We’re in Brussels with Edwin Moses, the former CEO of one of the most successful platform companies in Europe, Ablynx, now part of Sanofi. We talk about how he feels 5 years after the exit from Ablynx and his lessons. We also talk about the parallels between industrial biotech, AI bio and cell therapy, and how a chairman can help CEOs grow.

Edwin Moses is Chairman of Achilles Thx (cell therapy for solid tumors), Avantium (bioplastics) and LabGenius (AI biotech). He is the former CEO of one of the most successful platform companies in Europe, Ablynx, now part of Sanofi. I interviewed him back in 2018 when he sold the company.

🔗 LINKS MENTIONED

• Sanofi to acquire Ablynx for €3.9 Billion
• Edwin Moses on stage in 2018

Transcript

[00:00:00] Intro

Philip Hemme: And the company’s still subsidiary, is it? 

Edwin Moses: Yeah, it sits there in Ghent. Approximately four or five hundred people they have. I think they put more people in, not less. The platforms, you know, they’re a means to an end. They’re taking you somewhere. 

Philip Hemme: It is the recipe for a platform company to focus on assets.

Why they don’t manage it then? 

Edwin Moses: They’re very loyal. They take a considerable amount of time. They have a view on confidentiality regarding investment. Okay, I’m, I’m cool with that, but the quality of the interaction with the company is very high quality. 

Philip Hemme: How many times have you been proven wrong in the last years where you, you thought the answer was this and it was not this?

Edwin Moses: I can’t remember the exact numbers.

Philip Hemme: I’m your host, Alip, and welcome to a new episode of the Flodd Bioshow, where I interview the best Europeans in biotech. Building a platform company with a new technology can be extremely powerful, but also has many challenges such as validating the tech and prioritizing your own assets through technical trials.

Edwin Moses has built one of the best platform companies in Europe with Ablinks, which is now part of Sanofi. So I went to Brussels to talk with him. I’ve actually interviewed him back in 2018, just when the deal closed. And he is since then chairman of three different companies, one in biosolutions for bioplastic, one AI in biotech, and one cell therapy for solid tumors.

So we talked about how he feels now that it’s been five years after the deal. And what were his lessons. We also talked about the similarities between biosolutions, AI biotech, and platform companies such as cell therapy. And also how a chairman can help a CEO grow. So, here’s my conversation with Edwin.

[00:01:52] After the Ablynx acquisition

Philip Hemme: Welcome to the show, Edwin. So I want to start with with what happened basically after AdLinks acquisition by Sanofi, which was, I checked, I think, 3. 9 billion euros at that time, euro was like 4. 8 billion, almost like euro, euro billion dollars, euro was a bit stronger. It was January 2018 and I think it’s still the second largest acquisition ever in European biotech.

And I looked, I think the lead product in Cablivy, the brand name was, was approved and it was launched. Some of the programs I think were cut, so how, I’m curious, how do you feel now that it’s been a bit more than five years looking back on the deal, like how do you feel? 

Edwin Moses: I think the deal was, came as a bit of a surprise at the time because I think, as you remember, it started with a hostile bid from Novo.

We’re just moving towards approval of our first product and it set up a sales team and a commercial team. So we were all planning for the future and had raised hundreds of millions of dollars on the NASDAQ to fund the commercialization of the product. But when I look back on it, I think, positive things most certainly are that Sanofi brought an enormous amount of resources.

So as you take that lead drug that was approved. They now sell it all over the world. We would only be able to sell it in certain specific countries. We wouldn’t have had the capacity to do that. They have a enormous broad disease knowledge, so they can apply the platform more broadly than we could have applied it ourselves.

So I see that as very positive. If you look at the way the company is developed, I see it from the outside in. So I don’t have a very special information flow out, but just talking to our ex colleagues. What you see is the, the entrepreneurs moved on because for them, it’s all about fast moving, about quick decision making but the people with a lot of content knowledge and, and really understood deeply the technology have stayed and contributed that very well.

So, 

Philip Hemme: and the company is still, oh yeah, as is like independent subs, I mean, subsidiary physically. 

Edwin Moses: Yeah, it sits there in Ghent. Approximately four or five hundred people, I think they brought people in, not less. What’s, what’s a big difference I think is, a biotech really prospers by having low walls between different functions.

So it’s easy, the functions work, development, discovery, production, all of them, they’re only ten minutes walk away from each other, so you can always go and talk to somebody about what’s going on. I think what you saw very quickly there with Sanofi is that the Sanofi research people talk to the research people and have links that many faffing for their man, many faffing some silos.

Yeah. And, and when I talk to my colleagues, I think that’s one thing that makes me sad, it’s not the right word, but you, you, they don’t know what’s going on in the rest of the organization. I mean, for us, one of the things was as a biotech was communicating to everybody what the key things that were going on everyone was.

Now they know exactly what’s going on in their departments very well, but they don’t really know what’s going on with here or whether there’s a problem. It’s just the way it is. It’s not a, it’s not a criticism. It’s just an evolution. So I think the, the entrepreneurs moved on the people who want to see things happen very quickly or like working in small environments have gone on to find new environments.

So I think one statistic that I love is that at present count, I think there are 12. CEOs now who were ex Ablynx employees. So I think, you know, if, if I look at the legacy and the thing that I’m proud of, I know 3. 9 billion is fine and Michelle doesn’t make money and those things that I like that for being one of the most things as much as much of the products is that what it was, was an environment where people could learn and have the confidence they could go and do this themselves.

And I, I think that’s really, that makes me sure that that’s a really pleasurable result. 

Philip Hemme: It’s amazing. Yeah. Especially in a European environment, which is typically lacking of qualified executives. 

Edwin Moses: Exactly. 

Philip Hemme: So I’m curious, 

I think the, what’s mostly the Sanofi Genzyme team was, at least if I look to a marketing the product, so I guess there was also more, let’s say Boston.

I don’t know how, I mean, I guess now it’s, it’s very integrated. 

Edwin Moses: It’s very integrated. But it was certainly live from the Boston side. That’s 

Philip Hemme: for the, okay. But did that have a. Impact, as in like having a bit more of the biotech 

Edwin Moses: ginseng, right? Not really, I don’t think that would be fair to say. No, I think they’re a very professional, large organization that really just works as a machine and then sell.

Philip Hemme: I’m curious, I didn’t, I didn’t find, well at least I didn’t really find the sales numbers. Yeah, I just found this, like, there are some estimates when the FDA approval came on in 2019 that was, could be peaked at 500 billion. Are you aware of what the numbers are? 

Edwin Moses: Yeah, I’m aware of what the numbers are, but I’ve, I’ve, I’ve been told that Privately but I think that peak sales is very achievable from what I can see.

I think they’re well on their way to achieving that from what I can see from the outside. 

Philip Hemme: Okay. Yeah. I mean, I was wondering if there was really private, public, public data. 

Edwin Moses: I’ve been a little bit of public data, but I think basically it supports that original assumption. And that’s, 

Philip Hemme: yeah, I mean, it’s, and actually, you mentioned, you mentioned Novo, which was, which is, which is quite funny. Also, this was a, was a show in the podcast because basically Novo lost that deal to, to Sanofi. And then they went to acquire Corvidia, which where Marc, Marc de Geidel was on the show a few episodes back. It’s funny how, I mean, how biotech is a, is a really small world.

I just kind of, wanted to, to mention it. I also, I mean, what’s, what you mentioned, I’m curious also. I mean, you mentioned that you were prepared basically to roll out. You already had, you already had submitted for the European market approval. You’re already like, I’m curious when you look back, do you think they could have been.

Basically more value creation, as in, I mean, if you look at neighboring gains, let’s say RGNX just now, basically in the 20, I think 20 billion market cap. I guess in a comparable situation, did you see that this could have, I mean, could have happened? 

Edwin Moses: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you mentioned the, the pipeline behind the product, the V program and the time, the acquisition, we had about 45 programs.

Now, a number of those upon, but the RSC program, which you point to, which was discontinued by Sanofi eventually, because they also let RSC programs. But we were very enthusiastic and you can see the products that have been launched lately for RSV and the interest in it. And of course the, the Ablynx program was an inhale product, which had special advantages because of the nanobody characteristics.

So. Yeah. There was a, there were a lot of products coming behind. I think that the, could it be a, I think the algenics strategy is very, very clever. The the pipeline within a product idea, you know, you go through all the development and the safety issues around the product and then you prove it’s safe.

And then if you can then apply that to multiple indignations, that’s a clever, clever thing to do. And that’s what, what they’ve done. But yes, the entire, that having said that, I think when I last looked. To get that valuation, ar genix had to raise about 5 billion in equity. Okay. We raised about half a billion in equity to get our valuation, so, 10.

So yeah, it’s, it’s not as straightforward seemed. Then of course, as we discussed at the time, we didn’t set out to sell the company, but once someone initiates a big process, it’s very difficult to say no. And I think that I may have mentioned to you last time when, when that initial process or the Novo offer was announced.

Only one big shareholder called me up and said, you don’t have to accept any of these offers. We’ll back you to stand alone. Everybody else said, get the very best price that you can. And no, that big shell was, was fascinating that they said it was, I’m happy to say it was Baker Brothers, very famous North American investor.

They had taken ages to build up confidence in the company. We’d been to see them for years and years and years, and then they made big investment in the Nasdaq. But by that point, they didn’t need anybody else to tell them that they believed in the company. And so they were prepared to see us stay independent for a considerable period of time, but everybody else was very keen that we maximize the price set up.

And that’s what you’re. You know, you hear a discussion about whether CEOs should sell the company or shouldn’t. It’s not their job to decide that. They have to do it ultimately, so. Yeah, they do it in the best interest of their shareholders. And if, if you get an offer, or the last time that was, our share price was around 20.

If you get an offer that ends up at 45. It’s very hard to argue that it’s in the best interest of the federalists, you know, you have to convince them you’re going to get to 45 60 within a year or two. And we all know the risks in doing that. So I think at the time it was it was not what we planned, but we were also very lucky.

Sanofi, being a French company, was very committed to Belgium, maintaining the site in Belgium. And then the research site. We spoke to American companies. At the time, and one of the heads of R& D owned you very well, so look, of course I could buy the company, but the minute I retire as the head of R& D, the American company will close you.

And I don’t want to see that happen. So in a way, getting a local, local pharmaceutical company was a huge advantage for maintaining the amblinx territory and activities. I mean, 

Philip Hemme: and for watching, I mean, sounds like a very fair I mean, fair, even premium fair, the info for everyone at the end, like, I mean, of course you can always think, oh, yeah, I mean, there’s some missing out and what’s the upsides, but if you look overall, I mean.

Edwin Moses: Exactly. And I think you, you know, we talked at the last time that you, you, in clinical trials, you know, a few months before that, we’d completed the phase three trial and you turn over the card to say are the results good or bad. And and I still remember the Saturday morning when I got the call from the chief medic officer.

And you don’t know what the answer is, and if it’d be negative, we’d be in a different place altogether. And he said, I think we’ve got a winner here. 

Philip Hemme: I think, because we still need to look at it. 

Edwin Moses: And he just, and you think, and, so I mean you, every time you do another trial, you, you’ve found, and recently Argenix for the first time has had a few little failures, nothing very dramatic, but you know, just reminds you, this is not, Easy to plan your way forward.

So no, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m satisfied. I think the other thing I like, if I can just mention it, which I think is important is people talk to me, this is current employees and ex employees as it being the best time of their lives. That they learned a lot that they enjoyed working the, all the extracurricular activities.

We did a lot of stuff outside of work that the company promoted parties sports activities, all sorts of things to make it a whole, whole experience. And I’m just, but I’m good. The company benefits from building a relationship between the people in the company and the way they think, but they look back and say, I don’t think we’ll ever have a time like that again.

And that, again, I I’m pleased as well as the products and the technology. And of course the other thing that happened when Capitalism Kali was approved was suddenly people believed, and it was always a shock to me. They hadn’t believed before that nano bodies could be real products. So now you’ve seen, I dunno if you follow Moon Lake for example which has got a.

A product that they, that we licensed to Merck Sirona and they’ve licensed it at Antique Alsantein AF which is doing fantastically well in phase two studies now. So that’s another nanobody. The nanobody for TNF was approved in Japan by a Japanese company who licensed the product from Albin’s. So now you’re starting to see more and more nanobody products approached, how they get onto the market, approach the market.

That technology is now being accepted as real. There is a, a big pipeline in Sanofi and antibody products, so it’s, that’s exciting than the technology one. 

Philip Hemme: It’s good. Yeah. I, I wanna jump on the technology before that I wanna mention. Yeah, we, we, I mean, we talked in basically 2018 in the video is online.

I will, I will put, I will put a link. There’s definitely details on, on the platform and what happened, and I think it’s great also to compare. I listened to it again. It’s, it’s, it’s great to, to to see, and 

[00:14:49] Baker Brothers investor secrets

Philip Hemme: I want to jump on, on the Baker brother comment you made because, I mean, they are, they are very, I mean, they’re super, super successful first and you’re probably one of the most successful and they’re very famous for being very long term investors. I think with Siegen, they were there for 15 plus years and they made I don’t know how much the return was, I think a hundred fold plus.

But they’re also very famous for being very secretive, and, and actually I heard about them not that long ago, I mean, I think maybe, it was two years ago, I was talking with a VC and they stopped mentioning it, I was like, no, I mean, okay, I don’t, I will check it out, and then the funny thing is that they I started like, checking, and the only person I saw talking publicly about them was Yurik Shushan in the article.

I think it was some of like, Fears or, or Stardust or, and you were, you were quoted there. As in because they invested and I think you were saying that it took them a long time to invest in that from a judicious point of view, they were like very, very, very knowledgeable and doing it really. But once they were convinced that they will go, yeah, like all in, can you yeah.

And yeah, I mean, I also, one funny thing when, I mean about secretive is that they are so secretive that they don’t even put their name in the press release. It’s always. Unnamed healthcare, like a, like, what is it, oh, a significant healthcare investor. It’s really, really funny at the end, but I mean, but I know that choice, but can you talk a bit more about like, yeah, well, like, I don’t know what makes them, I mean, how was it, what makes them so?

Edwin Moses: Yeah, I think from the, from a, from a C, if you take it from a CEO’s perspective, I remember going there early on in my career in AppLinks and it was probably the most challenging experience of my career because the CEO, you go into the room and you might be used to meeting two or three people on the other side and they would come off as quite often with eight or 10 people.

And they would all be very expert, deep, deep science, and you know, you would come in and you show the CO with a sort of quite high level picture, and they’re suddenly asking you, so what is the color of the eyes of the patient in this trial, are you, idea? Now I’m just being facetious, but it’s sort of really detailed questions, and I think that the.

The amount of pre research they did about every discussion, you know, you go into a lot of investors, particularly here in Europe, but also sometimes in the US, where they haven’t really done much preparation and they haven’t, they’re not using their time wisely and they’re not using their time, your time wise, never the case with Beta, but they, they’ve gone through it and then they called.

KOLs in the area. So they’ve already talked to key opinion leaders to ask them, well, this drug, they claim it’s going to do this. Do you think it really will? Yeah. And so they’ll actually say, well, I talked to a hematologist consultant yesterday and you go, Oh dear. And so you, but what it does is it makes you raise your game.

You said, you know, as a CEO, you suddenly realized, no, I need to be better than this. If I’m going to do, you also realized you need to take more of your colleagues with you. But you can’t do all that on your own. You really can’t manage it, but it’s fantastic. But also challenging your story. And I’ve been invested in other companies I’ve been involved in and they are.

They’re very loyal, they take a, they take a considerable amount of time. You’re right, they have a view on confidentiality regarding investment. Okay, I’m, I’m cool with that. But the, the quality of the interaction with the company is very high class. They are very loyal to the company and to the CEO once they buy into you.

And I’m like, I think this is worth probably saying the, the NASDAQ flotation that we did, and they, that was when they became a very important investor in the company. One of the things that was going on, as you can imagine, is you have a pricing discussion, but you’re just trying to set the price for the flotation.

And the banks involved said to me, oh, well, there’s a lot of pressure from all the investors to lower the price. And then I said, I was grumbling to myself. And so I thought, well, I’ll pick up the phone to Baker Brothers, who I know are one of the biggest tickets in here. And I said to him, are you really putting a lot of pressure on the Pratt?

No, no, no, no. You fix the price of whatever you think’s right, Edwin, because we’re bad at that. So again, all about long term. Not, it’s not naivety. It’s all about not trying to screw the company or the existing investors for the short term. I mean, how do you build a company properly and feel you can trust them?

And that’s why they’re so successful, because they have a long term view of the, those things. So I was able to go to the bank and say, well, biggest investor coming in is, is very happy with the price. And we were stuck at, we stayed at the price. So no, I think all the, all the, the type of people, they, they employ top class and very, very good too.

Philip Hemme: It sounds like, it sounds like this really long term view. On the public market is, is not that common. And I would see it, I mean, but this is from my view and from my experience with investors, I would, I would see that kind of behavior much more like really high level VCs of angels who really bet on the, on building trust, super transparent.

And actually, I mean, from my little experience with investors at La Biotique, which was what I liked a lot with some of our investors, we were super open, transparent, even the valuation, we never really like negotiated super hard, was like, Hey, what’s kind of, what’s the fair price. And, and then working with them for long term.

And even when we sold the company, it was quite, I mean, relatively, obviously, I guess for you, I mean, same when you’ve paid off money on the table, it’s always. It makes the dynamics a bit, a bit different, but still it, it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s, yeah, it sounds, it sounds very like, yeah, very, I mean, very, I mean, very good, but I guess it takes longer to show that it’s, that it works as a, from an investment strategy as well.

I mean, I guess now with the CGN stuff, it now looked up and, and it, it’s proven to work, but it took them quite some years as well. But yeah. 

Edwin Moses: Yeah. I think they’ve had a lot of big successes and they, they proven that business model wouldn’t it? I think you’re right. It’s got to be a long term view.

They, what I like about them, which is a bit more prevalent in the U S and H C in Europe, if they don’t need anybody else to tell them whether this is a good idea or not. So actually when we walk into them and we talk, Oh, I’ve just got a big collaboration with Merkle, with Pfizer, and they really love our technology.

They sort of, it’s a long blink. They don’t really trust it because. They, from their point of view, they will evaluate whether technology is good or not. That they’re making a major call and that’s, that’s refreshing actually. You know, people who, who need other people to validate the idea, that’s not such a strong endorsement of what you do.

So you know that if they’d gone through your story and your equity story and what you promised and they’d like it, it’s a good story. I mean, they really will shake it to them and make you think. 

Philip Hemme: And you, are you still working with, or like, working with them on certain 

Edwin Moses: the company, one of the companies I’m involved in yesterday, they I understand.

Philip Hemme: And it makes me think, talking about also investor makes me think about the, the Strongman brothers and in Germany, which are, I mean,

investing earlier stage, I would say, but a bit in the similar, like, I mean, the, the, the investors behind I mean, now it’s, it’s Biointech, but many other than he made and many other successful, I mean, not most, but I would say most of the really successful stories, biotech stories in Germany. Yeah.

And it’s also amazing where, like, to just come in and invest and buy and take is crazy how much they invested in, I think they still hold like 40 percent of something like other company and we’re talking about 20, 30 billion in their company, which is crazy. But that’s, I mean, I think it’s also very, I mean, you say refreshing, but I think it’s very valuable for the ecosystem and we need, I mean, we need.

Investors like this, like, 

Edwin Moses: yeah, I think you need, I mean, you’ve got people who are more go with fashion. So, you know, today everything is obesity. They’re all pining into obesity and then something else. 80s thing people, you know, you did the people who followed and then the people who, who stay longer with the story and then they, they.

From a company point of view, what, what’s good is they don’t flip in and flip out all the time, you know, that you get a bad result that that doesn’t mean that they, they think your technology is wrong. They can see through that. Okay, that didn’t work. But the other things will work. And that’s, you need people like that who’ve got that, who are going to be with you for the, 

Philip Hemme: and why would you not work only or mostly with people like that?

Edwin Moses: Like, cause there are, there are not many people out there like that. I think we’re in reality. They’re, they’re quite a, a small number of that sort of quality and exist. 

Philip Hemme: But you as an executive, you would like, would you like prioritize those kind of assets? But it’s not like a limited. Yeah. And you just, you would be, I mean, you need to work on getting them.

It’s, 

Edwin Moses: I think it ends what your proposition is. I think if you have a very strong proposition, it also needs quite a lot of money. I see European propositions here where, The ambition is never quite the same as a, in my own company, so then these, well, they come to me and say, well, I need to raise 20 million.

Will you introduce me to U. S. investors? And I said, well, you know, the ticket size just, they, they can’t, someone like Baker Brothers, our capital, it’s. It’s hard for them to want to spend the time to do the dividends to only get 6 million of the 20 million ticket. It’s not the way they think about the world.

So if you’ve got a big proposition where they can really put money to work hard and it’s a, it’s a proposition that will stand up to their dividends. Yeah, absolutely. I would, I would take those companies to them straight away. And then people like R. A. Capital and Perceptive and, you know, in the U. S. that, who I think’s all had very good relationships with.

I’ve got, I’ve gone to them again where the proposition was very similar. 

[00:25:12] How to build a platform company

Philip Hemme: Ah, sir. Okay. Maybe on the, just on the talking a bit about the nanobodies, let’s say, like, I mean, you mentioned that, I mean, the, the, I mean, the platform was basically using fragments, I think from alpaca or fragments that you can then combine together that a lot of properties, I mean, in hiding will be one of them on many, many other benefits.

But what I’m amazed is always, I mean, there’s, there’s like, you know, there’s like, okay, you pitch the platform and there’s a lot of possibilities, but at the end of the day, you also need to prove and you, you mentioned, okay, you approved it in a phase three and it works in patients and then it kind of validates the rest of the platform, which I think is always, yeah, I mean, I would be curious, I mean, on, on there on like how, okay.

I think what’s really tricky and also it comes a bit from my experience, I worked with molecular partners with I think, I mean, a similar platform, obviously they would, I mean, I mean, it’s similar as in it’s, you could also have, you could, you could link several, like let’s say, they were not antibodies, they were alternative scaffolds, but darpins, what is it called?

But I think at the end of the benefits were, were, were quite similar. They were struggling as in the, as in to to, to really move the pipeline forward and have and validate the platform. I’m wondering for you, like, or some of the lessons maybe you’ve seen of, of how do you like, prioritize, like I think that’s really tricky as in like prioritizing, having your lead asset pushing really forward to the lead asset or.

Or doing more partnerships and what, like, what’s the best way basically to, to build such a, like, let’s say, platform company. 

Edwin Moses: I think it’s a key question. It’s something I get asked a lot, broadly, the platform companies to say, what should we do? I think that the, if, if you go back to the Amplink’s experience, there’s just one, one data point.

But the thing that triggered the sale was the lead compound. I’ve heard since that, let’s say at around the number of the 4 billion euros that Sanofi paid, I’ve heard, said to me that essentially when they did their calculation, they thought about half of that was for the lead compound, about half of it was black hole.

And I only have that information, I have no evidence for that. That’s what I’ve heard around. I think, and then I’ve heard that they, they think that was a hell of a deal getting that whole platform for two billies, you know, that was, that’s not bad. And, and so I, but I think that the, the trigger is often the lead compact, because that’s the thing where you can actually see the asset.

You can see what it can do, and you can see that it’s validating. 

Philip Hemme: Cash, I guess, from the revenue benefits also. Yeah, more palpable. 

Edwin Moses: Absolutely. Platforms, you know, they’re a means to an end. They’re only, they’re taking you somewhere. And, and so you’ve got to show, where’s the end journey taking you? Take you to that?

Oh, that, to that product. Okay, that’s an example of what it can do. Now I love the platform. But when you just wave your arms with platforms, that’s harder. And I think that one of the things about the nanobodies, which was, and you mentioned the origin. The origin comes that there’s a group of animals that come, there’s camels, llamas, alpacas, gormakas, vikuras, which all have this thing that when you put an antigen into a bloodstream, they produce normal antibodies against that antigen, like we do, but they produce these little VHH molecules as well, much more than that, so you can take those out and you can actually make, now the disadvantage of those compared with the example you gave me is that those have been produced naturally in nature So they’re already stable, they’re already buying to their target.

Liquid water formation. Yeah, so they give you a lot of the properties straight away that you really want. So artificial approaches, you have to overcome some more hurdles. So these aren’t Nature. Now the disadvantage of coming from nature is, as you could have mentioned as a CEO, kind of, Ah, I’ve got this product that comes from llamas.

Well, you see, some investors will just twitch off as you finish saying that. Because, of course, the previous 20 years, everybody had been getting humanized monoclos, stopped getting them from mice, you know, and we’d gone backwards in the mind of some investors. Oh, you were not humanizing them? You can humanise them, but the other source came from slender llamas themselves, and so there’s always the idea, Oh my goodness, I, I put a, an antibody from a llama into somebody, and it’s gonna cause them to grow ears, or horns, or forelegs.

And it sounds ridiculous, but there’s a bias, and a, and a, a concern that there are going to be unknown disadvantages with it. 

Philip Hemme: But I guess it’s coming from the EMAOFU as well. 

Edwin Moses: There’s always going to be challenges. You know, when we did our first clinical trial, there was the concern that you were going to get responses because it was immune responses, because it was coming from a foreign source.

Now, in fact, they, they are very, very nice molecules to work with. And we, at least in the experience I’ve had with them, you, we, we didn’t see any toxicity at all. I think then to your point about. How do you balance platform against assets? I think, I think one of the mistakes I see in platform companies today is that they.

They’re not taking, they’re not investing enough in their assets earlier, no, so they, they present themselves for rounds of funding to investors and they go in in a candidate and optimization and they’re going to be in the clinic in four years time or five years time. And that’s not quick enough. You have to start getting close to the clinic, starting getting clinical studies.

And I think we were lucky because the product that we chose, we, we chose it because they was found that the nanobody could bind to the target, the von Golovan factor, which was the target. better than any monoclonal antibody. So people have tried to develop antibodies to it, and they couldn’t get it to bind strongly enough to do that, and particular reasons that antibodies could.

But then we went after a different indication, a bigger indication that didn’t work out. And so we said, oh gosh, what do we do? And then we found this indication, TTP. Very rare blood deceit where suddenly there were no, there was no drug product available for it. We could see how our product could work in that environment.

And it was a market that from both the clinical trials and a commercial point of view, we could manage, we could realistically develop the product ourselves to keep it under our control. Because I think that’s the, the, the struggle for a platform company is turning into assets. If it at some point has to part of that, that asset of phase two, because it’s in RA or whatever it may be.

It loses control of that. And that, and that’s so key. I mean, back to the ambling story, the whole trigger was us getting phase three product success. And this, if the big pharma company is taking longer to develop your product because you partnered with them earlier, that’s very difficult for you. So it was, it was a lot of luck along the way, you know, you know, luck and being opportunistic being saying, ah, that’s important to see.

And I think that that that’s where the platform companies have also got to protect their investments. So they, it’s all, it’s super to do collaborations and invest in the platform, but you then have to ring fence your asset development and not always that it get dragged into another collaboration or something like that, because otherwise your assets won’t move forward.

And that’s what worries me with some of these platform companies. If you see them, they’re at too early a stage and particularly in this financing environment, where everybody’s looking for later stage assets. It means that they struggle to get refinanced going forth. 

Philip Hemme: I, I’m, if, I mean, if I bounce back on, I mean, the, it sounds also like, like, I mean, that it, it is the, the recipe for a platform company to focus on assets.

And I’m wondering, oh, it’s, it’s, but I’m wondering maybe, like, why do biotech not manage that? I mean, for all, like, let’s say. Even if platform got it, no, we have to move our assets forward. Why? Like, they don’t manage it that way. 

Edwin Moses: I think two things one of them is, is cultural. I think in, in Europe, again, the investors really learning the validation of partnering platforms.

They like it when you have a, a pharmaceutical partner comes in and partner with the platform because it gives them reassurance that the platform is strong. The American investors we discussed a little bit more independent. So they, they don’t really need that validation, but if you’re European biotech, that’s what your investors are pushing you to do, to do that.

The other thing is cash generation. So nowadays. When equity file, 

Philip Hemme: they push you, but, but from what you said, it’s basically not necessarily the best way to go as in the best 

Edwin Moses: long term solution. So what it means is, and I think this is where you talking about companies, but generally you’d have to realize that each venture capitalist around your board, has their own agenda and has their own boss.

They have to go back to. And so if they’ve been invested for one or two or three years in a company and nothing much is happening, they get beaten on the head by their boss. What’s going on? If things go back and I say, Oh, we just had a deal with Merkle. We just had a deal with Pfizer. That gets them, everyone says, Oh, well, and that’s fantastic.

That must be a, just show what a good investment we’ve made. So I think that there are those pressures. And it’s one of the reasons why I think CEOs have to own the business plan. Yeah. I see CEOs. I’m not where I’m working formally, but people come to me for advice, and they, I had one the other week, where he said I’m going to present the business plan going forward to my board on Friday.

I don’t believe in it, but the VCs are making me do it this way. And and, and, and that’s not uncommon, where they feel, pick it for your first time as CEO, and you’re surrounded by, Very strong, very experienced VCs who say this is the right way. Well, it may well be the right way from their portfolio point of view, but it may not be the right way for you as a company point of view.

So I think that’s, so why do they make those decisions? Do the collaborators can’t do that? But also partly when, when equity is more scarce, they raise cash through that. To, to raise cash through upfronts from pharma companies. And if you remember, you have Bingster, it’s 500 million was from England, 500 million was from collaborations.

And if we’ve had to raise that directly, it’s our lead, it has to sell some more to do that. So that, and I think that the thing, the other thing that I tell the companies I work with it, you learn so much from pharma, good and bad. You can see what, and, but you learn, they know an awful lot. And the other thing that you see is it helps you figure out how you should position your platform because.

You might mention some features that you think are really important, and they might be totally uninterested, and then they suddenly find, oh no, this is what they’re really interested in. And I’ll give you one example, it’s not long ago. So, we, we were filing patents at Amplink on everything that moved, basically, and we, she found that nanobodies could bind to ion channels, which are very interesting.

But we, we really didn’t know quite what to do with that. You know, see, an interesting group, they’re quite difficult proteins to deal with. And then one day we got a knock on the door from Merck and they said, yeah, we’re interested in your ability to bind an ion charge. And we said, we started to sort of do the story and dance about and they said, oh, shut up.

They said, look, we’ve read your patterns. We’ve made the nanobodies. We’ve tested them out. They do work. You are right. So we want to collaborate with you because you, you are the experts in nanobodies. So they said all that word before they even come to talk to us. So But then they taught us what their opportunities they could see with their therapeutic knowledge and their knowledge of the, the target base.

What can you do and how could we work together for success? So I think you can learn a huge amount from the pharma companies and that, that shouldn’t be forgotten. And I mean, one thing also, when you look at the way the nanobody is developing, can be here in, in Brussels, but we’re talking Proserix. So they’ve taken antibodies, and one of the asbestos antibodies, they’re very robust molecules.

I mentioned you can take them orally and they can survive the patch of the gut. But they’re also great for tying radionuclides to it, because they don’t get destroyed straight away. So they’re great at delivering radionuclides to targets. But also, they have quite a short half life, so they actually disappear out of the system quite quickly, which is exactly what you want.

Hit the thing, and out. So there are all sorts of companies taking advantage of nanobodies, and there’s one here also in Belgium using nanobodies in agricultural applications. Because they, they can do all sorts of things there, so they, they, it’s getting broader and broader, the application. 

Philip Hemme: Nice.

It’s, it’s good. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we, yeah. It, it, it’s, it’s, yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s funny to, I mean, it’s, it’s interesting to hear your, your view and then when I connected to what I’ve seen at Micro Partners where you’re also amazing properties in the platform, but. Yeah, it’s, there were, I mean, at the end, you still need to, to prove it in the clinics and finding this balance is just, and as you said, also, I think it’s, and it’s, it should, I mean, we should not forget, but it’s like, there’s luck, there’s a luck factor and there’s a, just science factor of if things work or not, and every platform company, if you look back, I mean, at Dublinx, probably the science worked, as you said, like worked remarkably well and you know, No problem in the clinics and the good results and you found a good application, I mean, the good indication, everything.

I mean, that’s, that’s a lot of things lined up as well. I don’t know. I mean, we could talk. Yeah. We could talk longer about about nanobodies and, and radio, radio nuclear, I mean, I think there’s, there’s a lot of things happening at the moment, 

[00:38:57] Getting onto the board of an industrial biotech

Philip Hemme: but, but I want to, I want to switch a bit gears and you, you mentioned agriculture, which.

It’s great because I wanted to talk a bit about, like, let’s say, non healthcare or industrial biotech. And yet, so you’re a chairman of Aventium, Aventium? Yeah. And I followed this company for a while, actually actually from a very long time ago for almost when I started Labiotek, or it was not even a company.

And I met Truquin at Sofinova, and he talked about Avensium and showed a plastic bottle. I said, okay, that’s, that was his like, flagship, non, non healthcare investment. Which is crazy is that now they, they really, I mean, really worked. And so they opened like a massive factory and starting to roll out, like, scale production and, yeah, I think some kind of replacement PT from, from Plants in the Arthritium.

I, I was a bit, I mean, a bit surprised to see you on, on, on the board, on this board, which, I mean, okay not, not healthcare, not the platform, but can you maybe talk a bit more, like, how, how you came, how, how it came to be and, and what’s your view on, let’s say what their product and industry by taking an alternative.

Edwin Moses: Now I said, it’s a really, something I’m very, I really, really like one thing to say is that I was involved in Vantim even longer than you were by the sound of it because I was chairman back in 2000 and four originally. Okay. So after I left my first CEO job in the UK, I set up a portfolio of Vantim was one of those.

And at that time, Vantim had a number of activities, including activities in healthcare. So I was part of that and I was chairman of that company at the time. And I only left them because when I moved from being chairman of Outblinks to being CEO, I knew we were going to do IPO. And Avantium was thinking of an IPO as well.

I, I couldn’t be involved with two companies doing an IPO in the bank at the same time, it was too complicated. So I very regretfully parted away, but I knew Denny very well all that time. And then they came back for me. In 2019, I think it was, after I stopped with Applings, in which you consider being involved again.

It’s meant to know that I can do as the CEO was someone I appointed when I was chairman of the first time around. So I, it’s a very incestuous sport and it was Danny Lukan knocking at the door saying he’s now retired from the board, but he said, you know, be friends with me a lot. Now, why on earth am I there?

You’re quite right. I look, I look a little bit odd in terms of profile, but if what I love about the company, first of all, it’s like a biotech, so it’s full of very smart people, about 200 people, a lot of PhDs, they do. Very, very clever science, because the whole science is about taking sustainable sources and converting that into building blocks for plastics that are truly biodegradable and have advantages compared with current plastics.

So as you know, a lot of plastics now claim to be biodegradable, but they take 200 years to biodegrade. That’s not really. Ours can biodegrade in one to two years depending on the conditions, so it’s, it’s real. But it’s all about from sustainable sources. What’s fascinating is that you can develop these chemistries on the lab bench, just like in biotech, but in biotech, the next step is to do a clinical trial.

In this world, the green chemistry world of Amantium, the next step is to build a factory. Because the chemical companies don’t believe you until you made You can make 5, 000 tons a year at 10 a kilo or whatever the price is. So you have to show the economics work, that you can scale it. It’s safe to scale.

And that’s exactly what a manatee had to do. The, the challenges from my perspective are quite similar. And in Pusil you’ve got a whole bunch of very clever scientists and you have to think about how you’re going to monetize and commercialize that, which is what people already worked on. But then it’s raising money to build the factory.

So this factory that we’re building has cost. A couple of hundred million euros more, and we had to raise the money to do that. It will be completed this year and it will make them 5, 000 tons of this intermediate called FTCA, which is then turned into a plastic called PEF. And that plastic is already being used by big brand names like Carlsberg.

There’s a Carlsberg bottle with the names on this. You know, they did many, many industries. We could get Crona also. Yeah. Major supermarket stores are looking at it for their own brand products and getting rid of normal packaging, you know, producing it. And so the business model there is you build your 5, 000 ton factory, and then that proves that you can make it in scale.

And then people take licenses for that technology and build their own 100, 000 ton factory somewhere else in the world. And you get a license income based on that. That’s the way in which the commercialization works. It, it’s so similar because you are pre profit quite a long time. You’re, you’re burning money just like biotechs are.

So I sit around a board table of people from, we constructed a board, which is fascinating. So we have the CEO of Castrol Oil, for example around the table. Someone who was very senior in Tetra Pak someone who was very senior in Ineos. So huge, huge companies with very different perspectives of the world.

But the thing that makes them nervous is when the cash flow is going down with the PC, none of their gyms do that. And when the sign sticks longer, I’m very reluctant because I’m used to seeing cash running out all the time. That’s life. So, I bring that side of it, and they bring this huge knowledge of the end market and what people really need and, how to position the products going forward.

So, it’s a lot of fun to be involved in it’s still challenging because in contrast to biotechs. You have benchmarks in biotech. So isn’t it? Let’s say fabrics or whatever, you’ve got people you’re comparing yourself with, and the analysts were looking with for advancing the year, there really is hardly any benchmarks.

So the analysts. When we raise money announced that we’re going to raise some more money. It’ll be recently just raised to 70 billion rights issued quite often. Some of the analysts are, oh, they’re raising money again. What did you think we were going to do? You know, we, we don’t have a product, a revenue stream or a sizable revenue stream yet.

That is the nature of it. So, but they don’t have any benchmarks to compare it with. So we, we are a pioneer in that. Having said that we benefit certainly in the Netherlands from. very strong political pressure to improve the environment and improve the way in which we source and make plastics, not from coal and gas anymore.

So the government puts a whole lot of pressure. By the, by the economy. And, and so that means that we have a consortium of the major Dutch banks who support us with debt facilities in a way that a biotech complete. I mean, you would never get that sort of support from banks. So there’s a, there’s a real benefit in that.

You’re a pioneer, things are hard because you’re at the front, but it’s fascinating around being involved. It’s amazing. 

Philip Hemme: I like it a lot. And I mean, it’s, it’s crazy because it, I mean, you said you were involved at the beginning, but it’s really, it took them 20 years to reach, to reach that. And, and what you mentioned that it’s one of the only, I think, I mean, it is, it’s funny because I was always super like, actually really curious about this field of green biotech or environmental biotech from, from the beginning.

And When I was, when I was, I mean, when you said, 2004, I was still in high school. But when I started studying bioengineering, I was really fascinated by this and it was the phase when you had all this like, biofuels, microalgae, I was thinking of global bioenergies in, in, in France and, and like things were starting to, to cook, but at the same time, a few years down the road where things quite collapsed, at least in the U. S. for all that I can think of. By a few then still today hasn’t really like I mean, it was not a renovation phase, it was really just like, I mean, I guess maybe it will take off at some point. But it’s, it’s amazing that Aventium, I think, global IDGs are still running and, and seeing. But otherwise, there was always not that many in Europe that have managed to survive and grow.

Edwin Moses: They have other technologies. I mean, they have one which is a carbon dioxide. 

Philip Hemme: I mean, from like that’s industrial biotech at scale. They’re not competing, but yeah. 

Edwin Moses: So it’s, it’s, it’s, but I think one of the things in Mentorage I’m, I was fascinated by, if you look at good ideas, a lot of the best ideas take a long time to germinate.

I mean, if you look at Ampling’s, well, it first, it first began in the mid 1990s. The VIB supported it here in Belgium with the surge, but it couldn’t really get any funding. It took four or five, six years of them giving it soft money until 2001, the company started. And it was 17 years later that the first product hit the market.

Genyx, it’s been going around 2007, I think they started. Now it’s fantastic, but it’s taken And they were quite fast, weren’t they? I thought such good things take a long time to generate. I’m, I’m involved in a, I’m called Lab Genius, which is in the UK and people, some investors were asking me about it and they said, Oh, but it took quite a time to get there.

Well, yeah, because when you’ve got an idea of the technology, it’s not always obvious what you do with it. So you’d have to try and fail and try and fail. But those are the special people who they’d carry on and find the right thing to do with the technology in their life. But it’s, it’s not obvious from day one.

None of the big ideas are wrong. 

[00:48:41] What makes an entrepreneur

Philip Hemme: That’s the, yeah, I guess the fundamental of innovation and, and also on, I mean, innovation and also on doing things that have impact. I always have this, this quote that comes to my mind is a quote from Obama, like nothing worthwhile is easy. And I think there is, I mean, in life, but also in, let’s say biotech or in innovation, there’s some truth to that.

Like, 

Edwin Moses: it’s a lot of truth. And I think that one of the things that fascinates me, you know, you know, what makes an entrepreneur, what’s. If I take Onov Andostopov, who was the smoothie business CEO of Goanpinus, my favorite stuff, because I know him really well, quite well, is, is the way he came back from disaster time and time again.

You know, the, the, the product that is now on the market that forgotten him. When he did the original, I think it was preclinical, he did a deal with a major pharmaceutical company, I don’t know the name, and they, they ended up giving him back. Came back three or four times or something. And they, well, yeah, they said.

Never put this into people. They didn’t only give it to him back, they sort of gave him a curse at the same time. And I just think, when I looked at him, and I, I think the lesson to all entrepreneurs is you are going to have horrible days, things are going to go terribly wrong, and you’re going to fight back and say, that’s it, I’m going to have a glass of wine, go back in the next morning and start all over again, and that’s, that’s what makes him, that’s what made the great success that he developed, and if I take Time Genius, the, the CEO there, went down some path that didn’t work out, and And then figured out the way forward and that was, you know, and he’s, he’s a good example of what he figured out this machine learning AI business approach that he wanted.

He couldn’t get any European investors to pay attention because he talked about algorithms and things like that. And that switched live science and this stuff because they wanted to talk about the end of Robin. So what did he do? Got on a plane and went to the West Coast. I found a tech investor who understood exactly what he was talking about and invested in it.

That’s a real entrepreneur. I don’t sit there in Europe and go, Oh, I can’t get any investors, but go on a plane and go to the right place. 

Philip Hemme: I find that solution. Yeah. That’s amazing. Actually, it’s amazing that it works so well with James. I connected with you guys. It’s crazy. 

Edwin Moses: Well, I’m doing some due diligence calls, investors at the moment with him, and they say, well, how did it happen?

I said, well, I didn’t realize at the time, but James had always, was always going to make it happen, so he identified somebody who had a, a connection with me. And he’s He’s very clever in this whole idea of warm introductions. I mean, you know how that works. You know what, it’s one thing just calling someone up and say, hello, it’s me, but if you get someone who has already got a connection and an established relationship, and that’s what he used.

I mean, yeah, you, you were the heart of that. And it was very weird when he told me, yeah, well, I, I picked you out as the person that I wanted Ed with. If I needed to get to you and I knew him and I asked Philip and he got the introduction going. So here I am. 

[00:51:36] How AI biotech can help R&D

Philip Hemme: That’s amazing. And I did, actually, it’s, what’s, it’s funny also with you, what I think you’re just saying is that I think he was basically, I mean, one of the first, let’s say, AI biotech or whatever, machining biotech, I mean, they started in 2016, I think, and so there’s kind of Ahead of the curve.

Yeah. But I think now, and, and through our conversation, they’re facing, I mean, at least to my view, similar challenges of a platform companies. And it’s great to have a tech and to license the tech, but assets are basically where, where you make also, where, where the value question is. Absolutely. They seem to be now more, I mean, at least building a pipeline and or versus having a user tech.

Edwin Moses: Exactly. I think that having said that, that’s completely correct that the first important collaboration we had was with Samofi. blahblahblahblahblah and That, that went very well to the point that Sanofi came out and said, I think it’s also figuring out what, what can your platform do. And this is back to what I’ve told you before with the nanobodies.

And, and with, when I first went to, to James and one of the things he, he emphasized was how his technology could speed up R& D and that’s absolutely true. But when you look at the whole R& D process, it’s taking a few months out of R& D. We had to say a three or four or five year process. But you’re probably not gonna get ahead of r and d at Roche or head of RD at Pfizer.

Jump outta their seat to talk to you about that. But when you see how, 

Philip Hemme: maybe now a bit more, now that they’re old, they, I didn’t know it, but, 

Edwin Moses: but how are you gonna get, really get their attention? Well get their attention by was now the, the key USP of of ness is we will find things that you would never find yourself.

So that’s exactly what Sanofi said after we did the collaboration. We have found nanobodies that we would have never found ourselves because of the internal biases we have. And of course, if you look at the way pharma’s structured, who runs the departments? Very clever people who spend 30 or 40 years doing discovery science.

So they, they think they know, this group here never works, that group they must have, they’re whatever. So they have, and with machine learning, you take that all the way. You don’t know that come, come in the Discussion at all. You just put data in and allow the machine learning, the AI to do the projections.

So then you find things that the human would’ve been biased and said, oh, we can, we can never manufacture something with that. Then, well, you can, because you can use machine learning to, to teach you how to do that. So I, I think that that whole concept now of finding things that they would never have found, that is a very powerful concept.

And finding them quicker as well. 

Philip Hemme: Then yeah, from a value proposition, instead of saying. I, I cut down by one month out of five years and it’s a few percentage of, and you said, okay, I find you a product that’s where they’ve never found. Makes sense. And, and then how, how does it balance with doing the internal pipeline?

So then they apply the same thing to find things that, oh, that was building the pipeline 

Edwin Moses: and they look at certain particular indication areas. They’re interested in T SUN engages where they can actually use the, the properties of. Machine learning, which is to, to evaluate in parallel, different characteristics of molecules.

So instead of sort of developing and how strongly it binds and then looking at stability and then looking at something else, you can do two or three characteristics, optimize them in parallel. And that’s a really big advantage of machine learning. So yes, they’re applying, they’re trying to pick the best targets out for the application of their technology.

And the other thing I think is interesting in that company, which the learning for me, but. Is that you, you are also then combining tech investors with life science investors, and they are different types of investors. So it’s, it’s an interesting, it’s the same as in the company itself. You have life scientists, but you have software engineers, you have robotic people, and when you look at what they do, you know, honestly, could Big Pharma do it?

Yep, they could. But. The trouble is, the walls in Big Pharma are such that getting those sort of disciplines to interact in a cohesive way is really quite challenging in very large companies. But in a 50 company, you get them all in the coffee room together. And then the robotics people realize the life sciences people are normal, and that they can actually talk to them, and they can talk to each other and understand.

But it was interesting with COVID, for example, it just had meant mugged me too, to speak. But some of the disciplines wouldn’t come into work in COVID as some of the disciplines would. So they reacted differently to COVID as a, as a, so they behave differently in the way that they think and you’re not, that probably won’t surprise you.

But it means that you have to, but it’s a lovely environment of getting these different disciplines to interact and respect each other and learn from each other, which I, I, one of the reasons I like them.

Philip Hemme: I mean yeah, it makes me, it makes me smile, but I mean, I totally understand and agree. I was a bit in, I mean, myself a bit in that scenario.

I mean, in the media content space, but basically tech company, digital company applied to biotech and kind of, I’m talking a bit to the two worlds and yeah, it, but what’s, what’s quite amazing is that let’s say five years ago was two different worlds. And I, I’m amazed by how quickly it’s, it started like that, or how the, the, the, the overlap like grew pretty fast over the last years.

Obviously, Gen AI, GPT, everything helped, I guess, especially make farmers people understand that AI and there’s something coming and they should look and try to understand it a bit more, but it’s quite amazing. And even. But still, yeah, in investors, I mean we had Tomas Klosal from Okin on the show.

And he was saying that finding investors who want to invest in tech, in biotech, was like finding a panda in the zoo, a baby panda in the zoo. And it’s true that, I mean, especially when you try to raise that, let’s say a billion valuations. Then it’s, it’s really hard to find. And he also has most of the investors in the US and, but I find it quite, I mean, it’s a good, it’s, it’s, it’s, I think it’s very, also very beneficial for.

Edwin Moses: Oh, I understand. And I think that what you do is it. Just as I managed to say with the Avantium thing, when you get people from different worlds around the table, you get different perspectives. So you get the tech investors who think about the world in a different way. They, their, their appetite to risk, risk is different.

You know, it’s hard for them when you say, I’ll tell you what, we’ll put 10 million into an IND and it might fail when we get to the end of it. Now for your licensing investor, that’s their daily. That’s what they’re used to doing. That’s not how the tech investor would generally think of the world. And the idea that they, it fails or, or succeed, it’s really quite a hard concept for them to, but they, they bring their own special way of thinking to the idea as well.

I think you’d get, I like these mix ups, these sort of potpourris of people coming at it from completely different directions. We are in Lampedusa, I think, at the time where we, we’re going to successfully bring the life science investor together with the tech investors, and that’s fantastic because they can learn from each other and we can learn from them and everybody benefits.

Philip Hemme: Yeah. No, it’s, I mean, I mean, it’s, it’s funny what you mentioned about the IND, but also the In the tech world, like optimizing something by significant 10 percent is basically what most digital companies do. And it’s very valuable. I mean, whatever productivity tool, like a note taking app is just improving something, but if you make it 10 percent or, I mean, there’s a saying thing, make it 10, 10 X better than than people with switch.

But yeah, basically I was making better versus taking a huge risks. It’s, and I find, I think it’s, I mean, what you, what you mentioned is a key thing, and I see it, I talked with a few tech, let’s say, tech bio, or biotech companies, and When they start from the tech angle, they always start to optimize and reducing cost.

And, but I think what you said is very true. It’s not necessarily the value proposition or how it, what, what people are buying in, in the biotech products, that’s industry pharma industry, or maybe it’s not the best value proposition you can have. 

Edwin Moses: Key is, you know, the, the, the old story of rubbish in rubbish out in terms of a model is that what you have to do is generate data fit for purpose to put into your model and the idea that you can just.

For this type of work, just go onto the internet and, and find some data and stick it in your model, probably it doesn’t work. And so the key that James got, you know, that genius got around was defining careful, quite complex experiments to produce functional data that could be loaded into the, the models.

That would give you the ability to predict much more interesting spaces of activity rather than just straightforward binding data or something like that. And making sure you do that yourself, you think about the design of the experiments themselves. So you generate your own proprietary data. And, and it’s a similar thing with Achilles, the other company I’m involved in.

So it’s not the way it presents itself, but it’s based upon the fact that it’s got a license, Tracer X, which is a data set. It was created in the UK around lung cancer patients. So because the NHS treats basically all patients in the same way, you can actually combine these data from different hospitals in a way that’s much harder to do in a lot of other countries where different hospitals have different approaches.

So there’s 700 plus patients. which have been followed over the long term in terms of their lung cancer. And those data have been collected, and it allowed the company to develop, then, a model for predicting what would be the neoantigens, so the cancer associated with them, but more importantly, what would be the clonal neoantigens, which are targets, which appear on every tumor in the body of those patients.

So you can then take a sample of the tumor. You can actually then predict what these clone on the edges, the ones that stick all around the body and develop therapeutic approaches to deal with those. So it all starts from data. It all starts from very, very high quality data. 

Philip Hemme: And you can, and you can have the neurointelligence for all these patients in the same.

Edwin Moses: You do this individually. So this is individually, 

Philip Hemme: but you can compare all the patients. And 

Edwin Moses: yeah, yeah, yeah. So it builds up that thing. So it’s all built on really high quality specialist data, which then gives you very powerful predictive methods. 

Philip Hemme: It’s an amazing parallel between data and machine learning to data in a. self therapy company, but they have similar dynamics. 

Edwin Moses: Very similar, exactly. 

Philip Hemme: It’s crazy. You make the perfect transition to Achilles, which I wanted to mention as well. One thing that comes to mind is like, it’s amazing how on the surface it looks like different. I mean, machine learning to industrial biotech, to Abilene’s platform company, nanobodies.

What, what fascinates me is how below or like below the surface the dynamics. There’s a lot of similar Yeah, similar dynamics issues. Yes. Similar overlaps of technology 

Edwin Moses: be almost, at least for me, I have to be in it to release even the theater. I was, it was a while before I was in Achilles, in in Loves Jeans.

I thought, you’re not a similarity period. You know, and I hear James going on about why the. Quality of the data was so important. And then I realized that’s exactly what I’d heard from the Akiming’s founding scientist. But I just, it was presented in a slightly different way and I was hearing it. But then you suddenly know there, it’s identical.

I mean, completely right. But it’s identical. And if you start off with unique, high quality data, and then you’re in good shape. 

Philip Hemme: And it makes me connect to actually what we mentioned, Mark DeGaridelle. And he mentioned about the, the quality of the clinical trials, and that, I don’t remember, one of their phase two, they didn’t meet the endpoints, and it was because how they were, basically, how the, the, how the Sierra was running the trial was not at all about the drug.

Yeah, yeah. And he emphasized, I mean, or shared his experience in that basically on how to run, let’s say, properly the character and not trying to rush too fast, but having actual great data and, I mean, similar story. 

[01:04:22] The lowest market cap for Achilles

Philip Hemme: Maybe quickly on, on Achilles, then I want to finish on more on the personal note, but on Achilles, I mean, it’s basically on, on, on solid tumors.

Recently IO events got approval for the first solid tumor cell therapy. So tumor car or what is it? What’s til, til, til til therapy approved, which also helped, helped I guess some help on the, on the market cap. One thing that I was like, when I looked at the company, I think this is like the lowest.

Market cap to cash balance. I’ve actually seen, which is quite sad to see, but, a little bit, a bit surprising. I mean, it’s, it’s hard for all the, I could say small cab, especially platform bio companies at the moment. But he, I mean, I think was what, what, what, something like on 50, 60 million market cap and 150 million in cash, like It’s quite surprising, actually, that it gets to control the market, I guess.

Edwin Moses: Yeah, I mean, the company, it’s just public knowledge, so you can see it. The company went public in 2021 at about 18 a share, and it’s currently about 1. 50. It’s just gone up quite a bit because of the AI events discussions. The company hasn’t done anything wrong. It hasn’t had a fail. I looked at the news and I’m like, well, you know, nothing goes as quickly as you’d like it to do, but we’re in phase two studies.

We’re waiting for the data. We don’t know what, what that’s going to come out with, but it’s, but what happened is I think you saw a combination of events, the markets fell. New companies on the market got into trouble because of that. Cell therapy got a bit out of favor, personalized cell therapy, and the Ivan story dragged on a little bit.

People weren’t sure whether that product was going to get approved or not. And so we, we suffered a little bit from that. I think, but you know, it’s, it’s a thing used as a, as a board and as a, I feel particularly sorry for the management team in this because they haven’t done anything wrong, they carried out the plan.

They weren’t like crazy. And everyone says, don’t look at your shared price, but as A-C-O-X-C-O-I know you can’t help the, the be of shared breast, and you see it as a reflection of what you’re doing, and it isn’t a reflection of what they’re doing. I think the ref effectual will be when the data are available.

We see how that all works out. But the, the basic premise of what they’re doing, which is when you compare with iban, so IBANs basically take a tumor from a patient, then find the, the pills which are the tumor infiltrating. Yeah. So the, the way in which the body actually attacks the tumor. But the tumor has ways of controlling that, so what you do is, you pull that out from the tumor, and then you expand the tills, make lots, billions of them, and put it back in, to basically help the patient heal themselves.

The patient 

Philip Hemme: is not actually engineers they don’t express any thought or anything. 

Edwin Moses: So that’s how that works. The difference then with the Kelly’s approach is to say, hang on, there are some tills in those, in that big mix of tills, which, target the clonal neoantigens, the ones that I said are special in neoantigens and exist on every tumor.

If we can pick those out specially and then expand those, expand a specific population of the TILs, we may, we hope, we may have a more effective medicine. So that’s the idea. So it’s, it’s a little bit like IVANS 2. 0. It’s going along the same line, but it’s trying to pick out a special subgroup of TILs, which it then expands.

Based on that, Tracer X dataset of lung cancer patients, which is able then to make predictions from. 

Philip Hemme: And the first group, if you have a subgroup, then you still have enough quantity. 

Edwin Moses: Yeah, well, that’s what’s got to be proved, that you expand them and So I mean, it’s not easy to expand. Yeah, the mental sites are there.

For them, and for us, it’s always going to be challenging because each tumor you do, you know, the starting material is different everywhere and everything else, but the, you know, the prospect of a patient designed drug is specific for the patient’s neoclonal enchant is very exciting, I believe. 

Philip Hemme: And why don’t you why can’t you engineer a bit more the title?

I mean once you have extracted it and that’s I think something 

Edwin Moses: we wouldn’t see a reason why you would need to do that because it is already specific use of the body’s already created that they’re the right drug it just needs more of it and the local environment stops it the body producing that so you take it out and make millions or billions of the of these cells and put them back in so you know you’re still giving the body a helping hand you’re letting the body create pharmaceutical but then you’re making more of it yeah okay 

Philip Hemme: yeah compared to to a car I mean to a car seat where you will take the lymphocyte out, we engineer it to recognize the antigen of the tumor, and then we inject it.

Edwin Moses: And obviously the potential advantage with this is that you’re not doing any engineering, so you’re putting back in the natural molecules that were extracted from the patient. These are not new molecules for the patient. 

Philip Hemme: Yes, you limit the risk of immune response and of, and of what, stone, what, what’s the chemo ah.

Yeah. Yeah. On it. Okay. Well, let’s see. Shows, it shows I think how, how biotech can be sometimes it’s, yeah, the whole story, but you need to keep on the long term. And also, I mean, what you said keep on the long term, 

Edwin Moses: what I, this sort of pro proposition, which is the same as the other ones I get involved in.

It’s, this is gonna sound very facile, but it, the, the elevator pitch is obvious. You know, I’m taking a molecule that body’s developed. Specifically to fight this cancer and it may have lots more of a give it back to you and make you better. That’s going to work. Now whether it works for Achilles or whether it works for somebody else, I am sure in 10 years time we’ll look back and say, Well, of course, that’s the right way to do it.

That’s a patient specific medicine made from molecules that exist in the patient. That’s, that’s a great way to do it. So it’s, it’s, it’s so simple, it’s, it’s obvious. We, it’s LAMPGENIUS. What they’re doing is, concept is simple at a high level. Will they be the ones who make it successful? Yeah, I very much hope so.

But somebody will make it successful using this technology to design new therapy proteins very effectively and find ones that people can’t find anywhere else. That’s the exciting part about it. It’s sort of obvious. It’s gonna, it’s gonna work. 

Philip Hemme: But yeah, the execution of it and the timing. When is it ready to?

Edwin Moses: Well, you can’t predict that. Certainly. 

[01:10:53] The draw of being the Chairman

Philip Hemme: That’s great. Maybe if I’m just switching a bit more to, to a personal note or finish on a personal note. I’m curious, you seem to like a lot the chairman role. You have three of them, but I guess you had many other options from whatever other regular board membership on bigger biotechs of pharma.

Involved with VCs, whatever, like, can you like share a bit more on what’s, what’s the rationale behind this, this like, Sweetball 

Edwin Moses: isn’t that always safest? Although I don’t have to be chairman in the company. It’s just happened like that. I think probably where the driver for that comes from the fact that I, I genuinely like to get involved.

All I’ve found in a small to medium sized company is that as a. Just a non executive director, it can be difficult to provide, to get access to allow you to leverage what you know and what you do, it’s a little bit more tricky because the chairman CEO access is so critical and that’s got to work very well and that’s key to the company so that’s why I enjoy being part of it because I want to be part of that and off my services.

So I like, I like to get involved. I’m talking to the companies all the time in in different ways. So that it’s, it’s part of my level of engagement in this, in this size of small to medium sized company. What I’ve chosen not to do, go off poignantic, if you feel involved in sort of short term consultancies to look at projects I, I, you know, people will say, well, we’re thinking of buying this company where you look at this company for us and make an assessment talks.

Private S3 companies do that quite a lot. I did a little bit of that. I don’t sound funny, very satisfying because I’m involved just at a point of content and I, I’m, I’m like a reporter. I tell them, I think this or that about the management of technology, and then they go off and do whatever they do.

I’m much more interested in operationally running, how do companies develop? How do they build, how do they hire people? How did they write the business plan? And, and being with them as they go through those transitions, just sort of giving them some advice and then going on to the next job. I think it’s, obviously, you know, that’s what consultants do and they like doing it.

It’s not for me. I want to, I want to see how this all works out. If you look at the training involved in that, I’ve already been involved with about, I think it’s like the shortest time, four years. These are projects you really get involved in. I have to learn. 

Philip Hemme: I guess it’s more entrepreneurial. I say more.

Edwin Moses: Yeah. And, and that involvement in, in the whole aspect, you know, raising money, hiring people, firing people. What sort of business do we want to be? How do we, how do we develop that and and going through the different transitions from being a private company to a public company and that. Those things I really enjoy and I want to be part of that.

Philip Hemme: It, it makes, it’s, it makes connect to, what you know, that cause I’m sure in crystal therapeutics and, you know, I forgot his last name. And they mentioned it and I think they mentioned it quite a lot about, especially with founder CEOs who are maybe a bit less experienced having the experienced chairman and that this duo can be like, can, I mean, can work very well and bring kind of this like entrepreneurial energy, naivety sometimes can be beneficial, but same time really this experience and when they work together, Do you see that?

I mean, maybe, for example, is that genius in you? 

Edwin Moses: Yeah, absolutely. I think you can see that. I think what from the experienced chair point of view, if I can call myself that, where you have to be very careful is, is not always coming with what you think are pre baked solutions. Because it’s boring for the CEO to be told this is the way to do it.

It’s also wrong because it’s not always true. So what you 

Philip Hemme: You’re really going into deep understanding. Deeply understanding. 

Edwin Moses: And I think what you have to do is, is More likely provide options, say these are the sort of choices you can consider or challenge some of the conclusions, rather than saying this is the answer.

It can be frustrating because as a CEO for 20 years, I always thought I knew what the answer was. And, so you, you get to, you think, I know the answer, this is obvious. You, you realize that’s not the way to be. 

Philip Hemme: How many times have you been proven wrong in the last years where you, you thought the answer was this and it was not this?

Edwin Moses: I can’t remember the exact number. Not that you’re used to them. But I think what you do, I assume, with it, Unless the CEO gets there in their own way, you haven’t got a solution. If you try an input, it’s, it’s your, you’re working different ways and at different speeds and in different ways and different sort of shades of gray in terms of what the right solution is.

It’s got to be their solution. So you, you really just got to try and you’ll put a red flag up that you can see something that’s a dead end. Don’t go down that dead end. That’s horrible. But the other, the other thing they’ve got to find the right thing that suits for them. So I think it’s, it’s giving those ranges ranges.

And I think more. Also, quite often when I’ve been talking to new companies, they say, well, watch your style as a chairman, you know, and people have been through what I have, but I’ve got a tendency to come in and say, this is the way I work. Now, I, I actually say, well, I think I should adapt to the way that James wants to work or, you know, I should have kicked these and not be imposed upon them the way I work.

I’ve certainly, I’ve got certain sort of styles and certain quirks and so forth, but it’s best to fit, it’s more fit, I’ve got to fit and try and, I don’t want to say gaps, but I’ve got to support the areas where they don’t have strengths. And the area where they’ve got strengths, let them, you know, carry on, right?

So that’s what I find interesting is figuring out, you know, some of them like a lot of contacts, some of them like to, to check things with you quite regularly. And I think with, with James, a good example is that. Early on, he, it was probably my fault thought. There were things that were too small to bring to my attention.

And I, and it took me a little while to realize that. And then I, I said to, well, you know, there’s nothing to talk. I can, we, you know, we are, we’re friends, we are colleagues. You can, you can come to me with anything and if I think you are, you are working at the wrong level, I can always tell you. So this, he then felt much more open and nothing was too slow, because if it’s important enough to be bothering him.

Talk about it. And, and so I think 

Philip Hemme: And also the small thing gives you a deep understanding of 

Edwin Moses: Exactly. Exactly. And, and there can be, you know, for first time CEOs, there are things they just haven’t done before. That’s the nature. We’ve all been first time, whatever. You know, you would first time you interview someone, there’ll be things you learned from that and you go on and you’ll have done things then that you would never have done again or whatever.

And so you can just see some of those things and you see them coming. And you can Exactly. You could help them with that but it’s, I think it’s got to be, you mustn’t overwhelm because it’s all about, at the end of the day, they are the boss of the company, not you. 

Philip Hemme: I was about to say, yeah. What you mentioned also is owning the business plan.

I mean, at the end of the day, they are executing and they have to, I mean, even if the solution, you propose a solution there, it’s settled. The management team or CEO who is actually trying to 

Edwin Moses: Let me say this quick. I think one of the things that, when I, in, in, when I’m talking different CEOs, not just the, the, ones that I’m talking about that I’m directly involved in, I think sometimes what they find hard They’re very happy to take the credit when things go well, but when things, particularly out of their control, don’t go well, then they say, well, that’s not my fault.

And I say, no, it’s not your fault, but your candidate would be. It’s a joke. You can’t have it both ways. And is it, you know, if the clinical trial were to fail, then the CO is at the end of the day? the way you’re going to look at it, even if it wasn’t their fault. But that’s what you, you know, that’s the positives and negatives.

You can’t, you can’t just want to have the good times. So it’s one of those learning things and giving them support. In times like this, I think is, is really important and then having the feeling that I ain’t in perspective, I guess, someone that, yeah, that today’s, today’s a bad day, but tomorrow’s going to get better, you know, and then just helping them and look at what are the good things that you can see here, because sometimes it’s, When things are going wrong, it’s easy to focus on just the negative, you know, what, what’s happening.

Yeah, but let’s look at the bigger picture. What have we got here? We’ve got a company that’s got these investors. It’s got this technology. It’s got this great group of people in the company. That’s pretty good, isn’t it? That’s, yeah. It’s amazing. 

Philip Hemme: I mean, it’s, it’s almost a bit like a coaching, I mean, role, but this is also super valuable.

I mean, I can imagine as a CEO founder. I mean, who else would really give, provide this kind of value and, and even from the, then from a company building and shareholder, it’s just an amazing role. I mean, 

Edwin Moses: I think the other thing that they, that become a sign of myth that they use, you’re doing it not from a theoretical, this is an MBA, I’ve read an MBA.

They know you’ve been there. That doesn’t mean that, that you, you’re right about everything, but they, they recognize they, you know, if they have a hard ball beating. And he’s not gone their way. And, and I can go to them and say, yeah, I sat in Har I I’ve been the one who didn’t get the picture right or did people didn’t agree with me and that’s frustrating.

And, but they didn’t have what we have to do and I liked that. So you can help them bounce back from the more difficult things experience. 

Philip Hemme: I like, actually, it’s funny through to wrap, but one thing that came out of my mind and out of memory from this Twin Reach talks in 2018 was actually the slide of like as a CEO you receive credit.

When everything goes well, but then you get hit on the back when things go badly. And I found this clarity about it, which I found pretty, like, I mean, first I could relate to it as you, myself, and I think, yeah, it’s, I mean, I think it’s very true, but I think you’re very, like, approached to it of taking full ownership, especially when things are bad, and that, I think that is very difficult to do.

Yeah. But once you embrace it, then 

Edwin Moses: You race it and once you, it’s easier said than done, but yeah. The way you depersonalize it that you, you, you don’t take it in your heart if you, you know what I mean? Which is a little bit harder to do, but that’s 

Philip Hemme: very hard when you found a company that’s basically, yeah.

Edwin Moses: But you, you have to sort of say, yeah, okay, this didn’t work out. And the main thing is, yeah, I think one of the lessons, you know, talked to James about quite a lot, is that boards don’t want to be confronted by problems. So if you’ve got to fail a clinical trial which is not what James has experienced, but one of the eight William or Willam clinical trials, and you go to the board and say fail, you will get massacred by that board.

They will, they will tell you what you did wrong and everything else. So what you’ve got to go to, and this is what we’re going to do next. Everybody wants to know what you’re going to do next when something goes wrong. And that’s what the CEO. That’s the great thing about bassoon. You are in a position where the guy who’s managing the orchestra, you can point the violins and say they’re gonna play for 20 minutes while we figure out what to do.

So you can, you can actually Lay out that forward plan, but that’s what you could, I think sometimes people think on the board wants to hear what, what happened. Well, they do, but they want to know what’s going to happen next. Is this a Bush mask? Yeah. Well, and even good news. They want to sit up here. Right.

That’s good news. How are we going to build on that good news? What are the, how, does that mean we’re going to raise money or we’re going to have a big collaboration or whatever it may be? So you’ve got to, that’s what you, you always got to be forward thinking, just. The reporting bit of what happened is the least important part of the theater’s job.

It’s got to be done very well and very clear, but it’s the creativity is saying what’s going to happen. 

Philip Hemme: Sounds like it’s you’re fitting in this role. Like, I mean, it sounds very balanced and it sounds like you’re enjoying it. And that 

Edwin Moses: it’s never the same as being the member of a single team. And 

Philip Hemme: I was about to challenge you on like, why not being executive some like another? But 

Edwin Moses: yeah, I looked at a few you know, never say never. I think the other thing I, I like a lot about this role, which is, which you’ve got the hint of, is that being a steel and pickle company, you get very expert in it, you know what we’re doing, but you can get a bit lazy because you are expert in it.

You know, when, the day you told me about Applings, I knew everything about Applings. I knew everything there was about nanobodies. But now I’m thrown into machine learning, I’m thrown into environmental chemistry, software. I knew nothing about those things when I went there. So I had to learn. So each day it made it look so wonderful.

And I, that, I like that. As, as you get older, the challenge of not being relaxed about what you know. Yeah, I know some stuff, because if I didn’t know some stuff, I’d be no use to anybody at all. But, but I’m, you know, I’m just in awe at some of the things I learn every day from the different interactions with the companies, remember?

The technology, the end markets, all those things. And that, that’s what gets me excited. 

[01:23:35] Thanks for listening

Philip Hemme: Great. I think it’s a great it’s a great wrap up to, to all, to our whole discussion. I mean, I really enjoyed it. I mean, that’s, I really love these like longer formats because we can explore deeper and we can see how things are so connected and how the content, I mean, it’s fascinates me from our discussion, just to summarize a bit, but yeah, and how, how the story of links and building a platform is connected to other platforms. How the dynamics are similar, how the experience, how everything it’s great. Thanks a lot. 

Edwin Moses: Thank you very much indeed. Great. 

Philip Hemme: Thanks for listening to the end. I was amazed by Edwin’s really deep experience and it also fascinates me how things can look so different in life sciences on the surface but if you dig a bit actually have so many similarities.

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