Kate Neville - Part 4: Building a Resilient Biotech IP Strategy & Protecting Your Work

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 Kate about IP strategy for biotechs, focusing on specifics like aligning scientific advancements with proactive patent strategies and navigating international patenting and resource constraints. If you missed it, be sure to go back and listen to part three. In part four, we conclude our conversation with Kate as she shares why securing a patent is just the beginning, highlighting the role of enforcement and the balance between litigation and licensing. We'll also discuss the importance of technology transfer, collaborating with academic institutions and embracing innovation through incremental advancements. Kate also reflects on her journey from the lab to becoming a partner of her firm, offering advice for those hesitant to take risks in their careers.

Kate  - 00:01:15: You know, we've been talking about like securing the patent and the process of doing that. What about when it comes to actually enforcing? That is also, I'm going to imagine, time, effort and like, you know, because when I was, again, just like talking to our CLO. It's like, yeah, you got the trademark, but like you got to actually enforce the thing. You can't just like not do anything with it. Because if I'm not mistaken, like if you don't enforce it, they can just take it away from you. Right? 

 Jon - 00:01:44: Right. It still has a trademark. Yeah. It still has to be in use somewhere. So if it's not in use for a certain amount of time, it can just kind of die or is free for other people to use. Again, I'm not a trademark attorney, but I think that's mostly right.

Kate  - 00:01:59: And so when it comes to actually enforcing, this is a world that I am not too familiar with, kind of like, how should a company... Think about enforcing their intellectual property rights for this hard-earned patent.

 Jon - 00:02:15: Yeah, it's hard. It's a difficult decision because you know if you get into litigation, it can be time-consuming and money-consuming. I am not a litigator. I just do patent office stuff, but I talk to our litigators and I have clients that have been involved in litigation and have talked about litigation. You're like, is it worth it? Do we just approach them for a license? Where's the fine line between us enforcing our patent versus just sinking money into something that ultimately... We could have just licensed. In the beginning. It's a business decision of like how much cost, it goes back to earlier, what's the risk you're willing to take and how much are you willing to invest? And what do you think you're going to get back? In return. Because, you know, depending on what the patent is, you know, if you have two competing products, and it's already on the market, the patent offices, FDA, they're less likely to just pull a drug that's useful off the market than just say, you guys work it out, and you pay them some money, and everybody will be like, work together and figure this out. It can be solved with money. And so a lot of things, you know, you could just do the settlement or the negotiations about licensing up front. As compared to getting involved into litigation. And I think, I don't know the statistic, but people file lawsuits, but most of them settle before they actually go to trial. So the reality is no one really wants to be involved in litigation because that's, you know, if you think the patent office process is long, I think the litigation will take potentially just as long. It's a four to five year investment of time. So. 

Kate  - 00:04:11: Everyone's like, yeah, let's figure this out amicably.

 Jon - 00:04:15: Yeah, basically. Can we work together? Because who's got that kind of time? 

Kate  - 00:04:20: Yeah. And I think something that's interesting too, that I'm, I'm learning is that It is kind of this like marriage of like, sometimes it can just be like a business decision. And it's like, you know, despite it being like, we have the patent on this thing, but sometimes it will just boil down to like this business decision. And like, what are you ready to do and willing to do to kind of like protect this like legal. This legal protection that you have. I would imagine that on the flip side, too, there is a time when you should go to the mat.

 Jon - 00:04:52: Right.

Kate  - 00:04:53: Right. And it doesn't always boil down to that business decision. 

 Jon - 00:04:57: Right.

Kate  - 00:04:57: It's like we are going to do this and it could be like make or break for us. And, you know, we talked about, you know, if you have a patent enforcing your IP, but I was also going to imagine for companies that rely on IP all the time and you're probably getting a lawsuit, too. Like I'm going to imagine that's not like an uncommon occurrence. And you've got to figure out a way to defend. 

 Jon - 00:05:19: Yeah. Again, you get some people or send you things and you're like, maybe is it a cease and desist letter? Do I worry about this? Because, as he alluded to earlier, like even if you try to enforce your patent, one of the analyses to do before that is how strong is my patent? Because someone... On the flip side, they're going to say, well, your patent is invalid. So it doesn't matter. So you have to be confident. That your patent is also not going to be invalidated. That's the risk you also have to think about if you want to enforce your patent. You have to think of it, it's a very strong patent.

Kate  - 00:05:55: Absolutely. And for the startups out there, you know, the first example I gave was like, it was kind of like tech transfer, where you're kind of like, there's probably an existing intellectual property, wherever it may be in the process, it's already kind of there. Can you just talk about like. For these founders out there and from the lens of like intellectual property, any advice for like. Securing their next big idea? And like, what are the considerations when it comes to like doing that tech transfer process and or not going that route?

 Jon - 00:06:28: You know, I mean, it's hard because it seems like a lot of new ideas, like the nascent ideas and startups do often come from kind of university technology that maybe the university doesn't have the resources and they spin it out. But from there, it doesn't mean that. You know, once you're kind of... Improving or adding on to that technology, it's still your, like, it's still the company's now. It's not the university's anymore. You know, so don't be afraid and think, oh, I can't patent anything new because it's still the university's or some other small company's. Like, if you add your stamp to it and you have your inventive concepts, it's yours now. The other hard part, I mean, you can... Do a... You can do a startup, but it's hard to be a self-startup from a biotech company, I think. It's not a great thing to do from your garage. It's definitely not GMP.

Kate  - 00:07:24: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 Jon - 00:07:27: Not my garage, at least. So it's harder to get the seed money to start without kind of that free IP, I think, unless you're independently wealthy, unfortunately. But if you have a great idea and you have ways to show people that it's a good idea, you do have some lab space or you contracted with a CRO, maybe you're not doing it, but you're like, hey, CRO, I have this great idea and I have this. Maybe it's a known compound and you want to use it in a new indication. That's still patentable. And you can get a third party to do the work. As long as you have some of that proof of concept, you can still file your application on it. So maybe you didn't have to do the work yourself. So it doesn't necessarily have to come out of the university if you have the seed money. You know, to start it yourself. But it's really all about the concept.

Kate  - 00:08:18: Perhaps academia is like a very popular method of doing this, but like also the larger, I'm going to imagine the larger pharmas are also, they're going to like look to like, you can, you can in license from them like instead or other sources outside of academia.

 Jon - 00:08:32: Yes. Yeah. And I think, I don't know how many have done this, and I think Eli Lilly, maybe is it Boehringer Ingelheim, have set up. Some like websites of like compounds they've shelved. And like, if you can look through those and it's like, oh, do you have an idea on this shelved compound, right? Like. It might not have worked for whatever they were using it for. And they just kind of shut that program down. And so there are ways to look at what other companies have done and try to in-license that as well. I don't know. You know, what the terms are like. For those, but I don't know what the terms are like for those. Um, But it is possible, and they are doing a lot more of that so that these... Compounds that have been proven a little bit, right? They've been made so you can synthesize them. They've done a little bit of maybe some Early toxicology, but maybe it just didn't work for, again, whatever they were looking at it for. So there are places to mine for some of that. I just don't know what all they are. But yeah, you could in-license from there. Or some smaller startups, they're people that worked at bigger companies. So they've seen what it's like and they know some of the goings on. But from my experience here, sitting in my office and having the clients, that's still different than being in a big company.

Kate  - 00:09:50: Absolutely.

 Jon - 00:09:52: Having to run the show yourselves and like you're saying, wear all of the hats and make sure everybody's doing what they need to do is still different when you leave the nest.

Kate  - 00:10:03: And I, you know, right now for investors, all you can hear is like de-risk, de-risk, de-risk, de-risk, de-risk. Like, I get it.

 Jon - 00:10:10: Yeah.

Kate  - 00:10:10: We're going to de-risk.

 Jon - 00:10:11: Trying. 

Kate  - 00:10:12: We're trying to de-risk, all right? But like, you know, I was trying to think about like, what are the avenues, right? And like exactly what you said, like big pharma has a lot of like IP, which they shell because they can't do everything.

 Jon - 00:10:25: Right.

Kate  - 00:10:25: And not, it's not to say that that's like a slam dunk and it's like completely de-risk. But like, and I even know a lot of investors were like going to like academic tech transfer offices and are mining, right? Trying to find these next opportunities. But like, you know. For anyone out there who's like looking for that next big ideas. Like. That's decently de-risked. But they shelved it for a reason, too. 

 Jon - 00:10:47: Right. Exactly.

Kate  - 00:10:48: They shelved it for a reason, but I think there's a number of companies out there. At the top of my head, is it Roivant or BridgeBio?

Jon - 00:10:56: Yeah, they're built on that.

Kate  - 00:10:58: Built on that concept. A little bit more punk rock, I guess. It's a little bit more punk rock, but it makes a lot of sense. It was worthy of actually doing some work on it if you can bring a unique lens and an approach to it. It was either one of those companies actually got a major, like a major outcome, like a really successful outcome of something from, I think they got from Boehringer Ingelheim, I think.

Jon - 00:11:26: Yeah.

Kate  - 00:11:27: And so one person's like trash could be another person's goal.

 Jon - 00:11:32: Absolutely. Like if you're, cause maybe they be- Biochemist or the chemistry person, like if you look at it and you're like, well, maybe if I just modify it this way and they didn't think of that and I can use it for something else or it'll work for this thing. So yeah, I think that's great. Saves a lot of time.

Kate  - 00:11:49: Yeah. Saves a ton of time and time is money. And as you're thinking about any of these, there's obviously options and pathways and approaches to kind of go about this. But for startups that are now kicking off this journey, are there any other kind of like common pitfalls that like, obviously one, like be careful what you say in the public domain. Are there any like other common pitfalls that you would advise startups to avoid? And maybe some just like key considerations.

 Jon - 00:12:21: Yeah, I mean, sometimes it's finding the right people. So, you know, I know if you're looking for investors, they'll often like put someone from their board or somebody leading the company. And I think it's hard. It's hard as a scientist from what I've seen from some of my clients to let it go. But I think sometimes the best thing can be bringing in an outside kind of more objective person, right? Sometimes you're, as a scientist, maybe it's something you've worked on for years and now you're finally excited to spin it out and it's your own and we're going to build this great company. But I think sometimes you're too close to it that you need to either take a step back or bring in somebody who is objective. And because you think it's great, but you need ways to refine your message and maybe... If you keep saying the same message and no one is biting, it's time to change it up a little bit. And so I think that. You don't want to linger too long. Without doing that. And I think sometimes that's where startups don't get their momentum is because they linger too long focusing on what they want it to be instead of what maybe... The market is dictating. 

Kate  - 00:13:37: Absolutely. I think that's incredibly prescient advice. And I myself, I fall victim to being wedded to my ideas sometimes too long. And I could have saved myself a ton of time here. You're right. That outside stimulus, it's kind of like you said, it's like it is your baby. Especially as a scientist, this is my baby. I want to go the distance, but it always helps to have that fresh pair of eyes to just be like... Take a step back for like a moment and and it's painful and there's not to say that this is like It's not fun. It's like-

 Jon - 00:14:13: Yeah, I think it's scary. I think people, you know, I've talked to some clients who then start out on their own. I think it scares them to like, let someone else take it. You're like, they're not going to do it the right way. I know how I want it to be done and some of this kind of stuff. So I think it's also it's. It's like anything. It's scary. It's mine. It's scary. I want to own it. But sometimes then when you look back on it two years later, you're like, why was I so worried? You're like, why did I make such a big deal about it? We all do it. You're like, why was I so worried about that? It all kind of has its way of working out. So I think the objectiveness, it works for us too. Sometimes we'll be working on something. It's another great thing about the company. And you're like, I just can't figure it out. And you just keep beating your head against the computer. I'm trying to get like, why is the examiner not seeing my way? And then you talk to someone about it. Have you tried this? You're like, oh. No, I haven't tried that. You know, it's like, it's as simple as walking away, asking somebody a question, and then maybe you get a new answer.

Kate  - 00:15:16: Yeah, and it helps if that person is, like, not necessarily, like, in the weeds with you.

 Jon - 00:15:21: Right.

Kate  - 00:15:22: Because you're just, like, seeing the same thing. And I think about that from, like. Just like organizational like culture, like as well. And like, I think that's why it's so important to, at least I believe that. You know, diversity and thought perspective and just like walks of life. That's where you get that magic where they're like, you know, maybe it's like someone who's on the software side, just like. Why are you doing it this way? Right?

 Jon - 00:15:46: Right. Yeah, they're like, oh, when we get that problem, we just do this or we can do this. You're like, oh, and you know, yeah, it's someone perspective. You're like, oh, the. Our technology would never go forward. It's like, have you tried it? Has anyone tried it? You never know until you try. And so we do a lot of that.

Kate  - 00:16:02: And that's not to like poo poo on like sector experts and just like deep expertise either. Right. Because I think there's, there's like incredible value for someone who can just like. Go super, super, super deep and into the weeds of something, but it's kind of like having a balance of the two of like insider perspective, outsider perspective, whether it's, whether it's in, you know, you're thinking about intellectual property, but also just like company building. And I'm going to imagine the firm building to having that perspective, really, I think it's like a true edge. But you know, sometimes there is a time and place where we're just like, we got to bring in the Navy SEAL of this, like. And, you know, they just come in and just, like, are able to get it done. But, yeah, it's, like, I think about that, especially as for Excedr, which is, you know, small but mighty team. And we're continuing to grow, just, like, growing with intention and just, like, not being necessarily too beholden or just, like, looking for a specific type of resume. Like, being open to the idea that people can contribute to the conversation and, like. Had unique perspectives coming from different walks of life. And like on our team, you know, I mentioned like the service industry, food and hospitality, a marketing team has a lot of that experience and they bring like a very interesting perspective. So, you know, when it comes to firm or organization and hiring, I think it's really important. And can you talk about just like what were like some big challenges and trials for you in your career, like as partner of the firm? Are there any like things that really stand out to you? Going from the bench to partner?

 Jon - 00:17:40: Yeah, I mean, it's been a long time. Sometimes you push back the other memories. You're like, I'm just not going to remember that. No, but just coming in the first time you're reading a patent and you're used to reading scientific papers, right? And patents are kind of scientific, but they're so, like you said, the language in them can be repetitive and it's very legalese. And so just kind of slogging through that and thinking, I will never get this. This doesn't make any sense to me. And then... You know, now being in the position I'm in and we have trainees coming in and you're like, you tell them, you're like, I know it doesn't make sense, but just kind of read it. Like, I remember when I started. So it's kind of a learning curve, but it's a fun learning curve. It was very much a trial by fire. Type of thing. Like all of our dates are on a docket. And I don't know if you ever watched Seinfeld, but like, you know, new one is like, it's like the mail, Jerry, it never stops. So like your docket never stops. There's always something to do. And I remember one time I was probably a couple of years and it was a bigger client and I saw this date. I was like, oh, that's not important. And then the day before it's like, do you have this? And it was like, what's called the national phase deadline, which is entering all of the different countries. Like, and I almost missed this deadline. Which would have been malpractice. We probably could have been sued. And I was like, oh my gosh, that my heart was just like pounding. I was like, I can't believe plus in certain countries, it's already the next day. And so you're trying to scramble and like, get hold of someone in China to do this. And, you know, I remember being kind of yelled at by the client and then the partner was like, why didn't you do this earlier? I was like, I didn't know it wasn't important. And so just, you know, getting through those kinds of things that you've never, you know, going through grad school, there's, there's nothing like that, right? You're not disappointing your PI or letting a whole company down. And so, you know, getting through the first time that you kind of have to do that and like apologize. And then you're like, I'm so sorry. And you're like, luckily nothing bad happened. But, things like that. You're like, there's rarely ever a patent emergency. You don't think of it as a patent emergency, but every once in a while they come up.

Kate  - 00:20:03: And you live to tell the tale.

 Jon - 00:20:05: And you live to tell the tale.

Kate  - 00:20:06: And you're a partner now. And so, you know, I know the journey through a firm, when you become a partner, that's like a, you know, a monumental moment. Can you talk about how just like, what is the life in the life of being a partner? 

 Jon - 00:20:20: Yeah. I mean, it's great. It's a little bit more responsibility on some things than you wanted. It's kind of like everything. I've talked to other people like, congratulations, you're a management. You don't get to do your regular job anymore. You have to put out fires.

Kate  - 00:20:35: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 Jon - 00:20:36: But I think it's great because, you know, I've worked with some clients, the same client, the same person at the client for 15 years or something like that. And now that you're a partner and you've both been at these places a long time, it's just like you have the conversations and you're like, you know, what's the business? What's the strategy? And like, where are we going? And so you get more ingrained. Into what the business purpose and the commercial purpose of your clients are and like what they're trying to do, which helps you become a much better lawyer for them, right? If I don't know what your objective is, I don't know how to help you achieve it. And so I think when you're a partner, you get to be privy to more of those types of conversations. And it's so helpful. And that's how I think I've gotten the perspective. Like I know what investors are looking for because I've talked to the client or I've had to be on due diligence calls when they're like, let's talk about how bad your patent portfolio is. It's a very good portfolio. But they're always trying to break it down, right? When investors are looking at it, they're like, well, this isn't as good as you say it is. They're always being the naysayers. And so I think... You know, at this stage, you're hopefully confident enough to be like, no, this is what we're doing. This is a good strategy. You know, it's going to be fine. And so it's been... It's been great to be on that end now.

Kate  - 00:22:02: Absolutely. It sounds like you get a very holistic view, which is a very unique vantage point.

 Jon - 00:22:08: Yeah, it is. And it's because I work with all sizes of clients, I also get to see the perspective from the big client and from the small client or university. What they're trying to do and achieve and how, again, sometimes you're like, can I take what I know from these midsize or these big clients? Is any of it useful to the small guys? Like I can tell you what the big guys do, but you might not have money for that yet. But like, This is what you can strive for and maybe do a little bit of it now. Or. You know, this is what I see my other clients doing. And so once you... Are able to get integrated into the client. It's really helpful.

Kate  - 00:22:48: I think it's like an incredibly unique and valuable perspective and position that you're in. And I always think about my friends who went in-house, who were formerly at firms. But you kind of lose that because now if you're in-house, you're doing very specific work for that specific company. But when you're at a firm, you're exactly what you're talking about. Working with the big folks, small, everything in between, academic. And that is just like every one of those experiences and client interactions is like accretive. It just like adds, you can chime in and be like, yeah, exactly what he says. Like, this is what the big folks are doing. I don't know if it's your budget, but this is their strategy. Maybe you can take something from that where you can't afford it. 

 Jon - 00:23:32: Right. Or just plan for the future, right? This is how maybe in a few years, this is where you can go. But yeah.

Kate  - 00:23:40: Very cool. And now, you know... Looking forward one, two years out, what's in store for you and what's in store for Marshall Gerstein?

 Jon - 00:23:48: You know, for me, it's probably more of the same. Like I want to stay and I'm working and integrating with my clients. The firm is... Growing. Luckily, we have, a lot of work to be done and we have some new fresh blood coming in at the patent agent level or the associate level. And kind of like what you were talking about too, we do try to get diverse people with diverse backgrounds. It's not easy per se. Like in a strictly IP world, it can be difficult because, I mean, STEM, it's hard to get people to go into law sometimes. And then STEM lawyers, it's another, you know, limiting factor. But we know a lot of our clients, you know, want to see a diverse candidate list of who might be handling their work. And so we... We also feel that, you know, getting in diverse candidates and schools of thought is helpful. And so we're always looking for good candidates and just kind of growing our client base. You know, we, I think that's a good thing about, we're in Chicago, but. You know, everything is so global. And with Zoom, it changed so much about client interactions and these kinds of things. A lot of our clients are based on the coasts, but we still want to, you know... Get those touch points back. It's been a long time coming. I think getting, just getting people back in the office and trying to figure out how to go see our clients and get that relationship reestablished to some extent. So I think we're looking forward to, if there are any clients listening, when I say, can I come visit? 

Kate  - 00:25:18: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

 Jon - 00:25:19: Can I come visit? 

Kate  - 00:25:20: It's not on Zoom. That doesn't count. Like I actually will show up. And yeah, I think, you know, the one thing that like coming out of the pandemic, I quickly realized like there's no replacement for human interaction.

 Jon - 00:25:33: Yeah. 

Kate  - 00:25:33: As much as like Zoom calls are lovely and it kind of enables a lot of a lot of things, but there's nothing that replaces that. And I love to hear that you guys are, you know, prioritizing kind of like diverse talent and talent pool as like a strength rather than just like, oh, I just got to do this because I think it's critically important. That's like super exciting. And I guess just like a quick question. Do you guys based in Chicago? And you mentioned having clients on the coast. Do you guys have offices over there too? Or how do you handle kind of like these coast to coast work?

Jon - 00:26:03: No offices on the coast. We do have another smaller office in Raleigh. We have a couple people that work out of there. The beauty is for Boston or Maryland, DC, some of those hubs on the East Coast, it's a two-hour flight from Chicago. So you could go in day out. Yeah, it's easy enough to do it in and out if needed, go to a meeting. A lot of times if we have clients on the West Coast, we'll try to stack some of the visits and say, all right, I'm going to be here these three days and get some quality client visits in. But we're willing to travel. I think as people are starting to come back, it's not too bad. And we... We do like CLEs or other things. So we try to incentivize people. It's like, come get your CLEs so you don't have to.

Kate  - 00:26:48: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can get two birds with one stone.

Jon - 00:26:51: Yes, exactly. Absolutely. So it's like training. We do a lot of training. I've done some training for clients on trade secrets and confidentiality. So we'll do various programs to help integrate it into the client and stuff. But like you're saying, nothing replaces that personal interaction.

Kate  - 00:27:10: Yeah, absolutely. And first off, I want to thank you, Kate, for your time. You've been very generous. And in traditional closing fashion for the podcast, there's two closing questions. First is, would you like to give any shout outs to anyone who supported you along the way?

 Jon - 00:27:25: I was like, that's a hard question. I'd turn into some like bad Academy Awards speech. I was like, I'd like to thank somebody out. I was like, I was like, oh, they know who they are. But no, there were a lot of partners, early on that just the people that took the time early on are the people you should thank, you know, and like even. Graduate school like Steve Miller and just all the training there, but just the partners here. And then my friends who listen to you complain and say, I can't get past this examiner and give you advice. So I was like, I could give so many shout outs. It would take another 20 minutes.

Kate  - 00:28:00: Yeah, no worries. I mean, I always have to thank my wife. I'm just like, God, you're hitting me. No one else at the company knows, but she's just like, all right, Jon, enough. But all right, get a couple more. Okay. Okay. Let's watch TV now.

 Jon - 00:28:16: That's a standard, of course, my husband, who's also in the science world, but not a lawyer. So it works out.

Kate  - 00:28:22: Yeah, absolutely. And then the second closing question, if you can give any advice to your 21 year-old self, what would it be?

 Jon - 00:28:29: I'd like to think that I was pretty flexible and open. You know, I wasn't like, this is how my life is going to be. But, you know, I never, ever thought, oh, lawyer is on the list of things. Lawyer is on the number one thing that I'm going to be when I grow up. And so I think just tell yourself, be open to new possibilities and don't be scared to take that leap of faith. Things will work out. Whatever it is, they have a way of working out, I think, for the best. And so you just have to be able to see the opportunity and to seize it and take it for what it is. 

Kate  - 00:29:07: I honestly don't know if there's a better way to round things out. And that's advice that I would take myself to. I think just like, sometimes you just need to like hear that it's going to like, it's going to be all right. Because there are, there's like, sometimes it's like dark times where you have that existential dread. You're just like, for me, at least at the bench, it was like, what am I going to do with this? What am I going to do with all this? But it ends up, you know, every experience is kind of, is additive to that.

Jon - 00:29:36: And it's like, you know, try not to get, let you get it down. Like it's, you know, it's easier to say it's kind of a trite thing, but yeah, in law school, like the first semester was like, oh, why am I doing this? So painful, but like, just kind of get through it, take it for what it is, and. 

Kate  - 00:29:53: Yeah, absolutely. Well, Kate, thank you so much. I could go hours and hours and hours with you. And maybe when you are doing your travel, maybe when we have JPM coming up, if you're at JPM, I'd love, I'd love to connect with you while you're in town. If not, maybe I'll see you in Chicago or Boston?

Jon - 00:30:12: Yeah, let me know. No, this has been excellent. Thank you so much for having me. It's fun.

Kate  - 00:30:16: Thank you. I've had a lot of fun and I'll be talking to you again soon.

 Jon - 00:30:19: Thanks, Jon. 

Kate  - 00:30:20: Thanks, Kate.

Outro - 00:30:22: That's all for this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast. We hope you enjoyed our four-part series with Kate Neville. Be sure to tune in for our next series with Cyriac Roeding, founder, investor, and CEO of Earli. Earli is on a mission to transform cancer into a benign experience. Using innovative gene therapy approaches, Earli's technology forces cancer cells to produce a synthetic, non-human biomarker. Overcoming the limitations of relying on naturally occurring biomarkers that cancer may or may not provide. Cyriac is a serial entrepreneur who loves challenging missions that move the world forward. As a founder and investor, he has created and supported ventures at the intersection of the physical and digital worlds, including investing in leading startups like OpenAI and serving as CEO of Shopkick, which was acquired for $250 million by SK Group, a Fortune 100 from South Korea. His current focus, Earli, has raised nearly $60 million from top investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, Perceptive Advisors, Casdin Capital, Sands Capital, Marc Benioff, Menlo Ventures, and Zenfund. Cyriac's journey from launching his first startup at 15 to being named a World Economic Forum tech pioneer is nothing short of remarkable, and his insights into founding and building successful startups makes for an invaluable conversation that founders won'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.