Latest / The BioHub - by Avetix / Episode 119 - Erik van den Berg - CEO of Memo Therapeutics

Transcript

Episode 119 - Erik van den Berg - CEO of Memo Therapeutics · The BioHub - by Avetix

• 0:06
  Eric, welcome to the podcast. Great to have you.
• 0:09
  Thanks Kellum. Nice to be here.
• 0:10
  Thanks for the inspiration. Well, fantastic to have you on.
• 0:13
  And yeah, I was thinking, actually, I don't think we've
• 0:16
  had a chair of two previous guests on before.
• 0:20
  Obviously for those of you listening who don't know Eric,
• 0:23
  Eric's the chair of Step Farmer and Target who Andy and
• 0:27
  Christophe have both been on before and Eric is net CEO of
• 0:32
  Memo Therapeutics. Eric, do you want to give a
• 0:36
  little bit of an explainer for those listening who maybe
• 0:39
  haven't heard of of Memo, just a little bit about what you guys
• 0:43
  are about and just a high level overview I guess?
• 0:46
  Sure. No, absolutely happy to do that.
• 0:49
  So the problem that Mammal Therapeutics AG is solving
• 0:54
  relates to BK virus infections of transplantation patients.
• 1:00
  ABK virus is not very well known, but it's it's quite
• 1:04
  predominantly available because 90% of the population has the
• 1:09
  virus. It is dormant.
• 1:11
  It resides in your kidney and it's fine, right?
• 1:17
  We keep it under control of our body and our immune system.
• 1:21
  The problem with organ transplantation is that these
• 1:24
  patients get very severe immunosuppression, which then
• 1:28
  allows the virus to re up, regulate and create damage in
• 1:33
  the kidney. So in total, the BK virus
• 1:36
  infections in kidney transplantation, it double S the
• 1:39
  risk for graft failure and it triples the risk for death of
• 1:42
  these patients. And there's currently no
• 1:44
  treatment available. We've been conducting a phase
• 1:47
  two study and in total it included 95 patients, kidney
• 1:51
  transplant patients with a severe BK virus infection that
• 1:55
  was detectable in blood and then provided our antibody which
• 1:58
  neutralizes the virus. And with that it dampens the
• 2:02
  reinfection of the virus and allows the immune system to get
• 2:06
  the virus again under control. We're the global leaders in the
• 2:10
  field for the most advanced and we will be entering phase three
• 2:15
  later this year. Nice.
• 2:17
  Awesome. Thanks for the overview.
• 2:19
  I mean you've got a, you've been with Memo several years already,
• 2:22
  right, But you've got a long history in biotech as well.
• 2:25
  Do you want to give a little bit of insight as to I guess your
• 2:28
  journey in the field and what what led you to Memo ultimately?
• 2:33
  Yeah, I'm two years now with Memo as the CEO.
• 2:36
  Prior to that, I was CEO at a company called Ampharma, but I
• 2:41
  started my my yeah, work as a management consultant in the
• 2:46
  late 90s at a company called Arcti Little.
• 2:50
  It was a company that focused on strategy consulting, but also on
• 2:54
  R&D optimization projects. So, for example, I worked for
• 2:58
  farming at the time, a biotech company, one of the two biotech
• 3:01
  companies in the Netherlands at the time, but also a Dutch
• 3:04
  university that wanted to get its curriculum in place for a
• 3:07
  biotech education. It was not there.
• 3:10
  Yes, Harriet, chemistry, physics and biology, but it was not a
• 3:13
  biotechnology. So that's how I started the
• 3:16
  career. Then I joined biotech in the
• 3:18
  late 90s in 99 with a company called Isotus.
• 3:22
  It was a bit of the Wild West, I think at the time, still in
• 3:24
  biotech. We IPO in 2000, very early
• 3:28
  research with a daunting ambition to have to become the
• 3:32
  leaders in tissue engineering. So make your own balmy and
• 3:35
  cartilage and skin, which we did and also a lot of biomaterial
• 3:39
  research was on body. That company bought another
• 3:44
  company in the US and Canada and basically then also moved his
• 3:49
  base towards US and Canada. So I joined Pharma after my time
• 3:55
  at Izolus Organon here in the Netherlands and ended up doing a
• 3:59
  senior executive position in business development and then
• 4:04
  returned back to business development in biotech with AIM
• 4:07
  Pharma, the company that I referenced at the beginning
• 4:10
  because I became subsequently CEO And I've stated that for 12
• 4:13
  years. And we navigated our lead renal
• 4:18
  biopharmaceutical program from preclinical stages to phase
• 4:21
  three and then back again to phase two.
• 4:24
  And the Phase 3 was a 1600 patient study, the phase two
• 4:27
  again 250 patients. And we also started a study,
• 4:32
  clinical study in an ultra orphan CS cost called
• 4:36
  hypophosphatasia. And we get 2 large deals at the
• 4:40
  time, one with Pfizer $600 million deal option to acquire
• 4:45
  the company that in the end didn't materialize after the
• 4:48
  option phase and a subsequent deal with Kiowa Kirin for
• 4:52
  Japanese commercialization rights of 250 million.
• 4:56
  Two years ago, I handed over my CEO role to the Chief Operating
• 5:00
  Officer, Julianna Bermont, who have been excellently running
• 5:03
  the company since then. And I joined the board of AM
• 5:06
  Pharma. Yeah.
• 5:08
  And it's a Memo. I joined memo because I thought
• 5:13
  it was a lot of things that were attractive to me.
• 5:16
  That's a great team. I had connectivity with the
• 5:20
  investor base. It's a clinical stage programme
• 5:23
  addressing I kind of have, do you know, the mathematical need,
• 5:27
  the mathematical need. So that's fitted indeed my my
• 5:31
  interest well and you're ready to mention at the beginning,
• 5:34
  I've been chair and board member of several other companies.
• 5:38
  Yeah, for sure. Nice.
• 5:40
  How did the the introduction come around?
• 5:42
  Was it just the the investors that that you knew put you in
• 5:46
  touch and say, hey, yeah, this is the next stage of the
• 5:48
  company. This is who what?
• 5:51
  You'd be a really good fit to lead it.
• 5:52
  Or yeah. How did that come around?
• 5:55
  Yeah. So at AIM Firma, we were working
• 6:00
  on a trajectory of about a year indeed to hand over my role and
• 6:06
  I hadn't had anything concrete on my radar at that point in
• 6:09
  time. But indeed, one of the investors
• 6:13
  that I I'm close to started this due diligence on, on memo and
• 6:18
  you know, asked me to, to join that see what I would be
• 6:21
  interested because the company have ACEO all the time.
• 6:25
  And yeah, I, I really are loving it.
• 6:30
  Yeah, awesome. Nice.
• 6:32
  I know you gave a little bit of the overview, you know, before
• 6:37
  in terms of what you guys are are trying to solve.
• 6:39
  I think it's a like a bit of an eye opener for those who maybe
• 6:43
  aren't too familiar with infectious diseases, just how
• 6:46
  many people have a resident DK virus in the right?
• 6:49
  And it's like you say, not a problem until it's a problem.
• 6:52
  And what's the origins of the company?
• 6:55
  Just to go back, like, where did this idea come from?
• 6:59
  Where did the technology come from?
• 7:01
  Yeah, what's the history, I guess.
• 7:03
  It's a very interesting history. So our scientific founder,
• 7:08
  Christophe Eslinger, was the chief scientific Officer of the
• 7:10
  company and had, you know, been in antibody discovery for a long
• 7:17
  time and was frustrated about the state of the technology that
• 7:22
  was applied to discover antibodies.
• 7:25
  If you go back to the Rudimental way how it's done, you create in
• 7:30
  either an animal or you start with a human sample, you create
• 7:34
  an antibody response, which means you create certain B cells
• 7:38
  that will secrete antibodies against a certain target.
• 7:43
  But these B cells are super fragile.
• 7:45
  So if you use them as a starting basis, you may be able to get 1%
• 7:49
  of the total antibody on in such a sample bankable and then
• 7:54
  investigatable. And that's a huge loss of
• 7:57
  information. And with that, of course, a huge
• 7:59
  loss of opportunity because you might lose interesting
• 8:01
  antibodies in that process. So the technology that was
• 8:04
  developed called Dropsylla was born out of this frustration.
• 8:09
  And it's a micro fluidics platform developed based on
• 8:13
  micro fluidic chips and suitable for, you know, high speed single
• 8:18
  cell sorting. And it's kind of a copy machine
• 8:21
  of the genetic code into a library of a bankable expression
• 8:26
  of all the antibodies that you get in a sample from these B
• 8:30
  cells that you get from a sample.
• 8:32
  So that's our starting position. We start with more than 80% of
• 8:36
  all the antibodies that are present and expressed by B cells
• 8:39
  that we get in our sample into a A library that we can then
• 8:43
  subsequently examine. This is also how we discovered
• 8:46
  our lead molecule called Potrophytuk, which is a fully
• 8:51
  human antibody against that BK virus.
• 8:54
  And it originated from a patient, a kidney transplant
• 8:58
  patient that has severe infection of the BK virus and
• 9:03
  then dealt with that voremia very fast.
• 9:07
  And based on a blood draw from a patient, we paint the B cells
• 9:11
  and we found this unique super part of the antibody
• 9:14
  neutralizing the virus. And that's the power of the
• 9:18
  platform being able to find a very rare but super interesting
• 9:23
  antibodies against a certain disease.
• 9:25
  And we prefer to start indeed with the human because then you
• 9:28
  have a full human and hence safe antibody.
• 9:32
  But you can also apply this indeed to to animal sampling if
• 9:36
  you've created immunised an animal, created an immune
• 9:41
  response. Got you.
• 9:43
  Understood. Nice.
• 9:44
  And then you mentioned before the the phase two trials done
• 9:49
  right as far as I recall from our conversation, what have you
• 9:53
  seen with the LEAD programme so far in terms of efficacy data?
• 9:58
  You've seen what really excites you going into yeah this year
• 10:02
  and, and, and Phase 3 potentially.
• 10:05
  Sure. So it's typically the phase two
• 10:08
  study has been completed and we've presented the data at the
• 10:11
  biannual World Transplantation Conference last year.
• 10:17
  What we demonstrated is that there is a faster neutralization
• 10:20
  and clearance of the virus from both the bloodstream where the
• 10:24
  virus is present, as well as from the kidney where the kidney
• 10:27
  creates, that's where the virus creates its damage.
• 10:31
  And compared to a placebo control arm, which is standard
• 10:34
  of care. Now sedative care is
• 10:37
  immunosuppression lowering, but it's not enough, right?
• 10:41
  It still has, it comes with a doubling of the risk of draft
• 10:44
  failure, tripping of the risk of early death.
• 10:48
  And so this faster clearance of the virus from both the
• 10:51
  bloodstream as well as the kidney is super important
• 10:54
  because what we have demonstrated in our Natural
• 10:56
  History study is that the faster you clear the virus, the better
• 11:01
  the outcome prediction is for patients.
• 11:03
  So less graft failure, less risk for early death.
• 11:09
  In our study, 61% of the patients on drug responded.
• 11:14
  So they had A at least one log reduction in their for Renia and
• 11:19
  they also had that much faster than the standard of care and
• 11:22
  the placebo control iron. So 52 days fast, that's a huge
• 11:26
  amount of time getting it down quicker.
• 11:28
  So that's what the bloodstream then in the kidney, what we
• 11:32
  noticed and this is for the first time anybody demonstrated
• 11:35
  this, there was an absolute reduction of 20% by 20 weeks in
• 11:40
  detectable virus in the kidney and it's almost halving of this
• 11:45
  so-called BK virus associated nephropathy.
• 11:48
  So the damage that's created by the BK virus in the kidney,
• 11:52
  whereas in the placebo arm, so the standard scare arm, there
• 11:54
  was no change in the presence of nephropathy in these patients.
• 11:59
  So it stayed at the high level. So this is a tremendous
• 12:03
  treatment effect, very interesting and will provide for
• 12:07
  an easy path in the to, to approval.
• 12:11
  Yeah, and it's an important finding, especially given that
• 12:13
  there is no current treatments available other than lowering
• 12:18
  immunosuppression. But lowering of
• 12:20
  immunosuppression is not ideal, far from that, because it will
• 12:25
  increase the chance that the graft the kidney is rejected
• 12:29
  that just has been transplanted because of your immune system
• 12:33
  start to reject that the kidney. So lowering immune suppression
• 12:36
  is actually not a good solution. You would like to keep that
• 12:40
  constant. Yeah, not for sure.
• 12:43
  Understood. And that obviously sets the
• 12:45
  platform for for the year ahead. I mean we're recording this
• 12:48
  first week, second week, I guess of of January, just before JVM.
• 12:54
  When are you expecting to kick off the pivotal trial of Phase
• 12:58
  3? Is that going to be at some
• 13:00
  point earlier this year or? Yeah, what are you thinking?
• 13:03
  Well, starting a phase three trial is always a big effort.
• 13:06
  So I think it will be more later in the year than early in the
• 13:08
  year. We haven't given any specific
• 13:10
  guidelines guidance on that. Yeah, it's a, it'll be a large
• 13:15
  study, a larger of course than our phase two, but also more or
• 13:19
  less a repeat of the phase two study.
• 13:21
  So if they'll be the same patients, kidney transplant
• 13:23
  patients with a severe BK virus infection, we'll evaluate the
• 13:28
  same or similar endpoints. We'll just reorder them to what
• 13:33
  is allowable then for regulatory approval.
• 13:37
  And then of course, we need to substantially expand our
• 13:38
  organization building towards a BLA submission ready company and
• 13:44
  also of course, a launch ready company because when you enter
• 13:47
  into phase three, you also have to prepare for the phase
• 13:49
  thereafter, which is the commercial launch.
• 13:52
  Yeah, absolutely nice. Oh, it's definitely an exciting
• 13:57
  year ahead for the team and yourself.
• 13:59
  Eric, obviously, I know we we mentioned that in our prep call
• 14:04
  that obviously there's another program in the works as well
• 14:09
  with with you guys that isn't the the main focus right now.
• 14:14
  But that's an earlier potential potentially oncology program
• 14:20
  that you guys are looking towards.
• 14:21
  Do you want to touch on that briefly?
• 14:23
  Like I said, I know it's not the priority for you guys, but yeah,
• 14:26
  how might that form a part of the bigger picture?
• 14:29
  Yeah, moving, moving forward. Sure, I'm happy to.
• 14:33
  We do indeed work all in upon our research and expand towards
• 14:38
  novel opportunities and create value with the platform.
• 14:42
  If you focus on oncology, there's a huge need for novel
• 14:46
  validated tyrets for the ever growing say modalities that
• 14:50
  we're currently creating AD CS, car keys and our we have all
• 14:55
  sorts of variations on the themes as well.
• 14:58
  But if you look then at the number of targets that are there
• 15:02
  for salt tumors, it's still pretty limited.
• 15:05
  Say typically it's about 15, maybe maximi 20 targets that are
• 15:09
  addressed. So there will be a limit what we
• 15:11
  can do with optimizing modalities and optimizing your
• 15:15
  AD CS to address this and become more effective.
• 15:17
  We will have to find novel targets, novel biology and
• 15:21
  pathways to address the genes that we see in solid tumors.
• 15:26
  And that's what we can do with our technology.
• 15:28
  So it's offers a possibility to identify novel targets based on
• 15:34
  the antibodies that we identify from derived from tumors from
• 15:38
  patients. So what is known is that if you
• 15:40
  have these, these B cell infiltrating as of tumor
• 15:44
  defiltrating B cells is that that is associated with good
• 15:47
  outcomes for patients. So the antibodies that these B
• 15:50
  cells are producing are somehow unique and different than the
• 15:54
  circulating antibodies in cancer patients.
• 15:57
  So banking these antibodies that are tumor matured will provide
• 16:02
  additional insight in what are they addressing, Are they unique
• 16:06
  targets? Is this unique combination of
• 16:08
  these of antibodies that that are needed and then elite
• 16:12
  controllers or patients that have a high or better outcome
• 16:16
  perspective are then a good source for these antibodies to
• 16:19
  bank these libraries And then investigate what are the target
• 16:23
  antibody pairs that we're discovering here that can lead
• 16:25
  to novel insights that then can be addressed with AD CS or car
• 16:30
  keys or keys allocators. So that's one thing we're
• 16:33
  working on. The other thing that we're
• 16:35
  working on in early research indeed is to develop a
• 16:42
  industrializable way how to create polyclonal proctens to
• 16:47
  address diseases. They're currently limited more
• 16:52
  or less to a single antibody that people are developing, but
• 16:55
  our immune system address diseases by a mix of
• 16:59
  polyclonals. We have 100,000 and millions of
• 17:01
  antibodies swirling around in our bloodstream.
• 17:05
  So the combination of antibodies will likely have a higher
• 17:08
  efficacy than a single antibody can.
• 17:11
  The hurdle however to get there is just a practical one.
• 17:15
  How do you express a, you know a mix of antibodies that it is
• 17:22
  producible in a industrializable way and that's where we have
• 17:26
  technology for in house and demonstrate it.
• 17:29
  But that's feasible and we're also looking forward to indeed
• 17:31
  to develop that. Nice, exciting.
• 17:35
  I mean, just bring it back to yourself for a moment as well.
• 17:39
  I know we touched on at the beginning that obviously chair
• 17:43
  at at step and and target and I know you've you've held a
• 17:47
  mixture of board rules over your career.
• 17:50
  Obviously you've been CEO on few occasions as well.
• 17:54
  I know we touched on this as a, as a question and prep like that
• 17:58
  into actually you, you start on both sides like those
• 18:01
  interactions you've dealt closely with your, you know,
• 18:04
  your board CEOs, you've worked with them and then you've
• 18:07
  obviously had to manage your board as as CEO of memo and and
• 18:10
  AM pharma. How is that influencing how you
• 18:13
  lead the organization? If it is, you know if there's
• 18:17
  anything you're drawing on from past experience, Now I.
• 18:20
  I think it's helpful being on both sides.
• 18:23
  I believe it helps to help me bridge the potential gaps that
• 18:28
  can be there with the different objectives or backgrounds that
• 18:32
  either a investment board member has as a vis A vis management.
• 18:37
  So stimulating the insight on both sides on how this works,
• 18:41
  what is the perspective where people come with at the board
• 18:44
  meeting is helpful. Then to be able to translate
• 18:48
  that if necessary, understanding for example, from the
• 18:52
  operational side that a board needs to take positions maybe 9
• 18:56
  or 12 months ahead of an event that you would like to occur by
• 19:01
  that time because it just takes that long to implement it and
• 19:06
  made it happen is, is something that is I think a valuable
• 19:09
  insight and also for management to translate, OK, what is the
• 19:14
  investor interest and what are we building here?
• 19:18
  What are we doing here to make sure that we don't lose say in
• 19:21
  the, the overall details during the day-to-day activities,
• 19:25
  because we have to deal with problems every day as
• 19:28
  management, but then keep a focus on the vision, the, the,
• 19:34
  the, the path on the horizon that we have stipulated for
• 19:37
  ourselves. It's I think something that that
• 19:40
  I can add with and you refers already to Christopher Paterson,
• 19:43
  CEO of of Target being on the The Bio podcast and Andy Parker,
• 19:48
  CEO of Step Pharma. It's really a pleasure to work
• 19:51
  with them and they're super interesting companies, clinical
• 19:54
  stage companies indeed trying to solve their own unmet medical
• 19:58
  needs. So intellectually, it's also
• 20:00
  super interesting of course, to be involved in a broader set of
• 20:04
  indications and challenges than being just from our company.
• 20:08
  For sure. I think it's an interesting
• 20:10
  point you mentioned at the beginning.
• 20:11
  I guess it's just that lived experience and the ability to
• 20:14
  put yourself in the other person's shoes, right?
• 20:17
  And that helps when it comes to, I guess, just decision making as
• 20:22
  well. Yeah, it's decision making.
• 20:26
  It's so. So my view is that the task of
• 20:30
  management is to execute all the plan, create optionality, solve
• 20:37
  problems along the way, propose solutions with that to the
• 20:40
  board, and then where the board's role is indeed to
• 20:45
  challenge management, you know, actually thought about this.
• 20:47
  Can I help making introductions and also be a bit more for of a
• 20:51
  coach there in depth. And I think more importantly
• 20:55
  also, but that's for management as well As for the board.
• 20:59
  We're there to take decisions, right?
• 21:02
  That that's that's the value that we add.
• 21:04
  We will always have limited information, but decisions need
• 21:07
  to be taken because especially in the biotech company, time is
• 21:11
  of the essence and wasting time by not taking decisions, it will
• 21:15
  in the end be a waste of resources and will increase the
• 21:18
  cost of the investment that the OPS forward.
• 21:21
  So strategy of course is always a shared responsibility.
• 21:25
  Management is much more involved with the program can see much
• 21:29
  more opportunities by creating from that from the the base up,
• 21:34
  whereas the board can provide that external view saying, OK,
• 21:38
  what do we see in industry, what do we see as other opportunities
• 21:41
  going on. And in the end it comes down to
• 21:44
  leadership both on the board level as well as on management.
• 21:49
  And the the board says it all right, you need to lead.
• 21:53
  And with that effective communication showing that there
• 21:57
  is no surprises from both sides and be consistent on your
• 22:03
  opinion is I think very key to effective leadership.
• 22:07
  Yeah, for sure, absolutely. Well, look, it's a massive year
• 22:10
  of execution for for you guys at Memo coming up and yeah, wishing
• 22:14
  you all all the best for it be be keeping an eye out for
• 22:17
  progress for sure. Thanks.
• 22:19
  Well, thank you very much for that.
• 22:21
  It's will be a super exciting year and we will start the year,
• 22:26
  kick it off very well at JP Morgan indeed, interacting with
• 22:30
  the rest of the industry. So look forward to that.
• 22:32
  Nice. Awesome.
• 22:33
  Well, look, Eric, we'll finish up with the typical Biohub
• 22:36
  question, if you don't mind. And that's, yeah, if you'd like
• 22:40
  to have dinner with one scientist or entrepreneur, past
• 22:44
  or present. And who would it be and why
• 22:46
  would it? Difficult question.
• 22:49
  I have an incredible respect for entrepreneurs.
• 22:52
  You know, entrepreneurs are the people that actually change our
• 22:56
  lives. So that's what what we're doing.
• 22:59
  I probably would opt for Maria Riza.
• 23:03
  I'm just reading a book from her now.
• 23:06
  She's a Nobel Prize laureate and she set up important online
• 23:10
  media platform into the Philippines.
• 23:14
  There's a a quote from her and I think that's particularly
• 23:17
  interesting in the current times.
• 23:19
  She says without facts you cannot have truth.
• 23:23
  Without truth, you cannot have trust.
• 23:26
  And without these three items, we have no shared reality, no
• 23:30
  rule of law and no democracy. I think that's something to
• 23:34
  think about in the current times.
• 23:36
  Yeah, for sure. Awesome.
• 23:38
  Yeah, I know. I don't think anyone's ever
• 23:40
  mentioned her before. So yeah, a unique choice.
• 23:43
  And yeah, like you say, pretty, pretty relevant at the minute.
• 23:47
  I'll check out the book for sure.
• 23:49
  How could send up to a dictator? It's an interesting book.
• 23:52
  Cool. We'll look.
• 23:54
  Yeah, enjoy JPM and yeah, best to look for the year ahead.
• 23:57
  Thank you very much, Callum. Pleasure to speak with you.