Latest / Core Memory / An Implant That Tracks And Treats Cancer Tumors - EP 82 Ben Woodington

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An Implant That Tracks And Treats Cancer Tumors - EP 82 Ben Woodington · Core Memory

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Okay, we are breaking new ground on this episode, at least for me.
0:04
SPEAKER_01: We are talking to Ben Woodington,
0:06
SPEAKER_01: the CEO and co-founder of a company called Coherence that is partially based in
0:12
SPEAKER_01: the UK I am partially...
0:13
SPEAKER_01: partially in the US.
0:15
SPEAKER_01: The company is broadly in the brain-computer interface field.
0:20
SPEAKER_01: You will have probably heard a lot about this
0:22
SPEAKER_01: with companies like Neuralink putting Chips in P - people's heads,
0:27
SPEAKER_01: folks who are paralyzed,
0:29
SPEAKER_01: who have ALS,
0:30
SPEAKER_01: being able to use computers, being able to speak again through their thoughts alone.
0:35
SPEAKER_01: Coherence is quite different from everybody else.
0:38
SPEAKER_01: It is using chips in the brain for the moment to So, monitor.
0:45
SPEAKER_01: Analyze, and try to control cancerous tumors.
0:49
SPEAKER_01: The early stuff Coherence is doing is putting a Neuro
0:52
SPEAKER_01: A Neuralink-like.
0:53
SPEAKER_01: Neuralink-like brain implant right into a brain tube.
0:56
SPEAKER_01: Tumor and then trying to use electricity to blunt the growth of the tumor and also
1:02
SPEAKER_01: to to see if other people other medicines are working, Not working with the two.
1:06
SPEAKER_01: Tumor.
1:07
SPEAKER_01: It's this whole idea of...
1:09
SPEAKER_01: Of putting chips in our bodies so that you actually know what's going on
1:14
SPEAKER_01: when you're having cancer treatments and then using these electrical impulses
1:19
SPEAKER_01: to control the underlying mechanisms behind the tumor to either slow its growth
1:24
SPEAKER_01: or perhaps even get rid of it.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: Um, typically.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: Typically, people We'll go for MRI.
1:30
SPEAKER_01: MRIs and other scans every few months.
1:33
SPEAKER_01: The idea here is that you would have
1:34
SPEAKER_01: a chip that's Constantly monitoring what's happening with your cancer
1:39
SPEAKER_01: and giving your doctor a ton more information.
1:43
SPEAKER_01: Coherence has been around for about three years.
1:45
SPEAKER_01: They've made what I consider to be remarkable progress.
1:49
SPEAKER_01: They already have a device.
1:50
SPEAKER_01: They've been testing in mice and they are heading toward human trials in Australia
1:56
SPEAKER_01: in the near future.
1:57
SPEAKER_01: Ben is Very, very smart.
2:01
SPEAKER_01: He's got a fascinating story of how he got into all of this technology.
2:06
SPEAKER_01: And I think you're about to learn about this new field called neuro-oncology
2:11
SPEAKER_01: that I barely knew existed before doing this.
2:14
SPEAKER_01: I am Ashley Vance.
2:15
SPEAKER_01: Vance.
2:16
SPEAKER_01: This is Core Memory.
2:18
SPEAKER_01: Here we go.
2:34
SPEAKER_01: Ben, hello.
2:36
SPEAKER_00: Pleasure to be here, Ash.
2:38
SPEAKER_01: It's nice to meet you.
2:39
SPEAKER_01: We're meeting for the first time.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: We are, yeah.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: Although I feel like I know more about you because I,
2:44
SPEAKER_00: it's I see you on Twitter and your documentaries.
2:46
SPEAKER_00: So you know when you meet a celebrity for the first time and you say like,
2:49
SPEAKER_00: oh shit, I know all about you and they don't know you at all.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: That's embarrassing.
2:53
SPEAKER_01: I let it all out there on Twitter.
2:53
SPEAKER_01: I love it.
2:57
SPEAKER_01: I try to I let the personality go.
2:59
SPEAKER_01: Um, but, uh...
3:01
SPEAKER_01: who did Erne introduce us?
3:03
SPEAKER_00: Erne introduced us.
3:04
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
3:05
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
3:05
SPEAKER_01: All right.
3:05
SPEAKER_01: Well, this is crazy because I felt like I cover BCI technology about as deep as anyone, I think.
3:13
SPEAKER_01: And I had not heard of you guys.
3:15
SPEAKER_01: I had not heard of this entire field of discovery and the idea that you could use...
3:22
SPEAKER_01: Electricity for Cancer Therapy also had not heard of that.
3:26
SPEAKER_01: So I feel like this is amazing for me because I was reading
3:29
SPEAKER_01: about you guys last night, but I have to like learn all of this.
3:33
SPEAKER_01: So usually on these episodes, I try to set things up for people Just to get there.
3:41
SPEAKER_01: Their They're footing, but I think...
3:42
SPEAKER_01: think I'm out of my depth on this one other than what I read last night,
3:46
SPEAKER_01: which is Because we traditionally.
3:47
SPEAKER_01: Traditionally treat cancers with Poison, cut them out.
3:53
SPEAKER_01: What else?
3:54
SPEAKER_00: Burn them with radio.
3:55
SPEAKER_00: Radiotherapy.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: Right.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's a very drastic And, uh, measures and.
3:59
SPEAKER_01: Measures.
4:00
SPEAKER_01: And then this is essentially you guys I'm, you know.
4:03
SPEAKER_01: You're not alone in this,
4:04
SPEAKER_01: but you're pursuing a whole fourth way So possibly,
4:07
SPEAKER_01: possibly treat cancer with electricity, modulating electricity.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: That's absolutely right.
4:12
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
4:12
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
4:13
SPEAKER_01: And then from, I'm going to let you I'll give the history here.
4:16
SPEAKER_01: Here, but from everything I read,
4:18
SPEAKER_01: It's roughly like 10 years that researchers have really been going at this.
4:23
SPEAKER_01: And I think there's a woman at Stanford in particular who's published quite a bit.
4:28
SPEAKER_01: What is the name of this field?
4:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the field broadly, you'd call it cancer neuroscience.
4:32
SPEAKER_00: And it's fields of oncology and neuroscience overlapping.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: And the person you're referring to is Michel Manger over in Stanford, who really...
4:43
SPEAKER_00: Push this field.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: Field forward, accelerated this field probably, yeah, 10 years ago.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: She won the Brain Prize last year, which is sort of like the Nobel Prize of Neuroscience, right?
4:51
SPEAKER_00: For her work in this field as well.
4:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I was like, oh, she's close.
4:55
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to get her.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: I'll see if I can get her on the podcast.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: She's a very cool person.
4:58
SPEAKER_01: So what, I mean, we're going to get into how all this works, but If that's...
5:02
SPEAKER_01: this started in earnest in some sense 10 years ago, So what do we need?
5:06
SPEAKER_01: We know the history of like...
5:08
SPEAKER_01: Do people already?
5:09
SPEAKER_01: Already suppose this was possible or somebody made a discovery?
5:13
SPEAKER_01: Or how did we start to get to this idea that electricity could have a role here?
5:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we can go back decades and decades and decades.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: And our field overlaps.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: There's oncology that overlaps in neuroscience.
5:26
SPEAKER_00: We're throwing another technology layer on this This neurotechnology has.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: Neurotechnology.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: So we sort of think ourselves as That's cancel.
5:31
SPEAKER_00: Patients.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: And you're a technologist.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: Neurotechnologists.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: And you can go So, you know, back...
5:36
SPEAKER_00: decades and decades and look at And Hal knows.
5:39
SPEAKER_00: Nerves are infiltrating tumors.
5:42
SPEAKER_00: You can look at how cancer cells express ion channels the same way neurons express ion channels.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: Or you can go back 25 years ago where this company that I'm sure we'll get into,
5:52
SPEAKER_00: Novacure, started using electrical stimulation To treat too much.
5:57
SPEAKER_00: Tumors as well.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: That was all happening and that was all stuff we knew about.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: 10 years ago, the piece that you're referring to is 10 years ago, So research came around.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: Around that says,
6:05
SPEAKER_00: you know,
6:06
SPEAKER_00: these tumors, yes,
6:07
SPEAKER_00: they respond to electrical stimulation,
6:09
SPEAKER_00: but they're not just living in isolation in a vacuum in your body.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: It's very easy for us to think about tumors just sort of floating around the body,
6:15
SPEAKER_00: but they're not.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: They're fully integrated with blood vessels in the body.
6:19
SPEAKER_00: They're like a living part of our tissue, of our body.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: And they integrate with neurons, with nerves that grow into them, they feed them.
6:27
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, Michelle's great.
6:27
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, Michelle's group showed.
6:28
SPEAKER_00: Showed that in the brain,
6:29
SPEAKER_00: these cancerous cells,
6:32
SPEAKER_00: they're actually forming functional networks with the rest of the brain.
6:37
SPEAKER_00: That's the big breakthrough.
6:38
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
6:39
SPEAKER_01: Which is sort of horrifying.
6:41
SPEAKER_01: It's pretty terrifying.
6:42
SPEAKER_00: And that has been built out over the last 10 years now to show So how, you know.
6:48
SPEAKER_00: Remarkable that is, that these cells are doing that.
6:49
SPEAKER_00: They're forming communication networks within our brain.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: They're shaping the entire network of our brain.
6:55
SPEAKER_00: And someone with a glioblastoma Has that clear by so much.
6:58
SPEAKER_00: Which is a very aggressive form of brain tumor.
6:59
SPEAKER_00: As that tumor grows, it completely rewires your brain.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: And then Follow -on groups have come through.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: Through and said, this isn't actually just happening in the brain.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: This is happening all through the body.
7:08
SPEAKER_00: So whether you have Colorectal cancer or pancreatic cancer or lung cancer,
7:12
SPEAKER_00: these same sort of networks are integrating with these tumors as well,
7:16
SPEAKER_00: which is even more horrifying.
7:17
SPEAKER_00: Just a layer of terrifying on top of terrifying.
7:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
7:20
SPEAKER_01: Okay, well,
7:20
SPEAKER_01: let's start with glioblastoma just to anchor everybody and hold on
7:25
SPEAKER_01: to something specific.
7:26
SPEAKER_01: So it's this aggressive form of brain cancer.
7:28
SPEAKER_01: It's untreatable.
7:29
SPEAKER_01: Do you live?
7:31
SPEAKER_01: Live, I think I think it was 20 years ago.
7:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 14 months, maybe 15.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: yeah. Okay, okay,
7:36
SPEAKER_01: so this—so,
7:38
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
7:39
SPEAKER_01: You know, So, untreatable.
7:41
SPEAKER_01: All very, all very dry.
7:42
SPEAKER_01: Drastic and...
7:43
SPEAKER_01: drastic.
7:44
SPEAKER_01: And so this is where you guys are starting as well.
7:48
SPEAKER_01: And then you mentioned Novacure.
7:52
SPEAKER_01: For the people who are watching on YouTube, I
7:56
SPEAKER_01: All right.
7:57
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to try to.
7:58
SPEAKER_01: To bring up the screen and focus here.
8:01
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this device is, Because it goes.
8:06
SPEAKER_01: I'll describe it for people.
8:07
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's a bunch of electrodes Yeah.
8:09
SPEAKER_01: Around the scalp.
8:10
SPEAKER_01: You have to shave your head.
8:12
SPEAKER_01: Um, it's covering...
8:14
SPEAKER_01: covering the entire scalp.
8:16
SPEAKER_01: And then it's connected via pretty chunky wires Wires to them.
8:20
SPEAKER_01: This It's really large.
8:21
SPEAKER_01: Large device that a woman uses.
8:23
SPEAKER_01: Is holding in her hands,
8:25
SPEAKER_01: I would say it's about the size of, I don't know, like a case of beer or something.
8:28
SPEAKER_00: It probably weighs about the same as
8:30
SPEAKER_01: well.
8:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's big.
8:31
SPEAKER_01: And so I was reading about it last night.
8:34
SPEAKER_01: So people have been using this vice.
8:36
SPEAKER_01: You have to wear it for about 18 hours a day, ideally as much as possible.
8:40
SPEAKER_01: People get, I think they can't work.
8:43
SPEAKER_01: Camera can see this.
8:45
SPEAKER_01: People get, it irritates their skin.
8:48
SPEAKER_01: They have to shave their head.
8:49
SPEAKER_01: You have to...
8:51
SPEAKER_01: Go around with this clunky thing.
8:54
SPEAKER_01: What you guys are making looks much It's more similar to...
8:57
SPEAKER_01: to a Neuralink-style device, which is quite small.
8:59
SPEAKER_01: I think you say it's about the size of a button Got a t -shirt.
9:02
SPEAKER_01: T-shirt.
9:03
SPEAKER_01: And you wouldn't have all this associated machinery.
9:06
SPEAKER_01: However, you would have to have it implanted in Correct.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: In your brain, so there's like...
9:10
SPEAKER_01: there's trade-offs there.
9:11
SPEAKER_01: And then on the most basic level, so for the people who have been using This device from no...
9:16
SPEAKER_01: Novacure, it's called the Optune Geo.
9:18
SPEAKER_01: So, um...
9:20
SPEAKER_01: And I think I saw something like 30,000 people are using this.
9:23
SPEAKER_00: I think 30,000 maybe have used it.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what they've got currently running,
9:27
SPEAKER_00: you know, a few thousand at a time of people running it.
9:29
SPEAKER_01: But it showed people were Living long.
9:32
SPEAKER_01: Longer than expected, at least from what I was reading.
9:35
SPEAKER_00: It's What's the most significant?
9:36
SPEAKER_00: Significant breakthrough in glioblastoma over the last 25 years.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: Nothing has held anything to it in the last 25 years, yeah.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: To it in the last 25 years.
9:43
SPEAKER_01: And then to give people just the very basic science.
9:46
SPEAKER_01: So what's happening?
9:47
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's electricity going in Through yours.
9:50
SPEAKER_01: Your scalp and to the tumor, and then what's happening?
9:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: So you described the system very well.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they have electrodes on the scalp, as you say.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: They've got good contact there with the scalp.
10:02
SPEAKER_00: They're carrying around a big battery pack all the time that's applying like
10:05
SPEAKER_00: a sinusoid or sinusoidal waveform, right?
10:07
SPEAKER_00: A stimulus.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: And that's creating electric field In the broadcast.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: Brain, and they're trying to target that on the tumor side.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: And what they're trying to do there is as those cells are dividing, You get, uh...
10:18
SPEAKER_00: And you get a sort of skeleton.
10:20
SPEAKER_00: Skeleton that forms in that cell,
10:22
SPEAKER_00: that holds it into shape, that pulls it into shape as it's dividing.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: That skeleton is made of I have a, like a charged.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: Charged molecule.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: And if you apply a field across it, you can disrupt that.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: So as those cells are just dividing and splitting it apart, you can do disrupt that.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: Cells break down.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: They go into what's called apoptosis.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: Big die, Immune.
10:43
SPEAKER_00: Immune system kicks in and tries to clean up that area.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: Um, And and we're why that works in the brain,
10:47
SPEAKER_00: of course, is There's nothing else in your brain.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: Brain or my brain should be dividing that fast.
10:52
SPEAKER_00: It's It's a sort of...
10:52
SPEAKER_00: sort of the core of cancer therapy everywhere, right?
10:54
SPEAKER_00: You want to target the tissue that's growing very, very quickly Yeah.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: And, uh...
10:58
SPEAKER_00: spare the tissue that's not growing very quickly.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: So that's one mechanism.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: There are other sort of secondary mechanisms we can get into if you'd like to,
11:05
SPEAKER_00: but that's the sort of prevailing mechanism that Novacure claim to be building
11:10
SPEAKER_00: on top of.
11:11
SPEAKER_01: So it's trying to just slow the progression of the tumor?
11:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
11:15
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's trying to disrupt and destroy those cells.
11:19
SPEAKER_00: And then when you stack a chemotherapy on top of this device,
11:24
SPEAKER_00: you get a really profound effect to the longevity of these patients,
11:27
SPEAKER_00: how long they live.
11:28
SPEAKER_00: So that's one of the things.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: One element there.
11:31
SPEAKER_01: But of course, this is 25 years ago, 15 years prior to this whole.
11:35
SPEAKER_01: So we knew this worked.
11:36
SPEAKER_01: They've been selling this device for a long time.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: They've been selling this device for a long time.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: It has a very, very steep usage effect curve.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: So if you're using it under 18 hours a day, it barely works.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: If you use it 22 or more hours a day, it works really, really well.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: And so then people then have to carry around this device with the wires and
11:51
SPEAKER_00: the batteries and everything for you know, 20 years.
11:53
SPEAKER_00: 22 hours a day or more.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: So they're sleeping with it.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: They're traveling with it.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: They're usually with carers so they can align all these pads and everything.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: Um, but it works.
12:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
12:01
SPEAKER_01: Like I, I don't want to come off as,
12:04
SPEAKER_01: as callous to this company of companies have feelings,
12:08
SPEAKER_01: which I think in America,
12:12
SPEAKER_01: but you know, so like miraculous that it works and is helping these people.
12:16
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's,
12:16
SPEAKER_01: it's like clearly cumbersome and,
12:19
SPEAKER_01: and I mean, you, you would not want to wear this if you did not have to.
12:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
12:25
SPEAKER_00: Certainly not.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's one of the main criticisms here of this technology.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: We have to be thinking about people's,
12:31
SPEAKER_00: especially in a disease that's horrible,
12:33
SPEAKER_00: we have to be thinking about people's lives, the rest of their lives.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: And, uh...
12:36
SPEAKER_00: there's a major impact to your lifestyle, to your independence, to pain and everything else.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: And so we do have to make that equation.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: And when I speak to patients and I speak to many people
12:46
SPEAKER_00: that are using this technology,
12:48
SPEAKER_00: You kind of always get get the same feedback,
12:50
SPEAKER_00: which is, I'm so I'm so happy that this technology is
12:53
SPEAKER_00: Technology exists and that someone has done something here, but I don't like it.
12:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: It's annoying.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: And it affects my life quite dramatically.
13:03
SPEAKER_01: hi.
13:03
SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to calm down.
13:05
SPEAKER_01: I'm sort of overwhelmed with questions because it's so exciting for me to be in
13:09
SPEAKER_01: a new area that I know nothing about.
13:10
SPEAKER_01: So anyway,
13:12
SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to do order of operations for the listener before we get
13:15
SPEAKER_01: into exactly what you guys are doing.
13:17
SPEAKER_01: So, okay,
13:18
SPEAKER_01: outside of these brain tumors,
13:21
SPEAKER_01: You already talked about, we think this can work in other parts of the body.
13:24
SPEAKER_01: Is it always doing the same thing?
13:26
SPEAKER_01: You're applying electricity to try to slow and disrupt the growth of the tumor,
13:32
SPEAKER_01: or is there an element of eradicating the tumor as well?
13:35
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there absolutely is an element of eradicating the tumor And you can, you can.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: Can stop these cells.
13:41
SPEAKER_00: You know, these cells are very hungry.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: Hungry and they They die pretty rough.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: Rapidly if you inhibit their growth.
13:47
SPEAKER_00: And there are multiple ways you can attack this, right?
13:50
SPEAKER_00: So yes, there is the directly affecting cell division,
13:54
SPEAKER_00: but then there are these second order immune effects as well.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: So with these kinds of technologies, you can modify the immune system.
14:01
SPEAKER_00: And this shouldn't be, again, very shocking.
14:03
SPEAKER_00: There are companies out there,
14:04
SPEAKER_00: you may have even covered them at some point,
14:06
SPEAKER_00: that look at lowering immune function using electrical stimulation devices,
14:11
SPEAKER_00: bioelectronic devices for things like autoimmune disease.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: And the inverse is true as well.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: You can upregulate the immune system in your body using electrical stimulation around it.
14:19
SPEAKER_00: So there are kind of like two things going on there,
14:22
SPEAKER_00: direct function on cells and immune function as well.
14:25
SPEAKER_00: And that's a It's a powerful thing.
14:27
SPEAKER_00: Thing In concert.
14:27
SPEAKER_00: Cancer.
14:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
14:28
SPEAKER_01: I mean, And I get like in some sense.
14:29
SPEAKER_01: Sense, this is weird and not.
14:30
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the body runs on electricity.
14:32
SPEAKER_01: It's just whenever I think about upregulating or downregulating something,
14:35
SPEAKER_01: you're messing with DNA.
14:37
SPEAKER_01: You're putting in a molecule to adjust these functions.
14:40
SPEAKER_01: You guys are just approaching this with electricity.
14:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: And drugs are a biochemical, bioelectrical process, right?
14:50
SPEAKER_00: There is an electrical process going on there on the single cell level.
14:52
SPEAKER_00: Um, we can just do that at a...
14:54
SPEAKER_00: a systems level as well, which is what we're looking at.
14:58
SPEAKER_00: So rather than using drugs directly,
15:01
SPEAKER_00: we're just looking at how we can modify single cell states using electricity,
15:04
SPEAKER_00: how we can modify the microenvironment,
15:06
SPEAKER_00: so how neurons and blood vessels are there using electricity,
15:08
SPEAKER_00: or how we can modify whole system immunity, for example, using electricity.
15:12
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
15:12
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
15:13
SPEAKER_01: And then just to give people a comparison.
15:15
SPEAKER_01: So this is your company, Coherence.
15:18
SPEAKER_01: And let me see if I can zoom in there.
15:21
SPEAKER_01: So this would be, I mean, very, The, um...
15:24
SPEAKER_01: for people who've seen seen some brain computer interface type devices, very kind of similar.
15:29
SPEAKER_01: So there's, uh, um, Well, you can.
15:31
SPEAKER_01: Can't see it, but you know what I'm talking about.
15:34
SPEAKER_01: So, so there's this device again, for people who are I'm watching on YouTube.
15:38
SPEAKER_01: YouTube or somewhere, um, So you've got Yeah, almost like a Bluetooth.
15:43
SPEAKER_01: Bluetooth headset looking thing going over the ear for people who remember those.
15:48
SPEAKER_01: And then And there's a brain.
15:50
SPEAKER_01: Brain implant.
15:55
SPEAKER_01: And then I want to pull up a picture of the actual Um, yeah.
16:00
SPEAKER_01: Implant.
16:02
SPEAKER_01: So when you have this like blown out image, Yep.
16:05
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this looks very similar To nerd.
16:08
SPEAKER_01: Neuralink.
16:09
SPEAKER_01: Is this Like, is this a render?
16:10
SPEAKER_01: Render, or does this exist?
16:11
SPEAKER_01: No, this exists.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: This has gone into our safety studies already.
16:15
SPEAKER_01: So it's like a coin-sized device, and so you've got You've got some kind of micro...
16:20
SPEAKER_01: microchip in there, I assume.
16:22
SPEAKER_01: You've got a battery.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: We actually don't have a battery.
16:24
SPEAKER_01: You don't have a battery.
16:24
SPEAKER_01: Oh, the battery's in the...
16:25
SPEAKER_00: Battery's on the outside, yeah.
16:26
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
16:27
SPEAKER_00: Um, so there's a, there's some.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: Some sort of quite specific engineering here that does differentiate it from
16:31
SPEAKER_00: that neural link device.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: And that form factor kind of looks similar because everyone kind of converges
16:34
SPEAKER_00: on this similar form factor, right?
16:35
SPEAKER_00: Something that you want to plug in the skull.
16:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: But it's quite different.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: So we have to take the battery out There's a, and the magazine.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: Magnets out.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: And the major reason for that is these patients were still going to have MRI.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: So we don't want to cast big shadows on an MRI.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: We don't want magnets being, you know, Falling with the MRI.
16:52
SPEAKER_00: So we have to take all of that out, which is why we have to move those externals to the outside.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: But otherwise, the incident...
16:59
SPEAKER_00: inside, the guts of the device are, yeah,
17:01
SPEAKER_00: there's a chip,
17:01
SPEAKER_00: there's a stimulator chip,
17:02
SPEAKER_00: there's electrodes that come out of the front of it,
17:05
SPEAKER_00: and we're delivering a stimulus and we're recording.
17:07
SPEAKER_00: So you You can think, think of.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: This conceptually,
17:09
SPEAKER_00: similarly to Neuralink where there's other BCI plays
17:12
SPEAKER_00: where you're recording some electrical activity,
17:15
SPEAKER_00: you're doing some processing, you're stimulating.
17:17
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18:18
SPEAKER_01: People are already going in for brain surgery.
18:20
SPEAKER_01: Correct.
18:21
SPEAKER_01: To have portions of the tumor removed.
18:23
SPEAKER_01: Correct.
18:24
SPEAKER_01: So the brain's open.
18:25
SPEAKER_01: And so, and this is going straight into the, you wanted it like as close to the tumor Yep.
18:29
SPEAKER_01: As possible.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: And then, so it's going under the dura.
18:33
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
18:34
SPEAKER_01: And so you run the risk of infection, scarring, all these traditional issues.
18:39
SPEAKER_00: You do, but for our first approach in Ingliblastoma.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: Glioblastoma, these are pretty gnarly surgeries.
18:47
SPEAKER_00: It's not a very simple in-and-out surgery.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: It's very complex.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: It takes some of the most specialist neurosurgeons in the world to do this,
18:53
SPEAKER_00: and we're piggybacking on top of that.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: So we're sort of marginal add to that.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: They're performing this debulking, this resection.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: You know, we want to go in and leave this down.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: Device behind.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: Compared to the damage you're doing from a resection, we're nothing I'm not a tool.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: All.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: Of course, we take a lot of care in making sure that we're nothing.
19:11
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, it fails in comparison.
19:13
SPEAKER_01: And then does the skull get totally closed over the top?
19:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:16
SPEAKER_01: It does.
19:17
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
19:17
SPEAKER_01: So the Like the knurling chip.
19:18
SPEAKER_01: Chip kind of replaces the chunk of the skull.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: We go into a burr hole.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: So the little burr drill that they use is about 14 millimeters in diameter.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: We plug into that.
19:29
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
19:29
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
19:29
SPEAKER_01: And then, so there's like a wire that's kind of extruding out or?
19:33
SPEAKER_00: No, that's just a coil.
19:34
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
19:34
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
19:35
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
19:36
SPEAKER_01: And so the rest of this device is handled.
19:38
SPEAKER_01: Handling the charging,
19:40
SPEAKER_01: some of the communication,
19:41
SPEAKER_01: some of the processing,
19:43
SPEAKER_01: and then you're, And I saw it said, so you can wear this for how many hours?
19:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:47
SPEAKER_00: We're going to go for a day at a time.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: A day at a time.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, people will just be wearing this constantly.
19:52
SPEAKER_01: And then you just recharge the earpiece?
19:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: So we actually, this is our old form factor.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: We haven't shown our new form factor yet.
19:59
SPEAKER_00: It's going to be going live within the next month.
20:01
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
20:02
SPEAKER_00: Um, that actually has a little little The magnet -connected.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: Magnet-connected battery module that you can just pop off and pop on a new one as well.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: So people can keep going.
20:09
SPEAKER_00: They don't have to sit there charging the device all day.
20:12
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
20:12
SPEAKER_01: So obviously...
20:14
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to carry around this huge battery pack.
20:16
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to shave your head.
20:18
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to wear this thing Across me and tires.
20:20
SPEAKER_01: Entire scalp all the time.
20:21
SPEAKER_01: Does it have other benefits?
20:23
SPEAKER_01: Like, is it more flexible on the sorts of charge it can put in and out of the brain?
20:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's a few things.
20:33
SPEAKER_00: So number one,
20:34
SPEAKER_00: because you're up close and personal now with the tumor site,
20:37
SPEAKER_00: if your biggest problem is where do you To concentrate.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: Concentrate your child, your field, whatever, your stimulus, You're there.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: You're right there.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: That's great for us.
20:46
SPEAKER_00: But the other major part of this for us is the readouts, the eFizz readouts.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: So that's just something.
20:52
SPEAKER_00: Something that's really, really hard to do with these headsets on the outside, right?
20:55
SPEAKER_00: You record sort of low frequency-ish oscillations with these EEG caps.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: When you're inside, you get very, very high density information.
21:01
SPEAKER_00: So the sort of second element of what we are doing as a As a company and as a.
21:05
SPEAKER_00: eventual product is is recording electrical.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: Electrophysiology all the time, recording out from these neurons what's going on.
21:13
SPEAKER_00: And we can actually use that train models on what the hell's going on on the tumor as well.
21:17
SPEAKER_00: So we can use that electrical information as a proxy for tumor size and volume
21:21
SPEAKER_00: and aggressiveness and whether it's responding to drugs and whether you're having
21:24
SPEAKER_00: a seizure and all of that kind of stuff.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: So we've been doing this in mouse models for now.
21:29
SPEAKER_00: We're We're kicking off our human works.
21:31
SPEAKER_00: Work soon.
21:32
SPEAKER_00: Um, and you get, you get.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: Get really nice readouts just from the e-phys.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: The idea is to train these against MRI and do away with MRI, right?
21:39
SPEAKER_00: To overcome that second part of the patient journey,
21:41
SPEAKER_00: which is I now need to go to hospital every three months to get my scans,
21:44
SPEAKER_00: to do this and that.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: And you stay at home.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: We'll just be monitoring you 24-7 all the time Um, and looking for key.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: Cues of when Someone needs to enter.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: Intervene and do something different.
21:55
SPEAKER_01: Because you're getting this constant stream of data.
21:57
SPEAKER_01: And so the opt-in device that we were looking at before, obviously, it's outside of the skull.
22:01
SPEAKER_01: So you're...
22:03
SPEAKER_01: They're blunted by the skull and the skin and all the tissue and you're right up
22:07
SPEAKER_01: against the tumor.
22:08
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
22:08
SPEAKER_00: Which means we get nice You know, spatial definition.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: Definition,
22:10
SPEAKER_00: but we can also record these higher frequency bands as well,
22:13
SPEAKER_00: which it turns out is the most interesting frequency area for,
22:16
SPEAKER_00: for, for cancer as well.
22:17
SPEAKER_00: And Again, this is a...
22:19
SPEAKER_00: know, we're not building from zero here.
22:21
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of incredible work going on at Stanford and UCSF looking at, um,
22:25
SPEAKER_00: These patients during surgery sticking grids on their brains and looking
22:28
SPEAKER_00: at What kind of difference?
22:29
SPEAKER_00: Differences you see between healthy tissue and a glioma infiltrated tissue.
22:34
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
22:35
SPEAKER_00: And again,
22:35
SPEAKER_00: because of this called cancer neuroscience space that's showing
22:38
SPEAKER_00: that these neurons are functionally synapsing with the cancer,
22:42
SPEAKER_00: you get weird kind of electrical spiking activity because of that as well.
22:47
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
22:47
SPEAKER_01: And then I didn't show this one piece, but you also have almost the not quite thread.
22:53
SPEAKER_01: Threads like Neuralink, but you have these long electrodes on a film.
22:57
SPEAKER_01: And so do you have threads going into the tumor or this film is sitting on top of the tumor?
23:03
SPEAKER_00: No, it's around the tumor.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's around the tumor.
23:05
SPEAKER_00: So that sort of resection cavity, we want to stick electrodes all around there.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: And it's sort of like a...
23:11
SPEAKER_00: Macro-scale Neuralink on the front, right?
23:14
SPEAKER_00: So the back end of the device is much, smaller.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: Front of the device,
23:16
SPEAKER_00: we want these nice,
23:17
SPEAKER_00: long leads with good coverage, so we can go around that tumor site as well.
23:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because I was having trouble with perspective,
23:23
SPEAKER_01: because you were talking about a shirt button size,
23:25
SPEAKER_01: whereas Neuralink is much more like a quarter.
23:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it's about half the diameter.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: My numbers are right.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
23:31
SPEAKER_01: And I don't want to get you interested in it,
23:32
SPEAKER_01: trouble or anything, but,
23:33
SPEAKER_01: you know,
23:34
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was just like really impressed with, because you guys started in 2023?
23:39
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
23:41
SPEAKER_01: Like when I see competitors to Neuralink and traditional BCI,
23:45
SPEAKER_01: usually their packaging on the device looks It's nowhere near as good.
23:49
SPEAKER_01: Good as Neuralink's,
23:50
SPEAKER_01: whereas you guys really seem to have gotten this really nice tight package in
23:54
SPEAKER_01: the small device.
23:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:56
SPEAKER_01: And then I have no idea what kind of intellectual property is around these thin...
24:02
SPEAKER_01: I guess it's probably nothing because it's really just a thin electrode layer, right?
24:06
SPEAKER_01: I mean...
24:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: So a lot of the engineering is not on the front of that device, but on the back, for sure.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: We have very talented engineers that have built these systems before who know how
24:15
SPEAKER_00: to do this thing.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: But of course, one of our big benefits is we can take the battery out.
24:19
SPEAKER_00: And the battery has taken up a lot of space in that Neuralink device.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: Power constraints are very hungry.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: So You know, you need to.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: That.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: So I'm not going to come here saying it.
24:27
SPEAKER_00: Saying in three years You know, we've like blown.
24:29
SPEAKER_00: Neuralink up.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: Of the water.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: That device is incredible.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: There's some amazing engineering that's been put into that.
24:34
SPEAKER_01: It's nuts when you see them.
24:36
SPEAKER_01: I've been to the manufacturing line.
24:38
SPEAKER_01: It's like, I think people, Their competitors It's still...
24:42
SPEAKER_01: and academics, frankly, underestimate what it takes to do that.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: It's always been my criticism as well of the people that were You're crapping on your.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: Neuralink a few years ago saying, well, people have been doing this in academia for years.
24:55
SPEAKER_00: no no no you haven't you've not the
24:57
SPEAKER_00: You've not deployed a device in hundreds of people or thousands of people.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: That is an entirely different challenge.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: It's like firing a toy rocket off in your garden versus getting a rocket to the moon.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: It's like two different games that you're playing.
25:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
25:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
25:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, when I went to their facility, I've been a few times now, and the exact same thing.
25:13
SPEAKER_01: You, you, you.
25:15
SPEAKER_01: The academics used to drive me nuts because they're like,
25:17
SPEAKER_01: oh, we've done this with monkeys before, and they're just repeating our experiments.
25:21
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, yeah,
25:23
SPEAKER_01: but their goal might not be your goal,
25:26
SPEAKER_01: but they're trying to make millions of things,
25:29
SPEAKER_01: and you guys are nowhere, You know, anywhere.
25:31
SPEAKER_01: Anywhere near making something like this device.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: And your goal is to have...
25:35
SPEAKER_00: None of them fail, right?
25:37
SPEAKER_00: You can't, oh, damn, something's not worked so well.
25:40
SPEAKER_00: It's like, no, no, everything has to work every single time.
25:42
SPEAKER_00: That's a really hard challenge.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: It's a really hard challenge.
25:45
SPEAKER_00: And I've worked It's in this.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: There's a legmet code.
25:48
SPEAKER_00: Medical technology space for years.
25:50
SPEAKER_00: And I can tell you, even with very, very simple devices, things have gone wrong.
25:54
SPEAKER_00: And so have something as complex as a Neuralink device or another BCI device And it worked.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: Work, all patients not fail, is not an easy thing to do.
26:02
SPEAKER_00: You know this.
26:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. No, no, no. It's good.
26:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:04
SPEAKER_01: It's good.
26:04
SPEAKER_01: Good context.
26:05
SPEAKER_01: And so where do you, do you make those, you guys are kind of split between the UK and SF.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, correct.
26:10
SPEAKER_00: We have a research site in Cambridge and the rest of our engineering teams in SF,
26:15
SPEAKER_00: a little bit of Palo Alto for some of our research work.
26:17
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and we're making making a lot of those devices in-house or
26:20
SPEAKER_00: with manufacturing partners right now, depending on the clinical needs.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: You know, ultimately we'll make everything in-house when we can.
26:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:27
SPEAKER_01: And when you do the work in mice, I mean, what size is that device?
26:31
SPEAKER_01: Is it?
26:32
SPEAKER_01: It's a little bit smaller, but it's also externalized.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: So in the mouse,
26:36
SPEAKER_00: everything's sat on the top of the head and we can run those studies and that's fine
26:39
SPEAKER_00: because mice don't have to go to dinner parties and explain what that thing is on
26:42
SPEAKER_00: the top of their head.
26:44
SPEAKER_00: Whereas in the human, we want everything inside.
26:46
SPEAKER_00: So it's approximately the same size.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: We just put the human version inside the skull so it's nice and flush.
26:52
SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay, okay. And then
26:54
SPEAKER_01: Like, let's nerd out on the.
26:55
SPEAKER_01: The science again just a bit.
26:57
SPEAKER_01: So in your...
26:59
SPEAKER_01: In your work with mice to date,
27:03
SPEAKER_01: when you put this device in the brain, Like, how long does it run?
27:07
SPEAKER_01: Run for?
27:08
SPEAKER_01: What exactly is it doing?
27:10
SPEAKER_01: What are you guys seeing as a result of the work?
27:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:15
SPEAKER_00: So we can do I'm going to do everything again by direction.
27:17
SPEAKER_00: Bidirectionally.
27:18
SPEAKER_00: So we're doing all these stimulation work across multiple,
27:20
SPEAKER_00: again, not just the brain, but across the body.
27:22
SPEAKER_00: And we're doing all this electrical readout work.
27:24
SPEAKER_00: And then we have You know, constant studies running.
27:26
SPEAKER_00: Running.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we really came.
27:28
SPEAKER_00: Came at this from our core thesis was, look, this NovaCure data is This is clear.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: Clear.
27:34
SPEAKER_00: It works.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: There's a massive overhaul you can do here to make it 10 times better,
27:39
SPEAKER_00: but the clinical effects are clear.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: You know, now it's enough.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: Nice engineering space.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: Now there's this wonderful optimization problem you can do where you can get in nice
27:46
SPEAKER_00: and close with the tissue.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: You can take all of the learnings from the last 10 years of cancer neuroscience.
27:51
SPEAKER_00: And like, now let's see what we can do.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: So Our site here in Palo Alto is running a You know, a bunch of different.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: Different studies, It's a bunch of different camps.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: Cancer models,
28:02
SPEAKER_00: various parts of the body,
28:03
SPEAKER_00: and looking both at long-term diagnostics piece, where,
28:05
SPEAKER_00: as I say,
28:06
SPEAKER_00: we're training models to predict tumor size and volume and when it's responding
28:10
SPEAKER_00: to drugs,
28:11
SPEAKER_00: what drug that animal may even be on,
28:13
SPEAKER_00: which is pretty cool just from the electrical readouts,
28:16
SPEAKER_00: and running a whole host then of new therapeutic studies to see, like,
28:19
SPEAKER_00: you know,
28:19
SPEAKER_00: can we drive this even higher and can we do something,
28:22
SPEAKER_00: you know, eventually curative in these models as well.
28:25
SPEAKER_01: So part of this is using the electricity to slow down tumor growth or eradicate it.
28:30
SPEAKER_01: And then part of this is just,
28:32
SPEAKER_01: this is the first time where we can have a device right against the tumor
28:36
SPEAKER_01: and It's great.
28:37
SPEAKER_01: Monitor it Yeah.
28:38
SPEAKER_01: And like...
28:39
SPEAKER_01: begin to characterize.
28:40
SPEAKER_01: Characterize tumor behavior in general Yep.
28:43
SPEAKER_01: With drugs, Yep.
28:45
SPEAKER_01: Different environments.
28:46
SPEAKER_00: And at home, I mean, in human, We don't know, no one's ever done that.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: That.
28:50
SPEAKER_00: No one has that data.
28:51
SPEAKER_00: We had data But broadly...
28:53
SPEAKER_00: on And people wearing mojo bees.
28:55
SPEAKER_00: BCIs and seeing like what we kind of know,
28:57
SPEAKER_00: like what happens with the brain and the motor cortex when you've got a device
28:59
SPEAKER_00: in there and the speech and everything else.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: In cancer,
29:02
SPEAKER_00: what's happening at the moment is someone has a surgery,
29:04
SPEAKER_00: you put a grid on there and electrode grid on there and you want to see You know,
29:08
SPEAKER_00: what's going on?
29:09
SPEAKER_00: Going on, how much tissue can I take away?
29:12
SPEAKER_00: Then that device comes away and the patient's having an MRI every three months.
29:16
SPEAKER_00: And in between those,
29:16
SPEAKER_00: or maybe six months, and in between those points, like we are completely blanked.
29:20
SPEAKER_00: We have no idea what's going on.
29:22
SPEAKER_00: And this is going to be the first time that we run these studies where we can,
29:26
SPEAKER_00: of course,
29:27
SPEAKER_00: we'll be doing therapeutics,
29:28
SPEAKER_00: but we'll also be just generally trending what the hell is going on
29:31
SPEAKER_00: in their brain throughout that time.
29:33
SPEAKER_00: We're going to learn so much.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: We're going to learn so much.
29:35
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna learn so much,
29:37
SPEAKER_00: I think we're going to be able to build very interesting models of tumor progression
29:41
SPEAKER_00: from people in their own homes and get the kind of fidelity of information
29:45
SPEAKER_00: that we need to to present the clinicians.
29:47
SPEAKER_00: Clinicians and say, hey, This person, Their tumour is becoming.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: Becoming more aggressive.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: It's growing over here.
29:51
SPEAKER_00: And you wouldn't have known about that for another six months.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: And then when...
29:55
SPEAKER_00: maybe they've been given 12 or 14 months to live,
29:57
SPEAKER_00: that's pretty huge information for those clinicians as well.
30:01
SPEAKER_01: All right, pod friends.
30:02
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30:35
SPEAKER_01: You talked about some of this,
30:36
SPEAKER_01: and then I saw on your website,
30:37
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the pancreas, colorectal cancer, I saw lung cancer, I think.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: So if I have Lung cancer,
30:44
SPEAKER_01: I'm putting same thing,
30:45
SPEAKER_01: this device, or is it, I just couldn't figure out how this works.
30:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's fair.
30:50
SPEAKER_01: We never talk about it publicly.
30:52
SPEAKER_00: You hear it here first.
30:56
SPEAKER_00: We're broadly and internally,
30:57
SPEAKER_00: we're building two platforms here, one for your brain, one for your body.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: So we're not trying to treat Treat You know, breast cancer or lung cancer.
31:03
SPEAKER_00: Cancer by putting an implant in your brain.
31:05
SPEAKER_00: That's not what we're trying to do.
31:05
SPEAKER_00: I see.
31:06
SPEAKER_00: We are trying to target those communications.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: Communication pathways closer to the organs.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: So I work in background.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: Pancreatic cancer, for example.
31:13
SPEAKER_00: We're putting a device down in the torso,
31:14
SPEAKER_00: and we're stimulating various nerves around that point Um, to control.
31:19
SPEAKER_00: Control tumor growth as well.
31:20
SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay, okay.
31:22
SPEAKER_01: And then, sorry, I'm grilling you, man.
31:24
SPEAKER_01: I'm fascinated.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: It's all right.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: I'll talk about this a little bit.
31:27
SPEAKER_01: It's fun. And then on your website, you kind of list out your pipeline.
31:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
31:31
SPEAKER_01: But so if memory serves, human trial, the goal is 2027?
31:37
SPEAKER_00: Well, Well, we're doing our first tune.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: Human Gliblastoma.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: Glioblastoma imminently.
31:42
SPEAKER_00: We have ethics approval to do this.
31:43
SPEAKER_01: We have a cleanup trial up in Australia.
31:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's always It's always in Australia.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: God loves the Australians.
31:51
SPEAKER_00: So we're doing that first safety work imminently.
31:54
SPEAKER_00: Ending...
31:55
SPEAKER_00: But in 2027, we're talking about this first sort of therapeutic trial, long-term trial.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
32:01
SPEAKER_01: So this imminent test in Australia will be a device put in a human...
32:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but over a short period of time.
32:07
SPEAKER_00: So we're doing stimulation and recording, then we'll take the device out again.
32:10
SPEAKER_00: So that's sort of what we call like an acute safety study where we want to go in,
32:13
SPEAKER_00: we want to make sure,
32:14
SPEAKER_00: we'll talk to the patient,
32:15
SPEAKER_00: make sure everything's fine,
32:15
SPEAKER_00: and then we'll come back out again before we do that long-term piece.
32:18
SPEAKER_01: And then you guys have the pancreas up pretty high on...
32:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Our, uh...
32:24
SPEAKER_00: our mouse data on that has been Pretty overwhelming.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: Overwhelmingly positive.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: More positive than even we thought it would be internally.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: And the research group that we work with on that I've said, you know.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: they have not seen a.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: a response like this in their models before with the drugs that they've been using.
32:41
SPEAKER_00: And so we've bumped that to moving To sort of our first year.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: Human studies as quickly as we can, actually.
32:47
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
32:48
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
32:48
SPEAKER_01: And when I,
32:49
SPEAKER_01: you know,
32:50
SPEAKER_01: I throw all this stuff into, uh,
32:53
SPEAKER_01: into many AIs before a guest comes on and, and,
32:57
SPEAKER_01: you know,
32:58
SPEAKER_01: they said, oh, well,
32:59
SPEAKER_01: these devices have been used,
33:01
SPEAKER_01: I think, um,
33:03
SPEAKER_01: already,
33:03
SPEAKER_01: you know,
33:04
SPEAKER_01: because the Optune device comes up really quickly,
33:06
SPEAKER_01: but then they were calling out other cancers where we have tried.
33:10
SPEAKER_01: I don't think they were calling it neuro-oncology, but it was all around the electric effect.
33:20
SPEAKER_01: Beyond that Optune device, have we tried this?
33:22
SPEAKER_01: Are there other companies making stuff?
33:24
SPEAKER_00: So we haven't with direct electrical interfaces.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: What does come up sometimes is this whole field of neuromodulation.
33:30
SPEAKER_00: There are many ways you can neuromodulate.
33:32
SPEAKER_00: There are many ways you can affect neuromodulation.
33:34
SPEAKER_00: Ion channels in cancer cells.
33:35
SPEAKER_00: And so people are obviously trying that with drugs as well.
33:37
SPEAKER_00: So people are trying it with drugs,
33:38
SPEAKER_00: like how do we affect like a neural firing pattern in the brain,
33:43
SPEAKER_00: for example, and what impact does that have on tumors?
33:41
SPEAKER_00: uh...
33:45
SPEAKER_00: So people are trying it with like anti-epilepsy drugs, Anti -epileptic.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: Anti-epileptic drugs, for example.
33:49
SPEAKER_00: It's like, let's just give a lot of anti-epileptic drugs.
33:52
SPEAKER_00: It'll dull some of that firing and like maybe we'll see effects there.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: So all of these studies are ongoing to see if you can chemo modify, Chemically Modified.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: Modify this sort of like electrical activity as well.
34:03
SPEAKER_01: Okay, and then, I mean, it's obviously early days in some sense with this.
34:07
SPEAKER_01: But, yeah, the AIs, you know, also called out.
34:13
SPEAKER_01: I I mean, like...
34:13
SPEAKER_01: they said, And, you know, the reason this happened...
34:15
SPEAKER_01: hasn't exploded across the oncology field And is it the benefit one?
34:20
SPEAKER_01: While real, is meaningful but not miraculous.
34:24
SPEAKER_01: The median overall survival in newly diagnosed glioblastoma improved from 16 to 20 months.
34:32
SPEAKER_01: And then it seemed kind of like a little more skeptical.
34:35
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I guess we just don't know much on the rest.
34:37
SPEAKER_01: So, Yeah,
34:38
SPEAKER_01: and I know you're - it's almost like you're trying to,
34:40
SPEAKER_01: there's like two things going on.
34:42
SPEAKER_01: One is the survival rate, the improving And the tumor itself is.
34:47
SPEAKER_01: And then the other is all this other new data that we would get.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: So I see the benefit Yeah.
34:51
SPEAKER_01: On that.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: But the other thing there is You know, that survival rate.
34:55
SPEAKER_00: Rate is what you're seeing in the field.
34:58
SPEAKER_00: And I spoke earlier about this usage effect.
35:00
SPEAKER_00: If people are using it really, really well, they get a nice survival benefit.
35:03
SPEAKER_00: If they don't use it very well, they don't.
35:04
SPEAKER_00: Use it very well,
35:04
SPEAKER_00: they don´t And a lot of what we're seeing is just the device is so cumbersome
35:09
SPEAKER_00: and difficult to use and annoying to use that people stop using it.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: They take it off.
35:12
SPEAKER_00: They take it off in the evenings.
35:13
SPEAKER_00: You can't blame them.
35:13
SPEAKER_00: They take it off at night.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: They stop wearing it.
35:17
SPEAKER_00: And so the real world.
35:19
SPEAKER_00: World survival benefit starts dropping and dropping and dropping.
35:21
SPEAKER_00: But if you actually look at the survival data with people
35:23
SPEAKER_00: that they call them super users,
35:25
SPEAKER_00: people that use it like more than 90% or 95% today,
35:27
SPEAKER_00: it's almost like a doubling of A medium, right?
35:30
SPEAKER_00: which is again.
35:31
SPEAKER_00: Again, nothing does that.
35:32
SPEAKER_00: Not surgery doesn't even do that, Um, which is pretty.
35:35
SPEAKER_00: Pretty profound.
35:36
SPEAKER_01: And then not to like totally slag off this company making this device,
35:40
SPEAKER_01: but I mean, I sort of saw this in Neuralink land and we hit on it a bit.
35:44
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it seems like there was some moment in time where, Um, well...
35:48
SPEAKER_01: I think with medical devices,
35:50
SPEAKER_01: sometimes you get the device approved,
35:51
SPEAKER_01: you get it locked in,
35:52
SPEAKER_01: you almost like never want to touch it again because you have to go
35:55
SPEAKER_01: through all this mess sometimes to get it all recertified,
35:59
SPEAKER_01: approved, covered by insurance, things like that.
36:01
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
36:01
SPEAKER_01: it just looks like a product that hasn't changed in 20 years despite massive gains
36:06
SPEAKER_01: in electronics and computing.
36:09
SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
36:09
SPEAKER_01: when I look at what Neuralink's doing versus like a Utah Array,
36:13
SPEAKER_01: You can just tell one of these things was kind of like in an academic laboratory
36:18
SPEAKER_01: And, and was in one.
36:19
SPEAKER_01: One setting and the other one is backed by startup funding and somebody who kind
36:22
SPEAKER_01: of knows how to do consumer electronics stuff.
36:25
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, is that sort of what went on?
36:27
SPEAKER_01: This thing just hasn't changed much in 20 years and then you guys saw an opportunity
36:32
SPEAKER_01: to bring all this new time.
36:33
SPEAKER_01: Technology to bear?
36:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean,
36:36
SPEAKER_00: there's been a lot of advancements,
36:37
SPEAKER_00: especially by consumer electronics over the last 25 years for Yes, for sure.
36:42
SPEAKER_00: I dropped the story before about a friend of mine who's actually,
36:45
SPEAKER_00: he's got gliblastoma, he lives in San Francisco as well.
36:48
SPEAKER_00: I went out and dox him, but And he's a great guy.
36:50
SPEAKER_00: Guy.
36:52
SPEAKER_00: And he's like, I'm so happy this device exists.
36:54
SPEAKER_00: He's like, but I wish they just brought in a couple of Apple engineers.
36:57
SPEAKER_00: And like, that's what it feels like, right?
36:58
SPEAKER_00: You just want a little bit of like product taste and a little,
37:01
SPEAKER_00: and sometimes people have said before,
37:02
SPEAKER_00: it feels like they never gave it to the To the actual users.
37:05
SPEAKER_00: And like, I'm sure they, of course they did.
37:07
SPEAKER_00: They did this human factors work.
37:09
SPEAKER_00: Um, but you can get this.
37:10
SPEAKER_00: You can do so much more.
37:11
SPEAKER_00: You can just make these things so much more user-friendly and make it
37:13
SPEAKER_00: So there's something that some.
37:14
SPEAKER_00: Someone wants to use and wants to wear, So, not something that's like...
37:18
SPEAKER_00: like so burdensome.
37:21
SPEAKER_00: And we've seen this before, right?
37:22
SPEAKER_00: The jumps from like Walkmans to iPods is like a big jump.
37:25
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing like fundamental, like, oh my God, we've invented new physics.
37:28
SPEAKER_00: It's just it takes a special company to come along and say, like,
37:31
SPEAKER_00: let's just delete this and rebuild it from sort of first principles again
37:34
SPEAKER_00: and make something that people will feel comfortable and like.
37:38
SPEAKER_01: I think there's like a mega trend going on here in some ways.
37:41
SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you look at the defense technology industry,
37:46
SPEAKER_01: you know, a lot of the stuff is like running on Windows
37:44
SPEAKER_01: Um, it's a...
37:48
SPEAKER_01: 95, literally.
37:49
SPEAKER_01: Like literally, I've been out in the field with people.
37:52
SPEAKER_01: They're using radios from like the Vietnam era is just kind of kind of crazy.
37:57
SPEAKER_01: Like none of what happened in consumer tech, you know, like Dougal Google...
38:02
SPEAKER_01: All the tools we use on a day-to-day basis to do our work are way more advanced
38:06
SPEAKER_01: than what You're like soldiers.
38:08
SPEAKER_01: Soldiers and even your CIA analysts and everything are using.
38:14
SPEAKER_01: You know, you just had this...
38:16
SPEAKER_01: thing where things get frozen.
38:17
SPEAKER_01: I mean, space was exactly the same way.
38:19
SPEAKER_01: When I look at like medical devices, All this stuff, like...
38:27
SPEAKER_01: the pacemakers, the Deep Brain, Stimulation.
38:30
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're all the same thing.
38:31
SPEAKER_01: It's just this clunky little thing that gets threaded in your chest with some
38:36
SPEAKER_01: And wires coming off.
38:37
SPEAKER_01: Off of it, and it clearly hasn't changed in a long time.
38:41
SPEAKER_01: So this is just,
38:43
SPEAKER_01: like between you guys,
38:45
SPEAKER_01: Neuralink,
38:45
SPEAKER_01: and some others, I mean, it's just this rethinking of how we make medical devices.
38:50
SPEAKER_01: But then Yeah, there is a...
38:53
SPEAKER_01: Big issue to overcome there,
38:55
SPEAKER_01: which is like the cost of what it takes to make a consumer electronics style device
39:01
SPEAKER_01: and going through all this Where you're getting fun.
39:05
SPEAKER_01: Funded like a startup as opposed to an academic Uh huh.
39:09
SPEAKER_01: Research project.
39:11
SPEAKER_01: But clearly, I mean, this moment seems to have arrived where people are going to try this.
39:15
SPEAKER_00: I think so.
39:16
SPEAKER_00: I think people care a lot more about that.
39:19
SPEAKER_00: And you're right.
39:20
SPEAKER_00: You're hanging on a seat.
39:20
SPEAKER_00: Things just get entrenched.
39:22
SPEAKER_00: Oh, this is the way we do it.
39:23
SPEAKER_00: And this is what it looks like.
39:24
SPEAKER_00: And that's it.
39:25
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have to be the way, right?
39:27
SPEAKER_00: We're seeing this evolve in multiple industries now that you can reinvent things.
39:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
39:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
39:31
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
39:31
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
39:32
SPEAKER_01: And then, okay.
39:33
SPEAKER_01: So in the biggest picture of like all this, I mean,
39:36
SPEAKER_01: how, this is unfair because you're, you're, going to tell me it's amazing.
39:41
SPEAKER_01: But like when we,
39:42
SPEAKER_01: when we talk about applying this type of technology in the cancer space,
39:47
SPEAKER_01: I I mean, how excited are people Um, generally.
39:50
SPEAKER_01: Generally?
39:51
SPEAKER_01: It just feels like it's weird to me that I've never
39:54
SPEAKER_00: heard of this.
39:54
SPEAKER_00: I have I know.
39:55
SPEAKER_00: No way to calibrate
39:58
SPEAKER_01: where this fits on if people think it's kind of like a nice
40:02
SPEAKER_01: to have and is going to give us some data
40:04
SPEAKER_01: or we think this is just some massive revolution in how we treat cancer.
39:56
um, um.
40:09
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's amazing.
40:09
SPEAKER_00: I think.
40:11
SPEAKER_00: I -I -I I obviously think it's incredible, but...
40:15
SPEAKER_00: That's not coming from me.
40:15
SPEAKER_00: I mean, when I started this company, But, you know, the first thing I did...
40:19
SPEAKER_00: did was, because these ideas not come from me.
40:21
SPEAKER_00: I was a conventional neurotechnology guy.
40:23
SPEAKER_00: I was working in sort of spinal cord injury type stuff,
40:26
SPEAKER_00: more aligned to what Neuralink are working on.
40:29
SPEAKER_00: My co-founder, at least.
40:31
SPEAKER_00: Elise, she was working in this neuro-oncology space.
40:33
SPEAKER_00: And she was the one that introduced me to these concepts,
40:35
SPEAKER_00: to Michelle's work, to the clinicians that were working in this space.
40:39
SPEAKER_00: She was like,
40:39
SPEAKER_00: I really think there's something that should be done here,
40:42
SPEAKER_00: something that should be done here.
40:44
SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's have a
40:46
SPEAKER_00: Have a look.
40:46
SPEAKER_00: I read through some of the papers and I was like, well, I want to speak to these people.
40:48
SPEAKER_00: I want to speak to these clinicians, to the people, to the patients that you're speaking to.
40:53
SPEAKER_00: And I was overwhelmed by the pull in this direction.
40:57
SPEAKER_00: The amount of people that are desperate for something,
41:00
SPEAKER_00: for new things,
41:01
SPEAKER_00: for breakthroughs,
41:02
SPEAKER_00: the people that are so inspired by Michelle's work and Sean Hervey Jumper's work
41:06
SPEAKER_00: at UCSF and this whole cancer neuroscience field,
41:09
SPEAKER_00: the pull from The pull of impatience is...
41:11
SPEAKER_00: is always going to be great, right?
41:12
SPEAKER_00: Because patients just want new technology and new breakthroughs in and oncology that...
41:16
SPEAKER_00: oncology as is their right.
41:17
SPEAKER_00: The pull from clinicians is really, really huge.
41:21
SPEAKER_00: From surgeons to neurologists to neuro-oncologists,
41:23
SPEAKER_00: people are very, very excited about this sort of new avenue and how real it is.
41:28
SPEAKER_00: It feels.
41:29
SPEAKER_00: Because we've seen these devices, There's the cultural needle.
41:32
SPEAKER_00: Needle has moved.
41:33
SPEAKER_00: Neuralink is going to be something that thousands of people are going to be getting.
41:37
SPEAKER_00: And it feels now that these technologies are so much more applicable and real.
41:43
SPEAKER_00: And they're going to be in people's hands over the next
41:46
SPEAKER_00: You know, a few years.
41:47
SPEAKER_00: Years, Yeah.
41:48
SPEAKER_00: Which moves the dial, I think, a lot more as well.
41:51
SPEAKER_00: Maybe even 10 years ago,
41:52
SPEAKER_00: if you were talking about something like this,
41:53
SPEAKER_00: people would be like,
41:53
SPEAKER_00: oh yeah, sure. Like When am I going to have something like this?
41:56
SPEAKER_00: I know what DBS looks like, and I don't really like implanting DBS devices either.
41:59
SPEAKER_00: So how's this going to be different?
42:01
SPEAKER_00: But it's going to be different.
42:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
42:03
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
42:04
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
42:04
SPEAKER_01: So you're, you're studying at Cambridge.
42:06
SPEAKER_01: I was, yep.
42:06
SPEAKER_01: And you're pursuing a PhD tied to spinal, So, spinal what?
42:11
SPEAKER_01: What?
42:11
SPEAKER_00: Like, uh, uh, like spinal cord injury.
42:14
SPEAKER_00: So I was working on flexible electronics.
42:16
SPEAKER_00: I was working out how you could, And, uh...
42:18
SPEAKER_00: But you could...
42:19
SPEAKER_00: Introduce electronic.
42:20
SPEAKER_00: Electronics through very, very small surgical windows.
42:23
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then Change their shape in the box.
42:25
SPEAKER_00: Body.
42:25
SPEAKER_00: So unfurl them and wrap them around the spinal cord or unfurl them and roll them
42:29
SPEAKER_00: across the surface of the brain.
42:31
SPEAKER_00: So we want really large area electrode coverage in the body.
42:35
SPEAKER_00: We want to cover all the motor areas on the spine.
42:37
SPEAKER_00: But typically,
42:38
SPEAKER_00: that's really tricky to do without doing a crazy invasive surgery
42:41
SPEAKER_00: that no clinician wants and no patient wants.
42:43
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of people don't even qualify for.
42:45
SPEAKER_01: To restore movement?
42:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Yeah, I mean to - I was doing two things.
42:48
SPEAKER_00: I was looking at measuring and modulating.
42:51
SPEAKER_00: So can we map the whole spinal cord whilst people are moving around and walking
42:56
SPEAKER_00: and interacting with the world?
42:57
SPEAKER_00: And then stimulate to look towards rehabilitation and restoring movement.
43:00
SPEAKER_00: And I was doing all that with flexible thin film electronics.
43:03
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so sort of like onward.
43:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Onward.
43:06
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Onward, And Gregory Quartine's one.
43:08
SPEAKER_00: Work was some of the work that had really inspired our group.
43:10
SPEAKER_00: They were using, obviously, sort of off-the-shelf type spinal cord stimulators at the time.
43:15
SPEAKER_00: And we were figuring out,
43:17
SPEAKER_00: what can we do if we've got hundreds of electrodes and they're covering all over
43:19
SPEAKER_00: the spine?
43:21
SPEAKER_00: How much do we move the needle there as well?
43:22
SPEAKER_00: So that was the work We were doing, okay.
43:24
SPEAKER_01: OK.
43:25
SPEAKER_01: I love Gregoire.
43:26
SPEAKER_01: We've hung out in Switzerland a few times.
43:28
SPEAKER_00: He's very handsome.
43:29
SPEAKER_00: Very cool company too. It was Very cool company.
43:32
SPEAKER_01: It was very cool.
43:33
SPEAKER_01: Cool.
43:33
SPEAKER_01: Dave Marver.
43:35
SPEAKER_01: It was just here.
43:36
SPEAKER_01: He's the CEO of Onward.
43:37
SPEAKER_01: So Onward makes a device with either 12 or 16 electrodes, I think.
43:41
SPEAKER_00: And it's Uh, yeah.
43:42
SPEAKER_00: Something like that.
43:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, something like this.
43:44
SPEAKER_00: I mean, somewhere between 12 and 32, I'm sure.
43:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
43:47
SPEAKER_01: And it's...
43:47
SPEAKER_01: And it sits on the spine.
43:48
SPEAKER_01: They have people.
43:49
SPEAKER_01: It's unbelievable.
43:50
SPEAKER_01: I've seen it with My very own eye.
43:52
SPEAKER_01: Eyes.
43:52
SPEAKER_01: And they...
43:53
SPEAKER_01: Grégoire?
43:55
SPEAKER_01: Gregoire, helped figure out the right way Data to Steam.
43:58
SPEAKER_01: Stimulate the spinal cord in the right pattern to help people walk again,
44:03
SPEAKER_01: move their arms again.
44:06
SPEAKER_01: And, and I mean, it's, it's incredible.
44:08
SPEAKER_01: It's still, it's, it's, um, it's both amazing.
44:12
SPEAKER_01: And then you kind of are left wanting more to a degree because
44:15
SPEAKER_01: the people walk again,
44:16
SPEAKER_01: but it's very, it's very, um, requires a ton of effort on their part.
44:19
SPEAKER_01: It's very, um, stilted is maybe the right word.
44:24
SPEAKER_01: And, and, and you, they often need sort of like a walker to help them.
44:28
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's, it's like a, it's a miracle.
44:30
SPEAKER_01: They're like moving again, but it's just, they're not like walking.
44:32
SPEAKER_00: Like they used to.
44:33
SPEAKER_00: Still lower fidelity than just having complete, you know, control over a motor.
44:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
44:39
SPEAKER_01: And so this is the question I've always asked them is like,
44:42
SPEAKER_01: you know, don't we want to put more electrodes on there?
44:44
SPEAKER_01: And then when I talk to Neuralink, they're like, oh, Onward doesn't go deep enough.
44:47
SPEAKER_01: We really want to, you know, Neuralink always wants to get in there.
44:49
SPEAKER_01: And they're like, because I think Onward just sits on that outside of the spine, I think.
44:55
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
44:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
44:56
SPEAKER_00: And that was my previous research record.
44:58
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, to caveat this thing that I'm going to sing next, I think Old Word is a name.
45:02
SPEAKER_00: Incredible company
45:03
SPEAKER_01: as well.
45:03
SPEAKER_01: The work they've done is amazing.
45:05
SPEAKER_00: The patient need is huge,
45:06
SPEAKER_00: not just in movement,
45:07
SPEAKER_00: but also in blood pressure and all the other problems that come
45:09
SPEAKER_00: with spinal cord injury.
45:11
SPEAKER_00: I think their work is incredible.
45:13
SPEAKER_00: But I've done some of this work as well.
45:14
SPEAKER_00: Well, where if you just cover the There's the spinal cord with loads and loads.
45:17
SPEAKER_00: Loads of electrodes, You still don't get that hype.
45:19
SPEAKER_00: High fidelity motor control.
45:21
SPEAKER_00: And the reason for that is just those large area,
45:25
SPEAKER_00: easy to recruit motor fibers, You can read it.
45:28
SPEAKER_00: Recruit them very easily using electrical stimulation and you get this sort
45:31
SPEAKER_00: of more explosive jarring movement if you try to do this, which I did.
45:37
SPEAKER_00: And you get some control.
45:38
SPEAKER_00: Control,
45:38
SPEAKER_00: you get multiple degrees of freedom,
45:39
SPEAKER_00: but it's not the way that anyone wants to walk like that.
45:42
SPEAKER_00: So Onward have done something I think very,
45:43
SPEAKER_00: very clever and the whole research group behind that where they're actually looking
45:46
SPEAKER_00: at these reflexive pathways as well to control more We're a natural move.
45:49
SPEAKER_00: Movement.
45:50
SPEAKER_00: But if you really wanted high fidelity control,
45:52
SPEAKER_00: you would have to do what Neuralink is suggesting,
45:53
SPEAKER_00: which is just penetrate the spinal cord with a bunch of tiny little fibers
45:58
SPEAKER_00: to actually recruit the track you want.
46:00
SPEAKER_00: There's huge challenges.
46:01
SPEAKER_00: Challenges to doing that.
46:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
46:03
SPEAKER_01: I mean, because when I've brought it up with Onward,
46:05
SPEAKER_01: they're like, oh, Neuralink has no idea what they would be getting into.
46:09
SPEAKER_01: Do you think, I mean,
46:09
SPEAKER_01: I get so excited about this technology,
46:14
SPEAKER_01: but then I honestly cannot tell if it has a path forward that's more dramatic.
46:09
SPEAKER_01: Have no idea what they're, what they would be getting into. Like do you think, I mean I
46:21
SPEAKER_00: I think I would say that these technologies These are as crude.
46:25
SPEAKER_00: Crude and as unsafe as they will ever be.
46:28
SPEAKER_00: And that's exciting for me.
46:30
SPEAKER_00: We're We're really, right?
46:31
SPEAKER_00: Right?
46:31
SPEAKER_00: We're early in these technologies and that we're proving so much already from maybe.
46:35
SPEAKER_00: Maybe 16 or 32 electrodes,
46:36
SPEAKER_00: whatever Onward is doing, I don't know, You know, to Neuralink putting...
46:40
SPEAKER_00: Neuralink putting their threads in, their 1,000 electrodes.
46:43
SPEAKER_00: These are as bad as these things are going to be.
46:45
SPEAKER_00: Over the next 10 years, there's going to be a radical shift.
46:48
SPEAKER_00: In the next 20 years,
46:49
SPEAKER_00: we're going to have much,
46:50
SPEAKER_00: much smaller,
46:51
SPEAKER_00: higher fidelity control over all of these nerves,
46:54
SPEAKER_00: and the things are only going to go up from here.
46:55
SPEAKER_00: So if we're you know,
46:56
SPEAKER_00: impressed and it seems like my magic to us already,
46:58
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what's it going to be like in 10 years?
46:59
SPEAKER_00: That's sort of how I view this field.
47:01
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
47:02
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
47:02
SPEAKER_01: So you're at Cambridge.
47:04
SPEAKER_01: You're working at a company, I think, in the spinal field, or it was separate?
47:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
47:09
SPEAKER_00: No, that was just all research.
47:10
SPEAKER_00: That was all research.
47:12
SPEAKER_00: Before that, I was doing drug development and delivery, Working on some Intelli.
47:15
SPEAKER_00: Some other intelligent drug delivery devices.
47:17
SPEAKER_00: But no, my spinal cord work was all research.
47:19
SPEAKER_01: I thought I read somewhere you were working somewhere and your company got acquired.
47:22
SPEAKER_00: That was the old Medical Advice Company.
47:25
SPEAKER_00: Company I was working.
47:26
SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay.
47:27
SPEAKER_01: And then so you meet Elise.
47:30
SPEAKER_01: She's chasing a PhD at At Kamer's as well.
47:32
SPEAKER_01: Well.
47:33
SPEAKER_01: And you guys just chat up.
47:35
SPEAKER_01: And you hear about neuro-oncology and then what?
47:39
SPEAKER_01: And then in like 2023 you start?
47:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
47:42
SPEAKER_00: So it was a funny crossing of paths.
47:45
SPEAKER_00: Elise was a, Still his egg.
47:47
SPEAKER_00: A electrical engineer And she'd been working all.
47:49
SPEAKER_00: All kinds of different projects.
47:50
SPEAKER_01: Formula One.
47:51
SPEAKER_01: Formula Well, yeah.
47:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, very cool stuff.
47:53
SPEAKER_00: Um...
47:55
SPEAKER_00: And then did this whole PhD that amounted to almost cancer biology.
47:59
SPEAKER_00: I was like, okay, I'm just going to take a You know, systems level engineers.
48:01
SPEAKER_00: Engineering,
48:02
SPEAKER_00: electrical engineering approach to cancer biology and see what there is there
48:05
SPEAKER_00: and built a bunch of her own systems and I studied and revealed things.
48:08
SPEAKER_00: Things in biology that we hadn't known before.
48:11
SPEAKER_00: And I was coming from the other end, I was a drug guy.
48:15
SPEAKER_00: Uh, who was trying to learn to become an electrical engineer.
48:18
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then we started collaborating on some things, um, You know, publish them.
48:21
SPEAKER_00: Some work together and then,
48:22
SPEAKER_00: and then started kicking around this idea for the application of neurotech
48:25
SPEAKER_00: in cancer.
48:27
SPEAKER_00: Uh, founded the company in 23.
48:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
48:28
SPEAKER_00: Uh, 22, I think we closed our first round of funding in 23.
48:32
SPEAKER_01: Did you get money from the UK or from the U S?
48:35
SPEAKER_00: Our money came from a little bit from the UK.
48:39
SPEAKER_00: The Australians Lenten Hard.
48:40
SPEAKER_00: Hard.
48:41
SPEAKER_00: So one of our favorite investors, Blackbird, Let our precede rounds.
48:44
SPEAKER_00: Round.
48:45
SPEAKER_00: And then our seed round was led mostly by some Australians still and US.
48:50
SPEAKER_01: Okay, I'm always like shocked.
48:54
SPEAKER_01: Every time I go to camp,
48:55
SPEAKER_01: Cambridge,
48:55
SPEAKER_01: there's all these genius ideas that nobody seems to want to give anyone money.
49:00
SPEAKER_00: I've been saying for years as well.
49:01
SPEAKER_01: Baffling.
49:02
SPEAKER_00: If it's not a fintech product, it's not interesting.
49:04
SPEAKER_01: It's like...
49:05
SPEAKER_01: And.
49:06
SPEAKER_01: Everyone I meet In the U .S.,
49:09
SPEAKER_01: who has a biotech, they all have to come here to get their biotech.
49:12
SPEAKER_01: It's like, I haven't.
49:14
SPEAKER_01: Have no idea what they're thinking over there.
49:18
SPEAKER_01: And so how did the Aussies, they just They just caught wind of this thing.
49:22
SPEAKER_01: And got into it?
49:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, at least it's Australian, so we had links to that.
49:25
SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
49:26
SPEAKER_00: And then we met this fund and...
49:28
SPEAKER_00: Fund and they were previously.
49:30
SPEAKER_00: Previously here, where we're sat right now.
49:31
SPEAKER_00: And they've done some crazy stuff from, like, surgical robotics to Quantum, actually.
49:36
SPEAKER_00: CyQuantum is one of their companies just down the road from here.
49:39
SPEAKER_00: And, yeah, liked Neuro, liked the application, and lent in.
49:42
SPEAKER_00: And, yeah, since then.
49:43
SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah, CyQuantum started in this building, Playground Global.
49:46
SPEAKER_01: There you go.
49:47
SPEAKER_00: I think two of them from my hometown in Bristol.
49:49
SPEAKER_01: Yes, yeah, they are.
49:49
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
49:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they are.
49:51
SPEAKER_01: They are.
49:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Jeremy and maybe Terry, I think is his name.
49:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
49:56
SPEAKER_01: Oh, no, Terry might be Australia. Anyway, I'm going to mess this up.
49:59
SPEAKER_01: Doesn't matter.
50:01
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
50:01
SPEAKER_01: So, and then over the last three years, so you got to make the device.
50:07
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
50:07
SPEAKER_01: And then you've kind of teamed up with some of these researchers here in
50:11
SPEAKER_01: the Bay Area to help with the studies and advancing the research around it.
50:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
50:18
SPEAKER_00: I mean, advancing the fundamental biology.
50:19
SPEAKER_00: So we as a company,
50:21
SPEAKER_00: we have one goal,
50:22
SPEAKER_00: which is to take these technologies into human beings and Radically improve
50:27
SPEAKER_00: and extend their lives.
50:28
SPEAKER_00: That's our company goal.
50:29
SPEAKER_00: Along the way,
50:30
SPEAKER_00: there are a lot of interesting research groups,
50:33
SPEAKER_00: clinical adjacent or clinical research groups,
50:36
SPEAKER_00: who want to learn more about this disease as well and want to take all of that data
50:39
SPEAKER_00: that we're doing, You know, put these electric...
50:41
SPEAKER_00: electrical stim and recording studies into their own rodents.
50:43
SPEAKER_00: And so we do that with partners around the Bay Area and also in Australia,
50:46
SPEAKER_00: where we do some of our peripheral cancer work as well.
50:49
SPEAKER_00: And we also have our own facility where we run those studies ourselves as well.
50:52
SPEAKER_01: And like, could I just take?
50:53
SPEAKER_01: Take a Neuralink device or a Precision Neuro device and instead of putting it in
50:58
SPEAKER_01: the motor cortex, just put it in the tumor?
51:01
SPEAKER_00: So you could do that acutely.
51:03
SPEAKER_00: If you were just in a surgery,
51:05
SPEAKER_00: you could stick a device in and just start reading some information.
51:09
SPEAKER_00: But that's not what we want to do, right?
51:10
SPEAKER_00: We want to leave these devices in for the rest of the person's life.
51:15
SPEAKER_00: And so then you need to be compliant or you need to be aligned with
51:19
SPEAKER_00: the clinical standard of care.
51:21
SPEAKER_00: And that means MRI.
51:22
SPEAKER_00: That means...
51:23
SPEAKER_00: Radiotherapy, and everything else that comes back.
51:26
SPEAKER_00: Comes with it.
51:26
SPEAKER_00: And that's not so Too easy to do.
51:28
SPEAKER_00: Do.
51:29
SPEAKER_00: The device that you showed earlier, it has a sapphire glass encapsulant.
51:34
SPEAKER_00: The whole thing's made out of sapphire,
51:35
SPEAKER_00: which is not as expensive as it sounds When you get it lab -made.
51:38
SPEAKER_00: Lab-made to our investors.
51:38
That's true.
51:41
SPEAKER_00: It's made of sense.
51:42
SPEAKER_00: Sapphire.
51:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's made of sapphire and platinum.
51:48
SPEAKER_00: It's more expensive than my...
51:49
SPEAKER_00: my wedding ring.
51:51
SPEAKER_00: But...
51:51
SPEAKER_00: Uh...
51:54
SPEAKER_00: The reason for that is really so we can be compliant with those clinical practices.
51:59
SPEAKER_00: And as I say, if you take I think a maybe...
52:02
SPEAKER_00: maybe precision device as a good example,
52:04
SPEAKER_00: if you take that to a person that's working in cancer and say,
52:07
SPEAKER_00: hey, we're going to have this.
52:08
SPEAKER_00: By the way, You won't be able to use them.
52:10
SPEAKER_00: MRI anymore to look at this person's tumor.
52:12
SPEAKER_00: The clinician will just say, well, no, I can't do that.
52:14
SPEAKER_00: That's just a non-starter for me.
52:16
SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of work that's gone around in on that.
52:19
SPEAKER_00: Then how we do broad area coverage,
52:20
SPEAKER_00: how we connect lots and lots of channels through a very, very small hole.
52:23
SPEAKER_00: This all takes a lot of engineering effort.
52:25
SPEAKER_00: The type of stimulation we use, All of that takes second.
52:28
SPEAKER_00: Quite a unique Sort of engineering efforts.
52:31
SPEAKER_00: Effort as well.
52:32
SPEAKER_01: And what the talent for that has been in the UK?
52:34
SPEAKER_01: Or it's a mix?
52:36
SPEAKER_00: It's a mix of U .K. and...
52:38
SPEAKER_00: U .S., yeah.
52:39
SPEAKER_00: OK.
52:39
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was just really impressed with what you guys built.
52:41
SPEAKER_01: How big is your team?
52:43
SPEAKER_00: We're 22, 23 people.
52:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
52:45
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you must have somebody really good at hardware.
52:48
SPEAKER_00: We do have, we have multiple people who are really good at hardware.
52:50
SPEAKER_01: It was It was, it was like.
52:52
SPEAKER_01: I, when I saw how old.
52:53
SPEAKER_01: The company was and then I popped on, I'm like, this must be a render.
52:56
SPEAKER_01: This can't be real.
52:57
SPEAKER_00: No, no, it exists
52:58
SPEAKER_00: It's getting into humans really quickly.
53:01
SPEAKER_00: We have some great hardware engineers.
53:03
SPEAKER_00: We have this guy, Jose, who leads our engineering team here in the Bay.
53:09
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, he's done...
53:10
SPEAKER_00: done You know, the impossible.
53:11
SPEAKER_00: Impossible.
53:11
SPEAKER_00: He's taken now,
53:12
SPEAKER_00: I think,
53:13
SPEAKER_00: three devices from conception through clinical studies and into market
53:17
SPEAKER_00: with different companies.
53:19
SPEAKER_00: You know, one of those companies is has been acquired.
53:20
SPEAKER_00: One's probably just about to IPO and one was a big, you know, corporate med tech company.
53:25
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
53:25
SPEAKER_00: And so he knows what he's doing and can do this in a sort of,
53:29
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to say one shot, but yeah, single digit shot.
53:32
SPEAKER_00: Shot.
53:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
53:34
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so you're in.
53:35
SPEAKER_01: And you're sitting around with the lead.
53:36
SPEAKER_01: Elise one day, and And she's, you've like never heard of it.
53:39
SPEAKER_01: Heard of neuro-oncology before?
53:40
SPEAKER_01: Never.
53:41
SPEAKER_01: Never.
53:41
SPEAKER_00: I'd worked a little bit in cancer, lung cancer, but never heard of it.
53:44
SPEAKER_00: I was like you.
53:45
SPEAKER_00: You were like, this is crazy.
53:46
SPEAKER_00: I've never come across this.
53:47
SPEAKER_00: I was working in neuro, and I had previously worked in drugs.
53:49
SPEAKER_00: I had never heard of this either.
53:50
SPEAKER_01: So what happens?
53:51
SPEAKER_01: I mean, she tells you, and then what?
53:53
SPEAKER_01: You start reading a bunch of papers?
53:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I start reading a bunch of papers.
53:56
SPEAKER_00: I start speaking to a bunch of people,
53:57
SPEAKER_00: and I was kind of, oh, I've been doing these things in spinal cord injury.
54:00
SPEAKER_00: This seems like an avenue I want to go down.
54:02
SPEAKER_00: As soon as I got into the weeds on this, I thought, this is fucking crazy.
54:05
SPEAKER_00: This is insane.
54:06
SPEAKER_00: The draw here is massive.
54:08
SPEAKER_00: The white space is huge.
54:09
SPEAKER_00: Um, like...
54:11
SPEAKER_00: There's It's such a beautiful engineer.
54:13
SPEAKER_00: Engineering optimization piece here where, again,
54:16
SPEAKER_00: you're up close and personal with the biology and you can bidirectionally interface
54:19
SPEAKER_00: with it.
54:19
SPEAKER_00: This is clearly what, If we don't do it, someone else will.
54:21
SPEAKER_00: Someone else is going to do this.
54:22
SPEAKER_00: So it's necessary.
54:24
SPEAKER_01: So if that opt-in device has been around for 20 plus years and it's Sean,
54:29
SPEAKER_01: shown results, It's...
54:33
SPEAKER_01: I'm befuddled as to why people would not have been trying this approach
54:37
SPEAKER_01: with different tumors more than in a...
54:39
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they have.
54:41
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
54:41
SPEAKER_00: They have.
54:42
SPEAKER_00: They have some programs.
54:43
SPEAKER_00: They just got approval for pancreatic cancer this year, I believe.
54:48
SPEAKER_00: They have approval for mesothelioma, lung cancer.
54:52
SPEAKER_00: And there are other programs.
54:54
SPEAKER_00: Some groups that have tried to make these things implantable.
54:57
SPEAKER_00: So it's not an easy.
54:58
SPEAKER_00: Easy problem, right?
55:01
SPEAKER_00: It takes A lot of grit and it takes a lot of time.
55:02
SPEAKER_00: Takes the right A little bit of a mix of experience.
55:04
SPEAKER_00: Experience to do that pretty quickly.
55:06
SPEAKER_00: So So that's...
55:08
SPEAKER_00: I think that's the reason for that.
55:09
SPEAKER_00: We're just on a rising tide of these sort of technologies and that's a good place for us to be.
55:14
SPEAKER_01: And when you said they, I mean,
55:16
SPEAKER_01: you're talking about university labs or you're talking about like The company
55:19
SPEAKER_01: that makes it.
55:20
SPEAKER_00: Makes What was it?
55:20
SPEAKER_01: Optune?
55:21
SPEAKER_01: Both.
55:21
SPEAKER_01: Both.
55:22
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
55:22
SPEAKER_01: What is it?
55:23
SPEAKER_01: NovaCare?
55:23
SPEAKER_00: NovaCare.
55:24
SPEAKER_01: NovaCare.
55:25
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
55:26
SPEAKER_01: So they're looking at other applications.
55:28
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
55:29
SPEAKER_01: And then in BCI land, there's like, I don't know, 36 brain implant startups now.
55:36
SPEAKER_01: I mean, do you guys have a direct competitor?
55:39
SPEAKER_00: There's one company in the UK that's trying to do an implantable STEM A program in...
55:46
SPEAKER_00: GBM as well.
55:49
SPEAKER_00: You know, I've spoken to other people.
55:50
SPEAKER_00: A lot of these BCI companies are founded by some of my friends and I've spoken
55:54
SPEAKER_00: to multiple about them and they are aware that this is a space
55:58
SPEAKER_00: that people should be looking at.
56:00
SPEAKER_00: Some of them have had their own ideas,
56:02
SPEAKER_00: but none of them, to what I'm aware, are actually working on this.
56:05
SPEAKER_01: So what does that say to you?
56:06
SPEAKER_01: I mean, are people, it's obviously hard.
56:09
SPEAKER_01: All this stuff is hard.
56:10
SPEAKER_01: But then if there's 36 people chasing the motor cortex and there's kind of you and a half Yep.
56:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
56:18
SPEAKER_01: I mean, does that mean there's skepticism around And what this technology is.
56:22
SPEAKER_01: Technology can do Or just a...
56:25
SPEAKER_01: it's newer?
56:26
SPEAKER_00: I think that we just had an insight that others didn't have at that time.
56:32
SPEAKER_00: The cancer space wasn't thinking that much about neurotech.
56:35
SPEAKER_00: The neurotech people certainly weren't thinking about the cancer space.
56:38
SPEAKER_00: Most people in neurotech, I mean, you would ask yourself the same thing.
56:41
SPEAKER_00: You're more in the neurotech world than anyone else,
56:43
SPEAKER_00: and you haven't had the idea of applying this.
56:46
SPEAKER_00: And I think another neurotech people are the same.
56:48
SPEAKER_00: I will say, when I've spoken to some of the...
56:52
SPEAKER_00: And I'll see you next time.
56:53
SPEAKER_00: I can't say which companies, but sort of lead neurosurgeons at some of the major BCI companies.
56:58
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to do this previously and I didn't do it.
57:02
SPEAKER_00: So I think it's more a case of just, there's a nicely, there's a well-trodden path for motor.
57:07
SPEAKER_00: From all of the DARPA data.
57:08
SPEAKER_00: Days, You know, from the Utah Radio.
57:09
SPEAKER_00: Ray days, it's just like motor makes sense.
57:11
SPEAKER_00: It's like, There's a very clear path there.
57:14
SPEAKER_00: So people focused on it.
57:15
SPEAKER_01: It's like the things people need first, move your body, Speed course.
57:18
SPEAKER_01: Speed, things like that.
57:19
SPEAKER_01: It makes sense.
57:20
SPEAKER_00: It makes a lot of sense.
57:22
SPEAKER_00: But I do think when it comes to actually scaling those technologies into clinic,
57:28
SPEAKER_00: commercializing these technologies,
57:29
SPEAKER_00: I think it's going to be a hard fight there in the motor space as well.
57:35
SPEAKER_00: Just because someone has to pay for this stuff
57:36
SPEAKER_01: at some point.
57:38
SPEAKER_01: No, I agree.
57:38
SPEAKER_01: I agree.
57:39
SPEAKER_01: And the insurance companies, I mean,
57:40
SPEAKER_01: like we were talking about Onward before,
57:43
SPEAKER_01: and the most dramatic stuff they do,
57:45
SPEAKER_01: we talked about is the paralyzed people moving again.
57:48
SPEAKER_01: The most obvious benefit is with the blood pressure Yep.
57:52
SPEAKER_01: Part of this where Or you have people who are...
57:55
SPEAKER_01: are paralyzed.
57:56
SPEAKER_01: They can't even get out of bed.
57:57
SPEAKER_01: They're passing out all the time.
57:58
SPEAKER_01: Their blood pressure is fluctuating all over the place.
58:00
SPEAKER_01: You turn on this device, their life goes back to normal.
58:03
SPEAKER_01: There's a woman I know in Belgium, Julie, she's like, 23, 24 years old.
58:09
SPEAKER_01: She's on that assistant, had her name on the, she's ready to commit suicide basically.
58:13
SPEAKER_01: And, and got this device.
58:15
SPEAKER_01: She's like back in her PhD program and, and you know, it's incredible.
58:18
SPEAKER_01: It's incredible.
58:19
SPEAKER_00: That's what we're going after, right?
58:20
SPEAKER_00: That's what all of us are trying to strive for.
58:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
58:22
SPEAKER_01: But then like the insurance companies still are like reluctant today for this stuff.
58:26
SPEAKER_00: I'm not here to defend the insurance companies today.
58:28
SPEAKER_01: That's, I mean, it's good.
58:30
SPEAKER_01: It's insane.
58:31
SPEAKER_01: It's like, it's like getting this to, For people to pay for this It's nuts.
58:35
SPEAKER_01: Nuts.
58:36
SPEAKER_00: I come from the UK, right?
58:37
SPEAKER_00: So I know more than anyone working within the NHS is hard.
58:41
SPEAKER_00: It's money, money, money is the main focus.
58:44
SPEAKER_00: And the US, there's more flexibility there.
58:46
SPEAKER_00: But still, some...
58:47
SPEAKER_00: someone, whether it's an insurance company or the individual, whoever, has to pay for this.
58:52
SPEAKER_00: And Again, with my commercial hat on, The pulling cancers.
58:58
SPEAKER_00: Cancer is just so profound, both from a treatment side and from a diagnostic side.
59:02
SPEAKER_00: The pull is so profound, and there There are ample reimbursements.
59:08
SPEAKER_00: Reimbursement codes for getting technologies into cancer
59:11
SPEAKER_00: that don't necessarily exist in other areas at the moment.
59:13
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
59:14
SPEAKER_01: I feel like I've been processing in real time,
59:17
SPEAKER_01: and then now I'm coming back to questions that I'm going to sort of re-ask you.
59:21
SPEAKER_01: Let's fast forward.
59:22
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
59:23
SPEAKER_01: I can't believe it.
59:25
SPEAKER_01: X number of years, 10, 15, whatever it is.
59:28
SPEAKER_01: I get colon cancer.
59:30
SPEAKER_01: And you guys have a device working.
59:34
SPEAKER_01: So it's like I go in, I get diagnosed, I have a tumor.
59:38
SPEAKER_01: Um, the - Then I get I get this.
59:43
SPEAKER_01: Essentially like a little So many computers.
59:45
SPEAKER_01: Computer chip.
59:47
SPEAKER_01: Put as close to my tumor as possible.
59:49
SPEAKER_01: This is the goal.
59:50
SPEAKER_01: This is the goal.
59:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
59:51
SPEAKER_01: And then it is so from like day one,
59:54
SPEAKER_01: then it's like reporting on what my tumor is doing all the time.
59:58
SPEAKER_01: And so it's saying, It's growing.
1:00:01
SPEAKER_01: Or you're getting treatment and it's shrinking.
1:00:04
SPEAKER_01: And it's what?
1:00:05
SPEAKER_01: It's just taking measurements that It's taking
1:00:07
SPEAKER_00: electrical measurements all the time.
1:00:09
SPEAKER_01: Just And that from those electrical.
1:00:10
SPEAKER_01: Electrical measurements, what are you able to do?
1:00:13
SPEAKER_01: You can see if things are growing?
1:00:14
SPEAKER_00: We can see if things are growing and shrinking, yeah.
1:00:18
SPEAKER_00: Even with You know, relatively...
1:00:21
SPEAKER_00: Like crude measurements at the moment in terms of low density electrodes.
1:00:24
SPEAKER_00: We can already We predict a change.
1:00:26
SPEAKER_00: Tumor size.
1:00:27
SPEAKER_00: We get about 70, 75% percent accuracy on the.
1:00:30
SPEAKER_00: The tumor size.
1:00:32
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:00:32
SPEAKER_01: So that would be like one major thing you're looking for.
1:00:35
SPEAKER_01: What else would I be sensing?
1:00:38
SPEAKER_00: We're looking for, you know, something that we're super excited about is your drug working.
1:00:42
SPEAKER_00: So we don't believe that these things are going to be You know, monotherapy.
1:00:45
SPEAKER_00: Monotherapy.
1:00:45
SPEAKER_00: That's not my, that's not the world I believe.
1:00:47
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that world is going to evolve in cancer.
1:00:49
SPEAKER_00: I think you're always going to have some combination of things that you need, right?
1:00:53
SPEAKER_00: Multiple tools To get to a curative scene.
1:00:55
SPEAKER_00: State or where we're holding you in a chronic state.
1:00:57
SPEAKER_00: Um, just...
1:00:59
SPEAKER_00: You live the rest of your life.
1:01:00
SPEAKER_00: We're keeping this under wraps, under control.
1:01:03
SPEAKER_00: So another thing that we want to know is, You know, is your drug?
1:01:06
SPEAKER_00: Drug working?
1:01:06
SPEAKER_00: Because if not, We want to switch you on to a new.
1:01:08
SPEAKER_00: New drug as soon as possible or implement something different.
1:01:12
SPEAKER_00: So that's something else that we're spending time looking at.
1:01:14
SPEAKER_01: Then that's mostly, you would still be monitoring tumor size for that?
1:01:18
SPEAKER_00: Tumor size, yeah.
1:01:20
SPEAKER_00: But there's also some of this electrical activity, the spiking rate.
1:01:22
SPEAKER_00: Some people have published some data looking at how that is predictive of growth
1:01:26
SPEAKER_00: and metastasis as well.
1:01:28
SPEAKER_00: So, it's early days here on the...
1:01:30
SPEAKER_00: the research,
1:01:30
SPEAKER_00: but it blew my mind when I saw some of this,
1:01:32
SPEAKER_00: that just from looking at the electrical activity of these tumors,
1:01:35
SPEAKER_00: we can approximate when that tumor is going to grow, spread.
1:01:38
SPEAKER_01: So the electrical activity of a cancer cell, of a tumor cell.
1:01:42
SPEAKER_00: Of a tumor cell and how it integrates with the surrounding tissue.
1:01:46
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:01:46
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I know nothing about this.
1:01:47
SPEAKER_01: How does it integrate with
1:01:49
SPEAKER_00: the surrounding tissue?
1:01:50
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, in the brain, as I said, there are Or synapses that are...
1:01:54
SPEAKER_00: forming.
1:01:54
SPEAKER_00: Um, in the...
1:01:56
SPEAKER_00: In the rest of the body, these nerves are formed.
1:01:59
SPEAKER_00: Are sort of functionally.
1:02:00
SPEAKER_00: Functionally feeding feeding the tumor, right?
1:02:02
SPEAKER_00: Tumor.
1:02:02
SPEAKER_00: We need nerves throughout our body to control everything.
1:02:04
SPEAKER_00: They're releasing neurotransmitters.
1:02:06
SPEAKER_00: An example might be norepinephrine.
1:02:10
SPEAKER_00: These nerves are releasing And you're up at...
1:02:11
SPEAKER_00: norepinephrine actually into the tumor sites as well I don't know.
1:02:16
SPEAKER_00: And a bunch of other transmitters as well.
1:02:19
SPEAKER_00: You've got sensory neurons there that you're can sense what the hell's going on
1:02:24
SPEAKER_00: And some of this is why these cancer patients have profound pain as well.
1:02:27
SPEAKER_00: So you have these nerves actually growing in and integrating again into the tissue.
1:02:31
SPEAKER_00: Again, we can read out all of that.
1:02:33
SPEAKER_00: We can modify all of that as well.
1:02:35
SPEAKER_00: And different nerves will do different things.
1:02:38
SPEAKER_00: We're interested in nerves very, very close to the tumor.
1:02:40
SPEAKER_00: We're also interested in nerves more upstream.
1:02:43
SPEAKER_00: I'll give you know, a crazy piece of reading.
1:02:45
SPEAKER_00: Research that was published recently in which...
1:02:49
SPEAKER_00: They grew up.
1:02:50
SPEAKER_00: Lung cancer model in a mouse.
1:02:51
SPEAKER_00: And then you're familiar with the vagus nerve, runs up to your brain.
1:02:55
SPEAKER_00: They just severed them.
1:02:56
SPEAKER_00: The vagus nerve, right?
1:02:57
SPEAKER_00: Now there's reasons that you wouldn't want to do that maybe in human beings,
1:02:59
SPEAKER_00: but in these rodents, they just severed the Vegas nerve.
1:03:03
SPEAKER_00: Nerve.
1:03:04
SPEAKER_00: And in these rodents where the The Vegas nerve.
1:03:06
SPEAKER_00: Nerve was completely severed, they just never got Metastasis.
1:03:10
SPEAKER_00: Metastatic cancer.
1:03:10
SPEAKER_00: It just never happened.
1:03:11
SPEAKER_00: The tumor just stayed local in the lung.
1:03:13
SPEAKER_00: And in all these other rodents,
1:03:16
SPEAKER_00: Where they didn't sever it, the tumor spread and went wild and went around the body.
1:03:19
SPEAKER_00: They got liver mets and whatever else.
1:03:21
SPEAKER_00: Now, you're going to ask me, why?
1:03:24
SPEAKER_00: Why does that happen?
1:03:25
SPEAKER_00: The only answer is, we don't know yet.
1:03:27
SPEAKER_00: This is early research,
1:03:28
SPEAKER_00: we don't know,
1:03:29
SPEAKER_00: but there's something really wild happening here in how the body,
1:03:33
SPEAKER_00: how the nervous system,
1:03:34
SPEAKER_00: how the tumors and how the immune system is functioning and speaking to itself,
1:03:39
SPEAKER_00: that you can have that profound effect in an animal model.
1:03:42
SPEAKER_01: So it's, I mean,
1:03:43
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure I'm going to oversimplify this,
1:03:44
SPEAKER_01: but I mean,
1:03:45
SPEAKER_01: it's like a parasite and it's rewiring your body to supply itself
1:03:49
SPEAKER_01: with what it needs.
1:03:50
SPEAKER_01: And then you guys are trying to disrupt these mechanisms.
1:03:52
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
1:03:53
SPEAKER_00: Tumors are smart.
1:03:54
SPEAKER_00: Cancer cells are smart.
1:03:55
SPEAKER_00: They have an evolutionary advantage to grow and thrive,
1:03:57
SPEAKER_00: and they will hijack as many processes in your body to do that, right?
1:04:01
SPEAKER_00: From growing blood vessels in to nerves to neurotransmitters,
1:04:04
SPEAKER_00: whatever they can take, they do and they will grow.
1:04:07
SPEAKER_00: And that...
1:04:09
SPEAKER_00: That's frightening.
1:04:11
SPEAKER_00: But also for a company like ours,
1:04:12
SPEAKER_00: we say, well, you know, we have the engineering tools to look at that.
1:04:16
SPEAKER_00: Interface with that.
1:04:17
SPEAKER_00: People have been doing that for decades.
1:04:19
SPEAKER_00: And we can do that as well.
1:04:20
SPEAKER_01: And then tumors always come in And sports ball.
1:04:22
SPEAKER_01: Ball sizes from golf ball to tennis ball to,
1:04:25
SPEAKER_01: I guess, well, then we get into fruit and softballs.
1:04:29
SPEAKER_01: You don't want grapefruit.
1:04:29
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:04:30
SPEAKER_01: Grapefruit is bad.
1:04:32
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
1:04:33
SPEAKER_01: The ones you get into the fruit.
1:04:34
SPEAKER_01: Fruits, it's usually bad.
1:04:36
SPEAKER_01: I mean, how many, how...
1:04:38
SPEAKER_01: How much coverage do you need on these tumors to get the data you want and then
1:04:44
SPEAKER_01: to affect a change?
1:04:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, if we decouple again the brain versus the rest of the body,
1:04:48
SPEAKER_00: you know, anything sort of like fist size.
1:04:50
SPEAKER_00: If you've heard fist as well, fist size is a common one in the brain.
1:04:53
SPEAKER_00: You know, we can get good coverage over that, to be honest, any bigger than that.
1:04:57
SPEAKER_00: And it's probably past the point that anyone is going to be able to help at that point.
1:05:02
SPEAKER_00: You know, in the rest of the body, it's less about how large that tumor is for us.
1:05:06
SPEAKER_00: It's actually more about how Distantness.
1:05:10
SPEAKER_00: It's distance to travel.
1:05:11
SPEAKER_00: Traveled.
1:05:11
SPEAKER_00: So obviously, if I'm tackling In the pancreas.
1:05:14
SPEAKER_00: Pancreas right now,
1:05:16
SPEAKER_00: and that has spread to my brain,
1:05:20
SPEAKER_00: that's going to be something that's like very,
1:05:21
SPEAKER_00: very challenging for anyone with like a physical means of constraint On that tumour.
1:05:24
SPEAKER_00: Tumor.
1:05:25
SPEAKER_00: So that's not something that we're looking, it's not something we're actively doing right now.
1:05:29
SPEAKER_00: Now, there is a path to, as I say, immune.
1:05:32
SPEAKER_00: Modification,
1:05:33
SPEAKER_00: there is a path to using these technologies in brain metastasis or other forms
1:05:37
SPEAKER_00: of mess.
1:05:37
SPEAKER_00: METs.
1:05:38
SPEAKER_00: But right now we're focused on these like primary side tumors.
1:05:41
SPEAKER_00: Like how do we control them?
1:05:42
SPEAKER_00: Whether they're grapefruit size or tennis ball size or fist size, How do we control this?
1:05:48
SPEAKER_00: These things at the local point?
1:05:50
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:05:50
SPEAKER_01: And so in this future scenario that I was talking about, I mean,
1:05:56
SPEAKER_01: I guess people start feeling bad or they're having some checkup and you see a mass.
1:06:03
SPEAKER_01: And, but like in every.
1:06:04
SPEAKER_01: Every case, really,
1:06:06
SPEAKER_01: you would want to be putting this device in when you're at the surgery stage of
1:06:11
SPEAKER_01: the...
1:06:12
SPEAKER_00: It's our entry point.
1:06:13
SPEAKER_00: So right now,
1:06:14
SPEAKER_00: it's a very,
1:06:15
SPEAKER_00: very low-risk way of getting these technologies into as many people as possible.
1:06:20
SPEAKER_00: So when we talk about these Implantable device.
1:06:24
SPEAKER_00: Devices...
1:06:25
SPEAKER_00: The first question that everyone says is, okay, well, even if it's small, like surgery, really?
1:06:29
SPEAKER_00: I don't want surgery.
1:06:30
SPEAKER_00: So our path to getting into as many people as possible is,
1:06:33
SPEAKER_00: okay, let's take this subpopulation who are already having surgeries.
1:06:37
SPEAKER_00: And in some of our disease areas, like 70 to 80% of them are having surgeries.
1:06:40
SPEAKER_00: And we'll do this.
1:06:42
SPEAKER_00: One of our friends called it like drive-by implant.
1:06:44
SPEAKER_01: We'll just say, Yeah.
1:06:45
SPEAKER_00: Okay, Okay, your surgical phone.
1:06:45
SPEAKER_00: Four is there.
1:06:46
SPEAKER_00: We're going to leave something behind.
1:06:48
SPEAKER_00: Now we need to do that.
1:06:48
SPEAKER_00: We want to do that to prove out how incredible this data string capture is,
1:06:52
SPEAKER_00: but also the therapeutic side is.
1:06:53
SPEAKER_00: Eventually, of course, You know, we want to be preempt.
1:06:56
SPEAKER_00: Preemptive.
1:06:56
SPEAKER_00: We want to go in before your surgery.
1:06:58
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's like a neoadjuvant where I want to go in and shrink as much as I can
1:07:03
SPEAKER_00: before you go in and take the rest out or give you a drug or whatever else.
1:07:08
SPEAKER_00: Maybe in a future world, I want to go in And just if you have a.
1:07:12
SPEAKER_00: a risk.
1:07:13
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're suffering from...
1:07:16
SPEAKER_00: Like pancreate.
1:07:17
SPEAKER_00: Pancreatic inflammation, pancreatitis, And pancreatitis, I think.
1:07:19
SPEAKER_00: Think it's called, and you have a high risk of pancreatic cancer.
1:07:22
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you have a particular A gene that suggests suggests you're going to get breast cancer.
1:07:28
SPEAKER_00: You know,
1:07:28
SPEAKER_00: in the future where these worlds are,
1:07:29
SPEAKER_00: these devices are so so safe and they're safe as like maybe getting
1:07:32
SPEAKER_00: a contraceptive implant, And we'd say, well...
1:07:35
SPEAKER_00: well, why don't we just leave this device with you and just monitor you for the rest
1:07:39
SPEAKER_00: of your life?
1:07:39
SPEAKER_00: Like what's that?
1:07:40
SPEAKER_00: There's going to be no harm in that And if your chance of.
1:07:43
SPEAKER_00: Of getting one of these tumors is 20 or 30 % in your life, then rest easy.
1:07:48
SPEAKER_00: Rest assured.
1:07:49
SPEAKER_00: Spend the rest of your time at home and this thing will serve as a warning
1:07:51
SPEAKER_00: if anything does come up.
1:07:53
SPEAKER_01: That was my question.
1:07:55
SPEAKER_01: That's kind of where my brain was heading.
1:07:56
SPEAKER_01: I mean it just sounds like you're trying
1:07:58
SPEAKER_00: to create this cancer sensor network type thing over time.
1:08:03
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
1:08:03
SPEAKER_00: And so Ray Kurzweil has been talking about that.
1:08:07
SPEAKER_01: Nanobots circulating through our body forever.
1:08:09
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is some early incarnation of that on some level.
1:08:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:08:13
SPEAKER_00: And again, these technologies are only going to get smaller and only get safer from here.
1:08:16
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing in the like physical physical realm right now
1:08:19
SPEAKER_00: that people are looking at and saying it's physically impossible
1:08:21
SPEAKER_00: to make something small enough and safe enough that you
1:08:24
SPEAKER_00: and I can have these things preemptively.
1:08:27
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing that blocks us on the physics world.
1:08:29
SPEAKER_00: There's engineering challenges.
1:08:30
SPEAKER_00: We're going to get more power efficient.
1:08:32
SPEAKER_00: We're going to get smaller.
1:08:33
SPEAKER_00: Chips are going to get smaller.
1:08:34
SPEAKER_00: Everything is going to get more powerful.
1:08:35
SPEAKER_00: You know, that would be a wonder.
1:08:36
SPEAKER_00: Wonderful world.
1:08:37
SPEAKER_00: Thinking about how we can, I mean, you know...
1:08:40
SPEAKER_00: Vertically integrated.
1:08:41
SPEAKER_00: Integrate and federate cancer care where we have all of this data under one roof Uh,
1:08:47
SPEAKER_00: and the therapeutic therapeutic avenues as well It's something, you know.
1:08:50
SPEAKER_00: Know, we certainly strive towards Over the coming days.
1:08:53
SPEAKER_00: Decades.
1:08:54
SPEAKER_01: And then, okay.
1:08:55
SPEAKER_01: And then again Everything's working.
1:08:58
SPEAKER_01: This is the optimistic case scenario.
1:09:01
SPEAKER_01: You guys do this for 10 years.
1:09:03
SPEAKER_01: Like, what do you think we learn about tumors that we didn't No, after.
1:09:06
SPEAKER_01: You know, after...
1:09:06
SPEAKER_01: after monitoring whatever it is, hundreds or thousands of people for 10 years?
1:09:11
SPEAKER_00: I think we're going to learn a lot about what some people call chronobiology, right?
1:09:16
SPEAKER_00: So like the time domain of, of tonight.
1:09:18
SPEAKER_00: You know, a cancer is disease.
1:09:20
SPEAKER_00: Diseases generally is really misunderstood at the moment.
1:09:24
SPEAKER_00: How What is your disease?
1:09:25
SPEAKER_00: Disease changing when we're awake versus when we're asleep?
1:09:28
SPEAKER_00: We have no idea.
1:09:29
SPEAKER_00: Should I be taking my drugs right before bed or when I wake up in the morning?
1:09:32
SPEAKER_00: There was this controversial paper,
1:09:33
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you saw it,
1:09:34
SPEAKER_00: about time of day of immunotherapy where they posited that
1:09:39
SPEAKER_00: if you deliver immunotherapy before 11 a.m., You get almost a double.
1:09:43
SPEAKER_00: Doubling of overall survival in lung cancer cases versus if you take it after lunchtime.
1:09:47
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
1:09:48
SPEAKER_00: I say it's controversial because someone's done a takedown,
1:09:51
SPEAKER_00: but then someone else has It's replicated it in literature.
1:09:53
SPEAKER_00: Liver cancer.
1:09:53
SPEAKER_00: So not my work.
1:09:55
SPEAKER_00: To your listeners out there,
1:09:56
SPEAKER_00: do your own research and assess whether you think chronobiology
1:09:59
SPEAKER_00: in immunotherapy is real or not.
1:10:03
SPEAKER_00: But it speaks to something pretty profound.
1:10:04
SPEAKER_00: Like there is clearly some time of day effect based on our circadian rhythm.
1:10:09
SPEAKER_00: You can...
1:10:10
SPEAKER_00: Tune the algorithm.
1:10:11
SPEAKER_00: Algorithms of deep brain stimulators to remove some of the symptoms
1:10:14
SPEAKER_00: by tuning things down at night and up again in the morning when
1:10:16
SPEAKER_00: the person might be interacting with the world.
1:10:19
SPEAKER_00: But on the data side, we know not.
1:10:20
SPEAKER_00: None of that at the moment.
1:10:21
SPEAKER_00: As I say, You, we are.
1:10:23
SPEAKER_00: We are three month time points.
1:10:26
SPEAKER_00: I get a scan.
1:10:28
SPEAKER_00: And then I'm treated for three months and then I get another scan.
1:10:31
SPEAKER_00: And most clinicians go, like maybe it's changed.
1:10:35
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's receded.
1:10:36
SPEAKER_00: Actually, maybe it's progressed a little bit.
1:10:37
SPEAKER_00: Oh, we'll mark it down as like a pseudo progression.
1:10:40
SPEAKER_00: And then actually there's some sweat.
1:10:41
SPEAKER_00: Swelling.
1:10:41
SPEAKER_00: Let's wait another three months.
1:10:43
SPEAKER_00: And I think when we have this It's very, very...
1:10:45
SPEAKER_00: very temporally fine data set of what the hell is going on to you between 10 10am in
1:10:51
SPEAKER_00: the morning.
1:10:51
SPEAKER_00: Morning and 10 p.m.
1:10:52
SPEAKER_00: at night, we'll be able to do some pretty profound things in medicine as well.
1:10:56
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:10:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:10:56
SPEAKER_01: I mean, my wife was...
1:10:58
SPEAKER_01: Going through all this cancer stuff last year and then she has to get checkups all the time.
1:11:04
SPEAKER_01: And it's just, it's just, it is all very, It always feels rare.
1:11:07
SPEAKER_01: Random to me.
1:11:08
SPEAKER_01: I usually pick.
1:11:09
SPEAKER_01: Pick the time that you're going to come in for these MRIs and everything.
1:11:14
SPEAKER_01: And, and,
1:11:15
SPEAKER_01: you know, I mean,
1:11:16
SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
1:11:16
SPEAKER_01: like we all live in these, um,
1:11:19
SPEAKER_01: Just by nature of our calendars and clocks,
1:11:22
SPEAKER_01: you're just like, six months sounds good.
1:11:24
SPEAKER_01: You've got to pick something, right?
1:11:26
SPEAKER_00: It always feels like when someone uses So yeah, six months.
1:11:28
SPEAKER_00: Months, it's like, that's probably not the right time.
1:11:30
SPEAKER_00: It's a nice round number.
1:11:31
SPEAKER_00: We stimulate at A hundred hertz.
1:11:33
SPEAKER_00: Hertz.
1:11:34
SPEAKER_00: That seems too It's too perfect for me.
1:11:36
SPEAKER_00: For Um, and
1:11:37
SPEAKER_00: Me.
1:11:38
SPEAKER_00: I may be alluded to at the beginning of our conversation.
1:11:40
SPEAKER_00: Like, what?
1:11:42
SPEAKER_00: We want the world to look like in the future where people aren't being prodded
1:11:45
SPEAKER_00: and stabbed and Scans and everything else.
1:11:48
SPEAKER_00: People don't want to feel like guinea pigs And when they're, when they are the.
1:11:52
SPEAKER_00: The worst, lowest points of of their life and they're going to going through this journey.
1:11:55
SPEAKER_00: You do want eventually all of this to be done remotely.
1:11:58
SPEAKER_00: You want to be monitored.
1:11:59
SPEAKER_00: You want to be treated.
1:11:59
SPEAKER_00: You want everything to be when you spend time hanging out with your kids
1:12:02
SPEAKER_00: and your family and going hiking,
1:12:04
SPEAKER_00: not trekking into a hospital every three months to get a scan.
1:12:08
SPEAKER_01: I was like looking over the side effects too.
1:12:10
SPEAKER_01: I mean, almost all of them seem tied to the actual device itself.
1:12:13
SPEAKER_01: Like it's like skin, you And, you know...
1:12:15
SPEAKER_01: know, irritation.
1:12:17
SPEAKER_01: And I read through all the side effects,
1:12:20
SPEAKER_01: but they all seem tied to like the cancer therapy drugs you're taking and Not
1:12:25
SPEAKER_01: that odd tune.
1:12:26
SPEAKER_01: Optune device.
1:12:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:12:26
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the Optune Force, It gives you a chance.
1:12:28
SPEAKER_00: Gives some skin blistering, But that's by now.
1:12:32
SPEAKER_00: Nature of being outside the body.
1:12:33
SPEAKER_00: It gets hot, just drops the skin.
1:12:35
SPEAKER_00: You've got a glue on your head kind of all the time and adhesive.
1:12:38
SPEAKER_00: And so you get this effect.
1:12:39
SPEAKER_00: And I don't want to Could it downplay that either?
1:12:43
SPEAKER_00: Either.
1:12:43
SPEAKER_00: That's a pretty big thing for people.
1:12:45
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it gets quite painful and they stop using the thing and that affects how well it works.
1:12:51
SPEAKER_00: But it seems like the side effects of the actual stimulus This is, is...
1:12:56
SPEAKER_00: low Or maybe you.
1:12:57
SPEAKER_00: Zero.
1:12:58
SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, I mean, yeah,
1:12:59
SPEAKER_01: I don't
1:12:59
SPEAKER_01: want to, again,
1:13:01
SPEAKER_01: I'm not giving medical advice or anything,
1:13:02
SPEAKER_01: but I was reading, yeah, the most common side effects when using up to what is it?
1:13:07
SPEAKER_01: Geo?
1:13:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:13:10
SPEAKER_01: Scalp irritation, headaches, and then other side effects.
1:13:15
SPEAKER_01: Well, they say malaise, muscle twishing, Skid Ulcers.
1:13:19
SPEAKER_01: Ulcers.
1:13:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:13:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:13:20
SPEAKER_00: That's the big one.
1:13:21
SPEAKER_00: The skin is the big one.
1:13:22
SPEAKER_01: But you guys are, you're not on the skin.
1:13:24
SPEAKER_00: But we want to go inside.
1:13:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:13:26
SPEAKER_00: I I don't know if you've had this conversation.
1:13:28
SPEAKER_00: Conversation with people about the, you know, we use invasive and non-invasive quite a lot.
1:13:31
SPEAKER_00: And I come from the invasive world, which sounds so scary to me.
1:13:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:13:34
SPEAKER_00: But we think a lot more about this sort of...
1:13:37
SPEAKER_00: How much does it affect your life?
1:13:38
SPEAKER_00: Your lifestyle?
1:13:39
SPEAKER_00: How intrusive is it?
1:13:40
SPEAKER_00: Not how invasive is it?
1:13:42
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, some of these Because some of these implants, like.
1:13:45
SPEAKER_00: Like let's use Neuralink as an example.
1:13:47
SPEAKER_00: Sure, it's invasive,
1:13:48
SPEAKER_00: but it's incredibly unobtrusive compared to a big EEG cap or this Utah RA pedestal,
1:13:53
SPEAKER_00: right?
1:13:53
SPEAKER_00: You can use it at home.
1:13:54
SPEAKER_00: You can use it at home.
1:13:55
SPEAKER_00: You can just chill and live your life Once it's, once it's in there.
1:13:58
SPEAKER_00: There.
1:13:58
SPEAKER_00: And like, yeah,
1:13:58
SPEAKER_00: we have to acknowledge that whenever we breach the skin,
1:14:00
SPEAKER_00: there's some risk of infection.
1:14:02
SPEAKER_00: We cannot ignore that.
1:14:03
SPEAKER_00: They'll get better, but we can't ignore that.
1:14:06
SPEAKER_00: But people care a lot more about the next five or 10 years of their life
1:14:10
SPEAKER_00: of just living their life to the fullest and not worrying about this other thing
1:14:14
SPEAKER_00: that they have to manage all the
1:14:15
SPEAKER_01: time.
1:14:15
SPEAKER_01: 100%.
1:14:16
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I hang out with Nolan Arba, the first guy to get the Neuralink implant all the time.
1:14:20
SPEAKER_01: And you would have no idea, really.
1:14:22
SPEAKER_01: And in fact, he'll be like talking to you And then he's like,
1:14:26
SPEAKER_01: Using his computer over on the side.
1:14:29
SPEAKER_01: Just like everyone else.
1:14:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:14:31
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I mean, right?
1:14:33
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I mean clearly.
1:14:37
SPEAKER_01: You don't see anything on his head or, you know, nothing.
1:14:41
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:14:41
SPEAKER_01: All right.
1:14:42
SPEAKER_01: Well, I've asked all the questions I can possibly think of.
1:14:45
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
1:14:45
SPEAKER_01: is there stuff that I missed that someone far smarter than I would usually kind
1:14:51
SPEAKER_01: of pushes you on or that people should know, I suppose?
1:14:57
SPEAKER_00: I just have a...
1:14:59
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
1:15:00
SPEAKER_00: Think about...
1:15:01
SPEAKER_00: Medicine and what the future of medicine is going to look like a lot.
1:15:04
SPEAKER_00: And it's a lot smarter than it is today.
1:15:08
SPEAKER_00: And I think Neuralink and others inspire this It's like line of thinking as well.
1:15:13
SPEAKER_00: Well.
1:15:14
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever heard this It's a quote that people say.
1:15:17
SPEAKER_00: Say, it's like, if AI could create a currency would be.
1:15:21
SPEAKER_00: Basically create crypto.
1:15:23
SPEAKER_00: It's the perfect currency for AI to interact with.
1:15:26
SPEAKER_00: And I think that these neurotechnologies are that same analog.
1:15:29
SPEAKER_00: In a future where All right.
1:15:31
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
1:15:32
SPEAKER_00: AI, whatever this means in our future, is going to be controlling medicine.
1:15:35
SPEAKER_00: It's going to work.
1:15:36
SPEAKER_00: Want to be controlling something that has this It's the bi -directionality.
1:15:40
SPEAKER_00: Bidirectionality to it.
1:15:41
SPEAKER_00: Something that you have Like, they're hugely rich.
1:15:42
SPEAKER_00: Rich data sets and something you can fundamentally You know, single cell.
1:15:46
SPEAKER_00: Cell and also system level control biology.
1:15:48
SPEAKER_00: So again, today, if our future AI overlords could create A technology for diseases.
1:15:54
SPEAKER_00: Let's say they're aligned to us and they want to do that.
1:15:57
SPEAKER_00: They would be making these technologies.
1:15:58
SPEAKER_00: They're not going to be making something where you kick a drug and
1:16:00
SPEAKER_00: then you kick around for three months waiting to see what happens.
1:16:04
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't seem very Future proof to me.
1:16:06
SPEAKER_00: Me.
1:16:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's what it is.
1:16:08
SPEAKER_01: Always so...
1:16:08
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we humans do incredible things and we've come so far.
1:16:12
SPEAKER_01: And then,
1:16:13
SPEAKER_01: especially on the brain,
1:16:14
SPEAKER_01: you always realize our knowledge is so crude and cancer is another area
1:16:20
SPEAKER_00: where it's just...
1:16:22
SPEAKER_01: You're both super impressed by what people have accomplished
1:16:25
SPEAKER_01: and they're very underwhelmed by what we know.
1:16:28
SPEAKER_00: It's, you know,
1:16:30
SPEAKER_00: As I said,
1:16:30
SPEAKER_00: I get into the weeds with patients and I think people have been affected by cancer,
1:16:36
SPEAKER_00: people that have had loved ones die from cancer, they're mad.
1:16:33
SPEAKER_00: People are, people that.
1:16:41
SPEAKER_00: I meet mad people more than I meet sad people.
1:16:43
SPEAKER_00: I've been watching the cure for cancer come up on the news every day for the last,
1:16:48
SPEAKER_00: feels like decades, right around the corner.
1:16:51
SPEAKER_00: And, um...
1:16:52
SPEAKER_00: then someone gets diagnosed with glioblastoma and they find out
1:16:54
SPEAKER_00: the treatment is going to be basically exactly the same
1:16:56
SPEAKER_00: as what another guy got 25 years before.
1:16:58
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, what's happening here?
1:17:00
SPEAKER_00: I'm seeing these breakthroughs constantly in academia and research labs,
1:17:03
SPEAKER_00: I've seen them announced at the time.
1:17:04
SPEAKER_00: Time.
1:17:05
SPEAKER_00: Why isn't anything happening?
1:17:07
SPEAKER_00: Why isn't anything changing?
1:17:08
SPEAKER_00: And, um...
1:17:10
SPEAKER_00: And I like to believe that we're on a bit of a takeoff moment for medicine generally.
1:17:14
SPEAKER_00: There's so many exciting things happen,
1:17:16
SPEAKER_00: both in the drug world, the immunotherapy world, you know, The cell -based medicine.
1:17:20
SPEAKER_00: Medicine world, the device world.
1:17:21
SPEAKER_00: I think there's so much happening on the data side of things.
1:17:24
SPEAKER_00: I think it's a good time to be an optimist in cancer,
1:17:26
SPEAKER_00: but, you know, we don't want to see the same thing in 25 years.
1:17:28
SPEAKER_00: People saying, I'm still, Well, my friend is just me.
1:17:31
SPEAKER_00: Been diagnosed with glioblastoma,
1:17:32
SPEAKER_00: and they're still getting a thing that someone got 50 years ago.
1:17:34
SPEAKER_00: That would suck.
1:17:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
1:17:36
SPEAKER_01: And what is like Novakir's reaction to you guys been?
1:17:40
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
1:17:40
SPEAKER_00: I tried to avoid avoid the conversation.
1:17:43
SPEAKER_00: ha, ha.
1:17:47
SPEAKER_01: So I'll, I mean, either they're being stealthy or they, they, you're not on the radar yet.
1:17:52
SPEAKER_01: I see where you must be.
1:17:53
SPEAKER_01: Um, actually I put a tweet out about,
1:17:55
SPEAKER_01: about the device this morning and then, And there's a guy.
1:17:59
SPEAKER_01: Guy who He wrote that his wife wife He's suffering from...
1:18:02
SPEAKER_01: glioblastoma and, um, She's about to be fitted for a device for a brain tumor.
1:18:09
SPEAKER_01: And then, and then I pointed to you guys And any.
1:18:12
SPEAKER_01: And he said that he's reached out to you to see if your wife could be an early tester.
1:18:17
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you saw that.
1:18:19
SPEAKER_00: I did not see that, but, um, yeah, I would happily have the conversation with that person.
1:18:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:18:23
SPEAKER_01: He actually seemed, um.
1:18:25
SPEAKER_01: Decently well informed and, um, was All right.
1:18:31
SPEAKER_01: Well, I'll, I think you saw, you saw my, my tweet.
1:18:33
SPEAKER_01: Just check, check his replies.
1:18:35
SPEAKER_01: We'll help Alex here.
1:18:37
SPEAKER_01: Or try to.
1:18:37
SPEAKER_00: I did see, I did see your tweet.
1:18:39
SPEAKER_00: And you know, that, that, that's why we do this, right?
1:18:41
SPEAKER_00: Like we want to, we want to move these things to patients.
1:18:43
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, like huge disclaimer, right?
1:18:44
SPEAKER_00: This is not a product that's in the world right now.
1:18:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:18:46
SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
1:18:46
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to give people.
1:18:47
SPEAKER_01: no no I wasn't trying
1:18:48
SPEAKER_01: to be cute.
1:18:49
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no. Occidentally not.
1:18:49
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely not.
1:18:50
SPEAKER_00: And I, I, I just wanted to put that out there, right?
1:18:52
SPEAKER_00: Like we're working as hard as we can and we're moving as fast as we can
1:18:56
SPEAKER_00: and we're killing ourselves and our engineers.
1:18:59
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, guys.
1:18:59
SPEAKER_00: Um, by pushing this as.
1:19:01
SPEAKER_00: This as aggressively as we can so that we can help people like Alex's wife
1:19:05
SPEAKER_00: as quickly as we can because there's a lot more to do.
1:19:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:19:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:19:08
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:19:08
SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you so much for educating us all.
1:19:11
SPEAKER_01: And then He said, said in the next month, there's like things...
1:19:17
SPEAKER_00: There's things coming up.
1:19:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's things coming up.
1:19:19
SPEAKER_00: We got a lot on.
1:19:21
SPEAKER_00: We've got, as our friends in Australia, we'll be doing some of this early work.
1:19:25
SPEAKER_00: And then it's a pretty aggressive push for us to roll these out
1:19:29
SPEAKER_00: into long-term studies,
1:19:30
SPEAKER_00: both in the brain and other parts of the body as well,
1:19:32
SPEAKER_00: which obviously we're hugely excited about to start building that data layer
1:19:36
SPEAKER_00: and also running therapeutic studies as well.
1:19:38
SPEAKER_01: And the product is called Soma.
1:19:40
SPEAKER_01: I don't think we, that's the device.
1:19:41
SPEAKER_00: That's the device before we moved to San Francisco.
1:19:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:19:45
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
1:19:46
SPEAKER_01: I actually hadn't thought of that.
1:19:48
SPEAKER_01: I wish I should have.
1:19:49
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:19:50
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:19:51
SPEAKER_01: And then, and then I'm.
1:19:52
SPEAKER_01: on your...
1:19:54
SPEAKER_01: pipeline, Um, so you've got...
1:19:57
SPEAKER_01: Late, pretty close.
1:19:58
SPEAKER_01: Preclinical Trial, Trial.
1:20:00
SPEAKER_01: Trial For high grade.
1:20:01
SPEAKER_01: High-grade glioma, and then another trial for low-grade, and then another for brain
1:20:09
SPEAKER_01: metastasis.
1:20:07
SPEAKER_01: And, uh...
1:20:10
SPEAKER_01: I can never say that.
1:20:11
SPEAKER_00: Meaning...
1:20:12
SPEAKER_00: Meaning I've seen cancers that are...
1:20:14
SPEAKER_00: spreading or spread to the brain.
1:20:15
SPEAKER_01: But like, So it's a glial.
1:20:18
SPEAKER_01: Glioma that's spreading?
1:20:19
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no. It's
1:20:20
SPEAKER_01: It's a problem.
1:20:20
SPEAKER_00: Peripheral
1:20:20
SPEAKER_00: cancer that's spread to the brain.
1:20:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
1:20:22
SPEAKER_00: So these gliomas, they tend to stay actually local, as in in the brain.
1:20:27
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:20:27
SPEAKER_00: But these other cancers,
1:20:29
SPEAKER_00: obviously,
1:20:29
SPEAKER_00: like most people who have like a significant Amount of people that The die
1:20:34
SPEAKER_00: of Duncan.
1:20:35
SPEAKER_00: Lung cancer or breast cancer.
1:20:37
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:20:38
SPEAKER_01: And then your early preclinical on the pancreas.
1:20:41
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
1:20:41
SPEAKER_00: Pancreas has been super promising.
1:20:43
SPEAKER_00: We'll be publishing some data on that this year as well,
1:20:45
SPEAKER_00: uh, which has been, yeah, And yeah, again, pretty.
1:20:46
SPEAKER_00: Pretty, pretty profound so far.
1:20:48
SPEAKER_01: Uh, And that's been mice.
1:20:49
SPEAKER_01: That's been mice.
1:20:50
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:20:51
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:20:51
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:20:52
SPEAKER_01: So everything's mice, except we're heading to humans in Australia.
1:20:55
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
1:20:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:20:56
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:20:56
SPEAKER_01: All right.
1:20:57
SPEAKER_01: Ben, thank you so much for your time.
1:21:00
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure we will, if you'll have us, we'll follow, follow along.
1:21:04
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
1:21:05
SPEAKER_00: Come to our lab.
1:21:06
SPEAKER_00: Meet our bionic cancer
1:21:08
SPEAKER_01: models.
1:21:10
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:21:11
SPEAKER_01: Is that part of the UK?
1:21:13
SPEAKER_01: or no that's
1:21:14
SPEAKER_01: here.
1:21:14
SPEAKER_01: That's just on the road from you.
1:21:16
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:21:17
SPEAKER_00: You're always welcome to swing by.
1:21:19
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:21:19
SPEAKER_01: I will 100% do that.
1:21:21
SPEAKER_01: That sounds fantastic.
1:21:22
SPEAKER_01: And thank you so much for your time.
1:21:24
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me.
1:21:24
SPEAKER_00: It's been really fun to chat.
1:21:25
SPEAKER_00: We'll be right back.
1:21:28
SPEAKER_01: The Core Memory Podcast is hosted by me, Ashlee Vance, and or...
1:21:33
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1:21:43
SPEAKER_01: And the show is edited, always by The John Sortland.
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