Starting a Drug Manufacturing Venture | Eugene Chan, Abpro

This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary.

[00:00:12] Mike Koelzer, Host: Eugene, for those who haven't come across you online, introduce yourself and tell our listeners what we're talking about today.

[00:00:20] Eugene Chan, MD: I'm Dr. Eugene Chan, and I'm the co founder and chairman of Abpro, [00:00:27] which is a company focused on developing novel cancer antibodies, as well as biosynthetic antibodies towards other key pressing disorders that might affect a lot of people.

Today we will talk about abro. The ins and [00:00:42] outs of our company as well as how we discover drugs and also partner to be able to bring these drugs to patients.

[00:00:50] Mike Koelzer, Host: Eugene, I've got a handful of brothers and Our big challenge of the year is [00:00:57] deciding where we're going to play our annual turkey ball touch football game. You and your brother, though, started a drug company. It's just beyond me how you would start a drug company and bring a product to [00:01:12] market.

[00:01:14] Eugene Chan, MD: It's a long path and everyone in the business knows that, and, but I think the journey is worth it because basically you get to be able to make therapies that address the new patient indications[00:01:27] 

[00:01:27] Mike Koelzer, Host: I'd suppose you don't start the day you leave college and say we're starting up a drug company right now.

[00:01:33] Eugene Chan, MD: That's tricky. So I think in order to be able to do that, I think basically you need a pretty extensive set of skill sets around the table. [00:01:42] And so I think the skill set that my brother and I bring to the table is that I'm a Doctor of my training. So basically I've gone through a lot of them. Training [00:01:57] required to basically understand how therapies are used and then while doing this basically also went through a training to understand sort of the basic biochemistry of these drugs.

On the flip side, my brother, he worked at Wall Street, so he's a business guy, so [00:02:12] he basically has a biology background, and at some point wanted to go to med school, but... really kind of realized that it would be better to basically go on to the financing side of things where basically he was [00:02:27] involved with sort of financing of biotech companies as well as M& A of biotech companies.

So it was pretty logical to kind of put our skill sets together and see if we could kind of create something that [00:02:42] could basically address medical disorders where they weren't optimally getting addressed. And one of the big ones is obviously cancer. 

[00:02:49] Mike Koelzer, Host: Eugene, is the conversation with your brother like, Hey, bro, let's start a drug company. Is it that or am [00:02:57] I missing something?

[00:02:59] Eugene Chan, MD: So I think that's sort of the nature of it. I think in some ways because we've had such a good working relationship and, just to kind of give you some context, he's the older brother and we've shared the same room [00:03:12] for. Probably more than half our lives

[00:03:14] Mike Koelzer, Host: Is that right?

[00:03:15] Eugene Chan, MD: and just think about that.

I mean, even with my wife and what I don't think I've spent as much time with her and so that makes a pretty special relationship. And whether you've kind of played together or you've kind of [00:03:27] gone through I had fights together and, put each other in headlocks and 

stuff like that. Look like you've done it too,

[00:03:34] Mike Koelzer, Host: Absolutely. All right. So Eugene, so you form this company and are you yourself thinking [00:03:42] of, Hey, this chemical structure would be cool if we could do this or that, or is your role more in hiring? The people that you think can do this, you [00:03:57] guys have been around for 13, 14 years. How much of that is you saying, Hey, I have this idea for this or that. Is it that down and dirty am I thinking too small? 

[00:04:09] Eugene Chan, MD: Oh, I think you're thinking about it as. [00:04:12] Correctly. So I think there's two sides of biotech that make it pretty interesting from my perspective. Yeah, first of all, it's achievable. So I think that's, you have to kind of, realize that you're climbing this gigantic mountain and if you're going to do this thing by yourself, you're not going to get [00:04:27] it right.

So basically, you want a super amazing team to kind of climb this mountain with you. 

And so who better to do it with than And so on top of that, we've actually built out this amazing kind of board of directors. And it was a [00:04:42] scientific advisory board versus our board director status, Bob Langer on it, he's the founder of Moderna.

And so absolutely, you've had some success there. And then on the scientific advisory board side, we've had. Laurie [00:04:57] Glimcher, who's the head of the Farmer of Cancer Institute, we have Ron Levy, who's the, he basically helped find, found IDAG, which basically merged with Biogen, so basically all these kind of kind of big experiences around the table to climb this mountain, and That's sort of the [00:05:12] team effort about this whole thing.

But at the same time, the big picture is not going to solve basically that specific kind of indication that you have. And so that's where sort of this like immense training kind of goes in. And one of the things that I think is [00:05:27] really important is. At the end of the day, it comes down to a single amino acid modification, coming down to a single sequence that basically now ultimately is success or failure.

And if you don't understand it to that level of degree[00:05:42] then basically you're risking it. And so I think, so for myself, basically, it's kind of bringing sort of this ability to kind of build a team, but at the same time, understand down to the exact pH conditions and be able to ask the tough questions to the team [00:05:57] so that, there's no stone over, that's unturned in this entire process.

And then that way you kind of get to the right answer. And that's really what this is about.

[00:06:05] Mike Koelzer, Host: Eugene. All right. With these board members I know that they became well [00:06:12] known because of their talents and skills. Is it important to have them, or as part of it, you let people know that your company is serious because you've got these names, is it [00:06:27] like having a name brand on your board?

[00:06:30] Eugene Chan, MD: Yeah. So I think that's a very good question. And I think here in this case, I think they're, it's less of a name brand. I think it's actually both. So basically it's a great name brand, but at the [00:06:42] same time, these folks, they bring real expertise to the table,

otherwise it would be the name brand.

So it's almost like a chicken or egg situation for that. And I think a lot of companies make the mistake of sort of seeing, Hey, these guys are [00:06:57] famous, working that. Plaster all over him, get him involved and not tap into your expertise. And so I think for us I think one of the great things about working with folks like, Dr.

Lyer is, he's an awesome name, but we also know how to work with him. And basically we can tap [00:07:12] into this expertise, I can drop my email, he'll get right back to me, we can talk about any issue and he's just incredibly wise. And so that's I think, when you could do that, then you basically have, you've kind of moved past sort of the current limitations [00:07:27] of plastering, fencing the anvil over your company.

You've actually now tapped into your expertise, which is what made him successful. Thank

[00:07:32] Mike Koelzer, Host: It's kind of like a piano player who only knows Fur Elise, and they buy, some hundred thousand dollar, piano or something, cause they [00:07:42] hope it 

Pulls it out of them, but this isn't the case. You've got the name brand people in quotes, but you know how to use them and then it all comes together nicely.

[00:07:53] Eugene Chan, MD: Yeah. So in my spare time, I do fishing. And people talk to me about [00:07:57] fishing. There's trap fishing and it's kind of a fun topic just because, yeah, I think if we go all the way to it. And so people tell me, it's like, Hey Eugene, like what kind of equipment do you use?

I'm like, it's not about the equipment that you need. You can go in there with a stick and some [00:08:12] bait and you can catch fish if you know how to do it. And 

Yeah. And but let's say you. You did have the fancy piece of equipment, and you knew how to use it, that's the supervisory board member, or board member.

[00:08:24] Mike Koelzer, Host: My brothers and I used to do, [00:08:27] just, I mean, we were way down the level, but we would do triathlons and we'd always pick on each other by saying, Hey, why don't you save 5, 000 on that bike and lose 15 pounds? And that's going to be the same thing.

[00:08:41] Eugene Chan, MD: yeah, I mean, that's a [00:08:42] perfect analogy, but I mean, that's a, I think ultimately it's... If you wanna get that competitive advantage, I think you're gonna look for anywhere, but I think sometimes the most competitive pieces are most obvious, and it's something odd that will give you, right?

[00:08:56] Mike Koelzer, Host: [00:08:57] . All right, Eugene I was at a get together Saturday night and I was like the only gray haired person there. I guess I'm getting older, but my son invited us. So we're at this party and one of the people there was joking [00:09:12] about how they didn't like Billie Eilish.

Billie the 

singer, 

[00:09:15] Eugene Chan, MD: Yep. 

[00:09:16] Mike Koelzer, Host: they didn't like her for this or that reason. And I said, what really intrigues me is that she won all these Grammys. She and her brother wrote these [00:09:27] songs and they did all the recording in like their little bedroom and they're in their parents house for the first album.

And I said, that's what really fascinates me. Cause I used to dabble in [00:09:42] that a little bit and it's just fascinating. And I think of the structures that were sort of, maybe torn down. I'm thinking of all these, all these studios that charge, [00:09:57] hundreds of dollars per hour and things like that.

And I thought, what did that change in the market? I know you're not going to create a drug in your garage, but are drug companies, are they getting there with the computers and all that, that it's just less than was [00:10:12] needed and you can throw anything in there you want to AI or this and that, but is there any correlation with drugs at all with this?

[00:10:20] Eugene Chan, MD: So this is interesting. Yeah, I wish we could discover drugs in our bedrooms. That would be amazing. Anyway, I think that would [00:10:27] sort of create a material kind of transformation of the healthcare

industry. Unfortunately, basically, drug development still remains very expensive. So I think on average, it takes close to a billion dollars to bring one of these things to market.

iT still remains [00:10:42] ridiculous, however, I think the early stages of discovery and knowledge about molecules and them being able to bind to target molecules, like in our case, we have these bispecific antibodies, which basically bind to [00:10:57] 2 Taurine, so essentially they'll bind to the target on the cancer cell, and then they'll activate the immune system of the person to basically bring these these like T cells over that basically fight cancer.

And so the cool [00:11:12] thing about this stuff is that there's a lot of knowledge about how potentially you can do this. And so you could actually cook up some sequences for antibodies pretty much You know, in your bedroom but in order to get these things [00:11:27] tested, that's where it becomes really complex because now you need a wet lab.

You need animal models. And at some point down the road, you need monkeys. These are all things that, once you start experimenting on these animals, [00:11:42] essentially that's where it gets very serious because now you need drug products. You've had a, all this stuff is sterile, you can't have fungus growing in this thing, and it needs to be perfectly pure.

And it definitely can't do it in my bedroom or, or any [00:11:57] kind of schleppy garage so I think that's where the limitation is. But I think if you can kind of shortcut that beginning piece, you've already kind of probably cut out like a hundred million dollars outta this thing.

And these sound like sort of gigantic numbers, but that's essentially [00:12:12] all I got about, being able to move something to Asian 

because ultimately you want to be able to have something that works and also it's of the quality that is suitable for administration into a person.

[00:12:24] Mike Koelzer, Host: All right, Eugene. Now, [00:12:27] this show is the business of pharmacy and that's because nobody trusts me to talk about medical stuff . But let me see if I have this straight. These drugs you make, they kind of mimic possibly something in the [00:12:42] body to fit the puzzle piece of what you're trying to get at.

But the question I have is... You can design a lot of stuff, but don't you still then have to find ways to create it like this recipe where you first add this, [00:12:57] and then you do this, and then you add this product. I mean, you've got to build it through a sequence of ingredients, sort of. I know I'm supposed to know this, but is that even close?

[00:13:09] Eugene Chan, MD: That's close. That's exactly what happens [00:13:12] in making a drug. So essentially there's a protocol that you follow pretty much like a kitchen recipe. And the recipe is scientifically complex. So basically you need to be a scientist to understand some of this. And [00:13:27] in our case, basically what, simplistically, you're taking a bunch of cells that make this bi specific antibody molecule.

And you grow up the cells in a reactor, and these cells then [00:13:42] essentially make this bi specific antibody that you can cure. So now you basically have, you go through this process where you basically get to a very pure drug substance. And then you go, there's a series of QC steps where you [00:13:57] basically ensure that there's no nothing that could be bad for a person, toxins from bacteria or anything like that.

And then once, once it's gone through the period of the QC process, on the back end, you want to ensure that the activity of this molecule meets your expectation. And [00:14:12] so it has to be able to perform as it would, based on preconceived kinds of success criteria. And this might be.

Binding to T cells, it might be binding to your target molecule, [00:14:27] might be activation, and basically the ability to basically kill your cancer cells. And once you've actually met all those metrics then basically at this point, you can basically now ship. I'm just gonna put it out there. the rules that you have to follow to make you but there's obviously all of the regulations that go with it as 

[00:14:42] well. 

And which are reasonably complex. So you, we actually have sort of groups of people basically focus on all this stuff.

And some people may say that, hey, this works out for you. but I think folks like myself, I [00:14:57] find it. You have to pay attention to that. It's just like the, at the very beginning of when I said, Hey, you have to create an awesome team, but at the same time, you need to know the details as well, because if you're not paying attention to things like quality processes, if you're, not keeping a lot of [00:15:12] notebooks and things like that, then, you're shortcutting a process to.

Potentially what would be a very successful drug that could benefit a lot of

patients. 

[00:15:20] Mike Koelzer, Host: Eugene, when I was in high school, you think of high school sports. I [00:15:27] played second string on the football team and I was a swimmer, one of those is very objective, swimming. It's a timed sport. The other one is very subjective.[00:15:42] For example, I only played freshman, sophomore year, and the guy that played in front of me went on to play at a Division II college, tried out for the Cowboys, and he made like the state [00:15:57] team, you know, the mythical team? I forget the term for it.

So I always figured that I was number two in the state, I just never got to show my skills, the drug process, are you ever dealing with subjectiveness? If Sally Smith [00:16:12] would have looked at this governmental level, if they would have looked at it instead of Bob Jones, it probably would have gone through. Is there subjectivism there? Or is it pretty much if you, get things in certain order they're going to fly.[00:16:27] 

[00:16:27] Eugene Chan, MD: Yeah, those are kind of great questions. And I think we try to take the subjectiveness out of it. Uh, What we design, especially things like clinical trials and success criteria, And I think one of the big things is you [00:16:42] always want to create objective sort of success criteria and quantitative success criteria so that basically you can't argue, but you can point to, and unfortunately I think in medicine, basically medicine is actually shade [00:16:57] to gray.

And so this is where I think it gets a little bit more complex. For instance, like you might have things don't fall as neatly in place as you might think it does. For instance, you might get a patient who's kind of come in, but, at the same time, maybe they missed an [00:17:12] appointment and they're three days late and now they're on a different dosing schedule than what you expected.

Now, do you make up for it? Do you follow the protocol? So you'll get things like that. And, some of these things, maybe it's a protocol deviation, maybe, or maybe it's still [00:17:27] within the protocol . . but you'll see things like that where you have to kind of sit through which are less black and white that ultimately will make the science for the success of your trial or not.

 But taking a step back, you want to [00:17:42] be able to design these trials so that if stuff like that does happen that regardless of what the answer is Basically, the path to success is basically still there.

[00:17:51] Mike Koelzer, Host: Alright. Eugene, when you are daydreaming, where I [00:17:57] might daydream about if I'm dreaming about the business, which I try not to do, but let's say I am and I'm thinking of a new system to get the.

Drugs delivered to a person at a certain time and how to follow up and all that kind of thing that might be [00:18:12] a daydream and I'm not thinking about something in accounting or something like that just doesn't thrill me. Sometimes you have to think about it, but it doesn't thrill you at your level in the company.

Are you still daydreaming and [00:18:27] thinking about drug structures for the certain? Drug you need to make, or are all your daydreams taken up by, thinking about the next round of investing or something like that?

[00:18:39] Eugene Chan, MD: Yeah, so those are great questions. So I [00:18:42] think of myself as a sort of scientist, doctor. I love the details. And so when someone tells me, hey, we've made this one modification to this molecule that we're testing, basically my first kind of questions could be like, Oh, what is [00:18:57] it?

And basically what's telling me what the sequence changes,

right?

and things like that. That's sort of the level of detail I personally existed. And that's sort of where I think ultimately expertise comes from as well, because ultimately more knowledge. Because of whatever the knowledge [00:19:12] is here, in this case, drug knowledge is actually very granular.

The more granular knowledge that you have the better offset you're able to make certain calls within your company, as well as be able to move some of these programs along. And I think that's all

comes down to sort of a [00:19:27] company that's able to make some progress and a company that's able to make a lot.

[00:19:32] Mike Koelzer, Host: I remember when my dad was alive and he was in the pharmacy and didn't have the granular handle on things that he [00:19:42] had, 10 years earlier. So let's say he was 65 at the time. He didn't have the same handle he did when he was 50.

Yet, because I was more second in command, when something would happen, I [00:19:57] knew I was going to get my way. But I knew I had to explain it to him to give him the respect of it. And then it would take a day or two to do this and back. And so your decisions that [00:20:12] would maybe take X were now four times X because of that layers of this and stuff.

So I imagine you having that knowledge and leading the thing really. Makes [00:20:27] things a lot more efficient than if you were explaining every step to a leader or a board and so on.

[00:20:33] Eugene Chan, MD: Yeah, because ultimately, I think you, it's hard to, I think, do like science by committee, 

Because I [00:20:42] think we've all kind of gone through it. And I think. The size by committee is almost never granular enough. You'll have, a bunch of folks, sitting around the table and they'll 

talk about things. I mean, I think in our case, we use a scientific advisory board to make new [00:20:57] ideas, new areas, basically big picture stuff, indications where basically we could apply our drugs and, just general direction. When it comes time to actually do the science and basically decide on sort of structured programs and how to kind of move these things forward, [00:21:12] ultimately, if you do it by committee, you're not going to get it done because it's just that example that you just gave me.

 you're going to have to go through many of those cycles, many of those like your three day cycles in order to come together with a plan that is going to be sort of approvable. And if you add that knowledge [00:21:27] yourself, you can basically cycle through that within a few minutes, right?

Make the next iteration in another few minutes, so then, and then off, off you go. And by then you've got a, that multiple days have elapsed. For someone else, they've only gone through three cycles. You've gone through a hundred.

And you've kind of [00:21:42] gotten closer to basically what would be an ideal solution.

[00:21:46] Mike Koelzer, Host: aRe there companies that have to fight that? Sometimes they bring in somebody and all of a sudden you've got these layers that you wish you didn't have?

[00:21:53] Eugene Chan, MD: Definitely. Definitely. I see that, I see those companies all the time.

And [00:21:57] so it's, and whenever I see them, it tends to be inefficient.

And I think the pharmacy example is interesting because I think being a pharmacist, I think the cool thing is you guys understand PKs, you understand chemical structures, you understand drug [00:22:12] classes and that's almost like.

Almost at the level of detail that we need to know things at most. I think the big kind of additional piece that kind of goes on top of it is basically how you make these things. 

but the end product is basically, it's basically it's wherever [00:22:27] it's on that FD label, that you. You guys are so familiar with it. and a lot of times you also want to work backwards too. You'll also want to say, Hey, here's, I'll give you some good examples.

For instance, like dosing, you'll look at certain labels on similar drugs and say, Hey, this thing is not optimally dosed. They [00:22:42] got to wear this continuous infusion pump, now with all of them. And as a patient, that's really noted, because, Fact shit was like, basically. It's just not an optimal solution. And so if you have a better dosing, how did you work backwards? And basically as an impact sort of [00:22:57] chemical molecular structure, right? And how do you actually change this so that basically you can sort of meet the ideal profile, the drug that you want.

And 

So a lot of times we actually do that and it's actually a super valuable exercise, but that's also iterative too, because you've [00:23:12] got to say, Hey, this is what we want. We can't do it. Here's if we change this, we can do it. If we change this even more, it'll get closer. We'll get basically what we want, and then we'll go run some tests and say, Hey, that met half of the criteria, but it didn't beat the full.

But [00:23:27] we're going to now kind of do additional iterations.

[00:23:30] Mike Koelzer, Host: How many people in your company, Eugene?

[00:23:32] Eugene Chan, MD: We've got close to 30 folks in our shop.

[00:23:35] Mike Koelzer, Host: And what's the breakdown of that roughly? Is it so much on the financial side, so many [00:23:42] scientists and so on?

[00:23:43] Eugene Chan, MD: Yeah, so it tends to be predominantly scientists and folks who are technically oriented. We have ethical sort of the clinical trial staff as well, as well as clinical operations, so between clinical and scientific basically that [00:23:57] covers probably the majority of the company and then we have obviously administrative staff and business folks.

You've got my brother, he's a business guy. He probably got the toughest job of all because he's a guy who goes out there and basically, beats the bushes for money. 

I call that the boring stuff. And and [00:24:12] basically, the side stuff is, it's, So that's where sort of the complement kind of comes in

He loves that stuff.

And for me, it's Hey, the cool stuff is the size stuff and for hanging out, the cool stuff is the money stuff.

[00:24:21] Mike Koelzer, Host: Not counting things that any company might farm out some legal and some accounting [00:24:27] and marketing and things like that is there any part of the scientific process that you guys farm out like I can't really think of what it would be like certain steps of the synthesis you kind of farm out.

Do you get a [00:24:42] company that helps you take it to the market? Or does this or that, or does your company just do all that?

[00:24:49] Eugene Chan, MD: yeah there's sort of a core expertise that we try to maintain within the company. And that actually tends to be related [00:24:57] to the biology of the molecules that we're focused on. For instance, just to give you an example, we have a HER2 CD3 bispecific T cell engager. Which is for gastric as well as breast cancer.

And this is the molecule that we partner with [00:25:12] CellTree on, which is a large Korean biotech company. It's going to cut over a billion dollar deal with these guys. And so with this one particular group, as well as the molecule, basically we have sort of now, we would be like the world's expert in [00:25:27] this one molecule.

The biology would be how do you actually kill cancer cells using R2, CD3 bispecific T cell engagers. And so I think that sort of level of granularity and the staff, as well as being able to understand sort of all the [00:25:42] nuances of how you actually use this tool if it resides within a company.

There's things like, hey, QC a molecule, QC drug products, stuff like that, which is less interesting. There's a lot of other groups that can possibly do it. So let's stay focused, with the main [00:25:57] shop inside and basically all this other stuff. Let's kind of outsource that so that basically we could still maintain streamlined in terms of the actual biology.

[00:26:06] Mike Koelzer, Host: the last things you mentioned, Eugene and I found a few errors in those, but I'm not gonna bring it up and embarrass [00:26:12] you. I'm just kidding. I'm having trouble finding out if you're still speaking English or not, but the couple things you mentioned about that aren't your direct line, this and that, is that part of that drug still? Or are you talking about different [00:26:27] medicines? Is it part of your drug that you need some other part worked on that is not as exciting, or was that a different drug you were talking about?

[00:26:37] Eugene Chan, MD: So that was still the same drug, but you know, I think in the development of any drug process, [00:26:42] you'll have the actual molecule, you'll have the drug, and then you'll also have... Sort of additional activities on top of it, which are what I call non core. It's not core, but it's still super important. But basically it's [00:26:57] a generic activity that something else can do.

[00:27:00] Mike Koelzer, Host: Might it be like how it dissolves and things like that, or

[00:27:03] Eugene Chan, MD: Yeah, that's, I mean, that's almost a good one. So basically that's the formulation question, right? So basically how do you actually store it in the vial? [00:27:12] How do you actually reconstitute it? So that is, we found that out. So basically there's companies that do this for a living.

We don't, we don't do it for a living. There's other 

people. And so we've partnered with folks on that side to be able to work with [00:27:27] developing the sort of the bright scan relation. So that basically it works all the time and it basically stores for the certain amount of time that we want.

[00:27:34] Mike Koelzer, Host: is there any part of the chemical structure that is, I'm doing quotes here, maybe a little bit more [00:27:42] boring that some other company does something with part of the chemical structure or is it just things separate from the chemical structure like the storage and that kind of stuff? 

[00:27:53] Eugene Chan, MD: So the core kind of. Sort of focus is basically the structure of the [00:27:57] molecule. So that is completely, that expertise resides within the company completely as well as basically, how did I use this molecule? So basically all that kind of expertise that goes into changing the molecule as [00:28:12] as well as testing it reside within the company. And that's also part of the secret sauce, right? And so 

as you can imagine. 

If we let other people kind of tinker around with the molecule and say, Hey, let's change this molecule and I'm going to give you part of the sequence, then [00:28:27] at that point it becomes a little bit tricky.

Even with our co-development partnerships, we've gotten pretty careful about that. Because we don't want to, I think we want to maintain full control over it. We want to be able to. Just kind of carry that expertise [00:28:42] throughout and without it, basically it's kind of hard to have that continuity as well.

That's pretty much how we kind of thought about sort of structuring the company. 

[00:28:50] Mike Koelzer, Host: You're mentioning this and I'm imagining something, but I don't know if you're being figurative, but how quickly could [00:28:57] you talk with one of your scientists about it and say, what would this little change do?

How quickly does that get changed? You might test this and that and get an answer. What time frame are we looking at there?

[00:29:09] Eugene Chan, MD: Let me see, it would be slower than [00:29:12] making Assault. Definitely, it would be faster than conventional drug development in the sense that conventional drug development would probably take six months. In our case, because of some of the processes that we have in place, we've kinda shortened some of these processes [00:29:27] down to weeks.

So basically it's an incredibly fast time frame where it's, I think it's unusual for industry. So industry would be like, somewhere in a six, six to nine month timeframe, come back and kinda give you an answer. In our case you'll know that answer pretty quickly, 

[00:29:41] Mike Koelzer, Host: Are there any [00:29:42] spies in the industry, like somebody, or maybe not even spies, but maybe disgruntled scientists that could go and do something somewhere else, or is that just [00:29:57] something in my mind?

[00:29:59] Eugene Chan, MD: Yeah and it does happen, and some of these have actually played out in courts, right? And, particularly here, you've got some very high value... I don't, these are therapeutics that which might be bringing in like billions of hearts per

So what [00:30:12] we've kind of seen is that, you know, fortunately, I think, most people are honest , which is great. And so I think the majority of folks are very kind of honest. And, particularly on the scientific side, folks are tend to be,

If they got all the training, they tend to be [00:30:27] like super upright folks.

And that's actually great. Fortunately for us, we have not had any issues where, people are stealing stuff or anything like that, but we're always kind of cognizant, I think 

of kind of sharing sequences and sometimes you'll actually get strange requests, where people kind of come in and say, Hey, send us [00:30:42] your sequence first

and we're like No,

and so you just have to kind of be aware that they might not talk to me.

So I basically, I've seen, I've seen all the different permutations where somebody asks for something where, you know, when you're not intending [00:30:57] to get until, 

yeah.

So they'll ask someone else in your shop. Who's not, it's the two to some of these issues. And so you got to educate your organization about basically, keeping influential property, within your organization.

But once you've done that, I think it becomes a pretty straightforward process, because even I [00:31:12] think there's still a lot of nuances, even if you did get your hands on sort of the secret recipe, yeah, there's still a lot of nuances as well as process you need to go through in order to make drug product, and that's sort of, I think, one of the challenges.

[00:31:24] Mike Koelzer, Host: When you talk about a[00:31:27] colloquially, like a secret recipe, how much information is that? Is that a page? I always hear who it is, Michael Kaku or something. He's some physicist. He always says that the physicists [00:31:42] are looking for the unification of everything theory, where it's going to be something that's an inch long, the whole equation.

But when you're talking about processes, is that a hundred page document? Is it a page with a few steps on it? How developed is that? [00:31:57] process. As far as if someone could steal it, are they stealing a picture of a chemical or is it a hundred pages they need to take.

[00:32:05] Eugene Chan, MD: Yeah. So most of these things are amazingly simple when it turns out to be the [00:32:12] case. So like in our case, you have these bi specific antibodies, which basically target, target cancers that basically activates your body's own natural immune system. Now in cases like that, it's sequence based.

So [00:32:27] basically it'll occupy maybe like a few lines on your page or something like that. Depending on what spot you have this thing at. And as long as you add that basically you can potentially, be in the same game as we are. And so you can imagine little pieces of paper can get [00:32:42] lost pretty easily, you can get emails around pretty 

easily, right? 

[00:32:45] Mike Koelzer, Host: And that's like what chemical is needed between this step and that step.

[00:32:49] Eugene Chan, MD: So in our case, because it's a protein recombinant biologic basically, pretty much mostly what you need is [00:32:57] the DNA sequence. 

And 

At that point I think there's additional details about it, which cell to grow this thing up in, but, you know, everyone uses pretty much the same thing, and what purifications you use, those are the only things you're missing from that sequence. [00:33:12] And basically everyone can do the same thing, so to speak. But I think their barriers to entry ultimately relate to sort of the biological license application. When you kind of get through the whole shebang, the BLA from the FDA and that is company and drug product [00:33:27] specific as well as related to you, right?

So even if someone copied your, it was not brought on the clinical trials, 

they were sort of going to prove it on their own evidence. And so I think that's why it goes through the right [00:33:42] process. I think there's kind of built in safeguards that are going to prevent sort of speedy copying of basically your drug problem.

So one of the big interesting things is sort of intellectual property. And so you'll have patents, right on the stuff. And so a [00:33:57] patent term generally is 20 years, for simplicity, And the actual drug development process may take more than a decade, right?

And by the time you get to the end of this thing, you might have five years left on your patent term. So in those five years, [00:34:12] basically you better basically sell lots of drugs, right? Or let's say you don't, right? And let's say let's say a year like seven, someone steals your formula. It's working on this thing, which you actually do see because your patent applications at some point become public.[00:34:27] So that's sort of like your trade with the US government. You're saying, Hey, I'm going to tell you how to do this thing. As long as you give me a 20 year patent protection. 

[00:34:36] Mike Koelzer, Host: Because somewhere it's in print then it's like you're hoping everybody goes to 20 years but the [00:34:42] information's out there then.

[00:34:42] Eugene Chan, MD: It's out there. Yeah. So it's out there. And so what you'll see is like from I think unethical folks is, or maybe I w I wouldn't say unethical, but less sophisticated parties. You'll see people kind of going in there, reading patents and basically copying your sequence, right?[00:34:57] And trying to use it, what they don't realize is on the backside of it, let's say they use that intellectual property and what they don't realize is that they're not going to be able to practice because you would have received a patent and then they would not be able to, essentially, you could take a [00:35:12] court have a patent, which would also, demonstrate that you're first at med things like that.

But I think in today's kind of information rich age, you basically see a lot of that going on. A lot of it actually doesn't get picked up. And so I think drug companies are, [00:35:27] I think they're sophisticated, but I think, for folks who are pretty good at doing this kind of thing, they'll, hey, I'm going to take this I'm going to stick it in my mom. And even though that's patented it'll still take him years to figure this thing out that you basically took those three amino acids.

[00:35:42] sO there's tricks to kind of all this stuff that basically how do you actually protect your intellectual property and there's timing.

It was filing and it was like, patents, there's when do you do it, when's the best time, is it like, right before your drug goes out, is it like before you put it in clinic, [00:35:57] Is it right when you get your first discovery, right? And these are all kind of debatable points, when

you do it because you might imagine, Hey, I got to talk to X, Y, Z investors.

They want to see what this thing is about. It's real, right? And at some point we'll disclose something and someone will write this off. And [00:36:12] so these are all things I think you, you got to juggle as you're going to do in the. Kind of the biochemistry behind your molecule to advance it towards patients.

 Eugene, Give me a taste of the numbers we're talking about. I know [00:36:27] that the drug costs a billion dollars but there's also potential loss and all that kind of stuff just roughly like how many ideas does your company deal with? And then, are there X [00:36:42] ideas month and then out of that only the end 0.

[00:36:46] Mike Koelzer, Host: 1x goes to the next step and then 0. 1 of 0. 1 goes to this. What kind of numbers are those? The pyramid of thoughts to final product.[00:36:57] 

[00:36:57] Eugene Chan, MD: And so I think it differs between different companies but just to kind of give you the sense about Abpro I think for us we tend to be pretty focused and targeted and basically we try to not make a mistake before we actually even test [00:37:12] it out in the white chemistry side. So I think that's sort of like one of the... These things, you want to kick it around, maybe there's a quick experiment you can do, on the biochemistry side maybe it's just, some reader in your lab or something like that. And so you want to be able [00:37:27] to have some kind of sense of what success is and be able to narrow it pretty quickly without actually doing any work. Because once you start doing work, I think the issue is, and we've actually seen this a lot, is that there's a certain momentum behind it. And unless you're [00:37:42] really good about kind of killing stuff off, right?

These things, they tend to be... They can tend to kind of grow up. And so basically next thing you know, it's you're now like working on two of these things.

And then next thing you know, you're working on three of them. And then it's almost like [00:37:57] it's, you've got to maintain that discipline.

It's almost and I. Be able to exert that kind of high quality control

at the get go and say, hey, this is a dumb idea, right? And or maybe we can kind of rule it out based on X. We're not even gonna try it, [00:38:12] right? Because the issue is if you have a, let's say you have a 70 percent baked idea, you go in there and It's gonna you're going to require a lot of iterations to kind of get to that point where you actually have something that's, that is rock solid, [00:38:27] but if you start off with something that's 85%, right?

Or maybe even if you're lucky, like over 90 percent close to what you're, what you want to get at. Then you're going to be much closer to success. Because now your branching pattern[00:38:42] is much more narrow and basically you can get to the success path a lot easier. And so for us, I think I would say, to move something forward, I think, it's probably around 10 or eight iterations or something like that, before there's something that's really kind of, kind of believable and good.

[00:38:57] But even within those tenets, highly selected for, basically, there's probably another two words of magnitude that gets screened out based on either notebook analysis or, software analysis, these days, you have, there's a lot of AI tools that you can, we [00:39:12] use that you tap into that you can basically say, Hey, structurally, this doesn't make sense.

Let's kind of rule that out. Or, maybe you can say, Hey, these things don't make sense either. You go, basically these things are as well. And then and even with a super target shot you'll [00:39:27] discover something. There's always like one thing that you overlook, no matter how good you are. And then with those, hopefully, you do a few tweaks. That's where the, sort of the 10 tweaks show up that kind of get you close to reality. And then you're going to discover more stuff as you kind of get into testing on animals.

[00:39:42] You'll, there's always one or two things that pop up. Hey, this thing is not behaving exactly as expected. It has more activity here, but less here. Of course, it's got this side effect that we didn't anticipate. And then we had to basically tune it so that, you don't have that side effect.[00:39:57] 

[00:39:57] Mike Koelzer, Host: Let's say that there's an idea that you kick around, Hey, what about this? Is that something that doesn't go far at all? Is that like one a week? One a year? One a day? How often is the very lowest level kicked around a different drug?[00:40:12] 

[00:40:12] Eugene Chan, MD: I kick stuff around in my head all the time, it's

[00:40:14] Mike Koelzer, Host: ha.

[00:40:16] Eugene Chan, MD: I'll be reading some scientific journal somewhere and be like, Hey, that would be interesting. We did X, Y, Z and then, I would kind of dig into the seal a 

[00:40:25] Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. 

[00:40:25] Eugene Chan, MD: that's gonna be reality.[00:40:27] 

[00:40:27] Mike Koelzer, Host: So you're thinking about them all the time, and you're just 

[00:40:29] Eugene Chan, MD: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And by now I've seen enough stuff where I got to know what's going to be a good flavor versus a bad flavor, right? but in terms of actually testing it, I think it's actually less than that.

It might be like, one a month 

or maybe two [00:40:42] months because of the enormous kind of I think. The system that needs to go behind it 

[00:40:47] Mike Koelzer, Host: Now, Eugene, I'm trying to picture this. All right. So let's just say your ideas, when you think of an idea, is your [00:40:57] idea like, Oh, I thought of a little tweak we could do on this drug to maybe have less of a side effect for This whole thing, or is it, Hey, I thought of a drug we can use to, [00:41:12] whatever people need to do, grow an arm back or something.

Are they different ideas or are you thinking usually of your top drug and what could be refined on it? 

[00:41:22] Eugene Chan, MD: So I think it's two classes of, and it's actually both. So I [00:41:27] think that what I call the sort of day to day drug development is sort of basically the tweaks. You have something where it substantially meets basically what you want to be making. But it might be. Formulation, 

it might be, Hey, we need to get the [00:41:42] concentration of drug, from X to X.

And, basically the drug needs to be in this format. And we'll work with, for stuff like that, we're, we're getting data back from, that's a perfectly partnered activity, right? So we'll get data back from partners, review it with [00:41:57] them and kind of give input in terms of an experimental plan in terms of improving that.

and then. You'll see some other items where I think it's sort of not at that stage, you're not at the stage of manufacturing, but you're at the stage where... Hey, [00:42:12] this thing just showed up and it demonstrated some great activity, but here's the issue, right?

number one unanticipated issue and, we didn't go into thinking, thinking that it would show up, but, here it is. So that would be like a second tier where it's kind of [00:42:27] less tweaking, but now you got to take a look at the whole thing and say, hey, maybe it's like these three amino acids, from, the N terminus, the middle, and also the end of the molecule as this bottom, this one end of the molecule,

And So you'll need to kind of make changes like that [00:42:42] and be able to quickly test it again to make sure that you're not completely way off.

And sometimes when you make these changes you break something, right? We've all done that. And it's kind of, kind of things, you might be like, building a shed or something like that. And you put the wrong [00:42:57] screw in, right?

And that wrong screw turns out to be a little too long and kind of prevents your door from going, right?

And you gotta backtrack. You gotta fix that. You also gotta make sure you don't, basically you gotta retest it so that basically, you don't break something else and fix it. And [00:43:12] so those are kind of second tier problems. And then sort of the kind of the blue sky ones, which are pretty interesting.

Those are, I think, probably tend to be the most exciting. But at the same time, I think those are the ones where you [00:43:27] wanna basically run sort of a thousand experiments in your head. And say, Hey, this makes sense. This doesn't make sense. And, you always want to try to disprove it.

And then, you'll kick around with your team members too. You'll be like, Hey, I'm like, yeah, I'm like complete, sillies are thinking about X. And then you want to bring like different [00:43:42] folks into the room as well. If you don't have that background and, I think my favorite is you'll have the perfect team if you have four positive folks who are like, really like, kind of enthusiastic and be like, let's go get them.

And then. It's always helpful to have that one person who's a little bit more grounded [00:43:57] in reality saying, Hey you can't do it if you do that. And you would, fail miserably

And then at that point, you're like you're kind of dousing all the stuff and say, Hey, okay.

This kind of makes sense in light of, XYZ's objections, we'll take his thoughts and considerations and

we'll [00:44:12] try to like, circumvent that one issue. At that point, you've got pressure tested the same and then maybe it's ready for, like a real kind of experimental flying at that point.

[00:44:20] Mike Koelzer, Host: All right. So when you talk about these tweaks, Not how [00:44:27] to think of the tweak, but to actually change it. Do you have a little bit of liquid or something, add another arm to the chain, you drop some of this in it and heat it up and do this or that?

Is that what we're talking about?

[00:44:41] Eugene Chan, MD: [00:44:42] Kind of. So this is again, it's a biological, so it's like a protein, right? So this is an antibody. So essentially you're now into recombinant DNA technology. So you'll take a piece of DNA that's in a [00:44:57] format where you can modify it. So basically I can now go in and I can You know, change a T to an A, or a G to a T, or something like that.

[00:45:06] Mike Koelzer, Host: a certain chemical?

[00:45:08] Eugene Chan, MD: So these are done with enzymes. So you'll basically go in there and basically [00:45:12] do essentially use enzymes that can basically cut DNA.

Yeah, so you'll basically extract a section of DNA, remove it, and then now you'll basically insert a new piece of DNA. in that one region and then basically splice it back together.[00:45:27] 

[00:45:27] Mike Koelzer, Host: you're not talking one gene there, are you talking a trillion of these cells or something, or you mean one actual DNA, and you're actually doing something with that?

[00:45:41] Eugene Chan, MD: So this tends to [00:45:42] be, it has to be multiple copies of that gene. And so basically now you're basically changing it. So like anytime you do, this enzymatic or recombinant DNA manipulation of and basically [00:45:57] splicing it back together. Anytime you're doing that you're going to be successful doing it to some of the molecules, but not all the

molecules. So then after you've done that, now you need a means of selecting the good ones. The

[00:46:12] ones that actually drop the gene that you wanted, in there. And there's a process where you're going to now grow this, a lot of times it's bacteria, in other cases it's like some other system.

but in the case of bacteria, you're basically now growing this thing up. And [00:46:27] only the bacteria that has the correctly inserted gene will grow because you have a selection medium, it's a, that's in there, you put a drug in that, only select for the one that basically, can grow in the 

presence of this. And then once you [00:46:42] have enough, and by that bacteria growing it now basically makes copies of that DNA,

and then you purify now, like what's going to be a bazillion copies of this DNA and then you could put it in different places. [00:46:57] Cell types like, Chinese hamster, reversed over yourself or backlog virus or other crazy cells.

And then use that to kind of create basically human-like protein which is ultimately using your birth drug product. So all this stuff is all kinds of [00:47:12] biological enzymes and the cool things, all it's all done at 37 degrees. Which is body temperature. And 

sO if you have, let me see.

You've been baking bread, right? I mean, you've got yeast in there that's like you're propagating. So it's still our [00:47:27] process, but you know, now it's like bacteria and as long as I can get the stuff to grow, and kind of reproduce copies of my DNA, then I can purify that DNA, put it into a system where I can now make a lot of protein.

Which is essentially my drug product. I mean, basically [00:47:42] have that in a pure form so that I can treat patients.

[00:47:45] Mike Koelzer, Host: So Eugene, I was on your website and I saw the graph of different drugs in their process and so on. Are they coming out with your company on them?

Or are you selling [00:47:57] them finally to another company? Or what's the final product

[00:48:02] Eugene Chan, MD: So the final product is basically, I think in a lot of cases, it's basically a partnered drug substance. So for instance, like in our partnership with Celltrion, the [00:48:12] screen biotech company, essentially they're the distributor for the drug. And and in that particular deal It's a geographic distribution, so basically for Asia they basically get the seller under their name

so essentially the Apple name will not [00:48:27] show up in that particular case and a lot of these cases, the whole drug distribution side of the business is like even I think the scale required for the bigger because basically now you're talking You know, how do you actually get this drug to I think here in this [00:48:42] case, infusion clinics, cancer infusion clinics, right?

And so these tend to be, now pharmacies within hospitals, right? And there's special handling, how do you actually reconstitute this, put it with saline bags and all that stuff, right? And these are going to be [00:48:57] different languages. It's going to be like in Chinese, Korean, Japanese particularly with this one particular HER2 CD3 molecule.

 But without that sort of distribution platform. It's almost impossible for a small company to kind of do it themselves. So you'll, what you'll see [00:49:12] is, and I think in pretty much all our cases, it's going to be a part of some kind of distribution of the drug. You're not going to see the appropriate name on it because I think in a lot of cases, basically it's XYZ drug company, who's, way bigger than we are coming and say, Hey, [00:49:27] Hey, we want, X, Y, Z to your drug, but we'll sell it for you.

[00:49:30] Eugene Chan, MD: And then but we want our name on it. And so that's sort of the bargain that you make as a huge drug developer, with all these guys. And it's a win, I think, in all cases, because by [00:49:42] basically getting that partnership revenue in, essentially now you get to basically at some point you'll see companies, early stage biotech companies kind of come up with their own drug, with their own label and their own names.

And at that point, you've kind of matured into a real kind of [00:49:57] stable loan drug company at that point.

[00:50:00] Mike Koelzer, Host: Do you hope to get to that point?

[00:50:02] Eugene Chan, MD: Oh, definitely.

[00:50:03] Mike Koelzer, Host: We have to have your name on something.

[00:50:05] Eugene Chan, MD: Oh, definitely. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:50:08] Mike Koelzer, Host: That would be something. Wouldn't it?

[00:50:10] Eugene Chan, MD: Definitely. Definitely.[00:50:12] 

[00:50:12] Mike Koelzer, Host: To say you invented something and then I mean, I know you got money to show for it But you invented it and there's your name's nowhere on it

[00:50:20] Eugene Chan, MD: Yeah, bragging rights. Yeah.

[00:50:21] Mike Koelzer, Host: Bragging rights. There you

go.

there you go. Speaking of bragging rights Eugene I [00:50:27] know the benevolence of wanting to cure cancer and these kinds of things.

I understand that, but as far as bragging rights go, we all have to pretend that we're humble and [00:50:42] we don't care about this or that, but what would be cool for you? So we already talked about getting your name on the product at BroName. Are there any other awards?

Am I going to see the Nobel prize for you? What would [00:50:57] be cool for you?

[00:50:59] Eugene Chan, MD: let's see. That's kind of interesting. So I think yeah I'll gotta talk about the humility piece first, just because I think ultimately, I think that's... There's kind of two sides to this, right? So I think it will do good, good science. You have to [00:51:12] have sort of that level of humility, because every day you're facing some sort of problem that's kind of kicking you.

You kind of go in there and have a Hey, I'm better than nature. God, you're going to have to, you're just going to lose. So I think and so I think that's one side of that. [00:51:27] It's kind of, kind of pretty huge. So I think basically if you're in the business of doing what I'm doing, basically, you're going to have to maintain that humility, no matter what kind of success that you have.

At the end of the day, you also have to be. Pretty mindful that I think a lot of [00:51:42] stuff on the outside is ultimately, I think the big success is obviously for the patients. And so is there anything beyond that for me personally? Yeah, I think it's tricky to say. I think I would be very happy if there's one person that was, that could [00:51:57] not be cheered, but now they could be with sort of one of the drugs that we have, 

even if it's just one person,

Because you know who that person might be?

It might be your mom, it might be your sister, it might be theirs, right? And I think that in itself, knowing that's going on is [00:52:12] basically what personally drives me. And seeing my name and random stuff is, Cool too, but I think at the same time, being grounded in that level of humility, it is sort of ultimately super important.

But I think for Avro, I think, yeah, being [00:52:27] able to see Avro, plastered everywhere is gonna be awesome, 

[00:52:30] Mike Koelzer, Host: When you talk about a cure, I'm so used to cancer drugs. They help prolong Mr. Smith's life and this and that. Are these drugs in [00:52:42] the line of saying that somebody had this and now they no longer have it? Is it like a black and white switch of success?

[00:52:51] Eugene Chan, MD: what we hope. So I think going into this, I think you've, by now you've probably talked to enough kinds of [00:52:57] companies and things like that to know that, or you kind of know yourself personally, in terms of, being a pharmacist. I think there's a sort of a misconception that, hey, we've made these amazing strides against cancer.

Those amazing strides are actually, hey, prolong someone's life, [00:53:12] lifespan from 6 months to 18 months, right? That one additional extra year is not a lot of time, particularly if it's someone that you like.

And 

So I think here in our case, I think, because of, I think, the powerful nature by which we're tapping into the [00:53:27] body's immune system.

to fight, essentially, cancer, there is that potential hope that some of these therapies will be way more effective than conventional chemotherapy, conventional antibody, monotherapy and [00:53:42] there's precedence, for, that level of efficacy and kind of similar types of work that we've done, as well as other folks have done, and I think the simple way that we could kind of describe What we're doing is we're essentially trying to take sort of this [00:53:57] concept of cell therapy, which is sort of like your body's immune system,

phytokinesis, and kind of making it so that you can administer it in sort of an easy way.

Cell therapy is challenging because you've got to take the cells out of the body and then you've got to modify it to stick it back in. In our [00:54:12] case, you don't have to do that. You can basically now convert your body's immune system in these wonderful T cells that you have that basically now help clear what's abnormal inside your body. Basically, these things are very [00:54:27] effective at clearing. And let's say you're infected with the virus, you're very effective at, clearing it out. And within like weeks you're done. So the hope is basically you apply that same technology that exists in your body to basically have the same effect on these kind of four celled [00:54:42] body.

[00:54:43] Mike Koelzer, Host: Eugene, is there any holy grail of drug... Discovery let's just say in your category, is there any holy grail of everybody's kind of things are getting better and better? Is there ever like a big [00:54:57] jump and what would that be? Or is it just continual innovation and things like that?

[00:55:04] Eugene Chan, MD: Yeah, I think we're, particularly for cancer, I think we're at a stage where... It's ready for that big jump, [00:55:12] and we've seen kind of pieces of it, I think cell therapy was like a big one that kind of popped up,

[00:55:16] Mike Koelzer, Host: Self therapy, like you said is using your own cells, changing them a bit, and then reusing them.

[00:55:22] Eugene Chan, MD: That's right. So cell therapy, I think the issue was, so cell therapy is, [00:55:27] there's, the original cell therapy is basically you gotta take the cells out and apply. And now I got it modified in some kind of sterile, clean condition,

and then sticking it back into the person's body, like these CAR T cells [00:55:42] super effective, I think when the data was first presented, people's jaws dropped because of the curing, in complete remission, and so it was like, it was amazing, and The issue is like these things, you can't make them, so you can't make them cost effectively enough so that you could now be able to [00:55:57] administer it 

and and that's where basically our kind of approach comes in. That's basically kind of taking that potential of this very powerful kind of not an incremental change, but you know, basically it's a pretty significant step change and be able to [00:56:12] now give that to a lot of people. But there's other things like that, potentially as well, that are. Out there as well. And so I think, it was just for us to kind of keep our eyes peeled. And I think it's also never to really, I think there's cancers, but [00:56:27] it's a pretty insidious thing. And really it's, you want to be able to constantly innovate, constantly leverage people's knowledge about sort of the disease.

To come up with sort of new, sort of safe approaches to be equipped, [00:56:42] to basically clear out cancer.

[00:56:43] Mike Koelzer, Host: Eugene, what's the worst couple hours of your week and can you do anything about that? I mean, I've got things I've gotta do, and maybe if I had a ton of money, I'd hire someone to do it for me, this or that. Is there [00:56:57] any part that you're kind of, you're just kind of stuck with the job that you wish you, it's not your favorite?

[00:57:03] Eugene Chan, MD: Yeah, I think everyone's got those things, for me it tends to be the administrative items, right? And whether it's like filling out like some paperwork for someone, 

or... 

It's a [00:57:12] necessary evil, but, it's almost like a, just, here's another form you gotta fill out, or it tends to be, stuff like that tends to bog you down.

And, some users are like, you can't find someone else to do it for 

[00:57:20] Mike Koelzer, Host: Because there's some stuff that if you had someone else do it for you, you'd have to sit right next to them and [00:57:27] spoon feed them the information. It's like, all 

[00:57:29] Eugene Chan, MD: yep, 

[00:57:30] Mike Koelzer, Host: saved me from writing with my hand, but that's about it.

[00:57:33] Eugene Chan, MD: Yeah absolutely. And I think, stuff like that probably consumes half a day, I'm a week, but I think other than that. I think it's great that I think I get to do [00:57:42] what I get to do. It's almost I feel lucky. Part of it's hard work as well, but I think it's, being able to...

Being in a position, I think at that level of granularity to pull a team together and to address some pressing problems I think it's just sort of, it's motivational [00:57:57] every day.

[00:57:57] Mike Koelzer, Host: I tell a lot of, I don't tell a lot of people this, but I think about let's say my pharmacy, let's say I had. I have one. Let's say I had 50 of them. Then my day's different. Maybe at 50 I would enjoy things [00:58:12] more, but maybe at 500, now you're sitting up alone in some ivory tower, and maybe you don't like that, so there's a certain level.

But yours seems really cool of the granularity of getting in there, yet having the power to make things [00:58:27] happen.

[00:58:27] Eugene Chan, MD: Yeah. And I think there's a, there's also, I think the team aspect of it is kind of interesting. And I think, I'm going to share with you some kind of early kind of life stories, but you know. When you're going to go through, I think, building a team and things like that, I think [00:58:42] if you're classically trained as a scientist, I think it tends to be kind of hard because it's, a lot of stuff is tend to be me, right?

And the team is kind of not about, it's about it's about being in a cup and [00:58:57] being able to kind of, bring sort of right skill sets. Together, like that's why it said, Hey, four positive guys, plus like the nine guy, perfect team.

When we'd be able to spot things like that. So now you're going to go back to like your football example, right?

So your football [00:59:12] example, your, your team was probably pretty good. And then basically you have a sort of different skill sets on the football team. And. Basically, it's, you might have someone who's kind of athletically gifted, but if they're paired with the wrong [00:59:27] guys, then, the team's just not going to make

1. Or if you have let's say, a good offense, but your defense sucks, right? Then, it's not going to make it.

Or, the other one is you could I think what I like the most is you could bring, I think, what seemingly [00:59:42] are reasonably ordinary people together. And when they're operating and functioning together basically that's where the brilliance happens. And when that is for me it's just it's kind of, it's joyful. You're like, Hey, I was just like, yeah, I've got to accomplish my mission here 

because,[00:59:57] 

now you're seeing stuff that you don't expect.

And they're basically kind of doing more than like you think that was possible. And then what's that, once you start getting it. Getting that piece gone, basically, now you're unstoppable. And now you can just go through pretty much [01:00:12] any obstacle that you 

[01:00:13] Mike Koelzer, Host: Years ago I went to a pharmacy ownership thing. This is, golly, this is... 30 years ago. And I hate teamwork.

 I just don't like doing teamwork, but they gave us each a [01:00:27] sheet of paper and they said, here's what you have, these 10 items, and we're going to, this is just a mind thought. We're going to put you down in the middle of Alaska. Here's the things you have, and you have these 10 items [01:00:42] now.

Escape or whatever. And everybody came up with their stuff and then they put us together with a team of six of us, same question, same list of 10 things. And it was just amazing what we came [01:00:57] up with six of us, how we would have escaped, and obviously it was a lot better than each of us on our own.

And, teamwork when it's good, it works and it works above, six, it [01:01:12] turns into. 15 and, it turns into 10, 12, 15, 20, the power of minds, even though there's six of you there, kind of thing.

[01:01:20] Eugene Chan, MD: Yeah, and I think there's also not only do you get good ideas, but I think, with sort of, I think letting [01:01:27] go is also a big part of it too, because now it's, it's the coach versus player, right? When I think about sort of the graveyard nature of kind of the molecules, that's the player, right?

That's like me as in that particular role, but, When you're working together as a team, you're taking a step back and, [01:01:42] you're playing coach, and at times you gotta flip between the two and when you're playing coach, I think there's this whole process of letting go and kind of fostering and trusting and they're not gonna, they're gonna make different decisions than you,

and I, sometimes like you may be like, Hey,[01:01:57] that's not the decision I would have made, 

right?

And, that whole trust that they're going to make a right decision and basically make sort of the right progress and, equal design, sort of the right experience. I mean, that whole process, essentially letting go is sort of, I think one [01:02:12] of the most liberating parts

about all the work that I do.

And because. It's almost now you're seeing sort of this you're fostering std environment for success, which is less predicted than sort of the linear path that 

You could have taken. 

[01:02:25] Mike Koelzer, Host: but unfortunately [01:02:27] Eugene I suck at the coach too because all right So even though I'm the second best quarterback in the state in my mind. I stop after sophomore year because I don't think I played it down And so I go and I become a fifth and sixth grade football coach at [01:02:42] my old elementary school.

So on our punt team, so this is my genius on our punt team The only count we have is a delayed count. So the whole game we're [01:02:57] going on Hut one, but in the pun, we're always going to go on Hut two in order to draw the other team off. And then maybe get a first down. The problem I had is I never put in an escape from that.

And so [01:03:12] every time we tried to punt. Each of my guys jump off sides. So we'd be like on the 45 yard line to punt and now we're on the 40 yard line. Now we're on the 30 yard line because my guys are [01:03:27] jumping every down and I didn't have a way out of it. So these whole coaching and football analogies don't work with me.

[01:03:35] Eugene Chan, MD: That's a great one. Yeah, that's a great one. 

[01:03:38] Mike Koelzer, Host: Eugene, boy,

Continued best wishes for [01:03:42] Abpro.

there's some of these shows that... I know about this stuff but this, I had no idea what's going on here.

So such a pleasure to talk to you and get inside the walls of this and see [01:03:57] what's going on. Very fascinating. So thanks for your time. 

[01:04:00] Eugene Chan, MD: And thank you so much, Mike, for Yeah. Having me on your show.