We’re online 🇸🇪 with Mathias Uhlen, one of the best entrepreneurial scientists in Europe. We talked about the entrepreneurial mindset in academia. We also talked about AI for biology and why he doesn’t believe in the current anti-ageing drugs.

⭐️ ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Looking at Mathias Uhlen’s career, you can only feel impressed. He has co-founded or invested in 26 startups while having published over 800 papers, and creating the Human Protein Atlas, one of the most successful biology projects ever. He was also the Founding Director of Science for Life Laboratory (SciLifeLab), a national project with the Swedish government to help technology and data-driven research in support of European life science research.

🔗 LINKS MENTIONED

• New innovation award celebrates entrepreneurs who have taken on big challenges: https://www.kth.se/en/om/nyheter/centrala-nyheter/nytt-innovationspris-hyllar-entreprenoren-som-tar-sig-an-stora-utmaningar-1.1049278
• Jens Nielsen, BII | How to make translation of life science research work | E12: https://flot.bio/episode/jens-nielsen-translation-of-life-science-research/

Transcript

[00:00:00] Intro

Philip Hemme: Where does this entrepreneurial mindset came from for you? 

Mathias Uhlen: It’s a good question. I still consider myself as a scientist and driven by curiosity and trying to achieve things. But I’ve always been interested in going from research discovery and then do it useful things. We’re now entering the next 10 years and what we would like to do is to use this data to try to predict and model the human cell and the human tissues.

I know this is very difficult, but obviously there’s so much happening with AI now. It’s interesting with aging because we know so much about biology. We know so much about medicine, but we don’t, and maybe I’m controversial to say, we don’t actually know what aging is. 

Philip Hemme: So you’re not big fan of all the anti aging therapeutics approach?

No, I’m not. No, I’m not. Welcome to a new episode. I’m your host Philippe and on this show I’m interviewing the best Europeans in biotech to help you grow. Most biotech innovations were initiated in academia. One of the best entrepreneur scientists in Europe is Matthias Uhlen. He has co founded or invested in over 26 startups, while having published 800 papers and having created the Human Protein Atlas, which is one of the most successful biology projects.

So I caught up with him online in Stockholm. I’ve known him by name for several years and it was great to finally talk live. We talked about the entrepreneurial mindset in academia. We also talked about why he’s so bullish on AI for biology and why on the flip side he doesn’t believe in anti aging drugs.

So here’s my conversation with Mathias and please hit the like follow button if you’re enjoying it. All right welcome to the show Mathias. Thank you very much it’s nice to be here. It’s very nice to make it happen. I want as a first topic to talk about the 20 plus startups you’ve co founded, which is a crazy number and general question.

[00:02:05] How Mathias Uhlen co-founded 26 startups

Philip Hemme: I’m wondering how, how you managed to co found so many, so many companies? 

Mathias Uhlen: Well, first of all, I should say that the protein Atlas program 20 years has generated a lot of ideas. And this is Despite the fact that actually the whole idea of the protein atlas is to be open access and so on, but actually to have all of this information also gives you good ideas about starting things.

And then I should say that we are, I, I am the base, my base is in Sweden and we have a very special, way in Sweden for startups. It’s called the teacher’s exception or the which means that we own our own inventions at the university. This means. And also, I should say, it’s rather non bureaucratic to start companies.

So you can do it sort of in a day. And you don’t have to have a lot of funding and, and professionals to do it. So this is one of the reasons that we have kind of started a company every year and it’s now, as you say, it’s 21, actually, that I have. Come from my group. Actually, that’s amazing. 

Philip Hemme: I was about to ask about the, I heard that Sweden was IP has really this, this, this exception.

What I’m also surprised at what I heard your conference at by Europe. I saw that you are investors. Also, you’re invested in many of the companies, which is also quite unusual, especially for academic, I mean, to be scientific co founder is like quite usual, but to be as an investor. So did it help you also to own the IP to get some more funds to then invest in these companies?

No, 

Mathias Uhlen: exactly. So one of the reasons why I did some exits early on when three of my companies went public, And, and when they went public, at least you can get some fun, some cash out of it. And then I use that cash actually to support very early startup companies with my own money. And, and in this way you know, you can actually avoid having venture capital.

And I, I must say in my experience, venture capital is, of course, very, very important when you want to go sort of the commercial way. But before you have created the value and the products and are ready for the, you know, crazy commercial world, it’s actually quite nice to avoid venture capital, I must say.

Philip Hemme: That’s a good That’s a good lesson there. You, I remember you said in your talk as well, if you want to race for VC, you need a very clear milestone, which was one of your lessons, which I guess correlated to what you just said as well. At the very beginning, you don’t have a clear milestone. So 

Mathias Uhlen: no, like, No, exactly.

And I think it’s, it’s very important that when you take in venture capital, you know exactly where, what are you going to do with that money? When are you going to do it? Will the money be enough to do it? And so on. And then deliver. It sounds easy, but it’s of course not easy.

Philip Hemme: Simple, but not easy. Exactly. I like that. And you, you, I mean, some of the companies you founded, at least the one that, that struck to my mind is Afibody when like alternative protein based in Sweden has really advanced. I saw Biotage, Atlas Antibodies. I mean, at least the three that, that’s kind of, some of them struck to me.

I don’t know what, yeah, what’s, or yeah, how you want to like, like spend on those or how, like 

Mathias Uhlen: what makes sense. Yeah, I could say a little bit about some of the companies then. So, so Biotage is a public company it’s on Nasdaq here in Sweden. It’s, it’s, it’s it’s, it’s more than a billion, million, billion dollar company actually now in, in, in, in, in Werf.

This started as with a technology from, from our group called Parasequencing. Then with that funding, we also expanded and so on. So this is now 25 years ago but we are very happy then to have sales all over the world. And, and, and so, there’s another company that you mentioned Afribody.

That is not public, but it is owned by the the famous Wallenberg Imperium, which is, and it is now about 70 people in the company and has done successful phase two and, and even phase three trials. But so this is, yeah, and we’re trying to have an alternative to antibodies for, for drug treatment and drug as drugs, you also mentioned.

And then we have another emberg sort of company called Atlas Antibodies. It’s a spin out from the protein atlas, which is the academic part. Where they are selling all the antibodies that we generated in the program. And this is a very successful company now, very profitable, and is. Selling hundreds and hundreds of vials with antibodies every day.

So it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s really quite nice. But then if I’m, I’m allowed to mention a fourth company, which I’m very excited about, that is a company that I co founded in South Korea. And it is on the Kostak, which is the stock market in South Korea. It’s a biotech company focusing on therapeutic antibodies, but also has its own program for CAR T treatments this treatments of, of immune cells.

And it’s also very successful and And is one of the few biotech companies on Kostak in South Korea, actually. 

Philip Hemme: How, how come that I remember this one also from your presentation and I was like, Oh, South Korea, I mean, it’s how, how come you, you were like involved in, in, I mean, geographically it’s a bit further from Sweden.

Mathias Uhlen: No. So when we started the protein Atlas program, the academic program to try to map all the human proteins. We decided to make antibodies to every human protein. And actually, in the end of the day, we we generated in house. 65, 000 antibodies and almost all of them were actually produced in South Korea.

So and so I was, I spent a lot of time in South Korea. I met with some brilliant people there and One of them, Jongsoo Lee, he founded this company then together with me and but I mean, he was the, he was the main founder and he has done some amazing stuff lately. We are in a, in collaboration with the Chinese company Henius we are in phase three for, for, for some cancer treatments and so on.

So, so, so and it’s very, I, I I, I just love the passion and the the the work ethics, all the people in South Korea, I must say it, it’s an amazing co company country to work with, actually. 

Philip Hemme: Awesome. Yeah. Awesome.

[00:10:55] Entrepreneurial mindset

Philip Hemme: Maybe switching a bit topic, the. I’m wondering where, where does this entrepreneurial mindset came from for you, like for the early days?

Mathias Uhlen: It’s, it’s a, it’s a good question. I mean, I still consider myself as a scientist and driven by curiosity and trying to, you know, achieve things. But I’ve always been interested in going from, you know, research, discovery, basic research, and then try to use, do it useful things. And I must say this has been.

All the way. And I, I should also say that my basic training is engineering and engineering, of course, is a little bit, applied in the, in a sense. So obviously that meant that I, I, But, but I don’t know, it just started, you know, my first, the piece, my PhD project was to clone protein A, which which is now used for purification of all the therapeutic antibodies.

So already as a PhD student, I started to, you know, file patents and so on. So it’s been with me my whole career, but it’s nothing that I planned, absolutely not. It, it, it just came naturally by, by just saying, this is very useful. Why don’t we try to you know, make it available for, for, for the world, basically.

Philip Hemme: I like that. It’s very obvious, I guess, in hindsight, it seems very obvious also that it worked, but it’s, it’s also not very common. I mean, this, this entrepreneurial mindset in academia and academia is. And I think especially in Europe, it’s quite rare slash quite missing, I think, even still today, it’s getting better, but it’s still 

Mathias Uhlen: No, and I agree.

And I think it’s for two reasons. One reason is, is that there is in many countries quite a lot of bureaucracy to go and start companies and, you know, and, and so on. Second, I think it’s not that easy, especially now, to get funding to, to do the, to, to form and start up and, and, and, and do conversations.

And, and thirdly, It takes a lot of time to be an academic so, you know, you don’t really have the time to, to do it. So, I think there is quite a lot of reasons for, for this. But I also, and, and obviously one of the big advantages in Sweden is that at least we don’t have the bureaucracy. And at least for myself, since I did some early exits, I could have money to support the early startups without to go to, to venture capital.

Philip Hemme: And the burglarcy, I guess you also mean the transfer of the IP. Et cetera. And not only the financial terms of IP, but also I always hear like it takes forever to spin out something from academia for academia. It takes for everyone to use to just get the IP signed and and et cetera. I guess that’s how can you explain on this?

No, no, no, 

Mathias Uhlen: but it is absolutely true. And, and, you know, I usually say then we have, so I have filed. About 100 patent families now, and I usually say that when you have, you’re ready with a publication, I could sort of send this to a patent attorney, and you can have a patent in a week. Or, I mean, not patent, a patent application, and file it and then you have protected your idea.

And all of this is actually, it sounds very easy, obviously it’s not that easy, but at least it’s held by the fact that it’s not a lot of bureaucracy here, here in, in, in Sweden. 

[00:15:10] Entrepreneurial scientist in Europe

Philip Hemme: What are the trade offs actually? Why are not more, especially European countries, like, mimicking the Swedish model? I think 

Mathias Uhlen: The trend is actually the opposite.

So we used to have the same rules in the whole of Scandinavia, but now both Denmark and Norway has the same rules as in the rest of Europe, and that is that universities own the invention. I think. I think the reason for this is that the politicians, feel that if something is invented in the university, it’s the university that should, you know, own it.

The problem with that of, of course, is that A lot of the funding to the universities are still external, and in Sweden, more or less, the universities doesn’t fund very much research. And I should say that when we have funding directly from the university or from the company, usually we don’t own the invention.

So obviously, So, so it’s but a lot of the funding in Swedish university are even for either from private foundations or they are from, from external, from, from the research foundations, the governmental foundations. Yeah. 

Philip Hemme: I have to say also that Jens Nilsson was, was on the show and I know him quite well.

And I remember he We, I was, I founded LaBiotique before, and I did, we did one of the listing, like the top 10 scientists entrepreneurs in Europe, and you were on the list, and Jens was also on the list. But Jens told me like, yeah, no, but Matthias is like way, way, way, very better than me. 

Mathias Uhlen: That actually is not true.

Jens is. You know, if this is a competition, I think that I’m actually second compared to Jens because he is, if you look at the bibliometry and, you know, h index and so on, he is he, he, he, he has beaten me, actually. So I return that. 

Philip Hemme: You return, okay. He will, he will be happy to, if he’s listening to it, he will be happy to hear it.

And 

Mathias Uhlen: he And as you know, Jens Nilsson is now setting up this bio, bio bio industry, bio innovation. Yeah, B I I B innovation. It’s, I think it should I think it should be a model for, for almost all countries in Europe. It’s just a fantastic achievement he’s doing. But now I’m, now I’m too nice to Jens.

So yeah. 

Philip Hemme: The Bioinnovation Institute, and we, that’s where we recorded in Copenhagen, actually, you know, for people curious to hear the episode, and I agree a hundred percent. It’s, it’s amazing. And especially, it’s especially amazing when you have 500 million. Euros or dollars backing from Novo to make the thing run and, and, and bring it out, which is, a challenge when they don’t have the financing.

Mathias Uhlen: It’s a lot of money to a fantastic leadership, that’s what I must say. That’s good. 

[00:18:43] Developing tools for research in biotech

Philip Hemme: On the, I want one last thing on the, on the company to start. One, one thing I was curious as well is that you worked or quite a lot of your research, I said, maybe it’s coming from your engineering background, but it’s, it’s quite a lot in tools as well.

As in, antibody tools, sequencing tools, alternative proteins, does it, did it also contribute and, and I, I’m seeing this parallel also in the U. S. with, let’s say, Bob Langer or Church or these kind of guys who, who have invented quite a lot of tools as well, bio tools. and who are also very entrepreneurial.

Is there, is there a correlation as in whose research is just more adapted to spinning out or more easier to spin out as a company? Yeah, I think 

Mathias Uhlen: so. I think so. And, and it’s wonderful to be compared to Bob Langer and Church and maybe Stephen Quake at Stanford. So no, but I, I think you’re absolutely right that all the people that you talk about here and also Jens Nilsson, we all been working with tools and and technology driven and data driven science.

And that just. Is it when you are sort of developing technology, and that’s, of course, also true in I. T. and, and, and A. I. and so on, then it is you’re on the front side of the science in that field. And that also means that they might be commercial sort of opportunities. And I think we all have sort of experienced that.

And a lot of the companies that I founded is tools companies. But of course, also some of them actually is using those tools to actually develop drugs and or, or pharmaceutical, you know, 

Philip Hemme: which is, I guess it’s the same in the I don’t know, Bob Langer example also, quite a lot of tools, but then also, I mean, Moderna was a therapeutics company at the end, quite a successful one.

Mathias Uhlen: Exactly. Yeah. That’s 

Philip Hemme: cool. That’s really cool. 

[00:20:53] Human Protein Atlas

Philip Hemme: Maybe switching gears to, to your, I mean, very connected to your research, I mean, to prepare this interview, I had a very good friend, actually he’s a church lab. And, and he was the. Nielsen lab just before for his PhD and doing postdoc at Solsham and, and he told me, like, I thought I asked him about human protein, and he told me he used it every day.

It’s like amazing. And I was like, wow, that’s, that’s quite a statement. So I, and I think you must be super proud of, of what you have built, like how, like, yeah, I don’t know shit about that. 

Mathias Uhlen: So, so the Human Protein Atlas started in a very, dramatic way because it was supposed to be done at Oxford University and funded by the Wellcome Trust back in 20 years ago.

And in the end and this was finalized and we were, I was, you know, going with my family to Oxford to look at schools and houses. But then in the end of the day, they wanted me to change strategy. And the Wallenberg Foundation in Sweden then said, well, we can’t give you all the money that the Wellcome Trust could give you.

But if you do it in Sweden, we will fund you for, you know, for four years to start up. And, and this actually meant that I stayed in Sweden and started this. And then of course, the Wallenberg has been extremely supportive through the years. And actually, you know, we, we got about 140 billion or million Swedish no dollars.

So it’s a lot of funding. But one project is insane, like it’s, yeah, and it’s been an, it has been an insane project. I mean, so dramatic in many ways. You know, we were generating 20 new antibodies every day. We were making 10, 000 bio images every day, and building up slowly the knowledge about all the building blocks of humans, the proteins.

And, and I’m very proud of the sort of flagship paper that came in science in 2015. So after 10 years, and this, this, this paper has now been cited almost 15, 000 times, I think it’s actually the most, one of the most cited papers from 10 years. Now, as you 

Philip Hemme: say, my friend told me. So my friend told me this as well and he, he told me that it’s basically almost on par with the CRISPR Cas9 paper in the number of citations in the amount of time, which is crazy.

Yeah. It is 

Mathias Uhlen: Nice of course, but also it is and the Wallenberg family or the foundation They were very keen that this is basic knowledge that we should have open access. And this has of course been very nice for me because now I can see that it’s used by every pharmaceutical company in the world.

Every university in the world and actually every minute there is about 10 to 15 researchers going into the atlas into the portal. So obviously that is incredibly gratifying for what you’ve done. But it’s also been done by a lot of people. So there has been more than 700 people formerly involved in the project.

So it’s it’s It’s it’s been it’s been fun. I have to say, 

Philip Hemme: and congrats, congrats on that. That’s it. 

[00:24:55] AI for biology and AlphaCell

Philip Hemme: And now you have a senior of a new project also financed by the one refoundation on alpha cell of basically bringing AI and AI models into the human protein. You talk a bit more about this.

No, 

Mathias Uhlen: exactly. So I guess the protein, the human protein Atlas program has sort of gone through three, three phases. The first 10 years was very much about making antibodies to all human proteins and, and we basically succeeded with that and used that to create a lot of data, which is now open access. The second 10 years, which kind of started in 2015 and up till about, today was very much about integration of data and very much taking also all the fantastic RNA data, the single cell data, which is created by not only us, but also other groups in the world and integrated that with the protein data.

And I think that’s something that we’re very, very proud of. And then we’re now entering the next 10 years and basically what we would like to do is to use this data to try to predict and model the human cell and the human tissues. And I know this is very difficult, but obviously there’s so much happening with AI now.

So at least we think that we can do you know, we can define what are the housekeeping proteins, which are the druggable proteins, and so on. So we want to use that to actually make The protein Atlas even more easy to use and also to be able to, you know, ask, you know, questions like, you know, show me all the proteins which are specific for the liver and so on and, and do that in this sort of text way instead of having to use search functions.

So this is so as you say then that we got funding for another six years from the Wallenberg This is joint funding for the National Infrastructure SciLifeLab in Stockholm the HPA But also funding to the new director of SciLifeLab John Ellenberg, which is coming from EMBL in Heidelberg Or has come from EMBL And we’re very, very happy to have him on board as the director of the, of the national infrastructure.

Philip Hemme: I’m curious on the, to stick on the AI and the application we had on the show, someone from Turbine. ai. We’re also kind of simulated doing simulated cells and through the experience. So how much does it to basically do drug testing and understand where, where, where can it like, where’s the best where’s the best fit?

How does it compare to this kind of application or is it? Well, I’m just trying to figure out and put, place it. 

Mathias Uhlen: Yeah, I think also I’m trying to figure out where we’re gonna be. So, so, you know, I, to be honest, I don’t know where we’re gonna be. If this gonna take five years or if it’s gonna take hundred years.

So but what I do know is that we have now data on all the human proteins. We know basically the structure of them. With the Alpha Fold 3, we can actually also look at the interactions between proteins. We know the subcellular localization of the proteins. We are, the, the data has exploded, and, and I know the data is very noisy.

And also we have, you know, the, there’s a lot of things we don’t know, how the modifications, you know, how, how important is that for the for the for the interactions and so on. So there is a lot of things that are, you know, are quite noisy and compared to, you know, the language models where you can actually train it on all the, all the text in the whole world.

It’s still rather little data, actually. So, so 

Philip Hemme: Special weapons, the complexity of biology. 

Mathias Uhlen: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, I would still say that we are, we are, I don’t think that this will happen in, you know, in a year or two, but but, but, but still, I think it makes a lot of sense to throw the new tools, the language models, and the, Machine learning and, and all of it in a very sort of structured way on all this data to actually start to be at least to be able to predict in some way the cell and the tissues.

And 

Philip Hemme: what, what did you think, or what do you think about the, the two Nobel prizes who went through basically for AI in biology? Yeah. Football. Robinson. Yeah. 

Mathias Uhlen: Oh, but I obviously, I love both the physics prize, which was, you know, to the machine learning and, and and the, and the neural networks and the, and the medicine prize obviously, which and, and the alpha fold, we were very quickly to adopt that into the protein Atlas.

So now in the protein Atlas, we have all the alpha fold structures. You can spin them around, and in the new version that came in, in October of the protein atlas, we also have the structure of all the variants, the transcript variants. So that’s 80, 000 variants, and we don’t even know if they are actually true or not but at least we are showing them, so you can actually see the structures.

Not only on the sort of consensus protein, but also on the, 80, 000 transcript variants. 

Philip Hemme: That’s, that’s insane to me. I mean, I remember I was doing my, I mean, I did in bioengineering and one internship, I did it in academia and one of the PhD, his whole PhD was on doing a structure for protein.

It took him whatever, four or five years. And that was, well, not that long ago. I mean, it was like 10, 12 years ago. 

Mathias Uhlen: No, no, no, and it could have been five years ago. So no, but I guess the, the, the nice thing about is about that is that those work, they were not in vain because you needed it to train the model.

So, so, so obviously that has, and I guess this is a very good. Re it kinda relates to what we wanna do with the cell and the expression to use the data to actually model and, and actually learn about it. And in a more AI based way then. But it is crazy and I’m very, I think the I’m very. pond of the Nobel prizes, both in chemistry and physics this year.

Philip Hemme: SL. I guess you went to the ceremony as you are in Stockholm. HH. 

Mathias Uhlen: Yeah, yes, yes, I did. Yes, yes. 

Philip Hemme: SL. Maybe you will have it for, maybe you will have the Nobel prize one day as well. HH. That’s, 

Mathias Uhlen: We’ll see, we’ll see. SL. Have you been nominated once 

Philip Hemme: on the list? 

Mathias Uhlen: I, you know, I’m, I’m I’m the member of the Royal Academy of Science, and obviously I can’t really, you know, talk about who is nominated and so on.

Yeah. 

Philip Hemme: Makes sense. Makes sense. Just curious. I’m curious also what you, what you said you, I mean, you love, I mean, you love what you’re doing and you love the potential of AI. I’m curious on the, on the higher level, like what, what really drives you and what drives you to keep, keep doing what 

Mathias Uhlen: you’re doing?

Yeah, that’s a good question because, you know, I really should be retiring now, shouldn’t I? And but no, but I still love, I still love the, what I’m doing. I still have. You know, you have to be healthy, you have to have the energy, and you have to have the, the lust to do things, and I still have those three things, so but, but I, I, and, and for me, it’s the perfect mix to do very basic science, try to understand how you do, you use AI to understand about the cell, but at the same time use some of the technology.

new inventions to try to, you know, to, to make them valuable for, for the for, for, for the world. 

Philip Hemme: That sounds, sounds very good. 

[00:34:35] Lessons for younger academics

Philip Hemme: Well, one last question on what are some of your lessons for, if like the younger academics listening to us what are some of your lessons? To your younger, younger Matthias.

Oh, that’s 

Mathias Uhlen: a very good question. Well, first of all, I should say that I’ve been blessed by being thrown, I guess you can call it serendipity. That means that, you know, things happen. It might be even bad things, but that has sort of thrown you into one corner and that has been very good. And I haven’t.

I guess what is important is that you, if you get funding, that you try to, to deliver what you have promised. But that is not a very good advice, I guess. No, I, I, I don’t, 

Philip Hemme: I guess you would, you would recommend to academics to be more entrepreneurial or is it a fit to their personality or to,

Mathias Uhlen: well, I, I think it’s, it’s it’s of course very good to be able to do both, to do curiosity driven research, but also to apply some of the things that, but. I think it all depends on where you are and so on, but I, I, I, I of course could recommend to sort of be in both worlds, I have to say, but of course it’s easy to say that from a Swedish perspective where it’s much, much easier from a bureaucratic point of view.

Philip Hemme: I like that. I mean, I, I’m also quite biased and I’m very entrepreneurial. I started things since I’m 10 and I always think, Oh, people should be more entrepreneurial. But also now I realized some people are just less entrepreneur, less risk taking. It’s just also, there’s a personal fit. And as you said, some projects fit more to entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, some fits less.

It’s not like Kurd, 

Mathias Uhlen: but you know, in, in, in Sweden, we have now about 4, 000 biotech companies, startups, and that’s quite amazing from a very, very small country. I mean like Sweden. So, so, so I see the interest from the young generation to go this sort of way, same route as I have done, where you, you know, you do curiosity driven research, but you also try to apply 

Philip Hemme: it and actually talking after one.

[00:37:24] Combination of tech and biology

Philip Hemme: I mean, I, I have a bit too one foot in biotech, one foot in tech. And I saw that you you launched a prior of the KTH Innovation award with, with Daniel. Egg from, from Spotify. It’s pretty amazing that you’re doing a collaboration like this. And one thing that make me think as well is that in Stockholm, I think at least in Europe, is the highest density of, I think, million dollar, highest density of unicorns per capita, basically.

In, in Europe, even in the world, it’s pretty high as well which I think it’s No, 

Mathias Uhlen: and you mentioned Daniel Ek and I, you know, it’s been such a pleasure to, to start this innovation award together with him. So we are the two co sort of the two founders of this together with the Royal Institute, the university.

So and it’s, it’s so. It is so rewarding to be able to actually also give then prices and awards and money to people that are actually going the same, this kind of journey, trying to go from Research into to applied. 

Philip Hemme: And it’s amazing that you are mixing. I was really, I mean, it’s the first time that I, not the first time, but the first time that I see that like a top biotech person with a top tech person.

Doing an innovation award together, which is, because usually you always have like deep tech on one side and then the tech on the other side and people don’t talk too much to each other. So can you talk a bit more about this, like your view on this? 

Mathias Uhlen: No, but I don’t think it is that surprising because obviously the biotech and the, and the biology and medicine, in is so much now driven from data driven science and, and AI now, and so on.

I, I have a feeling that a lot of the biotechs in the future will be together with tech people. It’s just, it’s just gonna, it’s just the way it’s going to be. And I kind of feel that it’s becoming more and more important. To be technology driven, be data driven, and actually the national infrastructure that I founded back 15 years ago, the Science for Life Laboratory in Stockholm, where I was the employee number one, but it’s now 1500 people.

The whole idea of that is actually to work with data driven science and and tech driven science. It’s amazing. 

Philip Hemme: It’s, you think about. The quote, I think, from Steve Jobs said that the 21st century would be a century of biology. Which, let’s see, but it could be. 

Mathias Uhlen: Yeah, it’s so far, I think he actually sort of defined the 21st century.

So, I think it’s amazing how he has influenced the world with the smartphones and the and yeah, and the music players and all of that. It’s just it’s, he’s a big hero of mine. I’m up there. 

Philip Hemme: That’s, you’re, you’re answering one question that I have for you for later, but it’s good. 

[00:40:57] False promises of anti-ageing

Philip Hemme: Before that one, One last question, or one last topic before we do a kind of quickfire quick question, but one last question is on, on anti aging.

I remember at BiUrp question about this and I was quite surprised on your answer, which you said, basically you, you were saying you don’t, you didn’t expect life expectancy to raise way beyond 80, but that the quality of life would, would increase. Like, could you explain a bit on, on why? 

Mathias Uhlen: Well, first of all, It’s interesting with aging, because here we are, we know so much about biology.

We know so much about medicine, but we don’t, and maybe I’m controversial to say, we don’t actually know what aging is. And, and, but I think it’s quite clear that at least in my view, it is sort of running out of steam and, you know, you’re in, you’re getting more and more. The cells are getting more and more vulnerable.

And, and when you look at what has happened, the, the, the life expectancy hasn’t really raised and I, I, and, and, but of course the, the average age has increased because we are healthier and we have better health care and so on. So and. And, and I don’t see any good ideas how to actually increase age.

So but maybe tomorrow there will be a good idea and then I will change my mind. But if, if I look at what we know right now, I don’t see that we have a clue how we would, you know, go from a, you know, going 80, 90 years old to 120 or 130. 

Philip Hemme: So you’re not a big fan of all the anti aging therapeutics approach at the moment, I guess.

Mathias Uhlen: No, I’m not. Although, no, I’m not. I don’t mind that people try to live healthy. So if that is anti aging, I think that’s fine. But I think there is a lot of, false promises out there, actually. But saying that then, we, one of my companies, Scandi Biotherapeutics, is actually starting a phase 3 trial to try to help Alzheimer’s patients, but it’s not really anti aging, it’s more trying to help the memory of these patients.

So So, so at least we, I’m a little bit involved in age related problems, but but I’m, I’m not really into the anti aging. 

Philip Hemme: Yeah. 

Mathias Uhlen: Actually talking about Well, because I, I wish I could live for another, you know, 70 years that would be fantastic I must say. 

Philip Hemme: It’s it’s actually talking about Alzheimer’s, I mean, it’s also always how you define aging.

I mean, Alzheimer’s is the biggest correlation to Alzheimer’s is age. So is it a aging disease or not? I mean, you can discuss that. And, and actually we had on the show, the, the CEO of Bioarctic, who’s also based in Stockholm and was doing amazing, amazing work in bringing the first disease modifying drug on the market for, in the last few years, it’s, I.

Crazy, crazy achievement as well. So just looping to everything we discussed. So yeah, cool. No, and, 

Mathias Uhlen: and yeah. Okay. Yeah. Please go, go ahead. 

[00:44:48] Quickfire

Philip Hemme: No, I want to finish on a, on a quick fire. So just quick question. One, one sentence answer. Yes. No answer. And. Before we have for the last few minutes of time we have.

So you said one of your heroes in tech. I’m wondering what, who is one of your heroes in biotech? 

Mathias Uhlen: I must say, I, I, I have been, I liked very much Craig Venter actually, who was, you know, one of the you know, the persons that did the Genome Project. I think I, I, I learned a lot from him, I must say.

And, and so that I think he, he’s one of my, yeah I, maybe not hero, but I, I, I learned his art from him. Yeah. 

Philip Hemme: Yeah. And he has amazing books for people listening. Oh, I mean, a lot of talks and books that are, that are really, I, I read his book and was very inspirational as well, I have to say.

Mathias Uhlen: Yeah. No. And he was very inspirational. Another person that I really have admired is sounds very similar. Greg Winter, who got the Nobel prize for display and so on, which from UK. He’s very different from Craig Venter, but he’s also kind of another type of hero for me, actually. 

Philip Hemme: He was also in the list of the top 10 European scientists, entrepreneur, and I think he’s.

What he has been doing is amazing. 

Mathias Uhlen: Just mention, proteomics, we have a superstar in Europe and that is Matthias Mann. So I guess I should also mention, and he’s also very unique. Yeah, I’m unique. Yes. 

Philip Hemme: I recently learned about him. I didn’t know him. And I think he’s the most of the biggest H index in Germany, any, any science in any science disciplines.

It’s amazing. 

Mathias Uhlen: He’s just a fantastic scientist and a nice, next question. What’s, what’s on the top of your mind at the moment? So right now we are very much into blood analysis. So we’re trying to use the information from the protein Atlas to, and use the new developments from actually from Sweden, O Link.

Where you can do massive, massive amounts of, of analysis from just a drop of blood. So to go in the sort of, of the tradition of Serranos, which was this California company that Bluff but actually now you can do 5, 000 protein analysis from just a small drop of blood. And I really think.

This will change the way we do precision medicine and medicine in the future. So I really see that we will, we will take a small blood sample, maybe at home, send it to the lab every year, and we will find, you know, cancers before they have symptoms and so on. And this is something that people have talked about for 30 years, precision medicine.

It’s really not very much that has happened, but I think with the new technology with AI and, and machine learning, I think we will, a lot of things will happen in the next 10 and I’m certainly want to be involved in that. Great. I think it’s 

[00:48:35] Thanks for listening

Philip Hemme: a great. Way to finish the great way to, to wrap up, to finish the podcast.

Thanks a lot, Matias again for joining, and I’ll let you head to your, to your next meeting. 

Mathias Uhlen: So yeah, thank you very much for letting me be in the, in the show. So thank you very much. 

Philip Hemme: Great. Thank you. Thank you. I’m impressed by Matias has done in science and in industry. I’m also impressed by his enthusiasm.

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