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Jan Thirkettle - CEO Harness Therapeutics at BIO Boston 2025 · The BioHub - by Avetix

• 0:04
  All right, so we're in Boston in bio.
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  So I'm here with Jan for Kettle, the CEO of Harness Therapeutics.
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  Just just give a bit of background on yourself.
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  Jan yeah. So CEO, as you say, joined the
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  company in 2021. My background is chemistry,
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  very, very long time ago. I was in large farmer for about
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  20 years, working mainly in late stage, mainly in novel
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  technologies like gene therapy and the rare disease space.
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  And that for me really fired up a passion about building new
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  technology platforms. So that gave me a really great
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  experience across the whole value chain.
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  Got involved in taking one of the first ex vivo gene therapies
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  to market. Then I realized I wanted to
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  change the scene and really felt biotech was a much more
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  exciting, agile environment that I wanted to take part in.
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  Moved to a company called Freelance Therapeutics that was
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  started up as a spin out from UCL in gene therapy for AAV
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  based gene therapy for haemophilia B and a number of
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  their diseases and had a fantastic experience learning
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  the craft of being a start up CEO, chief development officer
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  and being part of a team navigating the channels.
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  Are building a biotech ultimately through COVID as
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  well. Yeah.
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  And you know, that reaffirmed my passion for staying in the
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  biotech space, staying in building the new platforms and
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  new technologies. Yeah, that's amazing.
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  So just moving on to harness, who are you guys?
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  What are you doing? So we are a small new generation
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  company. We're focused on targets where
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  there's a really strong reason to believe that a small increase
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  can be disease modifying. Now that might sound like a very
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  small space actually there's quite a lot of exciting targets
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  in that area that have been well studied is maybe G was or the
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  clinical data behind them, but they've been left unprosecuted
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  because achieving a small controlled increase is pretty
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  difficult. You can't do that with gene
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  therapy and you know by definition knock down platforms
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  can't do that. So that first gets into space of
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  unprosecuted high value targets that can make a big difference.
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  And that's how we've decided to apply the technology we've
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  built. We've built up technology to
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  allow control increases in protein levels, particularly on
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  targets in the CNS. And we a couple of years ago
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  decided to apply that platform, particularly in new degeneration
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  and CNS targets, which was maybe counterintuitive lots of our
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  competitive companies or in rare diseases or in other organs.
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  And new degeneration is not an easy space to be in,
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  particularly on the clinical side of things.
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  But we felt the opportunity on the target space and the match
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  for our platform was really exciting.
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  And that's, that's the, the leap we made a couple of years ago
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  when we brand of the company's Harness Therapeutics.
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  Yeah. How do you completely separate
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  on, but how, how do you find it being AUK based company at the
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  moment? Is it positive, negative or?
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  That's an interesting, really interesting question.
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  I think there's a lot of, there's a lot of positives for
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  being in the UK right now. I mean, our our cost base and
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  access to talent, yeah, is, is actually really strong now.
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  It's a smaller talent pool compared to Boston, San Diego,
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  but there are now in the UK a large number of people who've
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  not just got a great content background, but have got
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  experience of biotech as well. And that pool has really grown
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  over the past decades. So yeah, for for me, it's a
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  great place to get talent and to be able to build and operate
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  really cheaply, frankly, by comparison to the US and some
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  great networks we can access with the healthcare system and
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  Kols in the UK and in Europe. So there's a lot of advantages.
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  You know, we don't have the same pool of big BCS, but you know,
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  those big BCS in the US are looking in this.
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  Space as well. No, I agree.
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  I think I've definitely seen that BCS are seeing the value in
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  European, not just UK talent and companies.
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  I've seen there's definitely resurgence.
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  You've seen other companies coming through doing these big
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  fundraisers that the US companies are doing as well.
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  Yeah, the cost efficiency and, you know, the ability to to
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  build a team, yeah, and build an operation with stability over
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  time. And that's that's difficult.
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  It's more difficult actually if you're in a real hotspot like
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  Boston. There's great pros to that, but
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  there's also cons that it gets, particularly in times of boom,
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  it gets very difficult to maintain the state of the team.
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  Whereas in the UK, it's less dynamic and people expect to
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  stay longer and notice pros and longer.
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  And so that's stability and really building an operation
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  where everybody knows each other, everybody's got each
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  other's back, everybody knows how to be.
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  That actually yields real dividends in the medium term,
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  and that takes time. To, yeah, I think your mindset's
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  quite refreshing because you talk about building a biotech
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  from scratch with like great fondness, which is great, right?
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  Like in what is a tough market through COVID, through what
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  we're going through now for. Me that's, that's one of the
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  most exciting parts of the science is super exciting.
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  But for me, one of the most exciting parts is to build the
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  company and build the operation. And yeah, I think it's also one
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  of the most difficult things actually my, you know,
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  experience at at free line and working with other companies
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  along the way. Yeah, science is always
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  difficult. You're always going to have to
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  adjust the science whenever work is planned.
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  The key then actually is how do you build the operation where
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  you're going to learn from that and adjust and that and and
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  evolved from a two person to a ten person, from a ten person to
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  a forty person. Actually, that's one of the
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  hardest things, yeah, seems to get right and it you need to be
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  quite deliberate about it. But that's yeah, yeah.
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  Second time round feeling a lot, a lot easier and and it's a real
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  focus we're putting onto it as a management.
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  Yeah, I think like the these aspects of gratitude and
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  celebrating little wins is big as well.
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  Like what you guys have done with harness is already a great
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  achievement. Like how often do you actually
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  sit back and. Yeah, maybe not often enough,
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  but for me as an organization, you know, we started this
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  company four years ago, started under a different name.
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  Yeah. From day one, an organization
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  about control, that regulation, as I say, two years ago, we made
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  some decisions partly based on wanting to adjust the Technology
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  Strategy, partly because we felt new generation was supposed to
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  go in and we adjusted the company.
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  And through that period, everybody stayed with it, didn't
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  lose anybody. And that sort of trial by fire
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  of any organization a team has been amazing to see people stick
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  with it. And that's for me is one of the
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  things I'm most excited about the company and proud of the
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  team that have continued to, you know, they've built resilience
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  through that. Yeah, a real, a real team.
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  That's awesome. So what?
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  What's next? Now what?
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  What are you thinking? So we're on the cusp of getting
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  some really exciting data about our lead program, which is
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  hunting this disease and, and say it's getting super exciting
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  data's coming out day by day, week by week.
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  So over the summer, we've got a very exciting summer of say some
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  big data readouts, selecting a development candidate and the
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  cusp of that. And that will be the catalyst
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  for they were going after an A round.
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  And so we're doing all of the pre work getting ready for that
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  starting to Asian investors. But it's about, it's a bit like
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  lining up to the the start line of a very big race and it's the
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  tensions building. Yeah.
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  Oh, it's exciting though. I'm really glad that you guys
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  are getting traction and. Yeah, and and it's been you
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  know, we're lucky the the field, the neuro field is, is on a real
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  up there with some real insights from on target biology on
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  endpoints, farmers really putting focus on investment in
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  the area and the investors can see that.
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  And then Huntington's, there's been some incredible
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  breakthroughs that have been driven by the big research
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  organisations and charities and specs, but that has driven real
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  excitement about thinker studies and luckily for us to put a big
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  focus on the pathway that our target operates in.
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  So you know, we're benefiting from that.
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  So it's a very exciting. Time.
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  Amazing. That's a great place to to
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  finish it off. But great.
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  Stuff Pleasure to have you on Jan.
• 8:11
  Thanks. Very much no problem.
• 8:12
  Thank you so much.