me that question, that question Max,
17:24
because I think you know in order to to be successful in
17:28
this business, there are so many moving parts that are part of
17:33
it, right. And so it's the ecosystem of the
17:36
companies, it's the ecosystem of the investors and invest in the
17:39
companies that are willing to take the risks when they can see
17:43
that there's a reward at the end of that risk taking and they can
17:45
calculate that reward based on past products that have been
17:48
approved by the way. So you want that.
17:52
So where I do want to see consistency is in the discovery
17:56
through development through approval process so that you can
17:59
predict where you could go next and and you can see that other
18:03
people have done it, you can do it too.
18:05
So I think that's a really important aspect of of success
18:12
in our industry. And what I'm seeing right now,
18:15
particularly in the United States, is an administration of
18:20
chaos that loves to just throw shit up against the wall and see
18:24
how people respond to it. And people get tired after a
18:27
while. So when you take academia, for
18:29
example, and you punish them for speaking out politically, which
18:34
is, by the way, what academia does, then you hurt their
18:40
ability to do things like conduct clinical trials.
18:43
Because if you take away funding for those universities or you
18:45
punish them for having an opinion about something that
18:48
you're not happy that they have an opinion about, and they get
18:52
decreases in their funding, then there are less study
18:55
coordinators in the institutions.
18:56
There are less infrastructure in the institutions that can do the
18:59
academic research that's needed to get products approved.
19:03
And so there's fewer and fewer people that can do these jobs.
19:07
There's fewer and fewer PhDs, by the way, because we're bringing
19:10
on less and less scientists that have come here to study in this
19:14
country. We send them home now instead of
19:16
keeping them here. Or at least we there are certain
19:18
people that want to send them home.
19:19
They don't think they belong here.
19:20
They're not white people or people that look like us.
19:24
So whenever you do things like that, that hurts the ecosystem.
19:28
And so the US clinical trial system today is a bunch of very
19:33
slow moving huge academic organizations.
19:38
So and there's not, and by the way, it's not the fault of the
19:41
academic organizations, they're in big cities.
19:44
By the way, 5% of patients in the United States that are
19:46
eligible for clinical trials live in big cities, 95% live in
19:50
the rural communities. So what this ecosystem needs in
19:54
my opinion, are more community based research centers where
19:59
community rheumatologists in the case of autoimmune disease can
20:02
treat their own patients with autoimmune disease, keep them in
20:05
their practice, treat them in the community setting and have
20:09
those patients who then trust that clinician, they don't want
20:12
to go to somebody else that they don't know in order to get their
20:16
clinical trials. So I think that's what that's
20:19
one of the things we need to do to fix our and I will say this
20:22
broken clinical trial system China can out enroll us 12:50.
20:28
Why? Because they're focused on it.
20:30
They're focused on enrollment, they're focused on on beating
20:34
the United States. And we should be focused on
20:36
beating them, not stopping them, but on an even playing field.
20:40
So I believe that the clinical trial infrastructure needs to be
20:43
competitive. To be competitive is not to
20:48
bully, but to actually perform and perform in a way that beats
20:54
the other countries or other systems because you are enabling
20:58
people to do entrepreneurial research and development.
21:01
So all of that wrapped up in, you know, taking these community
21:06
centers and allowing them to do research.
21:08
And by the way, big academic centers don't like that because
21:10
they want to hold that market themselves, but they're not able
21:15
to enroll the 95% of the patients that are eligible.
21:18
They shouldn't want to feel this way.
21:20
They should want companies to work with community centers.
21:23
So, so I believe if we do that, that will help to open up more
21:29
possibilities for a rural patient who happens to be the
21:33
patient that has autoimmune disease.
21:34
They tend to be people of color living in rural communities.
21:37
Give them the opportunity to roll in trials as a therapeutic
21:40
opportunity for them, along with the other therapies that you
21:43
might want to offer them and give them the option to do that.
21:45
And I think that would help us. And I think that's the area that
21:48
I want to focus on now in my 4th decade, because I believe that
21:52
if we do that, we will have a system that is competitive,
21:56
competitive with China, who we need to beat, by the way,
22:00
because China tends to like to come along and then take over a
22:03
market that's already been created.
22:04
We created this market. Let's hold on to it by remaining
22:07
competitive. So I think if we do that, then
22:10
we're in good shape. And I, you know, I lived in
22:11
Europe, I've lived in Canada, I've lived in these other
22:13
systems as well. And equally so, these systems
22:17
that I've seen Europe beautifully in Canada
22:22
beautifully adapt to the changing landscape and, and
22:25
market themselves as, hey, you can do your phase one trials
22:28
here or you can do your phase one trials in Australia.
22:30
You can do your phase one trials in Canada.
22:32
And we'll do it faster and quicker because we're enabling
22:35
people to do that. And that's what we need to do
22:36
more in the United States, enable the academic centers,
22:39
enable the community centers, provide an environment where
22:42
companies can go in and start clinical trials, get these IR
22:47
BS, which is another issue altogether, by the way, to
22:49
approve these clinical trials quickly so that we can start at
22:53
dosing patients. And then have these centers that
22:57
can actually enroll 5 or 10 patients in a month, not one
23:00
patient every other year because that's some of these centers can
23:03
do. They can't enroll a lot of
23:04
patients because they're busy enrolling other people's
23:06
clinical trials. So make more centers able to
23:10
enroll patients. And I think all of that's going
23:12
to help the ecosystem. I couldn't agree more.
23:15
And I think there's the other part to this right as well.
23:19
There's been a lot of focus recently on making the
23:23
regulatory process faster and more efficient.
23:27
Are are you seeing meaningful change on that front?
23:29
Where, where do you see where do you think regulators, regulators
23:33
could move faster without compromising on on patient
23:37
safety, for example? So short answer, yes.
23:42
Longer answer, I had the chance of when I was at the BIO
23:46
conference where I met you to have met with these high level
23:51
acting FDA leaders with a bunch of other CE OS that were on the
23:55
board of BIO as well as the CEO of BIO, John Crowley.
23:58
And they're talking the talk. They want to speed clinical
24:02
trial process. They want to enable companies to
24:06
file INDS and get drugs approved quicker by using single arm
24:11
trials and not having placebo, by taking more calculated risks
24:18
to get drugs approved to to speed up the system.
24:22
So to be competitive with China and others.
24:25
So they're saying the right things.
24:27
The only thing is that they're used in order to use advisors to
24:31
advise them on how to do this. They're looking to those big
24:35
academics. And while I think the big
24:39
academics have great input to give, I think they should also
24:42
be looking to community based physicians.
24:45
So to me, the grass roots efforts are as important as the
24:50
what I call the bow ties. The guys in the big academic
24:53
centers and the gals in the big academic centers who are doing
24:56
academic research and whose jobs are to publish and to continue
25:03
to do this kind of research. Whereas the folks who are in the
25:06
trenches, the grassroots folks in the community centers should
25:10
also be consulted and said, hey, you're treating 95% of the
25:13
patients that aren't eligible for clinical trials.
25:15
So that means you're treating 95% of the other patients in the
25:18
population who will benefit from a drug once against marketed.
25:21
So how do we use you to get these drugs approved more
25:26
quickly and how do we train you to be able to do that?
25:29
And I'm willing as ACEO to train community centers to do clinical
25:33
trials. We, we, you know, one of the
25:36
ways we enable centers to do clinical trials is by providing
25:39
A restricted grants so they can hire study coordinators who, you
25:42
know, would probably prefer to live in the community versus
25:45
living in a big city, by the way.
25:47
So I think there's a lot of work that can be done there that
25:50
would help the FDA continue to focus on innovating.
25:56
And I also think the thing that the FDA could do and should do,
26:02
and I think we're seeing this now, is stay out of the politics
26:06
of what's going on in the United States and stay focused on drug
26:10
discovery, development, efficacy, delivering innovative
26:14
new therapies, and staying out of the, you know, social issues
26:20
around whatever drugs are being developed for women, for
26:25
example, or people of color or, you know, diversity, equity,
26:28
inclusion. But who cares about that stuff?
26:30
I mean, I do, but I mean that shouldn't be part of the
26:33
equation of whether a drug gets approved or not.
26:38
It should be all scientifically based, not socially based.
26:42
So I think those are the areas that are good and those are the
26:44
areas that could be done a little bit better.
26:49
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think I really wanted to bring
26:52
up this next topic because we spoke about it quite in depth
26:55
when we we first met met you. You just spoke about some of the
27:00
the industry's most in influential leaders that you've
27:05
worked with over the years. Just how important have mentors
27:08
been throughout your career? Oh, I mean Panama.
27:13
I mean, it's absolutely crucial to my personal and professional
27:19
development. I'm starting all the way back
27:22
when I was at university and I had a mentor that I worked for
27:28
in a restaurant who had been AVP inside a major chemical company.
27:33
And I was able to learn from him even when I was bartending for
27:37
him and working for him as a waiter.
27:40
I learned from a member of my fraternity alumni who was a
27:45
Xerox person who was in management, who taught me about
27:50
selling. And then when I came into the,
27:54
you know, the field and at Hoffman La Roche, everywhere I
27:57
went, I always picked somebody that I wanted to be like in the
28:01
department that I joined to say I want to be like him.
28:03
And generally there were people who were my age now back then
28:07
when I was in my 20s and 30s or, and when I went to companies
28:11
like Genzyme, it was this personality, this CEO that was
28:16
this big personality, Henry Tremere that had all these human
28:20
qualities that were incredibly attractive to me as I want to be
28:26
like him. I want to act like him.
28:28
I want to have the success he has, but I won't have the impact
28:32
that he has on employees, how he makes me feel as an employee.
28:36
I want to be that person. So every step along the way,
28:40
people like Henry Chamir, Bill Rutter, who was the founder of
28:42
Chiron when I went to Chiron, Julia Levy, who was the founder
28:45
of QLT when I replaced her as CEO of QLT.
28:49
And what's interesting now is I've now run, you know, six
28:55
companies as CEO and there are people that I have mentored who
28:59
are now CE OS and a conversation that I have with some of them is
29:05
I'm learning from you now because you're doing things
29:08
differently than I'm doing them. You have evolved, you know, and
29:12
the, I told this to one person who looked at me and went, Oh my
29:16
God, I, how could I? How could I be your mentor?
29:19
You are my mentor. And I'm like, no, I'm learning
29:21
from you. The way this person happens to
29:24
be a lawyer who worked his way through business development
29:28
while I came up on the commercial side.
29:29
And I have admired the way he has handled issues with his
29:35
board, handled issues with his therapy, handled issues with
29:38
business development, handled issues with running a company.
29:41
I've been impressed with his ability to speak up the way that
29:45
I want to speak up. So I helped him to become a
29:49
vocal, involved person and now I'm seeing him be involved in so
29:55
many things that I'm admiring and saying, oh shit, I can learn
29:58
from this. So it comes full circle.
30:01
And so it is critically important.
30:05
And, and when I talk to employees in my company that are
30:09
working for me or with other people, I'm constantly telling
30:13
them, find somebody that you want to be like and model that
30:17
behavior if it's natural to you and you can learn from that.
30:21
And I, the leaders that I will want to promote in my company
30:24
are people who pay attention to the people that they're
30:27
reporting to them and help them become their future boss.
30:30
Because you're not going to get anywhere without developing
30:33
people. And I think so the whole idea of
30:36
mentorship is critical to the success and even today.
30:41
So now I'm 66 years old, I've been ACEO 6 times.
30:45
I like what I'm doing. I sit on boards and I want to
30:49
make sure that I'm the best board member I can be, you know?
30:52
And so I look to other board members and see how they behave
30:54
and say, well, you know, can I adapt that style or can I not
30:58
adapt that style? And so in the style I like to
31:01
adapt is when I see somebody again, who's not just sitting
31:05
there like a walrus nodding when the CEO says let's go left or
31:08
let's go right, but someone who says, Hey, what if I ask you
31:13
this question? You know, my job is to challenge
31:16
a little bit and to ask you these questions.
31:18
And then to see the interaction between management and the board
31:21
member and come to a resolution and compromise.
31:24
These are all things that we can all learn from.
31:26
I'm not the most compromising person.
31:28
I know that about myself. I'm an acquired taste and I but
31:31
I can learn from others when I see them be more diplomatic than
31:34
I am. I'm not a diplomat, by the way.
31:37
That helps me to develop a part of my personality that maybe
31:43
isn't a natural part of my personality.
31:44
Because growing up with Crohn's disease, I had to fight for
31:47
everything to be treated, to be treated fairly in, in companies
31:53
when I was coming up through the ladder, even though I had this
31:56
chronic illness that I had to deal with and you know, have
31:59
doctor's appointments and have to deal with these things.
32:02
So I think, you know, just being able to constantly do that.
32:06
I've been snowboarding, by the way, since I was 30 years old
32:09
when I lived in Boulder, Co. I take a snowboarding lesson
32:12
every year and I've been snowboarding for 45 years or so,
32:17
right? Because or 40 years that that's
32:19
what helps me get better at it and not kill myself because now
32:25
my muscles are different. My, my ability to snowboard
32:28
through the trees or go on the bumps are different.
32:30
And now I've got to be more of a cruiser.
32:32
And I got to learn how to do that and to be accepting of that
32:34
versus the guy that was jumping off of, you know, snowboard
32:38
parks. So you know, it's life goes on.
32:41
You adapt and you look to people who have adapted and you say, I
32:46
saw them do it. I can do it too.
32:48
I think what you're saying is so important as well because it's
32:50
not even necessarily industry specific.
32:53
You know, when I'm looking at potential mentors myself, you
32:57
know, you, you for me, I look at the full package of that
33:00
individual, you know, not just their career and how they act,
33:04
work, but like everything else that goes alongside with it.
33:07
You know, life, you know, you talk about growth mindset a lot.
33:12
Like, that's one of the biggest things for for me as well, and
33:14
one of the biggest things we talked about when we first
33:16
started ethics. Yeah.
33:19
I think everything you're saying is so so valid.
33:24
You know, and the things we do on the side, so I run a summer
33:26
camp for kids who have 54 diagnosis of the bowel and
33:29
bladder. So these are kids that have
33:32
diseases like I have. And I happen to be the chair of
33:34
that organization. And I developed these kids and
33:38
they, I've been doing this for as many years as I've been in
33:41
the industry, by the way, because I started doing it once
33:43
I graduated college. They become doctors and nurses
33:47
and pharmacists and business people.
33:50
And I get to, to watch that. And I get to look at, you know,
33:54
I, I had a young guy that was one of my campers that is now a
33:57
coal. He's a gastro, pediatric
34:00
gastroenterologist. I'm a member of the LGBTQ
34:03
community. What do I look for there?
34:05
And other LGBTQ leaders, right? I look at Martin Babbler as a
34:10
leader. Why?
34:11
Because he speaks up, right? And I see him and I, I look at
34:16
Peter Kolchinsky, who's not a member of our community but is
34:18
an ally. And I see him speaking up for
34:22
everybody, no matter who, no matter where they came from,
34:25
whether they're a European immigrant like himself or
34:27
whether they are women of color or whether they are just
34:31
anybody. Fairness.
34:33
Science tends to breed fairness. And so I look for those
34:37
qualities and leaders. And even if they have
34:41
challenging personalities, I want to get to know them and
34:44
figure out how they had the success they've had and how
34:48
they've been able to succeed despite the fact that they have
34:50
that challenging personality because that makes them
34:53
interesting to me. So in every aspect of life,
34:57
whether it's my running, my summer camp, whether it's being
35:02
a member of the LGBT community and wanting to make sure that
35:04
I'm fighting for what's right and not hiding from difficult
35:09
conversations, you know, we had in our company just last week.
35:14
So we do these fireside chats where we take everyone in the
35:19
company for whether it's a janitor or a leader in the
35:21
company. They get a chance to go up on
35:22
this fireside chat and answer questions about how they came
35:26
here, how they got to be the person they are.
35:29
And one of the things that one of our women, incredible PhD
35:37
works in our translational group, the day before she was up
35:41
on the stage, I was doing an all hands meeting and I said, you
35:45
know, anyone who doesn't believe in diversity, equity, inclusion,
35:47
they can go, you know, F themselves.
35:50
And she said to the whole company, the fact that our
35:54
leader is willing to say that and fight for diversity, equity,
35:58
inclusion, even though it's not something that is popular today,
36:01
is something that makes me want to work here.
36:03
That made my year my decade, right?
36:07
So I learned from her why this was I, I said that the day
36:12
before thinking, oh, oh, I might get in trouble for saying this,
36:14
but Dee actually thought this was a really good thing and and
36:19
it made me realize I was doing the right thing.
36:22
And so I from her how I am perceived.
36:26
And I think these, and by the way, I've also said things in
36:29
all hands meetings where I've got letters where people have
36:32
said, Hey, you know, stop trashing our president or
36:35
whatever. And, you know, not a president
36:36
of our company or our country, because I've done that to this
36:40
orange individual on occasion. And I'm willing to do that.
36:43
I'm, it does to me, it doesn't matter who you are, I, you earn
36:48
respect. And if I'm going to have respect
36:50
for you, I have to believe in what you're doing.
36:52
And that didn't that particular individual's case, I have no
36:55
respect. So it's OK.
36:57
I have respect for the position. I just don't have respect for
36:59
the person in the position. So I'm not going to sit back and
37:02
not say that. And I hope when I look for
37:05
people and leadership, if they believe that and they should be
37:12
fighting for that, not rolling over, right.
37:16
And you know, I, I, one of our major pharmaceutical companies,
37:19
I think rolled over on MFN and now the whole industry has done
37:23
MFN deals because one company started that and should have
37:27
fought it, in my opinion. And so now, now we're dealing
37:31
with this and the aftermath of this, which is going to go on
37:33
for years and years and years is because one person didn't stand
37:38
up through the whole rest of the industry under the under the
37:42
bus. And, and it's unfortunate, but
37:44
it happens. And you know what, I can forgive
37:46
that person for doing that. But I think we all have to be
37:49
cognizant of the fact that we're in these leadership positions
37:52
because our job is to end up. So one might argue that person
37:55
stood up for what was important for his company, which is big
37:58
portfolio products, had to do it in order for that company to be
38:02
successful. I get that.
38:03
But there's ways to doing both things and I think that's what I
38:06
look for in this. Yeah, I think that's a really
38:09
good point to leave it on as well, for sure.
38:12
Which brings us to my final question, which is a question
38:15
asked every one of our guests. If you could have dinner with
38:20
any scientist or innovator, past or present, who would it be and
38:24
why? Well, I did have dinner with
38:27
this person and I will do it again, although this person has
38:30
passed and it was Henry Tremeer. And when I was 33 years old and
38:36
a president for him of Europe, where he was in the United
38:39
States, I was one of his division presidents.
38:42
Every time I would fly from Amsterdam back to Boston to to
38:47
visit the headquarters of the company, he would invite me to
38:51
dinner and I would go to dinner with him and he would just want
38:56
to know how's it going. And you know, I was launching 3
39:00
products that had been approved by the Genzyme R&D machine.
39:07
And he wanted to know how that was going.
39:08
And he showed a general interest in not only everything I was
39:12
doing, but he wanted to hear about my assistant.
39:17
He wanted to hear about our financial director in Amsterdam.
39:21
He wanted to hear about our country manager in Paris.
39:23
He wanted to hear about our, our, our salesperson in the UK.
39:30
He wanted to hear about and he would name the names.
39:35
There were 6000 people in this company and he would name names
39:38
and say how's Julie? That's such a skill.
39:41
How's Cindy? How's your assistant?
39:43
How's Francois doing in Paris? How is Oleg O Olaf doing in
39:47
Germany? How is Fernando doing in this in
39:50
Spain? How is Massimo doing in Italy?
39:52
I mean literally go through the whole list every time and want
39:56
to know how these people were doing and where they can grow
39:59
and how they can grow and do they like working here and are
40:02
we providing an environment that helps them thrive?
40:05
That to me is a leader, that's an entrepreneur, that's someone
40:09
that gives a shit and lets you know it and practices what he
40:13
says on a daily basis and mentors people.
40:16
And now there's a Tamir Foundation, by the way, which
40:20
I'm on the board of. That is living up to that man's
40:23
vision because he believed that we should be mentoring and
40:29
developing these first time CE OS to be the best CE OS they
40:33
could be by taking people like me that we used to work for him.
40:36
That's become ACEO and taking other people that have become CE
40:40
OS and providing mentorship to these first time CE OS.
40:43
So his wife Belinda started this thing and it's grown into this
40:47
beautiful organization. John Merganori is on the board
40:50
of it. Deborah Dunzire.
40:50
These really big biotech personalities and great people.
40:56
And, and what we're doing is we're mentoring these young CEOs
41:00
is because of Henry that we're doing this because we're, we're,
41:05
we are preserving the memory of this mentor of this person that
41:09
cared about every single person in this organization, including
41:13
these new people that are coming up to become first time CEOs.
41:16
Because he was once a one time CEOs.
41:17
I remember when he promoted me when I was 30, he said to me
41:20
when I was 30, my boss at Baxter promoted me.
41:23
I'm promoting you because I believe you can do it.
41:25
Yeah. Wow, right, So that person I
41:28
could have dinner with every night of every week.
41:31
Yeah, I can imagine. That is so good.
41:34
I love that, honestly. Thank you.
41:37
I love that man. We all love him.
41:38
Anyone that's ever worked for him.
41:40
This is by the way, another thing passion goes along with.
41:45
Like you can't work with people and not fall in love with them.
41:48
I mean, you spend the majority of your day with these people,
41:51
right? So how could you not fall in
41:52
love with them? So when people put up these
41:54
artificial boundaries where, you know, don't fraternize with the
41:56
employees, don't do this. No, these people are giving you
42:00
their life. So take the time, the way that
42:04
he gave me the time when I was working for him, to help others
42:08
have the same opportunities that I had when I was 30 years old
42:10
working for Henry Tremeer. I think amazing.
42:15
Yeah. Look, thank you so much for
42:17
coming on, Paul. It's been a pleasure.
42:19
You bet, Max, Thank you for having me.
42:21
And please everyone like and subscribe to the Bio Hub.
42:25
Thank you so much, Paul.