Welcome to the Proteomics in Proximity podcast, where your co-host Cindy Lawley and Sarantis Chlamydas from Olink Proteomics talk about the intersection of proteomics with genomics for drug target discovery, the application of proteomics to reveal disease biomarkers, and current trends in using proteomics to unlock biological mechanisms. Here we have your host, Cindy and Sarantis. – Hello there. Welcome back to Proteomics in Proximity.
I'm your host, Cindy Lawley, with my co-host Sarantis Chlamydas. We have a very special episode for you today. We have a few guests coming to us from our new home, our new family, our new neighborhood, Thermo Fisher Scientific. Some of you might recall that last summer we completed the joining of Olink and Thermo Fisher Scientific. I'm excited to report that we've got Gianluca and, Karen to join us to talk about why and what that means for all of us and all of you.
Sarantis, do you want to tell us a little bit more about our guests? – Thank you. I’m really pleased to welcome our guests today. Truly honored to have Gianluca. And he's the Executive Vice President of Thermo Fisher Scientific. Karen Nelson is Chief Scientific Officer.
And, we are looking forward to discuss about integration of all in proteomics to the Thermo Fisher Scientific family and not only as a strategic alliance and, movement, but also the next step opening and promoting actually a world that is healthier, that is safer and actually, makes our life easier for everybody. I would like to pass the words to Gianluca if you don't mind. I would like to know you a little bit more better.
And to I get to know your journey and your career path that you had in Thermo Fisher and I am looking forward to hearing from both of you. Thank you very much. – Sarantis, thank you very much. And, Cindy, thanks for having both myself, and Karen, we were incredibly excited to have the opportunity to join you. As you might remember, many months back, when we first talk, I knew about you.
Not because of Olink but because of this podcast that really helped me as a non-scientist over the years to get acquainted with the magic world of proteomics. And having been 20 years in the industry, I always thought that proteomics that the certain point would be very transformative. And, indeed it is the case. And that's why ultimately we decided, about a year ago to acquire Olink and now Olink being part of the Thermo Fisher Scientific family.
It is, truly being transformative to the world of science. So I'm incredibly excited to be here. A little bit about me... – Can I just pop in and say that Gianluca and I met at the castle in Uppsala at a dinner, and, And he knew about the podcast, which was just so flattering to us. We were very excited to hear that. Sorry. Go ahead, Gianluca. – I knew about the pod. I was a fan. And, I'm continuing to be. – You even had it on your phone. You even showed me. I said, oh, please. He had it up.
It was right at the end of the episode. I was gobsmacked. – I had the proof. The proof is in the pudding. You see, it wasn’t only marketing. – Frist step towards trust between us, Gianluca. – Absolutely. Well, so. And this was a little bit about me. I've been at Thermo Fisher Scientific for the best part of the last 20 years. I was in Europe at first. Then I spent a few years in South America. In Brazil, I moved, then in 2012, to China.
Actually one of the biggest achievement while I was in South America when I was running, what at that time was Life Technologies in South America is meeting my wife, and we together moved in China in 2012. When we moved in China, we announced that Thermo Fisher was acquiring Life Technologies. We ended up spending five years running, Thermo Fisher in China had two kids that were born in Shanghai.
So I think technically made in China and then imported in the US when tariffs were not a thing back in 2018, we moved to California and then here in Boston, I now run our product and technology businesses at the company and as said, I'm incredibly excited about proteomics. We have ample time to talk about that, over the course of this podcast. And so, without further ado, maybe I'll hand it over to Karen to tell us a little bit about herself. – Absolutely. Looking forward. Looking forward.
Actually, I would like to know, I think as well that Karen has a tremendous career and academic career. And it was she was leading Craig Venter Institute, almost a decade. How was the transition from I mean, it's a common question right, the transition from academy to a big a technology industry institution? How did you find this? How was your vision? When do you change? – Well, Sarantis and Cindy, thanks for having us today.
It's such a pleasure to be with you guys, and Cindy, I'm just getting caught up on your podcast, but they really are great. So thanks for doing that. – Aw thanks. – You know, so I joined four years ago and, Sarantis, to your question, probably one of the best career moves of my probably is well, I'm by now, I'm sure it has been the best career decision of my life.
I spent close to 23 years in a non-for-profit research world with the Venter team, and they're, you know, they were part of the team that did the human genome, my biggest claim to fame was doing the first human microbiome.
So a lot of time spent in genomics technologies and then my coming over to Thermo Fisher and seeing the breadth and possibilities of what we have all the way from instruments through consumables in the life sciences through clinical trials that has been such an amazing, experience for me, both in terms of people and learning and the willingness of everybody wanting to partner.
And then, you know, when I heard that you guys were joining the family, it was like, you know, Gainluca, and I were like, yes, this is perfect because it was such a nice complement to what we had already in-house and had the potential to really accelerate what we're doing to make the world healthier and safer. So thanks for having us here today. – Yeah, thanks, Karen. Because we do. We feel very welcome. – Wonderful.
– I just want to highlight and put on records that you said that was the best move of your life and career. – She moved from Craig Venter to me. And so I don't know if I have the same scientific pedigree, I have to say, but I think that there's a compliment coming. – Well, it's been such a pleasure to be here. – He’s throwing down the gantlet, Karen, to Craig. – I know, I know. – Now I'm thinking maybe we'll hear from Craig. – But, you know.
But just the magnitude and the impact of Thermo Fisher. You know, I am one of those, who grew up on Thermo Fisher reagents and instruments and supplies. You know, it was Gibco in every aspect of your lab, for example, and different pieces of equipment and thermal cyclers. So it's actually, you know, my opportunity to be back, at home, just like you guys are here now.
– And I'll say it's not an easy thing to make a transition that that layers on what Craig Venter accomplished and what you accomplished with him. I mean, just the whole history is just phenomenal. – Well Cindy, you're part of that too. You made the jump. So you know what it's like. – Yeah. So that's why I'm complimenting us both for having such a good... – Good mentors and great guidance. – That's right.
It's all about having a cool technology, having wonderful people around you and those wonderful people then create a good culture. And I think with that in place, changing the world, feeling like we've got a purpose, I mean, that's just icing on the cake, right? So, Gianluca, we've got mass spectrometry, an amazing capability here at Thermo Fisher. And I will say, I as Karen says, I come from the genetics world. So, so proteins have always been really scary to me.
I felt like Olink gives me a little bit of a, an easing into proteomics. But why Olink in the context of the enormous capabilities at Thermo Fisher using mass spectrometry and the advances that we're seeing in that space? – Yes. Obviously starts from the understanding of the importance of proteins and the importance of proteins, to obviously our, incredibly complex and fascinating biological systems.
And as a leader in proteomics, through our mass spectrometry franchise, we had the opportunity to have great insights on what was happening in the market and also the understanding that, not only having solutions that are helping you to go incredibly deep and, in a way, in an untargeted fashion to study proteins was not enough to be able to provide to our customers the full breadth of what they truly need, which to us is also a high affinity method.
A throughput like, Olink provides that truly is being transformational. When you look at the result of the UK Biobank in terms of both the amount of information that, the UK Biobank cohort has been able to create and the one that is ahead of us, but more importantly, the number of publications and the understanding of correlation between the presence of protein, their level disease, this has been truly transformational. And the pivotal moment thinking science. And we'll discover more and more.
And so, we felt that was very natural to actually combine, the all the technology with the incredible leadership that we already had in mass spectrometry. And indeed, we are now seeing how engaging with customers, the two technology can be incredibly complementary to have a more comprehensive understanding of the human proteome.
And I can't wait to see what's going to happen in the next few years, because I do believe there's going to be transformational in the way that ultimately we actually prevent then detect and treat diseases that today are not, treated as well as they should. – To monitor, right? Who's really at risk? And I, I joke about the Goldilocks, too hot to cold and just right. And I don't want to dismiss your microbiome metabolites, but they are so hot, they move so quickly.
Right? DNA moves at the pace of generations. That's really slow. It's hard to nudge, but proteins, it's just, it's the baby bear bowl. It's just fabulous. – So, Cindy, I wanted to pick up on something you said about proteomics being scary. I don't know if it was scary as much as we didn't have the right tools. Right.
And now, finally, we do have to. And, if you think about Astral and Astral Zoom and how deep you can go on a sample now, I mean, it's unbelievable what's changed over the past 15, 20 years in terms of technology development. So we're now in a better comfort, space. And to Gianluca’s point about integrating the Olink data with, proteomics data. I mean, it's such a tremendous advance for science. And from where I sit, yeah, for sure.
– And I guess I think of it more as scary from a geneticist point of view, where we had this, you know, certainly in 2007 when we advanced to the to the massively parallel sequencing and being able to analyze those data, right, that we just shifted the burden from the collection of the data to the reconstituting the data and comparing it to reference genomes and handling those data or even transcriptomic data just feels a little more, you know, it's A C T and G
right there isn't the conformational or the, conformational complexity or the protein protein interaction complexity, but I think, geneticists are really getting comfortable with full length proteins. And then mass Spec is going to be the only way, today to dig into proteome forms, to dig into what are the post-translational modified aspects of those proteins that are actually, providing the bulk of those signals?
And, of course, we're seeing from the UK Biobank data amazing signatures of 5 to 20 proteins that are predicting disease better than anything a doctor has available today. Like this is, you know, just echoing on what you're saying. Gian, it's a very exciting time now. – I mean, I want to follow up in on Gianluca’s comment about UK Biobank. We see recently also that pharma investing from these data sets, right, of generating real world evidence, real world data.
And we see that they invest in cultural on platforms like Olink. How will you see both of you the role that can play in this platform kind of way of working pharma together with governmental institutions, with academic institutions to enable precision medicine? How do you see Thermo Fisher plays a role that are and having all of this weight and breadth of multi-omics approache? – It’s a great question. And, you know, maybe because, the probably only non-scientist of the crew here in the pod,
– I disagree. – You disagree? – Honorary member. – No, you’re scientist. – Honorary member. – You are absolutely a scientist. – I learned in street fighting, spending a lot of time with customers. But, you know, I've been thinking a lot and being, at heart, a lover of technology and innovation. I've been, obviously very impressed what is happening in the world of, automotive technologies and, transportation? We now have self-driving cars.
I wake up in the morning and my Tesla doesn't even need me to tell where I'm going, because the Tesla knows that more probably I’m going to the office. So I sit on my Tesla and there's already, a predefined destination in the morning. And then I put self driving and the car drives itself to the office. Intervention is very limited. And my hope is that at a certain point, health becomes the same. We are on autopilot. And to be able to do that you actually need, devices and detectors and signals.
And I think proteins are providing just that. We actually don't understand everything to the same extent that, digital technologies are able to understand, visual signs and help a car driving itself yet. But I think that's going to be obviously, a big transformation. And that is why I think to your question, pharma companies are so interested now in getting a head start in proteomics.
Because, we've seen again, through some of the result of the UK Biobank protein signatures and this, poly protein, you can call it race course. My opinion, but I'll leave it to the scientists on the part to confirm is more than rescore, I think very different to look at poly protein signatures and polygenic risk scores as an example.
That's why I think pharma so interested in this poly protein signature as an indicator of either an early onset of disease or perhaps an indication of, response to therapy. So again, over time, I think the, utility of protein signature is going to be quite broad in nature, whether he's prevention, early detection, whether he's response to treatment. And I think more things that can be done through, those signatures. So it's quite exciting.
Does the interest in the space, the key to me is still generating millions and millions of data points so that ultimately we can apply artificial intelligence and truly get to it to cells. Do I can I call self-driving human or is a bit to, provocative? I don't know. – I think self, so why do we want to call that? I mean, it's a really good question. We should come up with a phrase, Gian, I don't know that self-driving human, but it’s self, I mean, we're certainly
putting power in the hands of the individual, right? Yes. We the community, the scientific community by building such tools. And I think this point about self-driving, I love the comparison. You know, I love a good analogy, but, you know, I was talking to one of the I live in the Bay area, this, you know, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting somebody who's been involved in some aspect of collecting self-driving. I would never swing a cat, by the way.
Is involved in some aspect of this technological advance. And even where I used to live in the agricultural belt of California, they used an old air force base to do some of the practicing out of that. But but what turned out to be the most important thing is that the right data were used the minute you have incorrect data. And here I'm calling back to specificity. Right. And the importance of knowing exactly what protein you're measuring.
If the minute you have wrong data, the algorithm can't discern the difference. And so I think that was the turning point based upon the conversations I've had with a few of these folks of, of being able to, to really make that work because it's phenomenal to see those cars drive themselves. They can come pick you up at the curb with not a driver in the seat. It's impressive. – Actually.
You're not far away from the concept of digital twins, right in pharma convention that they have the digital twins where actually can project things in AI. Right. And predict things in AI, I think that's we are really close on this, really close on this on this era. – And the virtual cell. Right. We could navigate through it.
– So Cindy, just pick up on what one of the points Gianluca was making is that, you know, some of the preliminary data coming out of UK Biobank in terms of stratifying patients is really amazing. Right. And so to Gianluca's, point be, you know, the early diagnosis, like the protein signature that's coming really early on, we're going to be at a point where we can use that to change the trajectory of health or treatment. And I think we're just at the beginning here.
And, you know, you know, I just think it's going to change how we think about human health could go all the way to animal health, environmental health. But it's just such an amazing opportunity for the field. When you start to look at the initial implications of the data that's coming out. And I, I think, Gianluca, we have multiple collaborations now, right? It's not just the UK Biobank. I think it's we're processing... – Topmed, FinnGen, yeah. – Yeah.
– We're involved in our future health where, yeah, there's there's so many places where there's opportunities. And I think it just for context on UK Biobank, what a sweet data set that is just to remind listeners that, you know, those collections were made for individuals between 40 and 67 years of age, and it's been almost 20 years for them to develop diseases.
And so to Karen's point to Gian, to your point, this is a beautiful set to be able to look at those baseline blood samples and see the signatures for the same diseases in different individuals. And that has, you know, certainly coming out of, Ruth Travis's group, they've been able to do that in cancer that hit the UK news last year around how they could see a median of 12 years before diagnosis of cancer. 12 years. That's phenomenal. Right? A minimum of seven years. That was what hit the news.
And then, and then of course, the Carrasco Zanini paper coming out of Claudia Langenberg's lab, where 67 out of the 200 diseases in just the pilot of the UK Biobank Pharma Proteomics Project. They were able to see these 5 to 20 protein signatures that outperform anything a doctor has available today.
So just for some context, that some of that exciting stuff coming out of that study, that pilot and those pilot data are available for application to use them, and they're free for many, many, many academic institutions So it's, it's an exciting time. – One of the thing I want to add, one thing that is, maybe the elephant in the room or the human in the room, call it, the way we want. – The self-driving human. – The self-driving human. But, in serious terms.
One of the things that I’ve been, fascinated with is ultimately human psychology. And I think I'm not misquoting this, but, in a study that was run a few years back, they highlighted how 50% of the individuals that should take medicines that are critical due to the chronic condition and in many cases, a life saving, medicines, they're in noncompliance. 50% of them die in noncompliance, which tells you, the fact that, for some reason, humans are not very, self caring, if you wish.
And so one thing that I think is going to be very important to your point on the amount of available information, is how do we disseminate this information? How do we make sure there's enough, learning, opportunities both for doctors but also for individuals to become more self-aware on how they actually can stop the car before the car crashes. With the analogy of self-driving cars, a self-driving car normally doesn't crash.
And I think from a health standpoint, we should make sure that we prevent disease more effectively going forward. With all of this insight and information that we have available. Then one of the concerns I have, I don't know your perspective, is how do we influence culture and who is going to be, actually helping consumers to do a better job in taking good care of themselves? That, to me, is still an unresolved issue.
If we don't resolve it as a society, then it would be very difficult to take full advantage of, these tools. But maybe these alternative solutions, that will, be implemented over time as a result of, now much better tools to help, consumers and patients. – Karen, do you have ideas about that from the genetics space? Right. This feels like a parallel, of education needed, right. That what what was what was what helped us there from your perspective?
– Well there’s I mean, to Gianluca's point it probably it has to happen in parallel, right, to get absorption into the general population. I think back then we had set aside funds for like ethical, legal and social implications. Remember all of that good stuff, Cindy? – Yeah. Oh Yeah. – And, it was a percentage of all funding going into genomic research was, used for like education and legal work and getting, because there were a lot of questions. A lot of concerns.
And not everybody is trained in science. And so they don't understand. And, you know, we tend to be positive and can only, just try to discuss the positive implications. But there are concerns about some of these, research areas that people don't quite understand. And I think, the education and the value and highlighting, you know, like the car analogy. Gianluca, you're saying that when the light comes on, on the car, take it in and don't wait till like, the engine shuts down right.
And we're getting to the point where we can have that light come on really early when there's a problem in the car. Not on an Italian car though, right? I'm talking about in other parts of the world. So. But I think, as a society, Cindy, we probably need to start having those conversations about getting the information out, getting the positive findings out. You know, it's right now, it's so positive, like, how do we get that out in words that the general community can understand?
And I think it's up to us to try and accelerate that. – And isn't it easier because proteins aren't tied to our personal genetic information, right. – Right, it should be. – That might be because, yeah, it's not an identifier of us as individuals. Our protein signature. – Right. But it's hard to understand, right. Because you talk about proteins and proteoforms and splicing and all this good stuff.
And so it's about how to translate that in words that, the average person can understand the benefit of the research that's ongoing right now. – I think to your point, I mean, it's also really important not only to generate the data, right, but having the tools to interpret the data and make sense out of this data. And I think that's also really important. We'll come to the future and it'll come really important to the future as well.
Interpret the data, make them easy for the people to understand and make the right use on that. Yeah, that's an excellent point, Karen. I actually would like to follow up on this, Karen, if you have this NGS background and experience, what excites you more in this NGS proteomics nowadays? And do you see this like a game changer for clinical trials for example? Do you see that will make clinical trials smarter having NGS proteomics integrated to the omics pipelines, for example.
– Quick answer is yes. You know, you think about NGS. It's like a static point in time that you're understanding what's going on in the cell. Now, we can actually understand over a time period how a cell is behaving, how it's reacting, what it what it's doing. You can do it with a human. You can do it with a bacterial cell. You can do it with a plant. I mean, you can understand what the DNA has resulted in terms of activity at the cell level. And I think it's so exciting.
I mean, genomics was exciting. We built massive informatics resources, software resources, massive tools, AI. We were using all these tools back then, but now we have a chance to actually understand what are the messages coming out and what are they turning into. And how can not that we want to stop it, but how can we use that information to influence the outcomes and our health in the long term?
And I think it's gonna, over time, become a critical part of, you know, a companion, part of clinical trials? I would think so. I don't do that on a daily basis, but I would absolutely believe that they're going to you can take a plasma sample on a daily basis and look at how certain protein markers are fluctuating. Imagine a time like that. Right. – Well, Chris Whelan talked about this in depression where they had three endotypes based on proteins after the clinical trial.
Right. So this is an in that trial. But they responded differently to the therapy. Each of those three. Yeah sorry. Go ahead Karen. – No I was just saying that I think you guys had a partnership where initial outputs from Olink data turned actually into, diagnostic in the clinic. Right. And it took a couple of years, but I believe that that's going to become at scale that we can have these early biomarkers being detected as a result of the technologies that we're, fostering in-house.
I really believe that. – Yeah, yeah, those diseases and there's application and disease specific signatures that our customers are building. I think that is one of the most exciting things I was excited about in joining the Thermo Fisher family is that we can we can accelerate those. Right. – And Sarantis, my last happy, happy point. Imagine being able to live through the genomics revolution and landing where I can live through the proteomics revolution.
– That’s amazing. – I mean, not a lot of people get that opportunity, right, Cindy? – That's right, that's right. It's pretty special, it really is. – What do you think also this will open the door to let's say FDA and to other and let's say institutions that can be biomarkers that are approved will make probably all of these procedures much easier. Having all of these nice data sets. What is your opinion there, Gianluca, on that?
– I think regulators, have their hands full, to stay up to speed with the technology for sure. And it's actually, refreshing to see that I think we had recently one of the first, AI driven biomarkers approved, in the pathology space. If I'm not mistaken. And so it tells you that, they're starting to move at pace. And that's a very good news.
By the way, I Chatgpted the data point that I quoted on Nonadherence, and, in fact, there was a study from the W.H.O. that says that, Nonadherence can account for up to 50% of treatment failure. And just to put this in context, in the US, around 125,000 deaths and out to 25% hospitalization each year, that are driven from nonadherence, with medication. So, it's indeed highlighting how the need of, you know, information and education of the patient population is, super critical.
But also, I think technology plays a big role. Why we're seeing... – Sentry Mode, right, Gianluca? I mean. – Sentry Mode. Yes. – Get a pop up. – Get a pop up, but, you know, in that case, you obviously have the car that, allows you to do that in a patient ward. Actually, you need technology to be able to detect, as Karen was highlighting. What about detecting this biomarker on a continuous basis? And I feel we're still in the era of mainframe, in the life science space.
You have this big instrument... – Or it’s the Volkswagen Bub from 1966. – Yes. That's a good analogy. – Beautiful car, but. – We use Fiat. You know, I know that you now you're in the US. So you say Fiat means fix it again, Tony. But I as an Italian, I could take offense for that. But actually... – Yeah, you’ll get in trouble. – It was my first car and I truly enjoyed my Fiat. But I think technology will need to play a big role.
And I could envision over time we already have much smaller and compact sequencers and the we know the detection technology for Olink case sequencing. But over time, we're going to have smaller and smaller technologies that can be ultimately integrated in, our houses and will probably benefit from, an availability of biomarkers at the level. And to certain extent, you know, even with a WHOOP today, you can have these digital biomarkers that are augmenting your insights on your health.
And I think this will happen over time for things like protein for sure, which are challenging to measure as you know, with the current technology, but they're becoming easier and easier to measure with modern technologies. – And then you think to that, let's say one of the barriers you have to go with like finding new ways of sequencing or more easy ways of sequencing, or more handy ways of sequencing, right, that there will be the future, how you envision it. – Totally, totally.
That's why, we're investing, a billion three, a billion four every year in R&D. That's Karen’s ward, she’s very tightly managing, the priority around, everything that we spend in innovation. But, certainly that's the direction we're driving towards. And I'm sure Karen has some perspective on that. – No, I agree, I was laughing to myself because I remember in the early days of the microbiome, they wanted to put a digital detector in the toilet and so people could know if they were sick.
But but think about it, right, Cindy? I mean, imagine being able to look at inflammation in a urine sample. It could become our future that, you know, you have some way to check at home and this becomes a part of your lifestyle. So I, I do agree with that 100%. But in terms of our investment in R&D and pushing the envelope and integrating cost company, these are these opportunities. Again, you know, it's the things that wake you up in the morning excited to go to work.
We think about these opportunities. And I will tell you honestly that Gianluca and I think the proteomics space is one of the especially bringing Olink in, is one of the biggest, most exciting areas for us. So we don't advertise it all the time. But we are very, proud of the acquisition and what it means for the company. – I love to hear it. – You are very welcome. Welcome on board. Very happy to have you on board. – Thank you.
– It's been a year now, Sarantis, and it's like, I've known you forever. – Yeah. – Yeah, we get under your skin. We get there. – Yeah. We are, we are looking forward to. – It's very exciting. – It's very exciting. It's very exciting to see that the matching right with the omics pipeline that you’re having. And it's really clear, nice fit on that because now it's a complete now it's a complete toolbox right end to end for the customer from data generation also to data interpretation.
That's the beauty. That's the beauty. – Yes. Correct. – Can I add one thing? I want to add one thing which is super important because obviously, the Olink technology as well as largely Mass Spec for untargeted protein, detection and quantification, has been used in the translational and research space, but one of the big unlock will be when those technologies are getting to the clinics. And I think we have an interesting parallel with what we did with Ion Torrent.
We acquired the company back in 2011, I believe, and now we are basically the enabler of, vast majority of clinical testing, that are next generation sequencing based, thanks to the fact that the team has worked to streamline that technology. Now we have a fully integrated and automated NGS, that is used for therapy selection, with, you know, great products. We just announced that we got FDA approval for, our Genexus system. And, you know, a set of, panel and markers used for therapy selection.
So it's incredibly exciting. It's been a long journey. But it's a journey that, we learned how to, go through and execute. And I do envision the same journey on a shorter timeline because we learned a lot over the last decade, 15 years. And I'm super excited thinking at when we're going to see, proteomics, into the clinics at scale. It will require obviously content, technology, etc. but, it's, exciting to think about when is going to happen.
– And I think the what's critical and we do this today with our focus panels is being able to turn over those custom subsets of proteins that we already understand exactly how they cross react together. We already understand how they play. And those, you know, authentication steps of, you know, two antibodies and and one hybridization, those that three factor authentication is really enabling this to happen quickly.
And so I would encourage folks to keep an eye on this space because we're already seeing, you know, there's over 700 references to the UK Biobank. You know, foundation paper that came from the pharma partners. That was in October of 2023. So lots of references by using those data, some of them just mining the data for new insights. It's a rich source. – And if you don't trust a one factor authentication for your digital needs, why should you trust it for your health? – That’s true.
– Exactly. – So use Olink. That's the only two factor authentication at scale out there. – And antibodies are what we use in therapies. Right. So I'm also excited although much of it's behind closed doors. But when pharma are able to publish on mechanistic insights from the, the therapeutic targets that they're identifying, right. This is a big push for why 14 pharma partners are paying for 600,000 samples to be run, the entire cohort in the UK Biobank.
And I think that the mapping of those causal pathways across different diseases is going to be a reference that we will come back to for many years. It feels very good, Karen. It f feels like the GWAS revolution over again. Right. It's like you say, it's just such a privilege to have a front row seat and a tiny, impact on where this goes and where it will go next. – Well to be part of the team, Cindy, we're all part of the team, right? – It's awesome. It's awesome.
So I'm having the time of my life. I am having the time of my life. How about you, Sarantis? – Oh it's so great I mean, I'm coming from the omics perspective, right. And being in a big family, with the omics family coming together, which for me is the most exciting thing ever. You know, looking forward to break into clinics, looking for biomarkers and push and beat and convince FDA to have biomarkers for clinical diagnostics. That's I think is the next step I have to go through.
– And, Cindy, one more plug. One more little comment to Miller who is on our team sent me a list of about ten microbiome papers where they're using Olink to look at inflammation. And doing that correlation. – Thanks for the reminder. – But it's just amazing how it's spanning multiple different, areas of science, right. That you probably wouldn't have thought about the connection originally. – That's right. And we can put those in the show notes. So if folks are interested in that.
I had just had a customer, ask me specifically about that as well. Another person who came from that microbiome. It’s still happening, this microbiome – Still trying. – revolution where we're learning so much. Yeah. It's like they. I always think of them paying the biome is paying currency like it's paying rent to live in our body. Right? By giving us these metabolites like serotonin and things like this. Again, Gianluca and I, I think both really love a good analogy.
So, so final thoughts, we're just going to kind of, wind down here. It's a pretty great place to end on. Gianluca, do you have some final thoughts you'd like to leave our listeners with? – Absolutely.
The future is bright and is bright, thanks to the for us, 120 plus thousand colleagues at the company showing up every day trying to create those incredible innovation that, equally talented and incredibly important customers and partners are using to actually transform the way that, we identify early or fully, then ultimately identify treatment and treat diseases that, today are either not well treated or untreatable. And that's why it is incredibly exciting.
To do that well, you actually need the right technology. Back to the analogy of the self-driving car. You need the right sensors. You need the right orchestration, information, and you want to rely on something for your life. When you drive on a self-driving car or when you actually drive through your life and you make medical decision, you actually want to rely, on the best of the technologies and our two factor authentication at Olink, is something very special.
And I think it has been, proven, testified by the adoption that we've seen from the UK Biobank study as an example and the many partners in the pharma space that now are working with us to create the next generation of medicine and diagnostic. So it is incredibly exciting. It has been a great journey thus far, and I can't wait for the next decade to play out so that, together as an industry, we actually can truly transform the way that, medicine works. – Beautiful. Karen?
– Cindy, I can't add anything more to that. I'm good. That was perfect. That was really good. So thank you again for having us. It's been really a lot of fun. – I’m so looking forward to it. So in the show notes, I'll add some of the genetic corroboration of the Olink specificity and also some mass spec corroboration of the Olink specificity as well as Elisa. Right. There's lots of ways to corroborate. You just have to be able to see the protein in whatever matrix you're looking at.
Any final words from you, Sarantis – Oh, I mean, it's exciting. It's exciting times. And I mean looking forward to break the barrier. Right. To make our world healthier, safer. Right. And, the best place to live. Thank you very much for your time. And it was great honor to have you, both of you here. – Thank you, both. – Awesome. Well, just as a reminder, if you want to reach out to us, we're at pip@olink.com that stands for Proteomics in Proximity. We love to hear from you.
We love to get feedback and questions that you'd like to hear answered here. Thank you very much for tuning in. Well, that wraps up this episode of Proteomics in Proximity. Huge thanks to our guests and authors of such impactful publications. I also want to thank you for tuning in. Really appreciate you being here. If you enjoyed the content of this episode, please think about sharing it with friends or colleagues you think might be interested in the content.
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