Latest / The BioHub - by Avetix / Episode 194 - Rick Batycky - CEO at Nocion Therapeutics

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Episode 194 - Rick Batycky - CEO at Nocion Therapeutics · The BioHub - by Avetix

• 0:06
  Welcome back to the Biohub podcast by Avetix.
• 0:09
  Today, I'm joined by Rick Bataki, CEO of Nozion
• 0:14
  Therapeutics. Now Rick has spent more than
• 0:16
  three decades in drug development, building companies
• 0:19
  and advancing products across pulmonary, injectable, oral and
• 0:23
  sensory neuron biology. Before Nozion, he was the Co
• 0:27
  founder and CSO of Cevitas Therapeutics, whose lead program
• 0:32
  went on to become inbriha. Of course, the FDA approved
• 0:35
  inhaled therapy for Parkinson's disease.
• 0:38
  He's also held senior R&D and technology roles at Acorda, Poll
• 0:42
  Matrix and Alchemist. At Nozion, Rick is leading a
• 0:47
  novel approach to treating conditions driven by activated
• 0:50
  sensory neurons, starting with chronic cough.
• 0:53
  Rick, it's a pleasure to have you join me today.
• 0:57
  Thanks, Ben. Just to sort of get kick
• 0:59
  started, then, you know, Rick, you've spent more than three
• 1:01
  decades within the biotech industry building companies
• 1:04
  across different platforms. What has that taught you about
• 1:07
  translating a technical idea into a real medicine?
• 1:13
  Yeah, that's a great question to start with.
• 1:17
  It's it's not for the faint of heart.
• 1:19
  How's that? It is a long slog.
• 1:22
  Unlike maybe other industries, you can expect to spend a decade
• 1:27
  working on something and trying to move it from inception
• 1:30
  through to approval, with a lot of sort of mountains and valleys
• 1:34
  along the way. But the, the sort of the, I
• 1:37
  guess the thing that keeps you grounded and that advice to
• 1:40
  others starting is really start early talking to patients and
• 1:44
  really trying to define the unmet need.
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  It does help sort of center your North Star.
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  It does keep you working towards a goal.
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  And a good, you know, a good example is the prior company
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  Sevitus. We're working on Parkinson's
• 1:56
  disease. We're trying to provide a drug
• 2:00
  that would allow them to, you know, get their movement back.
• 2:03
  But when we started talking to physicians, family members and
• 2:07
  patients, we got different views of of how it was viewed.
• 2:10
  And, and just as an example, you know, I think for people maybe
• 2:13
  uninitiated with the disease, they view what they see on TV as
• 2:17
  dyskinesias and involuntary movement.
• 2:19
  And I think that that's what you're trying to control.
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  In fact, talk to patients and they hate being rigid and they
• 2:25
  hate being stuck in their seat. And so with listening to that,
• 2:30
  we were providing almost a, a rescue inhaler, if you will, to
• 2:33
  get someone up out of their seat and moving again, very different
• 2:36
  than if we, you know, hadn't talked to patients to begin
• 2:38
  with. And then the second piece, which
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  I think others had told us we were kind of crazy, was, you
• 2:44
  know, can a Parkinson's patient inhale a medication if they
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  can't move? Well, the patient said, can I,
• 2:50
  can I take an oral drug and swallow water and get a cup and
• 2:54
  fill it? And it was in fact, quite a
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  challenge. So kind of through that lens
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  that really helped us remain focused on that product.
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  It's great it got approved and it's helping a lot of folks.
• 3:05
  And, and, you know, coming back into the sort of startup
• 3:08
  industry, you know, it's looking at chronic cough is a similar
• 3:13
  sort of place we started with. And, and I can talk more about
• 3:16
  that later, but kind of to summarize it really, you know,
• 3:19
  stay focused on making something impactful.
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  Not everything works, there's a lot of failures, but I think
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  that connection to patients is really what helps keep moving
• 3:28
  things along. Yeah, I mean patients that are
• 3:31
  at the centre of this industry, no, no matter how you look at
• 3:34
  it. So bringing them in and getting
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  their perspectives from such an early stage is, is, is obviously
• 3:38
  going to be a great way to help design your, yourself and, and
• 3:42
  the company as you continue through the clinic and through
• 3:46
  latter stages when it comes to the regulatory side of things.
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  I mean, it is, is there a particular, you know, patient
• 3:54
  story or anything that you remember from your past that you
• 3:58
  view as being sort of, you know, really impactful within any of
• 4:02
  your companies? Yeah, it's the, you know, the
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  just in the, I guess again, in the, in the Parkinson's side of
• 4:11
  things when we first went out to and, and these, you know, the
• 4:15
  patients, they would invite us into their homes and take us
• 4:18
  through a day. And, and I remember talking to 1
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  gentleman who, you know, the whole, I think the whole thing
• 4:26
  behind how he was operating was trying to hide it and trying to
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  keep it under, you know, under wrap will.
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  And so he had worked out something with his boss.
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  He'd go to the car and lie down when he'd be having an off
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  episode, the boss knew and would give him a couple hours and then
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  he'd go back in. And so this sort of taking away
• 4:42
  this sort of daily living was a real issue.
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  And and you know that the other, you know, the other thing with
• 4:49
  the current company is this, you know, chronic cough.
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  I think to the uninitiated, folks think it's OK, you're
• 4:55
  coughing, maybe you can control it.
• 4:57
  These patients are miserable. They give up their jobs.
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  Co workers don't like sitting next to them.
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  Nobody likes hearing them in grocery stores.
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  Nobody likes hearing them on airplanes.
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  Add the lens of COVID over all of them coughing, everybody's
• 5:13
  tuned to it and it affects an incredible amount of people and
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  all they want to do is kind of get their normalcy back lives.
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  And that's super impactful for, you know, what it is we're
• 5:24
  trying to do here. Yeah, I mean, let let's shift
• 5:27
  over to noseeon then. And, you know, the company is
• 5:30
  built around noseeons, which are charged sodium channel blockers
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  designed to selectively silence activated sensory neurons.
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  How do you explain that platform to someone like myself and many
• 5:42
  of the audience who aren't, you know, ion channel specialists?
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  Sure. So maybe the, the easiest way to
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  start is sort of how do we sense the world around us?
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  And we sense it through our sort of mechanoreceptors and motor
• 5:54
  neurons, meaning we feel touch. And then we also sense insult
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  and insult can be things like heat and cold and I don't know,
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  acid and and all sorts of things that that trigger what's called
• 6:05
  a sensory neuron. And so to talk a little bit
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  about then ion channels, the the sort of the immediate way in
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  which we sense the world and take something as simple as Y is
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  hot hot or Y is cold, cold. And so the way in which it works
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  is when you touch something that's really hot, the very
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  first thing that happens on the end of the sensory neuron is
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  there's an ion channel called a trip V1 large pore channel.
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  And it opens up and it lets in charged compounds, usually ions,
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  but sometimes things up to a couple 100 Dalton inside.
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  And the purpose of that is it gets enough positive charge
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  inside the cell that it opens what's called the voltage gated
• 6:44
  sodium channel. They'll get another ion channel
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  in sodium. But that's the thing that sends
• 6:51
  that signal to your brain and and is wired in a way that says
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  that's hot. And then you have a reaction to
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  it. Do you drop it?
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  Do you pull your hand away? But that very start involves an
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  ion channel. And what's interesting just to
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  you know, some or at least what I found fascinating is something
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  like Trip V1, which is that that that large core channel I
• 7:11
  mentioned, it's called the heat channel because it responds to
• 7:14
  hot, but it also responds to capsaicin.
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  And so that's why Chili Peppers are hot is you open the same
• 7:20
  panel at the beginning of the nose sceptre.
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  On the opposite end, there's another channel called Trip M8,
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  which opens due to cold and it also opens due to menthol.
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  And so that's why menthol feels cooling.
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  But where it comes down to now what are we trying to do is the
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  the sort of the aha moment of our founders was these large
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  poor channels are not selective for just individual molecules.
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  They'll take all comers because their job is to just open and
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  respond quickly. And because of that, they
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  thought, why don't, why don't we create a charged drug that gets
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  in the cell that way and then does something from inside the
• 7:55
  cell And that solves a whole lot of problems.
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  In fact, the selectivity and the specificity that you might hear
• 8:02
  people talk about with drug development and getting on
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  target, it's built into the way in which nociceptors respond to
• 8:09
  insult. If you have a charged drug, it's
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  only going to get into an activated nociceptor.
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  So the body takes care of that once inside it actually we're
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  doing sodium channel blockers because the the sort of the
• 8:22
  local anesthetic binding site is which it's called the shutdown
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  of sodium channel is only available from the inside of the
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  cell. So once the compound they bind
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  to the sodium channel and it shuts down that signal going to
• 8:34
  your brain, which is telling you that something is either painful
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  or itchy. And in fact, when you think of
• 8:40
  cough, it's really kind of itch of the Airways or the upper
• 8:43
  Airways. So in calming that signal down,
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  we calm that the patient doesn't feel it and then doesn't have
• 8:49
  that reflex to constantly cough. Yeah, I mean, and, and let's
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  let's delve into chronic cough in a little bit more detail.
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  It's often dismissed as more of a symptom, but but you guys are
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  treating refractory and unexplained chronic cough as a
• 9:04
  disease of sensory neuron hypersensitivity.
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  What? Why does that reframe really
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  matter? Yeah, and it it, you know,
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  taking a page from and maybe we're sort of 10 or 20 years
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  behind, but taking a page from the pain sort of space, and this
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  is now itch space, but certainly itch of the Airways.
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  Chronic pain is well understood now on in and of itself.
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  People do suffer from it. Even if you know, you, they've
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  done a good job at trying to trying to address maybe the
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  underlying issue that may be leading it or maybe they don't
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  know. Chronic cough is actually very
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  similar in that for the most part, when you look at patients
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  who are coughing and, and when we say coughing, we mean maybe
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  it's maybe it's a cough every one or two minutes for like 10
• 9:50
  years. Like it, it goes on, it affects
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  every, every sort of fiber of their lives.
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  But the, the sort of the way in which, the way the way in which
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  we classify it is, is for the most part for these chronic
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  cough patients, let's say there's just to give you
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  numbers, I think in the US there's like 27,000,000 patients
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  that would be classified as having a cough that's lasting
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  greater than 8 weeks and not going away.
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  For the majority of those, it maybe it's related to something
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  like acid reflux or allergies or what have you.
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  And, and we typically say 2/3 of those things can be well
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  controlled. But that leaves even just in the
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  US 9 million patients we call refractory or unexplained.
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  And these patients have had everything thrown at them from,
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  you know, from sort of maybe asthma meds or, or sort of other
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  sort of maybe neurological meds, etcetera to try to calm it down
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  and it doesn't work. So we either call them
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  refractory because we think we know what it's causing it, but
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  we can't address or treat well enough what's underlying it or
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  unexplained, which means no idea.
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  And that's important because now I think like the pain space,
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  there's a move to say, yes, these these patients which are
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  refractory or unexplained, they're both hypersensitive to
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  these large core channels and they have maybe underlying
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  inflammation. And it's kind of a, a, a loop in
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  that it's the cough itself that may be sort of re upping the
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  inflammation. And so there's this sort of
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  cycle. And so the ability to break that
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  cycle and not talk about it as just a symptom of something
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  else, I think it's important for these patients to, you know,
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  really be recognized as they like to say, they they've tried
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  everything, nothing works. They're still dealing with it
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  and, and there's nothing they can do.
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  They feel hopeless. Yeah.
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  And your your lead asset taplicanium is locally delivered
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  once daily by dry powder inhaler.
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  How much of that sort of potential differentiation that
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  you have comes from the molecule itself versus the delivery
• 11:54
  profile? Yeah.
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  So, so maybe talking about the molecule first.
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  And so one thing immediately that is clear is it is a sodium
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  channel blocker, but it's charged.
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  And So what is interesting is when you, when you put it
• 12:08
  locally where you're feeling pain or itch, it only gets into
• 12:12
  the neurons that are giving you the sense of pain or itch
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  because they're the ones that accepts charge compounds through
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  their large pore channels. What it doesn't do is get
• 12:21
  adjacent to things like mechanoreceptors or motor
• 12:24
  neurons, so it doesn't cause numbness or paralysis.
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  So if you had just a neutrally charged sodium channel blocker,
• 12:30
  you block all three types of neurons.
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  And that's why you know, when you go to the dentist and get a
• 12:35
  cavity removed, you drool on yourself because you're, you
• 12:39
  know, you can't move, you can't feel things and you bite your
• 12:42
  cheek. That's your, that's your
• 12:44
  mechanoreceptors, but the pain block is through just these
• 12:47
  nociceptors. So we like to think that we're
• 12:49
  very selective with the molecule when it's applied.
• 12:53
  The reason for the inhalation is actually by necessity.
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  So I would argue that in the pharmaceutical space as a, in
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  general, we don't make charge compounds and we don't make
• 13:06
  charge compounds because they don't go anywhere.
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  They can't cross neutral membranes.
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  They don't get across the one brain barrier.
• 13:12
  They, you know, they don't cross the GI tract very easily.
• 13:16
  They so they, they like to just stay put.
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  And, and it may be sort of evolutionary that the bodies
• 13:22
  preserve this response to charge things in order to fire back to,
• 13:26
  you know, sodium or ion channels.
• 13:29
  But but for this very particular thing, then we can, if we apply
• 13:33
  it locally and the, you know, those those nociceptors of
• 13:38
  interest are being triggered and are causing itch, this compound
• 13:41
  should get in and silence them. So it has to be delivered via
• 13:45
  inhalation since that's where the insult is occurring.
• 13:48
  Yeah. I think, you know, looking at
• 13:50
  the field more broadly, there's been a lot of, you know, P2X3
• 13:53
  antagonists advance, but they've also run into both efficacy and
• 13:58
  tolerability questions. What areas do you really need to
• 14:01
  set your lead asset apart to prove that it is meaningfully
• 14:04
  different? Yeah, no, great, great question.
• 14:08
  So first of all, it is a a different mechanism of action.
• 14:11
  So there's always this, you know, opportunity for injunctive
• 14:13
  youth. But just looking at the P2X3
• 14:17
  antagonists, I think, you know, when we look at a chronic cough
• 14:20
  patient and we can see this, they are hypersensitive to P2X3
• 14:24
  agonists relative to the, the sort of the normal population.
• 14:28
  They're also hypersensitive to trip V1 and trip A1 agonist.
• 14:32
  So we already know that they're fired up for other channels.
• 14:36
  And then kind of looking at the P2X3 data, we see they work
• 14:40
  really well in like 1/3 of patients, maybe so, so in a
• 14:42
  third and really poorly in, in a third in the clinical studies.
• 14:47
  So that suggests as well that there are many different ways
• 14:50
  that lead to cough or chronic cough and and P2X3 is one way to
• 14:54
  address maybe a subset of those. Since we're agnostic as to which
• 14:59
  large poor channel opens. Our thinking is that in just
• 15:03
  chronic cough we will be better because we can move through Trip
• 15:06
  V1, Trip A1P2, all the channels that do ultimately trigger the
• 15:11
  sodium channel. The other thing which sort of
• 15:15
  thinking maybe broader beyond chronic cough is that sort of
• 15:19
  dry cough you get or 1/3 of patients get when they have an
• 15:22
  upper respiratory tract infection or long COVID.
• 15:25
  It's this sort of dry nagging thing that lasts kind of a, you
• 15:29
  know, couple weeks to a couple months.
• 15:31
  Well, there was some interesting data generated preclinically
• 15:34
  that suggested that it's more sort of think of it like
• 15:38
  evolutionary that a respiratory virus those that essentially are
• 15:45
  in the sort of the domain are the ones that are able to
• 15:47
  spread. How do they make, how do they
• 15:49
  spread, they make you cough and how do they make you cough.
• 15:52
  They up regulate trip V1 and TRIP A1, not necessarily P2X3.
• 15:57
  So the P2X3 on TAG haven't shown inroads in acute cough, whereas
• 16:03
  we haven't started that study yet, but that's something on the
• 16:05
  books as well. So we think we'll be broader as
• 16:08
  well in terms of the types of cough that we're able to treat.
• 16:11
  Yeah. And then back to the last thing
• 16:13
  you were mentioning about this sort of safety and tolerability,
• 16:16
  the fact that we're delivered locally and that charge
• 16:18
  compounds have very difficult time getting into the systemic
• 16:22
  circulation means the drug stays local.
• 16:24
  We don't see that numbness or paralysis.
• 16:27
  And so it stays where it needs to be.
• 16:28
  It has very long action. It has very rapid onset, which
• 16:31
  is great for a rescue Med, But the other sort of P2X3
• 16:35
  antagonists, they're given orally and so they sort of dose
• 16:39
  the body. There's other side effects.
• 16:41
  Sometimes you can see taste disturbances blocking P2X23 in
• 16:45
  the tongue. You can you can lose your sense
• 16:48
  of taste for a while. So these are kind of the
• 16:50
  significant side effects seen in some of the other products that
• 16:53
  we just don't have because we can't get absorbed.
• 16:56
  So if if we look to sort of the here and now, you know what's
• 16:59
  going on over at Ozion at the minute your ASPIRE study is
• 17:03
  fully enrolled, you have top line data expected in Q3.
• 17:07
  What what are you really looking for in that data set beyond just
• 17:10
  the primary endpoint and what would really make that result
• 17:14
  clinically meaningful? Yeah, Yeah, it's, well, I guess
• 17:19
  the good news is unlike maybe a lot of other trials I've been
• 17:22
  involved in, there's been a lot of people who've used this
• 17:24
  blueprint. And so we're pretty
• 17:26
  understanding of kind of what the primary is.
• 17:28
  It's objective, it's cough counting, but then it's the So
• 17:31
  what? Who cares, right?
• 17:32
  Why is that important to a patient?
• 17:34
  And so that comes in to pulling in the PR OS and the patient
• 17:38
  reported outcomes like severity, urge to cough.
• 17:42
  You know, you can, you can think that, you know, maybe not all
• 17:44
  coughs are equal. Maybe if you're having a, you
• 17:47
  know, a real sort of attack, it's different than if you have
• 17:50
  something milder in the background, the cough counter
• 17:52
  might pick that up the same, but patients might do that
• 17:55
  differently. So it is important to not just
• 17:58
  have our objective primary endpoint, but to have support in
• 18:02
  terms of these PR OS, quality of life, etcetera.
• 18:06
  And then and we also, you know, back to what I was saying just
• 18:09
  about the differentiation from the P2X3 antagonist, there is a
• 18:12
  real sort of potential that we will also be better in terms of
• 18:17
  just treating chronic cough relative to, you know, what's
• 18:20
  out there. But I should say, you know,
• 18:22
  maybe your viewers are wondering, I mean, the last
• 18:24
  approved product for cough was in 1958.
• 18:27
  Yeah. A long time ago.
• 18:30
  So there is nothing at the moment.
• 18:32
  And so the docs throw everything they can at you to maybe try to
• 18:35
  treat that underlying symptom, but something to treat this, you
• 18:39
  know, this chronic cough is just not available yet.
• 18:42
  Yeah. And you know, if, if the data is
• 18:44
  positive, you're going to move fairly quickly into, you know,
• 18:47
  FDA alignment, CMC phase three planning and financing
• 18:51
  decisions, what, what really becomes the biggest
• 18:53
  organizational challenge after a readout like that?
• 18:57
  Yeah, it's, you're exactly right.
• 19:00
  It's kind of growth and next steps.
• 19:01
  And we're, we're a very sort of you, you could argue maybe a
• 19:05
  classical biotech in that we're reading out a pivotal sort of
• 19:08
  phase 2B study and that sets us up.
• 19:10
  Well. Now the first thing I should
• 19:12
  point out back to, you know, when you start a company, talk
• 19:15
  to patients. I also think when you start a
• 19:17
  company, you know, surround yourself as well with a good
• 19:20
  handful of folks who've kind of been there done that.
• 19:23
  And that's, you know what we've been blessed to, to find people.
• 19:25
  We've, we've stayed small. We're in our 4th worldwide
• 19:29
  clinical study and we're only 10 people or 11 of us as of today.
• 19:34
  But those, those folks have seen everything from discovery
• 19:37
  through to successful registrations either through the
• 19:40
  US or MHRA or EMA, what have you, with drug device
• 19:45
  combination products. A lot goes into there.
• 19:47
  And the reason that's important is so much has to be done up
• 19:50
  front. Like right now we're very
• 19:52
  excited about the ASPIRE study reading out in a few months, but
• 19:57
  if that's all we were doing, we would be almost two years
• 19:59
  behind. So we've already now been
• 20:02
  finishing up our long term talks, which is required to
• 20:05
  start phase three. We've done our CMC, our
• 20:08
  manufacturing. There's also, you know, because
• 20:10
  we make a inhaled dry powder. There's a lot of focus on your
• 20:16
  scale up and your scale at phase three and making sure that.
• 20:19
  There's not a lot of changes as you start your pivotal studies
• 20:23
  from actually when you launch. And so we're already thinking
• 20:25
  about how big is the launch in 20-30 or whenever it is building
• 20:29
  that into what are we doing right now for scale up.
• 20:31
  And so you can imagine that cost a lot of money and there's a lot
• 20:35
  of risks. So that's that's the third sort
• 20:38
  of leg of the stool is to really think carefully about financing
• 20:41
  and fundraising. I will say the, you know, from
• 20:45
  as we watch the kind of the markets it's and biotech in
• 20:48
  particular, it feels maybe a little more sunny than it did a
• 20:52
  year ago. But there's a lot of
• 20:54
  opportunities and sort of ways in which we can raise enough
• 20:57
  capital so that we can, you know, register this product on
• 21:01
  our own. And so that is, you know,
• 21:03
  building the company, you know, speed is really important, but
• 21:06
  you certainly don't want any missteps because that cost you
• 21:09
  on the on the back end. And then maybe most immediately
• 21:12
  is, you know, with data in hand, we will then likely approach the
• 21:17
  FDA, which with what's called an end of phase two meeting, which
• 21:20
  is where you get to kind of show all your pivot or all your data
• 21:24
  to date as well as get some sort of agreement or alignment on
• 21:27
  what is our phase three's going to look like.
• 21:30
  So that we know what we're running.
• 21:31
  And you know, two or three years down the road, we didn't run the
• 21:34
  wrong thing. Yeah, sounds sounds like a busy
• 21:37
  sort of upcoming six months. It is.
• 21:42
  I mean, let's let's sort of take a step back away just from nosey
• 21:45
  on and, you know, focus on you and your your wider career.
• 21:48
  I mean, you've seen biotech from the founder side, from the
• 21:51
  operator side and the investor facing side.
• 21:54
  Given your view, sort of, you know, the good ideas are a dime
• 21:57
  a dozen. What should first time biotech
• 22:01
  leaders really understand about investors, fundraising and
• 22:05
  choosing the right Capital Partners?
• 22:09
  Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's I guess the good
• 22:11
  news in in certainly in the private space is the investors
• 22:15
  are the shareholders. So you have just one group of
• 22:18
  people you have to convince and that allows you to focus.
• 22:22
  But but when it comes to, you know, when it comes to I think
• 22:26
  investors in particular, first of all is like really be sort of
• 22:31
  upfront and honest. And that means whether things
• 22:34
  are negative or positive, don't oversell it if you can't back it
• 22:38
  up. Certainly a lot of this is
• 22:41
  biotech is kind of it's true until it isn't.
• 22:44
  And that's OK if you have a hypothesis, but don't start
• 22:47
  making promises that you can't deliver on including timeline,
• 22:51
  including cost of things. And, and you know, you know, VCs
• 22:55
  always want you to be efficient, but you know, if a, if a widget
• 22:58
  costs $1,000,000, a widget costs $1,000,000.
• 23:01
  So you know and, and you find if actually working with them
• 23:04
  really helps, but something you can do for them and for yourself
• 23:09
  is design sort of studies and experiments that are fast fail.
• 23:14
  So really get to the answer. If your thing isn't going to
• 23:16
  work, you'd rather know sooner rather than later.
• 23:19
  It saves capital. The investors will appreciate
• 23:21
  it. You know their LP's will
• 23:23
  appreciate you're not just putting good money after bad and
• 23:25
  you'll appreciate it. You're not wasting years of your
• 23:28
  life on something you kind of knew maybe it wouldn't quite
• 23:31
  work. And so any chance you get to do
• 23:34
  something not, not just because, you know, you want a job and
• 23:38
  keep this going, but really you want to sort of be impactful.
• 23:41
  Yeah. Do it so that you can, you know,
• 23:43
  you know when it's not going to work.
• 23:44
  And that and I think that is always very appreciated,
• 23:48
  especially as you're talking to people who are putting good
• 23:50
  money into your company. Yeah.
• 23:53
  And when you're really building that syndicate, I mean, let's
• 23:55
  say you're in the fortunate position to have multiple
• 23:57
  potential investors at the table, what, what does that
• 24:00
  decision making process come down to on your side as to to
• 24:03
  which syndicate you want to really go with?
• 24:06
  I think, well, yeah, that's a good question.
• 24:11
  You know, certainly there's a lot of I, I guess you know, for
• 24:13
  me anyways, I already have a lot of sort of historical
• 24:15
  perspective. But but actually watching just
• 24:18
  sort of how they're investing, who they're investing with, how
• 24:21
  they invest in a company, Are things really tranched?
• 24:24
  Are they kind of, you can kind of get a sense are they in it
• 24:26
  for the long haul or are they just kind of popping on because
• 24:29
  you know, another VC did diligence already.
• 24:31
  And so, you know, you do want that core group that will be
• 24:35
  with you, ones that you've seen are, you know, they, you can
• 24:39
  tell if they do kind of go through the good and bad.
• 24:41
  And another thing is, you know, you, I find whether we're
• 24:45
  talking to strategics about partnership or investors, the
• 24:49
  good ones actually come with smart people who right away,
• 24:53
  even if you haven't signed them up yet, they start to work with
• 24:55
  you to figure out how, how to make this successful, not why is
• 24:59
  it going to fail, right? And so you can kind of pick out
• 25:03
  a little bit of, of the personality.
• 25:05
  So yes, spend a lot of time with them.
• 25:07
  You know, ideally, if you get two or three, they're good and
• 25:10
  they they really like it. You know, you may be able to
• 25:13
  have a little bit of a competitive process, but I
• 25:15
  think, you know, first and foremost, you want, you know,
• 25:18
  you want a solid syndicate and, and you'll hear this from
• 25:21
  everybody. It's like, you know, everybody
• 25:25
  worries about dilution, but when you're kicking these things off,
• 25:27
  you know, it's take a little bit more if it's offered because you
• 25:31
  know, stuff will happen. You have for.
• 25:35
  Yeah, biotech is one thing. It's unpredictable.
• 25:39
  Yes, I. Like to tell, you know, other,
• 25:41
  you know, when we started, like, you know, there's people can
• 25:43
  kind of get into, you know, dilution and stock price all
• 25:46
  this. And it's like, well, it's worth
• 25:48
  0 until it's worth something, right?
• 25:50
  It's not really worth anything. You can, you can hope, but what
• 25:53
  you really need to do is focus on the work and, and you know,
• 25:56
  if it's a good idea and it has that effort behind it and you
• 26:00
  get to these successful places. You know, I I have still have a
• 26:04
  little bit of faith that that finds a home somewhere.
• 26:06
  Yeah, most most certainly. I mean, just to just to wrap
• 26:10
  things up here, then if you could have dinner with any
• 26:13
  scientist or innovator, past or present, who would it be and
• 26:16
  why? Well, it wouldn't, it actually
• 26:22
  wouldn't be anything to do with biology.
• 26:25
  And I, yeah, I, I say that the, so my sort of the passion when,
• 26:30
  when I'm not doing all of this everyday is actually, I really
• 26:34
  enjoy astronomy and, and, and part of it.
• 26:38
  I mean, maybe they're kind of similar in that you have to use
• 26:40
  your imagination for a lot of this stuff.
• 26:42
  We can't see a lot of the stuff going on at the micro level or
• 26:45
  the macro. But the, you know, the, the
• 26:47
  thing that I, I still find fascinating and it has, you
• 26:50
  know, real direct impact. And I'm an engineer by training.
• 26:54
  So everything has to have an impact somewhere.
• 26:57
  But I think the person that that with the most imagination,
• 27:01
  certainly in that area as well, I think is Einstein.
• 27:04
  And this sort of, you know, it's, it's not just about
• 27:07
  imagining, you know, stars and planets and stuff like that.
• 27:10
  But I the, the thing that really, I would love to, you
• 27:13
  know, figure out how did he make that leap?
• 27:15
  Is this thing into relativity, right.
• 27:17
  And, you know, everything leading up to, you know, where
• 27:20
  we are today, you, you know, a pound is a pound and a second is
• 27:23
  a second meter is a meter. And but for this sort of quirky
• 27:29
  thing that was happening with the, you know, the orbit of
• 27:31
  Mercury, right, of all things, he took himself out of where we
• 27:36
  are today and said, well, what if everything else is allowed to
• 27:38
  change? And that led to, you know, mass
• 27:41
  is not conserved. And that is just as important in
• 27:44
  chemical reactions. If you had a fine enough weight
• 27:46
  scale, you'd find the things you throw into the pot are different
• 27:49
  in weight than the things that come out mass and energy.
• 27:52
  And the, you know, the most bizarre ones are these, you
• 27:55
  know, these. Sorry about that.
• 27:58
  The most bizarre things are this, you know, the relativity
• 28:01
  and the idea that if I run around my living room instead of
• 28:04
  sitting here with you, I age less.
• 28:05
  Right. Yeah.
• 28:07
  Or if I sit on the top of a mountain, I age more and and it
• 28:11
  seems like, oh, maybe it's sort of at the at the margins.
• 28:14
  But, you know, where it really impacts is, you know, looking at
• 28:17
  things like GPS and you would not be able to drive your car
• 28:20
  from A to B after a few months if there's not somebody sitting
• 28:24
  in a building somewhere updating the clocks on all the global
• 28:28
  positioning satellites. So that's sort of, you know,
• 28:31
  something we can't see, we can't experience, but it defines how
• 28:35
  things work that, you know, imagine sort of learning about
• 28:38
  how to make that leap. And there's, you know, there's
• 28:41
  many folks in history who've made this, you know, Copernicus
• 28:44
  and who've made this leap from something that you see every day
• 28:48
  to something you get it. I think we'd learn a lot around
• 28:50
  maybe how to approach and attack really difficult problems.
• 28:54
  Yeah, it would. It would certainly be a
• 28:55
  fascinating, fascinating conversation.
• 29:00
  Great. Well, it's been a been an
• 29:02
  absolute pleasure having you with me today, Rick.
• 29:03
  Really enjoyed our conversation. I do too, Ben.
• 29:07
  Thank you. No worries and thank you to
• 29:08
  everyone for tuning in. Make sure you you like and
• 29:11
  subscribe and follow along for more episodes to come.
• 29:14
  But for now, that's all. Cheers.
• 29:15
  Goodbye. Bye.