Barry Ticho - Part 4: Founding Verve, Gene Editing Breakthroughs & Stoke’s Bold Vision

Intro - 00:00:01: Welcome to The Biotech Startups Podcast by Excedr. Join us as we speak with first-time founders, serial entrepreneurs, and experienced investors about the challenges and triumphs of running a biotech startup from pre-seed to IPO with your host, Jon Chee. In our last episode, we spoke with Barry about his time at Merck and the invaluable lessons he learned about rigorous standards in pharmaceutical research. We also explored his time at Biogen, where patient-centered research reshaped his approach to medicine, and his pivotal role at Moderna during the development of the COVID-19 vaccine. If you missed it, be sure to go back and listen to part 3. In part 4, we continue our conversation with Barry as he recounts the origins of Verve Therapeutics, which started as a casual breakfast meeting and evolved into a groundbreaking mission to tackle cardiovascular disease through gene editing. Barry talks about the challenges of being a first-time founder, the leadership lessons he's learned, and the critical role of assembling a strong team. He also reflects on how patient stories fuel his work as a chief medical officer at Stoke. He shares his vision for the future of genetic medicine, including Stokes' plans to transform patient outcomes. 

Jon - 00:01:26: Can you talk a little bit about when you decided to go out on your own and start your first company?

 Barry - 00:01:31: We'll talk about my experience at Stoke in a moment, I think. But the other company I helped co-found was a company called Verve, which is a gene editing company focused on treating cardiovascular diseases. And that company is very much of a... Cambridge, Massachusetts story. It was just a group of us who started meeting for breakfast every Friday morning to start working on this idea. And it was a group of colleagues, some of whom came from Mass General, some who came from the Brigham, some who had come from Biogen, who I'd worked with. And we just started putting together this idea that was based primarily on a plan that, Kathiresan had of how to treat heart disease through gene editing. But it required coming together. We ultimately ended up meeting in the Google Ventures office every Friday, partially because they had free breakfast there.

Jon - 00:02:34: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would do the same. Yeah, I would do the same.

 Barry - 00:02:39: But we started doing that, and we did rely on... On work that was coming out of Penn. And this is, it's a story that somewhat fits into the Excedr story is that we had to use. Some of the money that came out of innovation support from Penn. Do the lab work in the company and very much relied. Getting equipment through the graces of Penn to some degree, but also through means similar to what Excedr is doing in terms of... Helping startups get access to the technology that's needed. And as you can imagine, starting up gene-editing technology was not simple. It required, required putting, making lipid nanoparticles, making messenger RNA, making guide RNA, and then testing that in animals. But that all came together. And it was based on the idea that one of the challenges, especially in cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, is that patients do not adhere to their medicines very well. This is a well-established fact that... Only fewer than half of patients are actually taking all the medicines that they are supposed to. And especially with patients who have serious cardiovascular metabolic diseases, they can have many medicines that they need to be taking. But even in less severe diseases, the adherence rate is still very low. There are a variety of reasons for that. Some of it certainly is financial. Some of it is inconvenience, especially if it's an injected medicine that's not a very convenient form of medicine for patients. Some of it is just that patients don't want to acknowledge that they have a disease and having to take a medicine, whether it's a pill or a shot, no matter what. You are then acknowledging that I'm sick, I'm not fully healthy, and I have to take this to help make me better. So maybe if I don't take this medicine- 

Jon - 00:04:42: I don't have to.

 Barry - 00:04:44: I at least forget about the disease. It's not that I don't have it anymore. But so there are a variety of reasons that people are not adhering to their medicine. And so the idea behind Verve was, well, can we make a medicine that perhaps only has to be given once? And this is a form of medicine that's being developed, genetic-based therapies, gene therapy, that are given the sort of one-and-done type of idea. And that was exactly what BIRV was trying to do. We focused initially on PCSK9, which some of your listeners may know about PCSK9 or anti-PCSK9 as a treatment to help lower lipids in the blood. But the idea here was to alter the gene for PCSK9 in liver stem cells such that PCSK9 was knocked down to almost zero levels. And that that could translate to very low lipid levels in patients, which then would be cardioprotective. It was still very much of a dream when we started out. But then we started doing studies in mice and then ultimately non-human primates. And certainly to my surprise, we were able to show that one treatment to a non-human primate could last for years and we don't really know yet how long that can last. So that... Was something that got started again. Out of just a group of people in the right place at the right time. Focused on a mission and not letting ourselves get distracted by other things as we moved along.

Jon - 00:06:30: I love that because, I mean, again, we're thinking about these kind of like inflection point moments. It was just breakfast. It was like breakfast among friends. It's amazing. It's kind of what we're talking about. Just like get out there, have conversations. You never know what you might unearth and the opportunities you might unearth. And I love that. And I know you were, I think you, I believe you were the first CEO at Verve. And can you just like really quickly, you know, talk about how, what was that experience like as a CEO of a company that you founded?

 Barry - 00:07:05: Yeah, well, that's... Story of again, starting from the very bottom. So I liken it to various experiences that I had being a freshman in college or being an intern in the hospital or starting new in industry. You feel like you definitely are at the bottom of the ladder, and there's such a steep learning curve, and everybody is talking a language. Even when you're an intern in the hospital, all the secretaries are talking a language that you don't understand. Or in pharma, you come in, and there are all these. Three-letter abbreviations that you have no idea what people are talking about. And the same happens when starting up a company. There's just, when you talk to finance people and legal people and all the breadth of people that are involved in starting a company, it's a huge learning experience, but certainly makes one realize how little you actually know. And to me, the hallmark of that came when someone came up to me and said, we need to get pollution insurance for the lab. And I thought to myself, I didn't even know that pollution insurance was a thing. Certainly, I don't know how to choose the coverage for pollution insurance. But that was part of the job. So a lot of it was just learning by ear. Exactly, exactly. But the thing about entrepreneurship is that you do have to engage with a much larger sector of society to make something work. And so you've got to engage, as I said, with financial people and management. But you also still have to motivate the scientists and get everything to work together and work in the real world and make that happen. And that was very interesting. It was, of course, frightening and very anxiety provoking and knowing that people were depending on me for their jobs at some point. But that gave me much greater appreciation, first of all, for what it takes to start a company, but also how important it is to have talent around you so that I could turn to the person who knows about insurance and say, what police and insurance should we be getting here? And how much different talent it takes actually to put a company together and to make it functional.

Jon - 00:09:29: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's always like for any founder out there, it's like you don't have to do it alone, you know? And it's kind of like try to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. And hopefully they can kind of like, your weak spot can be their strength. And so you can kind of cover each other's backs. Like I'm going to imagine like insurance is not the, you know, what you get out of bed for. So, but someone else probably gets out of bed for insurance. So I've always thought about it as kind of like these emphasis on just like diversity in, in hiring and skillsets and perspectives to just be able, it's like good business practice. Everyone can cover your back in your weak spots and lets you excel at what you're most passionate and good at. And another thing that stood out to me is kind of you're talking about that trial by fire. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs who are contemplating jumping into entrepreneurship are looking for that, like the secret or like, what is the cheat code to all this? And it's like, surprise, the secret is that there is no secret. There is no secret. It is a trial by fire. Like I, you know, Excedr is now like approaching 15 years old. And I'm just like, I'm still learning every day. Like every day. I, and there are plenty of times where I was like, yeah, I'm super dumb. Like, I still feel like I just like, what's like, how did I think that? And every day is kind of this thing where you're just like, it's all a creative, every experience is a creative. And if it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger. It's basically what happens. 

 Barry - 00:10:59: Exactly.

Jon - 00:11:00: And it doesn't stop. And there is no cheat code. I think, you know, if anyone's looking for one, there isn't one. But you founded Verve. You were the CEO. You know, when did you end up making the decision to join Stoke? And how did that opportunity come about?

Barry - 00:11:17: Well, it was actually sort of in parallel. So these Friday morning meetings were happening while I started my role at Stoke as chief medical officer there. So they weren't necessarily separate. At some point, I had to make a decision. Was I going to stay on at Verve or was I going to commit to Stoke full time? And then I decided to commit to Stoke and see that through. What attracted me to to Stoke was a little bit, again, when we go back to the fit model, the main focus of Stoke is that it's an RNA medicines company. Focused on modulating splicing of messenger RNA. And that technology just has broad focus. And the more I learned about mechanism of action that are potential for these, these oligonucleotides, short oligonucleotides that were being used, the more attracted I was to this opportunity. Again, the focus of Stoke is especially on what are called autosomal dominant diseases, where there is, as you may recall from your biology, there's a healthier, a wild-type copy. Allele of the DNA, and then there's a mutated copy. So it's heterozygous. And the technology at Stoke can utilize that wild-type copy of DNA to make a medicine by increasing amount of protein from the message. And so these are diseases where there's a haploinsufficiency. There's half the normal amount of functioning protein. And in order to treat the disease, we'd have to increase the amount of protein as close to normal as possible. And that should take care of the disease. So what the advantage of this technology is that we focus on... Unknown genetic diseases where the biology is known. And that's a very important part of having a successful drug in the end. And that's been shown now by multiple studies is if you can identify a genetic cause of disease and have a treatment that aims to affect that genetic cause. That's one of the key predictors of success of a medicine. So that's the technology that Stoke has. We also, by focusing on the message, will only increase protein levels inside a cell that's intending to make that protein. Because if the cell wants to make the protein, it has to make the message. If the cell doesn't need that protein, it's not making the message. So by making oligonucleotides that target only the message for that protein... This technology can only increase the protein levels in the cells where it's intended to. And by the way, that's another key predictor of success for medicine is, can you limit the systemic impact of that medicine? Because as we know, many medicines... Fail because of toxicity or safety issues, the more one can limit. The impact of that medicine on the body. Less chance that there is of an off-target effect or some other safety issue from that medicine. So by using this technology, we are, again, focusing only on the cells that are making that. And then we also focus on diseases of the brain and the eye. So we're giving the medicine locally, either into the cerebrospinal fluid, into thecally. So the medicine goes almost exclusively to the brain and very little gets out to the body. Or we inject it into the eye, where it's going almost exclusively to the eye again, and very little gets into the body. So we've addressed two of the key factors that go into making a successful medicine. Then the other things that attracted me to Stoke were the management team, where this was a highly experienced management team, a very good track record, people who I had worked with before and had established relationships. The other thing, when we go back to the FIT paradigm, the IP here and the, the know-how that Stoke is, is extremely strong. And we've had companies come to us and say, you know, why can't other companies do what you're doing, and the reason is because, they've looked at our IP and realize that they would infringe in our patents if they tried to do the same thing. And then the final thing was the financial. And when I came to Stoke, it was well financed as still at Series A. But then we went on to go public and now still have a very strong financial base that keeps us going forward.

Jon - 00:16:07: That's amazing. And again, I'm going all the way back to when you saw the eye surgery video.

 Barry - 00:16:14: Yeah, having that ophthalmology background actually did help. And I think the other key message that I would get across is... A person's network and the web of their experience is very important. And you never know. When something from your past is gonna come back and help you out. So that's why I am a firm advocate of telling people, never burn bridges. Always try to be networking, always trying to find new people to talk to and new things. But you never know, even from, as you said, from childhood, when is something going to come all the way back and have an influence on your life much later? When is somebody who, you know, the people who I interviewed when I was first interviewing for biopharma jobs before I took the Merck job, there are still people who, on those interviews, companies that I never, that I didn't go to, I still run across as people now and have close relationships with them. So always trying to build the network and the connections, never stop doing that.

Jon - 00:17:19: Absolutely. And I think I wish I knew that earlier on in my career, because I was like, I'm like, even though, you know, obviously we're having a podcast conversation, but I'm far more shy and introverted than I put out. And I was like, I always just like got so nervous, like so, so nervous about doing exactly what you said, just like going and making these connections.

Barry - 00:17:42:And I'll tell you that that's, I mean, I'm an introvert. I'm probably a 12 on the 10 point scale. But being an introverted leader is a challenge. And, you know, there have been books and many podcasts done about this. And there's a book, Quiet, that you may be familiar with and other books about being introverted leader. But it is a challenge. And that's something that I've also had to work with my life in how to work as an introvert in what seems to be an extroverted world. But there are ways to realize that it's not really completely an extroverted world. And many of the things that tend to be on introverts' tendencies can be well adapted to being a good leader and especially being a good listener. Being empathetic, having a focus on... Planning, and being prepared, those are all things that put a person in very good stead for success in business.

Jon - 00:18:41: I totally agree. And I think being in San Francisco, there's always been that kind of like the Steve Jobs, like kind of like get on stage kind of, I was like, that's all I was kind of like grew up around. I was like, I need to do that. Like that's... That's what it takes. I don't think I got that. I don't know. I get like terrified. Like my palms are sweating, even just like thinking about it. But I think exactly kind of like playing to your strengths and adapting those skill sets and everyone's style of leadership is different. It's not to say that like one is better than the other. They're just different. And learning how to embrace the kind of the strength of whatever your personal lean might be, I think is like critically important. And I think for a long time, I tried to be that extroverted leader. And it didn't work out well. Let me give you the punchline now. It didn't really work out. So I decided I was like, I'm just not going to, like I can only be Jon. And Jon is more introverted than extroverted. So I'm just going to lean into that. And what a night and day change in terms of one, my well-being. We talked about resilience, right? There was not much resilience where I felt like I was just like draining my battery every day, pretending like I was an extrovert. But now it's like the battery feels charged up because I'm just like, I'm just doing how I would normally operate, just like operating that way. And so I think it's for anyone out there listening, it's like find your own style and embrace that style. And it's okay to be different. And you don't have to exactly, you know, kind of what you're talking about earlier about like the comparison, like, you know, you don't have to be them. Like you don't have to be that other person. You can be you and that's totally okay. And you'll find your way.

 Barry - 00:20:23: And let people know around you, know that that's how you are.

Jon - 00:20:27: Yeah.

 Barry - 00:20:28: And if you're an introvert and you need time away, I mean, my wife knows that. She says, okay, Barry needs his alone time now.

Jon - 00:20:36: Yeah, yeah.

 Barry - 00:20:37: But I also let my team know. I say, you know, you're not going to get an answer from me at the end of this meeting necessarily. I need to go back, think about this, and I'll come back to you once I've put all my ideas together. And so as long as people around you know that that's where you function, then they have their expectations and they won't expect you to be somebody different.

Jon - 00:20:57: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that's like, I don't know how I like glossed over that. It was just like, yeah, just let people know what your style is. Like, don't let have, there's less guessing games where you're just like, hey, like I need a moment. Like I need to recharge here. I need a moment to think about this and give me a moment. And you know, it's like that ends up helping everybody in this situation.

 Barry - 00:21:19: Exactly.

Jon - 00:21:20: And so, you know, you talked about Stoke, you know, joining Stoke as a private company and then now not being private public. Can you talk about that? Just like that experience of that, you know, I'm going to imagine it's like a very, very different experience being private to public. And can you talk about that transition? What was it like for you as a leader of the company and how have things kind of evolved, you know, making that transit during that transition? 

Barry - 00:21:47: Yeah. And I think part of what allowed us to do that was that the fundamentals of the company was so strong. And especially as we move forward with our treatment for Dravet syndrome, which is the most common genetic form of epilepsy, we had a very strong story as to why the medicine that we were working on was going to have an impact on those patients. And there's very clear evidence that there was a need for patients there that they didn't have treatments that were addressing all the aspects of the disease. And the families were telling us that as well. So we had a clear mission as part of the company, and that definitely helped us move forward. But it also helped us explain to potential investors what they potentially were getting into and what the opportunity was. So that helped us have a successful public offering. But it certainly did change the company, being able to keep everything inside and make decisions inside without having to explain them to the outside world, not feeling as though we had to keep the news flow going and not feeling as though we always had to be constantly raising money. Those are the changes that happened. So being public now meant, first of all, my job changed because now it still is the case that almost half my time is out spent meeting with investors and trying to raise money for the company. Then also, we have to, very careful what we say because, obviously because of Reg FD and the requirements for public company, we have to make sure that what we're saying to one group we're saying to the other. And we also have to be public about what's going on. And since we're taking now the public's money, we have to explain to them how we're using that money. So that, again, it was a change that we had to make. And then also having to go every quarter out and talk about what we're doing. Again, influenced, I'll be honest, it does influence how we do our work. And overall, it's a benefit. It's a benefit to be able to have the resources of being a public company, especially in terms of the finances, in terms of the connections that we make, in terms of being able to go out and explain our story to many, many people. There are many benefits to it, but there have been some challenges along the way.

Jon - 00:24:21: Absolutely. And Excedr is not publicly traded, but my wife's company is publicly traded and she's not on the earnings calls. But when I watch the earnings calls, I'm like, holy moly, that is intense. That is intense. And talk about trial by fire is kind of like trial by fire every quarter. You're just constantly having to be just so dialed in. And I'm just like, my God, every single word is like, being like someone is hanging on every single word I say, or they say, not me. And yeah, I think, you know, talking about like fit, right? Like, you know, there is, you know. Despite the complexities of being public, which is like, you're a publicly traded entity and you talk about the FITT, it's like the financial aspect is like, you're very strong now. You have access to capital markets that a private company does not, frankly. So I think, and especially when you're doing something as ambitious as you guys are doing. Kind of need to rally the, you know, we talk about drug development, just like only getting more complex, more expensive and longer, you kind of need to have that firepower behind you in order to, to get through it. So it makes a lot of sense. And, you know, for anyone who's, who may be at that Series A stage and is like starting to contemplate, you know, maybe getting their B and going public, is there any dislike? Common pitfalls to avoid tips, particularly for those who are kind of have a scientific, you know, kind of lean, any advice that you can impart on any of the listeners. 

 Barry - 00:25:59: The first is to hire wisely.

Jon - 00:26:01: Yeah.

Barry - 00:26:02: Make sure that the people you're bringing into the company are not only top-notch in terms of skill. And knowledge, but also people who you can work with. And sometimes people are willing to sacrifice a little bit on one of those two, but you really just don't sacrifice. And this is the message that gets told many times, but you really have to hire the right people is the first thing. And then the other thing is make the difficult decisions quickly and try not to delay making decisions or kicking the can down the road or hoping things will change or get better. If there's a difficult decision that has to be made, whether it's choosing a program or stopping a program or firing somebody or going and talking to certain investors or taking certain investments, you just got to make that decision quickly and make the decision as difficult as it may be. You're not going to be right all the time. There's just, you're never going to be right all the time. So you just have to make that decision and move forward as quickly as possible. Don't dwell on it afterwards. And that's the best way to move a program forward rather than. Sitting and delaying decision-making because that's one of the most challenging things that the programs have is that they sort of dawdle along and never get to their final place, whether it's being stopped or continuing.

Jon - 00:27:28: Absolutely. And I think super sage advice, because I think, especially with hiring, too, it's just like hiring, right. And especially in the earliest days, we talked about impact can be positive impact, but also negative impact, just like hiring, like, the right hire can just like can be logarithmic and you can just like, they can be massive unlocks. And then the next person they hire, if you hired well, they're probably good at hiring and hire other good people. That wrong hire early goes in the other direction. You're like, oh my God, they just hired someone else that might be worse. Like, and it just like, and then the, the organization kind of like is in shambles. So I think that's like really sage advice. And when it comes to not shying away from making those hard decisions and running towards it, I think is also incredibly important to remember because like the clock is ticking, especially in life sciences, where it's like every kind of, you know, moment of delay, it's just like the clock is like, it's burning down and it's important to, you know, obviously you, like you said, you're not going to make every decision correctly, but if you know, in your heart of hearts, like this is when he like, he's like, okay, it's very uncomfortable, but I'm not going to let this thing just fester. Like we got to, we got to make a decision here. I think that's incredibly important. He's like, you try to put your yourself in that future state. You're just like, are you going to beat yourself up about just letting this thing drag on? And if you're like, yeah, I'm going to have big regrets. You probably have your answer and you kind of need to, you need to pull the trigger on this. Whether it's, you know, whatever business it may be. And I'm thinking about this like whole journey and it, you know, there's so many points where you can just see there's all of these experiences are just like compounding and have built on each other and continue to build on each other. And it's so exciting to see everything that, you know, and hear everything that Stoke is up to and that, that journey. Can you, you know, just like if you were to like think about the kind of the biggest lessons that you carry with you through this day and that you're continuing to carry with you to this day as the leader of Stoke, what would those be as the chief medical officer? 

 Barry - 00:29:36: I think there are really three things. The first is, as chief medical officer, my primary responsibility is to the patients, making sure that what we are working on and the medicine that we put into a patient is something that we think. Is as safe as possible. But also that we hear the message that they have as patients or as family members caring for a patient, and that we... Try our best to make a medicine that's going to have a huge impact. On that patient's life. So the focus on patients, the chief medical officer is the patient's representative in the company, the primary patient representative. The second important lesson is... Something that I strive for is to be a multiplier, to be a leader who amplifies the capabilities. Of my coworkers and my team members and to amplify their contributions. One advantage that we have in this particular industry is that it's easy to motivate people in our company to do their work. As I mentioned before, we bring... Patients, we bring families into the company and they meet. The people who they are working to try to help. There's no greater motivator than that, being able to help somebody and looking in the eyes of a child with Dravet syndrome or talking to a family member of a child who has all his homodominic optic atrophy, which is another disease we work on, where they know that their child may end up unable to see, may not be able to drive a car. These are things where you hear these stories. It makes you run, run to try to get your work done. It gets you out of bed first thing in the morning. It keeps you. Working late at night. And so we're fortunate that we have that motivator. I don't have to worry about engagement. Of course we do worry about engagement in the company, but in general, Stoke is among the highest engagement of our employees in general, but the biopharma industry in general has great ability to... Get our workers motivated and keep them. Moving forward.

Jon - 00:32:08: Absolutely. And I love that. I can see like I can clearly see how Biogen like was a very formative experience. And also going all the way back to when you were at your father's practice and seeing a child like actually see and the impact that has on them and their family continues to be a North Star. That's like a big driving force behind what Stoke and you and your colleagues do. So that's really, really exciting. And as we're looking forward one or two years, what's what's in store for Stoke?

 Barry - 00:32:42: The key things are, first we have for our Dravet syndrome treatment, which is a disease-modifying medicine, the first one that's going to be available for any form of epilepsy, we are about to start phase three trial. 

Jon - 00:32:55: Awesome.

 Barry - 00:32:55: The definitive... Trial to show the efficacy and safety of the medicine. And that's going to be started relatively soon. And hopefully within the next two to three years, we'll have those results of the trial and proof that this is a medicine that's going to make a huge impact on the lives of patients and families with Dravet syndrome. Similarly, for our program for autosomal dominant optic atrophy, we're about to start a clinical trial there, the first in human trial. We'll just be starting to test this medicine to try to help prevent the disease of the retina that causes people to lose their vision. And then we have a pipeline that we hope to expand in other diseases of the brain and the eye, potentially other parts of the body. So that's a huge potential that we're looking forward to.

Jon - 00:33:45: So cool. I was like in my head, I was just like fist pumping, like hell yeah, let's go Stoke. This is so cool. That's so cool. Barry, you've been so generous with your time. Like honestly, thank you so much. Thank you so much, I've learned a lot. That's kind of the, kind of my, my, my- 

 Barry - 00:34:01: Kind of metrics?

Jon - 00:34:03: Yeah. Yeah. For me, I just like, it's just so. I feel so grateful to be able to learn from leaders like yourself and expert like your expertise. And every time I have these conversations, I'm so energized. I'm like, I'm ready to take on, you know, the next challenge. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast. And in traditional closing fashion, we have two questions. The first question is, would you like to give any shout outs to anyone who supported you along the way?

 Barry - 00:34:32: Yeah, I have to... Give gratitude for my wife and my daughter and my brothers as well, and my parents for all the support that they've given, especially my wife and daughter who've put up with a lot, but they also helped me realize how fortunate I am and almost on a daily basis get those reminders of. All the things that I have to be grateful for in my life.

Jon - 00:35:02: Honestly, I agree with this the same. I always talk to my wife. I'm like. God, thank you for bearing with me. I talk about Excedr way too much. And she's like, yeah, all right, all right. Like I will shoulder some of this stress. So, you know, I can't imagine a world without her. So I totally agree. And if you could give advice to your 21-year-old self, what would it be?

 Barry - 00:35:28: Yeah, I would say, first of all, try to be with the smartest and best people in your generation and try to be lifted and inspired by them. Always strive to be curious. Don't give up your curiosity. And finally, work on something impactful. Work on something worthwhile. As we talked about before, we all have limited time on Earth. And so we might as well spend it doing something that's going to have a major benefit to humankind.

Jon - 00:36:01: Honestly, don't know a better place to round things out. Barry, thank you so much. I've had a lot of fun. I could go hours and hours and hours with you, but maybe we'll have a part two and we'll have another conversation, maybe over breakfast at Google's offices. 

 Barry - 00:36:16: Yeah, exactly.

Jon - 00:36:16: Yeah, maybe we'll go over there. Well, thank you again, Barry. 

 Barry - 00:36:20: I'd love to do this. Thanks again for giving me the opportunity to talk and share some ideas and hopefully inspire some people to go on to greatness.

Jon - 00:36:29: I know you will. Thanks again, Barry.

Outro - 00:36:34: That's all for this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast. We hope you enjoyed our four-part series with Barry Ticho. Be sure to tune into our next series with Kate Neville, partner at Marshall Gerstein, a law firm with over 60 years of expertise in delivering sophisticated intellectual property advice and legal services to leading businesses, research institutions, universities, and entrepreneurs worldwide. Kate is an accomplished attorney who helps clients secure their inventions globally, combining her doctoral background in microbiology and immunology with over a decade of patent prosecution experience. She specializes in strategic patent management, preparation, due diligence, and proceedings like re-examinations and oppositions, working closely with biotech startups, big pharma, and nonprofits. Recognized for her expertise, Kate has been named among the world's leading patent practitioners by IAM Magazine since 2013 and has been an Illinois super lawyer since 2018. She's also a life sciences star by LMG Life Sciences and an IP star by Managing IP. Additionally, she was featured in the 2016 Women Worth Watching list and is included in the Best Lawyers in America for Patent Law. Before joining Marshall Gerstein, Kate earned her PhD in microbiology and immunology from Northwestern University Medical School, where her research focused on experimental models of multiple sclerosis and therapeutic regulation of autoreactive T-cell function. She holds a BS in microchemistry from the University of Notre Dame. Kate's insights into IP law and strategy makes for an incredibly valuable conversation, one that founders don't want to miss. The Biotech Startups Podcast is produced by Excedr. Don't want to miss an episode? Search for The Biotech Startups Podcast wherever you get your podcasts and click subscribe. Excedr provides research labs with equipment leases on founder-friendly terms to support paths to exceptional outcomes. To learn more, visit our website, www.excedr.com. On behalf of the team here at Excedr, thanks for listening. The Biotech Startups Podcast provides general insights into the life science sector through the experiences of its guests. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from the podcast is at the user's own risk. The views expressed by the participants are their own and are not the views of Excedr or sponsors. No reference to any product, service or company in the podcast is an endorsement by Excedr or its guests.