Latest / What's Your Problem? / Getting Yeast to Make Medicine

Transcript

Getting Yeast to Make Medicine · What's Your Problem?

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. There's this problem that's been going on in the
0:22
Speaker 1: background in the United States for a long time. The
0:26
Speaker 1: problem is this, there are not enough drugs to go around. This, strangely,
0:32
Speaker 1: is not about expensive new drugs that people can't afford.
0:35
Speaker 1: This is about old, cheap generic drugs, drugs that just
0:39
Speaker 1: are not available in sufficient quantities at any price. A
0:43
Speaker 1: national pharmacist group recently reported shortages of three hundred and
0:47
Speaker 1: nine of these generic drugs. There are multiple causes. It
0:52
Speaker 1: could be the bankruptcy of some little known generic drug maker.
0:55
Speaker 1: Could be a sudden surge in demand. Could be the
0:58
Speaker 1: failure of some distant crop that is the source of
1:01
Speaker 1: an essential drug ingredient. It's a complicated problem built out
1:06
Speaker 1: of lots of little problems. But broadly speaking, the supply
1:10
Speaker 1: chain for generic drugs is long and opaque and exists
1:14
Speaker 1: largely outside of the United States, so it is very
1:17
Speaker 1: difficult to see these drug shortages coming. I'm Jacob Goldstein
1:25
Speaker 1: and this is What's Your Problem, the show where I
1:27
Speaker 1: talk to people who are trying to make technological progress.
1:31
Speaker 1: My guest today is Christina Smolky. She's a professor at
1:34
Speaker 1: Stanford and the co founder and CEO of a company
1:37
Speaker 1: called Anthea. It's a synthetic biology company. They're in the
1:41
Speaker 1: business of genetically engineering microorganisms to produce commercial products. Christina's
1:47
Speaker 1: problem is this, how do you turn ye cells into
1:50
Speaker 1: tiny factories to create the active ingredients in drugs. If
1:55
Speaker 1: Christina and her colleagues solve this problem, they won't solve
1:58
Speaker 1: the drug shortage problem entirely, but they might help make
2:02
Speaker 1: it better.
2:05
Speaker 2: I actually started not in industry, not as a CEO
2:08
Speaker 2: of a company, but I started as a professor. And
2:10
Speaker 2: so there, you know, I was coming out the field
2:13
Speaker 2: in a more academic way, looking at here's the state
2:16
Speaker 2: of the technology, but think about how much more we
2:18
Speaker 2: could do if we really open this up. And so,
2:21
Speaker 2: you know, it was really let's focus on the hard problems.
2:23
Speaker 2: Let's focus on the problems that people say right now
2:26
Speaker 2: are impossible, that you will never get this to work,
2:28
Speaker 2: the science just can't do it. And let's figure out
2:31
Speaker 2: can we actually you know, make these impossible solutions possible
2:36
Speaker 2: to really address these problems. And so that's where it started.
2:38
Speaker 2: You know, for about fifteen years of my career was
2:40
Speaker 2: really focusing on the you know, foundational scientific breakthroughs that
2:45
Speaker 2: were needed to build a company like Anthea and really
2:48
Speaker 2: bring those transformations into the industry.
2:51
Speaker 1: So when you when you're starting out, you're thinking, Okay,
2:54
Speaker 1: there is this nascent field synthetic biology, this basic idea,
2:58
Speaker 1: I want to advance this field to the point where
3:01
Speaker 1: we can make you know, drugs or the active ingredient
3:03
Speaker 1: in drugs exactly what are the things people didn't know
3:05
Speaker 1: how to do that you and your colleagues had to
3:07
Speaker 1: figure out.
3:09
Speaker 2: So there was a lot to figure out. And you know,
3:12
Speaker 2: first and foremost when you looked at where the field
3:14
Speaker 2: was when we when I started in this space, most
3:17
Speaker 2: of where everybody focused and it's actually true still today
3:20
Speaker 2: is on engineering cells to produce relatively simple compounds. So
3:25
Speaker 2: let's just take a step back, and you know, we
3:27
Speaker 2: use yeast, very similar organism that yeah, basically identical organism
3:31
Speaker 2: that we've been using for centuries to brew beer, ferment wine, right,
3:35
Speaker 2: so we have a long standing history of that. That's biomanufacturing.
3:38
Speaker 2: But what the yeast of producing is ethanol, right, carbon dioxide,
3:42
Speaker 2: very simple molecules that it does naturally. Now take a
3:46
Speaker 2: step back, we want that yeast to produce a very
3:49
Speaker 2: complex chemotherapeutic, right, or a very complex anti infective. How
3:55
Speaker 2: do we teach it to do that? And when you
3:57
Speaker 2: looked at where we started, you know, in this in
3:59
Speaker 2: this field, what the field was capable of doing was
4:02
Speaker 2: basically taking a organism like yeast and maybe moving you know,
4:06
Speaker 2: three genes or three proteins into that organism. That basically
4:10
Speaker 2: allowed the industry to produce very simple compounds.
4:13
Speaker 1: Perfume, right. I feel like perfume was one of the
4:16
Speaker 1: big ones, sense exactly.
4:17
Speaker 2: Very close in structure to what the yeast could already make. Right,
4:20
Speaker 2: in order to actually make these you know, drug ingredients,
4:25
Speaker 2: we had to be able to transform the field from
4:27
Speaker 2: thinking about and being able to sort of routinely move
4:30
Speaker 2: maybe three to six genes or protein coding sequences into
4:33
Speaker 2: the cell to be able to actually move twenty thirty
4:37
Speaker 2: or more genes and protein sequences into a cell. And again,
4:41
Speaker 2: these drug ingredients that we rely on are so you know,
4:44
Speaker 2: they're so different, and they're so complicated from what yeast
4:46
Speaker 2: would normally make.
4:47
Speaker 1: Yes, it was not built to make chemotherapy drugs, right,
4:52
Speaker 1: to spend a billion years evolving to make the drugs
4:56
Speaker 1: we need to cure cancer exactly. So it is the
4:59
Speaker 1: basic problem that like if you try and swap in
5:01
Speaker 1: that many genes at once, the cell will just kind
5:04
Speaker 1: of blow up and die. Be like, what are you
5:06
Speaker 1: doing to me? I mean it's that the basic starting problem.
5:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know that was certainly I would say the
5:11
Speaker 2: general sort of I guess thinking at the time, right,
5:14
Speaker 2: And you know, when we propose to do this, you know,
5:17
Speaker 2: in my academic lab, we had a difficult time getting
5:19
Speaker 2: funding for it, even at like a research level, because
5:22
Speaker 2: the reviews would come back and say, this is you know,
5:25
Speaker 2: this is impossible. There's no reason to even try to
5:27
Speaker 2: do this because it will never work.
5:29
Speaker 1: It's an engineering problem at a certain level at that point, right,
5:32
Speaker 1: That is the sort of you have if you have
5:34
Speaker 1: the genomic information, you know what genes you want, but
5:38
Speaker 1: you got to figure out how to make them work
5:39
Speaker 1: in a yeast, right, And I mean I want to
5:44
Speaker 1: ask how do you do that? Although I know that's
5:46
Speaker 1: like a ten year long answer, So maybe what I'll
5:48
Speaker 1: ask instead is like, is there one piece of figuring
5:52
Speaker 1: out how to do that that you can explain? You know,
5:56
Speaker 1: is there one one thing you had to figure out
5:58
Speaker 1: along the way where you came upon it and it
6:00
Speaker 1: didn't work, and you figured out how to make it work.
6:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're right, this is an engineering problem. It's
6:07
Speaker 2: a systems engineering problem. Right. So ultimately we're asking the
6:11
Speaker 2: yeast to be this sort of mini nanofactory to produce
6:15
Speaker 2: drug ingredients. Right, So not these sort of macro factories
6:19
Speaker 2: we build out, you know, in our world, but really
6:21
Speaker 2: kind of a cellular factory. So what's happening inside the cell.
6:25
Speaker 2: One of the things that we brought to this field
6:27
Speaker 2: is sort of a very unique strategy was to say,
6:30
Speaker 2: you know, let's not the cell is not just a bag,
6:32
Speaker 2: right where everything just sort of happens in this nebulous form.
6:35
Speaker 2: Let's really think smartly about the cell as a system
6:38
Speaker 2: and the biochemical environments that are in different locations of
6:40
Speaker 2: the cell. And then when we change the sequence of
6:42
Speaker 2: the proteins, we would very specifically give the yeast directions
6:46
Speaker 2: of make this particular protein in this part of the
6:50
Speaker 2: cell because there's a particular pH to do some environment,
6:53
Speaker 2: you know. And then but this other part of you know,
6:55
Speaker 2: the molecular machinery, the other steps of the proteins, we
6:58
Speaker 2: want you to actually make it in this other area
7:00
Speaker 2: of the cell.
7:00
Speaker 1: So just to write to pick up on your factory metaphors.
7:03
Speaker 1: So it's like the naive way to think about the
7:06
Speaker 1: inside of the cell is just like a big empty room.
7:09
Speaker 1: But you're thinking, like, no, it's not like that. I mean,
7:11
Speaker 1: if the factory is the analogy, it's like, this part
7:13
Speaker 1: over here is like where we should be whatever putting
7:16
Speaker 1: the wheels on, and this part over here is clearly
7:18
Speaker 1: where like the robot arms should be bolting the chassis together.
7:20
Speaker 1: Because different parts of the inside of the cell are different,
7:24
Speaker 1: are biochemically different, and some parts will work to do
7:27
Speaker 1: some things and other parts will work to do other things,
7:31
Speaker 1: and you can't do it in the wrong place or
7:33
Speaker 1: it won't work exactly exactly.
7:36
Speaker 2: I mean, that's an exact metaphor, right, and the exact
7:38
Speaker 2: way to think about it, right.
7:40
Speaker 1: And so let me ask just a few dumb questions
7:42
Speaker 1: about that, because it's interesting. How do you tell the
7:44
Speaker 1: cell where to do it?
7:47
Speaker 2: It ultimately comes down to the directions you put in
7:49
Speaker 2: the DNA, right, And it comes back to that gencoding
7:52
Speaker 2: sequence where I mean, again it's biology does remarkable things,
7:55
Speaker 2: but within you know, within that encoded sequence, you know
7:58
Speaker 2: there are directions of you know, again exactly what amino acids.
8:02
Speaker 2: You know, how you are basically making that protein amino
8:05
Speaker 2: acid by amino acid. But there are also directions that
8:08
Speaker 2: basically tell a cell and the cell's native machinery, no,
8:12
Speaker 2: you're going to actually make the protein over in this
8:14
Speaker 2: location right now. We want you to transport it over there.
8:16
Speaker 2: We want you to move this over here, We want
8:18
Speaker 2: you to insert it into this membrane. So you know,
8:20
Speaker 2: I mean again, the cell is, it's so sophisticated, right,
8:24
Speaker 2: we just you know, we just have to basically be
8:27
Speaker 2: able to understand enough about the directions that the cell
8:31
Speaker 2: uses and reads in its own native processes so that
8:34
Speaker 2: we can begin to leverage you know, the strategies and
8:38
Speaker 2: the routes that it has you know, developed, is a
8:40
Speaker 2: way to move proteins to particular locations and cells.
8:44
Speaker 1: So you figure that out over some period of time.
8:48
Speaker 1: Is there a first drug ingredient that you get a
8:52
Speaker 1: Y cell to make? Is there some like proof of
8:55
Speaker 1: concept moment?
8:57
Speaker 2: Yeah? There, yes, there was. So the drug ingredient that
9:00
Speaker 2: we initially demonstrated with this is an ingredient called the
9:05
Speaker 2: dane And this is actually an ingredient that is extracted
9:09
Speaker 2: from medicinal plants, and it's an ingredient that's used to
9:11
Speaker 2: produce about half a dozen different drug ingredients, from drugs
9:15
Speaker 2: that are used to treat you very severe pain, to
9:19
Speaker 2: drugs that are used as rescue mediations to treat addiction
9:24
Speaker 2: and as well as overdose.
9:27
Speaker 1: Like the drug that has the brand name Narcan. Is
9:29
Speaker 1: it not lots like that?
9:30
Speaker 2: Oh?
9:31
Speaker 1: Interesting?
9:31
Speaker 2: Is that drug Narcan and naloxone is a drug that
9:36
Speaker 2: is used that is basically produced from the vein. We
9:39
Speaker 2: published that demonstration, that proof of principal demonstration in twenty fifteen,
9:43
Speaker 2: so that was and again that was done prior to
9:46
Speaker 2: us starting anthea. It was done in our the academic
9:49
Speaker 2: lab at Stanford, and again that particular demonstration, it took
9:54
Speaker 2: over a decade, right to bring it all together. So
9:57
Speaker 2: it was a very long term project in my lab
9:59
Speaker 2: for the very reasons that we discussed for all of
10:01
Speaker 2: these challenges, right, and it was one that because I
10:05
Speaker 2: would say the field in general viewed it to be
10:08
Speaker 2: impossible and thus not worth you know, spending research dollars on.
10:11
Speaker 2: It was one that we spent a lot of time
10:12
Speaker 2: bootstrapping in my lab because I really had a lot
10:15
Speaker 2: of conviction that we could get this done.
10:16
Speaker 1: So you publish this paper to show that you can
10:21
Speaker 1: get yeased to produce this drug ingredient. What happens next?
10:26
Speaker 2: The next questions are can it be done at an
10:29
Speaker 2: efficiency and scale such that this can really offer you know,
10:34
Speaker 2: solutions right to the industry, Because if you take what
10:37
Speaker 2: we showed in twenty fifteen tried to scale it up,
10:40
Speaker 2: I mean you would it would not be offering a
10:42
Speaker 2: solution because it was so inefficient. Is still not efficiently
10:46
Speaker 2: converting the sugar to that drug ingredient such that it
10:50
Speaker 2: would just be too expensive because ultimately price is a
10:53
Speaker 2: big consideration. So you know, there were and just to
10:56
Speaker 2: give you like a sense of the degree what we're
10:58
Speaker 2: discussing here, right again, when we look at what was
11:02
Speaker 2: demonstrated in twenty fifteen, you know the yest we're producing
11:05
Speaker 2: very low concentrations of that drug ingredient. We at Inthea
11:08
Speaker 2: had to optimize that by over a millionfold, and not
11:12
Speaker 2: just in scale but in efficiency of converting. That had
11:15
Speaker 2: to be able to produce a million times higher concentration
11:20
Speaker 2: of that drug ingredient than what we demonstrated.
11:23
Speaker 1: A million times more drug per unit.
11:25
Speaker 2: Sugar exactly right, or per unit use really right, So.
11:28
Speaker 1: The yeast has to get way, way way better. Sure
11:31
Speaker 1: it can make the drug. It's really bad at making
11:34
Speaker 1: the drug. In two, it's terrible at making it exactly.
11:38
Speaker 2: That's sort of independent of scale, you know, in terms
11:41
Speaker 2: of like the volume that you're producing. It's saying, okay,
11:43
Speaker 2: you know, whether you're we're growing you at a mill
11:45
Speaker 2: or we're growing you at you know, one hundred thousand liters,
11:48
Speaker 2: we need you to really steff up your game.
11:50
Speaker 1: And yeah, right, you.
11:52
Speaker 2: Know, converting that sugar into the drug product. And so
11:55
Speaker 2: again that comes back to a lot it's an engineering problem.
11:59
Speaker 1: So okay, this is the next problem you have what
12:01
Speaker 1: you know, what what are some of the things you
12:03
Speaker 1: do to increase efficiency.
12:04
Speaker 2: So you know, again if we come back to this
12:06
Speaker 2: idea of you know, you're assembling a car and a factory,
12:09
Speaker 2: right and it's going through these different lines to sort
12:11
Speaker 2: of build it in a modular way. That's you know,
12:14
Speaker 2: the sort of manufacturing assembly line that you've developed is
12:17
Speaker 2: sort of where you want your your drug ingredient to
12:19
Speaker 2: stay on track, right, But it is operating within this
12:23
Speaker 2: more broader complex system of the yeast. And so the
12:26
Speaker 2: yeast will have just natural processes that it's developed, and
12:29
Speaker 2: some of those will actually begin to interface with the
12:32
Speaker 2: assembly line that you've put in, and so it.
12:34
Speaker 1: Can start the yeast is busy being a yeast cell, right,
12:37
Speaker 1: Like the yeast was not born to make this drug ingredient.
12:41
Speaker 2: And it's you know, it's busy, as you say, being
12:43
Speaker 2: in a e cell. It has its own objectives that
12:45
Speaker 2: it wants to achieve, right in terms of you know, growing,
12:49
Speaker 2: you know, doubling, and you know, producing its own products. Yeah,
12:53
Speaker 2: it has its own dreams and you know, things that
12:55
Speaker 2: it wants to accomplish. And so it's you know, the
12:57
Speaker 2: natural system that you put it within is basically interfacing
13:01
Speaker 2: with that assembly line that you've put it in. And
13:03
Speaker 2: in many cases, right those natural systems can actually pull
13:07
Speaker 2: away or divert your drug ingredient from the desired endpoint,
13:12
Speaker 2: just you know, because of these interactions.
13:14
Speaker 1: That's the weird thing, Like the yeast is making you crazy,
13:16
Speaker 1: but like the yeast is also like the thing that's
13:19
Speaker 1: making the thing you need exactly right, and so you have.
13:22
Speaker 2: To really balance that very carefully because and so I mean,
13:25
Speaker 2: you want the use to be multiplying, because every time
13:28
Speaker 2: it multiplies, it's providing another cell factory that's going to
13:31
Speaker 2: reduce drug ingredients. So you it's this balance between allowing
13:34
Speaker 2: the EAST to obtain its objectives, which also feed into
13:36
Speaker 2: your objectives, but then where it is, you know, being
13:39
Speaker 2: disruptive to your process, trying to make surgical changes that
13:42
Speaker 2: will still allow the yeast to be relatively happy, you know,
13:45
Speaker 2: and feel like it is doing what it needs to do,
13:47
Speaker 2: but still but then allowing more of your drug ingredient
13:49
Speaker 2: to grow, to go towards the product that you ultimately
13:52
Speaker 2: want to produce.
13:57
Speaker 1: A few weeks ago and they announced that they had
13:59
Speaker 1: completed their first manufacturing scale production of the bay and
14:03
Speaker 1: they plan to start selling the ingredient to drug makers
14:06
Speaker 1: next year. We'll be back in a minute. Now, back
14:19
Speaker 1: to the show. So let's talk about drug shortages. To me,
14:24
Speaker 1: still somewhat strange phenomenon in the United States, a country
14:29
Speaker 1: where we're a rich country and we spend tons of
14:31
Speaker 1: money on drugs, although no generic drugs are cheap, and
14:33
Speaker 1: that's part of the thing. We can talk about that,
14:35
Speaker 1: but it is remarkable how widespread and persistent drug shortages
14:41
Speaker 1: are shortages in particular of generic drugs, and they seem
14:44
Speaker 1: to be increasing over the last few years. What's going
14:48
Speaker 1: on there?
14:49
Speaker 2: I mean, I think one thing that has been noted
14:51
Speaker 2: and that is notable is that in the US we
14:54
Speaker 2: do not have manufacturing capacity to produce drug ingredients or
14:58
Speaker 2: drug products really, right, It's very limited. Most of the
15:01
Speaker 2: drugs that we consume are basically produced outside of the
15:04
Speaker 2: US about ninety percent. What that ultimately plays into quite
15:07
Speaker 2: a bit is lack of transparency and control over these
15:10
Speaker 2: supply chains, right, because we don't have any domestic capacity.
15:14
Speaker 2: Because the supply chains actually are quite complex in terms
15:18
Speaker 2: of the different players involved, oftentimes we don't have a
15:21
Speaker 2: lot of notice or yeah, really notice or transparency into
15:25
Speaker 2: if we expect that there's going to be an issue
15:27
Speaker 2: with the supply chain. Right, there's just again very limited transparency.
15:30
Speaker 2: It's very difficult to track through all the supply chains. Now,
15:33
Speaker 2: when you talk about just manufacturing technology for drugs and
15:37
Speaker 2: the ways that they're being manufactured, there's essentially two different
15:40
Speaker 2: ways that all of our drugs are being produced. Right.
15:43
Speaker 2: We talked about agricultural sourcing, which a lot of that
15:46
Speaker 2: is sort of where we focus. But again about forty
15:49
Speaker 2: percent of our drugs are being produced through agricultural sourcing.
15:52
Speaker 2: These are very complex basically drug ingredients. We cannot produce
15:57
Speaker 2: them at scale with chemical synthesis, and so we still
16:00
Speaker 2: basically rely on biological synthesis to produce them.
16:03
Speaker 1: To be clear, you mean they come from plants.
16:05
Speaker 2: Plants, sometimes other animals, right, So you know there are
16:10
Speaker 2: in drug ingredients that are a extracted from animals or
16:13
Speaker 2: even you know, sometimes it could be rare marine coral.
16:16
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, but so you do really get
16:17
Speaker 2: a spectrum. I think the bulk of it is going
16:19
Speaker 2: to be plants, but it will meld into other areas.
16:22
Speaker 2: But all of these you can imagine, these supply chains
16:24
Speaker 2: are increasingly vulnerable. If you're farming in a small number
16:28
Speaker 2: of areas across the globe and you have a fire
16:30
Speaker 2: that goes through a region, or a flood, or you know,
16:32
Speaker 2: any one of the sort of climate catastrophes we're sort
16:36
Speaker 2: of seen and out of increasing frequency that can really
16:38
Speaker 2: wipe out basically the crops and a large fraction of
16:43
Speaker 2: the material that's being produced in any given year. And
16:46
Speaker 2: so there can have these variabilities, right, also variabilities in
16:50
Speaker 2: farming practices, variability and pest and disease that go through
16:52
Speaker 2: an area. The point is that there's a lot of
16:54
Speaker 2: vulnerability and variability that is becoming increasingly difficult to predict
16:58
Speaker 2: and also just increasing in frequency. So what that means
17:02
Speaker 2: is that supplies can vary right from year to year,
17:04
Speaker 2: from growing season to growing season. And the other thing
17:06
Speaker 2: is because the manufacturing cycles are so long, you know,
17:09
Speaker 2: any one of these because of the time it takes
17:11
Speaker 2: to grow the biomass or the organism right to complete
17:15
Speaker 2: a manufacturing cycle. For most medicinal plants, it can be
17:17
Speaker 2: two years to sometimes five years, right, just because of
17:21
Speaker 2: how slow they might grow. So if you wipe out
17:24
Speaker 2: a crop for any given growing season, you don't have
17:26
Speaker 2: the ability to just grow more, right, you have to replant,
17:30
Speaker 2: receive That can take years, So there's no ability to
17:32
Speaker 2: sort of respond rapidly if demand changes or if you know,
17:37
Speaker 2: part of your supply chain basically goes down with fermentation.
17:41
Speaker 2: Right now, what you have is very sort of consistent infrastructure.
17:45
Speaker 2: It's basically a fermentation vat whether you're producing a chemotherapeutic,
17:50
Speaker 2: a sedative and anti infective right, or a pain medication.
17:55
Speaker 2: Regardless of what ingredient you're producing, the infrastructure is the same.
17:59
Speaker 2: You're basically swapping in different strains of yeast, and the
18:02
Speaker 2: manufacturing cycle time is so fast, right, It's basically two
18:05
Speaker 2: weeks a week to grow the yeast, get the drug produced,
18:08
Speaker 2: and then an other several days to purify it to
18:10
Speaker 2: really pure form. So because of the fast manufacturing cycle time,
18:14
Speaker 2: and then because the infrastructure is very readily repurposable, right,
18:19
Speaker 2: because ultimately it's the same, you can and you can
18:23
Speaker 2: actually switch a facility from producing a chemotherapeutic to producing
18:26
Speaker 2: a sedative in a matter of two days.
18:28
Speaker 1: So the dream is to be the swing supply or
18:31
Speaker 1: for whatever ingredient is in short supply in a way
18:34
Speaker 1: that people who are using traditional technologies cannot be because
18:37
Speaker 1: of the nature of the technology.
18:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I would let me just say, I
18:41
Speaker 2: think I think for for me, the dream is actually
18:44
Speaker 2: to disrupt the market, right, I mean, we shouldn't be
18:46
Speaker 2: farming drug ingredients. It's very wasteful from a resource perspective
18:51
Speaker 2: that land can be used to produce food, right, and
18:54
Speaker 2: other products that you know we need for a growing population, right,
18:58
Speaker 2: you waste a lot of biomass. You waste a lot
19:00
Speaker 2: of water, I mean other things because most of that
19:02
Speaker 2: plant material you're basically throwing away. It's just not a
19:05
Speaker 2: good use of resources. So really the dream is this
19:08
Speaker 2: techno should disrupt and transform the industry. It just makes
19:12
Speaker 2: more sense, right. It can actually provide these ingredients at
19:16
Speaker 2: a cheaper cost, It could provide them at a more consistent,
19:20
Speaker 2: better quality, right, And it's it's just a more efficient
19:23
Speaker 2: use of resources. So it really should be that transformation
19:26
Speaker 2: in the industry.
19:30
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round.
19:43
Speaker 1: Back to the show. We just have to do a
19:45
Speaker 1: lightning round, and then you can go. As a professor
19:48
Speaker 1: of bioengineering, what do you understand about biology and or
19:53
Speaker 1: engineering that most people don't understand?
19:56
Speaker 2: I think you know. One thing is as engineers, we
20:01
Speaker 2: provide solutions. We develop solutions with imperfect data, right, and
20:05
Speaker 2: imperfect knowledge of the system. We have to have enough
20:08
Speaker 2: knowledge and enough day to provide solutions that are going
20:10
Speaker 2: to be meaningful, that are going to scale, right. But
20:13
Speaker 2: and I think that can be at odds with a biologist, right,
20:17
Speaker 2: or someone who's studying the pure science where we really
20:19
Speaker 2: want to understand all the nuance, you know, understand everything
20:22
Speaker 2: in sort of the beautiful detailed intricacy.
20:24
Speaker 1: What's your favorite yeast?
20:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really do like sacrimicos seravisier and you.
20:32
Speaker 1: Know, tell me about sacrimisis.
20:34
Speaker 2: Well, it's a it's a strain of use that we
20:37
Speaker 2: use at anthea, but it's also the strain of right,
20:39
Speaker 2: it's also use that are used again as brewers use
20:41
Speaker 2: you know Baker's uast.
20:42
Speaker 1: Right, if you weren't working on drug ingredients, what would
20:45
Speaker 1: you be working on?
20:49
Speaker 2: It's a good question. There's there's different ways to take that.
20:52
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that there are a lot of
20:55
Speaker 2: problems that are important in the context of synthetic biology.
20:59
Speaker 2: You know, I could also I would love to also
21:02
Speaker 2: there's another part of my life and sort of a
21:04
Speaker 2: second life that I might live where I'm in a
21:06
Speaker 2: very different industry. Right, So you know, but that that
21:10
Speaker 2: did not that is not the road that we took.
21:12
Speaker 1: What like, I feel like there's a very particular thing
21:14
Speaker 1: in your mind as you say that, what is that? No? No, no,
21:17
Speaker 1: I mean I you're thinking of something. What is the
21:20
Speaker 1: thing I always.
21:22
Speaker 2: I always joke with my friends and I would love
21:25
Speaker 2: to just you know, my retirement plan on basically after
21:28
Speaker 2: all of this is to go be like, I don't know,
21:31
Speaker 2: an assistant to someone like Wes Anderson who makes these
21:35
Speaker 2: incredible films that you know, I adore and I feel,
21:39
Speaker 2: you know, and and really just create these very interesting worlds,
21:42
Speaker 2: and I feel like I just would want to, you know,
21:44
Speaker 2: maybe get his coffee or something.
21:46
Speaker 1: Do you think of going into the movies when you
21:48
Speaker 1: were whatever in college or something?
21:50
Speaker 2: I mean in high school, I actually spent all my
21:52
Speaker 2: time in drama, right, basically you know, doing school plays,
21:56
Speaker 2: doing musicals, I mean, all that stuff. So and I
21:59
Speaker 2: really thought up until the point of I was making
22:01
Speaker 2: decisions to apply to college, you know, I thought that
22:04
Speaker 2: I would go into basically theater and you know, do theater,
22:08
Speaker 2: do movies, whatever. And then I just, you know, as
22:11
Speaker 2: I was actually applying, kind of had a revelation of
22:16
Speaker 2: do I really want to do that, you know, for
22:17
Speaker 2: the rest of my life? It actually seemed difficult. Not
22:20
Speaker 2: that what we're doing now isn't difficult, but it seemed
22:22
Speaker 2: difficult in a way that maybe was difficult. You know,
22:25
Speaker 2: even as much work as I could put in, right,
22:27
Speaker 2: it's it's not necessarily you can't necessarily project the outcome,
22:30
Speaker 2: and even at that time, you know, it was sort
22:32
Speaker 2: of taking a step back and saying, you know, what
22:35
Speaker 2: can I do? What do I want to do? Which
22:36
Speaker 2: allows me to sort of build create, you know, and
22:39
Speaker 2: make things and produce things, but something that could really
22:42
Speaker 2: have a meaningful impact right on the world. And so
22:45
Speaker 2: that kind of that then led me to engineering, you know,
22:48
Speaker 2: engineering with biology and and and really that sort of
22:51
Speaker 2: started that route as I went into college.
22:54
Speaker 1: I've taken up enough of your time. Is there anything
22:57
Speaker 1: else you want to say?
22:59
Speaker 2: No, I think you've done a great job of directing
23:02
Speaker 2: the conversation. So hopefully it's you know, then at a
23:05
Speaker 2: good level for the Are.
23:07
Speaker 1: They not at all worried? Sometimes at the end of inner,
23:09
Speaker 1: I'm like, how am I going to make this work? Guy?
23:10
Speaker 1: This is gonna be an easy one. This is great.
23:12
Speaker 2: Thank you, absolutely, thank you.
23:20
Speaker 1: Christina Smolke is the co founder and CEO of Anthea.
23:25
Speaker 1: Today's show was edited by Karen Chakerjee, produced by Edith Russolo,
23:30
Speaker 1: and engineered by Amanda K.
23:32
Speaker 2: Wall.
23:33
Speaker 1: You can email us at problem at pushkin dot fm.
23:36
Speaker 1: We are always, always, always trying to find interesting new
23:40
Speaker 1: guests for the show, So if there's somebody who think
23:42
Speaker 1: we should book, please let us know. I'm Jacob Goldstein
23:45
Speaker 1: and we'll be back next week with another episode of
23:47
Speaker 1: What's Your Problem.