Latest / The BioHub - by Avetix / Episode 215 - Kathleen Gallagher - CEO at Atrium Therapeutics

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Episode 215 - Kathleen Gallagher - CEO at Atrium Therapeutics · The BioHub - by Avetix

0:06
So welcome back to another episode of the Biohub, the
0:09
Avetics podcast. Today, we're thrilled to welcome
0:11
on Kath Gallagher, who's the President and CEO of Atrium
0:14
Therapeutics, who are a newly launched biotech company focused
0:18
on developing next generation RNA medicines for rare genetic
0:22
heart diseases. Atrium Therapeutics launched in
0:25
February this year and was spun out from Avidity Biosciences who
0:28
were recently acquired by Novartis for 12 billion.
0:32
In this conversation, we'll discuss Atrium's pipeline,
0:35
including their lead programme, which is targeting rare genetic
0:39
cardiomyopathies, the next critical inflection points for
0:43
Atrium over the next 12 to 2412 to 24 months and pulling off a
0:49
financing rounding in such a tough market.
0:52
So, Kaf, thanks so much for coming on.
0:54
How are you? Thanks so much for having me.
0:56
I'm doing great. How are you doing?
0:58
Yeah, good. Thank you.
0:59
It's a, it's a pleasure to have you on.
1:02
So look, Kathleen, let's just start off with a little bit
1:04
about your journey through the field and and how you got to
1:06
where you are today. So you've built your career
1:08
alongside the evolution of RNA therapeutics.
1:12
Can you just talk us through your journey through the field
1:15
and and ultimately how you got to where you are today at
1:17
Atrium? Yes, of course.
1:20
So I've now listened to a few of your podcasts, and I have
1:23
started to learn that all of us have kind of strange ways of
1:26
getting into the biotech field. Mine certainly fits into that
1:30
category. I essentially fell into the
1:35
biotech space because my college roommate was a biochemist.
1:40
She called me at one point right after we had graduated and said,
1:43
hey, working at this biotech company, we need our front desk
1:46
receptionist. Would you want to come here and
1:49
answer the phones until you find a real job?
1:51
And I was like, yeah, sure. Sounds great.
1:54
So I started at this company, Merrimack Therapeutic.
1:56
I'm sorry, Merrimack Pharmaceuticals.
1:59
And I ended up staying there for 13 years.
2:01
And what I did in that period of time was, you know, really, I
2:06
had so much incredible experience.
2:09
I, you know, was the first an executive assistant.
2:12
I was looking for a role in communications.
2:14
And the CEO at the time had said to me, I can't give you
2:17
communications today, but if you'll be my assistant, I'll
2:20
kind of teach you business and eventually you can run our
2:23
communications team. And Bob was a great mentor for
2:27
me. So I was all in and I ended up
2:29
staying there. We did multiple rounds of
2:33
private financings. We were able to take the company
2:36
to public. We also had a drug approval in
2:41
the United States in second line pancreatic cancer.
2:43
So, you know, what was kind of a random job at the beginning
2:48
ended up being this incredible journey and experience of
2:52
learning so many things about the industry.
2:55
And I was really in this lucky position where because I was so
2:59
close to the executive team and I really sat at the executive
3:03
table most of the time in my career.
3:06
I understood how the business ran and I got to have all sorts
3:09
of opportunities that you wouldn't necessarily have in a,
3:13
you know, in a big company or even in just a more advanced
3:16
company. So in that time, I ended up
3:20
really learning a lot about investor relations, but I also
3:23
did things like certain years, you know, we didn't have anybody
3:26
to run the strategic planning process.
3:28
So I jumped in and ran the strategic planning process and I
3:31
really got to understand the industry, the board, and the
3:35
investor community quite well from that experience.
3:39
Merrimack had an amazing company culture.
3:42
Unfortunately, the company did not survive.
3:45
So after my time at Merrimack, I ended up at a company called
3:50
Exia Therapeutics. Anexia was this amazing next
3:55
chapter because I had been working in oncology and I'd been
4:00
working with antibodies my entire career at that point.
4:03
What Ixia introduced me to was RNA therapeutics, and also it
4:07
brought me to the rare disease space.
4:09
And those were two things I had not had any experience with, but
4:13
I absolutely fell in love with. You know, the RNA therapeutics
4:17
was just this incredible mechanism that I just hadn't
4:23
experienced before. And working with rare disease, I
4:27
got to meet so many patients and their families and really
4:31
understand what it was like to be living with these different
4:35
diseases. In my first couple of weeks that
4:37
Ixia, we hosted a session and the disease we were working on
4:42
was called familial chylomicronemia syndrome and
4:45
I'll never forget that within that first week I was in a room
4:48
and there were probably about 7 or 8 patients.
4:51
There was an ultra rare disease and it was such an emotional day
4:55
because these patients had never met someone before that had
4:59
their same disease. They'd never met anybody who
5:02
would have been through the same journey that they had.
5:05
It was so moving and it really framed for me what it means to
5:11
be in the rare disease space that these people who have felt
5:15
alone for a long time not find community and hope in a therapy.
5:21
And that really helped to shape my career in terms of wanting to
5:25
stay in the rare disease space. And I see I got this incredible
5:29
experience of getting to work on two different RNA therapeutics,
5:32
one for HATT, R1 for FCS. And you know, we launched the
5:38
JTTR program in the US, we launched the other two, the
5:43
other programs we launched in both in Europe.
5:46
So it also expanded my understanding of what a
5:49
commercial launch looked like outside of the United States.
5:52
And so it was really building upon all of that knowledge.
5:55
I also had an entirely different network of people, and that was
6:00
a great experience and really opened up my mind to, you know,
6:04
frankly, the Genzyme world that I had not been a part of before.
6:08
I started to get to know a number of people that were in
6:10
that face. And then I left Thea, you know,
6:14
in 2020. It was right at the beginning of
6:17
the pandemic. I was about to have my third
6:20
daughter, and we were heading into March 2020.
6:24
And I, you know, took a bit of a break from the, the just to kind
6:29
of stay home and frankly help educate my kids while they were
6:32
home from school and all of those things.
6:34
And in January of 2021, I ended up joining Avidity Therapeutics.
6:39
Now I have worked with Sarah Boyd, the CEO of Avidity, as
6:42
well as Mike McLean, the CFO of Avidity.
6:45
We've all worked together at Avidya and so, you know, joining
6:50
Avidity was this great opportunity to marry these two
6:54
things together because I could learn so much about rare and RNA
6:58
therapeutic, but also they were using antibodies to deliver.
7:02
And so that was actually bringing in first experience I
7:05
had with Merrimack too, and it just felt like the most destined
7:09
for me to be in this space. Avidity was an incredible,
7:14
incredible experience. You know, the people, the
7:16
culture and the difference we were able to make for patients
7:20
was and still is a bit mind blowing when you really get to
7:25
think. When I get to reflect on it,
7:29
after the first couple years of still leading investor relations
7:32
and communications, I had been talking to Sarah and saying, you
7:34
know, I think I love my job, but I do feel like I'm ready to move
7:39
into something different. And I've, I've done so many
7:42
things at this point, I understand the process and I
7:45
don't really know where to go in terms of what the next step
7:48
would be. And so Sarah said to me, well,
7:50
we're hiring a global program head for our my atomic dystrophy
7:53
program. Why don't you take that role and
7:56
see what you think about that? And that was an amazing
8:00
opportunity, which of course I had to say yes to.
8:02
So I then completely shifted gears, moved out of
8:06
communications and investor relations and ended up being
8:09
really on the development side. But the way that we framed those
8:13
roles at Avinity was also that you were, you worked with
8:17
picking that you worked with the commercial team, you were in the
8:20
development team, you managed all the preclinical stuff that
8:23
was going to. So it was this real very
8:27
broadview of what a development program needed to be.
8:29
And I got to lead that team as we launched the phase three
8:34
program for the Harbor trial, which is still ongoing today.
8:39
After about a year of doing that, I then moved into the
8:44
Chief Program officer role, which was my final role at
8:47
Avidity. And it really felt like that had
8:50
been a culmination of all the different career journeys I had
8:54
had at that point because now I was overseeing all of our global
8:58
programs. I was able to oversee FSHDD, M1
9:01
and DMDI, also took over portfolio strategy and program
9:06
management. So I got to really get into the
9:09
team structure and also dig a little bit more into the early
9:12
stage pipeline and how we were thinking about that and how we
9:15
were prioritizing. And I also took back the
9:18
corporate affairs function, which was patient advocacy and
9:22
communications and policy. So the CPO role was this really
9:27
great broad role of multiple functions.
9:30
And I was doing that up until Novartis came and acquired
9:35
avidity. And when that happened, this
9:39
opportunity came to move into the CEO role.
9:43
And it, it did feel a bit like a natural progression because I
9:46
had kind of continued to build on my experience over the years.
9:51
And one thing that I had really kind of taken for granted was
9:54
that by sitting in the investor relations for so many years, I
9:59
just had this very different understanding of what the
10:01
strategy of a company was, how to handle the board of
10:04
directors, you know what, how to spend your capital, how to raise
10:08
capital. And so all of those things
10:11
together, including then having this multifunctional experience,
10:16
kind of really well suited me to be able to move into this next
10:19
chapter at Atrium. And obviously it's a new Co
10:23
atrium. So for for people that may not
10:25
be as as familiar with the company, how, how would you
10:28
break down the company's mission in a way that captures both the
10:31
scientific ambition and also the real world patient impacts that
10:35
you guys are trying to go after? Yeah.
10:39
Well, we we did try to actually state our vision in such a way.
10:43
So the vision of the company is to pioneer RNA therapeutics for
10:47
the heart and profoundly improve people's lives that are living
10:51
with cardiac disease. And you know if we kind of take
10:55
a step back the avidity story, what we were able to do there
11:00
was take RNA therapeutics and their biggest challenge had been
11:03
delivery outside of the liver. So even though you knew that RNA
11:07
therapeutics could make this big impact, you were only able to
11:10
target diseases that you know started in the liver.
11:14
What we are able to do with avidity is blow that space open
11:16
and all the sudden go into neuromuscular diseases.
11:19
And with Atrium, we are now able to take that same learning and
11:27
knowledge and apply that to the genetic cardiomyopathy space
11:31
that what is so exciting about this next step in Atrium
11:36
division is the genetic cardiomyopathy space is.
11:40
So it's really an open field Today.
11:43
We are at the tip of this beer in terms of thinking about how
11:46
to target the underlying causes of these diseases.
11:50
And at the end of the day, a number of these patients are
11:53
incredibly sick, right. So when you think about the
11:56
three opportunities or the three pillars of 1 Atrium strategy,
12:01
the 1st is really pioneering this RNA delivery technology
12:06
into the heart. The second is keeping this
12:09
really focused pipeline. We have four programs, two of
12:13
which are named and 1:00 will be entering the clinic or I'm sorry
12:16
will be filing an IMD for in the second-half of this year.
12:20
The second will be filing an IMD on next year and we have a few
12:23
other programs behind that. And it really gives us the
12:27
chance to focus in on those cardiology programs and genes
12:33
that today people don't have any treatment for.
12:36
And that really brings us to the third color, which is there is
12:40
such a clear unmet medical for patients in this space.
12:44
Don't hear about genetic idiomyopathy.
12:48
What we're talking about is, you know, often the story you hear
12:51
of a young person who suddenly has a heart attack, but they're
12:54
a marathon runner or, you know, a major who has a heart attack
12:58
in the football field, right. These are largely genetically
13:03
driven and what we are able to do with the technology we've
13:07
worked on at Atria is to deliver the therapeutics that can
13:12
actually target the underlying 5 where today we really have some
13:17
back management for their for their disease.
13:20
Amazing. And yeah, obviously Atrium had
13:24
emerged from Avidity Biosciences.
13:27
Could you just talk us through I guess the decision making
13:30
process on and explain why these sort of cardio cardiology
13:33
programs were better positioned to succeed in an independent
13:37
company rather than with a larger company?
13:39
Like what was the thought process there?
13:42
Yeah, Yeah, of course. I mean it is difficult to, I
13:45
don't want to speak on behalf of Novartis in terms of what their
13:49
strategy is. I do think that the cardio
13:52
programs aren't 100% aligned with their strategy, especially
13:56
given that they tend to be in much rare diseases.
14:01
What I can talk about is what a small company can do and bring
14:05
to that community. And you know, when you are
14:09
pioneering a new technology, there is a lot of big bold
14:13
thinking. There's a lot of risk taking.
14:16
You have to have a lot of agility and flexibility to be
14:18
able to move quickly, to respond to data.
14:23
And all of those things are really what biotechs are made
14:26
for, right? They have that ability to be
14:28
more flexible to really react. And I think another thing that a
14:34
small company brings is our ability to fully engage with the
14:39
patient community and that is a key pillar for us at Atrium.
14:44
You know, already we've only been here, we've only been
14:47
around for almost just a little over two months at this point.
14:50
We've had a couple of patient speakers already come.
14:53
We've had a number of patients weigh in on how we're doing our
14:57
clinical trial design and there's so much benefit that we
15:01
can get to that, that just being smaller allows you to do.
15:08
And so we, the other thing to keep in mind here is that these
15:11
are novel regulatory pathways as well.
15:14
So, you know, there isn't really a definition of what the trial
15:19
needs to be for a PRKA G2 syndrome.
15:22
And in a small company, you can kind of take on that risk of
15:26
developing that path, working with the FDA to think about what
15:30
that might be. And all of those things are just
15:35
very clearly in the wheelhouse of the biotech sector.
15:38
It's it's, it's kind of our bread and butter and, and why we
15:41
get to do this. So it is a great opportunity to
15:46
apply all of the learnings that we have from building affinity
15:49
to this next cardio map of the space.
15:52
Yeah, for sure. It sounds super exciting.
15:54
And you guys obviously launched with with a quite a significant
15:58
amount of funding to hand. How did that, that money sort of
16:02
shape your first 12 to 18 months in terms of of team building
16:06
pipeline prioritization and and in what is a challenging funding
16:11
environment as well? Yeah.
16:13
Just talk us through like what that capital allows you, you
16:16
guys to do as well. Of course.
16:18
So the 270 million was part of the transaction.
16:22
So you know as when when Atrium was founded on day one, that was
16:27
essentially part of who we are from the Novartis transaction.
16:31
And that is an incredible privilege.
16:34
It is something that I will never take for granted because I
16:38
have been watching and, and seeing how many companies are
16:43
struggling in this environment. And at the same time, having had
16:48
grown up in investor relations, you know, working to raise those
16:52
funds like blood, sweat and tears, right?
16:54
I, I, I earn every one of those dollars.
16:57
And so I've been always very thoughtful in terms of how we
17:00
were going to spend them. And I think when you grow up in
17:03
that environment, you kind of have to take that with you.
17:06
And so that is part of who I am, I think as a person as well.
17:10
And really thinking about that funding and how do we deploy it
17:14
in the absolute best way to support our science and to
17:17
support problems for patients. And that is, you know, kind of
17:22
the core tenet that we are utilizing as we're setting up
17:25
the company, building our strategy, prioritizing our
17:28
programs, and even, you know, rewarding our teams in terms of
17:33
how are we thinking about setting our goals and, and
17:36
making sure that all of us are on the same page and moving
17:40
forward with the same goal in mind.
17:42
So it is an incredible privilege.
17:45
I am so grateful for the strong start that we have had.
17:49
I think that the investment community also can see that,
17:53
that in terms of conviction and, and how they are looking at
17:57
Atrium, you know, they know a number or they know a few of our
18:00
team members because we had worked with a number of them
18:04
when we were at Avidity. In fact, you know, the structure
18:08
was that for every 10 shares of Avidity that you had, you got
18:11
one share of Atrium. So a number of our shareholders
18:15
from Avidity have come with us over to Atrium, which is
18:18
fantastic. So we have some good solid
18:20
relationships with these folks. They understand how we work.
18:24
They understand the underlying technology that we're utilizing.
18:28
They know that we're very thoughtful about how we spend
18:30
it. And I think they also know that
18:35
the team we have in place has a strong background in RNA
18:39
therapeutics in rare disease and we're not afraid to pave this
18:43
path that need a lot of work to actually bring these
18:48
therapeutics to the cardiomyopathy space.
18:51
So that is something we have continued to hear from the
18:54
investment community as well. Yeah, for sure.
18:58
And let's just delve into the pipeline a little bit more,
19:01
included the LEAP programme that targets rare genetic
19:04
cardiomyopathies. Can you just give us a high
19:07
level overview of the pipeline and what specifically about
19:11
these diseases makes them well suited for an RNA based
19:15
intervention as well? All of these programs are very
19:19
intentionally perfect for RNA therapeutics.
19:23
What each one of the programs in our pipeline has is essentially
19:28
what we would call it a toxic gain of function.
19:32
What that really means is that there is a gene that is
19:35
overexpressed that they're just just your body is creating too
19:39
much of it. And our goal is to knock it
19:40
down. And that is the exact spot where
19:43
RNA therapeutics play an incredible role.
19:46
So just spending a minute on the PRKA G2 program, we call that
19:50
ATR 1072. That is for PRKA G2 syndrome,
19:55
which is a rare cardiomyopathy that is in patients.
19:59
You know, it's about 1:00 to 2000 patients is our best
20:02
estimate in the United States. So it is quite a small patient
20:05
population. It's also a dominant disease.
20:08
So if you meet one family member with it, you tend to find that
20:12
an entire family is impacted by this disease.
20:16
It brings an incredibly heavy burden for the patients.
20:19
It's it causes heart failure, it can cause sudden cardiac death.
20:26
Patients will talk about the fact that they live with a lot
20:28
of anxiety around 1. How is it going to impact them?
20:33
How is it going to impact their family members?
20:35
And they don't have today any treatments that actually target
20:39
the underlying cause of their disease.
20:41
With this disease in particular, patients often end up having to
20:46
get a pacemaker, for example. And so it's pretty invasive
20:50
treatments today and it's still not actually stopping the
20:54
disease from progressing. So for ATR 1072, what we are
20:59
doing is targeting the root cause of this disease and we are
21:02
knocking down PRKA G2 with the hope of really just normalizing
21:07
it. It's not that we need to knock
21:08
it out completely. We just wanted to kind of come
21:11
back to a normal level. And the hope there is that if we
21:15
are able to do that, we can really either stop or even
21:19
hopefully reverse some of the disease symptoms that we're
21:22
seeing for these patients. This is also a devastating
21:28
disease because it often impacts people in their their first
21:31
symptoms are frequently in their teens or early 20s and they are
21:35
often not diagnosed until their 30s or 40s because again, it's
21:39
rare disease. So it takes a long time for that
21:42
diagnosis to happen. And that diagnosis journey is
21:45
long for those patients. So you know it really it is a
21:50
disease where there is a high impact to be had in terms of
21:54
really being able to deliver them a therapeutic that can help
21:57
both these individuals as well as their family members.
22:01
And that that program is entering the clinic second-half
22:03
of this year. Our second program is, is for
22:08
phospholamin or PLN is how we refer to that As for PLN
22:12
cardiomyopathy. Similarly that is also a disease
22:16
where it's having an over expression of of a gene and what
22:21
we are doing is knocking down PLN to again kind of normalize
22:25
that. What happens in in these
22:27
patients is that they often have cardiac death, the muscle is
22:33
really impacted and often times they end up having to have a
22:37
heart transplant because that is really the only option.
22:41
It's an incredibly difficult option for these patients to
22:44
have. There are no treatments for that
22:48
as well. Everything today is symptomatic
22:50
management. And so our program ATR 1086 is
22:56
to target the underlying cause of that disease as well.
22:59
We have two programs behind those two that we have not named
23:03
yet, but they are also in rare genetic cardiomyopathies where
23:07
we're utilizing our RNA delivery platform to knock down a gene
23:12
that is expressing itself or it shouldn't be.
23:14
Amazing. It sounds exciting.
23:16
And like the space that you guys are in, I guess just RNA
23:19
therapeutics generally is becoming increasingly
23:22
competitive. You see more and more companies
23:24
trying to get into this space as well.
23:26
When you look at Atrium, what what would you say different
23:30
differentiates you guys versus maybe some of the other
23:33
companies that are in the field already?
23:35
Well, I would say that first of all, competition is a good
23:39
thing. It is good for companies because
23:41
it keeps us on our toes, keeps us thinking fresh and makes us
23:44
look at things from different perspectives.
23:47
But more importantly than that, it's really good for patients
23:49
because if we can get more and more therapeutics to these
23:52
patients who today have nothing for them to go from no, no
23:55
therapy to choices, that is an incredible gift for these
23:59
communities. So I do think it's actually a
24:02
great thing that we're seeing so much competition in the RNA
24:05
space in terms of how we are differentiated though for
24:09
Atrium, you know, our platform technology is, you know, what is
24:15
called the AOC platform or antibody oligonucleotide
24:19
conjugates platform. And you know, given the work
24:23
that we have all done at Avidity, we have a lot of
24:26
experience with this platform technology.
24:30
So we've treated, you know, hundreds of patients with Aocs
24:36
over the last number of years with all different diseases.
24:39
We've treated patient populations that also have
24:42
cardiomyopathies associated with them.
24:45
So we really understand, one, how this platform works.
24:48
But two, we really understand the safety profile that we are
24:51
working with for patients. And I think that that is a real
24:54
competitive edge, you know, just to put it into context, the
24:59
antibody and the linker so that the way the AO CS are set up,
25:03
there's an antibody, there's a linker, there's an siRNA.
25:07
And for all of these programs, they all use the same antibody
25:10
and linker. So the only thing that we are
25:12
switching out is really the RNA therapeutic itself.
25:15
So that level of knowledge and understanding about the platform
25:19
is incredibly helpful as we go into a new disease setting.
25:23
So even though, you know, we've only historically been in
25:27
skeletal muscle, the heart is in fact another muscle.
25:31
And we have a good amount of experience knowing that we were
25:35
delivering to the heart in these other patient populations and we
25:39
understand what the impact is there and that we can deliver
25:44
and that we haven't found any safety issues today.
25:48
I think the other things that Atrium has going for us is the
25:52
team here has been in the RNA space for a number of years.
25:56
We are deep in the rare disease community as well.
26:00
And we have strong capitalization as we just talked
26:03
about, right? And all of those things
26:05
collectively put us at a competitive advantage for sure,
26:09
because there's a lot more certainty in terms of how we can
26:11
approach this. And as I think about the real
26:15
secret sauce for Atrium, it is our ability to engage with the
26:19
patient communities and really bring them into the process.
26:23
Yeah, amazing. And as you look ahead over the
26:26
next 12 to 24 months, what are the next sort of critical
26:30
milestones or inflection points that you guys are most excited
26:34
about? I would assume that now that you
26:35
have the funds and yeah, from all of that side, it's probably
26:40
more about execution and making sure that you're delivering.
26:44
Yeah. We are very excited because even
26:47
though we are just in our infancy as a company, our first
26:50
program will be pushing to enter that into the the clinic as
26:53
quickly as possible thereafter and really starting to generate
26:56
data in these patients quickly. And then beyond that, we were
27:01
looking at 2027 filing our second Ind for the PLM program
27:06
or ATR 1086. So we are moving at a very fast
27:10
clip in terms of progressing this pipeline.
27:14
And in addition to that, we're I think we're also very excited
27:17
about bringing these next programs forward too.
27:21
And so we're doing a fair amount of investment in moving those
27:24
along to kind of have a future eye and deep as well.
27:27
Yeah, that's exciting. And as you look at around like
27:30
the culture that you're trying to build at Atrium as well, just
27:34
talk us through like how you're going about trying to design the
27:36
culture. It sounds like you've working
27:38
with a lot of the people that you have done with Avidity.
27:41
So probably naturally it's it's quite easy to to to yeah, to
27:45
build the culture and know how it works with people.
27:47
But yeah, what are some of the non negotiables you're trying to
27:50
instill early on? Maybe if you look at people who
27:53
are joining who haven't been from Avidity or haven't worked
27:56
with you guys previously, what, what are the types of people
27:58
that you're trying to look for and the culture that you're
28:01
trying to build of? Course, you know, I feel
28:03
incredibly lucky that every company I have worked for has
28:06
had a really fantastic culture. And the reason for that is that
28:10
every CEO I have worked for has put so much thought and
28:14
investment into that culture. And for all of us, one of the
28:19
first things that we did when we found out we were able to have
28:22
this incredible opportunity is we sat down and we started
28:26
thinking about what are all the things we'd like to take with us
28:29
from Avidity, What are all the things we'd like to leave behind
28:33
and what are the things that we want to be just new for Atrium.
28:37
And we have been very thoughtful and intentional about that.
28:40
Before we even spun out, we had already defined what our three
28:43
core values were going to be as a company, which are creative,
28:47
brave, respectful. So we have already put quite a
28:51
bit of energy into this and I think it's something that you
28:55
have to constantly nourish as a company.
28:58
One of the other first things we have done is we brought the
29:01
entire company together. We do actually have our first
29:04
employees that are not avidity employees, which has been great
29:08
and they're wonderful new voices to add in because there's all
29:10
things, you know, we're all disruptors at heart, but when
29:14
you disrupt together for a long time, you want to bring in other
29:17
disruptors too. And so it's been nice to add
29:20
some additional voices and cultures in.
29:23
We had what we are calling the Founder Summit a couple of weeks
29:26
ago because we're in this unique positions where on day one we
29:31
had close to 50 employees, right?
29:33
You don't really see that very often.
29:36
And what we have been talking about as an organization is that
29:40
all of us together are founding this company.
29:42
No one individual is doing that. We're all employee number one
29:46
and it's up to us to build the culture together.
29:49
So we had this Founders Summit and we did some very important
29:52
things to really launch us all on the same point.
29:57
So first of all, we did a whole session on innovation and how to
30:01
think differently and how to push ourselves beyond what we
30:03
had known. Because of course we're doing
30:06
things one way for a long time, innovative, but we do have to
30:09
think of them differently. We are a different company and
30:11
we're A50 person company, not a 500 person company anymore.
30:14
So we put a lot of time into that.
30:18
We also spent time looking at the values of creative, brave,
30:21
and respectful. And we had our team spend time
30:25
defining what did that look like at Atrium.
30:27
How do we want those behaviors come forward?
30:30
And now all of us are responsible for holding
30:33
ourselves and each other accountable to really living
30:36
those values. Because for me, culture is
30:40
something that you can't define. It is defined by the values and
30:44
the people in an organization. So if we divide, if we define
30:48
the values themselves, we can create an amazing culture to
30:52
work in. And one of the other things we
30:55
did at this Founder Summit is we're doing something that's
31:00
bigger than ourselves, right? Already the work that we're
31:03
working on has the opportunity to change lives, but we're also
31:07
part of a community and you know, we're part of the San
31:10
Diego community and we did a service project together as a
31:14
team too, to really give back. So that was something that we
31:19
all enjoy. We stuffed bags for this
31:21
organization that make sure that children who are going through
31:24
cancer treatment have snacks so that when they come out on the
31:27
other side of their chemo treatment, we're oftentimes they
31:30
had to fast. They had food and snacks.
31:34
And one of the things that was such a clear, a visible thing
31:39
for me around who the people at Atrium are is we wrote little
31:42
notes of these kids and we, we all drew pictures on them.
31:46
And people put so much love and energy into making sure that
31:50
each one of those cards was special for each one of those
31:52
kids to open it. And those things say a lot about
31:56
a company. And if you can keep everybody
31:59
focused on the same vision, living by the same value, you
32:04
know, do incredible things together as a team.
32:07
And that for me has really been something that is important.
32:12
We have fun together, we have to serve together and we have to
32:18
challenge each other. And I think for me the only non
32:22
negotiable is that if someone's not living up to those values,
32:25
they don't belong at Atria. And luckily we have really
32:29
phenomenal people and, you know, we together are working out with
32:34
that culture we've over the coming years.
32:36
Yeah, amazing. I love that.
32:39
And like you, you're obviously you've stepped into the CEO role
32:42
for the first time as well. How have you found that?
32:46
I know you've only, you've only been in the seat for what the
32:49
last few months, but has what been some of the most unexpected
32:52
challenges or or learning curves that you've you've found in in
32:56
being in the CEO seat? Well, you know, it's funny
32:59
because for most of my career I was prepping other people for
33:02
these interviews. I wasn't having to do them
33:04
myself. And so that's been one kind of
33:07
fun learning curve at all of this is having to sit on the
33:10
other side of that and listen to somebody else coach me and think
33:13
about how to really approach the media out or approach investors.
33:18
That's been a fun and interesting challenge to not be
33:21
the one doing that, but actually to listen to others and take
33:23
feedback and and also understand what it's like to be in a very
33:27
different seat from the one that I had been in for the last 20
33:30
years of my career. So that's been kind of, I'm kind
33:33
of joking, but it's also been kind of fun to sit in a
33:36
different seat in that front. I think the other thing is, you
33:41
know, in my last role as the CPO, I was very much an
33:44
operator. So I was in it every day with
33:47
the teams. We were, we were really doing a
33:51
lot of work together. And I of course, I ran a number
33:53
of functions. So I couldn't be that deep in
33:56
any one thing, but I was certainly in it with them on the
34:00
day-to-day basis. And as CEO in the shift to go
34:04
from you're not really connected to anyone function or one
34:08
program, you're in charge of all of it.
34:10
And I think that that's been one of the biggest differences, but
34:15
also a really exciting one because I I just get exposed so
34:20
much more as ACEO than than I did as ACPO.
34:24
Yeah. And this is a question that we
34:27
would always finish with as well.
34:29
And I know I wanted to give you a bit of a heads up, but if you
34:32
to sit down and have dinner with any free people from past or
34:35
present, who would you go from? Why?
34:38
It doesn't necessarily need to be biotech innovators, although
34:41
it can be if you like. But yeah, free people you'd like
34:44
to to sit down and have dinner with.
34:47
I'm going to admit none of mine, but I love this question.
34:52
It's such a fun one and there's two things that I didn't mention
34:57
in my background. I'm a theatre nerd and I'm
34:58
English major, so the first person on my list was Lin Manuel
35:03
Miranda. He is an incredible, just a
35:07
force in terms of thinking about musical theatre, but theatre in
35:11
general and what he has done for Broadway has just changed the
35:17
game. I would love to be able to sit
35:19
with him and pick his brain around, you know, really just
35:22
even thinking about how he got the courage to do the number of
35:26
things that he has done. He's brought so much diversity.
35:29
He's brought all different types of music to the Broadway stage
35:34
and that is incredible. So I would love to sit with my
35:37
mom, Miranda, if I could. The other person you know from
35:41
the English major background is Jane Austen.
35:45
She was, as I think back on her, what an innovator for her time,
35:49
right? I mean, she was an author.
35:51
She was sitting and watching the world around her and giving a
35:56
full commentary on it. And she did it in such a subtle
36:00
and thoughtful way. It would be so fun to kind of
36:04
hear the background story of ma'am.
36:06
What was it like? And was there a Mr. Darcy that
36:08
you had in mind? I mean, you were writing some of
36:10
these characters. The third one for me was
36:14
Michelle Obama. Or is Michelle Obama?
36:17
Because I have read some of her books and I just find her to be
36:20
such an inspiration. One, she's done so much as an
36:24
individual, of course, she did so much as first lady, but she's
36:28
also really human. And I think of her as this, you
36:32
know, as a, you know, a woman, ACEOA, mom of three girls,
36:37
right? There are times you're the CEO
36:40
and there are times you're just mom or times you're just
36:42
someone's wife. And I've always found that to be
36:45
something very authentic with Obama as well.
36:49
And how she has shown up as, you know, a lawyer, a mom, a wife
36:53
throughout her career, a daughter.
36:55
And so it would be someone else that I would love to see.
36:57
All three of them are real immigrants and disruptors of
37:00
their time. And this was a fun question to
37:03
get and to to just sit and think about.
37:06
So thank you for that. Yeah.
37:09
But look, I love all three of those answers and look, thanks
37:12
for coming on and helping us out with this.
37:14
It sounds like what you guys are are building off off the back of
37:18
the success at Avidity is going to be super exciting and
37:21
certainly accompany a lot of people I'm sure will be
37:24
following as well. So yeah, congratulations on on
37:28
launching with with Atrium and yeah, I'm looking forward to
37:31
seeing that the progress and next inflection points that you
37:34
guys make as well. So thanks, Kathy.
37:36
It was a it was a pleasure. Oh.
37:37
It's such a pleasure to meet you.
37:39
Thanks so much for having us on. I really appreciate it and look
37:41
forward to sharing the story as we move ahead.