Latest / The BioHub - by Avetix / Episode 98 - Christian Leisner - CEO CDR Life

Transcript

Episode 98 - Christian Leisner - CEO CDR Life · The BioHub - by Avetix

• 0:04
  So welcome back from the episode of the Bio Hub.
• 0:07
  Today we're delighted to welcome Christian Leisner, who's the CEO
• 0:11
  and Co founder of Cdr Life, a biotech company pioneering new
• 0:15
  ways to fight cancer through highly selected immunotherapy.
• 0:19
  Christian's career spun both science and business.
• 0:22
  With a PhD in biochemistry, he helped guide drug development at
• 0:26
  companies like Novartis, Alcon, and ESP Tech, contributing to
• 0:30
  therapies in oncology, ophthalmology and beyond.
• 0:33
  Now at Cdr Life, he's leading the team that's working on an
• 0:37
  innovative platform to engage T cells against some of the
• 0:40
  toughest to treat cancers. So join us today as we'll talk
• 0:44
  through some of the challenges of building Cdr Life in the
• 0:47
  earlier days, Cdr Life's pipeline, as well as the
• 0:50
  advantages of operating in Switzerland.
• 0:53
  So Christian, thanks so much for coming on.
• 0:55
  How are you? Very well.
• 0:56
  Thanks a lot for the invitation, Tom.
• 0:58
  It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, said a pleasure as well.
• 1:03
  So let's just start off with a little bit about your yourself,
• 1:07
  Ed. So can you walk us through your
• 1:09
  journey through the field and share what experiences or
• 1:12
  turning points most influence your path?
• 1:15
  Yeah, absolutely. You know, I can't say that I
• 1:19
  ever had a plan. I think like most people, I've
• 1:22
  been been driven by it, by interests and passions in in my
• 1:25
  decisions. But but in hindsight, I think
• 1:29
  there are there are three key decisions that that I made along
• 1:32
  the way that that sort of comes to mind.
• 1:35
  First one was to enter science. I've been interested in the
• 1:37
  science since I was very young, particular natural sciences and
• 1:42
  I'm still in science. So, so that became a fairly key
• 1:45
  decision. And the second was that at some
• 1:48
  point I decided to move from Denmark, where I grew up and did
• 1:52
  my, my first studies, my master degree to Switzerland to do a
• 1:56
  PhD in biochemistry. And, and, and, and so that's
• 2:02
  another thing that, that, that clearly was important decision
• 2:05
  in, in that I'm still here 21 years later.
• 2:08
  And I think these two decisions probably were both based on the
• 2:13
  same underlying curiosity around discovery and exploration.
• 2:18
  I've always been really interested in figuring out how
• 2:20
  nature works, but also how how other worlds work.
• 2:25
  So, so these were definitely two key things.
• 2:27
  And I think 1/3 fateful decision for me was when I decided to go
• 2:34
  from Novartis where I've been spending some years doing drug
• 2:36
  development and and sort of learning, learning that trade
• 2:40
  and moving from there to a small biotech company in Zurich called
• 2:43
  Espetech that had just been acquired by Alcon at the time.
• 2:48
  And this was important because that's where I for the first
• 2:51
  time met the people that eventually became my Co founders
• 2:55
  here in Cdr life. Very good.
• 3:01
  What was the spark that led you to Co found Cdr Life and how did
• 3:04
  that idea revolve into a tangible mission?
• 3:08
  Well, so, so in Espetech, as I alluded to, I, I got to know
• 3:12
  some, some really impressive individuals and at some point
• 3:17
  Novartis decided to internalize Espetech and basically take it
• 3:21
  in, take this technology back into Novartis.
• 3:24
  So at that point I thought, well, you know, if I could
• 3:27
  convince these individuals to join me, I was also convinced
• 3:31
  that we would really have a chance of, of breaking new
• 3:34
  ground, in particular in the field of multi specifics and,
• 3:38
  and new types of antibody therapeutics and maybe even to
• 3:43
  bring better medicines forward against horrible diseases like
• 3:47
  cancer. So that was really the, the
• 3:49
  thing that that got the whole thing going.
• 3:54
  And So what we did was we, we got together in that small team
• 3:58
  and we started brainstorming, going through iterations the way
• 4:02
  you do when you start something new.
• 4:05
  And, and probably importantly, we made some constant learnings
• 4:08
  in that process and eventually worked our way through to a
• 4:12
  problem that we felt was relevant to work on and where we
• 4:16
  had a chance of actually doing something about it.
• 4:19
  And that's how we came to, to, to basically working on T cell
• 4:24
  engagement therapies going after challenging but much cleaner
• 4:28
  cancer targets than than what has been available so far.
• 4:34
  And and now we've also started doing that in, in autoimmune
• 4:37
  disease. So that's kind of how we got
• 4:39
  going. Nice.
• 4:43
  I know when we first spoke you mentioned that there was
• 4:46
  challenges in building Cdr life from the early days particularly
• 4:50
  there was an idea, but there was no funding behind it.
• 4:54
  What kept you moving forward despite the uncertainty, and
• 4:58
  what or how did you convince investors and partners to
• 5:01
  believe in something at the time that that hadn't been proven
• 5:04
  yet? Yeah, it's completely true, Tom.
• 5:07
  I mean, when, when we started out, we, we in some ways had
• 5:10
  very little and we had no IP, we had no data, we had very little
• 5:15
  money. But we did have a great team as
• 5:18
  I mentioned before. And and we had something that I
• 5:20
  think was probably very important.
• 5:23
  We had an an unwavering belief that that we could actually make
• 5:26
  this happen. And that's quite powerful
• 5:29
  because when you have that, then the rest really becomes a matter
• 5:33
  of finding your way. And and that's a lot easier if
• 5:37
  you have a great team. And I have an example of that
• 5:40
  because when we started out, we had of course our vision within
• 5:44
  oncology and working on T cell engages for solid tumors.
• 5:48
  But we also started a program called Cdr 2O2, which was based
• 5:52
  on the same online antibody fragment technology that we use
• 5:56
  in oncology. But in this case it was a
• 5:58
  program in ophthalmology and I disease program.
• 6:03
  And we had previously developed a new therapy in in
• 6:06
  ophthalmology as well. So that gave us the chance to
• 6:09
  out license that early on to burning Angel Heim and it became
• 6:14
  a great partnership. It was a very early stage deal
• 6:16
  before we even had a, a final molecule.
• 6:19
  And now it's in Phase 2 going really well and it became
• 6:24
  fundamental for us in our startup journey because it gave
• 6:28
  us non dilutive funding, it gave us some validation of the
• 6:31
  technology we're working on. And so with that in hand, we
• 6:34
  could really generate some proof, some preclinical proof
• 6:37
  around our oncology ideas. And with that, we could go and
• 6:41
  close a Series A financing round back in 2022 where we raised 76
• 6:48
  million U.S. dollars and brought in a great investor syndicate.
• 6:56
  Nice, good. And just just to go to the
• 6:59
  pipeline a little bit more, can you give us a bit of a run
• 7:02
  through the LEAD program, so Cdr 404, what makes that unique and
• 7:07
  how could it address potential unmet needs in oncology?
• 7:12
  Yeah, that's completely correct. Our lead program is called Cdr
• 7:15
  four O 4. It's what you could call a
• 7:18
  targeted immunotherapy. It's a teasel engage against a
• 7:22
  very clean tumor antigen called major 4.
• 7:26
  So practically not expressed on normal cells, but but heavily
• 7:30
  expressed on certain tumors. And and this is this is a
• 7:35
  molecule that could be the first major 4 targeting T cell ingator
• 7:39
  based on an antibody scaffold. So there's some real novelty
• 7:42
  around that. It's a it's relevant in
• 7:47
  different types of cancer, including ovarian cancer and it
• 7:49
  could be the first highly selective immunotherapy in in
• 7:54
  cola cancers like ovarian cancer.
• 7:56
  So we think there's a lot of potential here for bringing in
• 7:59
  that kind of immunotherapy, making that available for
• 8:03
  oncologists to start moving it earlier line and combining
• 8:07
  potentially with other therapies if it works well.
• 8:10
  I think it's a Third Point here that's important around that
• 8:13
  lead program. So it's it's the first seasonal
• 8:16
  engage based on our engager technology that we've taken into
• 8:20
  the clinic and it's still early in that phase one trial, but we
• 8:25
  have seen promising data around activity of the drug around
• 8:30
  safety, good safety PK. So it's starting to shine a
• 8:34
  positive light on the technology itself on the platform and hence
• 8:39
  on the subsequent programs that are coming in that pipeline that
• 8:42
  are using the same format. Good.
• 8:45
  And then to Cdr Life has been recognized for its work in
• 8:48
  developing highly selective cancer immunotherapies.
• 8:51
  But recently you've expanded into the autoimmune space as
• 8:54
  well. What prompted that move and how
• 8:58
  does your platform adopts or adapt to target autoimmune
• 9:02
  diseases compared to to just oncology, right?
• 9:05
  Yeah. So the modality itself, if you
• 9:06
  look at T cell engagers or CAR T for that matter, has of course
• 9:11
  been around in in oncology for a while, for a number of years.
• 9:15
  But recently there was some data generated first from academic
• 9:20
  groups and later on from industry showing that these
• 9:24
  modalities also work very well in autoimmune diseases where you
• 9:30
  can use them for example, for eradicating disease, driving B
• 9:34
  cells, the B cells that are basically attacking self
• 9:39
  antigens. And so that prompted us to look
• 9:43
  close at this given that we have the whole technology to actually
• 9:46
  do that. And so we quite quickly jumped
• 9:50
  on that as well and and generated multiple ideas.
• 9:56
  And the most advanced is, is a seasonal engagement that we're
• 9:58
  developing for B cell depletion targeting BCMA and CD 19.
• 10:04
  So it's a Tri specific molecule with first in class potential
• 10:09
  that we are now moving towards the clinic.
• 10:15
  Nice. And looking back over the
• 10:18
  company's journey so far, which milestones stand out as the most
• 10:22
  defining view personally through that through that journey you've
• 10:25
  been on? Yeah, there's been many, many
• 10:28
  milestones, you know, some some some smaller, some bigger.
• 10:31
  I, I think probably two things come to mind, one more strategic
• 10:37
  and and one perhaps more emotional.
• 10:40
  The, the first thing is the, the decision we made early on to
• 10:44
  focus on a clean but challenging tumor antigens without cease
• 10:51
  alligators. That was really game changing
• 10:55
  for us because that I still remember the meeting where we
• 10:57
  decided to do this because that really ensured that we started
• 11:01
  working on a relevant problem and, and, and, and basically set
• 11:06
  the strategic direction for the company back then that we're
• 11:09
  still on. So that was an important
• 11:11
  decision that ibidi remember. And the second thing is when we
• 11:16
  first started treating patients, the first patient we treated
• 11:22
  with our first T cell engager, we actually saw immunological
• 11:26
  activity and we saw an improvement on a tumor biomarker
• 11:30
  in that patient. And we heard from the
• 11:33
  investigator that patient felt better.
• 11:36
  And this really rarely happens at the starting dose in a phase
• 11:40
  one trial, you typically don't see anything.
• 11:43
  So that was quite remarkable. And it was the first sign I
• 11:47
  think for me and and probably also for my colleagues that our
• 11:50
  science, all the things we had been thinking about and working
• 11:53
  on might actually really turn into a a therapeutic.
• 11:57
  So this was really a rewarding observation.
• 12:05
  Nice. And I think particularly the
• 12:07
  oncology field is moving pretty quick at the moment.
• 12:11
  From your perspective, where do you think that field is now?
• 12:15
  What excites you the most about the oncology space and where
• 12:18
  it's headed? Yeah, no, absolutely.
• 12:20
  It is moving incredibly fast. But I think what we have to keep
• 12:26
  in mind is that the fundamental challenge remains unsolved.
• 12:32
  You know, most metastatic Kansas, stage 3-4 Kansas are
• 12:36
  still incurable and some cancers are on the rise in younger
• 12:40
  people even. So we haven't solved that.
• 12:45
  So I think that the speed at which drug development oncology
• 12:49
  is moving right now, while it may sometimes be a bit hard to
• 12:54
  manage for companies and for investors, I think it also gives
• 13:01
  hope to people living with cancer and also to the many
• 13:05
  people that in the future will be diagnosed with cancer.
• 13:08
  Because it's the first time that we have a chance to really move
• 13:12
  fast here and, and maybe even move towards increasing cure
• 13:15
  rates in some of these indications.
• 13:18
  So it is basically the kind of progress that we've been waiting
• 13:20
  for. We just need to to to to find a
• 13:24
  way to manage it really well and and make the right decisions
• 13:28
  along the way. Nice.
• 13:32
  So you mentioned it's a CDL life is a Swiss based biotech.
• 13:37
  I think, I mean we're seeing a lot of companies at the moment
• 13:40
  that are potentially moving their headquarters including B1
• 13:43
  Medicines that are moving their their site over there.
• 13:47
  What do you think are the main advantages of building a a
• 13:50
  biotech in in Switzerland? There are.
• 13:52
  Well, I think, well, I think first of all, I think, I think
• 13:55
  Switzerland is a place where you can really translate high
• 13:59
  quality research into companies. We've seen that again and again.
• 14:04
  It's a highly supportive ecosystem.
• 14:07
  And while Switzerland is a small country, of course, I think it
• 14:10
  is a recognized place as a, as a cradle of innovation.
• 14:13
  You could say. We see that when we talk to
• 14:16
  people globally that that that there is that kind of
• 14:18
  recognition Switzerland, that's just very helpful.
• 14:21
  But I think there's something else which is very important and
• 14:24
  more practical aspects when you're building a company like
• 14:28
  we've been doing, and that's talent, that's people.
• 14:33
  I spoke before about how critically important it is to
• 14:36
  get the right team in place. And you have a lot of people in
• 14:41
  Switzerland in life science that are really well trained.
• 14:45
  There's big farmer presence, there's biotech presence,
• 14:49
  there's really high level academic institutions all
• 14:53
  containing very well trained people.
• 14:57
  So I think this just gives you a big pool to tap into.
• 15:00
  And we've never really had trouble hiring here the way I
• 15:04
  sometimes hear from from from peers in in other places.
• 15:09
  And I think Switzerland is a place that's for many attractive
• 15:12
  to live. And that also means it's it's
• 15:15
  easier to attract people from the outside, easier to retain
• 15:18
  them once you have them here. So this is an incredibly
• 15:22
  important aspect. And I think if you, if you
• 15:24
  believe that that people make the difference for, for
• 15:27
  companies like ours the way I do, then a place like
• 15:32
  Switzerland becomes very important for your success based
• 15:36
  on the fact that you can access this kind of talent.
• 15:41
  Yeah, fine. I think for someone that works
• 15:44
  in the the talent industry, I would, yeah, certainly agree.
• 15:47
  There's some awesome people there, obviously big pharma,
• 15:49
  biotech, I think from someone that does recruitment, yeah,
• 15:53
  there's certainly a lot of very talented people there.
• 15:58
  I'm speaking your language Tom here and.
• 16:02
  Yeah, I think you are. And then just to finish with, I
• 16:07
  know I wanted to give you a heads up on this question, but
• 16:09
  if you were to have dinner with any free people, who would it be
• 16:14
  and why? It doesn't necessarily need to
• 16:15
  be biotech innovators, although can be if you like.
• 16:19
  But yeah, any free people you choose for dinner.
• 16:22
  Yeah, you're not. This is probably the hardest
• 16:24
  question of, of the ones I've been asked here.
• 16:26
  And because there, there there's so many to choose from and so
• 16:29
  many that I'd love to, to meet and talk to.
• 16:32
  But I guess, I guess what, what comes to mind is that we live in
• 16:36
  a world that's changing at a pace right now that we haven't
• 16:39
  seen before. And, and if I had that kind of
• 16:44
  of wish, I guess I would love to dine and talk with some of
• 16:47
  history's great explorers and visionaries just to get their
• 16:51
  view on where we are headed. And so, you know, people that
• 16:55
  come to mind for me is, are people like Abraham Lincoln,
• 16:58
  right, who lived through tumultuous times in the US back
• 17:01
  then and was able to break down complex situations like the ones
• 17:06
  that we're living in now. Another person who comes to mind
• 17:10
  is Hans Rosling, who was a Swedish professor in
• 17:13
  international health and he wrote a book that I can warmly
• 17:17
  recommend called Fact Fullness, where he made some important
• 17:23
  reminders about how much better the world has become in the last
• 17:28
  100 years and doing that based on facts and analysis.
• 17:32
  And I think that's a really important thing to keep in mind
• 17:36
  as we worry about where we are headed.
• 17:40
  And I think thirdly, you know, I'm a biologist and, and I, I, I
• 17:43
  cannot not say Darwin, right? I mean, you know, that's
• 17:48
  basically probably the reason why I entered biology studies
• 17:52
  was because of the the theory of evolution.
• 17:54
  And I would of course love to meet a person like that, one of
• 17:57
  my heroes, and, and hear how he actually came to that theory
• 18:02
  back then. So that that should be an
• 18:05
  interesting conversation. Yeah.
• 18:09
  Nice, but look, 33 great answers there and I think just the
• 18:14
  progress that you guys have made with the Series A and just, you
• 18:17
  know, bringing the the idea to where it is now.
• 18:19
  I think you're doing an awesome job with CDL life and certainly
• 18:23
  a company. I'm I'm definitely going to be
• 18:25
  following much, much more in the future for sure.
• 18:27
  So yeah, thanks again for helping us out with this.
• 18:31
  It's been a, it's been a pleasure.
• 18:33
  No thanks. Thanks very much, Tom, Really
• 18:36
  appreciate it. Thanks a lot for the great
• 18:38
  questions and and I appreciate the conversation we've had.
• 18:41
  Thanks very much.