Latest / The BioHub - by Avetix / Episode 170 - Craig Thompson - CEO at Cerevance

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Episode 170 - Craig Thompson - CEO at Cerevance · The BioHub - by Avetix

• 0:05
  Welcome back to another episode of The Bio Hub by Avetix.
• 0:10
  Today I'm joined by Craig Thompson, CEO of Seravance Now.
• 0:15
  Craig brings more than 25 years of experience across biotech and
• 0:18
  pharma, having held roles at major organisations including
• 0:21
  Merck and Pfizer, as well as several biotech companies.
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  Prior to joining Seravance, he served as President and CEO of
• 0:28
  Nirana Pharmaceuticals and across his career, he's built a
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  deep expertise in team building, drug development, commercial
• 0:34
  strategy, and access and reimbursement, giving him a
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  well-rounded perspective on what it takes to build and scale a
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  biotech. Craig, great to have you with me
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  today. Great to join you Ben and thanks
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  for having me on. Looking forward to it.
• 0:47
  No worries at all. I mean, to begin with, Craig,
• 0:50
  you know, could you just start by walking us through your
• 0:52
  career journey, What ultimately LED you to Sarah Vance and what
• 0:55
  were the key inflection points that shaped how you think about
• 0:58
  building and leading a biotech company now?
• 1:00
  It'd be great to, you know, obviously you cover some of my
• 1:03
  CV so won't dwell too much on all of the past experiences, but
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  I think it's a, you know, really important foundation is I
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  started my career over 25 years ago back at Merck, which was
• 1:14
  just an amazing place to start a career.
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  You know, Merck is really known for a lot of processes and you
• 1:21
  know, the correct way or the Merck way of doing things, which
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  is, you know, an absolutely fantastic way to do it.
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  And I had the opportunity there to work really at the
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  intersection of kind of science and strategy, ultimately working
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  on the pre launch activities for the Merck sharing cloud
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  partnership in Europe. So it gave me kind of a really
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  unique insight into not only the Merck culture, but also at that
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  time the sharing cloud culture, which is obviously now one of
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  how, how do we bring in a new product to market and really
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  create a product to market. And how do we make sure that
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  physicians understand that the science that we're bringing is
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  going to be beneficial to the patients because we're asking
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  them to look at A at a new paradigm.
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  From there I went to Pfizer, which was again, an amazing
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  experience, started off in the respiratory group, you know, had
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  some really good successes, also some failures.
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  And I think one of the biggest things, you know, we can always
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  learn is from failures. So when I was a farmer, I headed
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  up the CETP program, which was for our supposed to be Pfizer's
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  next big blockbuster and tackling the HDL, amazing
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  program, great interactions with the FDA, but really learning how
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  to sell or discuss with the FDA. How do we bring biomarkers into
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  the discussion on when HDL isn't an approved endpoint.
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  So really having great dialogue with the agency on, you know,
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  how can we get on to that point, various other opportunities
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  beyond that. And then eventually I left
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  Pfizer's VP of marketing for specialty care in North America
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  and joined a small company called Trius, which was again
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  just a really enlightening experience.
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  When I left Pfizer, I had over 300 people in my group, sales,
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  marketing, really big strong group and join Trias as I
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  believe was the 32nd employee. Yeah, it was a.
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  Big change, completely different experience and I really credit
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  my success on making that jump to our CEO at the time, Jeff
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  Stein. He just did, you know, a really
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  amazing job of taking a guy who spent, you know, 20 years in big
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  pharma, managing big teams, complex problems and saying, you
• 3:39
  know, you know how to do this, you know, how to move forward.
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  And I think, Jeff, you know, I'll be eternally grateful for,
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  you know, all the guidance and mentorship that he provided me
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  while I was at Trias. And Trias ended up being a
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  company where we did a partnership with Bear for Asia
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  Pacific and then ultimately sold the company to Kibist.
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  So a really kind of nice outcome and you know, as a big farmer by
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  going to little biotech, you're like, oh, this is the way it
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  goes. Great.
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  You know, great science. You build the story around the
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  great science, you get a partnership and then you sell
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  them. Apparently that's not the way it
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  works all the time. So from there I went to Tetra
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  phase working on a grand positive antibiotic and then
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  Anthera working on a really novel product for and then Rana
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  for a key to painful muscle spasms.
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  And then eventually to Serrance, which was a little bit of a
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  different take for me because it was a company that was founded
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  as a platform company and was moving into phase three.
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  So experienced a lot of that in Merck and Pfizer, but really the
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  first time having a platform under my belt at a small
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  biotech. So really great experience for
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  me. So what you know, kind of what
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  led me to the Sarah Banks was just the amazing science every
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  day. You know, when I looked at it, I
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  was first brought in by one of the BCS who was looking at doing
• 5:03
  an investment to help them on their diligence.
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  I just got really excited about the company and the science that
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  they were working on, especially around Parkinson's, which, you
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  know, I know investors are not, you know, super keen on
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  Parkinson's, but it's such a huge amount of need.
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  Yeah, I mean, delving into that a little bit deeper, you know,
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  Cervants has built itself around novel mechanisms and a
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  distinctive way of uncovering targets in the human brain.
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  What really gave you that conviction that this was a
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  company and a platform that was worth building around?
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  Yeah. So one of the things I love
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  about cervants and it's also one of the things that always
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  strives you nuts as well, is the targets we go after are truly
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  unique. So our program, our KC and K13
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  program working upstream of the LRP 3 FL Amazon, when we started
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  working on that program, there was only about a dozen
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  publications in the literature. So you're really going into a
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  kind of really novel science, and it's all driven by a
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  platform that we unlicensed from Rockefeller University.
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  And Xiao Xu, who was the creator of that at Rockefeller, came
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  over and joined our company and now runs that.
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  And really what makes, you know, the platform unique is its
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  ability to gain insights into the aging of the human mind with
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  disease. So what we're able to do is we
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  get postponed in human brain samples and we're able to
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  dissect the cells and from each cell I get the full
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  transcriptome and you're like, oh, that's, that's kind of
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  great. But the, what the power really
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  is is that we have over 26,000 samples across various diseases.
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  So if you say, hey, we're really interested in Alzheimer's
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  disease and we want to see, you know, in a certain region, what
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  cells are either up regular or down regular, we can actually
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  run that analysis because we have don't do dent die of
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  Alzheimer's disease, those who died of something else with
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  early Alzheimer's disease all the way through late Alzheimer's
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  disease. We use a technique called
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  pseudotime trajectory analysis where we can look by cell type,
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  which transcript or which gene is either up regular or down
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  regular as the as the disease progresses.
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  So it gives you really unique insight into it.
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  And then the other flip side of that is, and we do this pretty
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  routinely, is when someone else has a new drug that's, you know,
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  entering in areas such as Parkinson's, we always put their
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  mechanism through our platform. And you say what?
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  Why would you do that? Because it's relatively quick.
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  But what you find a lot of times is drugs fail because of adverse
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  events. And one of the things we really
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  like to do is find a target or a gene or transcription that we're
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  going after that's expressed almost exclusively in one cell
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  type. Right, OK.
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  Right. So if you think of on target
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  side effects, if you're going after a target that's expressed
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  in multiple cell types, you're on target side effects are going
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  to be across all those different cells, yes.
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  Exactly. So that's, that's part of the
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  kind of philosophy we have is let's find and I hate to use the
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  word precision medicine because I think it's way overused, you
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  know, really precisely target which cells are we believe are
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  important for the disease and go after those and go after them
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  aggressively. So pretty pretty unique science.
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  And like I said, it is really leading the way.
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  And I think a good example of belief in that science is we did
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  a collaboration with Takeda looking at diseases for them and
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  then also just finish up a partnership with Merck where we
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  are identifying new targets for them in Alzheimer's as well.
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  So both collaborations went really well and we're able to
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  deliver kind of novel, exciting targets for them for them to
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  look at in the future. Yeah, and that's great.
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  And obviously, you know, you've mentioned Parkinson's a couple
• 8:56
  of Times Now and the area of unmet need that surrounds that
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  was one of the big, you know, attraction factors for you in
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  terms of joining Sarah Vans. You know, whilst it is an area
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  of unmet need, it's also an area where a number of launches have
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  underwhelmed commercially. What do you think that the
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  industry has really misunderstood about what
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  patients, physicians and the market actually needs?
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  Yeah, so I think there's some great therapies coming forward.
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  And you know, I'm a guy that's a cheerleader for every company
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  working Parkinson's because, yeah, at the end, and we all
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  should be this way, you know, at the end, it's about improving
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  patients lives. You know, hopefully we're going
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  to have an amazing product that's going to do that.
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  You know, there's some gene therapies that are getting
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  worked on that are really exciting.
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  There's other modalities being worked on, but you know, as a
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  totality, you know, Parkinson's disease, I think has really been
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  neglected. It really goes back.
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  If you think about Parkinson's disease, the mainstay of therapy
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  right now is dopamine therapy. So leave the dopamine covered
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  up. That was originally launched
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  before you were born. I'm going to guess I'm going to
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  go out on a limb here, but that was launched in 1975 and that
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  that's our mainstay of therapy. Yeah, exactly.
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  There's just been very little additions and new sort of way.
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  Yeah, really. Really.
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  Yeah, really little additions and you know, 50 plus years and
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  your main therapy is still the same.
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  Like guys, we can do better. We are seeing, you know, we did
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  see some improvement. So we had both MAOB and COT
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  inhibitors that stop the degradation of dopamine, either
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  endogenous or exogenous dopamine, which were nice
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  improvements. We also saw the dopamine agonist
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  come on the scenes. But that last class was really
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  introduced in 1999. Yeah, so even.
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  Most innovative classes we have are now 27 years old and they
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  all, you know, approach Parkinson's by trying to
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  regulate the amount of dopamine. And our approach, the one we
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  looked at was how, how do we look at this differently?
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  You know, just regulating dopamine more.
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  We know what the dopamine side effects are going to be.
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  So if you, yeah, put too much dopamine, you're going to get
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  hallucinations, you're going to get orthostatic hypertension,
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  you're going to get the dyskinesias, kind of the random
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  flinging of the arms. And, you know, that's very
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  predictable what's going to happen.
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  So we're really, really inspired by deep brain stimulation,
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  looking at it almost as an electrician.
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  And let's look at the circuitry, you know is interrupt the
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  circuitry or change the path of circuitry so that we can get the
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  desired response without actually touching the straight
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  dopamine pathway, right? Kind of cool.
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  Like if you think about it completely different way.
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  And one of the valuable tools we had was an SC platform to help
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  us identify and look and validate different targets.
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  So the one we go after the novel target GPR 6.
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  So it's AG coupled, protein receptor orphan, GS coupled, and
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  it is almost exclusively expressed in the median spiny
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  neuron of the indirect pathway. And I know a lot of them
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  probably don't know Parkinson's really well, but each way
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  Parkinson's is there's this direct pathway which gives you
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  that accelerating movement, and there's this indirect pathway
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  which gives you the braking movement.
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  Yeah, you get dopamine pushed to both, you get acceleration and
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  you get release of that brick. So the indirect pathway is a
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  negative response. When you lose dopamine, you have
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  less acceleration and more pushing of the brake.
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  That brake is released, if you will.
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  Yeah. So we looked and said, you know,
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  one of the biggest ways to make patients move quicker, again
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  using a car analogy, is if we can take off that brake and, you
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  know, someone in motion goes much quicker than someone at a
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  complete standstill using basic physics.
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  Yeah. So we looked and said is there a
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  way we can go after the indirect pathway and kind of release that
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  brake. And we found GPR 6 which
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  actually combines downstream with dopamine too.
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  And the pathway we're able to actually down regulate that
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  signal by its patients with the opportunity then to get that
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  brake release and for them to be able to move.
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  And the really like interesting thing about that is because
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  we're not taking that dopamine pathway so far in clinical
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  trials, we're not seeing any of the dopamine related side
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  effects. So we're not seeing an increase
• 13:34
  in dyskinesias. We're not seeing the orthostatic
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  hypertensions. In fact, the only adverse events
• 13:41
  we're seeing over 5% in our current phase three study is
• 13:43
  still ongoing. So it's blended data over 5% is
• 13:47
  nausea just over 5%. Yeah.
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  I mean, you know, Speaking of that, I mean, you know, the
• 13:54
  phase three you're currently running, the data that you've
• 13:55
  discussed, you know, appears really encouraging without
• 13:59
  overstepping what you can share at this point.
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  I mean, what gives you the most confidence at this stage of
• 14:03
  development? Yeah.
• 14:06
  So obviously we looked at the blind to blend of data and we
• 14:10
  have a phase two study which looked really strong.
• 14:12
  So our phase two study in the intent to treat patient
• 14:15
  population, we saw about a 1.3 hour improvement and you're
• 14:18
  probably sitting there going well 1.3.
• 14:20
  That doesn't sound all that impressive.
• 14:22
  Almost everything else that's available in the market provides
• 14:26
  one hour or less improvement, placebo adjusted improvement on
• 14:29
  top of government. So every other worlds around
• 14:32
  that when you start to get to the infusions.
• 14:36
  So this is something where you have to have a two but
• 14:40
  surgically inserted into your stomach or you have to put a
• 14:42
  candle into your stomach every day and then you wear a pump for
• 14:45
  18 hours there. You're getting about 1.8 hours.
• 14:50
  And then if you go to deep relation where they put Burrow
• 14:54
  holes in your head and put rods into your brain to stimulate,
• 14:58
  you get about four hours. So that's the landscape.
• 15:00
  One hour is kind of the orals an hour and 3/4 to two hours is the
• 15:05
  infusions. 4 hours can be brain stimulation and the Phase 2 when
• 15:09
  we looked at all comers, we're 1.3 hours.
• 15:12
  When we looked at the patient population that we're going to
• 15:15
  be using in our phase three, we're 1.78 hours.
• 15:19
  So in close at least in the Phase 2 of what would be with
• 15:23
  infusion. So imagine a world where instead
• 15:25
  of having to be hooked up to a pomp and putting a fusion or a
• 15:30
  needle into you everyday, you could take an oral once a day.
• 15:33
  Yeah, it changes the game. Yeah, it's ease of consumption.
• 15:38
  It's just scale. It's it's one of those, you
• 15:41
  know, you don't want to say it's a no brainer, but would you
• 15:45
  rather wear a, a pump and a, you know, and a fusion or would you
• 15:50
  rather take a pill once a day? Yeah, I don't know, I'm biased,
• 15:54
  but so, so that that's the the premise.
• 15:58
  And you know when we're looking at our phase three data, again,
• 16:01
  it's blind to blended. So we know some placebo patients
• 16:04
  are going to have a nice response.
• 16:04
  But you know, generally we're seeing all the data come out
• 16:08
  where we expect it to come out and we're also getting the
• 16:12
  adverse events. So which which is great.
• 16:17
  So you know, we we do feel confident enrollment's going
• 16:21
  well. So we're we're just about
• 16:23
  finished enrollment at this point.
• 16:26
  So you know, as we continue to move forward, we'll continue to
• 16:30
  watch patients as they finish the study and right now we're
• 16:33
  expecting to have top line data in the September time frame.
• 16:37
  Yeah, it's an exciting time. And like you mentioned, you
• 16:40
  know, one of the most striking aspects of the program is its
• 16:43
  tolerability profile. I mean, you know, you look at
• 16:46
  the the low adverse event burden and the nausea rates that
• 16:49
  appeared, you know, notably low. How important is that within
• 16:53
  Parkinson's, especially compared to the other therapies that are
• 16:55
  out there at the minute? So it's really interesting when
• 16:58
  we do market research because you put the profile out there
• 17:01
  and you know, you're talking to prescribing physicians and KOLS
• 17:05
  and you show the efficacy. They get excited.
• 17:08
  You know, 1.3 hours gets them excited, 1.5 gets them really
• 17:11
  excited. And it's interesting, when you
• 17:12
  show them the adverse events, there's a little bit of
• 17:15
  disbelief. Yeah.
• 17:18
  It's like, how do you not have 20% nausea?
• 17:22
  You know, you have nausea and a headache and it's like, well, of
• 17:25
  course you have headache. It's crosses the blood brain
• 17:27
  barrier. But you know, even headaches are
• 17:29
  4%. So there's a little bit of a
• 17:32
  disbelief when you show it just because it's something that
• 17:35
  physicians aren't used to seeing in Parkinson's disease,
• 17:38
  medications with really low adverse events and efficacy.
• 17:42
  Yeah. And that that that must be sort
• 17:44
  of, you know, real confidence builder for you guys.
• 17:47
  Yeah, no, it's super helpful. And the the other nice thing is
• 17:53
  the way the product works is, you know, we talked about motor
• 17:56
  symptoms, so those those movement aspects, but there's
• 18:00
  other aspect of Parkinson's, the non motor symptoms.
• 18:04
  So most patients when they have Parkinson's, one of the first
• 18:08
  signs that they'll go into their physicians and say is, you know,
• 18:11
  I just feel like my gap and go is gone.
• 18:14
  There's an apathy, sometimes there's AGI upset.
• 18:19
  Nice thing with GPR 6 is we potentially also have an impact
• 18:23
  on those non motor symptoms as well.
• 18:26
  Interesting. Yeah.
• 18:27
  So in the phase two study, one of the key areas that you find
• 18:30
  with Parkinson's is sleep disturbances.
• 18:33
  And we saw an improvement in the reduction in daytime sleepiness.
• 18:38
  I know that sounds a little backwards, but we reduce the
• 18:40
  amount of daytime sleepiness in a relatively a small study.
• 18:44
  So kind of another exciting part about the product is we may have
• 18:48
  an impact on those non motor symptoms and we hope to
• 18:51
  elucidate that a little bit more in the kind of upcoming phase
• 18:54
  three study. Yeah.
• 18:55
  I mean, you know, it's a really exciting time and I'm definitely
• 18:58
  going to be keeping my eyes peeled for when when you guys
• 19:00
  release your data towards towards the back end of the year
• 19:03
  and you know, sort of heading heading towards Q4, I guess you
• 19:06
  know, sort of stepping away from what you guys are doing right
• 19:08
  now. Thinking a little bit more
• 19:09
  broadly, how do you think about translating?
• 19:13
  Great science into something that becomes genuinely
• 19:17
  investable and what really separates that interesting
• 19:20
  biology from a story that investors and partners and
• 19:24
  future commercial stakeholders can really get behind.
• 19:28
  Yeah, it's, it's really interesting.
• 19:31
  You know, there, there's some that is just the background
• 19:34
  dynamics of what's going on in the market.
• 19:36
  So as you mentioned, the recent launches that have happened in
• 19:39
  the past have not done well that that is the background and when
• 19:43
  investors and we'll talk to investors all day and they're
• 19:46
  like, you know, really interesting approach you have,
• 19:50
  you know, it looks like the the science is completely different.
• 19:53
  The efficacy you're seeing is probably best in class.
• 19:56
  The adverse events are lower than kind of what we've seen to
• 20:00
  date and then they always get trip back on but nothing else
• 20:04
  has worked. So, so I'd say that's, that's
• 20:07
  always been a little bit of a challenge is when investors in
• 20:11
  the past, things that haven't worked, it's sometimes hard to
• 20:15
  get them to go. And it's not one product hasn't
• 20:17
  worked. It's a couple of products it
• 20:18
  hasn't worked on. So they've had that repeat
• 20:21
  learning. So that is a pretty big, you
• 20:24
  know, hill to get up. It is interesting when we're
• 20:28
  having, you know, potential BD discussions or partnering
• 20:31
  discussions, you know, on the farmer side, they're not as
• 20:35
  jaded by those past experiences and they really, yeah, they
• 20:39
  really dive into the the biology and understanding it and really
• 20:43
  understanding that yes, the other products that came forward
• 20:47
  provided incremental benefits, but they didn't provide enough
• 20:50
  incremental benefits that pairs want to reimburse them.
• 20:52
  Yeah. So they've, they've kind of set,
• 20:56
  you know, for this to be, you know, exciting product we need
• 20:58
  to see, you know, in our case a 1.3 hour improvement or, you
• 21:02
  know, potentially 1.5 hour and then it becomes really exciting.
• 21:05
  So different groups have slightly different perspectives
• 21:09
  on the market, which makes it interesting.
• 21:13
  But the reality is we believe we have great science.
• 21:18
  We believe the clinical data is coming forward, which is
• 21:21
  absolutely fantastic. And now it's the end.
• 21:25
  Yeah, going back to one of the great movie lines is like, show
• 21:28
  me the money. Yeah, you must be sort of
• 21:32
  waiting and waiting for that to sort of penny to finally drop on
• 21:35
  on the other side. Yeah.
• 21:37
  And you know, if we're able to show that efficacy, you know,
• 21:41
  again, I think that will be really game changing because,
• 21:44
  yeah, investors will start doing market research on it and
• 21:46
  realise that, you know, that that is a a very good
• 21:50
  proposition to bring forward. Yeah, exactly.
• 21:53
  I mean, as ACEO, what to you are the most important pieces
• 21:58
  involved with building a biotech?
• 22:01
  You know, how do you balance long term value with the
• 22:04
  pressure to deliver near term clinical milestones?
• 22:08
  Yeah. So kind of three things to focus
• 22:11
  on in biotech and number one part is the people.
• 22:14
  Yeah, it's like you cannot underestimate people.
• 22:19
  One is hire the right people. If someone there that's not, you
• 22:24
  know, fitting into the team, make the decision, move on and
• 22:29
  build that team around a really strong team.
• 22:32
  You know, I'm I'm CEO. So everyone always says, oh, you
• 22:35
  take all the credit. It's like, no, there's, you
• 22:36
  know, a team of people that are doing all this work.
• 22:39
  I just have to be the front guy. But and it doesn't happen unless
• 22:44
  you have a team that's all very focused.
• 22:47
  And I think that's where the role the kind of CEO comes in is
• 22:52
  are the right people, make sure everyone's forward, make sure we
• 22:55
  have focus and then I'll make sure that we have the right
• 22:58
  capital allocation so we can accomplish the mission.
• 23:01
  So I think focusing on those three things is really key to
• 23:05
  it. Relatively simple, relatively
• 23:07
  straightforward. I know everyone likes to make it
• 23:09
  complicated, but it's really people focus capital allocation.
• 23:13
  Yeah, but and sort of each in their own sphere, it may sort of
• 23:16
  seem simple, but once you're combining the three that that's
• 23:19
  where difficulties come. It's finding the right balance
• 23:21
  between all of those because you know, ideally you'd go ahead and
• 23:25
  hire all the right people straight away, but your capital
• 23:27
  sometimes doesn't allow that. So it's finding that balance
• 23:30
  between the three and what really works for you at the
• 23:32
  time. Yeah, and even on the people
• 23:35
  side, you know, I've had situations where, you know,
• 23:38
  we've hired just absolutely brilliant people, but they're
• 23:42
  not great team players. So it's, you know, people is is
• 23:47
  a is an interesting one that really is success or failures.
• 23:51
  So you need to find the right skill set and the right
• 23:54
  personality. Not that you want to make
• 23:55
  clones, which you definitely don't want that you want to
• 23:57
  bring, you know, diversity of ideas and but how do you bring
• 24:01
  that together? And that's I think one of the
• 24:03
  key areas where you can really differentiate yourself is
• 24:06
  bringing that forward. So everyone, you know, builds
• 24:09
  that right team. And then the other one is just
• 24:12
  making sure everyone feels free to speak up.
• 24:14
  Yeah. Again, you hear that in lots of
• 24:17
  companies, and it's not really the case.
• 24:19
  But, you know, if you see something interesting, bring it
• 24:22
  up. Yeah. 100%, yeah.
• 24:25
  And, you know, my, my philosophy has always been, you know, on
• 24:29
  the people side when we're in meetings, you know, I'm just
• 24:31
  another team member. Yeah, not wearing the CEO hat at
• 24:35
  that particular moment. And you know, all throughout,
• 24:38
  I'll call it the silly ideas or the bold ideas, not necessarily
• 24:42
  because I believe that those are going to be where we end up, but
• 24:46
  it liberates people to speak freely.
• 24:48
  Yeah, exactly. You know, I've quite pushed us
• 24:51
  all the way out here. Then you know, how I feel free
• 24:57
  to now say that a great example is when we're working on Trespa
• 25:00
  for raising HDL. You know, everyone's, you know,
• 25:05
  very focused on lowering LDL and we were like, how do we make HDL
• 25:08
  just important? I said, what if we consider it
• 25:10
  like a vitamin? And I remember everyone like
• 25:13
  giggled a little bit. They're like, what do you mean?
• 25:16
  Like you're, you know, this is serious.
• 25:17
  I'm like, of course it's serious.
• 25:18
  But like, what if we think about, you know, it should be so
• 25:21
  intuitive that we want to raise HDL that it's like taking a
• 25:24
  vitamin? Yeah.
• 25:26
  You know, obviously we had issues with the product in
• 25:29
  clinical development, but that kind of thinking of, you know,
• 25:32
  let's liberate people to come up with creative ideas and not
• 25:37
  necessarily what's been done in the past.
• 25:39
  Yeah. And sometimes, you know, you,
• 25:41
  you have that environment and you have that culture when when
• 25:44
  you start out, when you're just building out.
• 25:46
  But the difficulty then comes with, you know, how, how do you
• 25:50
  to grow at the rate that you're needing to grow and make sure
• 25:52
  that you have enough people involved, right expertise, but
• 25:56
  still maintain that culture and environment that you've you've
• 25:59
  fostered over the first couple of years of, of, of founding the
• 26:01
  business. Yeah.
• 26:03
  And and it is tough as you grow because it starts to take on its
• 26:08
  kind of own personality, if you if you will.
• 26:11
  And then, you know, the other part is, you know, I always
• 26:14
  believe lead by example. There's, you know, nothing in
• 26:17
  the company I won't do. You know, everyone always laughs
• 26:23
  is like if someone's computer breaks, you know, you either
• 26:25
  call the help desk or call crack.
• 26:28
  You know, to me it's just, you know, you have to be willing to
• 26:31
  do every job in the company and you should be able to understand
• 26:34
  what those are and then hire really good people to do it.
• 26:37
  But if you've done those in the past and at least you can have a
• 26:40
  conversation and help them solve a problem but also learn from
• 26:44
  their experiences as well. Yeah, no, 100%.
• 26:47
  I completely agree. I mean, just just to round off
• 26:50
  here, you know, we'll finish with the same question that we
• 26:53
  always do. If you could have dinner with
• 26:55
  any scientist or innovator, either past or present, who
• 26:59
  would it be and why? Yeah.
• 27:01
  So I'm not sure if you've had this one before, but Richard
• 27:05
  Feynman. OK, interesting.
• 27:08
  That's not probably what you're thinking from from biotech
• 27:11
  perspective, but you know, you know, as a physicist a little
• 27:16
  bit in the biotech area, you know, some of his thoughts and
• 27:20
  kind of thought process are just absolutely, you know,
• 27:23
  fascinating. His work around kind of
• 27:27
  nanotechnology, which, you know, we're still evolving in biotech
• 27:31
  now is is, you know, incredible, you know, his thoughts and
• 27:37
  thought process around, you know, kind of nano computers
• 27:40
  going in and fixing, you know, systems within the body.
• 27:44
  You know, although space age then probably still now.
• 27:47
  It's just fascinating. His kind of ability to think
• 27:52
  differently, look at the problems differently and always
• 27:56
  have that kind of curious mind of, you know, what else can I
• 27:58
  learn? So I think it would be
• 28:01
  absolutely fascinating just to, you know, whether it was now or
• 28:05
  back in the 1950s or or 40s, that would just be an absolutely
• 28:09
  fascinating discussion to have. Yeah, I completely agree.
• 28:12
  And and I I'd join you on that one.
• 28:13
  To be honest, I'd I'd put up a chair if you'd have me.
• 28:16
  Yeah, yeah. And I was just like, I think
• 28:19
  there's just certain bias of time that you go, how how are
• 28:23
  you thinking just so provocatively and so differently
• 28:28
  than everyone else. So that that would be my dinner
• 28:30
  guest and probably be a really long dinner.
• 28:32
  Yeah, no, Great, great choice. Well, it's been an absolute
• 28:35
  pleasure having you on with me today, Craig.
• 28:38
  I hope you've enjoyed it. Yeah.
• 28:40
  Perfect. Great being on with you Ben, and
• 28:43
  we'll chat soon. Yeah, most certainly.
• 28:45
  Thanks to everyone watching. Make sure you you like and
• 28:47
  subscribe and stay tuned for future episodes.
• 28:50
  Bye for now.