Bernat Olle, Vedanta | Best Microbiome Therapeutics

In a virtual special, we welcome Bernat Olle to the show. We discuss the microbiome space, including Vedanta’s upcoming Phase 3, and how it feels to be a European founder in Boston.

Bernat is the CEO and co-founder of Boston-based Vedanta Biosciences, one of the leading microbiome companies. They’ve had a positive Phase 2 trial and recently raised a $107M round to run a Phase 3.

Bernat is a life science trailblazer. During his doctorate at MIT, he developed a novel method for large-scale bacterial culture. He’s been named “Innovator of the Year in MIT Technology Review Spain’s “Innovators under 35” awards and even has his own TED Talk!

I’ve known Bernat since 2013 when I was studying in Boston and he was starting Vedanta. It was great to catch up again and become inspired once more.

🔗 Links mentioned:

Transcript

Bernat Olle: The, the Genentech Biogen Amgen Genzyme founders figured out that using recombinant technology and cell cell banking, you could make products obviating the need for human donors. The industry went in that direction and they never looked back. Today there’s more than a hundred more OC equals approved, and the main advantages were you control the supply.

You could scale it commercially. It didn’t depend on donors that may or may not show up at the donation center when you needed them, you eliminated the risk of transferring HIV Hep C and some of the pathogens that cost nine MAs in the eighties and nineties, and you had a product always have the same quality attributes.

Well, the exact same things apply here. The difference is the biospecimen, instead of being ized now feces, but you too cannot create the donations here and make products from cell banks.

[00:00:56] Welcome

Philip Hemme: Hey, Phillip here. Welcome to the fourth episode of the Flot.bio Show, where I interview the best Europeans in biotech to help you be inspired and grow. And today I was supposed to be in Boston, but I had to cancel my trip for for sickness. So I’m in Berlin and I will do this episode online. I will interview Bernat Olle, who is the founder and the ceo of Verdantta and Bernat grew up and studied in Spain before moving to m i t for his PhD in mba.

He then joined PureTech where he co-founded Vita and then transitioned to the company as a C E O. And today Vita is really one of the leading microbiome companies worldwide. It has positive phase two data and recently raised over a hundred million rounds. In part two, run the, the phase three.

I will not talk too much about his personal story in this episode because he did the episode with Luke Tillman, where they went quite in details. And I will, I will link in below, but instead we will talk about where, where does the Microbiome Ministry stands right now and how does it feel to run by the company in, in Boston as a, as a European.

So let’s connect online and talk with, be. Alright. So, Bernat, welcome to the show.

Bernat Olle: Thanks, Phil for inviting me.

Philip Hemme: Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s great. We, we finally get to talk live as well, and too glad we, we couldn’t do it in Boston, but I still, still great to do it online next time. Yeah, next time.

[00:02:36] Zooming out on the microbiome field

Philip Hemme: So as I, I mentioned in the intro, I, I wanna start really with the kind, the big idea and starting on, on the microbiome field kind of as.

Zoomed out as possible. I think, I mean, it was a super hot field for, let’s say for the last, let’s say, let’s say last 10 years now you have these two drugs approved on market. It’s rev, biotech, fairing, and, and, and serious with that, you guys, you’re, you’re about to start your phase three. I mean, it’s coming really closer to like delivering patient values and, and, and, and like del delivering, delivering value.

So can you, can you expand a bit on like where we now, like where we, where we standing now?

Bernat Olle: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I think you made this reference to the, the, the field being very hot in, in past tense and then, you know, reaching some maturity now. And, and I, I’ve been in the field for I guess 10 to 15 years now, and you can see two stories developing what’s happening in academia and what’s happening in the industry.

And those didn’t go exactly. Parallel to each other. I think if you look at the academic output the quality of the, the work that’s come out, the quantity too, and just the collective knowledge that’s been generated, it’s a fairly straight line. You know, from 2008 until now, you’ve, you’ve kept accumulating really good work in the field.

And if anything, year after year, I think there’s, there’s more evidence and better quality evidence of which are the things that the microbiome do that are in fact important to health and which ones are maybe less important. I think in industry has been a different story because for good or for bad fear and greed are, are more of a thing in industry than, than in academia, although the latter is not immune to that.

And our field has gone through a cycle or a couple of cycles of hype. With, you know, some companies going public relatively early in their lifetimes having some negative clinical rates and then not affecting the field more broadly and then rebounding with positive data and brain, some repeat. But we have gotten to an interesting point in the field, in industry where there are now the first two drugs approved.

There was an approval in December from our colleagues at faring biotics of a, of acal transplant based on an enema. There was an approval in April from serious therapeutics of a, of a fecal or derived drug based on, on the spore fraction given orally. Both of them are for CD vail infection, which is the best studied indication in the field, and those are good news.

It, it shows, you know, the FDA. Put the bar here in terms of that’s what’s good enough and that’s what’s expected in terms of efficacy, safety, and CMC in this field.

I think this also leaves a lot of room for improvement. I’m hoping we can come to a point in this field where we don’t have to give feces to patients as the basis of a product. We can make drugs that are based on pharmaceutical grade compositions that are always the same, have always the same quality attributes that are safer, where you don’t expose the patients to the risk of transferring pathogens and that are truly scalable commercially, where you can make drugs for not just thousands, but hundreds of thousands, potentially millions of doses, and do that in, that’s,

Philip Hemme: that’s what what, where denta really differentiate or where, I mean you claim you’re the, the most advanced.

How you, for like gmp, pure bacterial banks or basically not fecal, there’s no fecal donors or no fecal derived drug at this, your most advanced trial in the world. That is, yeah, which is a big deal. I mean

Bernat Olle: that, that is what we’re trying to do. We’re, we’re trying to make drugs that are defined in nature.

And what we mean by defined is that you bypass the need for a donor of fecal material as the source of the drug. And you instead make the drug from clonal cell banks by fermentation technology, giving you a product that is always the same. And so the ultimate drug that the patient gets is what we refer to as a defined bacterial consortia.

By consortia we mean that there’s multiple different species of bacteria that make up the active ingredients of the drug each of which is, is grown from clonal cell banks so that each batch of product is exactly the same. And by the fine we, we also mean that, right? That it comes from solve banks and not from donations.

And so the the three key points that I made where I think we can advance the field quality attributes, safety, scalability stem from basically taking the donors out of the equation. If you, if you make a drug that’s based on acal donation, every donation is in essence a different drug. So no patient is ever getting the same drug twice.

Right. And I

Philip Hemme: remember on, on You, you made, you made that, that comparison with, with, let’s say the Genzyme in early days or any enzyme replacement therapy where it was made from donors and then they moved, moved on to to, to bio produced and bio reactors, and then the, the drug was standardized and, and you could deliver it at scale.

Standardized was, was always the same efficacy.

Bernat Olle: Yeah, I think it’s a, was a useful analogy. I think it, it is a useful analogy. This is where the biotech industry started. Actually, my, my thesis advisor at Mt. Danny Wong, who, who unfortunately passed away a couple of years ago he worked in, in the early days, in the seventies and the eighties in developing fermentation technology and downstream processing needed operations so that you could make biologics starting from cell banks using recombinant engineering.

Before that, the biotech industry relied on plasma donations and tissue donations, either from humans or from, from or from animals to make the drugs, right. Hemophiliacs, septic shock patients relied on plasma donations, and there was a time when there was no alternative. It’s crazy. And, and today it still exists as, as more of a niche thing.

Like for example, during covid, you could see that plasma donations, the very beginning when we didn’t know what we were doing was, was the only way to go. But when the industry figured out that. I mean the, the Genentech Biogen, Amgen Genzyme founders figured out that using recombinant technology and cell cell banking, you could make products of creating the need for human donors.

The industry went in that direction and they never looked back. Today there’s more than a hundred more corns approved, and the main advantages were, you know, you control the supply, you could scale it commercially. It didn’t depend on donors that may or may not show up at the donation center when you needed them, you eliminated the risk of transferring HIV Hep C and some of the pathogens that cost nine MAs in the eighties and nineties, and he had a product always had the same quality attributes.

Well, the exact same things apply here. The difference is the biospecimen instead of being plasma, is now feces. But you too can obviate the donations here and make products from cell banks. And of course, that requires. Everything has its ups and downs, right? And that requires more technology, more technology to figure out how do you pick the right combinations of bacteria, and then how do you manufacture them reliably.

Philip Hemme: What about to ask what are, what does the down say? I mean, I bit what you were you first point as well. I mean, academia evolved rapidly, but also microbiome is, is such a recent field that a lot of the understanding, even though the fundamental understanding is, is like, I mean, there, there’s still a lot to discover.

So I guess even for you to translate that into manufacturing different strains, strains, population, whatever, I mean, it’s, it’s, yeah, basic has never been done. So it’s, there’s, I mean, I guess a lot of fundamental technology to understand, develop that can be, I mean, this is definitely changing bo

Bernat Olle: both technology and biology.

You know, there’s some problems that we have that can be addressed with technology, and then there’s some areas of knowledge in the field that just need to be patched up with new biological insights that we just don’t have yet.

[00:11:44] Standardizing the process and composition

Philip Hemme: And no, it’s and you mentioned, you mentioned, I mean, the, the risk of transaction, I don’t remember for which drugg, but for at least for, for fecal transplant, there was, there was a big crisis, I don’t know, a few years ago with some, some infections dealing to, to patient deaths actually.

So I think, I mean, basically there, the pure fecal transplant is, is very, at least there is huge, huge challenges from a, from a, from a contamination point of view. But I’m curious with, for example, serious or some other drugs, which are, to my understanding, fecal derived, but still quite standardized and Leo ized.

And so can you, can you go just a bit in details to, from a, from a composition, where does it, like where Like, because they are a bit like, they’re a bit standardized, but standardized. Can you, can you explain bit in details or like Yeah, yeah.

Bernat Olle: I think the, the, the difference is are you standardizing the process or are you standardizing the composition?

Hmm. And, and the products that have gotten approved have attempted to standardize the process of making a fecal donation into a drug. So how do you screen the donors? What pathogens do you look for to disqualify potential invalid donors? How do you process the, the fecal donation? Do you use an ethanol treatment like Sirius to separate the spores?

Or, or, or you don’t do that? And then how do you encapsulate it in the final delivery system, whether it’s a cap a capsule or an enema? How do you store it? And then how do you transfer to the sites? That will give it? However, the composition will always be completely different from donation to donation.

Hm. With the donor drive approaches, there is no way to control that. Yeah. It is not standardized. In our case, the composition will always be exactly the same because you’re starting from cell banks. So the eight different bacteria, bacteria, species that are part of our product are always gonna be the exact same clones.

And same for, for other products that we’re developing. And so when instead of standardizing the procedure, you’re standardizing the composition, then from a development and regulatory point of view, you care about different things, right? Since you, you, you now actually know what’s in the product. In, in some ways the bar is a little bit higher to try to understand and make sure that those specific eight bacteria in, in this case don’t carry in their genomes any Any features that could be problematic from a safety point of view.

For example, antibiotic resistance genes or virulence genes. You don’t have to really look at that if you’re making a product based on thecal donation. Why? Because since you don’t know what’s in the product, then what are you supposed to look for, right? But in our case, since we actually do, then there is also the burden of like, okay, now look and make sure that those genomes don’t contain anything that could be problematic.

And then also, you know, the, the, the way you you manufacture batches of those different products also we’ll likely get looked at from regulatory agencies differently, right? In one case you’re making products for, from donations and you can contain, but you can never eliminate the risk of pathogens getting transferred.

So what you see some, some agencies doing like FDA is, is making sure that. The batch sizes are small, meaning one donation goes to only a handful of patients, but not hundreds, not thousands. Why? Because if there’s a pathogen, you’ll have some sense of containment. How many people are affected. Now that, that’s good from a safety point of view.

From a commercial scalability, it’s bad because you cannot get economies of scale. You cannot bring the cost of goods down by having larger batches. In our case, we can make batches that are enormous. You know, if you scale the the fermentation, you can make a batch that makes thousands of treatments. But by the same token, since this batch can go into many people, you need to raise the bar on how well you understand what’s in there.

And so reasonably, the agencies will tell you, okay, gimme a more full characterization of what you have in there. Make sure that you actually know what are the amounts of each of the different bacteria that you have in the drug. And. So just two, two different, two different ways to think about a similar problem.

Philip Hemme: But I guess, I mean, you, you have pretty much reached that now, not that you’ve completed a phase two with positive data. Can you, can you go maybe a bit more in the, the, or if you have some specific data to show, I mean, you’re saying, okay, we have more standardization, we can produce more, we can have economic of scale.

Can you maybe have some range, some like examples or, or how it compares or what are we talking about? I mean, are we talking about whatever, 50, 10% reduction, 50%, 80% from cost of, from cost of goods, for example. I mean, just to have a bit of an idea of, of how it compares. And I wrote down the date from the, from the phase two data, I think you were, you had basically was 50% chance recurrence was without your treatment or was, let’s say placebo and was your treatment, you were at 80 or.

81% sustained without recurrence. So, which was significant, significant difference. But can you Yeah, maybe just go a bit on the specific example and, and how, how it compares. Yeah.

Bernat Olle: So in, in patients that experience recurrences with clo difficile, which is agram positive pathogen, that, that people often acquire in hospital settings, sometimes in the community, bigger problem for the elderly, especially 65 and older.

Yeah. If, if you’ve had an episode of c difficile infection and then you, you recur

Philip Hemme: After taking antibiotics in most 80% of the case, it treats the problem or treats the, the, the strain, but then the infection, but then 20% will recur.

Bernat Olle: Correct. Yeah. So, so if you experience the first episode, You will typically get vancomycin, maybe cin and roughly 80% of the people will be fined, will recover naturally, and the other 20% will experience a recurrence in that subset of the 20% that experience recurrences.

You’ll have people that that experience multiple recurrences whereby another cycle and another cycle of antibiotic doesn’t really help and they just keep recurring. If you take the, the average, an average of the population of patients that recur 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 recurrences what you find, at least in the randomized studies that that, that we have run and the competitors that you mentioned have run, is that if your average, average population has had maybe about three, three episodes on average, then the, the placebo rates of, of natural recovery after antibiotic treatment alone, Which is the control arm that we use are gonna be somewhere between 40 to 50%.

That means that roughly half of the people after an antibiotic treatment and some time will recover their micro, micro microbiome and not experience recurrence. And the other, and the other half will, will recur. And then the, the way our drugs are measured is how much better can you do than half right?

When you take the other half and shrink it as much as possible. And so what we’ve seen is we can take this other half and three and shrink it to about 13%. So the difference between the natural cure on placebo and this 13% in our cases, 30 points that’s the absolute risk reduction. And this is the largest that’s been seen in the field.

For, for context, believe that the two drugs from mer Bezo, TOB CIN be Beb, which is the one approved for this indication, had about. 10 to 12 points of absolute risk reduction. So we’re looking at something that’s, that’s two to three times larger. And the fecal drive approaches have seen absolute risk reductions in, in the range from 12 to to 27% but with significant vari variability across studies.

So this is clinically meaningful because you’re, you’re reducing the odds of a recurrence for a given patient by about 80%, right? So if, if, if you would’ve been in the placebo arm versus a treatment arm in, in our case with high dose, then you have 80% better odds. Or in other words, another metric that physicians sometimes like to use is what’s called the number needed to treat.

Meaning how many patients do you need to treat to prevent one of the outcomes of interest in this case prevent one recurrence. And our number needed to treat is, is three, roughly three, which means that for every three patients that, that are treated or preventing one recurrence, And that’s a very good point to start as a launching path to run a phase three study to then validate it in a larger population, we, we preserve the signal.

Yeah,

Philip Hemme: that’s very clear though. It’s great context on the, on the, comparing the, the different efficacy. So I guess you will be, you can, I mean, you have potential to be basically best in class and I guess also first in class as a standardized bank derived microbiome producting.

Bernat Olle: Correct.

[00:21:39] What’s the cost?

Philip Hemme: Yeah. And that’s, and and from a, from a cost of, I I, can you give a bit of a context there of like what does the cost of the, of the convert I the cost of the map from, from what or what, what the kind of cost we’re talking about.

Bernat Olle: Yeah. So cost of good information is very difficult to find because for understandable reasons, companies like to keep that, that information close to their chest. But you can do a little bit of back of envelope, of envelope to understand orders of magnitude, right? And on in our field if you look at some of the information that that store banks have published, and I’m thinking specifically about Open Biome, which was a store, bank in town and not a nonprofit.

And what they, they were selling their fecal procedures for tho those, those procedures were about $2,000 a treatment in a nonprofit setting. I think that’s a, that’s a reflection of how costly it is to identify donors that are validated and that I’m, that can give you donating feces, but are free of any of the pathogens that would disqualify them, any of the viral, bacterial and parasitic pathogens that, that would disqualify you from being a validated donor.

And. If you cannot make your batches higher which from a regulatory standpoint, I think is gonna be difficult, then you’re gonna be stuck in this range where each, each treatment is, is in the range of several thousands of dollars to just make Yeah. If, if you’re relying on difficult automations, it’s a little bit counterintuitive because you’re thinking, well, feces are cheap, right? You can just go to the restroom. But it’s not, but

Philip Hemme: the screening and the standardization of the process is super expensive

Bernat Olle: minus screening. You have to maintain donation sites at different cities so that people can go and find, find the places you need the personnel to now to, to collect the donations on site, and then basically process donation by donation.

In our case, we can really turn this upside down by, because, by, by using fermentation technology, it’s really about what scale you’re producing at. Right? Right now we’re making drugs for our studies. At the 200 liters scale. At 200 liters scale, you have a certain cost of goods, but you can use the exact same process.

I mean, in phase two, we’re doing 20 liter scale. You can then use this exact same question at 2000 and 20,000 liter scale, and then you really drive the cost of goods curve down if

Philip Hemme: you manage to scale at 20,000. Not this, there’s some challenges there as well, but I guess so

Bernat Olle: yes, I’ll comment on that because I think those challenges are I’ll comment on that in a second.

Yeah. But just, just to make the point that by doing that, you, you can drive the cost of goods by orders of magnitude. And so that becomes very meaningful if you’re in therapeutic areas where you have to make a lot of drug because you’re gonna give it, you’re gonna be giving it for an extended period of time.

Or there are a lot of patients who you need to be able to reach a broad, a broad population saying that tens, hundreds of thousands of potentially millions of patients or certainly. If you want to make drug for any country other than the us which has a willingness to pay for drugs, that is fundamentally different than what the US system is willing to pay for.

Right? So if, if you want certainly if you want low and middle income countries to benefit from ion approaches, it hardly can be based on fickle donation approaches. But you don’t even have to go to lmis, even Europe the markets in Europe you, you have to be, reimbursements are at a place where, where the systems wanna, wanna absorb, right?

And so the cost of goods are gonna be very important. Now, to your point on scalability,

Philip Hemme: maybe just, just before scalability, just to, to zoom out on the, I mean, cost of goods, just to kind of summarize and, and add a bit of context. But what you’re saying is basically fecal based drugs will be in the thousands of cost of goods.

If you add to this 80, 90% margin margin, we end up in. Like whatever high five digits costs per year, probably somewhere there versus a drug, you can be more in a hundreds of cost of goods and you end up in, let’s say a high whatever one digit thousands. You can, you can, yeah. After margin. Just from a, from then a cost for patient or cost for insurance.

Cost for, for, for, for the system.

Bernat Olle: Yeah. Yeah. I think to put it another way, I think if you’re making a drug based on fecal donations, the cost of goods will play a very important role on what do you think is, is the pricing that that makes sense. And if you make a drug, a drug that’s based on, on cell banks, you’re more in the, in, in the universe of small molecules and even, and even some biologics where you can look at what is the price level that you think is gonna get good utilization.

And in, in this case, in infectious disease, we have to think about things of like, okay. How many restrictions will payers put on on the accessibility of the drug? Really get step at it. We get payer authorizations, really get different healthcare systems outside of the US to wanna, to want to use this and try to maximize the impact of, of, of the drug without being limited based on it.

That good? That’s consideration.

[00:27:16] Scalability

Philip Hemme: Let’s, let’s move to scale. Scale up challenges you.

Bernat Olle: Yeah. So you, you had mentioned you know, go going to a thousand liter scales and beyond. So when you’re scaling fermentations one of the biggest challenges historically is, is gas liquid mass transfer, if the bacteria needs oxygen to to, to be metabolically active.

This oxygen fits to get in there through a gas, liquid mass transfer processes. And those are very difficult to scale because as you make bigger tanks the bubbles of air are still the same size. So you’re. You don’t get good surface area. And so you need to, to work with things like sporting surfactants and all different things to make sure that you’re still getting good, good mass transfer.

And sometimes you just can’t scale beyond a certain point without being limited by, by oxygen transfer. Sometimes the cells are very finicky. Like for example, mammalian cells. You cannot do any meaningful purging cuz you’re gonna break the cell membrane. So that, that also limits you. Here we’re working with anaerobic bacteria.

The challenge is not so much can you get, can you get oxygen in that without that Yeah. One unreal. The challenge is, is of the different nature, which is, is less scale dependent. It’ll be Okay, well can, can you run a process with the unit operations where in the right place you in fact are eliminating exposure to oxygen all altogether.

So if you, if you go into one of our manufacturing facilities, You’ll see, you know, lots of people in glove boxes dealing with bacteria in anaerobic environments. Right? That’s a uniqueness of,

Philip Hemme: especially the, the bacteria. I mean, get gut microbiome, get bacteria hypersensitive to oxygen. I always remember my, my, my dad is actually microbiome research at, in, in, in Paris.

But always telling me like that you get out the bacteria and within like millisecond is basically dead if they’re in contact with oxygen. So I guess connecting this to your manufacturing forces, you must have like, I mean, it must be, there must be some challenges to keep the oxygen really Yeah. Completely out.

Bernat Olle: Must, when you have your, your bacterial liquid phase, where, where it’s gonna be metabolically active, you have to be very careful that you’re not exposing to ox oxygen after your lifealize is a bit of a different thing because then they’re arrested. But yeah, so we’re thinking we’re, we’re looking at things like, okay, can you keep the inner operations really anaerobic?

The ones that, that, that need to be which are. The different growth median ingredients that those organisms need to proliferate when you cultivate them. Does it makes more sense to grow them individually or do you wanna grow them in groups? Do you, do you have the, the right cryoprotectant formulation so that when you bring them from a liquid phase to a solid form to a solid powder during this ization process, you don’t blow up their cell membrane or, or have it collapse.

Instead, can you use the right formulations to keep the bacteria viable so that yes.

Philip Hemme: Still active when you, when you ingest, when you ingesting that they’re just active and repopulate them. So the patient

Bernat Olle: Exactly. Yeah. So that if in this, in this lifewise matrix that they’ll, or powder that they’ll be given to the patient in inside of a capsule when they reach intestine, you know, you want the to be viable so that they can repopulate rather than that.

And then everything that I’ve told you, You have to multiply by the number of bacteria in your product, right? Mm-hmm. So for example, in our CVIS product, we have eight different bacteria. Yes. I b d product. We have 16 different bacteria. So you’ll have x different cell banks, x different fermentation runs and so on.

In addition, some of these bacteria forms, spores, those are difficult to clean. If you’re making multiple products in your facility, you need to have a very, a very good environmental monitoring and cleaning set up and facility design so that you compartmentalize and contain the, the bacteria and then are able to clean the materials that you used to make them.

Yeah. And so none of these things by themselves are, are rocket science, but there’s a a lot of in incremental things that have to be done to get the manufacturing right, right. Which has taken us years to, to, to really polish. But when you get it to work, it’s a beautiful thing because then you can really make a lot of product with, with quality and not At a cost that, that actually makes sense.

Philip Hemme: I guess you’re a very solid CMC team then.

Bernat Olle: Yes. So CMC team is the largest part of the company.

Philip Hemme: Well that’s, I was always curious, but I think you answered, but on the, on the low realization on how like, well, like, I mean, I guess it works very well and I was always curious about this, but I guess it’s, it’s works fairly well and

Bernat Olle: well, it can work very well or it can work very poorly depending on whether you pick the right, the right cycle and the right cryoprotectant to maintain the bacteria viable.

This is an area that, that where we do research and all those do research too. If, if you, if you pick a, an anaerobic bacteria and, and you just lily them without putting much, much work into the formulation, the expectation is that most of it will be that like 90, 98% will be that. Okay. So that’s the baseline that you start from.

Then if you can get a good portion of the bacteria to, to stay viable by using the right sugars and other molecules around then that, that’s the goal of lifealization research. And we spend some time doing that. Yeah,

[00:33:05] The many microbiome companies

Philip Hemme: that’s, that’s great. That, that’s great. Maybe if we, if we zoom less from the product, but more to the, like, companies running micro, I mean, what’s there is, I mean, and also looking from a global, global perspective.

I mean, Sirius and, and you guys, you’re, you’re both, you’re Boston, Boston and then in Europe you have quite a lot of companies as well, and actually a lot of research done here as well. Yeah. But at least in the companies, they have not made it as far, at least not to the market market yet. I mean, I, I wrote down a few just do it by doing with preparing for the interview cause it’s, they, and until in France actually quit in France, pharma.

In the uk, microbio and Denmark Sniper Biome, I b t in Sweden. In the US a few more like what’s your, just for, for the audience also to get the bigger picture if they want to research a few companies down the line. But what’s your view there? Like first did I, did I forget anyone? Or and or like in your view, how does it compare or why, why didn’t they make it?

Like maybe on the market or other way close to the markets? I think I B t as a, as a phase three as well. So maybe if you, if you can comment on, on that, on the, of different side of that tension.

Bernat Olle: There’s a lot of ground here because you’ve mentioned at least four or five different modalities, right? You’ve mentioned measure mentioned products based on life bacteria either based on fecal donations or defined, you’ve mentioned companies that are pursuing biologics and small molecules from MI affecting the microbiome.

You mentioned Uhgo so that the, then you’re getting into the bacteriophages and editing. There’s also companies doing genetically engineered bacteria likes Logic, Novo. And I think you mentioned that the Danish company, there’s also an element of, of engineering there. Yeah. And that’s a lot of ground to cover because each of these modalities have different pros and cons and different sort of strengths.

And it’s just the nature of, you know, how we use the word microbiome. It’s in a way, it almost like seeing genomics companies 15 years ago. Well, that could have, that could have, that could have touched just about every pharma that we’re using genomics technology somewhere in their pipeline, right? Mm-hmm.

So you know, I, I think all of these approaches have merit in different ways. And they’re all. They, they all should be studied. There’s gonna be multiple modalities that end up being useful to patients. Yeah. Fle derived the protests are already being useful to patients today. As, as two products have been approved and they’re being hopefully prescribed.

We’re hoping that the fine bacterial consortia could be next. But, but as people continue to study the role of bacteriophages and how to engineer functions into bacteria and better understand the pathways that are involved in microbiome or signaling some of those other pro other approaches, including small molecules, will will also find good indications that are successful.

I think what you’re seeing is you know, this is a field that’s mature and yet is still relatively in the early days. It’s like we’re in like the beginning of our second decade and there’s still a lot of things that are, that are unknown. There’s been some first failures. For different reasons. You know, sometimes companies picked indications that might not have been the best testing ground for the hypothesis.

They may have been differentiated from what competitors were doing, but not where you had the highest probability of clinical success. That could be a reason for failure of otherwise viable modalities that maybe if somebody tries them again, another education will actually work. In other cases, you’ve seen failures because people skip steps and they went straight to a later study without understanding those response.

And then they turn out that those matter, they had to go back to try and board increase the dosing and get it to work in other, in other cases, companies did all the decisions, right. And they encounter very negative markets, especially in the US last two years just died from the ultimate cause of death of biotech companies, which is running outta cash, right.

Ultimately that’s, that’s the, that’s what all the, you think of a company as a patient, that’s what, what, what the ultimate cause of death. Al always is, right. But so, so I think, you know, in our field you have a, a, a, a mix of circumstances. Right now you’ve seen a cycle of hype with some investors being more bullies than others, depending on, on, on the timing.

And then in the US specifically there’s been several macro macroeconomic conditions conspiring together. We first had a crisis in biotech that’s well into its second year, almost third year, year now. Yeah. That’s left the public markets in very poor shape and then trickle into the private markets at high inflation.

It’s been less, a little bit, a little bit less of an issue in, in Europe and Asia, but a big issue in, in the us and so and so high interest rates, investors less likely to, to invest in biotech whenever there’s high interest rates. That’s normal. So there’s less investors. And then on top of that, you know, we’ve had some positive news, but also some negative news in the field with clinical rates.

So you have to put all of this together in the back. And some of the circumstances are controllable by the management teams of a company, and some of them are outside of their control. And we’re basically, we’re all swimming in this sea of uncertainty, trying to find the best way for our modalities to, to be, to be advanced.

Philip Hemme: Yeah, that’s great. Yeah. Yeah. You put it really nicely, the, the bigger picture. And I like also your comment on like, what’s in, in control, what’s outside of our control from a market point of view, from investor point of view, from a technology, I mean, still science and some things will not work, and there’s a kind of luck or out of control component, which I think is in biotech tends to be always a bit I mean, it’s very hard to measure, but it’s, it is very, it’s very high which doesn’t make it easier, but it’s, it’s kind of part of the game.

[00:39:43] EU microbiome industry

Philip Hemme: Maybe on the, just. On the, if you have a comment, not to compare, like, let’s say, or, or a comment on the European microbiome industry or what, I mean, you, you have partnered also with European research groups, I think in, not this, in, in, I think Paro and, and, and, and in France as well. Can you just, maybe if you have a, if you comment there, I don’t know, like if something you, you wanna share from, from comparing, comparing the two or, cause I, I mean just from, from covering the field in biotech, I was always impressed because microbiome was really one of the like field slash modality where, where Europe was actually like very not ahead, but almost equal level was, was the US from academic.

But even from a company building from investor, I mean, se venture was, I dunno if that le led Joran, but invested very early in Inver as well. So a French investor going to Boston to invest, I mean, it was one of the field where it was always quite, quite equal. So maybe, yeah, if you can just comment there.

Bernat Olle: Yeah,

Europe has a, an the, the, the, the quality level of, and quantity of microbiome research in Europe is extraordinary. And I agree with you. It’s, it’s very much on pair with the output in the us, not just Europe. You know, I think Japan too is another area where there’s been traditionally very good expertise in microbiology.

Some expertise in microbial ecology. And you know, we’ve had multiple collaborators in Europe. We’ve worked for a long time with a group, KU group at the Layton medical Center and with other collaborators in Catalonia, in France and, and the UK and elsewhere. So yeah, there, there’s a lot of, of good research.

The European Union was proactive in the early days of the field. To put money in, into, into research. And that paid out just like the NIH injected money into, into microbiome research about a decade ago. And so yeah, when we’ve looked for, for ideas, for, for good science, we’re, we’re never, we’re never focused on, in, in Boston.

The world is a very big place and, and research happens everywhere. And in fact, you know, a lot of the a lot of the technology inputs, intellectual property, early research that we’ve done, in fact did not come from the us in our cases. It came from Japan, it came from from from Europe. So yeah, I think, you know, per, personally, I stay very open-minded about where the, the research can come from.

In my previous life, before Vean, I worked in venture creation. And that’s a perfect ground to understand. You know, the world is much, much bigger than mit, Harvard, Stanford. There’s a lot of good research groups that are, are doing great work, and you really want to cast a very wide net to understand where good ideas are coming from.

You also mentioned the investment landscape with some European investors like Aventure, kinda building a name for themselves in this field. I think that’s another important consideration when, when you look for financing, it’s natural for us companies to look at US investors, just like European companies will look at European investors too.

But the world is a big place and different geographies look for, or different investors look for different things. We, we’ve also had, had to cast a very wide net. When we look at, at investors for Banta, we’ve looked at, at US investors, but we’ve, we’ve, we’ve also brought in several investors from Europe.

No, it’s Sky was a venture and others as well as Asia, we brought in investors from Korea, from Japan, from China, and yeah, sorry. Some considerations.

[00:43:51] Challenge of fundraising

Philip Hemme: No, that’s it. That’s amazing. Yeah, and actually talking about cash, I mean, I mentioned an intro that you closed the round or something hundred six or $107 million.

I mean, con congrats on this, especially in the thank you, and especially in the current times. I mean, closing such a big round is, is I can imagine very challenging and very crucial as you said, also to finance the, the phase three. But that’s, I mean, I think that’s still one of the advantage definitely to be in, in Boston slash in the US where at least some invest around, but also the public markets outlook.

I mean, when you look at the public markets in Europe at least in the 10 last years, it is, it’s incomparable to the Nasdaq and. Yeah,

Bernat Olle: I’ll say can make it you know, I haven’t gone through the experience of having to raise a financing. So I’m from Catalonia. I don’t know what my life would’ve been if I had to raise this amount of money from Catalonia.

Maybe, maybe it would’ve not been possible or from elsewhere in Europe. But, but I think it’s, it’s fair to make a point that fundraising in this environment is not easy. No. No matter where you are. It’s not just like, because you’re in Boston. Somehow it’s gonna be easier that there are, there have been a lot of challenges by US companies during this period of time, too.

It’s just like, you know, it may be harder to, to, to, to raise money if you’re a female CEO than if you’re a male ceo or if you’re like a 50 year old tray, a 20 year old CEO than if you’re an experienced 50 year old CEO that’s had several exits. But it’s still difficult. Like you talk to someone, the experienced CEO that have everything going for them.

They have the marching investors, they have the, the right age, the right gender, and it’s still hard, right? So I think bottom line is fundraising is hard for everybody and you, you have to appreciate that. But also understand that in some areas is even harder. And I’ll say, you know, we we’re very, we’re very excited that we, we put out we that, that we, we closed the financing and you know, everything, you’ll appreciate that everything looks beautiful when you put it on a press release.

You know, as a part of our company, you, you, you can choose what you, what information you should put out. And, and of course you say, we’ve raised 106 million and, and it’s like, oh, great. Reality

Philip Hemme: running I remember didn’t round up.

Bernat Olle: But my point is like, the reality of, of running a startup is it’s, it’s always, you’re always fighting fires and it’s always messy.

But you don’t have to put that in a press release. You don’t have to say, we’re fighting a fire here on this day. I’m feeling down because an investor was. Was, was, was mean to me. The, the reality is you know, it’s, it’s hard for everybody in our financing. You know, we had to work harder for this financing than we worked for any of the previous financings, despite having better data than we have ever we’ve ever had before.

Which ultimately is the currency of our financings. But ultimately we got what we needed, which is the, the right amount of money to be able to run essentially two, two mid to late stage studies. One late study in phase three for lead program in c difficile, which if positive, we hope could be the basis for our first approval of a defined drug.

Yeah. And a second study for our second candidate in inflammatory bowel disease V 2 0 2 which is just starting imminently in patients that have ulcerative colitis within the datasets from those studies will be the, the basis or the currency on which we, we, we can raise the next financings. And hopefully we can get either one or both of those two to work hopefully

Philip Hemme: keeps fingers crossed, as mentioned before, that need needs a bit of like, as well, or let’s, let’s say that somehow everything works out.

I I like your, I like your, your, your honesty and, and I mean in general and everything you share, but just, just now the comments you made on like what’s the, the reality of, of running a company, biotech or not. I mean, in, in tech, digital or everything sometimes looks more rose you your thing, but it’s, it’s, it’s really not and maybe a bit more experienced there.

It’s, it’s really not. And when you talk when you talk to people and beyond the press release and the website and the, and the press article, it is, it is a very different reality. But I, I like that you, you share that. And I think it’s also, I it’s also important for, for, for our listeners as well to, to be, to be aware of this and, and sometimes also, A bit more compassionate also for, for the people running the companies, cuz I mean, it’s easy to criticize, but it’s very hard to make these drugs and, and run these companies and, and you know, the, like, the difficulty and the challenges I think and people that are really doing their best, especially in biotech people care and, and invest so much like energy and time and passion and they’re trying really their best.

And yeah, it’s there, there’s some respect to be, to be, to be given there and to be shown there and, and, and, and understanding. So it, it

Bernat Olle: is a very difficult business as, as our chief medical officer, Jeff likes to say. Not, not for the faint of heart. Yeah.

Philip Hemme: But, but the, the upside is also amazing. I mean the, when you talk about it, but like, curing, curing patients, I mean, With where they, they literally have no treatment option available.

I mean, now you mentioned the two pro programs, but I mean, still like very little. I mean, it’s, it’s critical, critical unmet that can need, I mean, that’s also, it’s also amazing.

[00:49:23] Running a company in the US vs EU

Philip Hemme: So switching to, to, or what you, what you said a bit, I mean, I, I wanted to get a bit your, your feeling and you, you, you’re the first, let’s say, European interview who is based outside Europe to run the car, to, to, to work, or based in Boston at least.

So I wanted to get a bit, the feeling from you on, like, and obviously you, you cannot really compare for yourself as then you, you haven’t run a company in, in Europe or, or in Boston. But just getting a feeling for, for how, how was it to, you know, to, to run a company as a, as a, or like to, to, to come here maybe without network and then, and then growing your network and running the company, funding the company.

Do you feel differences? Do you, what’s your mindset there? Do you like try to just like be in a, in a very like US mindset and, and get more rid of the European mindset? Can you, can you, like, get, get a bit of like a feeling of, of how it was in the early days, how it is still today? Like

Yeah.

Bernat Olle: My impression is that in, in quote unquote normal times, i e not now in biotech a lot of the steps are necessary to start and grow a company are smoother in, in the us especially here in the east coast, in the west coast, than they are in many countries in Europe.

In particular finding the employees with a specialized knowledge of drug development quickly and and with the right, right, right. Expertise in qualifications. Some of this advantage has been eroded during Covid and with, with Zoom becoming an accepted tool and remote work being more accepted, but, but they’re still real to the extent that working in person is, is is not, not going away anytime soon.

Another topic. I think also the number and size of investment groups, the pool is deeper in the US and for many reasons they, they don’t always travel into other geographies to, to get to know companies. And so if you’re starting a company in Europe, you’re working out of a, of a smaller pool of investors, which in again, quote unquote normal times, they tend to be a lot more valuation sensitive.

And I would say run their processes of diligence a little bit differently than, than than US investors. Now that being said, is the silver lining view one for the European entrepreneur is that disadvantages right now are completely eroded. Hmm. Because it’s, they’re

Philip Hemme: talking right now and in the past three years I guess, since the thing of Covid, I guess.

Yeah,

Bernat Olle: yeah. Cuz it’s hard everywhere for everybody. So in, in many ways this, this hardened training of starting a company in Europe without being anointed with a silver spoon by well-known investors and doing all the hard work every financing round to have to hustle for every investor, to have to hustle for every employee hire I would think has prepared a European founders very well for those times.

And it’s, it’s good to see, you know, failure and to see hardship and to see difficulties early on in your career as entrepreneur because you know, when you have to make very expensive decisions for our companies, you’re get into later stages. The stakes go up in, in the, the risk of losing. Lots of money for, for lots of investors, only goes up.

Right. So I think that

Philip Hemme: Can you make you stronger?

Bernat Olle: Exactly. You know, I think if you’re, if you’re well prepared for this environment by this previous ex, by the previous experiences that you’ve had as an entrepreneur, then, you know, good for you. Mm-hmm.

Philip Hemme: And, and for that, no, that’s, and, and for you, maybe personally, for, like, did you feel any difference from, like, from coming from a, from a European background and then, I mean, even when you were at EC or founding Vita, did you like have some like personal challenges there that are connected to your, to your background?

Bernat Olle: No. I think that my, my integration to the US was very smooth. I, I was here for grad school. My grad school colleagues were incredibly welcoming. It was a diverse group, but, but the, the Americans were too. And I feel like the integration in the work environment in the US was also very smooth.

I think partly this maybe an artifact of Boston being a very international area already, but in general, my sense is that the US is a very welcoming place for entrepreneurs and for immigrants. Not withstanding what you see every once in a while in the media and the cycles that the country goes through as, as Republicans and Democrats fight for control.

None of that changes. The fact that integrating as, as an immigrant in this country is easier, no doubt than it would be for an American to try to integrate in Spain’s workforce. Both from a per per bureaucracy point of view, but also from a cultural point of view. Yeah. I think in, in the us if you, if you come with a, with an attitude that you wanna build and you wanna create and you wanna make a career for yourself, that, that is that in many ways makes you an American ultimately.

Philip Hemme: Mm-hmm. While I like that

Bernat Olle: back at home, you know, I could imagine if, if you come from America, let me try to integrate you, you will always to some extent be the American and not and not this pioneered, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Just because, you know, historically there’s been less, less exchange and less flow of people, but there’s also some cultural values that I think are, are very conducive to entrepreneurship in the us.

You know, there is an appreciation for, for, for people. Building out their, their own careers. There is a little bit more tolerance to bo both in the legal framework and as well as cultural culturally to accepting complete blowouts and failures and then start again. It’s considered a good thing that, you know, you have learned something from your failure.

It’s not necessarily like a

Philip Hemme: it’s not a bad thing. Yeah, I like that.

Bernat Olle: But you know, that being said, Europe is not a thing. It’s like a collection of, of many different cultures or many different countries. And even within Europe, you would find dramatic differences, right? Like you, you look at some of the cultural values in, in, in, in Germany, the uk and you compare it to Spain, it’s just like almost to different worlds anyway, right?

So you know, you have to make these comparisons with caution.

Philip Hemme: Yeah. No, no. Yeah. I think it’s, it’s, it’s, I was, yeah. Yeah. I can, I can. I can come, I mean, yeah, back up or I, I have very similar experience actually coming and living, at least studying one year in Boston. And, and it’s very, you can, you can really feel, feel this and, and definitely can feel it less.

Again, Europe is big and depending a bit where Europe, definitely some cities are more international than others. I mean, say, I mean especially UK or even Berlin. But it’s, yeah, definitely different. Yeah.

Bernat Olle: And another thing that I meant to add is that the density of entrepreneurs and how that affects the probability that you become one is actually a big thing, right?

I didn’t have an entrepreneurial background in, in my family. I guess the closest thing is my, my grandmother started the business to, to sell furniture to, to tourists many, many decades ago. But you know, growing up I never met any entrepreneur or didn’t really have any reference of a well-known entrepreneur in the country.

That was like a person that you look up to. You come here to Boston and. You know, you see entrepreneurs everywhere and they will include your immediate circle of people that, you know, if you studied here, I’m sure you know among your colleagues at bu you know, several entrepreneurs that you could name and you know what they did right.

And, and being able to see people your age, your degree, that look like you, like talk, like you go on and start companies, in many ways they, it demy, it, demystifies it, it, it makes it look less intimidating than than if you don’t have a, a reference. Cuz you can just, you know, kind of make the mental calculation of like, well if this person can do it, maybe I can do it to it.

And that, that is very valuable and that’s very much my, my story, right? I came in to do my PhD, my plan was that, you know, I’m just gonna go back to Catalonia and work as a chemical engineer in the petrochemical industry in tab. And that never happened. And that, and partly that never happened because one, I met my, my wife, which is an American, but two many of my classmates at MIT were, We’re starting by tech companies are their PhDs.

And I was like, well, that sounds very exciting. Maybe I can do the same.

Philip Hemme: But what, it’s amazing what you, I mean, one, one thing that fascinated me, what you just said is, or two things. One was the amount of PhDs I met in the Boston area, American, or not American, who were entrepreneurial, was fascinating for me.

I, I met many PhDs in, let’s say in Paris when I did some internship and research and like, I was not inspired at all. And when, when I met them in Boston, I was like, wow, that’s, that’s crazy. And the second part is I can, when you, I think for, at least for people who have, who have visited Boston or, but I think when you visit, just, it’s, even if you visiting biotech, it’s hard to really grasp the, the, the, the magnitude.

But if you have worked a bit there, it’s a magnitude of, of talented people. In around Kendall Square, and it is just insane. And the change, the likelihood that you meet someone very inspiring and that you will start collaboration or anything, it just creates this like really, let’s say, really ecosystem.

Bernat Olle: And we, it, it really is extraordinary.

Philip Hemme: Create opportunities everywhere. And that’s, that’s really infectious personally and inspiring and gives a lot of energy, but it also contributes a lot like to, to individuals and to companies.

Bernat Olle: It, it really is extraordinary. It, it, it it’s impacting when you foresee it for the first time when you feel the delta, wherever you came from and, and, and you start living here.

And for me, even after 20 years, you know, you don’t take it for granted. Like the, the privilege of being able to, to work in an area where there’s that density of, of really qualified, smart, ambitious people that wanna do in impactful, difficult things. Just very difficult to find anywhere else.

[01:00:30] Would you recommend the entrepreneurial path?

Philip Hemme: Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. And I was about for, for the PhD students who, who are listening to us, if you, if you would recommend joining, let’s say like, I mean venture creation lab or more the, the industry entrepreneurial pass. I mean, pure PureTech is, is one example, but flagship is another one in, in Boston, but in Europe you have quite a few now doing it from Kumar.

And so Nova has one in MedTech. But would you, and I know quite a few PhD students who have done that actually. I mean, I guess you would definitely recommend it. Would you still recommend it today? Like, yeah.

Bernat Olle: I, I honestly, I, I really don’t wanna recommend anything because I’ve seen so many people now do very well by picking different paths that, like what do I know?

I, I, I’ve seen people do v very well by starting their companies Trade outta school. Hmm. I’ve seen people create great careers by going to a large company, learning under a great boss, going deep into material, and then becoming a great employee for, for a black biotech, and then becoming founders themselves.

I’ve seen people create amazing careers by starting venture creation, learning the ropes of what it takes to start a company, and then becoming more focused on being operators and, and growing companies, which is maybe an experience that you don’t get in venture creation. And there’s so many paths to, to fulfillment.

I, you just need to be I, I was gonna give advice now, so I’m gonna stop short myself, but I think you wanna be mindful. Yeah. You wanna be mindful that it’s, it’s fine to experiment. You may not find the, the, the right job the first time around, or you may not find the right boss the first time around, but. You know, biotech, at least here, is a very fluid market.

So there’s lots of opportunities to try different things and know that in each of these positions, you’re making some trade offs, right? If you go to a, to a large company, you’ll have a lot of structures. You’ll have very solid training. You’ll learn from various seasoned people, but you’ll have influenza for a small deliver.

What the company does and limited bit of visibility on, on the, on the enterprise. If you go to a small company, you’ll have complete visibility in the enterprise. You’ll be in every discussion. You’ll be in the room where it happens every time, but you will be making a lot of things from the seat of the pans and learning things as, as you go with very limited training and support.

And, you know, as a result, your career may be accelerated, but it could also be slowed down depending on which group of people you work with, right? And same, same with with the venture creation path. I mean, I, I love venture creation. I think it’s great if you have that curiosity of playing with different things understanding the first key steps of the process of starting a company.

I, I love that and I think it, it prepared me well to be more effective when I did that for the second and the third time. But I never had the experience to work in a larger company and learn from a very seasoned mentor in areas A, B, C. And, you know, I, I have some colleagues that had this experience and made great careers for them so themselves too.

Right? So, no,

Philip Hemme: I, I like, I like your answer. I like your answer that there’s, there’s many, many different paths. To even reach the same, I mean, there’s many, many roads leading to the same road of like building a, a successful biotech company. I don’t think there’s really an idea or like a very optimized, I think that’s, I mean, I, I, I saw it myself as well, and even for myself, I, I tended to like, overthink it or even always trying to find the best path possible.

But I like your advice of like, maybe I, let’s say light advice of like, there’s many options. Many options can, can be very beneficial and it’s important to try out and see what works and adapting it to your personality or to to person, facility and then, and then move on and, yeah. Yeah. I like that.

Bernat Olle: And, and I, I think one thing I’d, I’d, I’d wanna qualify is I mean, you, you may hear what I’ve said and, and, and you may have kind of a kneely stone of like, nothing really matters that, that’s not what I intended.

I, I think it’s more like, yeah. I mean, if you’re gonna start a company yourself, then. It doesn’t matter who your boss is because you’re your boss, but if you will work for, for, for an existing biotech, for a pharma companies, it’s not like they’re all the same. There are better companies than others and they’re certainly, there are much better bosses than others.

Right. So who do you

Philip Hemme: for oneself especially.

Bernat Olle: Exactly. Yeah. So who do you choose with is super important. It’s, it’s not something that’s indifferent. They make a huge difference. It may make a huge difference in, in your career that you pick the right company and that you pick the right group and boss to work with.

So I think this is worth qualifying that, you know, when you’re looking for your job opportunities, you know, referencing heavily the company and referencing the group that you’re gonna work with, just like they’re referencing you in their interview processes is a very important thing to do. Just like before you, you’re doing your p your PhD, you should be asking your other PhD students in the lab if they like working for, for that pi.

Right? Although many people don’t do that. And then they later regret it.

[01:06:04] What can I do for my microbiome?

Philip Hemme: That’s a good one. No, it’s very good. I wanted finish on one thing that I really wanted to also like, and I think it’s a good conclusion and I wanted to talk with you and it’s bouncing off on your, on your TED talk and which gives a bit of bigger picture on like, okay, how to fight antibiotics or how to find the microbe resistance.

But I wanted to twist it a bit and like in a bit like the TED talk is, is meant for a more general population. When you go a bit into like what are some, like more, let’s say, actionable things that people can do when you think about, okay, me, myself, and my microbiome, what can I do? And I like the part in your TED talk of like, oh, My microbiome is like very or least very precious, and it’s, it’s my like immune system.

So I will not take antibiotics and I will let my microbiome fight the infection by itself. And then over time, my microbiome was solid. I, I, I’m paraphrasing and I remember your wife was going the opposite or like the opposite direction of taking me antibiotics upfront at least for the, for the same infection.

So maybe can you expand a bit on that, on like what you would like or what you see today? I mean, and also, I mean, sorry. And, and, and there’s many things in the microbiome today in, in terms of like microbiome testing, you know, in terms of like nutrition to get into microbiome. And I think there’s a lot of things that are maybe true, but really not that solid or like, or like still farfetched.

And I mean, I don’t want you to give like, medical advice necessarily and then, and be cautious there, but just. For like the person, the, the typical our audience or someone who like very biotech enthusiast or biotech person working in the biotech industry who kind of know what the bi microbiome is, but then when they need to take decision for themself on what to do, when it’s like kind of help cross microbiome, what would you like Yeah.

Recommend or at least give some like way to think about it or way to apply it.

Bernat Olle: Yeah. The, the long story short is I would recommend very little I under underscore very little other than some very obvious things around diet. Go, going back to the, the TED Talk and antibiotics. The TED talks are, are very short and, and usually nuance gets sacrificed at the altered of expi to, to try to get a, a point across and I think, and the ones that is maybe not.

Not given the way in that talk is there’s a lot of antibiotic use that is absolutely necessary. And if, if your doctor is, is recommending you to take antibiotics, most of the time they’re gonna be right. I mean, unless you have a viral infection or unless they’re, they’re giving you the, the wrong antibiotic is they didn’t do the homework most of the times it makes sense to to, to do exactly as you’re told in, in my Ted talk, was describing a very specific, a very unique context, which is being hiking in the Himalayas, not being anywhere close to a hospital where you can actually diagnose what in fact is causing you the infection.

So you don’t even know if it’s viral, antibiotic and, and bact, bacterial or parasitic. And then having those options, only those very broad spectrum antibiotics that that, that have a, a whole set of issues with them. Right. I think this is a different, a far cry from, say being a, an oncology patient which has an, an infection in a hospital setting, which the doctor, the ID doctor has diagnosed, they know exactly what antibiotic they have to use.

You’re at risk, that infection can, can get into the blood and cause death and you should absolutely do what the doctor saying. So you know, just to make the point, antibiotics are a very important plus of drugs that are not going anywhere. They’re necessary. We, we need more of them. And, you know, I think the right way of thinking about microbiome therapies is, is as an adjunct to antibiotics in most cases, not as a substitute, meaning that, you know, patients that have active infections, a doctor needs tools that that can act very quickly in hours.

And, and those tools will typically be antibiotics. There is a collateral effect of using those antibiotics. Unfortunately, they’ll damage other microbial communities in the intestine and for num, for some patients, it’ll be a good option to chase the antibiotic with microbiome interventions that.

Hopefully undo some of the collateral damage of the antibiotic. I think this is a good setting for how microbiome therapies fit in, in infection control as they, as they get approved. And here I’m talking about drugs that demonstrate their efficacy and safety with the right studies, they get approved by agencies, et cetera, et cetera.

When you get into the world of nutrition’s, nutrition, medical foods, beyond just a completely different world, right, because

there’s just so much bullshit, sorry to be be, but it’s just impossible to know what, what, for a consumer, what has good support and what doesn’t have good support. The claims are not evaluated by agencies. When they are. It’s usually in the context of, you know, using the stick against the company and being like, you know, retroactively, you need to not say that, but in most cases you have these small companies.

That don’t have cells that are big enough for FDA to even care or, or, or the, the food part of the FDA to even care to evaluate some of the claims being made. And as a result, you, you live in this universe of gray where, you know, some of these products are claiming to improve your immune homeostasis or your reg regularity.

And what does that even mean for, to a consumer, right? It kind of sounds good, but you know, if you’re a healthy person,

what do you need to, to change if you’re already healthy? Right? So on the other hand, many of these products have been used in ma, many bacteria have been used in, in dairy products, in yogurt, in kefi cheese, and they’re part of what’s needed to make the product, right? So of course you need them to make the dairy product, but do they actually help your health in any meaningful way?

It’s very questionable, right? And so I think if you like to take products that, that have microorganisms in them, And I do, I take all of those and all the by all means go ahead and do it, but do not expect any, any meaningful change in your health. And certainly not. If you’re already a healthy person, you have nothing to improve.

Philip Hemme: Right. Yeah. You haven’t mentioned pro probiotics, but I guess that’s along the lines. I mean, you haven’t mentioned the word, but that’s includes what’s your Yeah, yeah,

Bernat Olle: exactly. And then you also mentioned diagnos diagnostic tests. And this is an area that’s been sore for our field because we’ve seen everything.

We’ve seen outright fraud with us agencies stepping in and seeing some really ugly stuff from companies. Basically really trying to mislead both our investors and consumers with questionable reimbursement questionable, questionable practices. And there’s also some good research. Right. So it’s, it’s, it’s, you have to be careful not to put everybody in the same bucket, because I’ve seen companies that are working on diagnostics that are, are doing actually credible, good work.

Meaning using information of the bacteria that are in your, your fecal samples or in skin samples in saliva to to do something. And the something here is the critical part, right? I’ve had multiple relatives that did a microbiome test. They send me the test and they ask they tell me I’ve gone to the doctor.

The doctor doesn’t know what to do with it. Of course they don’t. What do you think about it? Since you work in the microbiome field? And I’ll look at it and, and I’ll be like, well, this is a lot of bacterial names that sound familiar, and you’re probably fine as you already knew because you’re a healthy person.

Why did you take the test in the first place? And they’re like, oh, there’s maybe two, 300. I think that, that where these, and I’ve taken some of those tests myself, by the way. I still do it. I think doing, taking those tests and using it as a curiosity, just as, as you can go into ancestry as a curiosity and say like, okay, court.

Who, who are my an assessors and am I 30% Irish? Or, or, or, or what am I? That’s, that’s fine. It is a curiosity and that’s where the field is at. I think where, where it really goes off is where some of those tests attempt to make claims that have any implication that you can make a decision about something that’s health related, or, I’m sorry, disease related.

Either diagnosing a disease or monitoring how you progress on disease setting. Cuz the moment you put those tests in front of a doctor, the moment you put them in front of a gastroenterologist and the infectious disease doctor, they’ll say, what is this? Like, what am I supposed to make with this information?

Right? Where’s the evidence that having the signature of bacteria makes you more likely to have this disease or that you’re progressing better on a treatment and this evidence will emerge. There’s no doubt about that and there’s companies working on that doing good work, but it is not today

Philip Hemme: have to be really cautious.

It. But I mean, these, some of these tests are claims that are sold like, you know, tens of thousand, hundreds of thousand times and it’s like couple of hundred Euro dollars to, to make the test. I mean, it’s from, from your answer. I mean, and I think it’s, it’s kind of almost also my personal opinion, it’s have to be very cautious as a, to be, to be very cautious. And it’s very hard to even understand.

Bernat Olle: Yeah. Like if you don’t know what, what do I do? Right? A little bit about the field, what do I do? I’ve taken those tests. I think they’re interesting. They’re curious. I I, I was, I was curious to know. That’s it. I’m not making any decision on my health based on those And, and I’ve been taking antibiotics as doctors have prescribed them almost all of the time as as you should.

Philip Hemme: And I think I, I think,

yeah, I mean it, you made a very good point of this differentiated sick setting or therapeutics, prescribe setting and a healthy, I want to optimize my gut microbiome or health setting, which are two very different, very different things.

Bernat Olle: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The whole, like, how do I optimize my microbiome?

You know, if, if you’re a healthy person, the answer is you don’t, you’re fine. Just like, or something else. If, if, if you’re a C cell patient, then that is a very different discussion, right? Cuz there’s a play for that. There. There’s a, there’s a place there for microbiome products. But, you know, I think that the most uncontroversial piece of advice is, you know, have a very good diet, eats lots of fiber, lots of fresh foods that look green.

Philip Hemme: And that are five fruits and vegetables per day.

Bernat Olle: Yeah. Yeah. If, if you, if you have many different sources of fiber in a, in a large amount of fiber in your diet, that’s the good thing. That’s a primary food for your bacteria. It will, it will contribute to having a more diverse community of bacteria that’s less likely to, to be populated by pathogens or by opportunistic pathogens.

But let’s be honest, we already knew that before the microbiome research, you know, pointed that, you know, nutrition is already knew that you, it’s better to have, you know, a certain amount of fiber in your diet. I think this what’s, what this research has done is help explain why and help illuminate how important it’s to bacterial communities.

Which is not to say that there isn’t a lot of potential. I think there is a lot of potential for personalized diets, and I really like some of the work that, that some companies are doing in this field. It just hasn’t come yet to the point where you’re like, okay, I’m ready to use that for myself because.

I’m learning something from this tool that I didn’t already know. Like if the tool is gonna tell me to eat more fiber, I was like, okay, fine. I already knew that. Yeah,

Philip Hemme: that’s a good it’s a good, it’s a good, very good conclusion. The question, I think I, yeah, I think we, we are also running out of time and ready to, to wrap up.

[01:18:06] Follow Bernat

Philip Hemme: I was a great, great discussion. I mean, I loved how we covered from the whole microbiome space. Zooming out to, zooming in, zooming in on, on Denta on your experience as, as a European in, in, in, in Boston and even at the end on, on actual insights for, for let’s say healthy microbiome or for individuals and in the microbiome.

Maybe just to, to finish, I mean, where can people like learn more about you and, and follow you? What’s the best, the best way?

Bernat Olle: Best way, so I’m on LinkedIn, I’m. As potty user of Twitter, I’ll, I’ll be out for, for weeks at a time, then come back in and take a look. So, and if you wanna, if you wanna learn more about the company, then on our website we try to update all, all of our major news and development.

So that’s another good place.

Philip Hemme: No, that’s great. Great. Thanks. Thanks Bernard. Thanks a lot. Thanks. And yeah, next time we do it, we do it offline then.

Bernat Olle: Very good. Very. Okay.

[01:19:09] Wrapping up

Philip Hemme: Me again. I hope you enjoyed the conversation and thanks a lot for listening to the end. If you’re keen, please hit the follow button somewhere maybe, or the like review share button, share it with some connections would help us a lot, especially this early in the show.

And before telling you more what’s behind the show, I wanna say big kudos. And, and thanks to the team Kiran Web development Catherine in marketing, Maryanne Logistics, Wayne in editing, they did an amazing job and there’s a lot of hard work I put into, into, into the show. So now what’s behind? So, flood Bio the company was founded in March, 2022.

I am one of the founder, and previously I founded Lab Biotech, but you, and we started the company building a marketplace for the biotech industry, but we didn’t have enough product market fit, so we decided to pivot to a content business with the first product being, being that podcast. We don’t want to create, you know, yet another podcast.

There’s already a lot of them around. But we believe Europe needs high quality, long form. Podcast to help both professionals and biotech enthusiasts be better informed, grow, and just be better at what, what they’re doing. And so that’s why we are creating the podcast. We are selecting the best Europeans in biotech we can find and we are interviewing mostly actually, offline, so we can have really the highest quality, both technical aspect, but most importantly on the dance and the content and the flow of the, of entering the content.

We release one episode around one episode per month on all the major platforms. Money-wise, we are financed by our own private investments. And our business model is based on advertisement. So it’s the sponsored messages, lots that you seen in each episode. And we are sponsored by financial support for individuals and corporate.

So anyway, I will not make it longer. If you are, I hope you share our vision, and if you’re keen to hear more or you wanna reach out or you want to share some feedback, please send, shoot us an email, hi@flot.bio. Again, thanks for listening and see you in the next episode. Bye.