Latest / The BioHub - by Avetix / Episode 58– Dan Kemp (CEO) & Steven Katz- (CMO) of Shinobi Therpaeutics

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Episode 58– Dan Kemp (CEO) & Steven Katz- (CMO) of Shinobi Therpaeutics · The BioHub - by Avetix

0:04
So welcome. Back to the episode of the Bio
0:06
Hub. Today we're delighted to welcome
0:08
2 visionary leaders at the forefront of cell therapy
0:11
innovation. Firstly, we have Dan Kemp, who's
0:14
the CEO of Shinobi Therapeutics, as well as Stephen Katz, who
0:17
serves as Shinobi's Chief Medical Officer.
0:20
So join us today as we'll walk through Shinobi's pipeline, how
0:23
Shinobi fits into the Japanese biotech ecosystem as well as
0:27
operating as a transatlantic company.
0:28
So guys, thank you so much for coming on.
0:31
How are you both? Good.
0:33
Good to be here. Yeah, it's a pleasure.
0:37
Yeah, it's an absolute pleasure to have you both on.
0:39
So look, Dan, let's let's start off with a little bit about you.
0:43
So could you give us a run through your journey through the
0:45
fields and how you got to to where you are today?
0:49
Sure. So I arrived in the US in 2000,
0:54
the year 2000 from the UK. So I did my school and
0:58
university and post grad in the UK and came to him a postdoc in
1:03
the US at Harvard Medical School, Mass General Hospital,
1:07
and actually worked in the lab of Joel Habner.
1:11
He actually discovered GLP 1. So back then the GLP one,
1:15
biology was very much focused in type 2 diabetes.
1:19
It's really much more recently that the obesity impact has been
1:22
taken hold and obviously it's a huge area.
1:26
So I worked in diabetes with Joel for my postdoc and then
1:30
joined Novartis and really started to build a career in
1:35
pharma. So 88 years or so at Novartis in
1:39
Boston. Very early days for Novartis as
1:42
they were establishing themselves back in the early
1:44
2000s, learning the ropes how to develop small molecules through
1:50
preclinical processes. And then I joined Merck in 2008
1:56
and really continued that journey in developing small
1:59
molecule drugs in the metabolism space and took one in particular
2:04
into the into the clinic, an AMPK activator, which was a
2:07
really fantastic mechanism. And through my journey, you
2:11
know, there have been certain biologies that really showed
2:15
themselves to be fantastic. GLP one was 1.
2:18
AMPK is actually another one. I think there's a future for
2:21
that area. But then I moved from so from
2:25
Merck to Takeda and Takeda was very eye opening for me.
2:30
Japanese company, a lot of things were happening is that
2:33
company was becoming a global presence as opposed to a very
2:37
Japanese pharma company. I spent a lot of time in Japan
2:41
and got very much involved in cell therapies.
2:44
So a lot of the transitions to where I am now began at Takeda
2:47
and then after a few years at Decaded, mainly doing business
2:52
development in the oncology space and rare diseases.
2:55
I became CEO of a company called Wujen based out of Saint Louis
3:01
and San Diego, working on allogeneic cell therapies, both
3:06
CAR T and CAR and K cell programs.
3:09
We brought 3IN DS through an 18 months, raised a lot of money
3:13
back in 2021 and you know, things going really well.
3:18
Obviously things happen in the biotech space.
3:22
The money dried up, things got a lot more pressured, probably for
3:25
good reason in in all respects. And I ended up then shifting
3:30
over to Shinobi in 2023. And we can talk about this a
3:35
little later, but a lot of the lines, you know, aligned
3:39
essentially for me in terms of where my career had been, what
3:43
my interests were and where I knew I could make an impact.
3:46
And Shinobi, being AUS Japanese company, was one where I knew I
3:49
could really bring some good to the table.
3:52
And it's been a fantastic ride for the last almost three years.
3:56
And that's where I am now. Fantastic.
3:59
And Stephen, the same with you, if you could give us a bit of a
4:02
room for your journey as well. Yeah.
4:04
Thanks, Tom. Happy to do that.
4:06
I think I'll start by stating, you know, what fundamentally
4:09
drives me and motivates me, which is to really enable
4:13
immunotherapy and cell therapy in particular to work for
4:16
patients who have solid tumors. And my Rd. was a bit windy to
4:20
getting where I am today. I began in medical school,
4:23
actually wanted to be a cardiologist.
4:26
I was an athlete growing up and became very interested in
4:31
cardiac Physiology. And after my first year at NYU
4:35
Med, somebody who was very close to me developed breast cancer,
4:38
and so I decided to do Cancer Research to learn more about it.
4:42
Nobody in my family was a physician, so I didn't really
4:46
know the medical community or the local hospitals very well.
4:50
And so I heard about this place up the street called Memorial
4:53
Sloan Kenner and Cancer Center, and I was fortunate to get an
4:56
internship there with John Lewis, who was a surgical
4:59
oncologist and an immunotherapy researcher.
5:02
So that summer I spent in John Lewis's lab, and I met others
5:07
there. Alan Houghton and Jed Wolchuk
5:09
were very influential and got me so excited about immunotherapy.
5:13
And Johnny brought me into the operating room, got me excited
5:17
about being a surgeon. And that's when I really decided
5:20
that I was going to focus my career not only on surgical
5:24
oncology, but immunotherapy. And so I spent about a decade
5:28
after all of my training in academia doing a lot of
5:32
immunotherapy work at the basic science level, designed and LED
5:36
several CAR T cell trials for patients with liver cancer and
5:40
peritoneal surface malignancy. And that was an unbelievable
5:43
experience. I was able to build and run AGMP
5:47
facility and recruit patients from across the world to be
5:51
treated. But what dawned upon me was that
5:54
really bringing something, you know, from the bench to the
5:57
bedside, but then all the way to commercialization really wasn't
6:00
possible in academia. So I began to look for
6:04
opportunities in industry. And then the first company I
6:07
worked for, Tresalis Life Sciences, my first Chief Medical
6:11
Officer role, I was able to develop ATLR 9 agonist in
6:15
combination with a very innovative delivery technology,
6:18
which was a great experience, helped take the company public,
6:23
get reimbursement codes for the delivery technology.
6:26
And along the way, I spent the year at Takeda as an
6:29
entrepreneur in residence, helping to bring 2 cell therapy
6:32
programs live in Japan. And that's where I first met Dan
6:37
and we had a great working relationship.
6:39
It was an incredible experience opening studies in Japan and
6:45
continuing my work with Trois Alice.
6:47
And then when Dan joined Shinobi and he offered me the
6:50
opportunity to become part of his team in our company, I
6:55
couldn't say no. It's a, you know, Dan's a great
6:58
leader and the technology as we'll talk about is very
7:01
compelling and we think it'd make a big difference for some
7:05
very significant unmet medical need populations.
7:09
Very good. And Dan so Shinobi has quite an
7:13
interesting origin story, evolving from its beginnings as
7:17
Thyus to rebrand in as Shinobi Therapeutics in 2023.
7:21
Could you walk us through the journey of the company?
7:25
Sure. It's a really interesting story.
7:27
So I I got to know Thyus back in 2015.
7:31
Sixteen. So this is a 10 year story when
7:34
it's spun out of Kyoto University in Japan.
7:37
Kyoto University is where Shinya Yamanaka discovered IPS.
7:40
CS won the Nobel Prize soon after, but built an institute of
7:45
research scientists around this IPSC technology, which is, you
7:49
know, really fantastic fire spun out of that institute and was
7:55
funded kind of regionally by Japanese investors.
7:59
One of the biggest issues for that company was that the
8:03
ecosystem in Japan in terms of biotechnology is very
8:06
underfunded. It's a, it's a very well
8:08
recognized issue in Japan. I was there last week, actually
8:11
met with the Prime Minister of Japan to talk about this exact
8:15
thing that that Japan needs to rethink how it really comes at
8:20
biotech because it could be a leader in the world and should
8:23
be because the science is absolutely world class.
8:26
When you look at Nobel laureates, you look at
8:28
publications, Japan is as good as any other country in terms of
8:31
academic research, but the translation into biotech and
8:35
drug discovery has been lacking. So thias really struggled for
8:39
about 7 years with about $7,000,000 of investment over
8:45
that period of time, which in the cell therapy space doesn't
8:48
get anything done. In reality.
8:50
In 2023, a couple of major investors, 8 Rhodes Ventures in
8:58
Japan and F Prime Capital in the US recognized that the science
9:03
was top class but really needed to re form the company.
9:09
Because as you know what you need to succeed as a biotech
9:13
company is science. You need application of that
9:17
science into drug discovery. You need a team, they can get it
9:20
done and you need funding that can maintain everything.
9:24
And this funding and team is a two way St. because you really
9:28
can't raise a lot of money unless you have a strong team
9:31
and you can't build a strong team unless you have money.
9:35
So F Prime and Eight Rd. came in in 20/22/23 and put in about $18
9:39
million and said OK, let's go. And I joined at that time and
9:44
that infusion of cash allowed us to do 2 things.
9:48
One is build a very strong team very quickly and also then to do
9:52
a Series A round and pull in another $50 million.
9:55
And we also established ourselves as AUS company with
9:59
the Japanese subsidiary, which gave us the benefits of both
10:02
countries in terms of resources, application costs as well as
10:07
access to funding and also access to the right regulatory
10:12
governments. So in so we launched in 2023, we
10:18
rebranded the name to Shinobi, which was actually an accident
10:21
because our two scientific founders are Shin Kaneko and
10:27
Toby Doise at UCSF. So I was playing around with
10:31
ways to think about a new name and thought that Shin, Shin
10:36
Kaneko and Toby, if you put their first names together, you
10:39
get Shinobi. And I thought that was pretty
10:42
cool. And then I got a call from Japan
10:44
and they said to me, do you realize that shinobi is a
10:47
legitimate Japanese word that means ninja, which I didn't.
10:51
And so I thought that's even better.
10:54
And if you think about it, are IPSC derived cell therapies,
10:58
which are immune evasive. They actually work like ninjas
11:01
in the patient's circulation, avoiding the immune system and
11:04
killing the tumors. And so Shinobi Therapeutics was
11:08
born and it's a fantastic name, but completely accidentally
11:13
unnamed by myself. So that's how the company
11:16
launched. Since then, we've raised
11:18
actually another $70 million through non dilutive funding
11:23
from the Japanese government. This is a big part of that push
11:26
from Japan to really help and support Japanese invention to
11:31
build the ecosystem over there. Well, good.
11:36
And Stephen Shinobi's pipeline targets tough to treat
11:38
conditions like solid tumors and autoimmune disease.
11:43
How is your approach addressing unmet medical needs where other
11:47
current treatments maybe fall short?
11:51
Yeah, it's a great question and it's something that we put a lot
11:54
of thought into. You know, as a company, I think
11:56
one of our strength is that when we design our products, even at
12:01
the level of genetic and molecular manipulation, we're
12:04
trying to do so with the clinical goal in mind and even
12:08
beyond that, the commercial goal in mind.
12:10
And so, you know, we took a step back and we really asked some of
12:13
the difficult questions. Why hasn't cell therapy worked
12:17
in solid tumor patients for the most part to date, especially in
12:21
the liver and in the lungs and other difficult to treat sites?
12:27
You know, one of the issues is the tumor microenvironment.
12:31
These are very difficult environments for the patient's
12:34
own immune system to work within and for cell therapy products to
12:38
function in the way you'd like them to.
12:41
There are physical barriers and they're more biologic barriers.
12:44
The physical barriers, what that really means is that it's
12:48
difficult to deliver therapeutics into some of these
12:50
solid tumors. The pressures can be very high.
12:53
The trafficking, meaning the movement that the cell therapy
12:56
product into the tumors can be very difficult.
12:59
So for that we're taking very innovative delivery approaches
13:03
using local regional delivery where we're more directly
13:06
infusing the cells into the liver, for example, where they
13:09
need to be in those patients, which may also offers offer
13:13
safety benefits that the cells aren't in organs or locations
13:16
where there isn't measurable disease.
13:19
The other aspects of the tumor micro environment, the more
13:22
biologic aspect is that there is what we call immunosuppression.
13:26
So there are cells in the tumor micro environment from the
13:29
patient that can shut down the ability of the product to
13:33
function. One of the most beautiful things
13:36
about IPSES are inducible pluripotent stem cells, which is
13:41
our platform, as Dan described, discovered in Japan, is that you
13:45
can make a lot of genetic edits to these cells, something you
13:48
can't do with other types of cell therapy products.
13:52
So we can do what's called armoring, so we can give
13:54
ourselves the ability to produce cytokines, which are immune
13:58
proteins that can stimulate our product, but also reshape and
14:02
modulate the tumor microenvironments that the
14:04
product can work better. And so I think that's something
14:08
that Shinobi is very thoughtful about.
14:10
Again, not only trying to get it to work better in patients in
14:14
terms of efficacy and safety, but making products that will
14:18
ultimately be easy to administer and successful commercially.
14:24
And I think another good example of that is what we're doing for
14:26
autoimmune disease. So for the oncology indications,
14:30
we're focused on using IPS T cells.
14:34
So T cells derive from inducible chloripotent stem cells.
14:38
But for autoimmune disease, we're going with natural killer
14:40
cells. And we've chosen that route
14:42
because NK cells tend to be more tolerable, less risky, lower
14:48
risk of severe side effects that are typically associated with
14:50
cell therapy. And so we're really developing
14:54
the products in a very thoughtful way to meet hopefully
14:57
our clinical goals, efficacy and safety, but also for commercial
15:01
success. And the platform using IPSCS
15:05
really gives you the ability to do that at a very fine level.
15:09
OK, great. And Stephen, back to you again.
15:11
Dan briefly touched on shinobi's deep roots to Kyoto University.
15:18
How would you see shinobi fitted into the Japanese biotech
15:22
ecosystem and what are some of the unique opportunities that
15:26
that brings? I think there are things
15:31
presently in the Japan biotech ecosystem that we are benefiting
15:35
from. And Dan alluded to this.
15:36
So the discovery of IPSC at Kyoto in Japan is something that
15:41
we're obviously leveraging in terms of the ability to engineer
15:46
the cells, manufacture them and the incredible scientific
15:50
expertise that exists at Kyoto University.
15:53
And then in terms of what we can contribute to the Japanese
15:56
biotech ecosystem, you know, I think that Shinobi has the
15:59
potential to really create some very big wins for Japanese
16:04
cancer patients and then globally in these very difficult
16:08
to treat indications. And hopefully demonstrate that
16:12
companies like Shinobi can bring highly innovative immuno
16:17
oncology products into clinical trials, you know, through
16:21
approval and then into the market, which has been very
16:25
difficult to do with cell therapy, as we discussed.
16:27
But we think Shinobi has the right pieces in place in terms
16:31
of leadership, team members and technology to make that happen.
16:35
And, and then we hope that can pave the road for other
16:37
companies to come into Japan and do similar things.
16:40
Because at the end of the day, we don't just want Shinobi to
16:43
succeed. We want many companies to
16:45
succeed in Japan to help patients there and across the
16:49
world. OK.
16:51
And Dan Shinobi has teams located all over the world.
16:55
How do you ensure effective collaboration and foster a
16:59
cohesive company culture despite the challenges of different time
17:03
zones, different geographies? Yeah.
17:06
So it's a really good question and it's, you know, it, it's an
17:10
ongoing challenge, but at the same time, in some respects it's
17:13
actually a great opportunity. So we have about 35 people in
17:16
Japan and about 20 in the US, mainly in San Francisco.
17:21
We have some remote workers as well.
17:23
And you know, the, the common theme across the whole of our
17:26
organization is it it's really about accommodation.
17:29
It's about almost to the extent of friendship.
17:33
I've been super careful, as we all have at this company to make
17:37
sure that when we're hiring, you know, we hire people who really
17:42
can fit into the kind of culture and the challenges that this
17:45
company brings. You know, the Japanese culture
17:48
is very different to US and European, and that's one thing.
17:52
The time difference between Japan and the US is very
17:56
different too. And so we're finding ourselves
17:58
working at different times of the day.
18:00
Communication, the languages in of itself are a challenge.
18:04
So we've learned a lot over the last 2 1/2 years how to work
18:08
really effectively together. In some respects, as we're
18:11
working around the clock either in Japan or the US, we're
18:14
getting a lot done in the labs on a constant basis.
18:19
You know, folks like myself, based in New Jersey, I'm
18:22
spending most of my evenings. On Zoom calls to.
18:25
Accommodate both San Francisco and Japan at the same time.
18:28
And these are just these accommodations that we make for
18:31
ourselves and we align them with our family and you know, our
18:36
balance of everything else. But, you know, I would say at
18:39
the bottom line that this kind of company, the way that we're
18:44
operating is not for everybody, but, you know, it really is for
18:49
some people. And and we've been careful to
18:51
hire those people for which it's a really good fit.
18:53
You know, Steven was a very obvious choice for me.
18:56
I've worked with him before Takeda and spent time in Japan,
19:00
you know, developing our products in Japan as well as in
19:02
the US And parallel is what we're going to be doing going
19:04
forward. So, so yeah, bottom line is
19:08
challenging, but also rewarding in ways that I think brings the
19:13
team closer together as a unit. Very good.
19:17
And this is a question for you both.
19:19
You've obviously worked together in the past and now at Shinobi
19:23
again. Can you talk us through the
19:24
importance of the relationship between the two of you now and
19:28
CEOCMO, and how your different skill sets complement each other
19:33
as well? Do you want to go first, Ian?
19:37
Yeah, I'm happy to start. I mean, it's, it's one of the
19:42
most important relationships and dynamics in a company like ours.
19:48
I think what helps Dan and I work so well together is that I
19:52
think fundamentally we're driven by the same things.
19:56
We really want, desperately want to help these patients with
20:01
these tumor types and these autoimmune diseases have better
20:04
outcomes. And better quality of life
20:06
through leveraging the technology that shinobi's
20:10
bringing into the clinic and then hopefully into the
20:13
marketplace. So I think that really helps us
20:16
align is that we're really both driven to achieve those goals
20:20
and at the same time create significant value for our
20:23
shareholders. And if you're doing things
20:25
right, those two things should be happening in tandem.
20:28
And so I think, you know, we approach that in a very similar
20:31
way, but I think we also have different skill sets and, and
20:35
that's why we complement each other very well.
20:38
You know, one of the things that impressed me about Dan very
20:41
early on when I met him at Takeda is he has a very unique
20:45
blend of deep scientific expertise and business
20:49
development prowess. I've met a lot of people with
20:52
one or the other. It's not common to see somebody
20:55
so strong in both areas. And you know, what I bring to
20:58
the table the clinical trial experience and, and the
21:01
scientific expertise and on the solid tumor and to our micro
21:05
environment aspects, I think just allows us to to blend very
21:09
well together and to you know, help everybody in the company,
21:13
you know, reach their potential and create as much value as
21:15
possible. Yeah.
21:17
And just to add to that, I mean, I, I think Steven, everything
21:20
that Steven said, I, I agree with.
21:21
I think our complementary kind of strengths and you know,
21:27
Stevens credentials as the Chief medical officer are fantastic.
21:32
So to me that's, that's kind of the easy piece where I know
21:35
exactly that he can take care of everything that that needs to
21:38
happen from a translational clinical perspective.
21:41
And, and of course, we're we're doing that really well right
21:43
now, both in Japan and the USI knew that he had the experience
21:46
in Japan too, which made me even much more comfortable.
21:50
But you know, at the end of the day, it also comes down to the
21:53
fact that, you know, you build a relationship and a friendship
21:57
that allows us to work seamlessly together.
22:00
And it's Steven and I, it's also others in the company as well.
22:03
But you know, I've, I've learned over the many years I've been in
22:06
this industry that working with people you want to work with is,
22:09
is, is, is pretty much the number one thing.
22:12
And when you have that and you have the right disciplines and,
22:16
and you know, you can get, you can get anything done.
22:19
And and that's what we're doing at Shinobi.
22:22
Very good. And Dan Shinobi recently
22:24
announced A strategic partnership with an OSHA to
22:27
develop off the shelf TCR engineered IPS T cell therapies
22:32
for solid tumours. How does this collaboration
22:35
enhance Shinobi's capabilities and what impact you anticipate
22:40
will have on these accessibility and effectiveness of cancer
22:43
treatments? Yeah, good question.
22:45
We have a couple of collaborations actually Anoka
22:47
is, is is one of one of a couple of strong ones that we have.
22:52
So Anoka are discovering and developing TCRS, and they're
22:57
currently in the clinic on an autologous car T, an autologous
23:01
TCRT cell program and doing really well.
23:04
But they have such a strong platform to develop novel TCRS.
23:09
It's exactly what we're looking for as we're building the cell
23:12
therapy platform of the future, an IPSCT cell platform.
23:17
And of course, from their perspective, Reagan Jarvis,
23:20
who's the CEO, he's looking for the best vehicle for their TCRS.
23:24
I think the whole world realizes autologous cell therapy is, is
23:28
fantastic, but it can't be the future in terms of access costs
23:33
and a lot of other aspects of the way that allogeneic cell
23:37
therapies can be off the shelf and beneficial.
23:39
So our our platforms actually could align beautifully well.
23:44
We're spending time now just making sure that our science
23:47
works together well and that our companies work together well and
23:50
that could be a very strong partnership for the future.
23:54
The another collaboration we do have is with Panasonic.
23:57
This is a really interesting one in Japan.
23:59
As you know, Panasonic are a huge company and very much
24:03
focused on engineering and their capabilities are being applied
24:07
to cell therapy manufacturing. In the case of our
24:10
collaboration, they believe that they could help us do the
24:13
differentiation and manufacturing on scale in a
24:16
fully automated way using the technology.
24:18
And a pilot program that we've already been working on for
24:21
about a year now is looking extremely, really good.
24:24
The data is fantastic, very robust and solid.
24:27
And this is another one that's similar to Anoka, where we hope
24:30
to build that collaboration much more strongly over the coming
24:33
years to something much more meaningful because I think you
24:36
know that the IPSC allogeneic cell therapy platforms across
24:43
all companies is going to be a major part of modalities in the
24:46
future. Fantastic.
24:51
And this is a question we usually finish with on the Bio
24:55
hub. I know.
24:55
I wanted to give you both a bit of a heads up that we asked
24:57
this. Stephen, I'll start with you.
25:00
If you could both, if you could have dinner with three people
25:04
past or present, who would it be and why?
25:06
It doesn't necessarily need to be biotech innovators, although
25:09
it can be if you like. But yeah, three people for
25:13
dinner. Always a tough one.
25:17
And Dan, I'm not going to pick you because we have dinner all
25:19
the time, so we don't need to cover that.
25:22
I think William Coley is the first one I would pick.
25:27
So Doctor Coley, for those who don't know his story, he
25:31
probably is the one who discovered immunotherapy in the
25:34
1890s. He saw one of his patients, he
25:38
was a surgeon on the Upper East Side of New York, and he saw one
25:41
of his patients with a large neck tumor who could not have
25:45
the tumor removed because it was wrapped around the carotid
25:47
artery, among other things, develop a really bad infection.
25:51
And Coley surmised that it was the inflammatory response.
25:54
Now, the immune system had not been discovered yet, so he
25:56
couldn't talk about B cells or T cells.
25:59
But he he surmised that the inflammatory response led to
26:02
this tumor regressing, which it did.
26:05
And years later, it remained gone.
26:07
And Coley began doing well, let's call it a clinical trial,
26:12
injected mixtures of bacteria into patients which were, let's
26:17
just say, led to mixed results, some toxicity, hence Collies
26:20
toxins, the term you may have heard of, but also some some
26:24
good outcomes. But the reason why I would love
26:27
to have dinner with Doctor Collie is, you know, it was very
26:30
difficult, I would imagine, for him to push forward an idea that
26:33
essentially the entire world was telling him would never work and
26:36
he was crazy for thinking about. But he really stuck with it.
26:40
And it didn't really come to fruition until probably over 100
26:44
years later. But I've always admired the
26:47
fortitude that he demonstrated, and pushing through what must
26:52
have felt like insurmountable barriers to try to help his
26:55
patients achieve better outcomes #2 I'm going to go with Winston
27:02
Churchill. I recently visited the Churchill
27:06
War Rooms in London, and that was a remarkable experience.
27:09
I had no idea how intense it must have been for Churchill and
27:14
everybody under him to live through that and the decisions,
27:18
the life and death decisions he had to make on behalf of
27:21
millions of people. And the way he seemed to keep
27:24
everybody aligned with his leadership and keep everybody
27:27
calm and focused on the mission was unbelievable.
27:32
So I'd love to. I hear that first hand from
27:36
Winston Churchill. I owe you one more, don't I?
27:42
I can leave it as two if if that's it.
27:44
I've got 4 so I can make up for that.
27:47
Yeah, you can make. Up for that and and the first,
27:50
the first two I would say actually Steven and I actually
27:54
did have dinner with these guys. So Shinya Yamanaka and Carl June
27:58
at the table at the same time in Japan last year.
28:02
Steven and I did and this is the inventor of IPSCS and the
28:05
inventor of car TI think in 2 or 300 years time, people will look
28:09
back. And these guys are, are are it
28:12
in terms of a revolution in, in therapy modality.
28:16
So that, that's, that's two in one that actually we've already
28:19
checked off from, from my scientific kind of background,
28:25
Ernest Rutherford, who's a physicist, was a physicist and
28:29
did some amazing work figuring out the atomic nucleus in the
28:33
basement of Manchester University, which is close to
28:36
where I grew up and was born. And I think just just the
28:41
enormity of what he understood with very basic tools back in
28:45
those days with the vision really made him a hero of mine
28:49
in a scientific space. And I would love to have dinner
28:53
with him and really get to know him because I also think that
28:56
he's a great guy as well as I've heard.
28:59
And my last one is a sporting legend of mine.
29:03
I'm a big cyclist and it's a guy called Tade.
29:07
Pegacha is probably the best cyclist that's ever been.
29:12
He's in his prime right now. He's going to be starting the
29:14
Tour de France in about 3 days. And I've had the pleasure of
29:18
seeing him ride by a couple of times in races.
29:21
But I would love to sit down and have dinner with that guy.
29:24
Wow, wow. Well, well, look, 6 terrific
29:27
answers there. And thanks so much for both of
29:30
you coming on and helping us out with this.
29:31
I think you've given a really unique perspective on running
29:35
AUS company with a Japanese subsidiary and the pipeline and
29:39
everything like that. So again, thanks so much for
29:41
helping us out with it. It's been a, it's been a
29:42
pleasure. Thank you very much.
29:45
It's been great talking to you. You guys, Tom, it was wonderful.