The Allogeneic Future with Poseida's Kristin Yarema, Ph.D.

Dr Kristen Yarema , newly appointed CEO at clinical stage CAR-T developer Poseida Therapeutics , knows this very well , and yet she and Poseida are all in , not on autologous CAR-Ts , but are instead developing a pipeline of healthy , donor-derived CAR-T therapeutics the allogeneic approach .

The company's underlying intention is to change the cell therapy accessibility paradigm by leveraging the manufacturing and economic scale benefits of a one-to-many , off-the-shelf approach . Positas candidates are many and its support is strong .

It's got clinical programs in multiple myeloma and B-cell malignancies in partnership with Roche , and it just recently freshened up a deal with Astellas to support its solid tumor programs . I'm Matt Pillar . This is the Business of Biotech , and longtime listeners might recall that Poseida founder and then CEO , eric Ostertag joined me on the podcast a few years back .

Well , today I'm excited to catch up on the company with Dr Yarema , who was president of the cell therapy practice there for less than a year before taking on the CEO role in January of this year . Dr Yarema , welcome to the show .

You know it's not hard to kind of follow a little bit of a trajectory there . After earning your PhD in chemical and biomolecular engineering doing a Max Planck fellowship , you joined McKinsey , which is not super uncommon among the biotech execs that I've interviewed . It's sort of a springboard into multiple things .

But I want to kind of get your perspective , in your own words , without making assumptions , on sort of what you were thinking about doing when you joined McKinsey and what sort of a career you were looking to form up at the time , whether it was sort of orchestrated or you were just kind of feeling out the waters .

What was kind of going on then , yeah , absolutely , you know .

But I had come to the conclusion that I was probably less wired to go and be the world expert in a you know , in a narrow scientific field .

You know , although I could have gone that path and that was probably the dream I had had since I was 10 years old I had had since I was 10 years old but I realized that I would be happier and probably more productive by spreading my energies and my efforts across a wide range of areas , and I really wanted to have more immediate impact .

I was always very much about impact . That's why I chose engineering over a pure science , scientific training actually right , I always wanted to be working on things that were very applied . I wanted to see , you know , the fruits of the project in quite real time .

And so I started to think , okay , I'm probably not a lifetime academic here , I need to get into industry , specifically medicine , and I had some medical members of my family practitioners nobody really in you know biopharma research and so I thought , okay , that's my next step and I could have gone to be an industry scientist . That was a very viable path .

Viable path . But at that time McKinsey and some of the other consultancies were recruiting PhD , new PhDs and PhD students very heavily , because they had come to the conclusion that they often made excellent management consultants and it had to do with how they approach their work .

So their approach to their work was really , as I saw it , applying the scientific method , but to business problems . So you get a problem , you formulate a hypothesis , you know , you go and investigate , you come to some conclusions , you present them and I thought to myself , hey , that's great , I can do that .

I can formulate hypotheses about anything and , you know , go and investigate them , and so I'll see where that leads me . You know , I'll get an overview of the biotech and biopharma industry . I was very clear with McKinsey that I really wanted to focus in healthcare and they gave me the opportunity to do that .

And , you know , see if this was the industry for me . Get closer to the front end of the healthcare system and start working on , you know , medicines that were either already on the market or things that would be near the clinic , and you know it was really a fantastic opportunity to do that .

You know consultants are so expensive that whatever they're working on , you know the project that they're hired for is always of great importance to the company , because otherwise why would you splash out expensive consulting dollars for that ? Different companies and many different products and areas .

So I worked for 19 of the top 20 pharma companies at that time a whole lot of biotechs . I did growth strategy , r&d strategy , quite a bit of org work , product turnaround , like just about every conceivable sort of project .

And so you know I left with , I think , a really good understanding of the landscape of the biopharma industry and you know that led me to the conclusion that this is where I want it to be .

But one of the more interesting and rewarding um elements of this pod I mean we're 200 and I think this will be like 212 , some episodes in One of the more rewarding aspects is the feedback that I get and the questions that I get from people who are still in academia and are considering pursuing a career in big pharma or biotech or biopharma .

And a question that I'm often asked is asked is like , what do I do once I have my PhD ? Like you know the people that you've interviewed , they've come at it from all different angles . What's the most efficient path ?

And it sounds to me like this this consulting opportunity was an efficient , efficient path for you Cause the other aspect of that is , like a lot of the students who come out even seasoned uh execs who come out of academia , for instance , or practicing physicians , when they decide that they're going to go into industry .

They struggle mightily with the transition to business . Would you , would you , I mean would you , agree with that and would you suggest perhaps , like the consultancy route is a pretty good ?

You learn , you know this challenge has been faced by many other companies many times before . It's always going to feel unique and very present to that current situation or that current team . But you will say , yeah , I've seen this 10 times before and , by the way , every other company is facing exactly the same questions and challenges .

You know , here's some ideas that I picked up that might be relevant , or here's why your situation is a little bit unique , you know , relative to others . So I think it's . You know , there's a lot of travel and there's a lot of hard work involved , but it's really an excellent training ground .

And I think the other piece that for me was very important was , you know , working in consulting , which is a team-based approach , and it's client service , right , which can be challenging . You're , you know , you're all . You have a customer , you have a client company .

It really taught me a lot about how to work effectively in teams , how to be a leader of teams and organizations and how to bring people together cross-functionally to solve very , very complicated problems . So you know , as a student or a researcher , I was very good at solving problems myself .

You know that I had defined but I did not receive training , how to solve very complicated problems that required inputs from lots of different people or places and how to move things that require efforts from many people forward effectively . I don't think academia is a great training ground for that , but you do it all the time .

You know when you're , you know , parachuted in as a consultant or you have , because a lot of the projects you have to go around and work with many , many different areas of the company , with many , many different areas of the company . So you know , now I see you know tremendous power and where I am today , I think much less about .

My job is you know I need to solve X . That is not my job .

My job is you know the path for the company forward needs to be charted , or we need to solve XYZ problems as a company to be charted , or we need to solve XYZ problems as a company and what I need to do is ensure that that happens , somehow , involving or bringing together whatever people or resources or outside experts or whatever is needed to do the task .

So I think that experience in particular is very different or can be very different in industry versus in academia , and you mentioned that people sometimes struggle with transition . What I've seen is it can often be about that . It's not about the science , it's not about the medicine . It's about how do I fit into a corporate environment and get things done .

Of Dr Kristen Urema , Before you earned your PhD , you doubled up your undergrad efforts at Stanford in chemical and biomolecular engineering , but you also earned a BA in English literature , both with honors , I might add . It begs the question what's behind that Like ? Were you like ? What was it ?

Was it a conscious effort to balance out your left and right brain equilibrium ? Like , what's ?

So , you know , growing up I was very much pulled to , you know , science and math and technology , but also very much pulled to the arts and humanities literature , music . So you know it was so as an undergraduate , I elected not to choose my choice was not with , you know decided not to decide and pursued both of those .

I ultimately concluded that I was likely to have more impact on I don't know the world at large , I suppose , you know , by heading down the technical path and going into biopharma and I've been very happy with that choice I actually get more opportunity to exercise my creative juices than I would have expected . In the industry .

We have , you know , lots of visual and verbal communication , to be sure , but I also think that bringing creativity to looking at drug development and commercialization is really important . These molecules or cells , they do not come with instructions .

Clinical development , in particular , I think is very strategic , and often coming up with ideas that are not cookie cutter , not what everybody else did , where you're going to build in your product differentiation , or where you're going to build in your product differentiation , or where you're going to , you know , take something that could have been an okay therapy and

really make it , you know , a remarkable one , which I've been honored to have the opportunity to do , you know , a few times in my career . But , I would also say , you know , to anybody out there today who may be , you know , feeling a similar , you know duality and similar tension , that I would not say that one could not have impact .

As you know , as an artist or someone in the humanities today , the older I get , the more I think you know we really should be valuing , as a society , our artists just as much as are builders .

It was like , okay , it's time to stop running around the globe , stop traveling . You know , have something that's that uh , you know it was . It was like , ok , it's time to stop running around the globe , stop traveling . You know , have something that's that , you know keeps , keeps me in one place a little bit more .

And so you know that that led me to to , you know , taking the first role at Novartis and later Amgen , as you said . So it was always a planned transition , I guess . Why big bio and not biotech to start with ?

Well , you know , I had more familiarity with the big company setting because more of the clients as a consultant were big companies , because they can afford it . And , you know , and I felt I knew how to navigate that setting pretty well , really liked what Novartis was doing at the time , and I got a absolutely great first role .

You know , I came in and I was really overseeing all of the commercial inputs and strategy , product strategy for a huge chunk of Novartis' pipeline . It was everything outside of oncology , which was a little ironic because in McKinsey I was kind of known as the oncology person and my PhD was kind of in oncology .

But you kind of go where you're needed and so that was an opportunity to learn everything else and I would say that's I think that's a good first move , because large companies have lots of experience , they have lots of resources , and I don't just mean financial resources but I mean other people , knowledgeable people , so you can really , you know , continue to learn

a lot , and it's different being inside a company than as a consultant . A company than as a consultant Consulting you also learn a lot , but it's different being a part of the machinery versus just helping tinker with it from the outside . I suppose .

You know , now we're we don't cross paths really anymore , but it was interesting , it was fun , you know it's , it's . I think it's good to have someone who , you know , understands the frame of reference that you're working with every day , you know you just have to make sure you're not talking about . You know work too much off the clock all the time .

You know , synthetic biology was kind of really just emerging . None of this stuff was really ready for prime time . This stuff was really ready for prime time , like the very first tyrosine kinase inhibitors , which are now , you know , bog standard in many . You know , cancers as treatment were were just being discovered .

So I had always been really energized by these advanced modalities and advanced therapies , but we just weren't there yet back in those days . But I had kept my eye on the space and always thought that cell therapy was particularly exciting .

And so when , you know , when I got the call which came in through my network you know , not through , not through a recruiter got the call from Pascal Tuchon , the CEO of Atara Biotherapeutics , I thought , okay , this , I wasn't looking at the time but I was like this is the one , this is , you know , this is the opportunity to finally make the move for because

it was something that I was really passionate about . I looked at the technology .

I had seen so many , you know so many drugs scores , hundreds of drugs , you know , feel very calibrated on separating the wheat from the chaff at this stage and I said , okay , you know , I think what they're doing is really important and is likely to work and I liked the people .

It's another piece of guidance that I would give to people considering that transition a large , you know biopharma , you know there , there are many , there are many . If you don't like the situation you are in , you can always go to another therapeutic area , or maybe you can if you're a commercial person .

You can go to a different country , even In a small company . The people are the people . Those are the people . You had better like them . You were going to spend a lot of time with them .

So make your choice very carefully , not just based on the technology , which is table stakes , and you better like that too but also really on the cultural fit and if you think you're going to be excited to work with these people . So all of that fit for me .

I joined Atara , as you said , a couple of weeks before the pandemic started literally which was a very interesting onboarding experience in and of itself and I joined as chief commercial officer . I cannot describe what it was like to be part of the team and the organization that got the world's first ever allogeneic T-cell immunotherapy through approval .

It's a product called Ebvalo for a rare type of lymphoma that transplant patients can sometimes get , and it is terrible . Patients who fail their first therapy for PTLD have a median life expectancy of something like three weeks . So it's very serious , very acute , and you really need a powerful and immediately available therapy to do that .

So Evallo is an allogeneic T-cell immunotherapy that is now available for these patients in Europe and hopefully soon in the US as well that win feel different than I mean ?

It's got all kinds of risks . You know lots of discussions with health authorities . What's the regulatory path ? You know how do we gauge quality manufacturing ?

There were many hurdles and challenges along the way , but it eventually got there and I'm confident that today there are people alive , enjoying their lives and with their families , who otherwise , you know , otherwise , they would not be so , you know , were it not for those efforts .

So , you know , I think that's , you know , that's particularly meaningful , that's something that I'll always take with me . And how did that impact me in terms of , you know , preparing me for eventually coming to Poseidon ? Well , in a few ways , I think I would say . First , it gave me absolute conviction that the future of cell therapy must be allogeneic .

I just gave you a great example , no-transcript that physician and patient together make the decision that cell therapy is the right next step . So it gave me that absolute conviction and it also put me in the position of really coming to understand , let's say , the state of play of cell therapy .

There are so many cell therapy companies out there and it can be difficult to really understand how they're different . Everybody is making big claims . We're very different from everybody else , but it can be quite challenging even for people in the field to understand exactly how .

So since I was in the space , it really gave me the opportunity to go deep and learn about all of the companies in the space . And I saw data from Posida at an ASCO GU conference genitourinary conference for a prostate cancer program that Posida had and this is a solid tumor CAR-Ts have really struggled in solid tumors and I saw that data .

The poster didn't get very much attention at the time but I saw it and said you know , I think that's really remarkable data in solid tumors for CAR T .

I'm going to take a , you know , take more of a look under the hood , which I did , and , you know , really learning more about Poseida's technology , I came to the conclusion that Poseida really has the winning set of proprietary you know , totally different genetic engineering tools and supporting technologies and so really has all the elements that are necessary to make

allogeneic cell therapy happen , and so that started the process by which I ultimately joined Poseidon .

So Eric was the first gene therapy student out of the University of Pennsylvania , very first one , and way back then he quickly came to the conclusion that the kind of tools that were available , a lot of which relied on viral vector technology , just would never be able to deliver the profiles of the kinds of medicines that we would ultimately need .

So a lot of limitations of viral technology . So there's a lot of safety concerns , expensive and difficult to manufacture . But also the versatility is limited . You can only pack so much DNA in a virus and so it's very difficult to put a lot of functionality into your medicine . It's very difficult to put a lot of functionality into your medicine .

So he developed an entirely different set of tools and completely unique approaches to do this . So we use those tools today on two sides of the business . So we use them in an ex vivo or outside the body way to engineer cells , and that is our allogeneic CAR T .

But we can also use them in vivo as genetic medicines , and so we have a program in gene editing , for example , a program in non-viral gene insertion . So I came in to start leading just the cell therapy , the allogeneic cell therapy division , as you said .

But Poseida actually has much more , you know , many more programs and much more technology under its umbrella than just cell therapy , though those programs are in the lead .

How would you say your experience is , you know , from McKinsey on McKinsey through Big Bio , sort of prepared you to , you know , move from a cell therapy discipline , leadership of a very specific cell therapy discipline , to leadership of a company that is multifaceted , to say the least , in terms of the targets and indications it's going after .

So I was in many commercial roles global , in-country pipeline , in-market lifecycle management , but also time in clinical development , you know , strategy , business development . You know I was originally trained as a biochemical engineer , so you know what do they do . You culture cells , so you know it's been , you know , definitely something of a wandering career journey .

I would be the first to admit that . But I'm very grateful to have had all the different experiences in different functions and seeing different things that I have , because I think that has really given me a great perspective on all the different areas you know that that need to happen all the different capabilities that company needs to be successful .

You know I mentioned corporate communications at Atara . You know that taught me about investor relations and , you know , managing the whole investor side . So all of these different experiences and I wouldn't say that someone has to have all of them in order to , you know , to take on a leadership role like CEO .

But I will say I feel very well prepared , having seen , you know and played a role in so many different places on , you know , what's likely to be an issue that needs real attention , maybe needs my personal attention , versus other things that are just going to work themselves out , or it's just , you know , kind of business as usual .

Yeah , it's a challenge , but we're going to work through it and that , I think , is a very important and valuable skill , because no one can be everywhere at once . Right , you really need to pick your spots and you need to pick your altitude .

And again , I I'm very thankful that I had , you know , so much opportunity to see so many things and so many different therapies in development or on the market or whatever , um , because it really gives me comfort and confidence in in knowing where to go in that way gives me comfort and confidence in in knowing where to go in that way .

Yes , absolutely yes , in between the two of you , then you know I always hesitate to ask these questions about CEO transitions because sometimes there's , you know , uncomfortable stories behind those transitions . But what led you from president of the cell therapy practice to CEO of the whole company ?

Eric founded the company , really put in place what we have that's Poseida today , you know , really put in place what we have , that's Poseidon today .

But then , around the time of the first transition , which was moving the programs you know , from research , from being a research stage company , to starting to go into the clinic , you know , that's where the transition to Mark Gergen came .

And Mark who still currently serves as our executive chairman , by the way who still currently serves as our executive chairman , by the way you know , had an absolutely fantastic set of skills and experiences for the company at its next stage . He is a phenomenal deal maker and , you know , just has a legendary resume within biotech .

Amongst other things , he was one of the co-founders of Maradi .

So he was really instrumental in providing the foundation for Poseida in the form of some of these partnerships , capitalizing the company , so putting together the Roche deal , helping to orchestrate the first deal with Astellas I was just looking back actually earlier this week at the non-dilutive capital that the company has raised .

We've only ever done one small equity raise since the time of the IPO and over the last three years alone we've secured $400 million in non-dilutive financing through these partnerships and we've got maybe up to another 150 million coming , potentially just in the next 12 to 18 months alone .

So , mark , you know , really put all of that in place for Poseida and then saw that the next transition point was coming , the next inflection point , which is for Poseida to be , you know , really a full-fledged clinical stage company , which we are . We have three programs in the clinic .

We have , you know , several programs rapidly approaching the clinic in the CAR-T , and then we have , you know , the genetic medicines programs and we've said we'll have at least one IND in 2025 on that side as well . So , you know , for Poseida , now in our next phase , you know this is where the rubber hits the road in execution of clinical development .

You know strategy , delivering data . You know thinking about target product profiles . You know making sure we have the data to support them . You know all of that experience and my skill set and having seen an allogeneic T cell immunotherapy all the way across the finish line . You know , those are some of the skills that we're looking for now .

So I don't want to say long-term , you know we don't want to look too far into the future , but for some amount of time , given your commercial jobs .

You know , people have a really unique ability to just make things happen and I've seen a lot of companies . I feel you know very , a really unique ability to just make things happen and I've seen a lot of companies , I feel , you know , very , very well calibrated on that .

I tell our people that all the time , you don't understand how special this place really is . You know it's this . Look around you , look at your colleagues , you know , be thankful for them .

And then I want to talk a little bit more specifically about some of the partnership deals , because I mean that's so important , you know , not just from a product development standpoint moving the ball down the field , moving the ball down the field but to your point , I mean it's been a financial boon to Poseidon as well .

Right , keeping the lights on keeping the employees getting their paychecks and doing the good work . So let's start with the pipeline though Just give us an update on recent pipeline advance .

So this is one of the two programs heme programs that's partnered with Roche the lead in that partnership and it was an early data set . But what we showed was that an allogeneic CAR-T really has the promise to be at least as good as an autologous CAR T and I think right now that's something that most of the industry does not believe .

Right , there's been a lot of challenges in allogeneic CAR T . You know a lot of . You know there's a lot of hype and some setbacks . We believe that you need a particular kind of allogeneic T cell to be the foundation of your CAR T . The T stem cell memory cell , not just any old T cell will do . It's got to be that .

And to get that kind of CAR T you can't use a viral technology . You really have to use a transposon technology , which is what we use . So this was the first data set for a program with that profile .

And what we showed is , in a very , very heavily pretreated population , probably the sickest multiple myeloma population ever treated we saw an overall response rate that was incredibly competitive with the autologous CAR-Ts and we saw great depth of response .

It was a very early data set so we didn't really know about durability at that time , but we really liked the leading indicators of what we saw . We could see our cells . We measured them by flow cytometry . We could see them sticking around in the bone marrow where they're supposed to be fighting the tumor .

So we're incredibly encouraged , our partner Roche also incredibly encouraged , and so that program has been continuing ever since and what we've said is we'll give at least one data update , possibly multiple data updates , on that program later this year , in the second half of this year , and it's been running now for you know , in the kind of doses and cohorts data

that shows , you know , an off the shelf allogeneic CAR T that patients do not have to wait for , that everybody can be , can receive , and that can be manufactured at scale . We're getting a hundred doses from a single patient , single batch right now , depending on what you believe about the cell dose . You know this .

This is not a dream , this is , you know , this , this is coming . So that's , you know , really put wind in our , in our sails , as you can imagine . And but it's it's not the only program that we have in the clinic . So we've we also have a second heme program . This is a dual CAR T , so sometimes we we call it dual CAR-T .

So sometimes we call it dual CAR-T . It's really a tandem . It just has domains on one CAR that bind both proteins . This is not that we have two full-length CARs in our cell , one against CD19 and one against CD20 . And those are both great targets for B-cell malignancies like non-Hodgkin's lymphoma .

So this is a program that we think would be able to be used in patients who've failed one of the commercial CD19 CAR-Ts , because a lot of times that's due to antigen escape . They lose the CD19 .

Obviously your CAR-T doesn't work anymore , but they'll have CD20 , or you could even use it before and it's kind of an insurance policy if the patient's tumor evolves and they do lose the CD19 over time . So that program is enrolling . We'll give a data update .

We haven't released any data on that program yet , but we'll give a data update on that one this year as well . And then , as you mentioned , we have our solid tumor program . This is against Mucin 1C , which is a target expressed only on cancer cells in a range of epithelial cell malignancies . So that program we continue to enroll .

We'll give a data update there . Also , and most recently on that program we had a poster at AACR where we showed in solid tumors we've always known that solid tumors are a more difficult nut to crack with CAR-T than heme malignancies .

We think maybe one of the reasons why is it's more difficult to get an adequate conditioning , what we call lymphodepletion of those patients , which is what you need . You know what we call lymphodepletion of those patients , which is what you need .

You kind of need to clear out some of the immune system cells to make space or niche for the CAR T cells to expand . You know differentiate become the tumor killing cells that you're looking for . And so what we showed is if you go to a higher level of lymphodepletion we can get much better expansion of the cells .

So we're very excited with this new learning about what we will be seeing in that program and again we'll give a data update there . So all of that is just on the cell therapy side .

At ASGCT we show that our lead gene editing program , which is for hereditary angioedema , that our gene editor is probably 20 to 40 times higher fidelity than CasClover , which is what everybody's excited about already . So you know , really promising technology there . And we also have a non-viral program , fully non-viral program .

That's a gene therapy for factor VIII , for hemophilia A . That's an area that's had some challenges with gene therapy in the past . But we think those are because those were viral gene therapy programs , not non-viral gene therapy programs .

And a problem that those programs have had is you don't get durable expression of the factor VIII protein , which is what you're looking for when you're treating hemophilia .

Well , we showed and this was in rodents , but we'll be moving to primates , non-human primates we showed rock steady expression of the factor VIII protein at therapeutic levels all the way through 13 months . This really surprised , you know , all of the practitioners and thought leaders who were there .

So we feel like the pipeline is just you know , it's like an embarrassment of riches . You know everything is moving forward as we would hope . If we had more capital we could fund more things , but we're , you know , we're focused on those things in the pipeline right now .

The Estella's deal that you , you've probably played uh more of a hand in the the Roche deal was kind of pre pre your time , so um and and sort of how it came together . Um , so I I guess I'd just start there , like , first , what is the what is the collaboration entail ? Like , what does the collaboration look like ?

And then maybe follow that up with how , how it came to pass .

So they got some equity , they got a board observer seat , some limited rights of negotiation on a program that were time bound . So it wasn't like a real collaboration Still very meaningful and we appreciated starting that relationship , but we weren't working together .

But this spring we announced , in a way , that Estella's is doubling down on Poseidon , if you will , by announcing a real collaboration and license agreement . A real collaboration and license agreement . And we are really excited about this because I think it's an example of where , you know , it's not just a license of something from one company to another .

This is really bringing together technology from two companies . That's incredibly complementary and creates the potential for new medicines that neither company would have been able to deliver on alone . So , specifically , this is regarding a convertible car T . Well , what the heck is that ? I like to think of it .

As you know , there's the screwdrivers with the exchangeable tips . So if you think about the handle of the screwdriver , that's like the car carrying cell itself . When you've got a car T , that's the long part of the screwdrivers sticking up with some binder on the end , and then the convertible tips are what you swap in .

So Astellas has a technology through their subsidiary , zyphos , that they call Micabodies . That are these interchangeable tips . So what the arrangement is is Poseida will produce that chassis car , you know , that handle of the screwdriver , and then Astellas will provide up to two of those interchangeable tips .

And what's really cool about this technology is , you know you can , it has manufacturing advantages , right . Maybe you just you manufacture the cell once and then you're just essentially manufacturing an antibody component . So that probably has some cost advantages , maybe some regulatory advantages .

But it also opens up the possibility to go after different targets or maybe even to change targets in real time . So you could in theory , by mass action in a patient , give them the CAR T cell , give them an initial microbi , then maybe infuse a different mycobody , later knock off the first one and then you've kind of changed the target .

Or you could give a mix of mycobodies and then maybe you have a multifunctional cell with CAR Ts that are directed at different targets . So this is not an approach that Poseida was , you know , planning to pursue ?

We weren't looking at a convertible CAR technology and , for their part , astellas , you know , didn't have , I think they thought , the right type of cell Remember , I mentioned not just any CAR-T will do you really want the T stem cell memory cell ?

So if you , you know so we're providing the allogeneic T stem cell memory CAR-T and they're providing their convertible CAR-TIPS , these mycobodies , and so this is in solid tumors and opening up space that neither company would have been able to pursue independently . So it's , it's really , I think , a great example of a win-win .

I mean , are your people like in constant contact ? Are they , you know , sleeves rolled up in the lab with their people ? What does it kind of look like ?

I would say the same is true , you know , of our partners at Roche too , and that's very important because you know it means that the scientists get very excited to , you know , to talk to each other , to work together . So you know , even in the run up to this , you know there was a lot of excitement .

And when we , you know we finally signed it and started to get going , you know , like from day one , you know scientists are talking together , they're meeting , they're charting out the plans , you know working on selecting the targets . So it really is a very hands-on , very fluid communication sort of a setup , and I think that that's really important .

If you want to maximize speed , If you're kind of shuttling communications back and forth , which is another model , you can do that , but you're going to lose a lot of time . So I think it was really easy to get into that mode of working very well together and constant communication , because we already had that previous relationship .

So , like I said , it wasn't an active collaboration , but we did talk to them all the time . We had standing meetings , you know , regularly , once a month .

So there was already a lot of , I would say , understanding of the companies mutually , a lot of trust , a lot of respect , and so that , just you know , really kickstarted , I would say , you know , our ability to , you know , to work immediately out of the gate once we entered this new phase .

You know the physicians who are attending the conferences for sure , but you'll also have all the industry people there , so you will have the scientific and medical experts you know from companies that might be candidates for partnering .

You will also have all of their business development people and their diligence teams experience than just you know finding their data later on . Because you know people have the ability to go up to the poster and ask questions . You know of the people presenting right there , or you know if it's an oral presentation .

Right after that oral presentation they're there asking questions . You know engaging in dialogue and sometimes very unexpected things come out of it . I mean , asgct was probably the most recent experience for us , which was a lot of our genetic medicines work that we hadn't really shared before and people didn't really understand how far we had advanced with those tools .

We were just mocked . The poster session was supposed to be two hours long . We had different posters on different days . Every single one of them went 12 to seven , and a lot of it was people from biopharma companies , large and small , all sizes , trying to understand what we were doing and many conversations sparking on from that afterwards .

We don't know if there's a way to work together here , but maybe there is . Maybe we're interested in your asset , or we have this technology , you have that technology , maybe they're complementary . Let's pursue this . So there's certainly a path . It certainly is work . I don't want to say it magically all comes together and poof .

No , but I do think to your point . You know these conferences and industry events are the perfect place to meet the right people and start that dialogue .

But , um , you know , is there sort of a ? Do you have some thoughts around like what's uh , what's , what's not a good idea if you're looking to attract partnership and perhaps use that venue as a vehicle to it ?

We have , you know , many ways of searching information that we didn't have before , but we also have a lot more information . It's a very crowded information .

You know landscape , and so you know hoping that , you know that the potential partners are going to just discover what you're doing , not being proactive about it is , you know , I mean , it might work , but you're certainly not putting the odds in your favor , I would say .

So you know , I think interest in talking with people , genuine interest in learning and it and it's and it can be very open , right , Like what are you looking for ? You know , if there's not a there there , then great .

You know you have to be prepared for that conversation , but sometimes you just don't know what people are really going to be interested in or what they're going to be motivated by , and they also don't know to seek you out .

So I just had one conversation comes vividly to mind where a potential partner company had been looking very much for a technology like ours .

Um had actually made it a company mandate and they had talked to many , many companies but they actually hadn't talked to us because , you know , they just assumed maybe our dad's card was full or , you know , they just assumed maybe our dance card was full or , you know , just hadn't come and hadn't come around to . You know , to get to us .

And it wasn't until we reached out to them , say , you know , I have no idea if you have interest in the kinds of projects that we're working on or not that we heard oh , actually we're looking exactly , you know , for this type of technology and opportunity . Gee , I didn't realize we hadn't talked to you before .

So , you know , I think the you know , maybe it sounds a little , I don't know , trite , like ah , just get yourself out there , but I think that is , you know , that is a part of it , and I don't think you have to have earth shattering data . You can also be a taker in of information , right .

So maybe you go to the conference , you see what everybody else is doing and maybe that sparks an idea . You know , maybe it's the missing piece for your technology that you didn't know was out there right , same thing happens to us . Oh , did you know this company has this ? That could be really quite useful .

We're going to have an R&D day as well on the cell therapy side . We had one for genetic medicines in the spring . So you know you're really going to hear a lot from Poseida in the second half . So that's certainly a priority . We continue to , you know , seek interesting partnerships . We've been very clear about that . It's been our MO for a long time .

You know we would be so excited to do something in the area of genetic medicines . We have no partnerships active there , you know , right now on any of the programs . That's , you know , an obvious area where you know we would be thrilled to talk to people .

So , you know , I think those are some of the things that are ahead In terms of what's exciting , you know , and where's my focus , you know I am genuinely thrilled to come to work each day . I just really believe that Poseidon , like I said before is the real deal and , you know , is a wonderful place to be .

We say that our medicines have the capacity to cure . It's kind of what our taglines , you know capacity to cure and so I feel like my focus right now is really on execution and making sure that we prove that out . You know that we continue to move these programs ahead .

We deliver the data that you know shows the world that these medicines do indeed have the capacity to do that , and that they will be the kinds of medicines that , as I said , you know are going to be available to far more patients who could benefit from them than you know we've been able to make available the kinds of advanced therapies that we have today .

So you know that's where you're going to find me , right here , trying to make sure that that happens .

Yeah , it's an important differentiator , you know I was thinking about what you said around being able to produce an allogeneic therapy that's at least as good as the autologous therapies on the market , and you know , without that differentiator of being a company that can change the cost and accessibility paradigm in this particular space .

You know , sometimes just as good as isn't good enough , but that's giant in this space , isn't it ? I mean , it's just a big , big deal .

They've already seen lots of different lines of therapies . We now know that CAR-Ts have tremendous benefit , you know , if used really early in disease . We've got , you know , survival data from some of the on-market products you know that are really demonstrating this .

But we're having trouble meeting , you know , manufacturing enough to meet the patient need , even for the smaller patient populations in late-line disease . Well , now , when we clearly see that they could benefit so many patients in early line disease , there's just no way to bridge that math .

You have to have production at scale that's going to make enough product to serve the needs of these patients . And that's just in oncology . We're all now also really very excited about the potential opportunity for cell therapy to treat various autoimmune diseases , which is another area that I'm very passionate about .

I kind of come from an autoimmune disease family , so some of those diseases are terrible and the therapies are also terrible . So to have a CAR-T kind of one and done approach for patients with those diseases is also incredibly exciting .

Well , let me tell you , the patient populations in those diseases dwarf the patient populations in oncology and some of these products are the same products that you would use .

So if we can't meet patient need today for small patient populations in oncology , what are we going to do when , you know , when we have data that shows that patients could be benefiting for these much larger patient populations ? So that's why we , you know , say the future really is allo , it has to be allo .

But you , you know , the burden is on us as an industry and on Posida to show that the right kind of alginate CAR-T can absolutely do that .

I invite you to subscribe to the Business of Biotech podcast anywhere you like to listen , leave us feedback and a review , and be sure to subscribe to our monthly newsletter at bioprocessonlinecom . Backslash B-O-B In the meantime . Thanks for listening .