Bryan Dechairo - Sherlock Biosciences - Part 1

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.

Jon - 00:00:23: My guest today is Bryan Dechairo, President, CEO, and Director at Sherlock Biosciences, an innovative biotech company that is enabling the democratization and decentralization of diagnostic testing to personalize healthcare and make an impact on global health. The Sherlock team and founders include engineering biology pioneers with world-leading expertise in CRISPR and synthetic biology, diagnostic industry veterans, and disease area authorities. Together, they provide an unparalleled set of capabilities that are transforming molecular diagnostics in clinical and non-clinical settings. Before Sherlock, and most recently, Bryan was Executive VP at Myriad Genetics and CSO and CMO at Assurex Health. His extensive career spans over two decades and also includes prominent positions at Medco Health, Pfizer, Oxagen Sequana Therapeutics, and Roche. Bryan vast experience working at both startups and Fortune 500 companies gives him unique insights that any entrepreneur can benefit from. Over the next three episodes, we cover a wide range of topics, including Bryan upbringing in Southern California, his time working at Pfizer, and his transition into big pharma, growing Assurex Health. And navigating its acquisition, the impact of COVID on the diagnostics industry, and Sherlock Bioscience's exciting plans for the next few years. Today, we'll chat about Bryan early years growing up in Valley Center, Southern California, choosing to study integrative biology at UC Berkeley, his exposure to clinical diagnostics at Roche, transitioning to the startups at Quanta Therapeutics while pursuing his PhD, and embracing new cultural experiences in the UK while studying at the University College London. Without further ado, let's dive into this episode of the Biotech Startups Podcast. Bryan so good to see you again. Thanks for coming on the podcast.

Bryan - 00:01:54: Thank you. Thank you for the invite.

Jon - 00:01:56: Yeah, of course. For the Biotech Startups Podcast, we like to start really in the early days. It's kind of a traditional start for us. We think it's really fun going down memory lane and really just like trying to think back to the early days. What was your upbringing like and how has it influenced your leadership style and business philosophy?

Bryan - 00:02:14: I think everyone has a unique story in their brain. I grew up in the 70s and I lived in a place called Valley Center. It's a small mountain farming community in Southern California, about an hour inland from San Diego. My father was a pediatrician and he had a kind of a hobby farm. So he was from Kansas originally and he created this hobby farm where we had about 10 acres of avocados, orange trees, and like a small commune type of farm where we have like two pigs, two cows, a few chickens for eggs. We like milked goats for milk. So we're like, we're self-sustaining. Yet he goes down into the city every day as a pediatrician to see patients and then comes home to this type of farm. And that was great because it really taught me about hard work. Like every weekend I would work with my father on this farm and we would like cut trees or irrigate or we would milk animals. And it taught me about like sweat equity. Like even today in my current company at Sherlock, we're always looking at like sweat equity on like, how can we like give back? And like, let's just not give money. Let's go do a group activity together where we go for a walk or we like sweat or, you know, something that we're putting energy into the activity because it has far more meaning. But it was great to show Colt side about science and hard work and being a doctor, but then also come in having hard work where you're using your body and you're actually doing things. And he also made me always work for allowance. Like I had to like work. I got paid like an hourly rate from day one. Right. And I remember one time he was like, I pay you a lower hourly rate than I pay others because you don't do as much as others do.

Jon - 00:03:54: The baptism of fire. Yeah, that's incredibly fascinating to have this kind of a dual experience. And, you know, obviously, with your father being a doctor, was science always like a dinner table conversation? Was that always the thing where science was around in the environment?

Bryan - 00:04:09: I was very lucky on that side, because I went to work with him, I was in his office with other patients, we would sit there and come off this avocado grove, and we'd be all dirty and like cowboy boots. And then we would take a shower and put on like a suit. And he would take me down to San Diego for a business dinner, right? And he would take me along with them for these activities and things. And so literally was like that juxtaposition. But like we saw science, I saw patients, I saw his research, he did a lot of research at UCSD as well. So he wasn't just a physician, but he was also a research physician. And so I got to see a whole bunch of aspects of life that I don't think a lot of people don't get to see. I was very lucky.

Jon - 00:04:47: I'm honestly jealous. Like I kind of like found biology later. It wasn't until actually getting into university where I was like, oh, science can be cool. And, you know, just to touch on working on the farm, was that where you found inspiration for business? I'm kind of seeing a pattern here. Was that a spark for you? Or did you find that inspiration in some other shape or form?

Bryan - 00:05:06: And for business wise, I definitely think it came from both my father and my mom and also from working on that farm. I mean, I think from day one where you had to work for allowance and like the more you work, the more you could get. It taught me maybe it's a little bit like capitalism, but it taught me that you have to put work in to actually have the reward at the back end. So talk to me about that. But it also told me a little bit about business. Like my mother was chief nursing officer of a lot of health networks in California. And so she got to the business side of nursing. She started out as a nurse and then she went to the business side of nursing where my father, as a pediatrician, he actually was private practice. He had his own business. He expanded it into multiple areas. He then went to insurance companies as medical directors as well and dealt with payments and things. And so it was always about not just caring for people, not just working hard, but also running your own businesses and building businesses as well. So I saw that from an early day.

Jon - 00:05:59: That's amazing. And I'm honestly jealous because I think sometimes science can be siloed. Like you're in the lab, you're a physician, you're a clinician, you stay in your swim lane. And like the marriage of these two of business and science, sometimes they just never cross. And oftentimes the conversations with folks who are kind of just considering their career path, I was right there when I was like doing research. I was like, what's a balance sheet? How does this work? Like, how do I get an insurance policy? What does this even mean? I'm jealous hearing that via this awesome, just like growing up environment to be able to see how the paths can cross.

Bryan - 00:06:36: Well, I think it was also interesting too, because you saw, they always shared like the good and bad side of things. And so like, both my grandfathers were doctors. My father was a doctor. I was like, I'm going to be a doctor. Like, it's just natural. Like everybody's a doctor. You're going to be a doctor. Right. And so I had that path. And my dad was like, I don't know if I want you to be a doctor. Like healthcare is changing. And he was a pediatrician. And he was like, I really care about the people and I care about my patients. And they all loved him back. But at the same time, they would say like, you know, it's cold season. I would just see 20 runny nose in a given day. Like you take the glamorous side of it too. Like, you know, it can be a routine over a period of time. But on the business side, I think he also showed me that like, again, there's a lot of physicians, people who are like scientists. They're not going to be business people because they don't do the balance sheet. They don't do the finance. They don't understand the cost. They don't want to be in cost. I don't want to be involved in that. And so I got exposed to all aspects early on.

Jon - 00:07:26: That's awesome. And as you're growing up and now you're starting to approach deciding what university to go to. How did you end up choosing Berkeley? I'm a little bit biased here because I was like, this is a no brainer for me. And why did you choose to study integrative biology?

Bryan - 00:07:40: Yeah. So the high school I went to, it's called Escondido, which is this inland from San Diego. My mom and my family were like fourth generation Escondido. And so she was like the first graduating class of this high school. And I went to her same high school that she went to. And one of her first teachers in high school was still one of my teachers in high school, like 25 years later. And his name was Richard Brown. And I took like AP biology when I was a freshman. And he used to take me down to like scripts research. And he would actually, we would do like fly genetic experiments with Drosophila in his lab at the high school, which like was unheard of. Like, we would do these things back in the late eighties. And so it got me really excited about biology, about science. And also like, I've never been like a chemist. I mean, I like chemistry. I like physics, but I always look at it like baking versus cooking, right? Like if you ever seen Jamie Oliver, he just like takes things. He never weighs them. He just like chops up, he throws them into a dish. And then he just like, you know, he just like, you know, he just like, you know, he mixes it and he's like, well, there it is. Where if you're a baker, he's like, you have to be like precise. And I'm not like that precision person. So biology was always great. It's like how organisms work and integrated biology was the systems. And Berkeley, we also had molecular cellular biology, which was like all the intricate parts micro in the cell. Right. And I liked that, but I just loved how the big things work. And I think in life, you know, there's tactics, there's help at the details, and then there's also strategy. And I realized, biology and things like that, the systems integration, like I'm excited about strategy, even more so than the little fine details of things as well. So that's why I went to integrated biology, not molecular cellular biology. I applied to many universities, and being from California, I got into Harvey Mudd, but I also got into Berkeley. And I really loved Berkeley because of its diversity. Like if you go up to Berkeley, like you're in Berkeley, you're right next to Oakland. There's a ton of diversity of people around you, not just the students that are there. It's abig campus. There's so many different things you can get in involved. In, is that liberal arts. So it's not like a specialized college. So you can get like philosophy as well as moving into science classes.And so, i just thought it was like a great ecosystem of learning and not just science learning, but just like learning how to be a human, right? Learning how to talk to people.

Jon - 00:09:58: We sometimes forget that like higher education is like, how do we be better citizens? How do we be better people? And that's something that I also really appreciated from the Berkeley experience. And it's funny the way you described chemistry, because I still remember doing the OChem. I was like, oh, I appreciate it, but this isn't for me. But I did toxicology. So it was like a lot of like physio, which was kind of like a lot of like systems thinking, which for me scratched the same itch. It's kind of like seeing how everything pieced together. And while you're an undergrad, did you have an undergrad lab experience?

Bryan - 00:10:32: I did. I did. I mean, I had a lot of different experiences. And so again, going back to the first thing my dad did when he dropped me off at Berkeley was he walked me into the dining facility and said, you should get a job here. And he actually like signed me up to like serve all the students here in the dorm with me food every day. I actually did that for a long time, which was also where I became the manager of that student facility. I worked with all the local people who worked there and things. It was a great experience. But in my later time, I also started working at one of my professor's labs. His name is John Taylor, and he was a mycologist, the study of fungus. And it was like one of the luckiest moments in my life. You look back in your life, you're like, what are some of those luck times? Like, there's like, you have to create your own luck, but there's times where you just get lucky. And so I really enjoyed this professor. And I know he had a lab and I was like, I need some lab experience. So can I volunteer at your lab? And he said, yes. And I initially was just like typing in references into a computer. Those computers were just coming on board and everything had been like hard paper and copies, but now we had electronics. And so I had to load up like references in the end notes so you could have a bunch of comprehensive publications. But then he was working in the lab. I'm like, can I do some of that work in the lab? And what we were doing was genetics. Because even though it was a mycology lab, we were using PCR. And PCR had just been like invented in the late 80s. And he had a collaboration with his postdoc there with Roche in Alameda, Roche Molecular Systems, which became Roche Diagnostics. And I started working on some of the experiments with the postdoc there in this lab using these latest tools. And again, now you get taught PCR and you get taught genetics in school, but it was not in my curriculum because it was just invented. It was like, it was a new tool that wasn't in the textbooks, right? That actually changed. The way diagnostics have been done for 30 years. And as I look back on my career, I always go, wow, I became a PCR expert at the beginning of PCR. And then with Sherlock, I've been able to now jump into diagnostics with like CRISPR synthetic biology right at the beginning of those technologies, knowing what's going to happen over the next 30 years there as well.

Jon - 00:12:38: That's amazing. That's like actually amazing. And how did you find the lab? Were you just like knocking on doors like, take me, take me?

Bryan - 00:12:45: The funniest thing about integrated biology, this course I took. It was, you know, I love plants now and I love conservation today, but back in my Berkeley days, I was like, I like animals. I didn't want to have to take plant courses. And so in integrated biology, because it's macro, we had to take two non-animal species courses. And so I'm like, well, what can I take that's not plants? And there was two courses. It was mycology, a fungal course and an algae course. These are two other kingdoms, right? You don't know we're in a plant kingdom, right? So I'm like, okay. So I signed up to this course just because I just didn't want to take a plant biology course.

Jon - 00:13:23: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bryan - 00:13:23: And I just ran into his lab and he took me out mushroom hunting, you know, and that sounds like Berkeley, right?

Jon - 00:13:29: That's so Berkeley.

Bryan - 00:13:32: He was a great guy. So I asked him if I took his class. I said, can I work in your lab? You know, and it was just luck, right?

Jon - 00:13:38: That's amazing because I'm just always thinking about on these conversations with folks who are just like embarking on this. And sometimes that's all it takes. Maybe in this case, it's like an email. But like if you're in a class that you find interesting, just like maybe after a lecture, just like go up and ask.

Bryan - 00:13:52: That's exactly it. You just ask the question like, hey, can I help you in your lab in any way? And you start off volunteering. I was working at a diet facility, but I was working for him for free. He wasn't paying me. I was like doing that work. And then eventually when his postdoc was leaving and got a professor job in Australia. You know, they said, hey, can you finish up some work? I'm like, yeah. And then he started actually paying me a little bit of a stipend or whatever to do this work. I'm like, literally, I was like, okay, like, this is how you do it. You just volunteer and you jump in.

Jon - 00:14:19: Yeah, that's amazing. And sometimes people can think it's kind of like this very formal process, but it's much more ad hoc than it is just like a traditional kind of like process orientation. So I love hearing those kinds of stories. I do it the same way for me. I was more of a like, in retrospect, very much a liability in the lab. I was like, how did you let me in the hood? How are you letting me do this? Obviously, like the postdocs were like, all right, John, this is how you do cell culture. And then eventually you kind of like earn your stripes, and then you find a place in the lab. So you mentioned while in this lab, you're starting to work with more PCR, Roche. And I know after graduation, you ended up at Roche. How did that opportunity come about?

Bryan - 00:14:56: So it was really interesting. And that was only a temp job for another year at Roche too. There was these two postdocs that were collaborating, one in John Taylor's lab in Berkeley and the other one that was a postdoc at Roche. And they both had this collaboration using Roche's PCR equipment and really looking for infectious disease diagnostics. And again, all diagnostics previously were not genetic. They were always protein, amino acid changes, these kind of things. And then people are sort of like, oh, we can see DNA. We can actually amplify DNA. We can make higher accuracy diagnostics like we do today here at Sherlock using DNA or using RNA. And let's start with some infectious diseases. And so they were both working on different infectious diseases at the time. And then one got a professor job. And so I got that opportunity at the Taylor lab to take over that person's work and then work with the Roche postdoc. And then the Roche postdoc got a PhD job too. So one went to the UK, one went to Australia. And then they're like, who's going to finish this work? And they asked me to come in. And finish all the work that was being done. And it was a great experience at Roche because, you know, not only are you using PCR to create some of the first high accuracy diagnostics for infectious diseases, which again, right now at Sherlock, we're focused on infectious diseases still today, but I was also working on diseases. So I worked on human diseases like histoplasmosis. Again, you've never heard of it. It's a fungal disease or coccidioidosis mycosis. They're like spores in the dust or in chicken farms and things like that. But I also worked on a thing called lobomycosis. And again, you've never heard of this, but this is something that's planned for two humans from the freshwater dolphins in the Amazon river, right. And it was great to see like a company caring about diagnosing something in the Amazon river basin. Right. And not just something like a US population health type of focus. And I thought that was great. And that kind of lived with me, you know, even to today, we're at Sherlock, we have a big focus on global health and not just high income businesses, but low and middle income. Countries too. So it was a great experience.

Jon - 00:16:58: That's amazing. And especially since Roche is so massive, because like Roche being so massive, Wall Street is Wall Street, but you can, sometimes it can make you chase certain opportunities and markets that it might be just focused on the highest earning countries versus humans are humans and humans get sick, irrespective of where you fall in this kind of like stratification. So that's amazing hearing that Roche for such a large organization was able to focus on that.

Bryan - 00:17:23: One other thing I'll say there about Roche, which I thought also learned was we were right next door to Perkin Elmer. And we had this collaboration with Perkin Elmer right next door about reagents versus assays. And it showed me the business models about like, you can collaborate with competitors or vertically integrate with competitors, or they also licensed PCR to everybody. And so now like every diagnostic, DNA, RNA diagnostic, the majority of them, until people like ourselves at Sherlock came around using other technology, have been using PCR. And it wasn't like they just kept it to themselves. So like, let's make sure that everyone has access to this so that everyone can use this tool and make great quality diagnostics. And it's a win for Roche too, because they get royalties and licenses, but they got the technology out to the world that way. And everything we do in DNA, RNA right now, I mean, most of it, like next generation sequencing, all these things, they're all still PCR based to some extent.

Jon - 00:18:14: Yeah. And I've only have worked in the sciences for a majority of my career, but my friends not being in sciences, they're like, It doesn't seem nearly as collaborative in other industries. And I'm not going to poo-poo on other industries. I've never been in it myself firsthand. But just from an outsider looking in, I'm like, oh, the sciences are awfully collaborative. And exactly what you said, competitors can work together and trying to improve health outcomes for everybody. It's like this North Star that we're all shooting for. So why not collaborate if it furthers this mission? So you're wrapping up your time at Roche. Did you know what was next?

Bryan - 00:18:51: So I didn't know what was next. I just knew back at Berkeley, I had always struggled with, I loved evolution. I love genetics. I don't think I could build a career, like the business type of career that I saw with my mom and my dad growing up in evolution. So let's go down the genetic road. And Roche led me down that way. And I had this opportunity where I knew how to use PCR, where not very many people in the world did at this point. I'm like, not everybody does it. You watch CSI, you watch all these different things. Everybody does it. Everybody knows it. But back then, not that many people knew it. Right. And so I remember one day somebody said, Bryan, there's a great job fair going on in San Francisco. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I have holes in my jeans. I'm wearing a ripped t-shirt because you have a lab coat on. It doesn't really matter what's over your lab coat. Right. And I'm like, you should go to it. And I'm like, oh, I'm embarrassed. Like, I can't go. And then I realized something that stays with me, which is if I don't go, I won't get any job. And if I go and they think this guy is not professional, then I won't get a job. But will that be the kind of job I want to work for? Or will they want to see the person and not just what the person looks like to get the job, which is important in life is not what you look like. It's what you can do. And so I said, I'm just going to go. And I ran into Alison Carey, who was looking for people to come to a new startup company in Torrey Pines in San Diego called Sequana Therapeutics. And I talked with her and gave her my resume. And next thing I know, like, she's like, wow, you do PCR? I'm like, yeah. And she's like, well, we want to interview you. And I got the interview. And a couple of weeks later, I was moving back down to San Diego to a startup company called Sequana Therapeutics.

Jon - 00:20:29: Yeah, that's amazing. And maybe this is just like recency bias, but I feel like startups only have been recently cool and like a viable path. So like for you, fresh out of college, joining a startup, that's like pretty punk rock of you. You know,

Bryan - 00:20:45: honestly, I remember before I got the Roche job, I remember sending my resume out to the back of like in the mail. There wasn't even like there was email at that point, but it was still very like unutilized, that they said, even in the early 90s. And so like, I remember like sending my CV out 400 envelopes to like every biotech company in the Bay Area.

Jon - 00:21:07: Yeah.

Bryan - 00:21:07: One callback, right? So I don't think I had the luxury to say it was punk rock of me to go to. I was like, yeah, right.

Jon - 00:21:16: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know the drill. And it's funny. I had a similar career fair experience, too. And everyone's like, you got to wear a suit. And so I was like, I don't have a suit. I really don't. And they're like, all right, well, we're just going to go to the nearest Nordstrom's and basically just bought a very ill-fitting suit.

Bryan - 00:21:35: Like a sack.

Jon - 00:21:36: Yeah, yeah. It was just draped over me. I'm just like looking like a mobster. In retrospect, people were like, oh, first time. I haven't been there yet. Yeah. And ultimately, exactly what you said. It's about what you can do, not what you look like. And so you're now back in Southern California. Can you talk a little about that startup experience and what was it like when you were there?

Bryan - 00:21:56: Yeah, I loved it. I mean, it was my first startup company because, I mean, Berkeley, been that big roche. Now I'm at this startup company and we were all like a family. It was an amazing experience because while we all worked in different departments, we all worked in the lab. We had like happy hour together every Friday. We all spent the weekends together. It was like a family vibe. That's something else that I've always tried to create in every startup I've been in as an older on, like at Sherlock is we're a family. We're all here together. We support each other. And it was great. It was just a great time. There's a lot of other startup companies happening in up in Torrey Pines at the time, near Scripps and things. And so it was just a really good vibe. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the work. We were trying to use populations of people's genetics to kind of find, you know, where genes may reside that cause diseases. And again, this is all before we sequenced the human genome. We didn't know where the genes were. We didn't know anything about much about the genes. We knew that it was all these genes existed. We just didn't know where they were located. Or whether they were related to anything. They just had names like U555454 or something like that. And you're like, okay, what is that? I don't know.

Jon - 00:23:08: It kind of seems like you're just like right before each wave. You're like catching waves, like using a surfing analogy, like things are about to swell and you're starting to paddle, which is awesome. I mean, you're at the ground floor.

Bryan - 00:23:19: But, and sometimes you're just too early. Like, so Sequana was a great, great idea and it did, it achieved nothing. It didn't discover anything. It, you know, it tried really, really hard. It had great ideas. But the technology wasn't quite there yet. And the approach was a good approach, but it was too blunt of a tool. And it really didn't result in anything that today you can look back on and say it achieved something. And that's what happens with startups is sometimes you have a great idea, but the idea is just too early for prime time and it's not ready. At Sherlock, we have a couple of different technologies and our CRISPR technology is super good at things like bringing cancer diagnostics into the, into the home or bringing prenatal diagnostics into the home. But the consumer is not ready for these diagnostics to be in the home and neither is the regulatory agencies. And so again, it's a fantastic tool we have. It's definitely part of our vision and journey about where it's going to go, but it's not our first product we're going to launch because if it was, we would be way too early for the market to need it. Right. You have to build that market to get there.

Jon - 00:24:23: Yeah, absolutely. And I think we can't understate how important timing is to science to business. And if you are too early, it'll be just like you're wrong and it'll feel exactly like it despite being right. And I don't know, like, I think I've always thought about the ability to have that kind of foresight and whether one can actually time it. I don't know. It almost feels like sometimes you just get lucky and the right place, right time with the right people. And then you catch the wave. You're now on a Mavericks level wave and you're just cruising. But sometimes you're just like, oh, it's not you.

Bryan - 00:25:01: You're sitting out there in California. I've been many times on the ocean and you're just waiting for the wave to come and it just never comes.

Jon - 00:25:07: It's not there, but you're in the right place. Like that's where you want to be serving. That's where you want to be serving, but just not here today. So that's really interesting. And the other part that really resonated with me. And again, I want to preface that I believe that there's plenty of ways to run a business, a bunch of different business philosophies. There's no one right way. But for us at Excedr, we prescribe to the same mentality of we're a family here. Because you spend every waking hour with your team. And it's much more than just like this transactional thing where blood, sweat, and tears go into XYZ initiative. You don't want to look back on your career and feel like you haven't made lasting connections with the people that you spend every waking hour with. That really resonates with me. And so you're wrapping up your time at the startup. Did you know what was next after that?

Bryan - 00:25:55: So this is interesting, right? So when I left Berkeley, I wasn't sure that I want to go to medical school, that I want to be a scientist. You know, this is great at Roche. This makes sense. And so once I got to Roche and then I got to Sequenom, I'm like, no, this is a great, I like genetics. I like the science. I want this for my career. And so at Sequana, I realized looking out about the people who were in the business and who had the top science jobs and everyone who had the top science jobs had a PhD in science, right? And I realized I'm going to hit a glass ceiling if I don't have a PhD in science. And at the same time, I don't like academics. I love learning, but I don't like the structure of having to like, okay, read this chapter, come get a test to sit for a test after a semester. Like I can read a book. Like if you're going to give me a textbook, I can read it and learn it. I don't need it. Right. And so I really wanted to have that opportunity to actually get a PhD while being in a company. And not have to leave work to then go get an education and come back. And so when I was at Sequana, as I mentioned, my boss, Alison Carey, she was actually British. She had her PhD from the UK. And I had been working with her to try to get sponsorship at like UCSD because we were in San Diego. And could I get the company to sponsor me to do a PhD at UCSD and still like do my work there with them part-time or something? And that didn't work. But she was married to an American and they got divorced. And so she... Moved back to the UK. And she moved back to the UK to start up a company called Oxford Applied Genetics that or Oxagen that had the exact same business model as Sequana Therapeutics. But they were starting up now where Sequana had been around for like four years. And so when we talk about this timing, it's like, well, this one may have been too early, but this one who's getting new seed money and new seed funding as linked to the Wellcome Trust might actually make this work, because it's a little bit further down to technology. It's a little bit further away. And in the UK, your PhDs are all like, hands on the job. They feel like hands-on is more important. So it's all about the research that you do. It's not about like taking classes that you already taken undergrad over again. It's about using your knowledge to actually apply it. And so when she moved there, she said, hey Bryan, will you come and run my hypo genetics lab at this new company and I said, I'll come to the UK, if you can get me some sponsorship for a PhD. And so she reached out to one of her friends, Pete Scambler at University College London, and the company sponsored me for a PhD program at UCL, which I got accepted to. And so once I got accepted, I said, yes. And so I left Sequana and I moved to the UK to do my research for my PhD at a company called Oxagen while being sponsored by University College London. And Oxagen was in Oxford, Oxford, UK. And so it was great. And I remember just like selling everything I owned and like showing up after paying off all debts that I had with like just two suitcases, thousand dollars at the airport in London going, how do I find a bus to Oxford? Right? Like, here I am. I'm coming.

Jon - 00:29:05: That's amazing. And just like career aside for a moment, how was the Southern California to UK transition for you? Did you have like a culture shock moment or like maybe like a mini panic attack when you got there?

Bryan - 00:29:19: I had panic attacks in my life and I care about mental illness. And you're going to hear about that. I had panic attacks when I was at Pfizer later on in my career, but I didn't have panic attacks at that point. I was really excited about the opportunity to move different cultures. As I said, I really care about diversity of people, diversity of ideas and cultures around the world. And so I was just really excited to embrace something new. I definitely wanted it. I wasn't scared. I was just really actually excited about the whole thing.

 Jon - 00:29:44: That's amazing. The concept of like the timing, that's a really interesting one because when you think about the timing being wrong, but hearing that you get a second bite at the apple and the underlying technology gets to live again, rising from the ashes, like we're going to give this another shot. And having the Wellcome Trust being a part of it is a big vote of confidence, big vote of confidence. That's probably an understatement.

Bryan - 00:30:05: And the tools got better. The genetic tools, we had these blunt tools. All of a sudden, we started getting some precision knives because the world was sequencing the genome and we started figuring out all of these small polymorphisms or all these mutations, all these different populations. Had differently and we could start harnessing them and we knew where they were located and we could like pinpoint things better. And so all of a sudden, the tools advanced for population genetics that allowed us to actually not go from like massive chunks of chromosomes, but down to like precise specific regions. And we actually, together with collaborators, discovered the first disease genes for Crohn's disease called Nod2. We used genetics to find disease genes for Graves' disease. And it was a validation too, because for Graves' disease, what was obvious, we found the thyroid-stimulating hormone, which was already drugs. But we were also finding the non-obvious, like Nod2, which is now linked to like interleukins. And now that's the mainstay of therapeutics for Crohn's disease is like interleukins and TNF. So again, some things show you what you know and some things show you what you don't know. And that was a big learning for me, which was a lot of the scientists at Oxagen wanted to focus on what we knew. They thought what we knew, like mutations that change genes. Where was important. And I kept fighting for whatever we don't know is far bigger than what we know. And I'm sure all this genetic space that we think is meaningless in the genome is probably the most meaningful.

Jon - 00:31:30: Yeah, yeah.

Bryan - 00:31:31: And so I'd be looking in the dark and not under the lamppost. And that's where these discoveries came.

Outro - 00:31:40: That's all for this episode of the Biotech Startups podcast. We hope you enjoyed our discussion with Bryan Dechairo. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave us a review and share it with your friends. Thanks for listening. And we look forward to having you join us again for part two of our conversation with Bryan. 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 dot E-X-C-E-D-R dot 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.