Latest / The BioHub - by Avetix / Episode 108 - JPM Special - Dirk Thye, CEO Quince Therapeutics

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Episode 108 - JPM Special - Dirk Thye, CEO Quince Therapeutics · The BioHub - by Avetix

• 0:04
  So welcome to a JPM special of the Bio Hub.
• 0:07
  I'm with Dirk Tai, the CEO and CMO of Quince Therapeutics.
• 0:12
  Dirk is founder of seven companies, CEO 10 times before
• 0:18
  train physician and he's been part of multiple drug approvals.
• 0:21
  It's a pleasure to have you, Dirk.
• 0:23
  How are you? Great, great.
• 0:24
  How are you? Thanks for having me.
• 0:26
  It's a pleasure to be here in order to be considered important
• 0:30
  enough to be on your podcast. So I appreciate the invitation.
• 0:32
  Now I. Honestly, it's a pleasure to
• 0:34
  have you and thanks for squeezing me in in this pretty
• 0:37
  busy JPM, right I? Was been busy, yeah.
• 0:40
  How's it been for? You extremely busy.
• 0:43
  Probably the most busy I've ever been at one of these.
• 0:46
  They're always busy, but usually it's a frenetic type of busy.
• 0:51
  And I always think at the end that I've got so many irons in
• 0:54
  the fire and then, you know, they're all going to come to
• 0:57
  fruition and then two weeks later, 99.5% of them have
• 1:01
  dissolves. But this one's different because
• 1:04
  we have, as I'm sure we'll talk about, you know, we have a major
• 1:08
  inflection point coming up for our company, which means, you
• 1:12
  know, the end or thriving survival.
• 1:15
  So we're lining up all the final pieces that go into, you know, a
• 1:19
  subsequent financing and preparing for the next phase of
• 1:22
  the company. So we were really, really busy.
• 1:24
  But the substance of the meetings is is very meaningful.
• 1:28
  Yeah, that's great. Yeah.
• 1:30
  Let's talk about that milestone coming up.
• 1:32
  What's what's happening and. So Quince Therapeutics is a rare
• 1:35
  disease company with a technology that encapsulates a
• 1:39
  drug inside of the patient's own red blood cells.
• 1:42
  And we're developing our first drug is dexamethasone.
• 1:47
  And without walking you through all the scientific details,
• 1:50
  essentially the advantage of putting it into your red blood
• 1:54
  cells is that it will slowly release the drug as the red
• 1:58
  blood cells are circulating throughout your body.
• 2:01
  And by doing so fundamentally changes the pharmacokinetics and
• 2:06
  the relationships of the pharmacokinetics, the drug
• 2:08
  concentrations over time that relate to how steroids work in a
• 2:14
  manner that eliminates the steroid toxicities.
• 2:17
  So the whole idea is to be able to dose steroids over weeks,
• 2:22
  months and years without any steroid toxicity, which is
• 2:25
  impossible with existing steroids.
• 2:28
  They're they're wonderful drugs, lots of different types of
• 2:31
  benefits for many types of diseases, but also highly toxic.
• 2:35
  Right. And then now we've got the state
• 2:38
  readout coming up. Right.
• 2:39
  Phase three readout, we're within about a month now of
• 2:43
  phase three data and we have a single indication and a single
• 2:48
  pivotal trial under a special protocol assessment with the
• 2:51
  FDA. So if positive, it should
• 2:53
  suffice for approval. So if it fails, you know, we're
• 2:57
  done. But if it succeeds, we're off to
• 3:00
  the races to build, you know, really excellent rare disease
• 3:03
  company. So you can imagine the amount of
• 3:07
  both anxiety and enthusiasm and anticipation at the company
• 3:12
  right now. Small company, 35 people,
• 3:15
  everybody's pretty fired are. I mean, that's great, Yeah.
• 3:18
  I mean. Very exciting time.
• 3:20
  Yeah, I mean, if that doesn't explain what biotechs like in a
• 3:22
  nutshell then? It's like biotech, it's do or
• 3:26
  die. We were chatting a little bit
• 3:27
  before before we started the interview and I was saying, you
• 3:31
  know, if you consider discovery programs, more than 99% of
• 3:35
  programs fail. You know, even if you get into
• 3:38
  the clinic with a program, which is hard to do, you know, you get
• 3:41
  something to the clinical stage, post I and D, you're in phase,
• 3:44
  185% of those programs fail, which shapes everything about
• 3:50
  the industry, you know, shapes drug pricing.
• 3:52
  It shapes the way, you know, venture capital grounds are
• 3:55
  financed and you know, how much equity founders retain and
• 4:00
  everything in between. Yeah.
• 4:02
  I mean, it's crazy. We also before the interview, we
• 4:04
  were just talking about your success rate in part of multiple
• 4:08
  drug approvals, even one that you, you were part of every step
• 4:12
  of the way, right? Yeah, One of the companies they
• 4:14
  started was, it was a really wonderful drug.
• 4:19
  It was called Ceftaraling. It was kind of, you know, my
• 4:21
  thing. We started a company around it.
• 4:23
  It was a preclinical asset. I took it through Phase 123 NDA
• 4:29
  advisory committee for two indications where I was the
• 4:32
  point person up there for like 8 hours in an advisory clinic and
• 4:36
  approval and launch. So that whole process, it's very
• 4:40
  rare to have the chance to do the whole thing from beginning
• 4:43
  to end as the leader of the program.
• 4:45
  So that was just a phenomenal experience for me.
• 4:48
  And, you know, obviously learned a tremendous amount, but also
• 4:51
  just just great to be able to take something from beginning to
• 4:56
  end and it's rare. Yeah.
• 4:57
  You know, like I work with a lot of amazing, smart people.
• 5:01
  Many of them are, you know, my age, like a mid 50s, been in
• 5:05
  this industry for years. They're smart, capable.
• 5:09
  They work hard. They never worked on anything
• 5:11
  that works, so it's that's not uncommon in this industry.
• 5:15
  It's a crazy concept, I mean. Yeah, just, yeah, it's not.
• 5:19
  It just takes a while to get used to, I think.
• 5:21
  But like the scientists that finally get into this industry,
• 5:24
  just get acclimated to it. Yeah.
• 5:26
  How valuable was that experience as well?
• 5:31
  It's hard to describe. I mean, it's like the foundation
• 5:34
  of everything I know. I mean, you can imagine that,
• 5:36
  you know, as you go along, you know, the company got acquired
• 5:40
  along the way. Yeah.
• 5:41
  So then I was part of a bigger company running it as a
• 5:44
  subsidiary of a bigger company, which gave me access to more
• 5:48
  resources, more money, almost unlimited resources and money to
• 5:53
  be able to do what we wanted to, to maximize the chances of
• 5:56
  success. So that in addition to all the
• 5:58
  development and scientific and regulatory and quality systems
• 6:02
  and all that learning that goes along the way, you also have the
• 6:06
  the learnings associated with business and how how types of
• 6:11
  businesses are different, small private startups versus large
• 6:15
  public companies, the different methods of working and the
• 6:18
  different methods of personnel management.
• 6:20
  So I mean, it's probably just the foundation of was probably
• 6:25
  the most valuable project, you know, in terms of like my
• 6:27
  learning and my skill set that I've ever had.
• 6:30
  Yeah, let let's just bring it back to Quince as well.
• 6:33
  You know, you, you're coming up to a phase three data readout.
• 6:37
  You know, that's not the only part of the story.
• 6:38
  You know, there's, there's a lot more to it.
• 6:40
  Like what's the journey being like from OH?
• 6:43
  This one's been wild. This is a crazy.
• 6:45
  But you know, this happens in biotech too.
• 6:49
  Like, for example, Sidera, this company, And I'd like to
• 6:52
  congratulate Sidera and Jeff Stein on their recent
• 6:55
  acquisition for I think it was over $9 billion.
• 6:57
  Incredible. Yeah, I met, I met my business
• 7:01
  partner, our CEO and CBO at Sidera when he was just a young
• 7:05
  BD guy because I was the first Chief Medical Officer at Sidera
• 7:09
  and this was like over 10 years ago now.
• 7:12
  And so they, you know, they went through multiple lives to get to
• 7:17
  where and died a few times along the way to get to where they are
• 7:20
  now. And you know, we were similar
• 7:22
  quits. Brendan and I were running a
• 7:26
  small start up out of Purdue University out of Phil Lau's
• 7:29
  lab. He's a very successful and well
• 7:32
  known entrepreneur and and entrepreneur and inventor.
• 7:37
  And we had a chance along the way to reverse merge into a
• 7:42
  company called Cortexim, which was pretty successful company in
• 7:47
  phase three and Alzheimer's disease with about a $4 billion
• 7:50
  market cap. They had a phase three failure.
• 7:54
  They immediately sort of traded down to cash.
• 7:56
  They had about 120 million left at the time we reverse merged
• 7:59
  into them. But our technology was too early
• 8:02
  stage to be a public company. So we used the remaining cash to
• 8:06
  go out and do an acquisition, right.
• 8:08
  And about 2 1/2 years ago, we successfully acquired this
• 8:11
  company called Aerodel, which was an Italian company that had
• 8:15
  spent about $100 million of venture money backed by Sophie
• 8:19
  Nova and some other European BCS over about 15 years to develop
• 8:25
  the technology I was describing before about the encapsulation
• 8:28
  into the red blood cells. So they had a wild journey too
• 8:31
  that took them like 1520 years. We had our, you know, spin into
• 8:37
  this reverse merger acquired him and that's and that became
• 8:40
  Quince. Right.
• 8:42
  Yeah. I mean, it's such a cool, cool
• 8:44
  journey. And you stayed pretty lean along
• 8:46
  the way as well. You said 35 people.
• 8:49
  Yeah, very leaning. Yeah, we're 35 people, typical
• 8:51
  really small biotech startup. 35 is probably pretty small for a
• 8:55
  phase three company, but it's also rare disease.
• 8:58
  And you know, we do utilize a lot of consultants and a lot of
• 9:02
  outside vendors to fill gaps where we don't have employees.
• 9:05
  But it's very, you know, very virtual, humble and flexible
• 9:10
  model. How how important is the right
• 9:13
  team in these kind of things? Like everything, it's critical.
• 9:17
  I mean, you know, over the years when, when I first started
• 9:21
  companies, when I was really young, right out of residency,
• 9:24
  after my residency at Stanford, I started a company and the
• 9:27
  venture capitalists also always used to talk to me about how
• 9:30
  important the people were. And they did it when I was
• 9:33
  speaking to them. So I just thought they were
• 9:35
  being friendly and encouraging because I just figured, you
• 9:39
  know, the essence of the scientific technology should
• 9:43
  determine whether it works or not.
• 9:45
  Like, you know, like lots of people can make it work or not.
• 9:48
  But over the years, I've seen so many failures, so many screw ups
• 9:55
  for a good product that, you know, puts it behind, like, 10
• 9:59
  years where it should have been. And if you screw things up along
• 10:03
  the way and you make those mistakes, yeah, you know, the
• 10:06
  world doesn't sit around and wait for you always.
• 10:08
  There are other people usually kind of going after the same
• 10:11
  targets. Well, yeah.
• 10:13
  And so that'll kill you. What what are those challenges
• 10:15
  that you come for us that could cause those kind of mistakes?
• 10:20
  There's so many. I mean, in every, every
• 10:23
  functional area, there's so many, I mean, there can be
• 10:28
  issues with the technology itself with with respect to
• 10:31
  hurdles for safety or for efficacy or for non clinical
• 10:36
  pharmacology or toxicology issues.
• 10:38
  There can be CMC issues a lot that crop up, you know, like
• 10:42
  something not silly, but something unexpected, like you
• 10:47
  don't have the right stability at room temperature after you're
• 10:50
  deep into a program. And therefore, you know, for the
• 10:54
  setting you're trying to approach, you're not going to be
• 10:57
  able to, you know, ship and store the drug and give it to
• 10:59
  people in a meaningful manner. Just things like that.
• 11:02
  Like, it can be anything going to be a regulatory issue.
• 11:06
  That's why there's a 99% failure for, like 85% for the drugs that
• 11:11
  get into the clinic. Yeah, lots of stuff can go
• 11:14
  wrong. Yeah, well, look, best of luck.
• 11:17
  And you know, good, even good people can't always fix it.
• 11:20
  Sometimes things just. Go wrong?
• 11:21
  Well, that's it as well, isn't it?
• 11:22
  It's time. Sometimes things just don't work
• 11:24
  because, you know, even with AI, it's hard to predict biology.
• 11:27
  Biology is super complicated. Yeah.
• 11:30
  A lot Best of luck with the phase three data.
• 11:33
  Thank you. Thank you so much for coming on
• 11:35
  the podcast and making time. Oh yeah.
• 11:37
  And and please everyone like and subscribe to the Biop and thank
• 11:41
  you again, Dick. I appreciate it.
• 11:42
  Thanks very much. Bye everybody.