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How will AI, blockchain and other new technologies impact life science? cclifescience.substack.com

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How will AI, blockchain and other new technologies impact life science? cclifescience.substack.com

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English


Episodes

Vertical Farming Meets Design of Experiments

3/27/2024
AgBio, sustainability and DoE all come together in this episode. Tim Cuthbertson is the Chief Science Officer at VelociGro where they are using Design of Experiments to optimize plant growth media for vertical farming. I was curious to learn about the concept of vertical farming and how it can make an impact relative to the massive acreage involved in traditional agriculture. There are scenarios where it makes a lot of sense. First of all, greenhouse-grown produce is nothing new. Tomatoes are the most commonly grown crop in what is known as protected agriculture. And overall, in 2019, 55% of vegetable growers had some component of indoor operation, extension of the growing season being the primary reason. A greenhouse can produce 2.5 pounds of food per square foot per year. That’s horizontal growth. Growing plants vertically should increase that productivity further. So where is the impact? Consider what it takes to send blueberries from Chile to Alaska. Now what if blueberries could be grown indoors locally year-round? With LED lighting (which apparently doesn’t have to work on a 100% duty cycle) there could be significant savings in carbon emissions. Not to mention loss from spoilage etc in transit. In case you haven’t heard, the Panama Canal is backed up and the largest container ships can’t go through with a full load currently because there is not enough water in Lake Gatun due to decreased rainfall. That means produce either being offloaded elsewhere and sent by train or truck or a longer trip around Cape Horn and associated delays. Don’t miss my upcoming episode on “the ethylene problem”. We’ll talk about what it takes to keep fruit “fresh” on those long journeys. Sorry to interrupt. Not subscribed yet? Let’s fix that. Either way, I appreciate you spending time here. Local access to fresh produce in urban areas is another opportunity to deploy vertical farming. It occurs to me that a lot of empty office space is ripe (yeah, I said it) for conversion to urban indoor agriculture. I’m beginning to imagine a back-to-the-office campaign where a company leases some of its space for growing produce to be sold while allowing people who come back to the office to have access to a share of the crop to take home each week. Where does Design of Experiments come in? We covered DoE in a previous episode. Briefly, it’s a method of testing multiple variables simultaneously to quickly iterate and find the optimal solution to a problem or process. A typical one-factor-at-a-time (OFAT) approach makes all the results dependent on the optimal value of the first variable you test. That doesn’t in any way guarantee the best final outcome. How is VelociGro using DoE? We didn’t go into details about their products. Whether plants are grown on a substrate or in a soil-free environment, they need nutrients to grow. DoE allows their company of six people to iterate and optimize formulas for new products in as little as six weeks. Even if agriculture is not your field, you can see how DoE can save huge amounts of time in product or method development. It strikes me that once again, regardless of what area of the life sciences you work in, thinking about how things are done is as important for delivering a successful product as the science that goes into the product itself. Your deepest insights are your best branding. I’d love to help you share them. Chat with me about custom content for your life science brand. Or visit my website. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cclifescience.substack.com

Duration:00:23:17

Opportunities and Challenges: A Primer for Founders

3/21/2024
Thomas Farb-Horch is the CEO of Thrive Bioscience. He has founded 18 companies. Seven of those turned out to be unicorns (sold at a valuation of >1 billion dollars). I was curious to know how he had identified so many opportunities correctly. BTW, Tom is not a scientist and has no advanced degrees in case you were thinking that was a requirement. He credits his success to being observant and inquisitive. That means keeping your eyes open for problems and asking why things are the way they are. The most attractive problem is one where people have been working the same way for a very long time. And if a process can be digitized, even better. As ever more computing power and storage capacity becomes available, more processes are in reach. Yet good ideas and smart solutions aren’t enough. Tom told me that every one of those unicorns came close to failure multiple times. How did he manage to dodge the bullet so often? One area where data and computing power won’t solve anything is our interactions with other people. To be successful as an entrepreneur, in addition to solving whatever technical challenges you have identified, you are still left to deal with customers, investors and board members. This is where Tom’s experience struck me. If you think reproducibility is a challenge in science, no amount of data or computing power can make humans more predictable. Getting people to change something that has been done the same way for decades is difficult. First for them to recognize the value and then to adopt new behaviors. Even early and late adopters won’t respond the same way. Your solution needs to appeal to both. At another level, while all your investors have a common goal of getting a return on their money, how and when they expect that to happen may be different. As you are likely to pivot at some point, it’s worth considering how you will keep them aligned on the new approach. The makeup of your board is critical and Tom has some essential advice on how you should negotiate their selection with investors. Listen to the episode for details. When it comes to what you are looking for, I’ll share one example here. Board members are sometimes (often?) selected for their name recognition as opposed to their domain expertise. Alexander Haig (former NATO Commander and Secretary of State) might have fit that description. Nevertheless, he brought value to the table in other ways. Tom told me that his skill at observing people and making sure everyone was heard to get to a result was off the charts. Given the roles I just mentioned, maybe that’s not so surprising. These skills are applicable everywhere. Board of directors is one of my favorite topics. It's so incredibly important. Many entrepreneurs don't spend enough time focusing on compatibility across the board. And kind of the profile of what they want. Every founder is likely to encounter a dark night of the soul moment. Tom said, “Fear is a terrible advisor.” It’s at those times when having chosen the right investors and board members will pay off. Who will stand by you and brainstorm solutions to see you through? Science is complicated and often difficult. Human behavior is even more so. It strikes me that in science, even if we don’t yet know the answer, we know it’s there and that certainty is comforting. I wonder if we shouldn’t spend more time thinking about how the people around us are going to affect our success and who we choose to do that. As an example of how humans can make an impact in our interactions, more than once over several conversations, Tom asked me, “How can I make this podcast successful for you?” I replied, “That mindset alone is all I need.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cclifescience.substack.com

Duration:00:57:52

Walk and Talk with Susanna Harris

2/26/2024
Susanna Harris is the Director of Community at Breakout Ventures. She is also the Founder of PhD Balance, a collaborative community empowering graduate students to build their personal and professional resilience and the 2023 recipient of the SAMPS Young Person of the Year Award. This episode is a little different. For the last couple of years, I have interviewed the winner of that SAMPS award on this podcast. Susanna has been a guest before and although we’ve chatted a few times since and both live in the Bay Area, we had never met face to face. Susanna mentioned hiking in one of our calls so I thought this would be an opportunity try something new. I suggested we meet up for a hike and record some stuff along the way. Thank you Susanna for being game for one more experiment. We had a free-flowing conversation covering our inspirations in science, science communication, marketing, career paths, longevity, mental health, and more. AI, psychedelics and The Andromeda Strain all came up as well. Give it a listen to find out the context. I typically focus these episodes around a theme and try to point toward a specific takeaway. While there is a thread to the topics we discussed, the takeaway for me this time was simply about the value of conversation. I trust that the listeners to this podcast will learn something about each of us and may be prompted to think about something they heard from a new perspective. As a listener, you don’t have to be part of a conversation to benefit from it. That’s the magic of this medium. You can listen in as if you were there. Taking that beyond podcasts, consider the value of people listening to your team members, executives and subject matter experts in their natural, unscripted style. Podcast listeners report (and I can verify this both as a host and a listener) that they feel like they know the people they hear from regularly. There is a level of know, like, and trust that is hard to replicate except face-to-face. Finally, one never knows where having a conversation will lead in the long run. I don’t even remember how Susanna and I connected initially. Yet here we were, 3 years later, hiking the hills, sharing our experiences in science and creating unique content along the way. If we get a chance to help one another out in the future, that would be icing on the cake. It all started with a conversation. Mentioned in this episode: Books: Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson The End of the World is Just The Beginning by Peter Zeihan Movie: The Andromeda Strain (also a book by Michael Crichton) Your deepest insights are your best branding. I’d love to help you share them. Chat with me about custom content for your life science brand. Or visit my website. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cclifescience.substack.com

Duration:00:37:20

Walk and Talk with Susanna Harris

2/26/2024
Susanna Harris is the Director of Community at Breakout Ventures. She is also the Founder of PhD Balance, a collaborative community empowering graduate students to build their personal and professional resilience and the 2023 recipient of the SAMPS Young Person of the Year Award. This episode is a little different. For the last couple of years, I have interviewed the winner of that SAMPS award on this podcast. Susanna has been a guest before and although we’ve chatted a few times since and both live in the Bay Area, we had never met face to face. Susanna mentioned hiking in one of our calls so I thought this would be an opportunity try something new. I suggested we meet up for a hike and record some stuff along the way. Thank you Susanna for being game for one more experiment. We had a free-flowing conversation covering our inspirations in science, science communication, marketing, career paths, longevity, mental health, and more. AI, psychedelics and The Andromeda Strain all came up as well. Give it a listen to find out the context. I typically focus these episodes around a theme and try to point toward a specific takeaway. While there is a thread to the topics we discussed, the takeaway for me this time was simply about the value of conversation. I trust that the listeners to this podcast will learn something about each of us and may be prompted to think about something they heard from a new perspective. As a listener, you don’t have to be part of a conversation to benefit from it. That’s the magic of this medium. You can listen in as if you were there. Taking that beyond podcasts, consider the value of people listening to your team members, executives and subject matter experts in their natural, unscripted style. Podcast listeners report (and I can verify this both as a host and a listener) that they feel like they know the people they hear from regularly. There is a level of know, like, and trust that is hard to replicate except face-to-face. Finally, one never knows where having a conversation will lead in the long run. I don’t even remember how Susanna and I connected initially. Yet here we were, 3 years later, hiking the hills, sharing our experiences in science and creating unique content along the way. If we get a chance to help one another out in the future, that would be icing on the cake. It all started with a conversation. Mentioned in this episode: Books: Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson The End of the World is Just The Beginning by Peter Zeihan Movie: The Andromeda Strain (also a book by Michael Crichton) Your deepest insights are your best branding. I’d love to help you share them. Chat with me about custom content for your life science brand. Or visit my website. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cclifescience.substack.com

Duration:00:37:20

Using ChatGPT to Optimize Your Market Geographically

1/24/2024
Kurt Mussina is the CEO of Paradigm Clinical Research. Their model involves dedicated sites chosen for access to their desired patient and physician populations to participate in clinical trials. Access to historically underrepresented populations for both patients and healthy volunteers is a key requirement. One can imagine it takes a lot of effort to figure that out from demographic data etc. Kurt shared with me their approach using ChatGPT with some plugins not only for determining the best places to lease space, but also for qualifying and scheduling potential participants and determining which contracts to pursue based on their historical successes and current strategy. 3 Applications of ChatGPT or AI: Where to lease and build out clinical trial sites Kurt and his head of clinical operations are based in Boise Idaho. The first requirement was to be able to visit sites without spending too much time traveling. He searched the website of the Boise airport for nonstop destinations that were reachable in a half day or less. That narrows things down to the western half of the US. They queried ChatGPT to identify which of those have, within a two-hour drive, populations with a significant proportion of people historically underrepresented in clinical research. For example, Chico California is one of those cities. Paradigm already has sites in Sacramento and Redding, which allows them to use the staff they already have on the ground and existing relationships to get a good start. Using AI chatbots to qualify patients and volunteers for studies Paradigm runs ads on Facebook to recruit potential participants. When a person visits the website looking for trials to participate in, rather than delivering a long list to browse, a chatbot will ask them questions about their age, background etc, to preview relevant trials and pre-qualify the person. It can then help schedule a phone appointment for further information and qualification. Thanks for reading cc: Life Science! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Contract assessment and budgeting There are thousands of trials going on at any one time. Which ones does Paradigm want to bid on based on their patient populations, investigators, and desired indications? Paradigm uses Salesforce to manage their sales pipeline. A sponsor or CRO may send out a feasibility questionnaire. This clip from the interview explains how an AI, based on their previous successes, helps decide which studies they’d like to bid on as well as providing a range of cost estimates and contract terms. I asked Kurt, how they decided to take this approach to all of these important steps. It turns out the husband of a board member is pretty AI-savvy. Would you be as comfortable trying something similar if you didn’t know anyone with that kind of AI expertise? In a couple of years, no one will think twice about this kind of approach. As I see it right now, the real barrier is our own imagination in terms of what problems do we need to solve and how to ask the right questions. Many of the current examples we see are using AI to generate content - images or drafts of written content, or some data analysis. It might be helpful to think of ChatGPT and its “colleagues” as individuals you hire to do a specific job. In this example, it would be like, “Hey Joe, can you compile a report on cities we can get to easily that have historically underrepresented populations? When you are done with that, set up a web page to qualify and inform people interested in participating in a clinical trial. Oh, and then, take a look through our historical data and let me know which of our leads in Salesforce are the most promising.” Those are the jobs to be done. I should say that Kurt was very clear that they worked with people outside the company to get these tasks done. In the end, one can see how it improves efficiency at every step. Your deepest insights are your best branding. I’d love to help you...

Duration:00:33:29

Breaking Through the Cannabis Cloud

1/10/2024
Up to this point, I have resisted doing any episodes around cannabis because 1. I’m a little old-school 2. I probably don’t know enough and 3. I want to avoid, in the words of my guest, “being painted with green paint” and tainting the brand. Separating emotions from logic, however, if there are cannabis components that could be effective therapies, it would be foolish to ignore them. There is already one cannabis-derived compound approved by the FDA. Epidiolex is pharmaceutical-grade cannabidiol (CBD) prescribed for the treatment of seizures associated with Lennox-Gastaut syndrome and Dravet syndrome. Pebble Life Science is taking a rigorous approach to investigate whether other compounds derived from hemp might be effective as therapies, either for other neurological disorders or even cancer, initially focused on ovarian. I spoke with Patrick Moran, the founder and CEO of Pebble Life Science about their approach, the challenges they have faced, and the success they have had in forming collaborations with the MD Anderson Cancer Center as well as participating in the NCI Applicant Assistance Program. Everything we discussed is in the pre-clinical phase, preparing for and gearing up toward clinical trials. A key event in this journey was the 2018 farm bill that allows the cultivation of hemp as long as the THC content is below 0.3%. That opened the door to growing and extracting components from hemp, all non-psychotropic, for investigation. Thanks for reading cc: Life Science! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Either way, I appreciate you spending time here. One obstacle was bridging the gap between (clinically unproven) claims of cannabis killing cancer and putting in place procedures to rigorously investigate those possibilities. Another challenge, as mentioned above, was breaking through the cloud of suspicion that exists around cannabis. After being invited to apply for a drug development grant by the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, one reviewer labeled them as drug dealers. While the research staff took that hard, their legal team suggested taking their data and the positive feedback they had received from the other three CPRIT reviewers and contacting the NCI. That led to an NCI sponsorship for the NIH Applicant Assistant Program which Patrick said was invaluable in helping his executive team prepare to submit an SBIR grant to help fund clinical trials. Based on pre-clinical studies in mice, Pebble is currently focused on the potential of a hemp-derived compound as both an adjuvant therapy and a frontline monotherapy for ovarian cancer. At the end of our interview, I asked Patrick what he had learned that would be helpful to any biotech startup whether or not they are in the cannabis space. Interestingly, I’ve recently had another conversation with someone I hope will be on this podcast soon. We concluded that science is difficult. People can be more so. It’s yet one more challenge to get people to change their thinking or to deal with the obstacles they place in front of you, intentionally or not. I hope this episode help you figure that out on your own journey. There were a few terms I had to look up in our conversation. You may find these useful: RPPA analysis Entourage effect Your deepest insights are your best branding. I’d love to help you share them. Chat with me about custom content for your life science brand. Or visit my website. 0 Comments This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cclifescience.substack.com

Duration:00:35:05

Commercializing Diagnostics: Engineering and Mindset

12/27/2023
This week, I talked to Dr. Michael Harman, an executive advisor, and consulting partner at Harmon Consulting about commercializing medical diagnostics, exploring various aspects from technology development to market trends and the integration of different scientific disciplines. I asked Michael about the process of transitioning laboratory technology into clinically viable products. He described a series of well-defined steps, starting from concept generation to prototyping and feasibility testing, eventually leading to a minimally viable product ready for market launch. It starts with identifying a gap in the market and scouting relevant technologies. Scouting is the process of identifying existing technologies that can be utilized to construct different subsystems of the proposed diagnostic tool. He used the analogy of assembling Lego pieces. While innovation can add value and is, of course, a little more exciting, it also increases risk. The engineering process of diagnostics involves bringing together various fields like industrial design, electrical and mechanical engineering, and crucial business aspects like sales and marketing. I didn’t know much about the world of diagnostics that lies between lateral flow tests like the ones we all use for COVID-19, and large analyzers running thousands of samples per day delivering results of multiple assays to your doctor. Michael noted a significant shift from centralized laboratory instruments to more compact, point-of-care devices, largely influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic. He highlighted the growing trend towards personalized medicine and home testing kits, demonstrating the evolution of diagnostic technology in response to global health challenges. This got me curious about the role of electrical engineering in diagnostics. So we took a little sidebar into the intricacies of technologies like thermocyclers for PCR. While heating a metal block seems straightforward, doing so evenly across 96 samples may not be. And I never put much thought into what it takes to cool that block quickly and where the heat needs to go. Needless to say, I have a new appreciation for electrical engineering beyond circuits and robotics. A key takeaway from our conversation was the integration of various scientific disciplines, such as computer science, biology, and physics, in developing new diagnostic methods. He mentions several innovative diagnostic projects he's involved in, such as non-invasive tests for endometriosis and personalized contraception compatibility tests. These projects exemplify the potential of predictive diagnostics to revolutionize patient care and treatment. There have been significant strides made in this field, largely due to the collaboration across different scientific domains. He emphasizes the importance of bioinformatics and the role of computer science in medicine, marking a paradigm shift in how medical research and diagnostics are approached. It also presents challenges: People don't always necessarily know what to do with diagnostic information either. That is a big challenge in terms of, okay, great. You've identified a marker now exists, but what is that now? How do you then inform the patient of or change their treatment based on that information? If you find this helpful, it kind of makes sense to subscribe, doesn’t it? Thanks for spending some time here, either way. As we often do, we discussed the challenges faced by academic founders in transitioning their ideas from academia to industry and the mindset changes required for successful commercialization. He notes that while academics are used to being highly independent and handling various aspects of a project, success in the industry often requires a more collaborative approach. Founders must learn to trust and leverage their teams, allowing each member to contribute their expertise to the project. Michael mentions the debate about the necessity of having clinicians or scientists in...

Duration:00:35:40

Mining the Microbiome for Possibilities

12/20/2023
When it comes to chemical reactions, if you can imagine it, somewhere out there a microbe is already doing it. This was something we used to say in graduate school. The challenge is finding that microbe among the billions that exist in environments all around us. Surehka Karudapuram is the VP, Commercial Operations at Isolation Bio where they are helping researchers solve that needle in a haystack problem. In this episode we talked about the what, the how and the why. Check this out: Isolation Bio specializes in high-throughput and automated isolation and cultivation of microbes. Surehka explains that Isolation Bio's platform consists of an instrument, consumables, and accessories that enable the efficient study of new microbes, their unique products, and their impact on the world. One could isolate many different microbes by diluting and plating extracts from your environment of interest on petri plates and then waiting to see what grows. Isolation Bio's technology allows researchers to perform massively parallel cultivation of hundreds of bacteria from various samples, such as soil or feces. This takes place in an array with over 6,000 nanoscale wells. I found it amazing enough to sort microbes into the wells. What blew my mind was the ability to then pick the desired samples out of those wells and transfer them to 96- or 384-well plates for further analysis. Incubating the array under specific conditions is the first step in screening for the type of bacteria you are looking for. In one example, the desired bacterium grew slowly and would typically be overtaken by other species. Creating individual isolates gave researchers the chance to find and cultivate exactly the species they were looking for. Thanks for reading cc: Life Science! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Either way, I appreciate you spending time here. Microbiome research has evolved from observation and cataloging into studying actual biology. We’ve gone from metagenomics (identifying what's there by next-gen sequencing) to identifying the capabilities of bacteria and purifying compounds. We discussed various application areas, including human health, animal health, agriculture, and environmental sciences, where microbiome research and bacteria play a crucial role. Human health is a big area for our customers and the microbiome space and it's just so many kinds of diseases that are now being linked to the microbiome and then also getting to that point of that causation. I'll just use the example of drug response or immunotherapy response in cancer patients. There's a clear population difference between the responders and the non-responders. And now we're starting to see work where the bacteria from the responders are being isolated and then being used in mouse models and then again, down to the next step, which is purifying, you know, maybe from the supernatant, the molecules, and then seeing that that can enhance immunotherapy drug response. Getting back to “If you can imagine it…”, we discussed potential commercial applications of isolated bacteria, including the development of probiotics, therapeutics, and products for various industries. Surehka highlighted the possibility of bacteria as "chemical factories" that produce beneficial compounds and explained how synthetic biology can be applied to engineer bacteria for specific functions, such as producing biodegradable plastics. It’s an exciting time to learn about the connection between our gut microbiome and other aspects of human health. On the other end of the spectrum is the possibility of discovering useful new compounds or ways of synthesizing them in living chemical factories. Where do you see the biggest potential? Leave a comment. Your deepest insights are your best branding. I’d love to help you share them. Chat with me about custom content for your life science brand. Or visit my website. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this...

Duration:00:28:02

Helping Cancer Patients Navigate the Journey Based on Experience

12/13/2023
Rochelle Prosser is the founder and president of Orchid Healthcare Solutions, the company she created to consolidate cancer treatment information and improve access to that information. We discussed the difficulties in navigating healthcare systems and the importance of having comprehensive, scientifically-driven resources for cancer patients and caregivers. Rochelle is a neurotrauma critical care nurse with 30 years of experience. She has had her own journey in healthcare and felt the impact of cancer on both her husband ( a two-time survivor) and young daughter. She described the challenges of a family trying to stay together and making decisions for a daughter who was only beginning to experience life when she was diagnosed with a rare cancer at the age of four. She had this arbitrary, completely rare brain cancer and it took nine years to figure it out for her to find survival. And that's a long time. Most people can't deal with that. Marriages are lost, finances are ruined, but we remained intact. Although her daughter was put into hospice five times, Rochelle never gave up advocating for her. I was curious about how you persuade a doctor to try something new when your child is already in end-of-life care. Her advice was to try to always be collaborative. Doctors and nurses want to help. There is value in being persistent, but it’s also important to listen. Not every treatment is the right one. If the doctor says no, there is likely a reason. But that doesn’t mean you stop trying: And so I had to find a way. to politely and effectively navigate and communicate so that I could get to that next cure, to that next option. For me, 50 percent chance of working for two years until the next treatment was a better option than 10 percent chance on a conventional treatment. Thanks for reading cc: Life Science! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Either way, I appreciate you spending time here. Based on genomic analysis, her daughter’s tumor was a mosaic of glioblastoma and DIPG (diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma). Imagine how complicated that sounds even to a healthcare professional, let alone anyone else. In addition to advocating for her daughter, Rochelle decided she would try to help others in similar situations. I felt the need to intercede in that space intentionally with what I knew and how to navigate. So this is why I started Orchid Healthcare Solutions. I created a cancer treatment library that houses all cancer treatments from soup to nuts. Everything that's out there that is scientifically driven in one place. One of the biggest pain points, being on the provider side, but also on the recipient and caregiver side that I found was there wasn't a place that had a unified place to go. It was really difficult to navigate to get information just to find out that knowledge. And I said, if there was one way that I could share my knowledge was to consolidate that, remove the silos so that you have effective and appropriate information sharing, and that will help vulnerable populations. That will increase knowledge and awareness and increase participation in clinical trials. Because genomics was so important in her daughter’s case, Rochelle feels strongly about the need for diversity in clinical trials to understand how treatments affect different populations. Representation in those trials is critical to advance medical science that benefits everyone. At the same time, she is very clear about the importance of informed consent and the conditions around consent for participation. Bottom line - we need more people to participate AND understand their rights regarding their tissues and data. That’s how we get to the end goal of more diversity and better understanding of which treatments will work for different populations. That is the only way to move us forward. We all must come together because where it works or is expressed in one, it doesn't work (in another), but we need to find out why. And...

Duration:00:53:04

Expertise is Your Product. Selling it is Your Business.

12/6/2023
Jeffrey Kiplinger is the co-founder and partner at Selling Science, a consulting firm dedicated to helping life science, contract research, and tools companies boost revenue by building and optimizing their scientific sales teams. He is also the author of the book "Expert to Entrepreneur." Jeff shared his personal journey from obtaining a PhD in organic chemistry in the late '80s to his corporate experience with Pfizer. He highlighted the frustrations he faced being siloed in his role and the desire to take his expertise on the road. I appreciate his perspective on the disconnect many scientists face when building businesses. I guess I would say, your expertise is the product, but it is not the business. I’m still chewing on that one as I think there is a lot to be learned from that. Jeff emphasized the importance of viewing the business as an entity itself, separate from the scientific expertise it offers, and focusing on growing the business side. Personally, I find marketing easy (talking about what I do). But sales is hard (asking for money). We talked about that and how to find the right people for your offering, stressing the need to identify the ideal customer and tailor marketing efforts to address their specific problems. What is, what do you do that's provided real value for your customers in the past? And the easiest way to find that out is to ask them. And that's also something that we're terrified of doing. I asked him about a quote from Brian Tracy. “Sales is just a transfer of enthusiasm.” When you believe in what you have, you can have a conversation and talk about why you are enthusiastic. But first you need to find out if the person in front of you has a problem you can solve. If you find this helpful, it kind of makes sense to subscribe, doesn’t it? Thanks for spending some time here, either way. The conversation also touched on hiring experienced salespeople, both within and outside the scientific domain, and the critical factor of finding the perfect customer. Jeff outlined the significance of defining an ideal customer profile, which guides marketing efforts and ensures a more focused and effective approach. Does the salespersons skills and experience match what you are trying to do? Do they have the right mix of science and sales expertise? For example, selling from a catalog is different from selling a solution comprising components from a catalog. If you're buying somebody's expertise in your science and they can't sell, that's a wasted investment. If you're buying somebody's network and their network isn't your ideal customer base, that's a waste. …I guess what I see is when people hire experienced sales reps or senior people who've already got field experience, very frequently they're not looking at whether that person is a match for what you're trying to achieve. They might be a match for your company, they might be a match in terms of the revenue they've produced in the past, but are you really checking them against what the company is trying to do? If you are on the road to selling your hard-earned scientific expertise, you should definitely give this episode a listen. Your deepest insights are your best branding. I’d love to help you share them. Chat with me about custom content for your life science brand. Or visit my website. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cclifescience.substack.com

Duration:00:30:48

Accelerating Drug Discovery with Virtual Screening

11/29/2023
Tom Pesnot is the Head of Medicinal Chemistry at Concept Life Sciences. I invited him to talk about AI and virtual screening in the drug discovery process. By way of review, Tom laid out the overall process of discovery. One needs to identify a target whose activity can be modulated in a way that is of course, relevant to the disease of interest. Most often we are trying to stop a protein from carrying out its normal function. Then we are looking for hits — interactions of candidate compounds with the target molecule. The quality of those hits are important. Typically, this has been done in high throughput screening using in vitro assays. This requires lots of compounds and lots of assays, making the process inaccessible for many. As you might imagine, it is very expensive with fancy robots etc. All of this provides the rationale for virtual screening because computers are becoming more powerful for predicting interactions between small molecule compounds and target proteins. Instead of starting with a compound collection (that few have access to), you start with a database. It’s possible to virtually make tens of billions of compounds in silico for screening. What blew my mind was the fact that they are only screening molecules that can be made in two or three steps from existing building blocks. Tens of billions! That means the time from identification to testing is essentially the time needed for shipping the constituent compounds. And of course, at the other end, you still need a model to recapitulate the proposed activity in vitro. AI is used along with known protein structures to see what molecules fit and how well in the target’s binding site. I asked about binding in other places that would affect activity. Ligand-based interactions are legitimate, Tom told me. For example, GPCRs (G-protein coupled receptors) elicit different pharmacology depending on where binding occurs, but AI has more impact in structure-based screening focused on active site binding. Thanks for reading cc: Life Science! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Either way, I appreciate you spending time here. The big innovation is narrowing down the possibilities to test. The traditional brute force approach, even with AI, is to screen one compound at a time. This requires huge amounts of computing power. An AI-derived algorithm that tests the most likely candidates can accelerate the process 1000-fold. “And that means that because you're accelerating the process by a hundredfold or a thousandfold, then you don't need 10,000 CPUs. But you need 12 CPUs. And then you can screen billions of compounds using, you know, average Joe’s (gaming) computer and get that done in a week. So that's really one of the aspects where AI is having a huge impact on virtual screening. It means that even for huge collections, this process is accessible to small biotechs, to everybody.” While machine learning is working on making hits more relevant, false positives are a still a challenge. Many things need to work well for a drug to be approved. Safety, efficacy, solubility etc are all important. We’re not making virtual medicines So how many compounds from a screening will be tested in an actual in vitro assay? Tom says they might start with 500-1000 molecules. Then those are whittled down to 50-100. Then they make/buy them and do an in vitro assay. I’ve been curious about where we are in terms of AI developed drugs in the pipeline. It’s still early days with respect to approved drugs from discovery by AI. According to this article, as of August 2023, none are yet at the approval stage. One big problem, yet to be overcome, is that typically negative data are not published. “The problem is, We have a lot of positive data points, negative data points are not necessarily as available because we don't tend to publish negative data. Even though there are some channels to do that and the problem is to build and test and validate a machine...

Duration:00:34:39

Unlocking the Power of Earned Media - A Freelancer's Perspective

11/15/2023
Note: For this episode, I asked ChatGPT to write a summary based on the transcript of our conversation. I enjoy doing these interviews and consider myself a decent writer. However, it takes a lot of time each week to write a summary that I find minimally satisfying and acceptable. You deserve better and I can put my efforts to better use elsewhere or upgrading the whole experience here. I did lightly edit this to make it sound as if I could have written it. This is my second attempt following some feedback from a respected colleague (you know who you are). I’m beginning to see how my own style differs from ChatGPT, even if what it produces is perfectly readable, but somewhat less memorable. Let me know what you think in the comments. Miranda Lipton is a talented freelance writer, photographer, and multimedia storyteller. In this episode we talked about earned media from a freelancer's perspective, focusing on how companies can collaborate with freelancers to get their stories published in widely read publications. Our discussion centered around Miranda's recent success in securing a feature in Fast Company about cultivated meat from fish. Our conversation should be enlightening for both freelancers and the companies that work with them. Miranda's Journey into Freelance Writing Miranda journey into freelance writing began in high school, and continued at the local town newspaper, a path that eventually led her to major in journalism at Ohio State University. Her desire to explore different facets of storytelling, including writing and photography, drove her to the freelance world. The Genesis of the Lab-Grown Fish Story Miranda's fascination with food sustainability and innovation in the past few years led her to investigate the idea lab-grown fish. The idea for the article emerged from a deep dive into the world of lab-grown meat, a concept that had been around for nearly a decade. Miranda recognized a gap in coverage, particularly in the realm of lab-grown fish, which was an emerging and innovative field. This, combined with her passion for food sustainability, created the perfect recipe (ChatGPT made a pun!) for a compelling story. She did her research and interviewed folks at relevant companies, eventually leading to the publication of her story in Fast Company. The Art of Pitching to Publications I was curious about the pitch process. How did she get an articled idea accepted at Fast Company? She utilizes a consistent pitch outline, typically comprising two to three paragraphs that encapsulate the essence of the story. Miranda stressed the importance of familiarity with the publication's focus. In her case, she had been an avid reader of Fast Company for years, allowing her to confidently identify the magazine as an ideal platform for her lab-grown fish story. . Navigating Interviews with Companies While pitching to publications can be challenging, arranging interviews is more straightforward. Companies are generally eager to discuss their work. Her process involves reaching out to individuals at relevant companies, often beginning with CEOs or co-founders identified through LinkedIn. Of course, it’s important to gather a diverse range of perspectives to provide a well-rounded view of the subject. Thanks for reading cc: Life Science! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Feedback and Challenges I asked her if she had gotten any feedback. While direct feedback from readers is not common, she occasionally receives emails from individuals who have read her articles. The overarching response to her articles on topics like lab-grown and 3D-printed food often revolves around skepticism and the novelty of the subjects. Many readers express interest in these innovations as well as uncertainty about trying them. The unfamiliarity of concepts such as 3D-printed food explains their hesitation. She thinks that as research in these fields progresses, more people will embrace these innovations. I have...

Duration:00:20:02

Crafting Narratives with AI Based on Data

11/8/2023
Note: For this episode, because we are discussing the narrative capabilities of AI, I asked ChatGPT to write a summary based on the transcript of our conversation. I enjoy doing these interviews and consider myself a decent writer. However, it takes a lot of time each week to write a summary that I find minimally satisfying and acceptable. You deserve better and I can put my efforts to better use elsewhere or upgrading the whole experience here. I did lightly edit this to make it sound as if I could have written it. Let me know what you think in the comments. In this episode, I had the opportunity to chat with Matt Lewis, the Chief AI Officer at Inizio Medical. We dove into the world of artificial intelligence (AI) and its pivotal role in the field of medical affairs, particularly in aiding the commercialization of medical innovations. This conversation shed light on the remarkable ways in which AI can be harnessed to enhance decision-making, streamline data analysis, and shape the narratives around product launches. Introduction Inizio supports various players in the life sciences arena, including pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, medical devices, digital therapeutics, and more. Inizio helps these entities translate their scientific endeavors into compelling narratives tailored for a diverse set of stakeholders, from clinicians to regulators, payers, and patients. AI has been a significant player in the medical field for several years. Matt, with over a decade of experience in medical affairs and 15 years in AI, highlighted how AI first emerged as a solution to address the overwhelming volume of scientific data, including clinical research, published papers, and patient information. This surge in data presented a challenge as it exceeded the capacity of an individual to process effectively. Matt went on to explain how AI, particularly Natural Language Processing (NLP), was employed to sift through vast amounts of content. This enabled the identification of relevant terms and concepts that were crucial for strategists and scientists to focus on. It essentially acted as a tool for surfacing meaningful insights from the sea of information. The AI-driven lexicon analysis and scientific platform considerations played a vital role in ensuring that medical professionals could efficiently navigate the complex landscape of scientific data. The Role of Subject Matter Expertise in AI While AI is a powerful tool, it requires substantial input from subject matter experts. To effectively utilize AI, you need to define the key terms and concepts that the tool should focus on. In the medical field, this entails understanding the therapeutic area, specific indications, and relevant terms and vocabulary that are integral to the domain. Without this critical input, AI can't effectively sift through and categorize the data. It should be viewed as an amplifier of human expertise rather than a replacement for it. Crafting Effective Narratives with AI How can AI be used to craft narratives that resonate with various audiences? Matt explained that in the past, narrative development was often based on subjective, qualitative discussions within multidisciplinary groups. While these discussions were essential, they sometimes lacked objectivity. The loudest voices or the strongest opinions often win. There was a lot of evidence, but sometimes the subjectivity and the qualitative nature of kind of what made sense of the organization kind of won the day, if you will. I think when we started moving into more of an evidence-centric, data-centric, AI-centric type of environment, those contributions are still there for sure, but they're kind of counterbalanced by more of an objective evidence-based approach… AI has transformed this process by providing an evidence-centric, data-driven approach. Instead of relying solely on subjective opinions, AI can analyze data to reveal how different narratives perform in the market. For example, if several...

Duration:00:33:27

Revolutionizing Demos for Better Customer Experience

11/1/2023
All of us in the life sciences are in the business of making the world healthier. The instruments and reagents we sell and the technologies and therapies that result save lives. A scientist (after a lot of research) will look at a disease or problem and say, “I think I can find a way to fix that.” Can we, as an industry, look at trade shows like a scientist would, and ask, “How can we do this better and stick to our mission of making the world at least less sick if not healthier?” If you’ve been with me for a while, you know I have a love-hate relationship with trade shows. When I was a MarCom director, events were by far the biggest part of my budget. I imagined all the other awesome campaigns I could execute with that money. And then there is the waste. The stuff that ends up in the hotel trash before you get back on the plane and the shipping of huge amounts of equipment all over the world. On the other hand, if a lot of customers are going to be in one place at the same time… it makes sense to take your offering to them. And human connection is important. I know it’s important because this episode came out of my trip to ADLM, the event formerly known as AACC. Stuart Warrington is the CEO of Envoke. They create virtual demos to make your instruments accessible at more events and present a consistent story across the customer journey. More on that below. Stuart is a filmmaker. He has been created videos for the likes of Thermo and Bio-Rad. Videos used to have a longer useful lifespan. Then his customers wanted new content at a faster pace that was more engaging. Stuart suggested video games. “No. That’s not it.” “How about a virtual demo? “Yes!” It turns out those are basically the same thing just packaged differently. (They are both virtual experiences that tell a story with the user as the hero.) Stories are the key here. (The crowd cheers.) People need to tell their own story, right? And sales and training and all that is about that. It's like, how can I communicate the message of what this thing does in the most accurate possible way? And you need to give people freedom to craft that story. And that's why we do things the way we do them. We make this story block library and it's loads of little clips. And in each clip tells its own individual message. And then your user, your sales rep, your engineer, your trainer can take from that library and craft this story. It might be about a really specific bit of qPCR on the qPCR devices in the platform. And you know your customer only really cares about that. So we give you the opportunity to just pull those bits in and tell a story that is about your product with your product rather than PowerPoint presentations and brochures and videos and things like that. It just takes that to a slightly higher level and it also then starts saving you loads of money on shipping. Right? The result is that consistent experience for the user from the web to sales to training to maintenance and service. We talked about training people the same way pilots train. On a simulation. They can make mistakes without breaking an expensive piece of kit. Not subscribed yet? It would mean a lot to me. Thanks for spending some time here, either way. In addition to the contribution to sustainability without shipping products, the ability to customize a story improves the sales process. So one of our customers built a storyline for the event from the story block library. So they built something that was like, this is what we want to talk about. This is the story we're telling here. But then what it also did was they put on a QR code, so that you scan the QR code as your customer, and what you do is, you walk away with a different storyline that's specific for you, that's just about the thing that you were talking to him about. It's all come from the same place, we've just pitched it slightly differently. So it's all come from that story block library, we've just created specific storylines...

Duration:00:26:49

Cultivating Climate Solutions with Microbial Cover Crops

10/25/2023
Barry Goldman, founder and CSO of Pluton Biosciences introduces the concept of microbial cover crops as a new and innovative approach to improving soil health and sustainable agriculture. A plant cover crop e.g. alfalfa, is typically grown in the off-season and plowed back into the field to enrich the soil before the actual crop is planted. Barry and his team set out to see whether some bacteria can do this, particularly around nitrogen fixation, adding ammonia to the soil from the atmosphere. He points out that since the 1950s and 1960s the world’s population has gone from roughly 3 billion people to 8 billion. Some part of that is due to the use of synthetic fertilizers - ammonia made from the Haber-Bosch process. That has fed a lot of people. But that process creates a lot of greenhouse gas as well. Is there another way to add nitrogen to the soil that avoids undesirable side effects? When Barry and I were classmates and labmates in grad school studying Salmonella genetics, We had a saying. “If you can imagine it, a bacterium is already doing it.” Starting with a soil sample containing about 10,000 different species, the scientists at Pluton Biosciences have identified a consortia of bacteria that will grow in the absence of carbon and nitrogen except for what they can get from the air. The consortia work together using energy from the sun to reduce CO2 into usable energy sources (photosynthesis) and fix N2 to ammonia which can be used to synthesize amino acids etc. As an additional benefit of deploying microbial cover crops on a large scale for nitrogen fixation, it’s possible to sequester a significant amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. "If you could now take this on a hundred million acres, you removed a hundred million tons of CO2 per year... you can start tackling this and give ourselves more time to come up with even better solutions. We also believe we can put on 30 pounds of nitrogen per acre. So now, if you're on that for that much, you're essentially almost turning the amount of the Haber-Bosch process to zero. That's roughly 20 percent of the greenhouse gases that are being emitted. You put those two together, now you have a massive impact on climate change." Not subscribed yet? Can we fix that? Either way, I appreciate you spending time here. What would it take the bring this potential to reality? Of course, like anything else in life science, safety and efficacy matter. These consortia need to be tested in the field. Because they are not genetically modified, the EPA would be satisfied to know that the constituents of the consortia have been identified and are typically present wherever they are intended to be applied. The second challenge is getting farmers to test the consortia in their own field (or a portion thereof). They will want some assurance that they would at least be compensated for any reduction in yield. And to be paid for their effort as well. Testing in real-world fields is crucial to prove that these microbial cover crops work as expected. This involves multiple phases, from starting with a few fields to expanding once efficacy and safety are demonstrated. Amazingly, the consortia create a visible crust on the soil. Similar to what we discussed in a very early episode of this podcast, drone technology and machine vision can be used to monitor the fields and gather data on microbial cover crop performance. Oh yeah. What’s the business model? Someone needs to pay for this. If the consortia works, the grower gets value from savings on synthetic fertilizer. There is also the carbon market. Right now that’s at $15-30 per ton of carbon sequestered per acre. Finally, does the soil improve? Does it result in better yields (more revenue)? Barry reminds us that this is not a complete solution. But microbial cover crops have the potential to put a significant dent in greenhouse gas emissions giving us more time to develop additional remedies for climate change. Your deepest...

Duration:00:35:58

Commercializing Your Diagnostic

10/18/2023
I traveled to Disneyland Orange County for AACC ADLM back in July to connect with a few folks and walk the floors of the exhibit hall. I was on my way out when Derek Hamre from Launchworks CDMO stood up at his table and got my attention with the best elevator pitch I have ever heard. And that landed him a spot on my podcast. I’ll share what it was at the end of this post.* Imagine this scenario. You’re in an academic lab or small biotech and you’ve developed a diagnostic test for a molecule or a disease. How do you go about commercializing your test? Do you need to get a bunch of regulatory approvals? What else do you need to think about? After all, you’re in a small research lab stepping into a whole new world. It turns out there are people who do this for a living and can help you plan out your strategy. Launchworks is a CDMO for molecular diagnostics. Services range from commercialization strategy and supply chain management through to fulfillment. A company might come to them with a locked down bill of materials and work instructions for kitting tens to hundreds of thousands of units at a time, or maybe they are early in the process and need help thinking through strategy from the beginning. …one of the reasons that we are pretty present at ADLM, AACC is the RUO kits. Those that are taking an idea from the R&D space and bringing it to the market and that commercialization process is a big, you know, lift for a lot of companies, even if they're bigger. Um, but especially for smaller companies when they have 5, 10 workers that have never gone through the commercialization process. Beyond that, what level of regulatory approval do they want? In some cases, a kit might be sold as RUO (Research Use Only), but a customer’s customer might want to take it further: And a lot of our customers, so we won't make those claims, obviously, our customers will go through the FDA filings or whatever, um, but some of our customers will just not want to go through the FDA process, so they'll make their kit RUO and then maybe one of their customers will buy the kit and then go through the FDA or 510K, PMA process… …so allowing another customer or their companies that they're working with to go through that process on their behalf might be the pathway for them. Regardless of the regulatory path chosen, Derek described the four main areas where a CDMO can help get a product to market. * Risk mitigation * Commercialization strategy * Manufacturing process * Supply chain You’d like to avoid surprises in any of those areas. Taking supply chain, for example, it would be important to know if a supplier might be closing shop in the near future. Will you be able to maintain quality as you scale up? I asked Derek about the logistics of assembling and shipping hundreds of thousands of units from different vendors. Everything is done in-house. Mixing buffers, putting kits in bags, labeling and shipping. Launchworks has about a 30,000 to 40,000 square foot facility in Beverly, Massachusetts. Prior to this I knew that there were CDMOs for pharma, but not for diagnostics. ADLM was an eye opener in terms of the world of clinical chemistry. And this isn’t the only episode I recorded as a result of that visit. More in a couple weeks. *I don’t remember his exact words, but it was along the lines of “We’re helping visitors to ADLM become vendors at ADLM.” Your deepest insights are your best branding. I’d love to help you share them. Chat with me about custom content for your life science brand. Or visit my website. Intro Music stefsax / CC BY 2.5 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cclifescience.substack.com

Duration:00:26:46

What is a Liaison Research Organization?

10/11/2023
Dr. Antonio Tito is the Founder and CEO of rEthix in Houston, Texas. rEthix is the world’s first Liaison Research Organization (LRO) facilitating clinical trials in Mexico and Latin America. A search of clinicaltrials.gov shows that several large pharma companies are currently running trials in Mexico. rEthix is leveraging the ICH (International Council for Harmonisation) guidelines to run these trials in Mexico and use that data to support IND-enabling studies in the US. The ICH sets the guidelines that the FDA and equivalent agencies in other countries follow. COFEPRIS, the Mexico Ministry of Health, assesses the laboratories. rEthix also prepares those laboratories to pass that assessment. One advantage is cost. According to Dr. Tito, the cost of a trial in Mexico may be 15-25% of the cost for a similar trial in the US. Another advantage is meeting your goals for testing diverse populations. While it’s common to run trials in Mexico, it is not common to start them there. …that is reflected only that only 3. 5 percent of new drugs are generated out of Mexico. And most of that has to do with communication. It's important that we have these type of channels, like the one that you are promoting, Chris, to teach people that it's okay to start your clinical trial in Mexico. You can approach the FDA about it. Be very transparent with the FDA always. But don't let the communication gap, not only the language, but also the culture… the paperwork is very extensive in Mexico. Don't let that stop you from generating data that you can later use for submitting to your investors and, obtaining more funding. Antonio also mentioned the opportunity to expand into Latin America with, for example, devices already approved in the US. For a 510K device that you already have obtained approval for in the U. S., You can easily transfer that into Mexico very simply because you have all the data that you've used, you’ve generated it to demonstrate that it works and is similar to other predicate devices out there in the market. And you've generated that information for your filing for the FDA. All that information can be then translated by our team and we can pass it on to COFEPRIS and the process is similar to the U. S. as well. But it's... You get the advantage of tapping into sometimes virgin markets where there is absolutely no other alternative to that device or to that diagnostic in Mexico or Latin America. So you have a winning hand in leveraging tactics to negotiate with, like commercializing agencies in those countries. Whereas in the U. S., you have more competition. It takes longer to get your market traction. So it's a win-win situation. Not subscribed yet? Let’s fix that right here. Thanks for listening to the podcast and sharing this post. rEthix is developing an app… Let's say you have a new discovery in your research institute, and you've received approval from your tech transfer office to take your technology out into the commercial markets and you have partnered with us to help you get your innovation out. We are, as part of the app, what it's going to be, it looks at all the data that you have, implements AI, And determines what is the best pathway in terms of the study design, the type of protocol that needs to be developed for better for commercialization for your device or your drug or your diagnostics. Until the app is ready, they are building an incubator in Houston at the medical center to connect life science companies to share ideas and facilitate access to data that will generate traction for IRB studies in Houston. Your deepest insights are your best branding. I’d love to help you share them. Chat with me about custom content for your life science brand. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cclifescience.substack.com

Duration:00:28:11

Metrics, Creativity and Imposter Syndrome

10/4/2023
Jamie Gier is the Chief Marketing Officer at Dexcare, responsible for establishing the company as a category leader in modernizing the way consumers discover, access, and choose their healthcare services – from digital search to booking an appointment. We enjoyed a wide-ranging discussion about marketing beginning with selling high-value products with long sales cycles and multiple decision makers. You’ve heard it before, but no one wants to be sold to. That’s the expressway to the delete button. Jamie emphasized building relationships and educating, showing customers how their lives could be better. At Dexcare, her team learns a lot from early adopters about why they chose their product and continue to use it. Ask as many questions as you can, just like we talked about last week… We don’t know what we don’t know. Jamie and her team are taking advantage of thought leadership in a big way. We happen to spend a big portion of our media budget on LinkedIn, for example, that happens to be the channel where a lot of our buyers are, and there's a lot of thought leadership. And so if anything, we've really focused our paid media on a single channel and we want to get really, really good at that. And so that's where we're placing a lot of our investments, but it's one of many. We know as soon as we capture their attention, a relationship begins. And that's where we have to start developing even higher levels of trust and rapport beyond just what they see with us in a digital way….we spend a lot of time with our clients simply promoting their own thought leadership on these topics. That's number one. Two, we do spend time on building content that is education- rich. Measurement is important and of course. I asked her how she makes the case for the tactics that are harder to measure. Observation and paying attention. When you land a large deal because someone heard about you on a podcast, that’s a pretty good sign. Not subscribed yet? Can we fix that? Thanks for spending some time here, either way. Jamie thinks that because of the emphasis on measurement, marketers have moved away from creativity. That took us on a little side trip to talk about Jimmy Buffett, who died right before this interview, and storytelling. I had written a piece for LinkedIn (not posted) about the impact JB had on my career. (DM me for details). Besides writing fun songs about pirates and exotic places, Jimmy’s clever use of language to make emotional connections set him apart. Jamie said: The thing about Jimmy Buffett is he brought you into his world, or he went into yours. And that was the power of the words he used in his songs. With one top-10 hit (not even close to his best song) Jimmy Buffett built a business empire around his collection of memorable characters and events. We should try to do the same. What advice does Jamie have for marketers just getting started? * Join communities where you can learn. (I recommend SAMPS) and * Don’t be intimidated by people with advanced degrees. They may know a lot in a technical field that took years of study. And you know (and love) marketing! Learn what you can from them, but also show them how you can help them with what you know. Science doesn’t get sold without storytelling. Your deepest insights are your best branding. I’d love to help you share them. Chat with me about custom content for your life science brand. Or visit my website. Intro Music stefsax / CC BY 2.5 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cclifescience.substack.com

Duration:00:32:37

Using the Voice of Customer to Design Consumer-Centric Diagnostics

9/27/2023
Julie Garlikov is Chief Commercial officer at Sherlock Biosciences where they are developing over-the-counter diagnostics to put answers in the hands of consumers and empower them to make better health decisions. Sherlock is developing two platforms - a disposable test and a reusable reader for home diagnostics. You can listen to the podcast for some details on the science. Let’s focus here on VOC in design. Consumer-centric design for me is really all about embodying the methods of design thinking. Which is really making sure that you have a deep understanding and empathy for the user that you're designing for. And that you're solving a problem that they really have, and that you're doing it in a way that fits into their lifestyle or their needs. This approach involves lots of research, qualitative and quantitative surveys, prototyping and ethnography. Ethnography is more than observing how they use the product under development. One can learn from understanding how they use any product. Even the buying process is investigated. How do they shop for groceries? When it comes to the product itself, do they understand the instructions for use? More good stuff coming in future episodes. Don’t miss it. Thanks for being here. If you are developing a diagnostic for sexual wellness, you need to know not just the population dynamics of STIs but also people’s attitudes and beliefs around their sex lives. How do you reach people based on what you know about their behaviors? The results can be surprising. … one thing that I uncovered in this attitudes and usage study that we did with almost 1300 people, young people in the U.S. was a group I'm calling, it's like a segment of the population, I would call frisky-riskies. So frisky-riskies is a group that skews a little more male than female and they're a group that's engaging in behavior where they have more frequent casual partners, and they're not often using protection, and they know that they're not using protection, and they know that puts them at risk. So, what's interesting is that they actually test more than other people because they use testing as a way to mitigate the things they're doing that they know are causing risk for them. The ability to do home testing for all kinds of indications can certainly reduce the spread of infectious diseases and help move us forward to thinking about prevention and general wellness. In the case of STIs which can be asymptomatic in women, there are implications for fertility as well. As I think about our conversation, it struck me that we all have an opportunity to make products that will improve people’s lives in some way. But what can we do to make the biggest impact possible with the products we make or the services we offer? It seems like asking questions and observing the behaviors of our ideal customers offers a big return on a little extra effort. I just realized last week’s episode reached a similar conclusion about how the early work in any project seems to have an outsized impact. It’s like painting a house. The quality of the outcome is all in the preparation. Your deepest insights are your best branding. I’d love to help you share them. Chat with me about custom content for your life science brand. Or visit my website. Intro Music stefsax / CC BY 2.5 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cclifescience.substack.com

Duration:00:24:17

Rethinking Lab Workflows Impacts More Than Productivity

9/20/2023
Cheri Walker and her colleagues started Rhinostics in the middle of the pandemic in response to the massive increase in testing volume required to keep faculty and students at Harvard safe from Covid. That’s a story in itself. The principals never met in person for the first nine months! We had all of our calls virtually. It was all done telephonically, I mean in Zoom. I basically started the company out of my guest bedroom because we didn't need space for the first year. We now have a facility which you can see behind me and we have, you know, all the normal things that you would have as a company grows and expands. Make sure you listen to get the details on that. But those workflows I mentioned… Remember the nasopharyngeal swabs that ticked your brain? No one likes those and processing those samples in that format is cumbersome. Harvard developed a new type of polypropylene swab with an active end that interacts with a decapping robot. By developing and manufacturing this new type of nasal swab (no more brain tickling) Rhinostics was able to create: * A better patient experience with a more comfortable, DIY swab. * A smoother automated workflow with faster turnaround and * Potentially reduce turnover of medtechs in the lab I think that's been the flip side of starting a company in the pandemic is just the supply chains and labor and all those issues. And then when you actually talk about the problem that we're solving and the real pain point that exists in laboratories today. Not only are there the cost structures and things like that, it's just finding med techs and people to work in the lab. And a lot of them got burned out. There was a small number before the pandemic, but a lot of them got burned out. And med tech now is making anywhere from 125, with 20, 000 signing bonuses. And, you know, retention turnover in the labs is something in the 25 to 30, 35%. So, it's a real issue, um, facing most of the laboratories right now. The automated workflow removes the manual step of decapping swabs before analysis. Barcoding ties the sample to the patient through an app on their phone and allows for better sample tracking. Both of those make for a better experience for the user and the med tech. You’re subscribed, right? I have several interesting episodes in the can already. Don’t miss ‘em. Thanks for being here. The insight here is that rethinking workflows and a small, unsexy device can have a huge impact on lab productivity, patient health and worker satisfaction. No medtech went to school thinking they would be uncapping tubes all day, rather than looking after equipment and solving problems. I asked Cheri where sample collection is going in the future. There is definitely a move toward home testing. The pandemic proved that it can be done accurately. There is currently an epidemic of STIs (sexually transmitted infections) for which the option of buying a kit off the shelf at the pharmacy would seem to be a way to discreetly get individuals to seek treatment if necessary while maintaining some privacy. Cheri also mentioned, for example, having a teenager on Accutane where blood lipids needed to be tested on a regular basis. You could send our little VERIstic® blood collection device, do a finger prick, send them home with ten of them, and then they can just do it and send it back. They don't have to drag their teenager back to the clinic to stay and wait for a blood draw and keep them out of school… …it's interesting because everyone, it's not just home health and kit providers that are interested, like the whole hospital health system is trying to figure out how can we use these tools to actually have better health care for people that's more convenient, but still just as accurate and maybe get more compliance. More powerful analysis on the back end of testing is great, but across life science, I wonder if the real opportunities to make an impact are at the front end of how we do things. Your deepest...

Duration:00:26:18