Latest / The BioHub - by Avetix / Episode 67 - Micah Mackison - CEO of Vico Therapeutics

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Episode 67 - Micah Mackison - CEO of Vico Therapeutics · The BioHub - by Avetix

0:04
So welcome back to the episode of the Bio Hub.
0:07
Today, we're thrilled to welcome Michael Mackeson, who's the CEO
0:10
of Veeco Therapeutics, a clinical stage biotech who are
0:13
developing RNA based therapies for neurological diseases like
0:17
Huntington's. Over the past two decades,
0:20
Michael has held senior roles across corporate development
0:23
strategy and finance at companies including Eli Lilly,
0:26
Pfizer, Ovation Pharmaceuticals and Assembly Assembly
0:30
Biosciences and the Carna Bio. And he's helped shape
0:33
transformative deals, grow pipelines and bring cutting edge
0:36
signs closer to patients. So join us today as we'll talk
0:40
through Vico's pipeline operating as a transatlantic
0:43
company, as well as what's next for Vico.
0:47
So Micah, thanks so much for coming on.
0:49
How are you I'm. Doing well, Tom.
0:51
Hey, thanks very much for having me.
0:52
I greatly appreciate it. Yeah, it's an absolute pleasure.
0:57
So look, let's start off with a little bit about yourself as
1:00
you've had a rich journey through biotech.
1:02
So from corporate development and venture capital to now
1:05
leading Vico as CEO. Talk us through your journey and
1:09
were there any specific mentors who influenced that journey?
1:13
Yeah. Well, like a lot of folks
1:15
probably in my position, it's not a straight line.
1:20
You don't it never really works out how you plan it, which is
1:24
probably the way that it should be.
1:27
Started my career as a finance guy and a big pharma company,
1:31
Eli Lilly, not quite sure where I wanted to go, wasn't
1:36
incredibly familiar with the industry at that point.
1:39
But what it did offer me was the ability to learn a lot and it
1:43
really kind of fall in love with the, with the industry, what
1:47
we're doing and the focus on the patients.
1:50
And so I just followed my gut in a lot of ways and in, in
1:56
navigating through a couple of large organizations and then
2:00
finding my way into smaller companies where I've been now
2:03
been for almost 20 years, the great majority of that time in,
2:08
in biotechs. And also developing a, an
2:15
interest in rare disease and in neuro.
2:18
And, and also even it within the indications that that I've, I've
2:22
started in, I've developed a, a great appreciation for what the
2:27
patients and the families go through, especially for
2:31
therapies that don't have any disease modify or indications
2:34
that don't have any disease modifying therapies.
2:37
So as I've sort of navigated my way through these companies,
2:43
have found an interest in business development, spent a
2:46
lot of years there doing deals. And as I then went through to,
2:54
to the, you know, the, the leadership route, if you will,
2:59
was introduced to Vico working in disease areas that I was
3:03
quite familiar with, had a, had a strong personal and
3:06
professional interest in. And it's been a great three
3:11
years since I've, I've started here.
3:13
We were preclinic when I started.
3:15
We've now gone through a few years of clinical trials, had
3:18
some interesting results. And, and it's been a great,
3:21
great journey along the way. Not as I said, not exactly what
3:25
I planned, but I wouldn't change anything.
3:27
And, and I've had, you know, honestly, too many great mentors
3:31
to mention along the way. Really at every company.
3:33
I think you can take a little bit out of everybody that you
3:36
work with, whether that's your direct supervisor, your peers,
3:41
or even sometimes your subordinates.
3:43
You can learn a lot from all all of those in a 360 way.
3:48
Nice. And before Vico you worked at
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Lacana Bio Assembly in Lumbek which all had very deep focus in
3:55
neuroscience. Can you talk us through your
3:58
passion for Huntington's disease and where you think the genetic
4:02
medicine space is currently? Yeah.
4:05
You know, it all started actually at Ovation Pharma where
4:08
we were working on rare neurological diseases, including
4:12
Huntington's chorea. There we launched the first drug
4:16
ever for any form of Huntington's.
4:18
That was tetrabenazine, which we got approved by the FDA in early
4:23
2009. We were then quickly acquired by
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Lundbeck shortly after that. And that was my first
4:30
introduction to rare neurological diseases and
4:33
specifically neurodegeneration. Didn't know it at the time, but
4:38
many years later discovered that a friend of mine was diagnosed
4:42
with Huntington's disease. And that renewed an interest in
4:46
me. And I joined a company called
4:49
Locanibio, which was a gene therapy company working on a
4:53
trinucleotide repeat diseases, including Huntington's and
4:56
others. And then the, the opportunity
5:00
with Vico came about as well to go even a bit deeper into into
5:05
the Huntington space and also the spinal cerebellar ataxias.
5:10
The spinal cerebellar ataxias in Huntington's disease are all
5:13
caused by the same mutation, the CAG repeat expansion.
5:17
And so we have a drug at Vico that directly targets the CAG
5:21
repeat expansion. In fact, it's the only drug
5:24
that's currently in clinical development that has that
5:27
specific target. And so, you know, my interest
5:31
really was trying to get at the source of the disease being in
5:35
genetic medicine, and we're directly targeting the source of
5:38
these diseases, the mutation that causes the toxic proteins.
5:43
Yeah. You've worked with so many
5:45
different types of companies before, small and large.
5:49
What was it about Vico Therapeutics that convinced you
5:52
that this was the right next place in your career?
5:56
I guess what made that opportunity in particular stand
5:58
out against others? Yeah, you know it was, I had
6:02
been through a couple of organizations that had been
6:04
similarly sized when I joined kind of in the 10 to 20 ish
6:10
employees and and grew those up to about 75 to about 250 or so a
6:17
couple of opportunities. So when I joined VECO it was
6:20
very similar to that. We had about 20 or so people
6:23
maybe a little bit more at the time and, and I understood the
6:28
playbook right. When you've seen it a few times,
6:32
that is you, you have a better sense of, of how to manage that
6:36
size of an organization and also how to manage the growth of that
6:40
size of an organization, right. You can easily double the
6:43
company pretty quickly. We haven't done that.
6:47
We've been pretty measured in in how we've expanded our team and
6:53
for the most part have been reasonably successful to date.
6:57
But I like the size of a company.
6:59
This is my sweet spot, if you will, if I if I had one.
7:03
You can learn a lot in large organizations.
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It's hard to get the depth in a lot of those organizations in
7:09
addition to the breadth. And you can probably get one or
7:12
the other, but you probably can't get both.
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And in smaller organizations, you can.
7:17
You can get very deep, sometimes too far into the weeds, but it
7:20
doesn't take very long to take a step back and get very high
7:23
level with it as well-being such a a small organization.
7:28
Yeah. And just to delve into Vikos
7:31
pipeline then. So you guys target a unique set
7:34
of neurodegenerative disorders using antisense
7:37
oligonucleotides. Can you talk us through the
7:41
pipeline, the lead program, what makes the approach different
7:45
from others in the space and where do you see it having the
7:48
biggest impact? Yeah.
7:52
Yeah. So you're right.
7:53
We do focus exclusively on Antisensologos for neurological
7:57
diseases. That's where our our research
8:00
expertise and our clinical expertise resides.
8:04
Our lead program is called VO659 and as I mentioned, it targets
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all CAG repeat or what are called polyglutamine diseases.
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There are about nine of those diseases in total that are all
8:18
caused by the same mutation. So VO659 is a bit of a a
8:21
pipeline in a drug opportunity where we can go after multiple
8:25
indications. That's pretty rare in genetic
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disease. Usually it's a single target
8:29
single disease or single mutation single disease.
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So this is a bit different in that aspect.
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And that's in part what makes VO659 quite unique.
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But in addition to that, we're working on a program for Rett
8:43
syndrome, an early stage program in a genetic form of Alzheimer's
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and some very early targets that we haven't fully disclosed yet,
8:51
but are quite interested in as well.
8:54
So when you're pre, when you're a clinical stage company, you
8:57
often get defined by your lead program.
9:00
We often do as well which we understand.
9:03
But there is a a much deeper bench behind that of of AS OS
9:08
that we're developing for other severe neuro diseases that are
9:13
are are similar in size and scope to that of Huntington's or
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the Ataxias. Yeah, very good.
9:21
And as you look ahead to the next 12 to 18 months for Vico,
9:24
what do you think is next for you guys?
9:26
Are there any particular milestones or developments that
9:29
you guys are particularly excited about?
9:32
Yeah. So you know the the last you
9:35
know 6 to 9 months have been pretty exciting for us.
9:38
We've had some clinical data that we presented towards the
9:41
end of last year from the first three court 3 cohorts, 3 dose
9:45
levels of VS659 in the clinic that was that demonstrated that
9:51
we were clearly on target in both our Huntington's and SCA
9:55
patients. And so now we are about to take
9:58
a larger step forward into a fourth cohort where we're going
10:01
to be studying a much larger number of patients over a longer
10:05
period of time both in Huntington's and in spinal
10:07
cerebellar ataxia Type 3 and Type 1 patients.
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What this is really going to enable us to do is look much
10:14
more beyond the on target profile and also look at the
10:17
right dose and dose regimen. So we know that we're on target.
10:21
Now it's about refining it to getting the right dose and the
10:24
dosing frequency rate because we do have a very long half life
10:28
and we think we can give this drug relatively infrequently,
10:31
perhaps as infrequent as every six months.
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And so we were very excited to start actually in the next
10:37
couple of months dosing patients in our fourth cohort where we'll
10:41
be looking at a total of 20 Huntington's patients in 12 SCA
10:46
three patients and up to six SCA one patients over a one year
10:53
dosing period. And so that is coming up here in
10:56
the very near term. We would expect to have some
10:59
interim results from that probably around the middle of
11:02
next year, probably Q3 time frame and then the full data set
11:06
would likely be at the end of next year or early part of 27.
11:11
So those are our immediate focus of things that we're working on
11:15
today and you know, quite excited that we can get some
11:18
additional patients in and also get some data in the not too
11:21
distant future. Nice.
11:24
And I guess just a separate point.
11:25
Are you guys looking at another round within that time or like
11:29
what's the situation on the funding side?
11:31
Yeah. But just like I think everybody
11:33
else in the biotech world, we're we're in the process of raising
11:37
capital as well. So you know that side obviously
11:40
is is been challenging for the last few years really for the
11:43
entire entire market. And I do think that we are a bit
11:49
advantage in the fact that we are in the clinical stage and we
11:52
have some early data. We're now looking to to refine
11:55
that data. And so I think we're probably in
11:58
a better position than than many, but it still remains a
12:01
pretty tough environment. In any case, we are.
12:04
Earlier this year, we kicked off what would be our Series C
12:07
financing. We've raised a little less than
12:09
100 million to date in a Series A and a Series B.
12:13
And now we're planning on our Series C to support the the
12:16
study I just described and beyond.
12:18
In fact, we think that this next raise actually could potentially
12:22
fund us through an NDA submission for our first
12:25
indication. Nice.
12:27
Yeah, That's, that's good to hear.
12:29
I know so many companies are struggling at the moment.
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It's good to hear you guys have made some good progress with
12:35
that. And Vico, so you have operations
12:39
in both the US and the Netherlands.
12:41
How does that geographic footprint shape how you operate,
12:44
collaborate and think about growth, especially when it comes
12:48
to talent partnerships, clinical development?
12:50
I think you see a lot of companies that will maybe start
12:53
in Europe and then eventually get to the US How how have you
12:57
found that from a cultural talent, partnership, clinical
13:00
perspective? Yeah.
13:02
So I, I had worked in in Europe in the past.
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I am, I am based in the US now. I'd worked in Europe in the
13:09
past. So I had familiarity working
13:10
with European companies. So that wasn't, wasn't much of a
13:14
challenge, but I tell you, if it hadn't been for the pandemic,
13:18
obviously a lot of terrible things happened as a result of
13:21
the pandemic. One of the the good things, I
13:25
guess is that we learned how to work a bit remotely or at least
13:28
separated for the most part. And and so that's actually come
13:33
in quite handy here as well. So I can have access to, it's
13:38
sort of the best of both worlds, right.
13:40
Have access to to things that are happening in here with the
13:43
US, the FDA and US investors while the team is, is, is
13:50
progressing the our program in Europe with ADA sense
13:54
oligonucleotides often is the case where drugs will initially
13:58
be developed clinically in Europe or other parts of the
14:02
world and then come to the US no different for us, we're a
14:06
European company. But aside from this, the
14:10
geographical aspect of it, it does strategically make sense to
14:13
to develop this initially in Europe before coming to the US
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and that that is in fact our strategy as well.
14:19
So, so far so good on that front.
14:22
We just have a couple of employees, myself and our head
14:25
of business development in the US, Our Chief Medical Officer is
14:30
in Switzerland, a legacy Roche colleague who had spent many
14:37
years there also in Huntington's.
14:39
And then everybody else though is in the Netherlands.
14:41
And so we're, we're, we're still pretty centralized despite the
14:45
fact that a few of us are in other parts of the world.
14:49
Nice. I was speaking to a company
14:50
based in France and they said having their R&D in France
14:54
versus the US, it saved them like 3040% on, on their costs
14:59
like is. I imagine that's something
15:01
you've noticed quite a lot. Absolutely that, that was a bit
15:04
eye opening. I didn't, I didn't fully
15:05
appreciate that prior to coming to the US but the cost basis is
15:09
quite substantially less in Europe and particularly in the
15:13
Netherlands. And so we're able to to get a
15:16
lot more done with less. Our burn rate is relatively low.
15:19
We have about 35 or so employees now and and people are are quite
15:25
surprised at how low our burn is with that number of employees.
15:29
So it does make sense, not just strategically but also
15:32
financially, to have operations in Europe.
15:36
As well. Yeah.
15:38
And there's, there's obviously some unbelievable talent in the
15:40
Netherlands and in the surrounding areas of Europe as
15:43
well. So.
15:44
Yeah, yeah. One other thing I didn't
15:46
appreciate too. Specifically, we're, we're based
15:48
in Leiden, so just a little outside of Amsterdam and the,
15:54
the Leiden Bioscience Park is, has an enormous amount of
15:58
talent, expertise also specifically in genetic
16:02
medicine, so AS OS and gene therapy.
16:05
Much of that because of the, the Leiden University Medical
16:08
Center, which is right there. And you know, we are a stone's
16:12
throw away from that. We're currently based in the the
16:16
Leiden Bioscience Park And so there's a number of other great
16:20
companies that are, are are in that ecosystem.
16:23
So we certainly take advantage of of our location there as
16:26
well. Nice.
16:29
Just I guess a question back to you.
16:31
So you've stepped into Vico as a first time CEO.
16:36
How has that been in terms of was there any lessons or or
16:39
challenges that you faced along the way, any shifts in
16:42
perspective that may have surprised you as well?
16:45
How, how did you find that transition from?
16:48
Yeah. Yeah, that, that's always a, a,
16:52
a tricky transition, right. And in going into, into the CEO
16:56
position for the first time, I, I got lucky and I found the
17:01
right opportunity, a disease area that I understood quite
17:05
well, a manageable size team. We weren't too big of an
17:09
organization and we knew what we needed to do.
17:14
The, the, the playbook was, was pretty well understood.
17:17
And so I got a bit lucky in coming into a situation like
17:20
that where I, I felt quite comfortable from from the start.
17:27
Of course, we run into challenges, lots of things that
17:29
are unanticipated that you never really planned for that you have
17:33
to adjust there. It's really about having the
17:36
right team around you to help manage through those situations.
17:39
And again, we have a, a wonderful team, our, our CSO,
17:44
our CMO, the rest of our senior team and really the broader
17:48
organization. They've, they've been around the
17:51
block a few times. And so, so they've seen
17:55
challenges as well. And we and we know how to
17:57
navigate those, right. I think one of the, the, a
18:00
couple of the biggest challenges I think facing the market right
18:03
now, one we've talked about is the financing, right?
18:06
Everybody is raising money now, whether you need it now, you
18:09
needed it six months ago or you're going to need it a year
18:11
from now. So everybody's out in the market
18:15
and we're not in the the best environment.
18:17
So, so that's something that we have to adjust and adapt to.
18:22
The regulatory landscape certainly in the US is sort of
18:25
shifting underneath our feet, but we focus on the things that
18:30
we can control. We can't control the the
18:34
financing markets. We can't control the regulatory
18:37
environment. We have to be able to focus on
18:39
what we can actually execute on, and that is developing novel
18:43
therapies, executing on the clinical trials.
18:47
You know that that's what we're good at.
18:49
And so that's where we'll keep our focus and the rest of the
18:52
things will sort themselves out over time.
18:55
Yeah, very good. And this is a question we always
18:58
finish with on the Bio hub. And I know I wanted to give you
19:01
a heads up on this, but if you were to pick three people to
19:04
have dinner with, past or present, who would they be and
19:08
why? Don't necessarily need to be
19:10
biotech innovators, although they can be if you like.
19:12
But yeah, three people for for dinner.
19:17
Well, that's a good one. I'd say.
19:19
I'd probably want a leader, somebody from the leadership
19:22
ranks. Abraham Lincoln certainly comes
19:25
to mind, somebody that can take an incredibly difficult
19:28
situation and figure out how to navigate that successfully and
19:32
try to bring the country back together.
19:35
I'd love to pick his brain on on the moments that he the private
19:39
moments that he went through and, and thinking about that,
19:42
I'd probably select an innovator.
19:46
Thomas Edison is arguably one of the the greatest contributors to
19:52
the modern industrial revolution in, in his inventions and
19:58
innovations that he's made. That would be interesting.
20:03
And then I'd probably select someone from the the broader
20:05
entertainment category. As a bit of a sports fan, I'd
20:10
say probably Muhammad Ali would be a quite interesting person to
20:14
have. He also is.
20:17
I grew up in a town not far from where I grew up as well, the bit
20:21
of a hometown hero in many ways, but also much more than just a
20:25
boxer, a supreme entertainer, a a philanthropist and and
20:34
somebody that is known to tell a good joke every now and then too
20:37
to keep keep the table light hearted.
20:39
So I think that's probably where I'd go, somebody from
20:43
leadership, somebody from innovation and and somebody to
20:45
keep things light and fun. Yeah, good.
20:48
We'll look 3 terrific answers there.
20:50
And thanks for so much for coming on and helping us out
20:53
with this. I think you've given a really
20:55
unique perspective and certainly a company I'm definitely going
20:58
to be following going forward. So yeah, Micah, thanks again for
21:02
helping us out with this. Well, Tom, thanks very much for
21:05
this opportunity. By the way.
21:07
You know, I know I've mentioned this to you in the past.
21:09
I think you guys are doing a really good thing here.
21:11
It's a, it's a nice way to differentiate yourselves as
21:13
well. So very much appreciate the
21:16
opportunity to come on to share more about VECO, to talk with
21:19
you and all the best to you guys and keep doing the doing the
21:24
great work that you're doing.