We’re in Munich 🇩🇪 with the founder of one of the 15 most valuable European biotechs, Harpreet Singh of Immatics.
We talked about the field of PRAME receptors, TCR therapeutics and cell therapy at large. We also talked about the combination with mRNA therapeutics and his upbringing in a Sikh family in Germany.
🔗 LINKS MENTIONED
Labiotech.eu | “Interview Harpreet Singh – Why Being in a New Field From the Start Can Pay Off in the Long Run”, Sep 2019
Flot.bio | “Bahija Jallal, Immunocore 🇬🇧 | Commercial, Diversity, and AI | E14”, Mar 2024
Edwin Moses | How to Build Large Biotech Platforms (like Ablynx) | E13
ApexOnco | Immatics’ PRAME gift keeps on giving
Transcript
[00:00:00] Intro
Harpreet Singh: We think that these are keys to make solid cancers accessible to immunotherapies, because TCRs can tap into the intracellular target space.
Philip Hemme: Quite a lot of scepticism in Cell Therapy.
Harpreet Singh: Well, it matters so much whether you get it right. This is true for every type of drug, but for cell therapy, you have a relatively high cost of goods.
And so you have to give something back in return that is so mind blowing for physicians, patients, for payers. Look, valuations and market capitalizations are somehow subjective. I would argue that the way they’re determined, maybe not an exact science.
Philip Hemme: Yeah. I’m new to the new episode. I’m your host Philip. And on this show, I’m interviewing the best Europeans in biotech to help you grow. There are 14 biotechs in Europe that are worth a billion dollars or more. The number 12 is Immatics. In the year 2000, Harpreet co founded a company in Tübingen, Germany, just after his PhD.
It now counts almost 500 people, now also spread across Houston and Munich. So while I was in Munich, I caught up with Harpreet. We’ve known each other for a while, but it’s actually the first time we met offline. He has one of the deepest commitments for patients, while being super sharp, but also honest and fun.
So we talked about the PRAME receptor field, as well as TCR therapeutics and cell therapy at large. We also talked about combination with mRNA therapeutics and his upbringing in a Sikh family in Germany. So here’s my conversation with Harpreet and if you’re enjoying it, please hit the like and follow button.
Harpreet Singh: Welcome to the show, Harpreet. Philip, it’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you very much for having me on your show.
Philip Hemme: Yeah, it worked out. It took a bit, but we made it.
Harpreet Singh: Excellent.
[00:02:00] PRAME & TCR space
Philip Hemme: I want to start with the PRAME and TCR space. It’s a very hot space. You guys are one of the world leaders. There’s also quite strong competition and actually one of your main competitors is Immunocore, and Bahija was on the show a few episodes back.
So I’m curious to hear, let’s say your side of the story and how you differentiate.
Harpreet Singh: Sure. I mean, let me start with the most important thing and that is actually not a thing that is the patient, right? That’s what we all serve of. And I also listen to, to Be’s show and, and she also made very clear where her focus is and how delighted she is.
about really making an impact on the lives of cancer patients. T-cell receptors, or TCRs, have a unique opportunity to actually really open up the target space. And we think that these are keys to make solid cancers accessible to immunotherapies because TCRs can tap into the intracellular target space.
And that’s what TCRs and companies like Immatics and Immunocore do. And it’s still a young field. It’s still a budding field. And I’m delighted that there are, that there’s more than one company around, that there’s several companies actually doing this. So I think about companies like Immunocore, Adapt, Immune, T Scan and others as peers, not competitors.
I’m delighted if all of us are successful. This is still a small field. It’s not about being the kind of biggest fish in a small pond. It’s about going out in the ocean and really serving. As many patients as possible.
Philip Hemme: Actually, I felt like the patient centric was, I think, was one of the most patient centric guests on the show.
I think it’s, and it sounds like you have also a similar approach. I like that a lot.
Harpreet Singh: Well, this is something that we and I also personally have been thinking right from the start. I mean, if I go back into my history when founding the company sort of translating science into something that could be potentially transformative for cancer patients, making a real impact on the lives of cancer patients was the primary driver to kind of create something crazy, which is like creating a biotech.
The odds are, as you know, kind of quite slim. A few years, a decade. But I’ve been personally, and we as a company and the fantastic team of Immatics have been always driven, dedicated, obsessed about how we can actually serve patients. And that is something that’s driven all our research and science right from the start.
Philip Hemme: I like that. It reminds me of the, I read the biography of Henry Termeer and it was also really eye opening because I think there’s, there’s a, like, a lot of people say that. But then when you see really the action and in details of what it really means and when you need to take a decision, prioritize really patient and be patient for good, I think that’s where it’s quite the difference.
Harpreet Singh: It is. And there’s also transition within a company or a group when you actually move from the kind of theoretical to the practical phase, right? So we have been talking about patients for quite some years, even when we were in preclinical phase and what the kind of promise is to deliver to patients.
But once you actually start infusing patients, and in particular, IMA203, that’s our PRAME directed cell therapy, we saw objective recess responses and deep responses already early on in development, even in dose escalation, and some very meaningful impacts that we’ve achieved in the patients. One of our earliest patients, a sarcoma patient, now alive now for more than three years, has been even treated twice with cell therapy and saw very, very deep responses.
This is a gentleman living in Chicago. There’s actually several companies and restaurants all over the world and it’s really making an impact in a local charity community in Chicago and no other companies like Immunocore also have these examples. But then it becomes actually very evident what impact for patient means and, and one of these patients also visited us and, and that’s been very meaningful for the staff and very emotional.
So it’s a very, very strong way to kind of then. really see and observe what has been crafted for years with the hands of our scientists, how this actually now really translates into benefit for patients.
Philip Hemme: You mentioned the clinical results, I mean, the amazing results, from the, was it interim data?
Can you, yeah, maybe just go a bit. A bit deeper on different, the response rates you observed, how many patients you dozed.
Harpreet Singh: Yes, with pleasure. And so one special thing about Immatics is that we are a TCR company, but we’re not restricted to one TCR modality. So there are two different modalities. There is a TCR-T.
So that’s the autologous cell therapy based on T cell receptors, adapt immune or T scans are companies that are also doing. TCRT, and there is TCR based by specific, like our peer immuno, that’s what we’re doing. We’ve decided early on, based on the strength in our discovery platform, based on the strength of creating targets and finding targets and creating TCRs for both of the modalities that we want to actually pursue both of these avenues.
So we will be talking about these two different modalities. So let’s start actually with TCRT. So there are like three differentiating factors always in our drugs. That’s a target. That’s a TCR, and then it’s the way how we manufacture. We’ve started with targets that we’ve identified through our mass spec platform called X President.
Analyzed thousands of targets, ultimately ended up with a list of 200 targets. that are suitable candidates. PRAME ranks among the top, actually, of those. And the platform is to identify peptides. Exactly. So the target is not the protein. When we talk about PRAME, the PRAME protein, which is actually intracellular, is not the target.
It is a small peptide that’s been derived from the overall PRAME sequence that’s presented on the surface. of tumor cells at very high copy number, almost exclusively, with the exception of, of testis. That’s why it’s called a cancer testis. Antigen, and can be then recognized in the context of a so called HLA receptor, biotether receptor.
Philip Hemme: And that’s why, I guess, similar to Immunocore, you need a very specific TCR to, to the peptide and not to a big protein. Exactly. So
Harpreet Singh: this now, this peptide embedded in the HLA receptor on the surface, so this prane peptide needs to be recognized by a tether receptor, so that’s the second differentiating factor.
We’ve been actually very good. And creating T Cerceptors, you have to know that most of these T Cerceptors by nature are actually not suitable. The way that nature has designed T Cerceptors is that they’re promiscuous. That’s the least thing you need in drug development. You want a very specific TCR that just recognizes.
The pre peptide in the context of HLA, not other peptides, not other HLA molecules. So we had to actually look at dozens, up to 150 t receptors actually, to kind of find the one that was really suitable. And we found one that was very, that is very specific, but it has just the right affinity. It’s kind of single digit micromolar affinity, which is ideal for cell therapy.
The third element that’s differentiating is actually the peptide. The manufacturing. So one element that, that Stefan Walter, our COO actually took very serious right from the start is to really get the foundation right, which means years of non glamorous work. So while other companies. We’re like talking about CRISPR gene editing and second, third, fourth generation stuff and all kinds of stuff, which is super interesting, right?
We actually put our heads down and, and did down to earth CMC work, optimize the manufacturing time, brought this down from 21 and 14 days to seven days. We’ve worked on how we actually expand these T cells. We found that removing the monocytes. It actually helps enormously, something very simple and mundane to do.
We experimented with different cytokine cocktails, non glamorous, non exciting work, not something that you can actually put on a nature medicine paper on a podcast, but it had a tremendous impact on the quality of these T cells. The result is that we can manufacture the T cells within, among the shortest time in our industry.
These T cells are younger, more vigorous, they can, they get less exhausted. And now what’s the outcome? When we infuse 1 to 10 billion of these T cells, that’s the range, we see in more than half of these patients deep confirmed recessed responses. So we’ve recently shown data in 30 melanoma patients, mostly cutaneous and UVL melanoma patients.
We’re talking about patients that are an average fourth line patients. I’ve seen three previous lines of treatments. Our cutaneous melanoma patients have seen Two previous lines of checkpoint treatments our urethral melanoma patients often have seen Chemtrail, obviously, which is a drug by Immunocore.
And now, these patients also come in with large tumors that are fast progressing, more than 100 millimeters. 70 percent of these patients in the brain are living. This is all stage 4C, right? So we’re talking about really, really very advanced. Patients, these patients have an average or mean median progression free survival of only two months, right?
And overall survival could be as low as four to six months if we look at kind of internal control groups as our patients in dose escalation. Now, if we treat these patients with our cell therapy, what we’ve seen is 55 percent of these patients, N equals 29, overall safety was safety was, was 65 patients in, including dose escalation.
These patients, 55 percent have deep confirmed objective responses. So these are partial responses, some are very deep, up to 80 90%. And we see median duration response of more than 13 months, despite 70 percent of these patients having actually deep. Liver or brain lesions, despite 80 percent of the cutaneous melanoma patients have been treated with the best possible first time therapy, that’s Ipinevo, right?
And so this is kind of the, almost the worst patient population you can imagine. And we’ve seen quite an impact. So this has been a surprise for us. We didn’t expect that.
Philip Hemme: We go from two, three months of mean, means, or median survival to 13 months.
Harpreet Singh: So we have not yet sort of published our median progressions pre survival.
That’s two to three months on average in this patient population, but we provided the objective response rate, 55%. The median duration of response, which is 13 months.
Philip Hemme: Okay. That’s, that’s already, that’s already amazing. Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s it.
[00:12:43] Types of Cell Therapy
Philip Hemme: Can you, can you just, I mean, we went pretty deep into prime this year.
Right away, if we zoom out a bit, especially for third tumor, you have the, the tail tumor fat infiltrating es lymphocytes. And then for the cold tumor, you have the, the car ts basically. Mm-Hmm. , if use the word for self therapy. I think for you guys, I mean, TILs are one of the quite one of the direct comparison of competitors.
Can you, can you like, yeah, give me the picture of, yeah, let’s say solid tumor, liquid tumor, different technology. I call it.
Harpreet Singh: Yes, absolutely. So let’s start with CAR T versus TCR T because CAR T is the kind of TCR T. It’s a more well known entity. It’s been approved in lymphoma and other liquid or hematological cancers.
There’s CD19 CAR T and BCMA CAR T, which are both approved by several companies. Very successful. Amazing results. There’s a really high degree of complete responses that have been seen, patients even cured from these. So this is very, very, these are very, very impressive results. There’s a limitation that CAR T has, the same as antibody based therapies, and that’s that there can only access extracellular or surface based targets.
Cu19, BCMA are those that are only on the surface and they’re actually B cell lineage targets. You basically kill the entire B cell compartment. That’s how you kind of really control the tumor. If we now go into solid cancers. There aren’t many surface targets around and solid cancers and those that are around, like HER2 Nu in breast cancer or DLL 3, a novel agent where Amgen is active in small cell lung cancer, are actually sort of restricted, typically, to one or two tumor types and to certain fraction of these tumor types, so you don’t have these Very broadly applicable, solid cancer targets extracellularly, typically, and that’s That’s why we have to sort of now dive into the intracellular target space.
That’s what we can do with T cell receptors. That’s why we require TCRs. The only downside of TCRs, as probably a lot of our listeners here know, is that they now require an HLA restriction. So our patients have to undergo a qualification upfront. They have to be HLA A two A oh two positive. That’s roughly 50% of patients here in Europe.
This is roughly 42% of patients in the us so that’s still a substantial fraction. The good news is once they’ve sort of overcome that quality, initial quality qualification, they will be mostly pain positive. So 95% of melanoma patients are. 90 percent of uterine melanoma patients are PRAME positive, almost 100 percent of uterine cancer patients are PRAME positive, 80 percent of ovarian cancer patients are PRAME positive, 65 percent of squamous lung cancer patients are PRAME positive, so the vast majority of solid cancers have a very high prevalence in PRAME and so that breadth of PRAME is what makes it so interesting.
So that’s CAR-T versus TCR-T, right? Now let’s look at the other side of your question. That was TILS. So TILS stands for Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes. So it’s a very different technology. It actually exists already since the 90s. Steven Rosenberg at the National Cancer Institute was one of the pioneers.
Patrick Yu was with him at that time. Pioneer. And so what they did is actually do a tumor surgery. That’s always the starting point. That’s, that’s a restriction. Then take basically isolate the T cells from the tumor surgery and kind of reactivate these T cells. by culturing these T cells ex vivo and then giving them back.
Now, you don’t know what these T cells recognize, whether it’s prame or something else. Most people actually think it’s neoantigens that these TILs recognize, and then they actually reactivate them and put them back into the patient, and so they can go after these
Philip Hemme: neoantigens. And take out the lymphocytes that are already active against the tumor.
Harpreet Singh: That’s a prerequisite for all cell therapies, whether this is CAR T, TCR T, Or TILs reacquire to a short term, so this is a few days of so called lymphodepleting chemotherapy. So this is kind of chemotherapy done for a few days not to shrink the tumor. Typically doesn’t do anything on the tumor. But to really remove the existing T cell compartment so that you create space where you then bring in, through the T cell infusion, where we bring in our T cells and the T cell product.
Philip Hemme: That’s, that is, very curious. And, and, because TILS, I mean, they, they, I mean, it’s maybe old technology, but they got, I think, approval recently. Yes. And it was pretty nice results as well. And in solid tumors as well.
Harpreet Singh: Yes. We’re delighted. Actually, this is the company Iovance. They’re another peer of us.
They got an approval this year in cutaneous melanoma. So that is very similar to the patient population that we’re going after with encouraging results. A response rate around 30%. And a median duration of response that was not met or not reached at the time point of final analysis. When we look at the entirety of the data, it looks like roughly a year of realistic median duration of response.
So that’s fantastic. That’s good progress in this, in this patient population. We think our data can go beyond that with our 55 percent and, and median duration response that’s maybe actually similar, but the TCRT has some other advantages. Significantly lower cost of goods, no requirement for tumor surgery, shorter turnaround time because our culture step is only seven days plus release.
Then also very importantly, TILs require an infusion or several infusions of high dose IL 2, that’s a cytokine, basically kind of keeps up the T cells and makes them further expand in the bloodstream. For TILs, that’s required and relevant. And that, unfortunately, high dose IL 2 comes with kind of pretty significant toxicity.
And TCRT does not require high dose IL 2. We actually use low dose IL 2, which can be easily also applied in an outpatient setting and does not actually add any significant toxicity. Well, IL
Philip Hemme: 2,
[00:19:05] Manufacturing cost
Philip Hemme: I, I worked a bit with molecular partners. Oh, right. Between LaBiotic and, and FlintBio. And we had a, we were looking to a program on IL 2 and so I look, and I saw a lot of IL 2 programs.
didn’t work for toxicity. I guess it’s a, it’s a different, but there’s definitely a lot of toxicity involved as well. That’s sounds, sounds, sounds, sounds really good. So I guess I wonder, do you have like, I mean, all of this sounds good on decreasing the cost of manufacturing and improving the, the speed on the manufacturing.
Do you have like a, or would you like estimate number? I mean, are you cutting the cost by whatever? 10%, 50%, what’s the, like, what’s the estimate?
Harpreet Singh: So we have not disclosed yet our cost of goods, but I can give you some kind of qualitative measures that I think will give you and your readers your listeners, a A view that this is a significant reduction in cost and time.
So typically TCRT and TIL, manufacturing is done at a range of 14 to 21 days. And so having these T cells in culture for such a long time has an advantage. You can grow them to very large numbers, but comes also with very big disadvantages. And that’s really that this is more error prone. Your manufacturing success rate.
Maybe lower your cost of goods because this manual labor involved increased dramatically. So we’ve cut this actually to a third or a half considering which metric you look at. So that’s a significant reduction. But it has two other advantages. The manufacturing success rate goes up. We’re actually striving for more than 95 percent and we’re already there now at phase one.
So there’s a good chance that we would actually be well above this even in a commercial setting. So it depends on which of these manufacturing sort of things to look at. But it’s spanning from 83 percent to 95%. I can tell you 83 or 85%. It’s actually not good enough because it creates a lot of nuisance for physicians and patients to kind of want to be above 50%.
So above 90 percent is what’s been typically desired. Our ambition is to be above 95%. That’s a metric for the achieve, right? And that’s important, not us, not just to reducing costs of goods. It’s really also important for patients and physicians, right? Not make them undergo that. So look aphoresis, our aphoresis process twice, right?
Philip Hemme: And I guess you will see it also and you can make a result, you will have better response rate and better.
Harpreet Singh: Yes, and that’s the other aspect actually in enhancement of the quality of the T cells. So we actually figured out that we can still get a very high number of T cells if we cause them only seven days.
So half or a third of what others have done in TCRT, so still high numbers, but actually now with that reduced manufacturing time. These are so called younger T cells, immunologists talk about effective memory and terminal differentiated and naive T cells, and in our setup, the fraction of naive and effective memory T cells is very high, and that’s typically associated with better engraftment of the T cells, better persistence, better tumor infiltration, and this translates into better and deeper responses and ultimately, hopefully, better overall survival.
So this is where we have actually. use manufacturing to really enhance the product to the benefit of the patients.
Philip Hemme: Yeah, that’s, that’s it makes me think about, I mean, the importance of, of manufacturing in cell and gene therapy in general, but I think it was always pretty clear that it was important, but I feel like in the recent few years, it was even clearer and that could really differentiate on the manufacturing as well.
I think I, I remember, one, one result from selectors, I think, and they, They really, they showed that in the manufacturing, I don’t remember the exact number, but they could show like a significant activity difference in T cell with the same like editing, but just from a manufacturing process showing how important it was.
I mean, that’s, yeah, I guess, I mean, it’s good for what you, what you.
Harpreet Singh: Well, the cell therapy field really has, has come along quite a lot. I mean, there’s been two movements. I think there has been increasing skepticism, particularly with investors on. The commercial viability of cell therapy because of the original issues that we’ve seen, but there have been also enormous developments, particularly in the manufacturing of cell therapy and advancements that we could actually also piggyback on and, and further advance, right?
So the shortening of the manufacturing, the increase of the manufacturing success rate, the quality of the T cells, also the safety that we have with our IMA203, which is a CD8 only cell therapy. product and does not have that very high degree of CRS that’s seen also in some CAR T approaches and eventually, obviously, the efficacy.
So, our view is that, so if we make our patients jump through the hoops of cell therapies, which is obviously more tedious than having a simple off the shelf drug like our Bi Specifics, right? We need to offer these patients something. and return that really is very meaningful or even transformative, right?
And so a high response rate, long duration of response extension that’s meaningful on progression free survival and eventually the gold standard overall survival, all of that needs to be way beyond what actually typical, therapies offer. And we’ve set ourselves very high bars right from the start.
So long before we actually started cell therapy, our chief medical officer, Cedric Britton, who came into the company from GSK, where he was the head of cell therapy, previously was actually the first R& D employee at, at Biontics, a very experienced person and a fantastic person as well. Cedric said right from the start, Harpreet, we’re only going to start this if we have at least 40 percent response rate.
That’s a very high bar and last line solid cancer. But we determined that this bar is relevant and necessary and even critical to make this not just medically meaningful, but also commercially viable. And commercially viable means we want to really be able to deliver this to as many patients as possible in a sustainable fashion.
Right. And so that, that’s what commercial viable needs for us.
Philip Hemme: Yeah, I mean that’s what, that’s what the Kim showed as well. I think the revenues are, I mean, I talked with someone who was the head of Celgene at Novartis Univers. He was in charge of, of the commercialization of, of Kim. I said he got some gray hairs from that , and it was really like tough.
[00:25:44] Commercialization
Philip Hemme: But at some point, I think, I don’t remember the, the revenue metrics, but I think was, what is it, half a billion a year now on the waters. It’s not in the blog poster scene, but it’s still like, pretty high. I mean, they showed that this commercially was, was viable. Like what’s like, yeah, I mean, I, I, it makes me also think about the second thing was on, on what you said, like there’s quite a lot of skepticism in, in self therapy and I, I see that.
And I mean, I see even like some of the valuations of self therapy companies are like trading half the cash or something. And it’s like. You’re pretty crazy,
Harpreet Singh: but what do you think of that skepticism? Well, it matters so much whether you get it right. This is true for every type of drug, right? But for cell therapy, you have relatively high cost of goods, right?
And so you have to, as I mentioned, give something back in return that is so mind blowing for physicians, patients, for payers, that, that, that the existence of cell therapy and the application is justified, right? And so what patients love in cell therapy is That this is one and done. I mean, imagine you’re like 200 miles from a large academic centers.
You don’t want to go back there like every third week or like in the case of IMTEX every week. Which is pretty tedious. So they, they love the one and done the, the single application, although it’s a tedious application, right? Part, but then it’s also to stay close to the center of the brain, but it’s one thing.
And, and, and the other part is obviously the efficacy, right? And, and what’s something that’s, I think, been under emphasized is deep responses. So a lot of these biologics, that are being developed exert a good amount of tumor control, which can then actually translate into a nice survival benefit. But actually shrinking tumors really matters.
I mean, our patients are coming in with more than 100 millimeters of some of target lesions. So that’s the kind of total diameter and that’s just the target lesions that are measured by the urologist. If you add the non targeted lesions, some of our patients have 200, 300 millimeters. So this is like a grapefruit and up to, in some extreme cases, a basketball of a tumor.
Those large tumors really have a significant impact on quality of life. These patients and their physicians are seeking drugs that are dramatically shrinking tumors. And that’s something that cell therapy is particularly good at. And it acts very fast. We’ve seen some of these very large tumors shrink within a few weeks, substantially then deepening over time.
And over months, and even beyond a year and longer, and giving a kind of substantial relief to these patients. We recently had a mucosal melanoma patient with a large tumor in the face, sitting basically in the nose, and sort of saw a near, near to complete response. And this patient now can exercise again, can work again, can actually smell again, and thinks this is a miracle.
And to some extent it is, right? And so physician and patient are enthusiastic about. The impact on quality of life and that’s, it’s to be added. This is where cell therapy offers something unique. So cell therapies that are as powerful as C19 and BCMA CAR T therapies or as our PRANE therapies, this, these deep lasting responses that really make this tumor shrink so substantially that, that has a meaningful impact on the quality of life.
[00:29:11] Valuations in Gene Therapy
Philip Hemme: I mean, it’s impressive results like, and also, I mean, if I turn around what you just said, also, you mean in the self therapy space, you have to be. As excellent you will have a bucket of people like on the top and then maybe a bucket of like you have basically a gap between the more excellent and the less excellent or is that is that I mean I’m not paraphrasing what you’re saying but the way it’s it seems a bit the case from the evaluations you have one at the top of pretty like fair evaluations and similar to what was before I mean still crisis mode and this lower but some other like bottom is really low.
Like, I don’t know. I mean, just,
Harpreet Singh: well, valuations and market capitalizations are somehow subjective. I would argue that the way they’re determined, maybe not an exact science, right? So that multiple movements, for sure. Sometimes you think that actually a word that’s spoken by the Federal Reserve Bank of the US has more impact right on our space than, than the actual data.
But that doesn’t, this is secondary, right? So I mean, I would always argue that, and certainly also at this moment, that given what we are showing, Immatics is obviously kind of undervalued, but some people think this is a decent value. So there’s a continuum in the perception on value. I think people are clearly recognizing that Immatics has a lot to offer.
It is outstanding results that have really surprised ourselves, to be honest. And self therapy, but it’s also the prospect that we are developing bi specific, so true off the shelf biologics that can be deployed into not just the academic centers, but also into the community setting and that can be actually deployed and, and manufactured and, and, generated and delivered to patients in the same way.
as antibody based biologics can. And so this prospect of Immatics having a very good results in our cell therapy, and now sort of operating also with a second generation biologics and platform is actually, I think, very promising also to investors and is, is, is really appreciated. If you look at the cap table of Immatics, so the kind of top 10 shareholder list which is public information, you’ll see.
relevant names, such as Perceptive Advisors, T. Rowe Price, RTW, Baker Brothers, Wellington Management in Boston. But what I like about these, these shareholders is that they’re really thinking long term. They see the big picture and I’m delighted and pleased and we feel privileged to have shelters like those on our side, obviously complemented by our very strong German shelter place like Divini and Atos and others who have been in the company in the private setting right from the start and have been Loyal and big believers right from the start.
Philip Hemme: Yeah, I would say. On the, on the, I want to make a quick comment on the results, but even Apex, Jacob Plath, who I follow quite a lot for oncology things. I’ve rarely seen him so enthusiastic and so positive about like results and you’re like, oh, Immatics and PRAME successes. Unity is really like. I guess, I don’t know, quite neutral which was, I mean, which I guess I will link also to the articles, I think, if people want to, to read, which I guess for you guys must be also quite a good recognition.
Well, we
Harpreet Singh: were actually almost overwhelmed by the response. We had decided to release our data as part of a quarterly. Yeah. Update prior to ASCO. So it wasn’t even like a proper medical conference release and our clinical team was overwhelmed by actually a request to meet by investigators at the last ASCO meeting based on this data and the data that we’ve also released sort of at the, at the SMR meeting last year.
And so. That is something actually very meaningful, more than, to be honest, kind of movements of the share price that, that physicians are really recognizing the value that we could deliver to cutaneous and uveal melanoma patients. And so I’m delighted about that interest. Yeah.
[00:33:17] Fundraising with Dievini and Struengmann
Philip Hemme: That’s amazing. Maybe just to, to finish or to finish on the, on the financial side of it, what’s also.
I mean, you, you have a, I mean, a few things, but first on, on Divini, yeah, that’s interesting. That’s very interesting because you’re backed by those, by the same, by the same investor of Kurovac and you are basically in the same city and tubing and how it is you started there. And that’s the SAP founders, Dietmar Hopf holding, and then Athos is the Strongman Brothers.
Correct. Just also for context. I didn’t know both of them invested actually. Yes,
Harpreet Singh: actually. No, this, we, we have few privilege that, that both of these, billionaire families actually committed to Maddox early on. And Dietmar Hopf and Divini, that’s his family office, sort of Got in in 2007, so this was pretty early on when we were private and then Andreas and Thomas Strungmann joined in 2010, if I recall that correctly.
I really maintained their position, have been very loyal supporters. Also, through ups and downs so without these, these families, in particular, Dietmar Halbwey and Maddox wouldn’t exist. And I just had dinner with Thomas Strungmann last night. And so this, we, we feel privileged by this kind of tremendous support that these two families alongside other investors, like also MIG here in Munich and Grazie Equity in Stuttgart have actually provided.
They were instrumental for our success and the foundation that we’ve created then with the IPO sort of adding now this, this already very good list with. Really long term thinking often long only investors, including specialists and mutual funds is very meaningful to us.
Philip Hemme: That’s amazing. I think for, for the, for the audience as well, we had actually someone who connected us again, but Ingmar from the founder of Kervak, and we went quite a lot in, quite in details into the early stage and how he actually met.
But it was, it was Divini, how they meant to, to, to invest. And that was pretty like for, for context. And we talked quite a lot about also like quite specific to the German dark or German speaking market that you have this kind of like two, three. Sam in the office is super successful in biotech or tech and reinvesting in biotech, super long term hundred plus millions of euro dollars.
And also super successful financially, but also. Cool. patient and have amazing innovations in the market. I mean, biotech is the talks by itself. So I think it’s, I mean, people are curious, they can, they can, they can check this out and also people are curious also about, about the Baker brothers and the other long term investors you mentioned, I think that’s also really impressive list of investors.
And we talked with, we had Edwin from Hublinks on the show and we did like I mean, 10 minutes on the Baker Brothers and he said quite openly, especially not that many people talk, there’s not that much public about them. So it was, it was really interesting.
Harpreet Singh: Well I listened to that, that podcast action preparation of our meeting and I can tell you everything he was referring to, to Baker Brothers, but also those type of investors that think like the Baker Brothers was absolutely accurate.
So as I mentioned, we feel privileged. to have such investors on our side and supporting us. And they are also very demanding in the sense that they really challenge what we do, which is exactly what I think good management teams need.
Philip Hemme: Yeah,
Harpreet Singh: no, that’s,
Philip Hemme: that’s great. Maybe to just a quick quote before moving to more personal notes on the, I’ve seen that you’re very busy, planning for the end of the year.
Can you elaborate a bit on this?
Harpreet Singh: Yes. So we had a very exciting first half of this year with CELT RB data that we kind of pushed out, but the second half will be even more exciting. Because we have actually up to four data updates upcoming, so there will be two data updates around our cell therapy. We have two different generations called IMA203 and IMA203 CD8, where we will provide more data than we’ve done before.
But what’s particularly exciting is actually that we’re opening up a new chapter now in the second half. That will be the first clinical data sets. So, as I mentioned before, we are maybe unique as a biotech company and in the TCR space that we have decided to develop both of these TCR modalities, not just cell therapies, but also TCR biocifics, such as our peer immunocore does.
And we have two of these. biosephics in our clinical pipeline, more in the preclinical pipeline to follow. The first one is called IMA 401, which is direct against MAI J4, MAI J8, so different target, not PRAME. It’s not the MAI J4 peptide that everyone is going after. It’s actually a more proprietary version of a MAI J4 peptide.
And the second one is PRAME, again, the same peptide as we are sort of using for IMA 203, and we’re expecting two data readouts. For these two bi specifics. Now what’s special and differentiated on our bi specific platform is that these are second generation half life extended bi specific. So like the first generation bites by Amgen, actually the original company was Micromet, and then or the first generation Imtax by Immunocore have a pretty short half life, which means that you either have to continuously infuse them, like the first generation bites, Or have to give them a weekly doses and even the weekly dosing.
There’s a question, maybe is this a slightly underdosed, right? Depends on the PK. Our goal was to actually offer something that can be given in a kind of convenient fashion for the patient. So every two weeks is something we’ve already established, but even every three weeks is something that we’re going for.
So that’s also more compatible with. Schedules of checkpoint inhibitors and from combination settings, but at the same time not make any compromise on efficacy. So to really develop this like a classical antibody. Where you, with even every two or three weeks schedule, have a kind of steady state PK, so continuous pressure of a relevant dose of the drug in the bloodstream and the tumor mark environment on the tumor.
That’s sort of how we develop our bio siphics. And so Carson Reinhardt, our chief development officer, who came from Micromet, has been really, together with the team, pioneering this platform, Adamatics, and, and developed a, I would say perfect molecule. I’m maybe slightly biased, but it is truly perfect.
It’s perfect molecule, a perfect bicivic format, which we call T CIR. And all our bicivics are based on this, on this format. And we believe that these could be differentiated. Obviously, we have not released any data that in, that they could go beyond tumor control. So what we’ve seen with first gen.
biocivics that they often were more focused on stabilization of disease. That can be meaningful, right, as we’ve seen in, in Yubing melanoma with GP100 to extend survival. But, but our ambition is to also see responses, our ambition is to kind of show differentiated patterns where we potentially could see also deep response, which have been rare, and filtration biocivics or deepening over time.
As I mentioned, reduction of tumor mass matters. Obviously, overall survival is the gold standard, but we would like to also sort of Really establish the best possible impact on quality of life for these patients on this journey of kind of having hopefully a very strong extended life span. That’s good.
We’ll keep my
Philip Hemme: fingers crossed for the results.
Harpreet Singh: Stay tuned. Yeah.
Philip Hemme: Maybe that’s a good, a good segue or so to, to switch to a more. To a more personal, personal background. I’m wondering, first thing, I mean, it’s quite a personal question, but you’re wearing a sick turban. Correct, yes. Which, which is very, very uncommon in the, in the biotech, let’s say in, at least I don’t know anyone else in Europe.
Even in the US, at least, I don’t know many. I’m wondering how, like, like, I
Harpreet Singh: don’t,
Philip Hemme: I don’t
Harpreet Singh: even know how to really approach it. That’s all right. I think I know where you’re going to. So yes, it does. So I’m, I’m obviously of Indian heritage, which is, which is I think pretty obvious for those that are sort of looking at the video podcasts of this part.
So I’m wearing a turban and a beard, which is common for, for, for Sikhs. I was born, raised in Germany, but my parents actually immigrated to. Germany in the early seventies and so that’s been determining my heritage, but also my identity. So it’s not something I’ve chosen to be a Sikh. When you’re born into a religion, I think this actually applies to most people, right?
But it’s become part of my identity and the impact is certainly that it makes you stand out, right? And you can stand out in a positive or a negative way. And it emphasizes, so if you do this negative way, it actually emphasizes negative impact. I believe it’s been rather positive, for me. And if you do something good and something that’s impactful, people certainly are more likely to remember you.
So I would say that’s been a, that’s been a positive impact. I’m proud to be a Sikh and, but it’s not something that’s determining actually my work or the way how we behave with each other. We have a very diverse team at Immatics. We believe strongly in diversity of mindsets. So it’s, it’s less important to me, although I know it is almost politically incorrect to say this, it’s less important to me.
What skin color somebody has or whether somebody has a turban or not, what’s important is how people actually think and think differently. I think gender diversity really matters because we know that, that human beings that are male or female or are sort of diverse think differently. And so we strive for better gender diversity.
We still have some gap, particularly in the senior management to kind of get there. That’s, there’s a lot of awareness with us. But that kind of diversity of mindset is something that we strive for and that we see actually really makes a difference in finding the best results, the best solutions, challenge each other respectfully as part of our values and really looking at things from different angles.
Thank you.
Philip Hemme: I wasn’t, like, it’s, it’s a bit I wasn’t sure how to really ask it. Oh, fine. Yeah.
[00:43:46] Sikh origin
Philip Hemme: It reminds me, we had Navid from, from Novo, like two or three episodes ago. And one thing that he said, I think it’s, it’s, it’s similar. He really embraced diversity for him personally, but also for the people he worked with.
But he also said that there are some challenges earlier in his career. Can you maybe touch on those? If, if you had something, let’s say, specifically to, let’s say, European biotech, or if you had some challenges?
Harpreet Singh: No, no, actually, I have to say not at all. So I have never, I mean, when you work in biotech, right, this is a largely academic setting.
These are all people that have gone through college and many of them had PhDs. And these are educated people that are often having, I think, a kind of more, Open minded mindset. So I have not occurred any negatives nor any type of racism throughout my career, I have to say that. So I’ve been very blessed and fortunate, but it also depends on your own attitude, right?
If you’re looking for that all over the place, you’re also more likely to kind of observe this, and I have a very positive attitude. towards these kinds of things. So, so I have been blessed sort of not to be at any disadvantage because of that. Yeah.
Philip Hemme: I think it’s a powerful message as well for, I mean, if in our audience, we have people from, or whatever, less represented gender or races, I think it’s a powerful message as well.
And you’re powerful, like role model that’s showing that, you can embrace it, it can be positive, don’t have negative experience. I quite like this, like mindset message, especially, I mean, Europe is quite immigration friendly, but still like less than some other countries, let’s say, compared to the U. S.
So I think it’s, yeah, I, I like that, I like that a lot.
Harpreet Singh: And we have pictures of the, of our AMADEC team. So we have like almost 200 employees now in, in the U. S. Most of them based in Houston, Texas. Houston is a melting pot, similar to Manhattan. Our people coming from all over places. So the diversity is clearly palpable and visible.
Transcribed Right. But you also have that diversity, as I mentioned, of mindsets from people that come from academia, from pharma, from biotech, from different areas in the U. S. that are culturally different. And that influences the way how you think. And that’s exactly what we want. So certainly we see. Even more of that diversity in, in, in the US, Europe and Germany are a little more homogenous, but this is changing as well.
And so if you now, nowadays, we’re currently in Munich, if you nowadays go to a restaurant in Munich, actually the chances that you hear someone speaking English at the next table is more than 50%.
Philip Hemme: It’s pretty high, actually. I always saw Munich a bit less international than Berlin, where I’m based, but it’s actually, I feel like, very similar.
Yes, I mean, it’s probably the highest in Germany.
Harpreet Singh: And it’s an excellent basis. But so Munich, we have an office the kind of headquarters of the companies in Tübingen, which is a typical academic city, university based city where we have an excellent access to actually, talent there from the university and the Max Planck Institute actually.
So you opened a new building as well. We did actually. So expanding our team. And so currently the team, because there was not enough space was spread on different buildings in different parts of Tübingen. And now we’re bringing everybody together on one campus called Campus Sternwarte. Sternwarte stands for observatory because there’s a historic star observatory there.
We just opened this actually. A few weeks ago, I had the prime minister and the minister president of Baden Württemberg sort of helping us opening and the mayor of Tübingen was a fun event actually. I’m not, I mean, there are different CEOs and founders. Some people are very fond of buildings. I’m not very interested in buildings.
That’s brick and mortar for me. But what I’ve recognized with our new building is that it really provides a very attractive new home. And that matters kind of on how people act and come together, particularly post COVID. It’s been become more difficult to bring people together. We don’t force this to kind of for people to come in every day, but we want them to come in regularly.
Obviously in the lab, they have to come in every day or in our manufacturing. So really creating a space where they come together and actually enjoy working together and can mingle and have a cup of coffee and have these informal interactions. The fun interactions is so important. but also for the work that we’re achieving here and that we’re trying to achieve for the benefits of cancer patients.
Philip Hemme: in many ways, but also for work.
Harpreet Singh: Look, if you think about the history of mankind, 99. 99 percent we’ve been sitting around a fire and attracted socially. Nobody’s taught us to actually do this over teams or zoom. So that’s a very, very
Philip Hemme: good thing on zoom. That’s a good one.
[00:48:31] Expanding to the US
Philip Hemme: Maybe on the, on the, on the, actually what you mentioned on the geography, but how like you were first, one thing that I always liked about, about you guys are very early on going to us and.
Houston vs. MD Anderson, I think was 20, was it 2015 already? Correct. 2015. Yes. Now also if Tubing and Munich, I’m curious, can you touch base on this? I’m like, why you went so early to US? Why opening this Munich office if you already have a German office?
Harpreet Singh: No, absolutely. So the drive towards sort of moving into the S was very practically driven.
At this time we were diversifying to other therapeutic areas. One of these therapeutic areas, so really leveraging our specific ability to discover targets in TCRs was adoptive cell therapy. We did not have the expertise, nor was the regulatory 2015 actually already ready to kind of embark on new targets.
So there was some hesitance with regulatory. Yeah. And we were the only agencies in Germany at that time to really start phase one trials, safety trials with very new targets. And so we needed the expertise and the right environment. And so we explored partnerships in the U S that would allow us to really jumpstart, propel us forward.
We had discussions with multiple, actually, larger academic institutions. Who had experience already in cell therapy and the one that convinced us immediately was M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Actually multiple investigators, Patrick Hugh was one of the drivers at this point, Cassian Yee, Lawrence Cooper, but also the president of M.
D. Anderson, Rhonda Pinion at that time, who said, okay, we really would like to kind of join forces with you. Let’s think beyond a typical collaboration. Let’s think about a joint venture. But the condition is that you come over. And if you come over, we’ll give you office space, we’ll give you lab space, we’ll even help you finding GMP space.
We have a wonderful collaboration with UT Health. That’s a sister institution. Of MD Anderson that have supplied us now for years with extremely high quality, very cost efficient GMP space that was really relevant. And we even got a kind of relevant grant from the state of Texas to kind of start this there.
So this was the ideal setup. What we’ve recognized to, to really jumpstart CELTR. Stefan Walter, our CO, was the first one to kind of move over. I moved over a year later with my family, lived there a few, few, few years in Houston, Texas. And this was kind of a great start of our cell therapy journey. I mean, while we’ve recognized actually some other merits of the Houston, Texas area, that’s access to talent.
So while we see companies struggling with access to talent at the West and the East Coast, but also this talent struggling with the high cost of living, Houston offers a very attractive cost of living, but also sort of has much less. competing biotech around us for talent. And we have particularly well educated and trained people in the areas of cell therapy, manufacturing, QA, QC.
So exactly what we need. Actually, we have just now set up a large hundred thousand square feet R& D and GMP manufacturing facility is not being formally opened. We’ll do this sort of early next year. So then there will be another opening, but it’s already partially operational. And it allows us to now not just operate all the R& D for phase one or phase two studies, but also actually manufacture.
The GMP material for phase two, phase three studies, and for the initial market supply in the first year. So we have really decided to take this to the market. We want to sort of take cutaneous melanoma, at least, if not all severe melanoma, to the market. And we all, and, and sort of, and for this we require our own fully controlled manufacturing facility and that’s what we’ve built.
Philip Hemme: I was wondering what’s you, because one of the thing I was wondering, obviously, I was in Boston two weeks ago. I was kind of comparing, okay, Boston, obviously hotspot and a lot of European biotechs would typically open in, whereas in Boston.
Harpreet Singh: Oh, Boston is, Boston is beautiful. And if you are like our partner, Moderna very well established, I think you have little trouble to finding access of the access to talent, but, but from a, from a, Sort of early biotech development perspective, Houston is the ideal place.
Yeah. Yeah.
Philip Hemme: I would love to talk about the Moderna deal as well. I think it’s, it was one of the also trigger for, for, for me to reach out as well. And I love, I love Stefan and Moderna actually, so, but yeah, just, I mean, people can, can look at it. I will, I will link as well. I think it’s an amazing deal and two amazing companies.
So
Harpreet Singh: I’ll just say one sentence because we have lack of time and this is that Moderna Animatics Have a joint vision. How we can not just help each other in our respective platforms, that’s part of the deal, but also really develop something that goes beyond how we apply biospecifics, right, up to potentially multiplexing biospecifics with a fantastic mRNA map from, and that is what both these companies think could be entirely disruptive to the solid cancer field.
It’s a long term vision. It’s one that I think we can accomplish by joining, so how we’ve joined our firepower and our competencies, but it’s a fantastic collaboration.
Philip Hemme: Yeah, I’m looking forward to see what comes out of it.
[00:53:59] PhD to CEO
Philip Hemme: Maybe a last, last question, but personal before going into the last quickfire.
You shared quite a lot of, in an interview on La Biotech actually from a few years ago and I would link to the article you shared quite a lot on like your challenges for moving from academia to founding the company, you on like the early days. One thing that I’m curious about and what’s quite like, striking and quite unique about you as well is that you, You started, I think you were a CEO.
So at least there was a, let’s say experienced CEO who came in. I don’t know if Paul was at the time. Okay. And actually it’s fun. Yeah. Anyway, it was off. I have to say this funny story, but in 2014, I was in, I was in San Diego at bio and then I was talking randomly to Paul, like I didn’t know him. And then I was, I was studying in Boston.
I was like, big eyes, everything shining. Oh yeah. I meet a lot of like. Companies have raised more than a hundred million, and he was like, yeah, me too. And I was like, okay. So that was funny to meet him at that time. But anyway, that’s a bit of a sideline, but then what’s interesting with you is that you then you took the CEO role and now you’re the CEO.
Can you talk a bit about there on, like, what your experience was like transitioning from being founder and taking CEO afterwards? Sounds a bit like the, whatever, Larry Page, Google story of like, successfully, I don’t know.
Harpreet Singh: Well, these comparisons may not be appropriate, but, but it, it’s been a, it’s been a really fun journey with lots of challenges.
I mean, it, the Immatics story started with really a conviction that how can we translate it. The findings that people like Tony Weinschenk a co founder who’s created our express and platform and me and others could translate this into patient benefit. Right. And we then found out quickly that actually creating a company is the most effective and efficient way to do that because there is a different capital requirements and resource requirements.
If you want to do proper, what we regard as proper drug development. So we created Maddox. We recognize that we are scientists with very little background in, in kind of how to run a business. And so I became chief scientific officer, but it was clear, clear, right from the start to investors that I have no ambition in the beginning to become the CEO The company and so help the board, the private board that time to bring in our first CEO, Paul Heim, which was exactly the right choice.
Paul came with a commercial background, but also clearly understood the biotech world already very, very well. Given his kind of experiences. And so this was the ideal start for us. At a later time when, when we created our cell therapy and I moved to the U S with my family to kind of build that cell therapy franchise, I became CEO of the Immatics subsidiary, Immatics US.
And so that was for me, a first glimpse into kind of a broader role and to run beyond the R and D also other aspects. Including sort of having discussions with investors and, and being involved in business development. And so that was something I found very exciting that, that broadening of my horizon.
And later in 2019, I returned to Germany, became the group’s CEO. And since then, I’m enjoying. This, this part of the, the job and the commitment I have to the company enormously.
Philip Hemme: It’s amazing, yeah. I guess, I mean, we talked with Dominic yesterday and like there was this like, you mentioned a lot on like, this personal fit is the most important, like you need to enjoy yourself.
It’s not just CEO for being CEO, you need to enjoy, you need to fit for the company. Look,
Harpreet Singh: we have a very short lifespan on this planet that’s available to us, and when you operate. In cancer, and you see how patients die and how quickly they die, or anybody who is lost. Someone that’s very close to you, value life, but also means that you actually value what you can achieve every day.
And, but while we’re doing this and doing something meaningful, we really want to also have a blast, right? And so the fun, the fun part and the enjoyment is absolutely critical. But for what’s so central for me, it’s the kind of purpose of the company. We’ve declared this right up front is to really make a meaningful impact on the lives of cancer patients.
Everyday matters that we can. Do this. And so for me right now, the most exciting part being a CEO of Immatics is to actually help not taking this into what we call the commercial setting. And we think what commercial means actually goes back to our purpose because commercial means that you take this.
Let’s do that. Let’s let me say this a little more sort of drastic. You take this from the ivory tower of academia where we run clinical trials that are available for a very small subset of patients. We take this into reality to patients, to larger number of patients, to larger geographies. That’s what matters, right?
That’s our purpose. That’s also my personal professional purpose to do this. And so recently hired a head of commercial Jason Brown, who’s actually done commercialization at Kite Pharma, one of the most successful companies in cell therapy. He’s setting now up kind of the first, very first set up of our core of the commercial team and, and he’s bringing in this, this commercial mindset into the company.
Philip Hemme: Amazing.
[00:59:21] Quickfire
Philip Hemme: I mean, To finish, so I mentioned this before, but as this is episode 20, I want to try something new. So you’re the guinea pig, so a quick, a quick fire. So just basically very like straightforward question. If you can just answer yes, no, or within a, within one sentence. Okay. And we test it out.
Let’s see how it goes. Well, shoot. What’s your, what’s your favorite biotech book?
Harpreet Singh: It’s not a biotech book. It’s actually a management book. And I’m reading right now. It’s The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. I can recommend it to every CO and leader. What’s the biotech
Philip Hemme: content of news
Harpreet Singh: you consume the most?
I love to read diverse newsletters, podcasts. One of them I like is Endpoints. John Carroll’s a fun guy.
Philip Hemme: Are you investing in other biotechs?
Harpreet Singh: I actually do, although not directly, but Through a friend, a fund, Grazie Equity, one of our shelters, they have a fantastic fund, they’re investing in, in small tech and also some of them biotech.
Do you meditate? I don’t, but there are other ways to actually bring yourself into good mental states. Such as? Breathing. And really actually sort of giving you the time to think about what you’re doing.
Philip Hemme: What’s your favorite biohack?
Harpreet Singh: Biohack? Oh dear. I don’t think there are hacks. I don’t think that there are too many shortcuts in drug development. There are a lot of parent hacks I know about, but
Philip Hemme: Biohack is a very tech, tech term. But let’s say, well, usually men tend to like Optimizing your own body can be short term, can be shortcuts, but can be also long term, sleep or exercise or whatever.
Harpreet Singh: Well, sleep exercise is clear. Something that people underestimate is actually what you eat and how much that actually impacts your health. We are taking too much sugar and bread and all that kind of stuff into us and that causes chronic inflammation and that’s not good for the brain or the body.
Really kind of moving towards a low carb, more ketogenic, and nutrition is something that my wife believes very much in and she’s driven me into that kind of thinking. Yeah. Enormous impact. I can tell that.
Philip Hemme: Very good biohack. So you mentioned your family. Do you have children? I have a son. Yes.
He’s nine years old.
Harpreet Singh: Do you prefer train or plane? I’m, I prefer plane in Germany. The train system unfortunately doesn’t work anymore and I have to travel to the US very frequently. That is not really possible with the train
Philip Hemme: explain. And the last one, who is your, one of your biotech heroes?
Harpreet Singh: Oh, there are, there are lots, but, I have to really think back.
I mean, I, I, I’m thinking about the tech heroes like Steve Jobs and others who have done this. Yeah.
So one is actually Thomas Vittman, who has actually passed away a few years ago. He was Co founder of Actelion and was actually the very first chairman of Immatics. And so he came in as a chairman, yes, and also as a entrepreneur and taught me a lot of things in the beginning, a great human being and, and such a loss for the world.
[01:03:01] Thanks for listening
Philip Hemme: That’s, I think it went very well. Thanks a lot. I think that’s, that’s wrapping up everything. Amazing conversation. I really loved it.
Harpreet Singh: Philippe, such a pleasure. Thank you very much for having you, having me on your show. And you can always do this again. If you like. Sounds good. Thank you.
Philip Hemme: Thanks for listening to the end.
I’m impressed by Harpreet’s stories, both before building Immatics and what he has built with the company. I’m also impressed, I have to say, beyond my expectations. Of how solid the pipeline platform and the company is. And I’m really looking forward to what’s coming in the next few years. If you also enjoyed this episode, please hit the like, follow, review button.
Any of these actions would help us a lot. And help more people access the podcast. I would be also curious to hear what you think. So if you can, leave a comment in whatever platform you’re on. Or shoot me an email at philip at flot. io. Alright, see you in the next episode.
