Latest / The BioHub - by Avetix / Episode 224 - Wyatt McDonnell - CEO of Infinimmune

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Episode 224 - Wyatt McDonnell - CEO of Infinimmune · The BioHub - by Avetix

0:06
Welcome to the bio podcast. Good to have you on.
0:10
Yeah. Thanks for having me, Callum.
0:11
Great to be here. I appreciate it.
0:14
I know it's been a little while in the making, but I think if
0:18
anyone's had a good excuse this summer, it's it's probably
0:21
yourself and things have been super busy at Infinity.
0:26
We'll probably get on rightly so to the all the recent
0:30
milestones, Series A, the Merc deal, the plans for 27 in a
0:35
little while, but I think may be useful for for those tuning in.
0:41
Just going back a little bit to your entry into biotech, which
0:44
is, yeah, pretty recent. I, I, I checked it out obviously
0:48
2019 starting out in computational biology at 10X.
0:53
So I just wanted to, yeah, if you wouldn't mind, give a little
0:56
bit of insight as to how you got into biotech and sort of your
1:00
journey through the field so far.
1:03
Yeah. So I have, like most people in
1:05
biotech, I have a unique path into it.
1:09
You know, it's not something you'd think to yourself at six
1:12
years old. Like I want to work in biotech
1:14
and I want to work in the Bay Area and I want to start a
1:16
company. Like that was very much not my
1:19
experience. You know, I went to a small
1:23
liberal arts College in the Midwest in southern Michigan and
1:27
I studied a lot of things because that's what you do to
1:30
liberal arts college. Had a pretty keen interest in
1:35
immunology and microbiology coming out of that.
1:39
I went to, you know, grad school instead of medical school, which
1:43
at the time was a big let down to my parents.
1:46
I wrong type of doctor and you know, on the other side of and
1:50
the past few years I think it's it's been clear that they I made
1:53
made the right choice and part of you know what that looked
1:56
like for me at the time was I just really felt that there was
2:00
a lot of opportunity to understand the immune system
2:03
still, you know, and I think you can read really excellent
2:06
coverage about this from like Ed Young over at the Atlantic.
2:09
But immunology really is one of the last domains where there is
2:15
both so much known and unknown. And every, you know, 5 to 10
2:21
years, we seem to find some set of things that completely flip
2:27
what we know on its head and take us in a totally new
2:30
direction. So, you know, that's, that's a
2:31
great place to work intellectually.
2:36
Going into my PhD at Vanderbilt, I initially, you know, my, my
2:42
team will rib me about this sometimes.
2:44
Like I actually used to pipette, OK, I used to have good hands.
2:47
Like I was a laboratory scientist and I worked in a
2:51
really interesting lab that had a great blend of, you know,
2:56
tooling on the computational side, automation in the lab,
3:01
really high quality, hands on protocol development, building
3:05
single cell assays that look nothing like what most people
3:09
run today. So plate based assays using, you
3:12
know, flow cytometry to put one cell in one well and then try to
3:15
miniaturize those reactions because it was very, very
3:18
expensive. And so as a graduate student, I
3:22
watched the 10X Genomics chromium controller launch
3:26
commercially. Vanderbilt was one of the, I
3:29
think one of three institute's at the time that had all of the
3:33
single cell platforms in the single next generation
3:36
sequencing core. And it was pretty interesting to
3:40
watch the queue for the Chromium controller get longer and
3:43
longer, and the queue for the other controllers get shorter
3:47
and shorter. And then in the middle of that
3:50
process, one became pretty clear that all this work I'd done in
3:56
the lab had been just sort of obviated by the entrance of this
4:00
new technology. And then two, there was this,
4:04
you know, large refresh of, you know, the granting institutes at
4:09
the time the United States started saying things like you
4:12
have to have a single cell genomics component in all of
4:15
your grants to us. Otherwise, you know, we're the
4:17
National Cancer Institute and we're not going to fund
4:20
innovation that doesn't incorporate this technology.
4:23
So that created a lot of opportunity to just work with a
4:26
lot of different labs in grad school.
4:28
And I just started, you know, putting my hand up and saying,
4:31
like, I can help you with that. I can help you with that.
4:33
And so I started learning how to write really mangy Python And R
4:37
code that, you know, when I moved over to 10X genomics, I
4:42
encountered real software engineers and real computational
4:46
biologists. And I think that's, that's
4:48
really important because, you know, I think you learn the
4:51
difference between computational fluency and being sort of a
4:57
translator. So I think, you know, my, my
4:59
foray into computational biology really came from one,
5:05
recognizing that there's a lot of opportunity to approach
5:08
things with code and think about them from a quantitative
5:11
perspective that isn't really emphasized in most graduate
5:15
programs. You know, we, I think we all
5:18
need more quantitative fluency. And then two, working at 10X,
5:24
you know, I think the best part of that was being able to plug
5:28
into this really interdisciplinary team where you
5:31
learn what real computational biology looks like.
5:34
And you get asked things in your interview like, you know,
5:38
enumerate an algorithm for counting K MERS in a string.
5:41
And then you go like, Oh my gosh, I don't know anything
5:44
about computer science. And yet this is exactly the kind
5:47
of work that I'm doing day-to-day.
5:49
So it forces you to level up and think really hard about what
5:52
you're doing rather than just, you know, importing somebody
5:56
else's library and not thinking twice and just like, OK, the
6:00
results, the results. So you spend several years in
6:03
that environment and what do you get to do?
6:06
You get to work on really interesting products that are
6:09
going after, you know, new, not market opportunities, but
6:13
biological opportunities. So helping people be able to see
6:17
the biology of what they're studying because they don't have
6:20
the tools to do so is an immensely rewarding journey to
6:24
be a part of. And so I spent three years at
6:26
10X building out a couple of different products.
6:30
And as part of those teams, you know, that included the barcode
6:34
enabled antigen mapping solution or beam, the VDJ product, the,
6:39
you know, V2 of the five prime gene expression product.
6:45
I worked really closely with the intellectual property team.
6:49
So if you, you know, look up my Google patents profile, see I
6:52
was not unproductive in my time at 10X.
6:55
And yeah, you know, I, I left four years ago and then I
7:01
decided to start in Phenomune because one of the things that I
7:03
was encountering was that, you know, there's this incredible
7:07
technology and big farm. I have no clue what to do with
7:11
it. And that's crazy because this
7:13
technology can be used to find therapeutics right now today.
7:17
And, you know, it became the basis of Infinimine rather than
7:21
being a service company, rather than being a, you know, CRO,
7:25
rather than being, you know, more Adam AB style business, we
7:29
chose to work on something more impactful, which is being a
7:32
therapeutics company that really knows how to apply this
7:35
technology. And there's, there's very few
7:36
companies like Infinimine that are, you know, coming into
7:40
existence today and certainly very few if any left that
7:45
started around the same time that are still doing that.
7:48
Yeah, definitely. And and you met a lot of the
7:50
founding Infinimine team at 10X, right?
7:54
There's this. Met all of them at 10X, yeah.
7:57
Yeah, yeah. And and worked side by side with
8:01
David Jaffe and Computational biology.
8:04
One row over was another, you know, quad mate Lance Hepler,
8:10
one floor down and then, you know, another pot of desks.
8:15
Katie Pfeiffer, my CTO, and Mike Gibbons, my CSO.
8:18
And so, you know, I think most of us had not directly worked
8:25
together very, very closely at the time, but we had bumped into
8:30
each other frequently and frequently reached out to each
8:34
other to, you know, brainstorm or pick each other's brains
8:37
around like, hey, I'm seeing this.
8:39
What do you think about that? And so, yeah, you know, I mean,
8:43
there's the nice thing about working in, you know, orgs like
8:49
that is like, you start to figure out who is really well
8:52
respected for their contributions and not just, you
8:55
know, their sense of humor or like their ability to, you know,
8:59
convince anybody of anything. You know, we, you know, we don't
9:02
have a, you know, sort of Kissingerian leadership team.
9:05
We have scientists who are really admired for their ability
9:10
to think through things robustly and propose some good solutions
9:13
and make those real, or at least figure out which ones are
9:16
viable. Yeah, for sure.
9:19
So you mentioned you didn't necessarily work that closely
9:22
with any of the guys. How did it come about?
9:24
Like bringing it all together? Yeah.
9:27
So I think before I left, so Lance had, Lance had left maybe
9:37
maybe 7 or 8 months before I did.
9:40
And he had spent a lot of time in the, you know, he was really
9:46
high impact algorithmic engineer for all of the software that
9:50
intend X was developing. And he was a go get it done,
9:54
figure it out, write up brand new code from scratch, implement
9:57
new methods from scratch. He's he's one of the only PhD
10:01
trained biologists I know that can, you know, look at whatever,
10:05
you know, attention algorithm is now on archive.org and actually
10:09
write it up from scratch. So that's pretty interesting.
10:12
So I knew we needed a, you know, architect and or like a systems
10:18
engineer. So I reached out to Lance and
10:20
said like, hey, I'm, I'm going to start something.
10:22
I think you'd be great for this. David and I, before both of us
10:28
left 10X, we had worked very closely together on several
10:32
projects and we actually ended up publishing a paper in Nature
10:36
called Light Chain Coherence. And that was pretty high impact.
10:41
And when you spend months with somebody working through an idea
10:45
with that and going like, wow, there's a lot here.
10:50
I don't know that I can stay here having seen like this kind
10:54
of biology and the implications it has for therapeutic
10:57
development. So I think David, David was my,
11:01
was my first call. And and then with Mike and
11:05
Katie, you know, I had, I had left and I said, well.
11:10
I I think the world of both of you and we're going to need a
11:16
world class wet lab team and I think there's place for you to
11:22
build technology here and apply technology you've developed in a
11:25
way that isn't going to come around the block again.
11:28
And you know, so this was basically, you know, several,
11:33
several beers worth of pitching. And you know, I think I think
11:36
all founders should go through this is, you know, the the
11:39
reason you should bet on companies that have Co founders
11:42
is it means the CEO has had to convince somebody to come join
11:47
them in a very risky endeavor. And that is ultimately at least
11:51
half of the job in the first year of a company as CEO is
11:55
convincing people of the vision and then making that vision come
11:59
to life, whether that's people joining your team, whether
12:01
that's investors understanding your vision and backing it from
12:05
there. So I think that's the highest
12:08
return thing you can spend your time on as CEO is now trying to
12:12
go it alone. Yeah, for sure.
12:14
And it shows you've got a lot of smart people with high
12:16
conviction in in what you're building, which, yeah, makes
12:19
those secondary conversations a lot easier for sure.
12:22
I mean, like there's a lot of smart people within
12:26
computational biology Wire for sure super switched on technical
12:31
brains in in that side of the business.
12:33
But but not everyone has the sort of, I guess almost
12:38
commercial mindset or drive to to say, hey, I'm, I'm this
12:42
works. I'm going to set something up
12:43
around it. Obviously you you had that.
12:46
Is there anything that like really stands out in terms of
12:50
like maybe it's a personality trait of yours or yeah,
12:54
something that you do really well which has made you
12:56
successful in that that maybe you could pass on to others in?
12:59
A similar position, I think there's, I think there's a
13:03
couple of things that I've, I've learned about like my, my peers,
13:07
so like fellow CEO's that are pretty common in people who, who
13:12
start companies. One, there's just a, a horrid
13:18
degree of stubbornness and you have to be very stubborn and you
13:21
have to really believe in things with conviction.
13:25
And, you know, I think, you know, even this week they,
13:27
there's an interview on NBC of the, the Co CEOs of Panda
13:31
Express and, you know, they were asked if you were not ACEO, what
13:36
would you be doing? And one of them said, I mean,
13:39
I'm a really bad hire. I don't think it could work for
13:42
anybody. I'm just, I'm very stubborn.
13:43
I believe what I believe with great conviction, right.
13:46
So, so I think that's part of it.
13:48
I'm a very curious person. So I, you know, I think I would
13:52
score pretty highly on openness and curiosity.
13:55
And I think that's important because you have to be able to
14:00
learn about something, but you also have to be able to change
14:03
your mind about something pretty quickly in response to, to
14:06
evidence, because otherwise you might miss the boat or you might
14:10
get things very wrong and you're promising new company might die.
14:15
I grew up in a bed and breakfast, so I spent a lot of
14:18
time with a lot of strangers walking in and out of our home.
14:22
So I think I'm a fairly good judge of people at this point.
14:26
So I've, I've just, I've met a lot of people, I've spoken to a
14:29
lot of people who are, you know, in all kinds of different lines
14:33
of work. I think that really helps.
14:36
And I, and I think, you know, from a mentorship perspective,
14:39
that's the, that last point is really, really important because
14:43
I've been, you know, for whatever reason, my entire
14:47
professional career surrounded by people who are incredibly
14:51
bright, incredibly helpful, good humans who know lots of things
14:55
that I don't. So for example, I, I worked very
14:58
closely with the chief business officer of 10X Genomics while I
15:02
was there. And as a, you know, kid, the PhD
15:08
who was trying to figure out how to build products to then see
15:12
the other side of the coin and go and go Aleg, I actually don't
15:15
know what an NPV is. I should learn that.
15:18
And also, I don't know how to apply a framework of where is
15:22
there an opportunity that's actionable in research and
15:24
development? So, you know, you start to learn
15:28
things like the McKenzie framework of, you know, what do
15:30
you need to believe, you know, as you as you build out a case.
15:34
And so I think that kind of, you know, curiosity you can really
15:39
only put into play if you have people in your life who are
15:43
willing to take a chance on you and give you opportunities to
15:46
step up to plate and and learn something new.
15:49
So I think most of why I have been successful in life is I
15:55
would say 20% to do with who I am or, or what I am, and maybe
16:01
80% to do with the people that I've been very, very fortunate
16:05
to work with. Yeah, I guess curiosity
16:08
naturally only means something if you, if you action it right
16:11
and, and you ask those questions and, and speak to the people
16:15
that you need to. Yeah.
16:16
Nice. That's, yeah.
16:17
Useful insights to pass on. So, yeah, look, obviously
16:21
getting on to Infinimune, you've got the guys in place, you've
16:25
got them over, you've persuaded them over a few beers to to join
16:29
the ship. What, what's the sort of first
16:32
period of time look like? What, what are you guys?
16:35
I mean, maybe this is a good point to sort of ask about the
16:37
thesis and and the platform that you built.
16:41
Yeah. So, you know, we started around
16:44
something pretty simple, which was that human knowledge when it
16:48
comes to the antibody generating system in the body is woefully
16:53
incomplete. So we had spent some time going
16:56
through the, you know, federal deposits or a, you know, the
17:01
sequence read archive where you see all of the next generation
17:05
sequencing data sets uploaded and stored and found lots of
17:08
different examples, you know, albeit using, you know, mostly
17:13
bulk technology of, you know, RNA transcripts that look like
17:17
they're antibodies, but in another sense look nothing like
17:21
any of the antibodies that you would typically see in like a,
17:23
you know, prominent immunology textbook like Janeway or a boss,
17:28
for instance. So we had proof of a signal in
17:32
one sense. And then we had assembled a team
17:35
that was very capable of building molecular technologies
17:39
and computational technologies. And then there was 1, you know,
17:44
afternoon where we sat down and, you know, we're talking about
17:47
maybe we should, you know, get an SBIR grant.
17:51
SBIR grants are very, very small amounts of capital that are
17:55
excellent for different types of businesses, not therapeutics
17:58
businesses. And, you know, instead they
18:01
said, well, we should raise a venture capital round because I
18:04
think we have enough here to be the basis of a really, really
18:08
excellent end of one platform. And I think the right audiences
18:14
will be interested in that. So we did sort of a reverse
18:17
matchmaking process. You know, I had a list of
18:20
companies that I really liked and I really admired and I, you
18:23
know, walked backwards to who were the first checks into those
18:27
companies converged on a pretty short list.
18:30
And I just did cold direct outreach and you know, first
18:34
fund we ended up really matching with was Axial VC and Josh
18:39
Elkington over there. And then Josh introduced us to
18:43
several funds in his network including Playground Global, who
18:47
later turned into our, you know, seed round lead.
18:50
So that happened pretty quickly. So we incorporated second week
18:55
of July 2022 and then we closed the seed and had the wires
19:01
landed second week of October that same year.
19:04
So we got up and running very quickly.
19:06
And that's because we've had an idea of, you know, what we were
19:10
going to build, when we were going to build, what we were
19:12
going to do with it. And we turned out to be pretty
19:16
much on the nose about that. So it was, you know, the
19:18
initial, what's the thesis, what's the technology we build?
19:22
How are we going to apply it? And then just putting your head
19:24
back down and getting to work, you know, and I think the thing
19:29
that I'm, I'm most proud of our team for navigating successfully
19:33
in that early period. We thought it was going to take
19:38
18 to 24 months to build out the core technology platform.
19:43
And then we did it in about 6. So then we had all of this white
19:47
space in front of us where it's like, oh man, like we didn't
19:50
think we were going to have to deal with this whole set of
19:52
problems for years now. What are we going to do?
19:56
So then you start having to build muscle around, how do you
19:59
think about targets? How do you think about markets?
20:01
How do you think about that intersection?
20:03
What's the role of partnerships in our platform?
20:06
You know, it's very, it can be very tempting if you have a
20:10
really good platform. To pursue cheap revenue because
20:15
it's revenue and every little taste of revenue tastes even
20:19
better and better, right. So, you know, I think we have
20:22
struck a good balance between developing technology that is
20:27
best used by us and making sure that our technology is also
20:32
producing assets for partners, but not in a way that reduces
20:36
Infinimine's ability to move it's own molecules forward
20:39
through the clinic. Yeah.
20:41
Yeah, absolutely. And and I mean, you've always
20:43
had the goal, I guess. So even having the idea about
20:48
Infinimine to be a therapeutics company, right.
20:51
So so that helps. To that extent and, and, and
20:53
partially because you know, there's just, you know, platform
20:59
companies when you get it right, it's incredible.
21:03
And it's also very, very hard to build a platform company that
21:07
stays a platform company over time.
21:09
And, and for us, we could have done that, but it was really
21:14
more about the biology that we're working on where we said,
21:18
well, if we're able to connect human anti antibody biology to
21:22
assets, then we think we should be spending our time developing
21:26
assets because few other companies, we think no other
21:31
companies can do what we do. You know, very few of them have
21:35
that extremely human centric approach to asset development in
21:39
the 1st place. So try to be a big fish in a
21:44
small pond wherever you can, right?
21:45
And try to make sure that you are doing things that you are
21:50
uniquely capable of doing well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
21:55
Nice. And I don't know how much you
21:57
want to touch on the assets that you have turned out.
22:01
I know you obviously spoke about those in the latest release a
22:05
little bit, but obviously pencil to enter the clinic next year
22:08
with those. Yeah, it's a biggest start.
22:11
Enough with with the lead, yeah. Yeah, so the lead asset
22:16
neutralizes Illinois 22, a pretty important barrier
22:19
cytokine that you know, we could do a whole separate episode of
22:22
some time about all the different evidence behind it.
22:26
You know, I think the key points for us, it's the only Target
22:31
outside of aisle 13 that has genetic validation and every
22:35
major continent, every major ethnicity.
22:38
That's actually not true for Targets like aisle 18 for
22:42
example, or even aisle 31 in terms of the, you know, reverse
22:49
translation that has occurred. It's also interesting there's
22:53
several companies that have tried to develop FC fusions of
22:57
bile 22 in the past and the dose limiting dose dependent tox you
23:02
see for those assets funnily enough is eczema.
23:05
So it's the only target that has been forward translated and
23:09
reverse translated. And then from our end, you know,
23:12
we discovered an antibody out of a cohort of donors who are
23:16
protected from developing, you know, bullis, autoimmune skin
23:21
diseases and who don't develop eczema.
23:23
And it appears to be mediated by neutralization of interleukin 20
23:27
twos who recovered a really rare exquisitely potent antibody
23:32
against this target directly out of a very relevant human cohort.
23:36
And then in terms of the profile of that compound, we have some
23:42
posters at EADV and we'll have some posters and talks next year
23:46
at the major Durham conferences. But we think we have a fairly
23:52
compelling asset in terms of the half life of that molecule, the
23:56
potency of that molecule and you know, being able to deliver it
24:00
in sub Q fashion and a highly concentrated no halozyme
24:04
required basis. So yeah, we're excited to see
24:09
the potential of that asset starting first in eczema and we
24:12
think there's some expansion opportunities down the road with
24:16
the second asset, which is an Illinois 13 neutralizing
24:19
antibody. It's it's been a great year for
24:22
TH2 inhibitors, obviously with the acquisition of Apogee
24:25
Therapeutics by ABV. And I think the thing that
24:28
really struck us about you know, those data, if you look at the
24:32
phase two trials, the apex trials of Zuma Loca Bart, you
24:36
can see that about three out of five patients still don't have a
24:39
100% reduction in disease severity.
24:42
And we've believed on the basis of the data we have today that
24:47
we have a substantially longer half life than Zuma Loca Bart
24:51
while maintaining or improving the affinity of neutralization
24:55
there. So we think that's a really
24:57
excellent bar that has been set. We think we are one of the
25:00
vanishingly few companies that can actually clear it.
25:04
And we think there's so much room for unmet need and novel
25:08
mechanisms both in eczema and sort of TH2 adjacent areas that
25:14
it's a good time to be developing innovative medicines
25:18
that have, you know, pushing out towards that Q6M dosing
25:22
potential. And that's where we see both of
25:24
these first two assets really playing.
25:26
Yeah, nice. It's it's a nice comparison
25:29
really as well because Illinois 22 has been a pretty tricky
25:32
target, right for well for a lot of immunology developers.
25:37
But Illinois 13 so well validated now, I guess, right?
25:41
Yeah. Yeah.
25:42
And, and you need, you need that blend of risk in your portfolio.
25:46
And then separately, you know, I think we have a very good idea
25:50
of what went wrong with some of those assets.
25:53
And I, I think you know, for some of the Illinois 22
25:56
targeting assets, it's a molecular problem where the
25:59
antibody clears and you know, 7-8, maybe 9 days Max and is
26:05
also not particularly high affinity.
26:09
If I were an arbitrary drug developer and I had a compound
26:13
in my pipeline I were developing for eczema and it had AQ 2 W
26:17
dosing profile, I think I would de prioritize that compound in
26:22
2027 simply because Dupixent and biosimilars of Dupixent are
26:26
coming and I would be struggling to compete with them.
26:29
So that I think that's also part of the story for lack of
26:33
continued investment in some of these assets, it's a pretty
26:37
rational, albeit sad decision to make.
26:40
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And and you touched on the, I
26:43
guess the risk profile a little bit there.
26:47
It sort of sums up. I, I thought quite nicely that
26:50
different participants in, in new Series A really with
26:54
obviously Regeneron's venture coming in and playground who you
27:00
mentioned have been involved from from the beginning sort of
27:03
CVC traditional very early stage VC.
27:06
It's it's quite quite a nice comparison.
27:09
Yeah, No, we, we have a, you know, I think Infinimian like
27:14
many biotech companies before us, we have benefited from
27:18
having diversified capital support the company, you know,
27:21
and that includes, you know, our earliest supporters from the
27:25
sort of West Coast tech bio community that includes family
27:30
offices that have joined along the way.
27:33
Strategic support from Merck and now in the form of a Co lead
27:37
from the venture arm of Regeneron as you mentioned.
27:40
And now biotech specialists such as RA Capital and Forge life
27:45
science Partners and then high tech generalists such as
27:50
Goldcrest Capital and Godfrey Capital.
27:53
And, and I think that's important to highlight because
27:57
you learn something from each of those different groups.
28:00
They optimize for different things.
28:03
And it also helps you have a more fulsome conversation in
28:07
your boardroom and helps you really cover your bases around
28:10
what is actually special about your company and what are the
28:13
features that many different audiences will think about
28:16
versus, you know, sort of zoning in on like, well, we're going to
28:20
talk asset talk just like every other biotech company.
28:23
And that's the only way we think about our company.
28:25
And it's, it's a very, you know, blinders on way of thinking
28:29
about what you're what you're building versus, you know,
28:32
something with a little more peripheral vision and a little
28:34
more opportunity you can see as a result.
28:37
Yeah, definitely. And I guess those more on the
28:41
tech side will tie in I guess to the origins of the company very,
28:45
very well as as well, right. Nice.
28:49
You touched on the the Merc partnership as as well.
28:52
That was obviously big news. Q2 was it this year?
28:56
Or was it? Yeah, we announced that in in
28:59
March of this year. Yep.
29:00
And yeah, you know, partially because you know, it's good to
29:06
get things out before the end of the quarter.
29:09
But no, I mean, that's, that's a conversation that it had been
29:12
developing for a while. And you know, as you can
29:15
imagine, our our CBO, Tim had his hands full negotiating that
29:19
deal and a lot of back and forth.
29:21
But you know, that's a great example of what it's like to
29:25
have a partner that really has a complementary but different
29:29
understanding of what you do, not from A and Infinimune is the
29:33
best perspective, but from something better than that,
29:36
which is Infinimune is uniquely capable of doing these few
29:40
things. And that's why an organization
29:43
like Merck chooses to partner with you at the end of the day.
29:46
So we we have a really great rapport that's developed between
29:50
our R&D teams. We've learned a lot from them
29:52
and vice versa and how we're prosecuting our, you know, first
29:57
parts of the partnership and having a lot of fun doing that
30:02
when we are looking forward to our our next joint steering
30:06
committee dinner and catch up in the in Q4 and having a lot of
30:11
fun. You know, it's a great
30:12
opportunity to, you know, like I mentioned earlier point our
30:16
platform at Target Biology that we might not be tempted to take
30:20
on just because we don't have the resource to do that.
30:23
But being able to help partners fold human biology into their
30:28
antibody assets is a privilege, a lot of fun and, you know, one
30:33
of the highest uses of our platform.
30:36
Yeah, nice. And yeah, good to keep those
30:38
conversations open for sure. I mean, just going back to the
30:42
Series A briefly, I think it's always useful to just get a idea
30:47
on what it sort of allows you to do over the next sort of period,
30:51
whether that's a year, 18 months, also why it'll it'll
30:55
fund you through phase one, right for the two leads.
30:58
It'll actually fund us farther than that.
31:00
So it'll fund us through completion of a of a phase two
31:03
study and we're excited to bring that to bear for our our lead
31:09
compounds earlier than that. So you know, phase one studies
31:13
complete for those programs as well.
31:16
We'll be bringing up an additional pipeline asset from
31:21
our portfolio into early clinical studies and we'll be
31:25
continuing to you know, prosecute our partnerships and
31:29
probably adding, I had to guess maybe maybe 1, not more than two
31:35
additional partnership like the one we have with Merck and
31:37
Scope. So, yeah, you know, I think the
31:41
next stage of Infin Immune is, you know, we're, we're already
31:44
well on our way. We're building clinical
31:46
competency as the feature of the organization.
31:48
And that's really exciting cuz there's all of these different
31:52
things that you learn as you go into the clinic.
31:54
And that's been great fun. You know, we, our Head of
31:58
clinical operations joined us last month, our Chief Medical
32:02
Officer several months before that.
32:04
And we're having a great time building in a new set of
32:09
capabilities at Infinimune and looking forward to building our
32:13
own repeatable work units for entering and going through the
32:16
clinic. Yeah.
32:18
It's a massive change, right? Yeah, it's a, it's a new phase
32:21
for Infinimune, literally. So awesome.
32:26
Yeah, cool. All good.
32:28
Well, look, it's been a pleasure catching up on, I guess the
32:31
origins and and where you guys came from.
32:34
I mean, it's going to be super interesting and exciting journey
32:37
to track over the next, next couple of years while.
32:41
So yeah, thanks for coming on and and we'll have to have you
32:44
back when, when that data starts to roll in for sure.
32:48
Maybe 2027? Yeah, we'd, we'd love to do
32:51
that. We have a nice pile of clinical
32:54
data that will start arriving next year.
32:56
So yeah, looking forward to checking back in and sharing how
33:00
that's going with with listeners.
33:02
Thanks, Callum. Awesome, cool.
33:04
And we'll finish up. We'll we'll do the standard
33:06
Biohub question if if you. Want, yeah.
33:10
More low keynote, but yeah, I always think it's a useful
33:14
question to ask because it gives you some insight into people's
33:17
thinking really, and where they're aligned to, for sure.
33:21
But yeah, that is, yeah, if you were to have dinner with a
33:26
couple of people, past or present, and be scientists,
33:28
entrepreneurs, anyone really, who would it be and and why?
33:34
Yeah, You know, I, I, I think as somebody who grew up in the
33:39
Midwest, there's a couple of Midwesterners that I'd, I'd like
33:42
to get dinner with. You know, Charlie Munger is one
33:46
of those. You know, I love folks from the
33:48
Midwest. The Omaha dry wid is a thing I
33:53
love encountering wherever possible.
33:55
Marilyn Robinson, you know, another really, really excellent
33:59
essayist and novelist. I'm a I'm a pianist.
34:03
So Keith Jarrett, you know, he has a really lovely
34:07
improvisational philosophy. You know, how do you build
34:10
something coherent and, and beautiful in real time from
34:13
almost nothing on that front? You know, I would, I'd love to
34:20
get dinner with Chris Boss. And I think his negotiation
34:23
approach and, and framework is one that everybody working in my
34:28
chair should read and figure out how to interact with at some
34:32
point. Anthony Bourdain and Werner
34:35
Herzog would be right up there as well.
34:38
You know, especially as a as a Bay Area foodie, you know, I
34:42
think, you know, I think meeting of a food storyteller like that
34:46
would be tremendous. James May you know, another
34:49
person who's got a pretty high degree of curiosity about how
34:54
things work. And, you know, I think these are
34:57
all folks that, you know, would actually talk and not just not
35:02
just as you know, talk at you, but these are these are folks
35:04
who like to talk with you. And then, you know, in my
35:07
immediate arms reach circle and I, I can always stand to get,
35:12
you know, other dinners with, with my wife and with our our
35:15
team at Infinimium. Yeah, you filled the table,
35:19
that's for sure. Absolutely.
35:20
Very important. Yeah.
35:21
It's very important to book, book the backroom.
35:24
That's right. Exactly.
35:25
Yeah, private dining. Yeah, nice, Awesome.
35:28
Well, look, thanks again for for coming on.
35:30
It's been a pleasure. And yeah, looking forward to
35:34
seeing the progress. Thanks very much, Callum.
35:36
Have a great rest of your day and a great weekend when you get
35:38
there.