Latest / The BioHub - by Avetix / Episode 107- Kevin Marks - CEO Delphia Therapeutics

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Episode 107- Kevin Marks - CEO Delphia Therapeutics · The BioHub - by Avetix

• 0:04
  Welcome back to the episode of the Bio Hub.
• 0:06
  Today, we're thrilled to welcome on Kevin Marks, who's the Co
• 0:09
  founder and CEO of Delphia Therapeutics, A next generation
• 0:13
  biotech company that's rethinking how we treat cancer.
• 0:16
  Kevin brings decades of experience in oncology drug
• 0:19
  discovery, having helped shepherd multiple breakthrough
• 0:22
  cancer therapies from concept to approval at Ageos, and he also
• 0:26
  LED oncology research programs at Novartis.
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  Now he's channeling that expertise into Delphia, a Boston
• 0:32
  based biotech with a bold new approach called activation
• 0:35
  lethality. So join us today as we'll
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  discuss Delphi's pipeline, Kevin's journey from scientist
• 0:41
  to CEO, and Delphia's awards for culture.
• 0:45
  So Kevin, thanks so much for coming on.
• 0:47
  How are you? Tom, really.
• 0:49
  Well, thanks for having me. Yeah, it's a pleasure to have
• 0:52
  you on. So let's just start off with a
• 0:55
  little bit about your journey through the field.
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  So you've started your career as a scientist and then obviously
• 1:00
  now at the helm of Delphia. Can you walk us through your
• 1:03
  journey and how you got to where you are today?
• 1:08
  Sure. Excuse me, You know, Tom, maybe
• 1:11
  a a good way to to introduce myself and give my back story in
• 1:14
  a sense is that I can tell you about my favorite movie when I
• 1:16
  was a kid, which it turns out might still be my favorite movie
• 1:20
  now. So don't don't don't judge me
• 1:22
  for it. So it's a Steven Spielberg
• 1:25
  movie. It's a family movie called
• 1:26
  Goonies, right? And it's basically about these
• 1:28
  sort of plucky underdog kids who find a treasure map to some sort
• 1:33
  of hidden pirate treasure on this epic journey, right?
• 1:36
  And along the way, basically one of the core things you have to
• 1:38
  do is sort of solve these puzzles left behind by the
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  pirates, right? I love this as a kid.
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  And some of the things I'll do about it actually are pulled
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  through, I think, into what we do and I get to do today.
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  Foremost though, is that I've always loved puzzles and not
• 1:54
  necessarily just jigsaw puzzles, but meaning the kind of like,
• 1:57
  you know, how does this work, logic puzzles, that kind of
• 2:00
  thing, right? How do you figure out kind of
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  the solution to an unforeseen problem?
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  And so it turns out that kind of is like a foundational aspect of
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  what I've always loved and and enjoyed.
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  When I got to college, I had this revelatory moment when I
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  realized that life inside of the cells in our body is like this
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  incredibly cool and incredibly complicated puzzle, right?
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  There's this cartoonist named Rube Goldberg who sort of became
• 2:25
  famous for basically drawing these cartoons of these like
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  incredibly complicated mechanisms.
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  Sometimes they do really simple things.
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  And so I think of the life inside of the cells in our body
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  as this incredibly complicated Rube Goldberg Rube puzzle,
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  essentially, right? And so when I had that aha
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  moment, I was like, wow, like this is a whole lifetime worth
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  of puzzles to try to understand. And importantly, of course,
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  those that Rube Goldberg machinery, when it's all
• 2:49
  working, great, that's all fine and well, but every single
• 2:52
  disease that impacts humanity are fundamentally problems with
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  that machinery inside the cells in our body.
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  So by understanding it, we might learn how best to make new
• 3:01
  medicines, right. So that had me hooked from kind
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  of an early age, scratched that itch to be a kind of underdog
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  pirate treasure chasing puzzle solver, which in turns out
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  rather than actually chasing down pirate treasure, I, I sort
• 3:15
  of channeled that into a path and a career as a scientist.
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  So had a fairly conventional academic training, you know, an
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  undergraduate studies in biology and APHD in biology as well.
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  And then came back to the Boston, Cambridge area where I
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  am now, in fact, where I grew up.
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  And then from there, I've been really, really tremendously
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  privileged to spend over the last 20 plus years working with
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  a range of teams fully focused on harnessing kind of the the
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  broad field of understanding that's emerged in these past
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  decades about the machinery that drives cancer, right, the Rube
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  Goldbergs that that get sort of rewired or reset and cause
• 3:53
  cancer. So I've been privileged to be
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  part, as you mentioned, of some really great organizations and
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  great teams bringing forward new science and new medicines in
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  some cases that impacted patients.
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  And it's incredibly addicting in a positive way.
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  I think addicting pursuit and one that I'm really, really
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  thrilled to take forward to, to Delphia now.
• 4:12
  Nice. How would you describe Delphia's
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  mission in its simplest form and why does it matter to you
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  personally? And how do you think the
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  company's purpose has evolved since those those early days?
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  Yeah. I mean, I think at the highest,
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  highest, highest level, I think maybe a Yeah, I share a brief
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  story. So it turns out I happened to be
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  at a coffee shop nearby. I'm located here in Cambridge,
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  MA, just across the river from Boston.
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  As you know, it's a hub where there's a ton of biomedicine and
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  biotech innovation. I was at the coffee shop, and it
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  happened essentially to strike up a conversation with another
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  patron at the coffee shop. And it turns out he came to be
• 4:51
  aware of where I had been working, which is that company
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  called Adios that you mentioned. And he shared that he was in
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  fact, one of the first patients on that company's first clinical
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  trial of an oncology medicine and a medicine for a really
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  devastating disease called acute leukemia.
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  And it was a really incredible, like fortuitous moment from he
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  Tom, because it turns out this this man had actually been
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  benefiting from the drug and benefiting for a really nice,
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  healthy and long period of time. He, in fact, was at that coffee
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  shop meeting up with his son to plan like a vacation together
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  like that, kind of like aha, like it's a single point of, of
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  the touch of what the impact of what we do can be.
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  And what I'll do to reflect that in the broader field of oncology
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  drug development is it turns out this individual is something
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  that through the academicians in our field would call an
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  exceptional responder. And what that means is even
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  though that medicine's effective and works for many patients, it
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  turns out, like all too many cancer medicines, patients
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  benefit for only a short period of time before their cancer
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  essentially finds a way to escape and become insensitive to
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  the drug. This man was exceptional because
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  his treatment benefit had been much longer than normal.
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  So academics are trying to study and understand that phenomenon
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  and see if we can make it happen more frequently.
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  And so that's all to say, at the highest level, the mission of
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  Delphia is to try to make those exceptional responses, make them
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  ordinary, right? Make that not the the rare case
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  where a patient has a very durable benefit, but make that a
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  really commonplace part of the experience of patients with
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  advanced cancers, these metastatic or really advanced
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  diseases. Happy to tell you more about how
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  we do that. But at the core level, the
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  reason I'm so excited about Delphia is that if we succeed,
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  we have the opportunity and the potential to both, you know,
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  advance some new science and some new medicines.
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  But if they succeed, they could be medicines that could enable
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  much more durable benefit for patients.
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  The proverbial adding both years to life and adding life to
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  years. Nice.
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  And just to delve into, so the LEAD program is yet to be
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  disclosed, but can you just talk us through what activation
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  lethality actually is and why does it hold promise in
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  oncology? Yeah, you bet.
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  Happy to. So it turns out in oncology for
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  these past probably two or three decades, there's been a really
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  strong current sort of a field within oncology called targeted
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  therapies, which is understanding the molecular
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  machines that get altered or mutated and cause cancer and
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  then finding drugs to block them, to inhibit them, right.
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  And that's actually as in we were talking about, it's very
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  effective. It's led to many, many good
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  medicines, but all too often those medicines only have a
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  transient or short term impact. Notably, the core finding that
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  sits underneath everything we're doing at Delphia is that while
• 7:48
  that script has been effective, that sort of find the oncogene
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  and then block the oncogene. It turns out for many, many
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  biologies and cancer, for many of these cancer driving
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  pathways, cancers are vulnerable not just to inhibition or if you
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  are cooling down the level of activity, they're also
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  vulnerable to over activation, overheating, if you will, the
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  level of activity of this pathway.
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  A useful analogy I think of sometimes is like cars on the
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  highway, right? So the normal cells in our body
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  are, you know, sort of well behaved drivers and cars sort of
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  commuting to work and doing whatever they should as they're
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  supposed to. Cancers, though, are our cars in
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  which some of the machinery has broken and now the car is, you
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  know, careening too fast down the road, out of control.
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  The brakes don't work. And so it's really dangerous
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  right now. For decades, with this inhibitor
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  medicines we've made in targeted therapy, we've had a guardrail
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  on one side of the road, but cancers essentially veer off the
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  other side, right, and escape. So our activator medicines could
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  be a guardrail on the other side of the road.
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  And secondly, typically what we've been doing to try to stop
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  these runaway cars of cancer cells is essentially to jump in
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  the car and pump the brakes, right, to try to slow it down.
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  What our medicines do is they actually overheat the engine.
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  And of course, as you know with the car, one of the ways you can
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  stop a car permanently is if you redline the engine too much and
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  it overheats, causes essentially A catastrophe and that car will
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  no longer operate. And so our medicines sort of act
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  as a literally the kind of in fundamentally the opposite way
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  of most of the medicines that have been out there in play in
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  oncology, but they can drive really, really robust efficacy
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  by pushing cancer cells over the edge.
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  OK. And I, I think that space that
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  you're in, there's obviously quite a few players that are in
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  that. Where where do you see true
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  opportunities for for innovation today?
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  Yeah, it's interesting. So I, I think, I think this is
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  true certainly in oncology and I'd say probably a cross biotech
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  in general, which is that broadly there's a ton of
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  crowding, right? And many, many players in
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  oncology and for instance, targeted therapy, this sort of
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  subfield that we had to say within.
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  However, Tom, I think a really important note and it's probably
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  one of the fundamental things I think our industry needs to,
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  needs to begin to do differently is that there tends to be a
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  tremendous amount of sort of flocking or crowding to a small
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  number of ideas, right? And so particularly when
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  something becomes sort of a hot idea with some maybe some
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  initial human clinical validation, very, very rapidly,
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  once that initial biology de risking has taken place, many,
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  many players all move into the same space.
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  Some people, I think I talked to a lot of colleagues who are
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  parents and a common picture is like when you have young kids
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  and they're playing soccer, you know, soccer here in the US,
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  football, football on your side of of the the pond.
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  There's a sort of phenomenon in like young kids where like
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  everybody on both teams, when young kids just starting out
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  learning to play, everyone moves to the ball, right?
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  And so there's a tremendous amount of crowding right around
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  the ball, right. But the rest of the field, in
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  fact, is wide open. And I think that's actually a
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  picture visual that can kind of describe the state of play in
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  biotech and certainly in in oncology in biotech, which is
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  that there are some spots, balls, if you will, that have
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  many, many, many, many players. There are, you know, 50 or 100
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  or 200 programs targeting her 2IN breast cancer or EGFR in
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  lung cancer, right. However, well, as we are
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  pioneering sort of a novel biology, we're essentially have
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  picked a whole different space on that playing field.
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  And as of today, we are the the only players covering that
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  space, right? I think that provides really
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  important business strategic benefits, right?
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  We're first movers into a novel space.
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  We have the opportunity and the ability to kind of claim the
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  best targets and the best opportunities in that space.
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  And I think as we go forward, it actually potentially can create
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  a scarcity effect where we're the one and only player.
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  Nice. Exciting.
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  And just to delve into your background a little bit more, so
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  you went from scientists to CEO, which I know is a big change and
• 12:05
  probably less traditional route to get into ACFO as CEO role.
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  Typically I guess you'd see a chief business officer or a
• 12:13
  chief operating officer, chief commercial officer.
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  What did you find the hardest part of that transition?
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  And do you still find yourself thinking like a scientist
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  day-to-day, or has your role become something completely
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  different now? Yeah, really good questions.
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  I definitely try to ask myself those questions really
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  frequently as well to make sure I'm hitting the right mark,
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  right? Maybe I'll take the second part
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  first. So the answer is I definitely
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  think about science every day. And Tom, I'd probably unpack
• 12:41
  that as like, there's a part of me that no matter what will
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  always spend some time thinking about science and geeking out
• 12:46
  over either Delphia science or exciting things happening in the
• 12:50
  world, right? Where we're chatting today.
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  And it's a season where there's some really exciting conferences
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  on medical and scientific conferences.
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  And you know, I absolutely perk my ears up and tune into
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  interesting novel stuff I'm hearing, right.
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  That said, honestly, I think particularly in the, the chapter
• 13:09
  of the business in which Delphia has been in is, is sort of
• 13:12
  starting to Crest out of which is our start up through initial
• 13:16
  drug discovery phase. I'm happy to tell you more about
• 13:18
  it, but we're anticipate graduating our first medicine
• 13:21
  out of our labs and into clinical development in the next
• 13:24
  year or so. Very, very exciting time.
• 13:26
  But during that phase, honestly, science is our business, right?
• 13:31
  And to some degree that will always be true, right?
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  There will be other pieces that are added on, but fundamentally,
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  picking the right targets to pursue, picking the right
• 13:40
  molecule to advance into the clinic, building the right
• 13:43
  scientific team, those are actually some of the most
• 13:46
  mission critical pieces of the broader business.
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  And so in that vein time I'm actually like, it's absolutely
• 13:51
  true. I still wear a scientist hat,
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  you know, a portion of my time, but that actually at this stage
• 13:56
  are still really serves the business well.
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  That said, I think you're also alluding to like, Hey, being
• 14:01
  ACEO is not the same as being a scientific leader.
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  And I agree. And actually it's part of the
• 14:06
  fun of, of the role that I get to take now is that each day
• 14:09
  brings a new set of questions and new new area to dive into.
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  I think there's some aspects of, of training through a scientific
• 14:20
  path that are actually a really great preparation for what I'm
• 14:23
  doing now, which is mostly the way I would describe it is, you
• 14:28
  know, in the sciences, when you're in your university or in
• 14:34
  school settings, a lot of sort of learning science is about
• 14:38
  kind of learning facts, right? Learning what's known and how
• 14:41
  the language of science and how it works, right?
• 14:44
  Once you train to become a scientist in the job of a
• 14:47
  scientist, you don't actually spend your time in the what's
• 14:51
  already known. You spend your time trying to
• 14:53
  figure out what's not known, right.
• 14:55
  And actually that toolbox of how to think and how to act and how
• 14:59
  to work with teams to tackle new problems, that's a very
• 15:03
  translational toolbox that I guess use everyday.
• 15:07
  I remember all the CEO, you know, sometimes those problems
• 15:10
  are. Yeah, maybe it's around, you
• 15:12
  know, questions around corporate legal structure or financing
• 15:16
  strategy or you know, early clinical planning for our our
• 15:19
  next asset. And it's absolutely true.
• 15:21
  I didn't kind of grow up through those functional lineages, if
• 15:26
  you will, those sort of wings of companies, but I get to bring
• 15:29
  kind of that scientists problem solving mindset to them and that
• 15:33
  helps me to tackle these spaces. Nice.
• 15:35
  What was it An easy transition when you know you're looking to
• 15:38
  engage with VCs for fundraising or whether you're looking to
• 15:40
  engage with made or big pharma for licensing?
• 15:44
  I assume in some of your previous roles you've always
• 15:46
  done like the scientific due diligence for licensing deals.
• 15:48
  But sort of going on the transaction side, was that
• 15:51
  something that you naturally can pick up quite, quite comfortably
• 15:55
  or was it take some time to adapt a bit?
• 15:59
  Yeah, great question. So definitely take some time and
• 16:01
  I think I would say I'm still actually, you know, continuing
• 16:04
  to grow in some of those domains.
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  Hopefully all of us are, you know, continuing to stretch and
• 16:08
  grow the way I the way I tend to experience it.
• 16:12
  Tom is, is really, you know, it's really fun and cool.
• 16:17
  Is is either individuals or parts of a business or another,
• 16:21
  you know, entity like an investor.
• 16:25
  You can be looking at the same thing, Delphia, its lead
• 16:28
  program, you know the industry, whatever, but looking from a
• 16:31
  different lens by nature of your different background and where
• 16:35
  you sit, you know, an intellectual property lawyer
• 16:38
  might look at the same set of things from a different lens.
• 16:41
  Then you know our Chief financial officer, etcetera,
• 16:45
  etcetera. And notably, but they'll look at
• 16:48
  and are looking at the same thing.
• 16:49
  So a lot of the CEO role is actually about trying to learn
• 16:53
  to see one thing through many different lenses.
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  And what I note probably is maybe one of the most important
• 16:59
  things is I've realized each of those different parties or
• 17:02
  stakeholders, if you will, they also have slightly different
• 17:06
  ways of thinking, a slightly different language, right?
• 17:08
  And so one of the transitions, for instance, as an entrepreneur
• 17:11
  had the privilege to cofound Alfia.
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  And as an entrepreneur, one of the the early things of like,
• 17:17
  hey, I got to figure out how to do this is it's really valuable
• 17:21
  for me to be able to talk and communicate about the vision of
• 17:24
  our science, the impacts it can have on patients, etcetera.
• 17:27
  And I need to be able to convey also the language of investment,
• 17:32
  of return on investment, understand enough about how we
• 17:35
  know private investors like venture capitalists, what, what
• 17:39
  their incentives are, how they think about a deal and whether
• 17:42
  or not to do it. And they need to find a way to
• 17:44
  communicate. So I communicate all the pieces,
• 17:47
  the science of what we're doing, where it could go as a business
• 17:49
  and why it's a wise investment for them to take.
• 17:53
  And so I think a part of it actually is, it's kind of like
• 17:55
  it's trying to become multilingual, right?
• 17:57
  Because the different stakeholders all have slightly
• 18:00
  different languages they use. Yeah, sure.
• 18:03
  One of the things that I know you've said previously is, is
• 18:06
  that culture is just as important as science in an early
• 18:09
  stage biotech. What?
• 18:11
  Why do you think that is? Yeah, I mean, you know, Tom, I,
• 18:15
  I first I'd say what we get to do is you should probably hear
• 18:18
  from me. I think it's some of the coolest
• 18:19
  and most important stuff that human beings get to do.
• 18:22
  And I'm a believer of the the sort of a sentiment sometimes
• 18:28
  echoed in biotech that making a medicine from the idea all the
• 18:32
  way through to, you know, commercial product that doctors
• 18:36
  are writing scripts for and, you know, through the company's
• 18:39
  booking revenue against. That is perhaps the toughest
• 18:45
  team sport of all team sports. And sometimes we talk about, you
• 18:48
  know, the years it takes to go from idea all the way to revenue
• 18:52
  producing medicine. We talk about the time it takes.
• 18:55
  We talk about the dollars it takes, you know, a billion, $2
• 18:57
  billion. What we don't as much talk about
• 19:00
  is from that initial idea through to that medicine that's
• 19:05
  helping patients and bringing revenue forward.
• 19:08
  It requires literally hundreds of different people to work on,
• 19:13
  to touch that project, to impact it positively in different ways
• 19:16
  along the journey. And so fundamentally, you're
• 19:19
  talking about it. It's yes, the science has to be
• 19:22
  right, but you need literally a hundreds of different folks with
• 19:25
  many, many different disciplines, if you like.
• 19:28
  They play different positions on the field and they all have to
• 19:31
  work as teams in concert to bring that medicine forward.
• 19:35
  So fundamentally, culture really is the glue of the how that
• 19:39
  those teams work together. So you can have the best
• 19:42
  individual players in the world, but if they're not connecting
• 19:45
  together, you're not going to succeed in making that medicine.
• 19:48
  So fundamentally, I actually think culture is the fabric
• 19:50
  that's it's and kind of connects together all the stuff that we
• 19:53
  do in biotech. Yeah, I can only imagine how
• 19:56
  important those first few highs that you made were for the
• 19:59
  business on a cultural side as well.
• 20:02
  Yeah, for sure. And it's and it's it's really in
• 20:06
  a way that I think is a really fun and dynamic part of startup
• 20:09
  company is every role, every individual is to use the science
• 20:16
  word as catalytic, right, Meaning they bring both what
• 20:19
  they bring to the table and they impact and help one another.
• 20:23
  And in fact, and they those early hires are critical both in
• 20:27
  the tone they set and how they do their work.
• 20:29
  They very often, though, also become the recruiters and hiring
• 20:32
  managers for the next waves of hires, right.
• 20:34
  And so when successful, an early stage biotech, even if a really
• 20:39
  lean team can bring together a really top notch talent and, and
• 20:44
  really gel together. And actually part of the fun of
• 20:46
  of my job when internal facing parts of it is, is trying to
• 20:51
  think about how to how to build a team that's going to have a
• 20:54
  culture where the whole is greater than the sum of the
• 20:57
  parts, which is absolutely what we aim for here.
• 21:00
  Nice, just just on culture as well.
• 21:02
  Delphia has been recognized with awards for culture which is
• 21:07
  which is awesome. What kind of workplace did you
• 21:10
  want to try and build when you first started Delphia?
• 21:14
  Yeah, I think, I think two or three core things and I really
• 21:18
  feel really fortunate that so far I think this sort of garden
• 21:21
  that we're trying to cultivate and grow is, is in fact kind of
• 21:23
  growing in a really great way culturally.
• 21:27
  The first is truly and deeply mission oriented team.
• 21:31
  You know, when you heard me describe sort of the scale of
• 21:34
  this mission, right, you know, what we're doing is big and bold
• 21:38
  and audacious and incredibly important to bring forward to
• 21:41
  patients. And it is a tremendous kind of
• 21:45
  boost to have a team where everyone has a strong and deeply
• 21:50
  held view. That's the most important thing,
• 21:53
  serving patients with our science and our medicines and
• 21:56
  that the way we get there is by serving one another.
• 21:59
  And so mission oriented and other oriented kind of culture
• 22:03
  and style is the most bedrock piece.
• 22:06
  We talk a lot about that. It's it's kind of an unofficial
• 22:09
  cradle here at Adelphia serving patients and one another.
• 22:12
  The idea that in that big tough team sport of making medicines,
• 22:15
  we have to think about the end in mind, the patients we're
• 22:17
  trying to serve. And as we go along that way, we
• 22:20
  have to think about how to help one another, right, to be the
• 22:23
  best we can be at our jobs. So that's a really core piece.
• 22:25
  And then I'd say probably the other aspect of our how is that
• 22:30
  we really aspire to be, to bring a high degree of authenticity
• 22:35
  and, and trust the work we do, right?
• 22:37
  The spirit here is like, we are all, you know, talented but also
• 22:43
  complicated human beings. We have, you know, good days, we
• 22:47
  have bad days. We have our natural way.
• 22:49
  We want to show up. And honestly, we as, as really
• 22:53
  strong professionals, people tend to have a good judgement
• 22:56
  about how they can be their best and how they can be most
• 22:59
  impactful. And so something I really valued
• 23:01
  and I think we've tried to to sort of put in place with
• 23:04
  practices and just sort of informal cultural ways is to try
• 23:08
  to create a culture where everyone can show up in the way
• 23:10
  that they want to be, right? You know, whether that's dress
• 23:14
  or how you communicate, how you think, how you like to do your
• 23:17
  work. And that that's sort of his
• 23:19
  welcome. And we're inclusive to that
• 23:21
  range of how people want to show up.
• 23:23
  And the view is then if if you're able to be, you know,
• 23:27
  your authentic self, able to be who you are at your best, then
• 23:30
  you can bring your best every day.
• 23:31
  You don't have to spend all your time trying to fit in or, you
• 23:33
  know, dress like your boss or, you know, say things like
• 23:36
  everybody else, right. So authenticity is a really
• 23:39
  important part and a mission orientation are really key.
• 23:42
  Nice. Yeah, I love that.
• 23:45
  And just on service and obviously fund that fundraising
• 23:47
  climate, it's tough at the moment.
• 23:49
  We've seen a lot less IPOSA, lot fewer fundraising rounds,
• 23:53
  layoffs everywhere. How are you approaching
• 23:57
  financing in this current climate?
• 23:59
  I know it's yeah, I hear it so many times from so many
• 24:02
  different companies. How how difficult it is out
• 24:04
  there. How are you approaching it?
• 24:07
  Do you think the market will change at some point?
• 24:10
  And how do you think the current market is impacting you and
• 24:13
  Delphia currently? Yeah, for sure, lots of, lots of
• 24:17
  great and meaty questions there. And I think, yeah, maybe a first
• 24:21
  part I'll tackle is how we see the market evolving or changing.
• 24:26
  And I think fundamentally there will remain a release.
• 24:31
  In fact that will be growing increasing demand for really
• 24:36
  interesting high quality emerging medicines which tend to
• 24:39
  be kind of the product if you will of biotech startups, right.
• 24:42
  In particular, you know of the the larger pharmaceutical
• 24:45
  organizations in the world that have a whole, you know sort of
• 24:49
  baskets of medicines that they bring to patients.
• 24:51
  They have a continuing need to fill that their pipelines and
• 24:56
  biotech startups like Adelphia have time and again proven to be
• 25:00
  one of the richest sources of new innovation.
• 25:03
  And so I think the demand for what we do is, is high and will
• 25:06
  in fact only grow. So I anticipate they'll be even
• 25:09
  an increasing uptick of M&A activity, which in fact already
• 25:13
  in 2025 has been really nicely robust and elevated from some
• 25:18
  prior years. So one, I think that's already
• 25:20
  changing is sort of the, the, the, the pull that comes from
• 25:26
  demand for successful emerging medicines is growing.
• 25:30
  That kind of offsets the sort of frosty IPO market in my mind.
• 25:34
  Now that said, you're, you're right.
• 25:36
  I think we're kind of currently operating in a world where
• 25:40
  perhaps unlike some past periods, it really it's kind of
• 25:44
  like the proof is in the pudding, meaning you don't get
• 25:47
  credit for hype or what you could do.
• 25:49
  You get credit for what you do, what you have done right.
• 25:54
  And that's not actually a bad, bad situation for the bad tech
• 25:57
  ecosystem certainly makes as an operating leader, it makes the,
• 26:03
  the, the mission, the job to, to sort of tackle our mission.
• 26:11
  It's a 1/2 step harder, which is like we have to be very
• 26:15
  conscientious as we go along the way to be as lean and as
• 26:19
  efficient and as capital efficient as we can be, right.
• 26:22
  And so probably something that's different for Adelphia is having
• 26:26
  pioneered now this whole new biology space.
• 26:28
  Three or five years ago in a frothy market, we would have
• 26:32
  grown tremendously in size on our science team.
• 26:34
  We have opened up a broad, broad, broad portfolio of
• 26:37
  projects. Now here we sit and we're
• 26:40
  opening up a whole new field of science.
• 26:43
  Yet we're still staying really disciplined and taking on only a
• 26:46
  small number of highest value projects.
• 26:50
  Because maintaining a really lean, capital efficient and a
• 26:54
  cost controlled business structure is the best way to
• 26:57
  kind of navigate the current environment.
• 26:59
  To make it so that the current investors and our future
• 27:02
  investors, they're investing in a manner in which they can
• 27:05
  actually generate a really great return, which of course, so it's
• 27:08
  good for the goose, is good for the gander, right?
• 27:10
  Yeah. And I, I think when the market
• 27:12
  does change, like you said, there'll be some great lessons
• 27:14
  learned for this current market, staying lean, doing more with
• 27:18
  less cash, being cash conservative, all of all of
• 27:22
  those different things, which I think when the market does turn
• 27:24
  is, is, yeah, there'll be some great things that have come from
• 27:27
  this. I think you're right.
• 27:30
  Yeah, fine. And then this is a question that
• 27:33
  we always finish with on the bio Hub.
• 27:36
  I know I wanted to give you a heads up with it as well, but if
• 27:38
  you were to have dinner with any free people pastel present, who
• 27:43
  would you? Who would you go for and why?
• 27:51
  So if I could have dinner with any three people, that's an
• 27:56
  awesome, awesome question. I can imagine a lot of different
• 27:59
  dinners with a lot of different vibes.
• 28:01
  Maybe you know the gosh touching on a couple of the things themes
• 28:04
  of the morning or our conversation.
• 28:07
  Let's see so three people first person I'd pick is a scientist,
• 28:13
  a person named Carl Sagan, who's an astronomer sort of famous for
• 28:16
  look like understanding big broad world of not the world
• 28:20
  space that's it's beyond our our world, but also incredibly
• 28:24
  thoughtful. You've got this really cool view
• 28:27
  of humanity, really, that comes from understanding that we're
• 28:32
  one tiny teeny little thing and one giant sea, right?
• 28:36
  Incredibly cool, thoughtful person.
• 28:37
  I'd love to love to pick his brain 2nd.
• 28:40
  And this would add a little spark of chaos to the dinner.
• 28:43
  I'd invite Robin Williams, the comedian and and actor.
• 28:48
  But incredibly smart, thoughtful, wise, witty, and so
• 28:52
  ridiculously funny, right? Like it would be a laugh a
• 28:55
  minute I'm sure. Like cheeks and bellies would
• 28:57
  hurt by the time dinner was over.
• 29:00
  And then the third noting that those are two pretty different
• 29:02
  people that have pulled together so far.
• 29:04
  The third one I actually would would invite an old friend, a
• 29:10
  man named Roland, who was actually a mentor of mine when I
• 29:14
  was back in grad school 20 plus years ago.
• 29:17
  A scientist and an artist in a bon vivant.
• 29:20
  Really, really great human. I think in a way he would kind
• 29:23
  of marry the Carl Sagan, deep wise science thinking and the
• 29:27
  Robin Williams, vivacious and lively and the beautiful,
• 29:33
  beautiful soul. And unfortunately, someone who
• 29:35
  passed away with lung cancer a handful of years ago.
• 29:38
  And so I do miss him. And it'd be held a lot of fun to
• 29:41
  to get get him over for dinner, reconnect and and spend the day
• 29:46
  musing and laughing with with Carl Steak and Robin Williams.
• 29:50
  Good. Well, yeah, look, 3 great
• 29:52
  answers there. And thanks so much for coming on
• 29:55
  and helping us out with this. It sounds like what you're
• 29:57
  building at Delphia is, is amazing and you've done some
• 30:00
  incredible stuff so far. So I'm, I'm looking forward to
• 30:03
  seeing the, the, the next wave for you guys.
• 30:06
  And yeah, thanks again for helping us out with this.
• 30:09
  Super Tom, great to chat today.