Latest / Lab to Lives / Male Fertility in The Human Being Room w/ Chiara Chianese

Transcript

Male Fertility in The Human Being Room w/ Chiara Chianese · Lab to Lives

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Laugh to Lives, the podcast where we ask, how do we get great ideas out of the lab and into people's lives?
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: Your hosts are Alexander Bou, Piara Kian East, and Ivana Olsen Dai Uchida.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: We are improv comedians who also work in life science.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: On this show, we invite guests from the industry to give us their bold take on how we could get more health with less waste.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: So whether you're developing a next generation drug, innovating in medic or just curious about how healthcare moves from discovery to impact, welcome to Lab2 Lives.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_03: Hello everybody and welcome back once again to another episode of our favorite podcast.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_03: We are sure your favorite podcast, Lessons Be Shy, the world's favorite podcast, Lab2 Lives.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_03: Everyone's laughing with joy here at just how popular we are.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_03: And you can hear two voices laughing away in the studio today.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_03: The first one is, of course, our usual host, Ivana.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: Woo! Hello, welcome to me.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_03: And the second is our guest for today, who is Chiara.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_03: Chiara, say hello.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, hello everyone.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_03: Well, the first thing that we always like to do on this show is to get a little introduction from our guest.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_03: So, Chiara, tell our wonderful audience, enormous audience, who you are and uh and what you do in taking uh projects from labs to lives.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so my name is Chiara, originally Italian, practicing being a Dane since 2021.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's been five years now.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well integrated, I think.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Still uh not really used to the summer not being actually summer, but we'll get through that.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: I my my background is actually wet lab.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: I did my PhD in genomics.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: I was working in male infertility, a very niche topic.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: And after some couple of many years, actually seven years working in the lab, I realized that my personality was not that of a lab person.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: I was around too many tubes and not too many people.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I quit my job in a lab that was quite isolating and went to school and went to business school to do an MBA.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: So throughout my career, I've been this person at the interface between science, scientific work, and business.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: But also during my MBA, I discovered my entrepreneurial essence and I founded back then in 2019 my first startup.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: And actually it was a chat GBT for infertile patients, but nobody believed in AI being used as emotional support for people back then because chat GBT didn't exist yet.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: So it was very tough to kind of find fundings.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: But then because I was working in the space, I was headhunted by faring pharmaceuticals and moved all the way here to Denmark because that was the requirement.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then after a couple of years of faring, I started working in Novo Nordisk in the strategy and delivery team in AI and analytics.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then last October, I was one of the famous 9,000 people who were laid off from Noble, and that's where my I had to kind of uh reset and re-resettle everything back.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: And since March, I've been working with my co-founder Ivan on a new startup, which is called Orby Grants, and we're basically making grant writing and grant management accessible to everyone.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: And at the same time, I am organizing the I'm the chair of the global STEM women in in Denmark.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: So we're having this event next May, and I'll be the founder and the organizer of this.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_03: That's in a nutshell.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_03: No, that's right.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_03: That's a that's a fantastic nutshell, a huge journey of a of a nutshell.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_03: It's that's amazing.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, perhaps you've already answered the question.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_03: We also have a follow-up question for our guest, which is we have a theory here at Lanta Lives, is that there's five main pillars, five main set sections of of this journey that people tend to fit into.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_03: One of them is research and development, another is sort of production and and manufacturing, another is commercialization, then there's the uh regulatory compliance side, and then there's the corporate side.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_03: So which of those categories best fit you?
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: Today I would say I'm uh ahead of the the pipeline, so I'm in the um facilitating research by closing the gap between funding and research, as I would say.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd be uh I'm in that space.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_03: Amazing.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_03: So then, well, let's get into the meat of the podcast.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_03: We also like to start things off by asking everyone here, what have what have we all been thinking about?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_03: Are there any big topics on our minds right now in terms of this labs to life lab to lives journey?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: For for a good while now I have been like following the general femtech evolution and developments within that space.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: Recently I have been thinking about well, what is the male equivalent?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: Like what is the mentech, what is happening for like male reproductive health.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: And then funnily enough, I recently a a person reached out to me on LinkedIn wanting to be a guest on this show who does exactly that.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_02: They have created a medical device that deals with male erection problems.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, oh my god, here it is in my inbox.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: Here is uh the the the mintech equivalent of femtech.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: It exists, and it was interesting because his his note was almost like apologetic.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: He was he was like, I I'm I I'm sorry, but we have built this and it's pretty good, and we want to come come on our show and talk about it.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: So uh I have been thinking about mintech and like is it niche?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: Is it strange?
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: Is it femtech or is femtech actually something different from mintech?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like I want to time in because you know, my whole background, my whole PhD was in male infertility, and for all the years of my PhD, which was four, I was always confronted with the with the question, but how important this actually is?
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you even looking at it?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: If if anyway, you know, there there is some research uh that you know the egg can actually adjust or and any spermatozoa problem that men can have.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so there was a lot of research that we're not going into men's or reproductive medicine because it was not as important as women's health.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I guess in this case, it's quite interesting because we often hear how women's health is so not funded and everything is men's focused.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: But when when it comes, at least from my experience, when it comes to reproductive medicine, actually, there's very little that has advanced and has done in male in male reproductive medicine.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say that then, to your doubt, I think they're quite different.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: Also, because we're really talking different systems, different cells, different mechanisms, everything is different, different brains.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yet there is one thing that I think they have in common, which is not so molecular, it's not the molecular level, but it's the mental health.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's that's something that it's widely neglected.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that feels to me a bit unfair.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: For example, when I was working with a male infertility, I was doing this huge next generation genome sequencing analysis for men, and we had to ask men where they were coming from.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so I had this five-minute window talking to these men, and that was the the only five minutes where these men could finally release tears, stress, tension.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because outside, because we are in a men world, men feel this pressure to men up, to be strong, to be the tough ones.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: But actually, when it comes to reproductive medicine, in my case, uh, what I can talk about is infertility.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: It can really be very hard on men.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, this is my two cents on what you just said, which me think, yeah.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's interesting.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_03: It makes me think how much health outcomes or health interventions can be even, I don't know, I guess soft-selected or or coded based on sort of societal expectations.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the the other thing I was thinking of on the reproductive side, you know, a lot of the focus is is much more on women than than men, obviously, but there's a a negative side effect, which is that I think the general impression when a couple has infertility problems is that I think a lot of the the spotlight tends to zoom around to the to the woman to start off with, and that that's not always the case, and I think it's more rarely the case than that sort of is actually the truth of the treatment.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_03: So it's interesting how in many directions the way we've set up these societal expectations or patriarchal expectations, sort of create negative health outcomes from both sides of the equation.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you think what you mentioned that though the focus is on women, which can also be quite deleterious for women, because they become the only ones that might that we might think they're the have the problem.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so they go through a lot of tests that might be not necessary because we don't look at men at the same time as we look at women, which not only is a burden for the woman, it also delays the couple's goal of having if we're talking infertility, and also we miss the opportunity of learning more about what's happening in the men.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that's also why I think for men there is so much very little progress when it comes to reproductive medicine.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so there's like this is this a certain certain unfairness that affects both genders in this case.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: I was gonna comment that for the majority of uh the population, the reproductive system has to involve a man and a woman.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: And that is actually the full system.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's uh the you gotta like tie a loop around both individuals for it to be a system.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: Looking at it isolated is not not quite complete.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, I mean it there's the other side of this, right, as well, which is the the do we call it the anti-fertility system?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_03: The um hormonal pill was invented in the in the whatever the 1960s or became available then at least I suppose.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_03: You know, where are we for really equally sort of biologically focused interventions for men?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_03: And actually I I've seen a lot of commentary recently about how it's not that some of these interventions aren't coming through or or or being sort of created, it's that a lot can't get regulatory approval because the side effects and and all of this sort of stuff, but the side effects of yeah, the hormonal pill are also enormous.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_03: But it was just approved back in the 60s or whatever, and so almost seems it's accepted because fertility is seen again as as the domain of the woman much more than the man, right?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_03: And uh and it leads to these weird inequalities in healthcare.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it is also it's not just society imposing this, but the men themselves are not so for once informed, but also not really keen into going in and getting tested.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: It feels embarrassing and it's totally understandable.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes also I think involving educating people about certain realities can make something more normal for them and also make sure that they don't feel weird or wrong for going get tested at the same time, for example, as the woman.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_03: I mean it's interesting.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_03: I also fell into that trap recently as as I guess the representative of men on the podcast today.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_03: Uh because uh yeah, well, exactly.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I go running quite a lot and I uh overdid it slightly, and I uh I got a well, what I'll say is I got a stress fracture in in my metal tassel.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_03: I say that, I haven't been to the doctors.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_03: I kind of self-diagnose this and have been self-treating it um through resting, basically.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_03: But it's also interesting in this lab to life journey, right?
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_03: Which is that we can create the best intervention in the world.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you know, I'm sure there's treatments to accelerate the healing of methatarsal bones, but I people have actually got to go out and access it.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: I I will say that you're not alone, Alex.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: I I had a a situation where I was flying to Princeton for work, and then when I when I landed, I I fell ill and had to like lay down on a bathroom floor in Newark airport, which is well, not a desirable thing to do in usual circumstances.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_03: I've been to Newark Airport and I would not trust the bathroom floor.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: And yet my partner was with me, my fiance, and he was like, Well, like that that is uh unusual.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: You have to go to the doctor, and this is uh five weeks ago, and I still haven't been.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: So, and a part of it is it's it's over now, like the situation is gone.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_02: I just probably need to uh get a better grip of myself and like stop fainting.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_02: Control it, damn it.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we do have to take a step back, and you know, what a what a breakthrough in medicine medicine, the just don't do it method implementing the ending.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_03: It's changed the world, we're all living better because of it.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_03: Also interesting.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, with these discussions with men around around fertility and their mental health.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_03: Was there anything coming out of those discussions that indicated what might help people in that situation?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I was talking to this men, I was just, you know, the the the person in the lab getting their numbers and their their information so that then I could make my Excel sheet with all the information and then do the statistics analysis.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: Years later, I went to the MBA.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: So there I learned about entrepreneurship.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually had to Google the word while I was there because I had no clue what that was.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, I was the only scientist in the whole class, 70 people.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: I was the only scientist and with no business background, so it was really quite embarrassing.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: And now I tell the story very proudly.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: And when I Google it, you know, when you translate it to Italian, it's uh imprenditore.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, we have some characters in Italy, like Berlusconi or then Trump, and they are imprenditori.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: So like, oh my god, oh my god, I do not want to learn this.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: I don't, you know that.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: But then we had this amazing teacher, and he was telling us, you know, an entrepreneur is anyone who finds a problem in the society and gets obsessed with it and wants to solve it.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: In that moment, like, oh, actually, and I my brain went back to those years in the lab with this mess like, well, that was actually something that would be nice to solve because those people were really suffering.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how the idea of uh 30 bot, that's how the name of my chatbot was, uh, came up.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: It was how how to support people throughout their journey.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, what came out from conversations, also, you know, I was pretending to be the chatbot.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I had a number of conversations with hundreds of people that would sign up.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: And most of them eventually were women, but you know, because men don't want to engage so much.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: But what they really needed was someone to talk to without being either corrected or reassured or pressured, and also just not humans because they didn't want to be embarrassed in front of them.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was at a workshop that was about smart cities, and there was introduction of what a chatbot was.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, wow, this sounds like such a great idea to have, you know, you just thought on your phone, you're talking with your childbot, nobody has to know, and you can do it at any time, especially because a lot of these patients had anxiety and they would wake up in the middle of the night just because I don't know, you just come, you know, when you're anxious, it happens.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so having something to talk to was uh what they actually wanted.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: And this was interesting to me because as a completely novel entrepreneur and as a scientist, I was like, I want to build this super app that has all the scientific information that is a super high-tech.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I actually asked people what they wanted, it was like, well, actually, we just want a doctor that's decent when we talk to them.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: I just wonder what my mom to remind me that I'm not, that she's not a grandmother yet.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: I just want to not confront people about this.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that actually patients started telling me what I needed to put into my solution.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, that's to the answer of your this is my answer to your question.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: There was there was this need for not being pressured or and don't feel need to talk without feeling embarrassed afterwards.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_03: That's great.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's also it's almost like you're creating there a separate room they can go into that's like, okay, this is the this is the non-patriarchy room, right?
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_03: You can go in here, you can you can not have the yeah judgments and and everything else and and just talk.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: I must say though, most we most users of the when I started, you know, marketing a little bit were women eventually.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_02: Men were still reluctant, but oh but that is such a good question, like both in in healthcare, how do we get people to go go to the room where the treatment is available, but also maybe it does require that we go through the human being room first.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like if we feel ourselves and if we are allow ourselves to actually experience what's happening in our bodies and not just shrug it off somehow, then it might be easier to go into the the the healing room.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and it's a useful question all the time is is what are the bounds of healthcare?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_03: And I say this because the the UK right now, if you don't know, is is kind of once again asking itself this question because uh for a long time we've had the National Health Service, and this the question that keeps coming up is should we have a national care service?
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_03: Because we've got a lot of old people in the UK or people with disabilities or are in some other form of say end-of-life care, and there isn't a very good care structure there for them.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's very underfunded, it's it's not necessarily the best standards, and that has a healthcare impact.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_03: That means that yeah, the care that people are getting in a in a say end-of-life home or or things like that impacts you know how often they go to the hospital if people like have bed sores or or you know, just catch the flu or or this kind of thing.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_03: And so there's this real question of well, should the social care aspect also be treated like the healthcare system?
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, because they're not entirely separate.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: But it sounds like prevention having to be a bit more prioritized and yeah, it might be a bit controversial, but I do think that prevention sh is underestimated from an institutional and system perspective.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: I I think there's also an aspect of is a thing you said earlier, Alex, about standard of care, that it has become institutionalized that it is uh women who take care of the contraceptive duty in a couple.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_02: We have also a a similar like expectation for what does care look like in a society.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_02: For example, in in Denmark, dental care is subsidized, but it is not completely covered by the state, which is normal in Denmark.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: But I when my American uh fiance moved here, he was like, Why not dental care?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: Like, why everything else, but like specifically not uh dental care.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_02: So it's funny how like whatever we are used to and grew up in becomes the norm.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's it fascinated for me a long time that it's the same in the UK.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_03: Sort of everything counts as health care except for your eyes and your teeth, and that's that's somehow separate part of your body.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_03: Doesn't seem to seem to count.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it it was actually the opposite in in the US where it like when when I was stationed there, dental care was part of the health plan, but female reproductive care was not a part of my insurance.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: Where I was like, okay, that is that why?
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, it depends on I I guess it says a lot again about where societally we're drawing the lines on on what is health and and topic relevant for us because that again, coming back to the previous point, impacts well who is accessing.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: Who's able to access these great new innovations that we're putting out there, even?
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that last step from okay, you've developed the thing, you've gone through all of the regulation, you've you've is it been adopted into market, but is is anyone actually using it?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_02: I would actually be curious, Kara, because you mentioned that the solution that you built, that it was too early, like no one believes that this would become a a big deal.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: I'm curious whether you think it would have been different if you had built that yesterday.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think so.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was a matter of I mean, I was in the wrong time, I think.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: Or maybe wrong time and maybe not in the in the right place, full fully right place, because I mean Chat Gbiti, I think, you know, OpenAI and everyone, all those companies they started seriously coming and putting out their models, maybe 2020.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: When I started building 40 bot was 2018.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: That was the first time I heard about uh actually what is a what is a chatbot.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: And the way I built it was, yeah, I was just I used uh like a tree system platform where I could basically tell the system, okay, if the person clicks yes, then you'll have to go to this other bubble that asks this other question.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then they can type in, and if they say the word meditation, then you link them to this meditation, for example.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I I feel that if it was clo at least closer to the, you know, AI is coming and it's doing it's gonna be a companion for for people, it might have been easier to, at least at the beginning, to get fundings and to get investments, which I never actually got.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: Everything I I managed to do was by testing with actual clinics.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: I did my first pilot, but they were very skeptical about this.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I think timing matters a lot when you're building something new.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: But of course, there's another thing that I must be honest about.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: I also didn't have the best partner in terms of um co-founder, in not being he was excellent in many ways, but we have very different values.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I was this scientific mind-minded person who wanted to help people.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: I was doing in my MBA.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: I had just completed my MBA, but you know, it gets some time to get that business acumen.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: And he was only business.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: We have to sell this in two years, and then and so there was this pressure of selling or doing things that I didn't really fully embrace in a way we can just tell people that this solves issues.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, no, we haven't proved yet that yet.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: So that was a bit a struggle, and then also I this is something I have worked myself, I've worked on myself, is keep believing in the solution, even though people keep telling you that it's not gonna work, it's not, it's very unlikely that the people are gonna use it, but I can internalize what others tell me, and so that's uh that's a personal trait of well, actually, if I insisted, because I did really believe in it, and there were some cases, like there was already a company doing psychological therapy through AI.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it was it's it's still and it's still thriving.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's called WISA, and actually they accepted to work with me in terms of building the infrastructure for my chatbot.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I I just had to be more persistent, resilient.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then the truth is that when fairing pharmaceuticals, the NASA of infertility contacted me, said, We're gonna come to Denmark, and then you can do all you're doing in fairing.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: All the stress of being underfunded, burning out, working a full job to pay the bills, and then let's just keep staying in the afternoons and working on the startup.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: All of a sudden I had the opportunity to kind of live an easier life while still doing something meaningful.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: So then I was like, you know what?
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: This is happening for a reason.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: All my scientific vibe went this is happening for a reason.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: I must I I have been called, I must go.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: But it's more like rationalizing, like, yeah, I can get paid to do similar, to work in a similar space.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: But there is a part of me that kind of regrets giving in, just the tiny part, because then of course there were so many other beautiful things that happened afterwards.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I I was really attached to my to Ferdi Bot, and now I see everyone using AI for anything, including myself.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like, ah, I just should have just been more consistent, you know, like believe in uh in the idea more.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_02: But there is a piece about healthcare innovation that I think makes it hard for individuals to really break through because healthcare innovation is usually complex and it depends on the structures that we are part of.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: And and we in like the startup world sometimes treat healthcare innovation companies as though they were building like food delivery apps and expecting them to like to be able to turn a revenue in two years.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, in two years you haven't even figured out how to integrate like to the major hospital systems yet.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_02: It takes longer time and it takes stronger to find a business model that is sustainable.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_02: So I I think we need like a separate category for healthcare innovation.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, that makes that makes sense, and it can be quite discouraging while you're in it because you're trying to do all the good things and you're really trying to help.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then the fact that you're continuously misunderstood and asked for things that cannot happen yet, it's it's really tough.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: But I yeah, I totally agree.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: It should be a different system, different way of uh evaluating these.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: But of course, then there is the the money thing.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: Say, when will I get my return on investment?
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the whole all comes back to that thing.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I mean, I also tend to think perhaps the change needs to come a little bit from both sides.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_03: As a scientist, it's important to be to understand the difference between a technology and a product.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_03: But I think that from the money side, the investor side, quite often that money comes with unrealistic expectations, perhaps, around timelines and risk and and you know, not absolute return on investment, but when that return on investment might happen.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_03: And it's a big challenge in in healthcare in particular, because these things need a little bit more time to be to be nurtured and to grow.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_03: How we make those two pieces meet in the middle, I think, is a big challenge of this journey as well.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: We need some deep pockets and we need like a bunch of the information that's sitting, like not the information, the knowledge, the know-how that's sitting within like these big healthcare institutions.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_02: We somehow need to marry that with good ideas, the people who can see what is actually coming and what is going to be a big deal three years from now, that no one can see it.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_02: Somehow, like there has to be a another room where those parties come together and it's not it's an unprotected room where ideas can exchange for the benefit of humanity.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_03: I was thinking about this.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_03: Is it a different room or is it not just the same room?
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_03: It could still be the human being room, right?
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_03: And I say that because I also think that there's a dynamic there.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_03: If you're a scientist-led startup trying to get funding in, there's always this power dynamic between you and you know, these hotshot investors with loads of money and everything.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_03: And that can make it quite difficult even to have a truly sort of grounded conversation on what this technology needs.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas if you can go into the human being room and then you're just two people having a chat, you know, it's much easier to say, hey, look, come on.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_03: Two years, we're not gonna do anything.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_03: It needs to be four or five or or six or or whatever.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_03: And maybe that means that you can't invest and fine, but we need to at least approach this with uh some presumptions around the reality here.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_03: So I think it's the human being room again.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I completely agree.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: I always think when when we're talking about what is needed and maybe it's the know-how, the technology and the money, but actually a lot of it has to do with the human uh bias and human essence.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: And also what you mentioned, Alex, kind of if you just put off the mask of, oh, I'm the business person, I'm the scientist.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: But it's also true that some of these, you know, this let's call them title set scientists and business person.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: They also come with the some personality traits, right?
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: So the scientists are attached to their ideas, they find something super interesting and they go after it, no matter they don't care about what other people say, they want to do that.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the business is more like, okay, I need logic, I need this to work, I need this to give me a return investment.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: So they're very rigid.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the challenge is also to make these two types of personality come together and actually talk to each other in a way, and I'm saying this with all the because I have I am that person.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: I've been the scientist who thinks that business is mean and doesn't understand anything, and I've been on the business side thinking that scientists are just distracted all the time with all the beautiful ideas that they have.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I say this with the with all the love that I can to both sides.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: If we all put our ego a bit to the side and we're just like open to actually listen to the other, then we might learn from each other and we might make innovation easier.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's just sometimes it's really just about a conversational way, a matter of communication to get things to be clear or find a common ground.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, what what I really like in there also is your is your masks metaphor.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_03: Frequent listeners will know we are a fan of metaphors on this show.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_03: We love them.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um yeah, well, but I feel like that's a little bit what we've talking about, been talking about all episode is is the limitations that we put what's possible by putting masks on ourselves and others, right?
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_03: You know, me as a stupid man injure my foot and because I've got my I'm a man mask on, uh I don't go to the doctor.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_03: Or, you know, we put a mask on on uh on our partners and say, well, our female partners and say, well, you know, they're the responsible for contraception.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_03: Or we put you know a mask on the healthcare system itself and say, well, yeah, you know, it's responsible for the the liver and the heart and the spleen and the and the bones, but teeth, absolutely not.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean you can live without teeth, let's say that.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_03: As a person who um enjoys soup, but not that much.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: I probably and and back to the prevention part.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_02: Teeth is actually like a great example for how we've we we actually managed to get prevention into the healthcare system.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: I remember my uh great uh grandfather for his 14-year-old birthday, his father gave him the gift of having all of his teeth pulled out and and getting dentures because then he wouldn't have to suffer through all the teeth rotting.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: Problem solved.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_03: My grandma was the same.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_03: No, she had all of hers pulled at like something ridiculous, like 18 or 20.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_03: She just had them all taken out and then she had dentures for the rest of her life.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_03: That's how they used to do it.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_03: That was prevention in those days, right?
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_02: But but now because we actually take care of our teeth, like we can keep them for life, hopefully.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, hopefully, yeah.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_02: But it it is a good metaphor, the taking of masks off and finding each other as human beings.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I was also thinking about our like the hypothesis we have in lab to lives about the the five pillars or the five value streams of a pharmaceutical company.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_02: We because we need them all, and in those five value streams, we have very different people.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_02: We have lawyers, we have scientists, we have regulatory professionals, we have uh quality and compliance people, we have the commercial people who actually visit doctors and try to convince them to prescribe drugs, and all of these people somehow have to get along and ensure that we get a product out to that patient who it is actually beneficial for.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_02: No matter how many SOPs we're gonna write, it does take some of that human-to-human connection to to make that variety work.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 100%.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen some of the in my ears in pharma, I must say, some of the most incredible research or stuff or innovation built being stuck because of power dynamics or misunderstanding or fear of what's happening because of the miscommunication.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I totally agree with that.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's time for us to move on to our quiz.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my god.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it is lab to lives quiz time, and today our quiz is what did GOP1.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, nice, very good, very good.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_02: I am I am going to see if uh Chiara, you and Alex can determine fact from fiction on GOP1s.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_02: And this was a fun one to research for me.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_02: Let's see if it is fun for you.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_02: In this quiz, there will be three questions, and for all three questions, I'm going to give you three possible options.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_02: And today I I have felt especially mean so that there may be multiple correct answers.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, well, let's get to it.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_02: First question What are three benefits of GLP1s outside of obesity?
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_02: Possibility number one cardiometabolic benefits with potential for erectile outcomes, substance abuse, neurocognitive decline.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_02: And for the uh two last ones, it is stopping with the substance abuse and stopping the neurocognitive decline.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um this one I'm gonna say I'm gonna take a punt and I'm gonna say all three.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_03: I mean cardiovascular, right?
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_03: If you're not going in in into obesity and and and you know accumulation of fat stores, then that's gotta be good for your cardiovascular health.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_03: I do know that they I have seen stuff written about their impact on addiction because they work on the um sort of the pleasure reward pathways is part of the way that they work for obesity, and it also works for say alcoholism and and drug abuse in a in a similar way.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_03: And we've already got two in there, so why not throw the third in?
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I uh I agree.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there was this uh famous study that showed in 2020, it actually was the one that uh brought Topy one to be one of the uh this incredible drugs because there was a 25% decrease in risk of CVD, so the cardiovascular cardiovascular disease for sure.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: And also for I also, you know, there's this study about what the mention about the abuse, but it was also something about it doesn't matter, but it was something about mental health and depression, there was some sort of relation there, and then definitely there were two clinical trials into uh put together for the Alzheimer's disease, so I would also say three.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you are both correct.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh all three are benefits of GLP1s, and I was also like pleasantly surprised that uh all three are actually bugged up by what appears to be some pretty solid science.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_02: So yay!
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_03: There's been times in the lab where pretty solid would have been a dream outcome, I've gotta say.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uh yeah, so we'll always change pretty solid science.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_02: The next question for you What is not a long-term consequence of GLP1 use?
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_02: Option number one, gastrointestinal issues.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_02: Option number two, muscle mass loss.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_02: Option number three, long-term weight loss.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: I th I I remember that gastrointestinal issue could be a side effect.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure about the muscle loss.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, I'm I'm gonna say the gastrointestinal issues are the one that isn't a side effect or isn't an impact.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_03: I think the other two are.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the weight loss is the core target a lot of the time.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_03: The muscle mass loss, I think, happens though, and I've I've been seeing some stuff on this, because you're impacting your both what you're taking in calorytically and and your metabolic rate, then your body isn't necessarily differentiating between burning mass and burning uh burning muscle.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_03: And so one of the challenges with GLP ones for for weight loss right now is that you can um lose a problematic amount of muscle at the same time as losing the uh fat.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_03: And it's also a problem for when you come off GLP ones because then you will predominantly gain fat but not muscle back.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_03: So I think there's even recommendations now for combining GLP ones with strength-based exercise to try and maintain as much of the muscle mass as possible, uh, which is a long way of saying, yeah, my answer is A.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_02: Very good.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_02: Gastrointestinal issues are a long-term consequence of GOP1 use.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_02: Muscle mass loss is a long-term consequence of GOP1 use.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_02: Long-term weight loss is not a long-term consequence of GOP1 use.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_03: Ah, okay.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, we both got trapped.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_02: But also, I perhaps I am being a little bit mean to the companies producing GLP1s because of course if you stay on the drug, then you will remain with your weight loss.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, third question.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_02: What are some of the societal changes of many people on GLP1?
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_02: Option number one, many people are signing up for gyms.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_02: Number two, fewer diet books are being sold.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_02: Option number three, less alcohol is being consumed because of lower alcohol tolerance.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't read about this, so I don't really, but I can assume that people feel I actually read some Reddit comments about people taking a Zenpig, and they were like, I finally feel just losing a bit of weight just makes me feel like I can finally move again.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I would assume that people will sign up to the gym because they feel that motivation to just get out.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the the biggest gift, I guess, of these drugs that for extreme very obese people they finally can have a normal life.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: About the diet books, I mean, it's it's I don't know if do people buy diet books?
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you just go on on on on the internet, right?
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say no to that.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: I would say no.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then the third one, less alcohol for I I don't know.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't I think I don't think so.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I think this the first one is the the societal change I would bet on.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I'm I I'm just gonna take a punt and go for all three again.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_03: I think yes, the gems I can believe for the freedom.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_03: The diet books, I I can believe.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_03: I I think my impression is diet books are still a huge industry.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um I just thought it was that's there.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_03: And then um what was the third one again?
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_03: Less alcohol being consumed.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, less alcohol.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_03: Uh that one, uh okay.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_03: Now I'm metagaming.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_03: That one I think that one I think is true because Ivana gave an extra piece of detail to that one.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_03: Which I think is because it's true.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_03: Oh man, you you have done too many quizzes with me.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, and uh the the true ones are the less alcohol being consumed because of lower alcohol tolerance, and that more people are signing up for the gyms.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_02: But that one is is actually a little bit iffy because it's not gyms like not the weightlifting gym.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_02: Apparently there has been a general upsurge in exercises that is uh like strength-based, so such as boxing or what is it called, with the big ropes and dragging rocks around.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, CrossFit.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_03: CrossFit, there we go.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe I've got too rosy of you of the health of the diet book industry then as well.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I don't know.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_02: I almost bought a diet book the other day.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so either just people just going you know on the internet or Instagram and just find some influencer to follow these days.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's actually also how Zambik became famous.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: So that's true.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_03: So I have to say just one anecdote here, which is I have it's not a diet book, it's it's uh but it is a cookbook that I have on my shelf.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_03: And this is one of my favorite things ever.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_03: It's a cookbook on the shelf, and it's a cookbook aimed at vegetarian runners.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_03: Oh wow.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_03: The author of this cookbook apparently is called An Eater Bean.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_03: Either that is a moniker or the world's greatest coincidence between sort of author and book, very specific book subject I've ever seen in my life.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_03: But sorry, I just had to share that one.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe she changed her surname on purpose so it could fit the story better.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_03: If anyone has the background on Anita Bean, email us at our email address.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_03: I want to know.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_02: Everything.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_02: And also maybe we could get Anita Bean on the show.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like I would love to hear her take.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_02: Anita Bean, if you're listening, please do come on the show.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you very much for playing.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I need to uh change some of my tactics for these questions so they're less gameable.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_02: I am now curious what your key takeaways are from our conversation today.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_02: What will stick with you tomorrow?
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_02: What might you still be pondering a little bit while you brush your teeth tonight?
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I will quickly snatch up the human being room.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: Because that was such a great metaphor, and also just something that I hope we can be a part of creating on this show.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_02: It's the the human being room for life sciences and and health in general, and figuring out well, how can we get treatment to people who need the treatment?
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody else, if we ever do a live show, I think we've got a title.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_03: The Lab to Lives Human Being Room.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_03: Leave your mask here.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_03: Well, but I was about to say that the thing that I liked is is is the masks metaphor, but also yeah, the idea that I mean, because I find I do this as well.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_03: You meet someone, you have expectations of them based on their role, and and sort of you say, well, they're like this or not like this, how interesting, not like this, and it's it's not true, actually.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, trying to see beyond the mask a bit.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that that also they they kind of overlap in a sense, right?
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: The human room and the mask metaphor.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm a big advocate for the humans behind whatever role, whatever profession, whatever anything.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that also stays with me.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: And also while I'll be brushing my teeth, I'll be thinking that I should take care of them in any case.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, most important thing is the humans.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: Let's stay human with good intentions.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_02: Chiara, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, where can our listeners learn more about you or ask you further questions?
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely LinkedIn.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm quite active on LinkedIn, so you can find me there.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: Chiara, Alex, thank you so much.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Ivana.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Alex.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_02: This was Lab2Lives.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_02: Follow us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your content.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_02: What is your take on how we get from the lab to making a difference in patients' lives?
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_02: Send us a note via the link in the show notes or via LinkedIn.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to be a guest on the show or broadcasts for a comedy event in your company, go to lab2lives.com