We jet off to Central London to meet Robin Carr, CEO of Myricx Bio, a startup developing antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) to treat cancer.

The team’s idea – using a novel ADC payload inhibiting molecules called N-myristoyltransferases (NMTs) – helped them to bag an impressive £90M ($114M) Series A round in 2024.

Robin outlines Myricx’s journey from small molecule antivirals to the booming market of cancer ADCs, and how the transition from big pharma to biotech has been an energising experience for him.

⭐️ ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Robin kicked off his Myricx experience as chief development officer in November 2019, before rising to the CEO seat in August 2022. Before this, he was VP of drug discovery at Astex Therapeutics, before spending more than a decade in research executive roles at GSK. ending up as SVP Drug Design and Selection.

🔗 LINKS MENTIONED

• Myricx Bio’s website: (https://tiltbio.com/)https://myricxbio.com/
• Myrcix Bio’s Series A round: (https://tiltbio.com/userassets/uploads/2025/05/TILT-Series-B-press-release-May-2025.pdf)https://myricxbio.com/myricx-bio-announces-90m-114m-series-a-financing-to-advance-its-novel-nmti-adc-therapeutics-into-clinical-development/
• A winding road – the many adventures of a promising ADC – Cancer Research UK: https://news.cancerresearchuk.org/2024/07/09/a-winding-road-the-many-adventures-of-a-promising-adc/
• Dominik Schumacher, Tubulis 🇩🇪 | Founder-led ADC Biotech ⭐️ | E19: https://flot.bio/episode/dominik-schumacher-tubulis/

Transcript

[00:00:00] Intro

Robin Carr: When we raised the money, we were sort of three people. So we’ve transformed the company in the last 12 months. We’ll get into the clinic next year with our first program, and we’ll have the second candidate for a second program by the end of this year. It’s been a busy year. I’m not sure the therapeutic index was the biggest challenge for en cell transfer raise.

I think the bigger challenge was. It’s completely novel biology. When the biology is so novel, you dunno what the best cancer to go into and you dunno how to design that stuff. 

Philip Hemme: I think, yeah, biotech is just a, a really 

Robin Carr: small world like isn’t it? I like the phrase you need to be careful who you are rude to because you will see them again.

Never unintentionally rude.

Philip Hemme: You have new to a new episode. I’m your host Philip, and on this show I’ve been doing the best Europeans in biotech to help you grow. Antibody drug conjugates or ADCs are still very hot, but new payloads are needed and are rare. One of the most promising approaches of new payloads is actually coming from Europe, more specifically from London, from Myx.

So I went to Canary War to catch up with its founder, Robin. I didn’t know him personally, but he was highly recommended by one of the previous guests on the show. We talked about Myx raising one of the few recent European Series A that passed the a hundred million dollar bar to advance is MNT a DC.

We also talked about why the UK is actually pretty good at ADCs and why leaving big pharma after some time can be very energizing. So here’s my conversation with Robin, and please hit the like follow button if you’re enjoying it. Before we start, here’s a quick word from our sponsor. Today’s episode is brought to you by ca.

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Robin Carr: So welcome to the show, Robert. Well, thank you for the invitation. I’m pleased to be here. 

[00:02:43] Navigating biotech networking

Philip Hemme: Cool. So I wanna start with the person who introduced us, Tim Hees from from Atworth who wasn’t the show before, and I’ve seen that you worked for him at Aztec. Basically was 20 years ago and even more. And now he slash invested last year in the, in the series.

So I think, yeah, biotech is just a, a really small world like, isn’t it? 

Robin Carr: Yeah. I mean I like the phrase you need to be careful who you are rude to. Yeah. Because you will see them again. Never unintentionally rude 

Philip Hemme: that that’s yeah. Screw. And so the, the, just going to the series A obviously was. Exactly, basically exactly one year ago, which was a huge series.

A a hundred hundred $15 million, I mean, 19 million pounds led by and novo, can you just, yeah. Maybe go a bit into what progress you made now, one year after? 

Robin Carr: Yeah. Good progress. You know, so when we raised the money, we were sort of three people. A lot of fantastic consultants, a great network of people we’d known for years, but in terms of staff, we were really small and we were absolutely a hundred percent focused on raising the money.

Otherwise there’s no future. So we’ve transformed the company in the last 12 months. You know, I think we look, look and smell like a very focused development company, you know? So we’ve selected our first candidate. Got through our first pre IND meet review. We’ll get into the clinic next year with our first program and we’ll have the second second candidate for a second program by the end of this year.

So we’re gonna have two registrations next year, which for a small company is remarkable challenge we’ve taken on. So that’s. That’s, it’s been a busy year, 

Philip Hemme: quite some progress there, and I’ve seen that the, the round was, was not easy. I mean, I guess it’s never easy to close around, especially of that size, you’re now.

Robin Carr: Yeah. You know, so some lyrics, you know, we were formed in 2019, you know, I’d retired from GSK. I was doing bits and pieces with friends and I was not looking to, to be crazy, crazy, you know, it’s absorbed by one thing. And a friend of mine, Roberta said, we’re gonna, we’re gonna start this company November, 2019.

Do you wanna consult? Would you like to join? And I said, look, I’ve tracked the science. It looks really cool. I’ll, I’ll join. But I thought we were gonna be two years. Then we’d raise a Series A and I’d rere retire. And yeah. And this was for small molecules. IV or oral, and we got compelling data, but we couldn’t close on a series eight.

It actually Haworth and Novo amongst the VCs that were politest to us. They said, these are the things we really like about your small molecule program, but here’s just a couple of risks. We can’t go ahead around both of them. So we sort of, as always, it’s very good to leave on good terms. If you don’t get what you want on the moment, it doesn’t mean you won’t get it down the road.

So we parted in good terms and decided to. To pivot to working an A, DC. So when we went back around to raise money in 20, in late 23, early 24 our name had been around a while. And that’s not always a good thing. If you’re known as a company that didn’t raise the series a first time, you have to factor that in.

So it was interesting but clearly we were very fortunate with the timing. The world was super excited about ADCs. The world was, knew they wanted new payloads. And so that. That brought a lot of people to the, to the table, and above all else, we’re super fortunate that it looks like NMT just happens to be a fantastic payload as long as you design and select an appropriate NMT inhibitor.

So a number of things came together, but it was still tough to raise the money. This is, you know, I’m late in my career. I’m not a, a serial CEO, I’m not a really a CEO dude. I’m not a financial care person. I’m a, I’m a discovery scientist, I’m a tech technologist. So there’s a lot of learning for me and a huge amount of help from our seed investors.

So yes, I feel know, I was in the, so know that and, and Brandon and individual at Brandon Johnson Tobin was, was very very helpful. Yeah. Both in terms of. Optimism and positivity, but also specific contacts. And he did a lot of work. So yeah, we got there. 

Philip Hemme: And so 

Robin Carr: we got there. 

Philip Hemme: Yeah. And I guess also 20 23, 20 24.

And still today just the investment climate is 

Robin Carr: so we had all biotech is, so again, we’re very fortunate in timing. Very fortunate with timing and I’m, and I’m grateful that, I mean yeah, absolutely. 

[00:07:30] Myricx’s Series A and transformation

Philip Hemme: Yeah. Cool. And, I like you, you mentioned a bit the pivot, but going back to the story of the company, what I find pretty remarkable is that you basically, 2019, you started with, or the compound started as antiviral.

Yeah. And went into small molecule for ecology and then into ADCs, like, 

Robin Carr: so there’s a, a really famous drug discovery person, Paul Jansen. And a friend of mine went to his retirement lecture and he asked him a question. He said, how did you deal with attrition in your career? Yen said what? Attrition.

Some targets take a year, some take 10 years and some, some take 30 or 40 years. So it’s remarkable, you know, if you listen to a lot of friends and colleagues, you know, they’ll tell you their own stories about targets that didn’t make it first, second or third time. So NMT Enstar transferase inhibitors was looked at as an antifungal.

Decades ago, and one of our founders was one of the first chemists working on it, Andy Bell. So there’s a lot of information that we were able to, to bring in and use, but the big challenge had been if you block the enzyme, you will kill the cell. But how do you get selectivity over the disease cell or the non mammalian cell?

And you have, you have to factor that in. So that had been the challenge. So. MX actually, you know, spun out from the cricket imperial, and we in licensed some fantastic IP and knowhow that was based on looking for antimalarials. It’s funded by medicines for malaria, but a key objective was you’ve gotta get a hundred fold selectivity for killing the malaria.

Cells relative to human, and they couldn’t achieve that. So they just said, look, here are all the compounds back. Here’s all the knowledge. We can’t see how to use it as an anti-malarial. What can you do as innovative academics? Where might you take this? And that’s, that’s the work that it, it taped it to then sort of do some novel work.

Philip Hemme: And then as a, I guess as a standalone. Then the, the delivery is probably a problem to the solid tumor versus with a DC you get a bit more specificity. Sure. 

Robin Carr: So, I mean, with small molecules, there was a dogma before Meric started that actually you just kill all cells at the same concentration. It just really would not be a useful cytotoxic mechanism.

So Ed Tate screened at at the Sanger before MX was founded. Three structurally diverse inhibitors that, that Andy Beard made and tested it about 700 cancer cell lines. The dogma was they’ll all look the same. The data didn’t support that. The data said, we don’t know why, but there’s 15 20% of cancers that are really sensitive.

We don’t know why, but the 15% that are insensitive and the rest is sort of a spread in the middle. So that was in innovative data. It’s sort of challenge the dogma of the day and when you challenge a dogma, people say, okay, maybe these people are smart. Maybe they’ll get somewhere different. So that was the data that got Brandon and soften over comfortable after putting a very small, very.

Targeted seed fund.

[00:10:45] The pivot to ADCs

Philip Hemme: Yeah. Okay. And then the, so I’m still the, the switch to ADCs. So you’re adding, you’re adding target and selectivity, I guess. 

Robin Carr: Yeah, we are. So we’ve made and tested, you know, seven or 800 NNT inhibitors with the range of properties and profiles. A and what we found was that you could get complete tumor regression.

A range of solid, hard to treat tumors. You could completely resolve them 

Philip Hemme: in animals, I guess in mice. In mice, yeah. 

Robin Carr: But to do that you needed to sort of dose episodically. You couldn’t chronically dose, the animals would lose too much condition. And that’s the sort of a well-known regime for cytotoxics to most intermittently.

One of the compounds, you know, you needed to give sort of four MIGS per week to get pretty decent tumor growth inhibition. If you take that same compound and put it onto an antibody with a clinically unprecedented linker, rather than needing four MIGS bik, you need 0.018 migs bik K. So it’s hugely more efficacious, and that’s what you really want to see.

That actually, that is a very obvious. Piece of data says, look, you’re getting to the tumor cell, you’re releasing it, and you’ve got far less systemically exposed. So it’s a very encouraging standpoint. It worked. Our first experiment that we did in vivo with the A DC gave us a spectacular increase in efficacy and, and, and a very, very big increase in tolerability.

So very encouraging. Okay, both again. 

Philip Hemme: Cool. And then cu Okay, now I, okay, now I understand. And I’m curious, you mentioned ip, I mean, if it was a re old compound with specific is IP, then 

Robin Carr: Yeah. So as you’d expect with laid down multiple layers of ip? Yeah. So, you know, we have patents of selection from, from most preferred payloads, which are much more recent.

And we’ve also got patterns on the use of any NNT inhibitor. As an a d, C payload. And then we’ve got specific patterns for specific ADCs. So we’ve got multiple like levels. 

Philip Hemme: Okay. Yeah, because, okay, because what, I’m just curious also on the, because on the ADCs, I mean I’ve talked to a few company tubs was on, was on the show before and I followed a A DC therapeutics and followed a bit the space.

But from my understanding, there’s always. Either innovation on the antibody, either innovation on the linker as innovation on the payload, either bringing the innovations to bring them together. I think for you guys it’s mostly on the payload. 

Robin Carr: It’s completely the payload and yeah. Today, yeah. Okay. Mid 2025, we have really exciting preclinical efficacy that, you know, we have really encouraging preclinical tox data.

But it’s an incredibly early project and it’s completely, you know, novel as an a DC payload. So we do not need more novelty. Yes. So we try to be quite robust and take clinically validated antigens and or antibody and clinically validated. So we’re focusing on, on the nmt. That is our core for sure.

Okay. 

Philip Hemme: One thing I saw with the A DC as well is the, the number of payloads that you can attach. Yeah. And that day she has basically one of the superior technology or something. Yeah. 

Robin Carr: Yeah. So it’s interesting, you know, going through the through the fundraising, we got to meet a lot of due diligence people from me, a lot of investors, and, and also, you know, we pivoted into ADCs and one of the things that we were told by, you know, some very helpful advisors, you know, was.

You don’t know anything about ADCs. You know, if you weren’t successful with this mechanism as a small molecule and you are small molecule experts, how on earth are you gonna cross the finishing line when you take on such a complex modality? So we just reached out to some KOLs and when we showed them our small molecule data they were super excited to see what experiments they could help design, whether or not we could ask the question, does an NNT inhibitor look like a useful payload?

So people were super helpful and encouraging, but as you listen to people, you know, sometimes everybody says the same thing, but often, you know, you get complete diversity of views. So this drug antibody ratio, you know, some people said it’s incredibly important that you really optimize that. Other people said, look for a novel payload.

I’m not sure it really matters. So we’ve been, I think MX is a pretty careful company, you know? We’re well-funded. What we don’t want to do is rush and take any unnecessary risks. The risk is in NNT is NNTA useful payload in humans? Does the efficacy translate? Does the ti translate? We don’t want to step over anything and be simplistic.

So we’ve done pretty thorough job on DAR optimization and, and hone dinners on a specific methodology for a specific DR. 

Philip Hemme: Okay? 

Robin Carr: And we’ll see. 

Philip Hemme: And I guess you can always do whatever second generation and by further on for sure. Absolute. I, I like this. I mean, I haven’t heard really another example of companies even globally where they had a small molecule and then they transitioned to ADCs like this.

Robin Carr: I, there are a few that have phoned me up over the last year and would just prevent to have a sort of informal conversations. So there are a number I think of. Interesting biological approaches. Yeah. Where people have bumped into ti is the issue. Yeah. Therapeutic index. You know, I’m not sure the therapeutic index was the biggest challenge for enmar cell transferase.

I think it was an obvious challenge. I think the bigger challenge was it’s completely novel biology. It’s it, it’s one enzyme, two isoforms, one enzyme, but it blocks cells making between 115 and 200 proteins. So it’s really. Pleotropic. So how do you design a really smart, your first smart clinical study?

You know, which cancer, which endpoints, you know? So I think that was probably the biggest change for us closing on a small molecule race. In some ways the industry is used to taking a risk on the ti. And they can factor that one in. They sort of know it’s coming with most cancer mechanisms, but actually when the biology is so novel, you dunno what the best cancer to go into and you dunno how to design that study.

You can’t leverage a previous success. That was the big challenge. And, and you get that, that focus when you go with an anti chipp. Because clearly that’s represented on specific cancers. 

Philip Hemme: Yeah. So, yeah. That’s makes, makes sense. Can you go a bit deeper into, so, which. Type of, I think it’s solid tumor, which you selected which antigen?

Robin Carr: So we actually go public. Okay. On the lip programs will be but they are well-known antigens. One where there are is a major product on the market this topo one based 

Philip Hemme: Okay. HER two or something. 

Robin Carr: And the reason that we think that’s a very interesting part about. Portfolio is that we have preclinical data that shows we work in models resistance resistant to the TOPO one drug.

So we can come in after you’ve pretreated with the TOPO one drug and we still see really good tumor regressions. So we’re building a body of data. Demonstrate preclinically this mechanism, novelty of biology means that you can get responses when you don’t get responses to current clinical payloads.

Yeah, so you know, the biology is really the core lyrics. You know, we are an NNT company. We’ve chosen to use ADCs as a very timely way to develop our first products. If they’re useful, it will be because NNT itself is a really interesting mechanism. You know, so it doesn’t touch any of the pathways, the current a DC payload due, so it doesn’t touch juin, doesn’t touch micro juin.

It doesn’t touch DNA. We’ve done a lot of work. Our academic founder has done a great deal of work to identify the key pathways. And there’s a small handful of pathways that all oncologists will know, but actually nobody actually got a, an approach to bring those together so we can uniquely hit to multiple targets using one enzyme.

Philip Hemme: Okay. Yeah, I was, I was also curious, Matt, you, you answered a bit on like how you differentiate from. A DC space was really crowded. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Robin Carr: So our first, you know, one of our first two programs is, is, is a very competitive, you know, with a really major top of one product. The other program will get to the clinic and our first program, there are ADCs in the clinic where nothing launched, no market getting towards late stage.

And I think. W we are completely focused on NNT being a differentiated payload. So we are not gonna try and find the rarest cancer that nobody’s run a study for yet. You know, and we’re not gonna try and say that, you know, ours, you know, we, we win on, on efficacy, you know, or in a dose. We we’re not gonna, it’s, it’s not incremental, you know?

We really think the complete novelty is this mechanism. Should allow us to get profoundly different biology in, in cancer patients. In which case, you know, our ultimate objective is to, is to demonstrate the NNT is the best payload, you know, so we would look forward to having the database that says in the clinic, this is a highly efficacious and safe payload and warrants coming earlier in the treatment pathway.

But we all know that we’re gonna have to start, you know the clinical studies on people that have gone through those standards of care. Yeah. So we are gonna get patients. Third have been through multiple treatments, including, you know, ADCs. Increasingly. So actually for us, it’s gonna come down to do we work in situations where other payloads can’t work?

Philip Hemme: That is always challenging, you know, well 

Robin Carr: though, at false lonely, I’m, as I say, I’m a scientist, you know, I, you know, like, you know, you know, I came into MiiR because I think the science is compelling. I think the team is agile. I think our, our investors have a great mindset. We want to ask that question.

Is the, does the novel biologic really give you profoundly different efficacy in cancer patients that have seen other treatments? So that is the question that I want to ask. So I don’t, I’m not intimidated by it. I think how biology, our understanding the biology makes this an obvious and compelling experiment to run.

Yeah, 

[00:22:10] NMT ADCs in cancer

Philip Hemme: yeah. Makes sense. And on the. Curious on the NMT space as well, because I saw that there’s one company, PEX Saex. Yeah. But they do it as a small molecule. 

Robin Carr: Yeah. But they’re on phase two already. Yeah. And we know, clearly, we know that they’re compound. Well and I think they’re a very impressive organization.

You, I’ve never raised sort of VC money. They’ve really worked extremely hard. They’re very clinically led. They really believe that they can run smart studies, but how they’ve done it scientifically is very different to us. So, you know, I rambled about 20 minutes ago and said that we learn from our small molecules that you’ll get profound tumor inhibition in tough sodic cancers If you treated intermittently two days on, three days off, you know, different regimes, they appear to have not.

Observe that or not learn that. So what they’ve done is they’ve gone, they found the maximum tolerated dose pre-clinically, and then they’ve just translated that and found the maximum tolerated dose in humans if you dose every day for 28 days. Scientifically, to me that that makes no sense because what we’ve learned is there are certain ME related proteins.

That are very sensitive to NNT and the way that you see that sensitivity is that the cancers dependent on those mu related proteins die quickly. So if you only dose for a few days, the only cells that show toxicity are the ones that are sensitive to NNT. If you dose for 28 days, all cells will show similar sensitivity.

So the good news is they got to the clinic and they found the dose limiting tox to be transient gi. We’ve seen GI as probably the mechanistic hallmark talks that you observe, whether it’s a small molecule, you know, independent, a series or, or, or an a DC. So we are learning from them. Yeah. And we wish them well.

They’re, I think they’re incredibly focused on patients and we, we wish them well. We’ve taken a different route. Yeah. And, and you know, we’ve, yeah. And, and they’ve, they’ve I’m pondering, I don’t wanna say something now that I’m gonna phone you up in a week and say, can you edit that? I shouldn’t have said that. But you may be probably not aware, but actually they’re trying to pivot to be an a DC company. 

Philip Hemme: Oh. So, okay. 

Robin Carr: They went to a meeting recently and presented on NNT as an an A DC payload.

And we actually asked them, have you got data? What data are you gonna use at this meeting? They said, we haven’t got any, our own data, we’re gonna use yours. 

Philip Hemme: Okay. I guess it’s also good to not be, I mean, it’s good to be first, but it’s also not good to not 

Robin Carr: be alone. You don’t to be alone. I think I found that with investors.

They like, they realized they had to take a risk, but I learned a bit of a venture, like to know the benchmarking. 

Philip Hemme: Yeah, I like that. And to finish on the, on the team, you mentioned, I saw that this. X gen people who joined. One is chief medical officer, one is what is it? Which I think is a very good sign.

Robin Carr: Yeah, and, and it was interesting, now Yes. But is joined as S-V-P-C-M-C. Yeah. If you looked at him on paper, there’s no way we were gonna attract him. He’s way too senior, but he was involved with doing, he supported Novo’s due diligence on us, I a Series A. So he got to lift up the bonnet and looked inside and just saw at this, at the stage of his career, he wanted to do something pretty bold.

He just wanted to, to get out of his office. He wanted to, to, to push himself. And I remember saying to him, I said, are you sure? We’re big enough for you. Are you sure you want to get down and dirty? You know, you do. You really wanna do this work? And he said, absolutely. And he, that’s the exciting as well.

He’s, he’s a fantastic fit. I mean, he just epitomizes, you know, the culture that we need. Experience smart people that really want to, to get their hands dirty and see if we’re onto something. 

Philip Hemme: Yeah. And I guess it’s at the end, a similar profile to you as well. Are you aware? At GSK pretty high. I mean high level at GS K.

Robin Carr: Yeah. Yeah. And I’m, I’m a technologist. I mean I, I I had failure very early on in my med chem career. I got a couple of assets, small molecules into early development you know, like five years into my career and the flight’s fantastic. And they both failed. And, and then you have to sort of sit down and say, well.

You know, when was the writing on the wall? You know, when would a wiser, more experienced person had done something different? And, you know, so I did a lot of reflection and, and actually in hindsight, they were high risk compounds. And so I became very interested in causes of attrition, molecular design, physical properties.

So most of my career has been focused on. Maximizing the chance of, of a specific project working, and you’re trying to be ruthless about when you’ve got too many risks. And that’s probably why I, you know, I did a number of the jobs and why I went to Aztecs. You know Aztecs had no money, no labs, no chemistry, but a compelling idea.

And that just appealed to me. 

Philip Hemme: Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. Transition to, and. Maybe your last question on Eric also is that I saw that Chris Martin, also the founder, CEO of a DC therapeutics and probably really big guy in a DC at in Europe, he’s a chairman. Sure. And must, it must help I guess like 

Robin Carr: un to Sure.

On many, many levels set a, a bubble else. He’s a really, a genuine person that wants to contribute and help the team. So, you know, he makes himself very accessible. He really wants to help, but clearly. This was pre series A raises. I was being pretty ruthless. I needed somebody to increase our credibility that we had something worth investing in.

It took me nearly a year to get Chris to join actually, you know, and that was the highlight of my 2023, was getting him to sign us as the chairman at the end of the year. You know, we didn’t, we didn’t have the Series A at that point, but when I spoke to him at the beginning of the year, I said, this is what we’re looking to achieve and, and this is what we’re looking to achieve this year.

He just said, well, ring me up when you’ve got those milestones. You know, keep speaking to me. And so it took me most of the year and by the end of this year he said, okay. The team seemed to do what they say they’re gonna do. The data seems they did. Really, really encouraging. I’ll, I’ll join you. And I think he’s come for fantastic reasons that he’s learned a lot about a DC companies.

He’s learned a lot about being a senior exec and he’s learned a lot about. How to sort of keep your feet grounded, you know, to really focus on the key things when you’re developing novel payloads, the whole world wants novel payloads, but most of the world knows, they’re incredibly hard to discover and, and clinically validate.

So I think our board investors and our chair, you know, really walk that talk. We’re optimistic. We’re also ruthlessly objectives. We’ve gotta do critical science and get that data. 

Philip Hemme: I like. I can see yourself. Let’s say some kind of a takeaway, but also from everything you mentioned, that you are trying to really isolate the risks, not take too much risk, not do something too crazy fancy, but just the biology alone is already, I guess, very risky.

So isolate and Yeah, 

Robin Carr: absolutely. As a, as an old chemist, you know, you need novelty, but you don’t need, you don’t want too much. 

Philip Hemme: Yeah, I like that. I like that. And how, like, I’m curious also if you had another lesson, I guess you had lot, lot, a lot of lessons across your career, but maybe recently from whatever you, your first, you, your last five years at GSK, is there one like lesson especially in drug development that struck you?

Robin Carr: Yeah, I mean, so I was at Aztec for six or seven years, small biotech in Cambridge, uk and it’s, you know, fantastic. Probably, that’s funny. The best five, six years I’d ever had. But I wasn’t as confident as I wanted to be that they would find drugs. I was unbelievably confident. They had brilliant technology and they were creating really good leads, but I wasn’t sure they’d be a standalone drug discovery company.

And that’s what I wanted to do. So I. Surprisingly, I moved back into big Pharma, into GSK, and most people don’t go back into big Pharma, and I did, and I’m glad I did. We had a brilliant few years of GSK when, when it was very focused on respiratory. And then your company reorganized a number of times as you need to.

Philip Hemme: Yeah, 

Robin Carr: and, and I just, I, I, I, I chose to take a senior role in platforms, and I guess I hoped that I would be experienced enough and smart enough and good enough. To be helpful, be helpful, you know, across dozens of programs. And I think what I realized was I couldn’t, I couldn’t hit the level of scientific impact that I wanted.

I couldn’t be close enough to the data. I couldn’t in real time, nudge people and, and help them solve problems. So I ended up as a sort of, as you know, strategy manager, portfolio budgets, and I got no energy from it. So I was there, I was there for 11 years. I had seven jobs. When they asked me to do job number eight, I just had to be honest to myself and the organization that I needed to go somewhere that was gonna give me energy.

So I guess my left, I guess my only left. Oh, sorry. That’s honest. I am honest. That’s good. I certainly not always right. I, I try to be honest. So it was a, with with a heavy heart that I left GSK, I’d have loved to have been able to. To, to be more useful to the organization. I did my absolute best. But it just wasn’t energizing for me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

[00:32:09] The big pharma to biotech leap

Philip Hemme: I’ve seen also, it makes me think also, I mean, on the show there’s a few people who, who came from big Pharma and moved more to the biotech space, and I think it’s, it’s a theme that came a few times. Like either they were. As you just said, maybe less energized in big pharma and more in biotech or just they had a more exciting 

Robin Carr: opportunity in biotech.

They’re different organizations. I mean, they just suit different people. In, there’s no, I’m not putting a, a value judgment on it. They, they are different and I think there’s 

Philip Hemme: different 

Robin Carr: phases of career. Further, if you know, I learned most of my science in big pharma. I’ve learned most of my experiences.

I’m extremely. Grateful. But at this stage of my career, I wanna go around it one more time. To do something really novel. Yeah. Really innovative. That’s high risk. But if it works, incredibly high return for, for patients, investors, for everybody. So that’s just what I wanna do and I don’t wanna spend too much time on breadths sinks.

Yeah. 

Philip Hemme: Makes, makes total sense. And I’m cur, I’m curious on the. From what you say, you sound more, I mean, you, it sounds like you’re energized by the whole mission and everything. It sounds like it fits you well, though. It does fit me well. I mean it, it 

Robin Carr: does fit me well. It’s a compelling experiment to run, and I want this team to run the best possible experiment to be very capital efficient, to be really.

Focused on what success looks like. You know, success isn’t just dosing it in the clinic. It’s gotta be impactful. You’ve gotta really position this payload, you’ve gotta really anticipate what people will require. So it’s a compelling experiment and I feel super, super lucky at this stage of my career to sort of into the opportunity.

Philip Hemme: Yeah. Yeah. Like, and how, how was it for you? Or maybe. If you can look back to other people who, who were, who want to do something similar to you, maybe that senior role, and then they wanna run the company or small biotech, how was it for you like to, to transition? I think you, you didn’t start as CEO, but then you became CEO, like 

Robin Carr: Yeah.

And you know, I don’t aspire to be the CEOI aspire to be part of the team that does great things and, you know, my friend Roberto, one of the three founders, was the founding CEO. He’s a small molecule person, but he’s a biology person and, and he just felt ADCs were very chemistry, different modality.

He just, he, he said he was really, he was ready to just step back, become a consultant. So, you know, I stepped into CEO role because I wanted a. To succeed. Yeah. And, and, and so I just cracked on with it. But I think now that we’ve raised this series A, now that we’ve got a couple of programs with really clear paths to the clinic, you know, I believe now’s a great time to bring in the next type of CEO, somebody that will really grow the company.

Yeah. That’s really. Far more development, far more commercial, and far more U US and well known. So, you know, I’m working very hard in this role on many levels. One of them is to, to add to the team. Somebody else is outstanding That will, you’re looking for someone that will Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s super exciting.

Philip Hemme: Okay. And then you would, you would stay in more on the scientific and discovery role, I guess. 

Robin Carr: I think you picked up on that. My passion. You know, is that and we’ve got a couple of great programs. We’re using the same linker payload, so if both of them work, that’ll be incredibly bold and incredibly successful.

But I wanna lay down options. Should we want slightly different profiles. Yeah. With the linkers. With the payloads. So. I wanna do some skunk work. I wanna do some stuff almost behind the scenes. Yeah. That won’t touch our first couple of programs, but it’s gonna give us breadth to give us resilience. And to be frank, when people look at the organization down the road, they’ll say mirrors are really strong in multiple ways.

Yeah. Their link, clinical programs, their platform, their breadth, their level of understanding. So I want us to be excellent. 

Philip Hemme: Yeah. I like that. And I like also, I mean, it sounds like from everything we discussed. Because you have so novel Target and biology that you can really build this platform and have this press.

So, so we, 

Robin Carr: you know, as, as you’d expect, we’ve done a comparison of, of our payload to DXD, the leading a DC payload. Yeah. And we’ve looked at sort of, you know a hundred odd cancer cell lines. You know, we have a, you know, very similar breadth. We’re at least as broad as as topo one. Yeah. We, you know, have very comparable IC fifties for major cancer types.

So, you know, the breadth of opportunity is immense. You know, if the noble biology can start to indicate in the clinic that we work where topo one doesn’t, and that we have, a very clinically manageable therapeutic index. You know, scale of opportunity is truly immense. And one of the things that we’ve learned is that yes, we have a novel mechanism and grade efficacy.

We’ve also got novel tox profile. Yeah. So we do not show. The, so far we have not seen the, the tox that typically limits the use of current payloads. So we don’t see ocular tox, we don’t see neurotox, we don’t see lung tox. We don’t see impacts on, on, on, on neutrophils. We don’t see neutropenia. So actually these are the things often compromise the dose that a patient can take, the duration that a patient can take it for.

So that novelty, the tox profile for me is. As exciting as a novelty, the efficacy. ’cause it’s often the talks Yeah. That impacts and limits how thoroughly patients are treated. So at a very high level, I think a DC is a truly remarkable in modality in terms of response rates. Yeah. You know, very, very high response rates.

But the duration response is not as strong. Mm. You know, the large number of patients need those holidays, they need dose reductions, and it’s because you’re just walking that, that line between 

Philip Hemme: efficacy, toxic sulf. 

Robin Carr: So, you know, I really hope that this novel mechanism will have a novel profile in the clinic and that we will be able to fully engage the mechanism.

And I have a much lower the talks to the point. They’re not compromising dosing. So I’d love it if this payload actually can be dosed to fully engage the mechanism throughout the duration of the patient treatment. Wouldn’t that be a great experiment to be of? And, and we’ll see. But if you don’t, I think you don’t have clear articulated ambitious goals.

Philip Hemme: And I guess you will, you will see in, in your phase one and testing in humans, we will see. It’s a, it’s a big step and a different step than, I mean, translating from animals to human is always absolutely big challenge. So, yeah. Maybe staying on the bit on the, on the personal lesson leadership lesson.

One thing also is always, I think a challenge is this transition from academic data to. Being a, a biotech. 

Robin Carr: Yeah. So we were super lucky. So MXs have had luck in a number of ways. Timing of funding into ADCs. The other thing was one of the three founders of of MXs was Roberto Solari. He was also a co-founder of Aztec.

Okay. And I’ve known him for decades. And actually I was having such fun at GSK when I was head of chemistry and respiratory that, you know, I broaden in. To, to work with me at, at GSK. So we worked as colleagues at GSK. He, he then decided to go to Imperial, you know, late in his career because he just had a passion to push some respiratory virus work.

So actually, although it spun out of Imperial, it had Ed Tate world class academic, there’s huge amount of NNT world leader. It had Andy Bell, an ex Pfizer chemist that chose to go to Imperial rather than go to the US with Pfizer. And then it had Roberto at Imperial. So actually two out three were hyper proven, proven, you know, drug discovery, April and also Roberto serial entrepreneurs.

So it was just a, a, a fortunate collision. Okay. Yeah. 

Philip Hemme: Which is quite rare. 

Robin Carr: So, I mean, I, I’ve been the other way around where I’ve signed quite significant collaborations with major academic names and we haven’t been able to translate their beautiful academic assays into something that could support drug discovery programs.

So I think we’ve been super fortunate. 

Philip Hemme: Yeah. And besides, besides experience and besides the people like. Are there any, like, let’s say, some practical lessons on the translation? Like 

Robin Carr: You know, we’ve come to the ADCs sort of, you know, in its second decade, so there is a lot of experience out there in the world.

So I think one of my lessons has been, if you have one thing that’s interesting, you know, be prepared to share that with people. Because if you’ve got something interesting and they can add to that, people like to add to it. So when we showed them our small molecule, NNT data you know, bio conjugation, scientists want to contribute.

You know, people that have retired from, from, from, from major a, DC companies want to contribute. So what I’ve learned is, you know, if you’ve got something exciting, even if it’s a small thing, other people. Want to join and see if they can, as a team do something useful. So it feels like a team, you know?

And that for me is really energizing. 

Philip Hemme: I like that. Yeah. Especially I, I’ve seen that quite a few times, especially I think with, with younger biotech entrepreneurs who come from academia where like, oh, my ID is so precious, I should not share it. I should do my kind of. My own thing. Own, which I think is something I think, I guess some people will lose quite some time and don’t get the best results through it basically.

And, 

Robin Carr: you know, I do some mentoring for, for, for, for, you know, for academics looking to do translation and you see the whole repertoire. And some are very open and some are very defensive. It’s just how people are, right? 

[00:42:39] ADCs in Europe, the US and Asia

Philip Hemme: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And going a bit more into the, the industry or the a DC industry, what one thing you said, and what was pretty interesting as well, was that you said that the UK slash let’s say Europe at large was, was pretty strong in ADCs from.

I mean, for example, a DC therapeutics, AstraZeneca, future amount of, of experience, 

Robin Carr: her virus, you know, bliss, you know, Malins, I think yeah, there’s significant successes of, of in, in innovative a DC work in Europe. As always the US has a, as a huge scale, but actually China. Yeah. In Japan, I guess I’ll tell you.

Sure. Yes. Some very, very good individual companies. You know, just as I think China’s had a long-term strategy for Eds electric vehicles, you know, it almost felt it couldn’t compete with petrol engines and diesel engines, so it made a big, long-term strategic play. I think the same’s true with, with ADCs 

Philip Hemme: and biotech in general.

Yeah. 

Robin Carr: Well. I think they clearly committed a long time ago to high-end innovation, structural biology, et cetera. But ABC’s remarkable. So where do I think the competition will come from? You know, in the last six months, we’ve heard on the grapevine of two startup companies very early in their, in their, you know, in their work, but both saying they want to work on LMT as a payload.

From Taylor. One of them is, is an extremely high-end US academic serial entrepreneur who always attracts money and really, really smart people. And the other one is a very good Chinese a d, c company. So I think, you know, at the moment I think we’ve got an advantage maybe two years, maybe 18 months.

But people are, are working on this. So I think how do we respond to this? I think for us it’s to stay focused negative and to at least meet our timelines to the clinic. And if we can exceed them, let’s exceed them. So I think we’ve got to keep moving forwards. We’re building the team very successfully.

We’ve gotta keep, you know, incredibly. Focused on timelines we’ve gotta be operationally excellent. So I, I joked at the beginning that, you know, before the Series A we’re all about raising the money. Now we’ve really become a, a small but focused, you know, company that must develop these into the clinics.

So I don’t wanna be beaten. I mean you know you know I don’t want to, you know, we don’t want to be known as the innovatives. We want to be known as the people that translated this successfully to the clinic. You know, and if we ask the question and Nmt just doesn’t work in the clinic, I’ll be gutted.

But as long as we’ve asked the definitive question, then scientifically you’ve just gotta accept that. 

Philip Hemme: I like that. Yeah.

What, what’s the order of magnitude when you say like us at a scale or China in terms of ADCs, like, oh, if you compare 

Robin Carr: That’s a very question. Depends how you, how you cut it. Because I think quite a lot of the Chinese workers in, in, in, in, in major CROs and some are more independent companies. I think there are far more scientists doing a DC work in China.

Than there are in the us. Well far more, far far more. But as always, you know, innovation is, is critical. And, and, you know, Europe, the US has great track records. 

Philip Hemme: Hmm. 

Robin Carr: That’s good. 

[00:46:17] ADCs are a booming market

Philip Hemme: And and what’s you, what’s your take on the, I saw the, the a DC market in general? I mean, I think it’s, it’s grown like crazy in terms of, I mean, I think I saw a figure was, what was it, 20.

23 was, was above $10 billion revenues. And it’s expected to grow a lot. Like, 

Robin Carr: yeah, I you 15% annual growth. Yeah. I mean, clearly I read the reports, I look at them you know, there are hundreds of ADCs at different stages. Development. Do I know them all in detail? Know? Yeah. How do I contextualize the all, you know, for me, the, the context is at the moment, many ADCs give a good, response give you a good response rate, but actually duration response is always a key vulnerability. So, you know, for us, I just think we have the potential to be very clearly differentiated. So if NNT translates, we wanna have clear differentiation against all of those. ADCs is my personal view. So I think it’s a good time to have innovation.

And to be differentiated. I mean, but there’s so levels of, of smart work that people are doing. The ABCs, you know, we hope we’re doing very high-end payload. There’s other people doing fantastic work on linkers, fantastic linkers and yeah, fantastic Work on, on, on, on, you know, release mechanisms and, and designing antibodies.

And then there’s by specific antibodies, dual payloads even three payloads. So I’m humble and that we’re just one group trying to do small work. We are really focused on unique biology and seeing if that translates. If it does, then I think we’ll, we’ll have huge opportunities, you know, should not do everything anyway and we can’t.

And you know, one of the things I learned, you know, when I was at Tex through the programs it worked on, got partnered really early. They’re the one, you know, they translated three launch products, so I’m very fortunate that I’ve seen 

Philip Hemme: How many were, I think two were blockbusters. Yeah. 

Robin Carr: Yeah. I think a couple of, yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, one of them is, you know, multi-billion CDK four, six. So, I mean my, my lesson from that is that Aztecs did something unique. They did the fragment screening. They found high quality early leads. They had a toolkit that could iterate and optimize their leads, but actually it partnered early because it knew that it needed other things.

You know, it needed resilience, tenacity, but also needed development expertise. Actually two of those three products were developed by first intent as combinations. So they were launched using an asset that the major pharma already had. So as we progress, as we go through the risk discharge, we go through the value increase.

You know, the whole. Range of opportunities for us to really amplify that success by very smart strategic partnerships with one or a small number of strategic partners. So we won’t be able to do it all. But I think what we’ve gotta do is we’ve got to ask the question, is NMTA really valuable payload?

Yeah. And you know, what we’ve learned is not, not all NMT the inhibitors are the same. You can’t take. NT inhibitor and get efficacy on an A DC. You can take payloads Devil in the details, I guess. Yeah, it is. So we’ve taken some of our own that are sort of like a single digit nanomolar. A medicinal chemist would look at that and say, that’s really potent.

That’s a great compound. You stick it on the A, d, C, you don’t see efficacy. So the rules of the road, 

Philip Hemme: and I’m curious on the, I mean a bit on, you say, but. I think investors, as we talked, there’s a big appetite or there was a big appetite in a DC, I don’t know. Now maybe it’s a bit more crowded, I guess, from big pharma as well.

You have a very strong appetite when this is a sales number and they all want to go in. How do you still see it? Like today Do Yeah. How like 

Robin Carr: I think you see that, but that’s from interest in, in investing in differentiated. But clearly the bar is very high. Yeah, no. I think in terms of pharma, I think that, you know, their appetite remains.

Yeah. Because we’ve raised very good money. Yeah. Because we’ve recruited some very proven, talented people around development. I think they realize that’s what we’re focused on doing. We’re gonna translate two programs to the clinic. So I think, you know, we’re finding a lot of pharma wants to get and stay close to us and just, you know, and see how, you know, see how far we get, can, can we keep chipping away at risk discharge?

And and, you know. We’re having those conversations, most of them not under c, d, a, you know, one or two where we think the companies have a unique insight or we really would value their judgment. We’re going under cda. So my objective for this year in terms of BD is engagement. Very mindful engagement to bring people along because.

You know it’s very important. They, they get familiar with entity, they get familiar with mirrors. We don’t wanna just email them something and say, look, this is what we’ve got in that first X patients. Do you wanna type them in one month? Yeah. We wanna bring them on the journey. And that takes some amount of time, but it’s also energizing.

Philip Hemme: Yeah, I like that. And I guess there’s a, we, I heard that a few times on the show at the end of the day, in biotech, I mean, you want to have a lot of optionality. And you wanna have whatever fundraising capital ways you want to have partnership op optionality and you wanna push everything as much as you can.

Robin Carr: So I 

Philip Hemme: guess that’s part of your job as CO also too. 

Robin Carr: It is. And, and I think part of my job as a current CEO is to bring in the next CEO that actually has a, outstanding track record of going to next, the next level. So we’ll be very active in that regard. And that is a long-term planning for funding.

We can’t assume that we’re gonna knock the ball out the court, you know, without first phase one eight dose escalation. You know, we, you know, that’s, we don’t want to, you know, we don’t want everything to be hinging on like one patient. Yeah. So I like them. Yep. 

[00:52:35] Quick-fire questions

Philip Hemme: I think that’s a great wrap up to thing. I wanna just finish with some, like a quick fire, just some quick questions a few, a few minutes and then yeah, just some quick questions.

One sentence answer. First one, what’s on top of your mind at the moment? 

Robin Carr: So, signer, GLP readout for our first program. I just want that data. So the, the, the dose range finding the report is 700 pages. You know, I want to get the data and wanna get that report that’s gonna be absolutely transformational.

Yeah. 

Philip Hemme: One advice to young life science professional who want to, you know, yeah. 

Robin Carr: Growth life. I done, I’m not sure I will, I’m not sure I could, I I think I’d just say try and get themselves into a position where they, they get as much energy as they give. But that’s easy for an old guy to say, right?

When you’ve got kids and you’ve got a mortgage, you know, there’s breslow’s hierarchy of needs, so sometimes you’ve just gotta focus on school and away the money. You’ve gotta like, so, you know, I’d respect anybody who’s just trying to find their way through. So just don’t look to too many people and just crack on.

Philip Hemme: Yeah. But I like the finding the fit of what energizes you. I think it’s a, yeah. 

Robin Carr: They say if you find something you like, you never work a day in your life. 

Philip Hemme: Yeah. What’s one of your favorite biotech or science book? 

Robin Carr: Anti dyslexic. And so actually I don’t read books of pleasure. Yeah. Okay. I’m very visual.

Philip Hemme: One mistake you made in the past 12 months. Oh, last.

Robin Carr: I’m, I’m struggling to think of a, of a big mistake in the last 12 months, honestly. I can give you some big ones. We, I think we’ve had a good run of luck. 

Philip Hemme: I can’t think of one. Well, it’s okay. One new habit that you adopted recently. 

Robin Carr: Embracing new media. 

Philip Hemme: Like 

Robin Carr: a podcast. Like a podcast. And last one actually chat.

GPT ai. Yeah. Phenomenal, phenomenal fun. It’s like having six artists that are okay if you ask them terrible questions so you can just triage crazy questions. I love it. 

Philip Hemme: I have to say on this, I mean, we could talk a lot, but I love also also for the biotech audience, how good it is when you ask super specific questions.

I’m surprised sometimes it’s like, yeah I mean, you have to know what comes and what’s true, but like sometimes it’s, 

Robin Carr: I think if you’re asking specific questions, you’ve gotta be prepared to then do the legwork to track down the references because there are a significant number of inconsistencies.

But if you are asking, if you’re just trying to get your brain working, if you’re just trying to contextualize things, it gives you that terrain almost for free. And then you can say, that’s not worth thinking about, or that is. So it’s just like, I feel like I have. Dozens of ongoing conversations with Chap GPTI run the same type of search, so that I love it.

Philip Hemme: Yeah, that’s great. A last question. Who is one of your biotech pharma heroes? 

Robin Carr: Biotech, pharma, 

Philip Hemme: or mentor or hero? Yeah. 

Robin Carr: Yeah, so I’ve been super lucky to, to, to, to, to work with and report into some, some, some amazing people. And, but one that sort of, I only realized how invaluable he was many, many years later was a, was a guy called Alan Baxter.

He was a very senior person. He chaired project reuse at, at Glaxo Glaxo. Welcome. And when my first program went out, two. Failed to get to reach the clinic. I asked the project team, you know, have we tried our best ideas? You know, should we keep this going, what you recommend? And we all said, we’ve done our best ideas, you know, we haven’t got other good ideas.

So I proposed to the, to the, to the, to the management council to close the program. And it was in the days you walked in, you gave your presentation, then you walked out. It was very formal. And as I walked out, somebody tapped me on the shoulder and I looked round it. Allen Baxter. He said, I just want to shake your hand.

I said, why? He said, you are the first project leader that’s ever come to my review committee and recommended closing their program ahead of me having a coffee with them. And I didn’t realize what that meant. But what he was saying was actually he and lots of people really value people making those tough calls, making early calls.

Don’t hold onto things. Be confident that the next thing will be even better. Be confident your, what you’ve learned will steadying well in the next. Next position. So I’ve never been frightened for closing projects. I’ve never been nervous about going to ambiguity, and it’s because of people like Alan.

He’s not the only one, but it was a small thing. But that permission to fail is very, very empowering. 

Philip Hemme: Yeah, I like that. I think it’s a great way to to end the conversation. Thanks a lot, Robin. 

Robin Carr: Okay. Yeah, that was up. Was that okay for you? 

Philip Hemme: There we go.

I am impressed by the story behind Marx, especially the persistence to reuse m and t and the opportunity to combine it with ADCs. I’m also impressed by Robin’s clarity of his role and his limits. If you’ve also enjoyed this episode, please hit the like follow a review button. Any of this action will help us a lot.

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Alright, thanks for staying on to the end and catch you in the next episode.