Neela Patel | Part 2: The Value of Personal Relationships in the Lab

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 Neela Patel about the influence her father, a physicist at Bell Labs, had on her leadership style and curiosity for science. We also heard about her dual major in the humanities and biology at college, how an internship at Genentech sparked her passion for the life sciences, the challenges and triumphs of her graduate school experience at UCLA, and her decision to move from academia to industry. If you missed it, be sure to go back and listen to part one. In part two, we chat with Neela about her experiences at Roche, where she learned the ins and outs of drug discovery and development. We also dive into how she led a cross-functional team across multiple countries, successfully managing stakeholders in both industry and academia, and discuss her transition from Roche to SUGEN, where she took on the challenge of exploring new therapeutic areas and helped establish a pipeline in record time.

Jon - 00:01:25: Do you remember what the other offer was and why you ended up choosing Roche instead?

Neela - 00:01:30: Yeah, I do. The other offer was with a company where I wouldn't have had a group, so I wasn't as interested. And it's true that they were, it was actually with Sequana, a company that's long since gone by the wayside. What I knew that Roche had was a track record. Like this company had been around already for like 150 years. This is a company that knows how to make drugs, right? And at that point in time, it was really knows how to make small molecule drugs because that's what there was. There was small molecule drugs. And so I thought, you know what, this is going to be a great chance for me to learn this piece of it. Whether I stay there or don't, at least I will learn that piece of it. It was an amazing opportunity to learn about target ID and validation. How do you set up assays? What is high-throughput screening? Why does library size and diversity matter? What is an SAR? Learning to talk to the chemist. What is PK? Why does it matter? So, it was a really great experience for me. That learning and the other thing that was really wonderful is that the head of the department was osteoporosis and nominally also metabolism, but really the focus was osteoporosis. And the head of the department, when the project that I was working on reached a dead end, our structure activity relationship was just so tight and we just couldn't make enough changes to optimize the potency and the other properties of the molecule. And somehow he saw something in me that I maybe didn't see. And he's like, you know, what do you think about leading this collaboration with an academic lab? They're in Antwerp. And he knew that my background was molecular biology. He's like, basically you guys need to figure out this, what this gene is that's driving increased bone formation throughout the lifetime. And I was like, okay. Sounds good.

Jon - 00:03:32: Yeah.

Neela - 00:03:33: Yeah. So it was, my lab was doing some of the basic molecular biology. There was a lab out of Roche Basel that was doing what was then high throughput sequencing. Not casting aspersions on them, but you know, it was better than my grad school days, but it was still not what we have today.

Jon - 00:03:51: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Neela - 00:03:52: And then the lab in Antwerp, that was an academic lab. And basically what they had was, the guy was, you know, a genetics person. And so he had found a family with a family tree showing that. You know, there was a gene responsible for increased bone formation throughout the lifetime. Now, you and I do not have. We continue to maintain bone, but you don't see our bone, our cortisol bones getting thicker and thicker, as was the case with this family. So it was really a great experience to learn how to align interests, how to bring people together, how to set goals, right? Goals that would meet everybody's needs. Because here's an academic lab. He doesn't care if we don't get a drug. I mean, yes, he wanted it, but... He needed the publications, right?

Jon - 00:04:44: Yeah.

Neela - 00:04:46: And he had grad students and postdocs who needed those publications. Interestingly, the postdocs wanted to understand what it was like in industry. So one of the things that I could offer was a willingness, hey, sure, have them call me. We can set up a series of conversations that I can help you in a different way, right? And so we set some goals and, you know, the goals maybe had a little bit of room for those publications to explore some byways that were maybe not central, but were not too far off base. But I have to say there were times that I had to be like, hey, you know, we kind of need to focus on this.

Jon - 00:05:28: Reel it in. Reel it in. Yeah.

Neela - 00:05:31: Right. So it was good fun. I enjoyed going over to Europe and getting together with everybody. And we did ultimately find the gene. It was, you know, it was great. Unfortunately, in those days, it turned out not to be an easily druggable target. Nowadays, you could do it. But in those days, not so much. But it was still a fantastic experience.

Jon - 00:05:57: Very interesting. So many directions I want to go with this. The first one is you mentioned kind of like learning a lot, like pretty quickly. Was it your manager that was just like, can I show you the ropes? How did you, as a sponge, soak up all these kind of like skill sets in such a kind of condensed period of time?

Neela - 00:06:18: The technical knowledge, I would ask people who were in those areas, hey, could we have lunch together? And I literally just picked their brain. How do you run those assays for pharmacokinetics? How does a drug get metabolized? What do you mean first pass? How do you fix these problems? So I just sit down and ask people. And of course, I would say, hey, if there's anything that I can help you with, and they kind of laugh. But people, it's interesting. You're not asking them to give you a whole course. You're asking them for 45 minutes of their time. And if you're nice about it, and you're... You express your gratitude and they see that you're genuinely interested in what they do. Most people will give you the time of day. I think even now that's true.

Jon - 00:07:09: Yeah, absolutely. It just reminds me of my conversation with a friend, Jake Glanville, when he was at Rinat-Pfizer a long time ago and how he met his co-founder, Sawsan, was exactly that experience. He came in and was just like banging on doors like, hi. Hey, and Pfizer, Rinat-Pfizer had, you know, obviously kind of what you're describing, kind of like these like experts in different fields.

Neela - 00:07:36: Yeah.

Jon - 00:07:37: And you're like, you're in the, again, you're kind of like in the presence of greatness. Obviously be gracious about it. Don't, you know, and just like exactly what you said. And just like, if you can add value, add value, but just like, don't be shy. People don't bite most of the time and you're going to learn a lot. 

Neela - 00:07:52: It, do a few people say, oh, I'm too busy. Sure, but I mean...

Jon - 00:07:57: 45 minutes. Yeah, it's like 45 minutes. It's not the end of the world.

Neela - 00:08:00: Right. And you know, those days, companies ran at a different pace. Everyone had lunch. They had lunch not in front of their desks, not in front of their computers. They went up to the company cafeteria, subsidized good food, and you'd mix it up. Like you'd just sit down with someone and be like, hey, this is what I do. What do you do?

Jon - 00:08:23: That's like something that's, I think, missing. Like, it's like, it feels productive to just like eat in solitude at your desk. But those moments of where you can actually like cross paths with someone who you wouldn't otherwise cross paths with, I think is something that is hard in this day and age to kind of capture that magic, that like lightning in a bottle. I'm optimistic that like you can, we can still capture this lightning in

Neela - 00:08:49: the bottle. I am too. 

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Jon - 00:08:49: You know, that is not just a relic of the past, but it's like, I guess the saying is like, there is no replacement for human interaction.

Neela - 00:08:58: Yeah, and humans still long for connection. It's just you have to create the pathways to foster those interactions. 

Jon - 00:09:06: Absolutely. And I guess just a real quick question. How frequently were you flying to Basel and Antwerp?

Neela - 00:09:13 We did quarterly meetings and we, I think we did three in Europe, a year in one in the US because two thirds of the people were in Europe. So I couldn't really, you know, and anyway, I was, in those days, I wasn't unhappy to do that.

Jon - 00:09:27: Yeah, there's a time and place for sure. And so this, you know, this team, was this like your first proper kind of like team management role? And I'm going to guess probably a hard one at that, that you're this multi-site, like you're balancing stakeholders and from a lot like industry, academia, different countries. Was this the kind of the first major management opportunity you had?

Neela - 00:09:54: It was. That's exactly right. Because I had a couple of people reporting to me, but that's different. That, you know, the way you're setting your goals and what you're trying to achieve is very different. So it was, I really enjoyed it. I mean, I'm sure I made mistakes, but on the whole, you know, I learned to, first of all, assume good intent. I know that's a very cliche thing to say, but not one of the people who I was working with. Didn't want. To find this gene. Like we all wanted to, right? And so, yeah, were there some twists and turns along the way? Absolutely. They were about my same age, which also made it a little easier because we were at a similar stage in life.

Jon - 00:10:42: Yeah, totally. And as you're reflecting on that experience, what would you say? Was the artist aspect of managing? And then what would you say on the flip was the most fulfilling aspect of managing?

Neela - 00:10:58: The hardest was learning to tell somebody who was more or less my peer. I mean, yeah, I was assigned as a team leader, but really they're my peer.

Jon - 00:11:08: Yeah.

Neela - 00:11:08: But listen, you know, the way we set up our collaboration was these are the things that we can pay for and we can't actually. Pay for this whole other side project that's of interest to you? And saying no to that, it was like, oh my God, is that going to ruin the relationship, right? It was finding a way to say it that was honest, but diplomatic and still moved us in the direction we needed to go. 

Jon - 00:11:36: Absolutely. And I, by the way, I struggled and I still, you know, from time to time, it's not necessarily easy having to say no and not, like everyone wants to be able to bring good news, but it's not always good news. And I think it's like, you know, it's just like, it's just how it is. And I think you're exactly right that the, it is important. Like communication as a skill is like critically important. Even though science can feel like a very... You know, cerebral kind of like objective kind of pursuit. But I think, you know, if you can't effectively communicate, sometimes it ultimately becomes a moot point. You know, no one wants to listen if you can't, you can't like engage in a, like you said, diplomatic fashion.

Neela - 00:12:24: That's right. And I see that I do a fair bit of advisory work with startup have done and still, and I'm now serving on the board for a company. Sometimes it's just helping companies to tell their story, right? It's like, oh, you've got this great thing, but I don't hear it until slide 20. That's going to be a problem.

Jon - 00:12:44: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, that should be like slide one or two, like bring it all the way to the front. But learning that better late than never, right? It's kind of like-

Neela - 00:12:54: Absolutely.

Jon - 00:12:54: As long as it's not permanently slide 20.

Neela - 00:12:56: No, that's right. That's right. No, that's exactly right. So communication in all its forms, the diplomacy, the interpersonal piece of it, the external communication, it is. It's critical. And I think, I mean, in our scientific training, the only communication skill we're formally taught is writing papers.

Jon - 00:13:16: Yeah.

Neela - 00:13:17: Right, which is completely different. 

Jon - 00:13:20: So different. It's so different. My wife worked at PLOS for a long time. So like very familiar with the kind of trials and tribulations of like getting papers published. And she's like, this is not how humans normally talk to each other. No. It's not. It really isn't. And it's really interesting to you talk about, you're talking about communication styles too. Like, you know, you're talking to scientists, you're talking to folks who are in industry. It's kind of like there's different communication styles for the audience. Whoever's on the other side.

Neela - 00:13:53: That's right.

Jon - 00:13:53: At least for me, if you fail to kind of cater to that, you sometimes can land and not stick the landing, at least in my observation.

Neela - 00:14:02: Yeah, that's right.

Jon - 00:14:03: Okay, last question about this. What was the most fun and fulfilling aspect of this management role and experience for you?

Neela - 00:14:11: Getting to know the other people. It was really enjoyable. And my counterpart at Roche Basel, she and I became friends. And, you know, when I'd get over there, she'd come here, we'd visit. And that was just, you know, it's one of the things that is a side bonus to science as it is international. And even in graduate school, you know, there were postdocs from all over.

Jon - 00:14:34: Yeah.

Neela - 00:14:35: The world who were at UCLA and same at DNAX. And some of the scientists had been born and raised in Italy or the Netherlands, or my boss was from the Netherlands. So I really liked that piece of it. I found it exciting and enriching.

Jon - 00:14:52: Yeah, absolutely. Like science knows no boundaries. And so it's like really cool where it can take you.

Neela - 00:14:57: Yeah.

Jon - 00:14:58: And there's also conferences everywhere. So you can kind of like. Piggyback on that and see a new place and you're like, sweet, like.

Neela - 00:15:06: Yeah.

Jon - 00:15:06: You know, at least for like back then, when I was doing more conferences, like I can't afford this, but the company can. Like so send me, like I'll raise my hand, like send me, um, which is amazing. So, now you know, you're wrapping up your time at Roche, when did you know it was time to leave, and did you know what the next opportunity was in store for you you?

Neela - 00:15:25: Yeah, I ended up going to Sujin and I got there through a friend of mine, the husband of a friend that I had known from DNAX was working at SUGEN. And he said, oh, this is really great. Like, you know, you talk to your friends about their workplace. And I was like, wow, that sounds like a great place. And so he got my resume onto the desk of the hiring manager. I interviewed and then they were like, we don't want you for that job. We don't even have the job, but we'll just write you this thing. And that's what we want you for. And I was like. Okay, great.

Jon - 00:15:58: Yeah, that sounds good to me.

Neela - 00:16:00: Like, I'll take it. It was good to me. So the focus there was kinases. And this was in the days when kind of the dogma was, if you drug the ATP binding site, ATP binding site's always going to be the same for every kinase, so you can't possibly have a selective kinase inhibitor. And the company was just like, that's not true.

Jon - 00:16:21: Yeah. You know? Uh, no.

Neela - 00:16:24: Right. So it was a small company with the advantages of a large company because Prior to my joining, Pharmacia had purchased SUGEN. And they kept it. This was in the days when big companies had the confidence and the ability and willingness to keep acquisitions at an arm's length and be like, you know what? You do what you do best. You got to deliver an IND to me every, you know, this often, this company, new targets. Like you have metrics, but as long as you're meeting them, you do you, right? And so I was in a setting where we could do really interesting work, but we also had people who thought about commercial, had people who thought about pivotal trials and so on. Now, we were never going to be the company that took something beyond proof of concept because it just doesn't, it's a whole different specialty. It doesn't make sense to blend that in. When I started there, I was heading up the cell biology group, which was devoted to the oncology programs. The rest of the company, all 326 other people were oncology. They hired me to try to figure out. Other therapy areas these inhibitors could be used in. Now, as you can imagine, that's like a kind of big world, like all areas. So I kind of went at it the other way. Oh, we have an FGFR inhibitor. Let me read the literature, see what other areas this could be used in. Can we set up a collaboration with an academic lab to kind of suss it out? Right. So I started kind of doing that work. And about six months in. Pharmacia was a legacy company, right, of... Two companies and they were harmonizing what they were doing, what was done in Stockholm, what was done here. And they were like, oh, this program to do VEGF inhibitors for ophthalmology, we don't want to do it anymore. Sujin, do you guys, this inhibitor came from you guys. Do you want it? Do you want to do it? And my boss called me into his office. He's like, here, you can be the team leader for this. And I was like, okay, Tony, you understand, all I know is that eyeballs go here on the head. That's all I know. It's okay. You'll learn. You'll learn other things. You'll learn this. 

Jon - 00:18:48: That's amazing. You got it. Is this kind of... Don't worry about it. You'll figure it out.

Neela - 00:18:55: So I read, I read a lot, a lot, right? And we were at basically close to clinical candidate selection. And the next step was to do all that pre-clin dev work. And I was familiar with some of it, but a lot of it I didn't know anything about. The good thing for me, the most fortunate thing was that Pharmacia's culture was one that emphasized and rewarded teamwork. So if I went to somebody, if I got assigned a team, here's your tax person, here's your this, here's your that. My chemistry was done out of Kalamazoo, Michigan. My animal models were in St. Louis. My commercialization was in New Jersey. My toxicology was in Nerviano, Italy. But each of those people, if they did right for this project, they got rewarded financially. So the incentives were completely aligned for people to be good team members. So actually, the people I had the most trouble with were in-house at SUGEN, who they maybe weren't as rewarded for that, right?

Jon - 00:20:07: Yeah.

Neela - 00:20:08: So. The same thing that I had done at Roche. I went to people's offices and I said, I see you are the tox expert. Can you explain to me how you design a dose range finding experiment, how you use the results and what is our GLP tox study going to, you know, and so I learned, I learned, I spent a lot of time in the airport. I did not love that part of it, but I realized that. I just had to go and explain to people why this project was interesting, why it could help people. Because those other people who were working on it, they didn't know anything about ophthalmology either. And they were like, what? You know? But when you explain, oh, this many people are impacted by macular degeneration, and you show them a slide that shows this is what our normal vision is. Someone with macular degeneration, they have a big fuzzy ring where their central vision would be so they can't read. They can see outside of it, but not there. And they're like, oh, my God. My grandmother had that. That's why she couldn't read anymore.

Jon - 00:21:17: Yeah, yeah. 

Neela - 00:21:18: So there was a sales element. I think there always is. Even at Roche, when I had my project, and you wanted to be moved up in someone's queue so that your project could be run in HTS. You went and you talked to them and you tried to sell why this was such an exciting program, right?

Jon - 00:21:34: Absolutely. Two things. I think. First, because it's kind of exactly kind of fresh in my mind right now is that. Again, kind of like coming from a scientific background, sales is all like, just like, like effective communication outside of like writing. Sales is not really like taught either, or it's almost like frowned upon.

Neela - 00:21:57: Yeah.

Jon - 00:21:58: Get these sales people away from me. Like, you know, and there's a, there's like a class way to do sales. And I think. I'd like to dispel the myth that all sales is distasteful and, you know, yucky, because I think there's a way that you can make it not that. 

Neela - 00:22:15: Sales is distasteful if you don't believe in the thing that you're selling or the thing you're selling has obvious issues and you're scrambling to cover them up and pretend like they don't exist. That makes sales really icky. But when you feel passionate about it and you believe that you have a thing, then it's a matter of listening to what the other side needs. Do I have something that actually helps? Okay, let's talk about it, right?

Jon - 00:22:43: And I think it's like something I've learned over time is that it's a lot of just like. Good active listening and asking great questions.

Neela - 00:22:52: Yeah.

Jon - 00:22:53: Kind of, that's like kind of a lot of it. I used to, when I first tried my hand at sales, I would just like, all right, here's my script. Listen to my script. Everyone's like, I'm one, falling asleep. Two, this is horrible. This is not how you should be done. Quickly learn that you should do more listening and more questioning.

Neela - 00:23:15: Get the other party talking as fast as possible. 

Jon - 00:23:18: Yeah, absolutely. And just something you mentioned that was like interesting, and I'd love to pick your brain on it. You mentioned that larger companies back in the day were okay to keep acquisitions at arm's length. Why is it that that is not the case now?

Neela - 00:23:34: Honestly don't know. I think it has to do, you know, you've seen this shift in the way that our public markets run, that now companies are judged. Daily, quarterly, you missed your earnings by a penny. I'm punishing you by like a 10% drop in your stock price. And I... I think I have to be sympathetic to executives in very large companies that are trying to like mind the shop as best they can and feel like, oh, that's a level of control that I won't have. But if we've seen the Roche Genentech story over time, you see that like, oh, you're the goose laying the

Jon - 00:24:22: golden egg.

Neela - 00:24:23: I don't want to be too, but how much can I have existed for you all? Right?

Jon - 00:24:28: Yeah.

Neela - 00:24:28: It's, it's. I don't mean to sound negative about it because I think it's a very real dilemma.

Jon - 00:24:34: Yeah.

Neela - 00:24:35: To figure out how to do it, how to incentivize. Because whatever you incentivize is what people work towards. And it's not even that people are bad. It's human nature. This is your goal. Okay, let me work towards it, right?

Jon - 00:24:48: Yep.

Neela - 00:24:49: So I think that acquired sites could be run independently. I just think that it takes a lot of work, to align the incentives properly. And depending on what you're doing, if you've acquired something that's totally separate, like, oh, you guys do surgical instrumentation for ophthalmology surgeries, and we have no one who does that, then it's a total standalone, free, you know, it's its own P&L, easy, right? If it's, oh, we're fitting you into our oncology portfolio. The problem then becomes that you feel appropriately that every project that's outside the acquired company needs to meet the same bar, like same quality bars, and needs to be compared to your portfolio programs. If I'm going to resource it, if I'm going to spend the money to do scale up, GLP talks, get into clinical trials, what if that program is not as good as my program that's running in Rahway, New Jersey?

Jon - 00:25:57: The reason why I ask is I have no idea, like, how if there is a kind of solution to it. And the one thing that I've asked myself about it is larger companies like looking at a startup and they're contemplating it. They like the technology and the team so much that they want to put forth an acquisition offer. If they're good at what they do and they're generating good technology, like let them cook. Look, like too many coats in the kitchen might kind of, you know, ruin the magic, honestly. And I'm like, if they're good at what they do. And again, I'm not I'm not large company doing this day in, day out. There's probably considerations that I haven't thought about. But this is like, hey, like there's a magic to this company that you're looking to acquire. Probably to keep that magic. You don't want to like smother it.

Neela - 00:26:49: Yeah, that's right. And well, I think we'll come back to this when we talk about good and bonum. Most large pharmas, they're looking for assets. They're looking for something that has the potential to be a drug, right? A drug that they sell. And I get that. And at the time that they do an acquisition of a company that has a technology that spun off or the technology that led to that asset. The intrinsic value of the technology to the big pharma is very little. They're like, I just want the product. I want this other stuff. Right. So I think that there's an inherent tension there. And we do need to be, we tried to figure out a solution that was appropriate for good, for our investors, for Roche, for everybody, where we would preserve the value of the platform by doing a spin out and let Roche acquire the asset that they wanted to. And everybody was happy at the end. It was a good model. I think the only time it really works is, and Roche probably wasn't, I mean, I can't speak for them, but I can just say that hypothetically, they would be unlikely to have paid a lot more for having taken the whole company. Because they were like, what? I don't know how to value that thing.

Jon - 00:28:10: Yeah. And they're like, just that specific thing there that like we're most interested in that. All this other stuff. It's like. Nice to have, you know, and I think sometimes too, it's interesting there during these acquisition kind of like periods when you're evaluating it too, like sometimes they'll just like discount everything else.

Neela - 00:28:31: Like, you're like,

Jon - 00:28:32: it's almost like, it's almost like detracting value by having other elements of the deal, which I've always thought I'm like, it is kind of puzzling. I'm just like, I realized, you know, it's all about like specific and focus and Wall Street loves that. But I'm like, there's like a bunch of good, like, yeah, it's not exactly that thing that you're looking to acquire, but there's a lot of good there.

Neela - 00:28:56: Who should be funding that? That is kind of a foundational question. Who should fund it and who will benefit in that circumstance? Because if the big pharma company continues to put money into the little company and they're like, okay, so my deliverables are drugs. Those are coming at an awfully slow rate. It's really not doing it for me. Yep. If your funders are either private equity or the public markets, and say you work with a different pharma company, not the one that could have acquired you, but now you can work with five different pharmas and they can each benefit from your technology. Now there's a path for your investors to get some return, right? So I just think it's the who's going to make money from it and how.

Jon - 00:29:46:Yep. Yep. And I think that's exactly, you've hit the nail on the head. And it's kind of like aligning incentives every step of the way. And I think just as an observer from the outside, it's where you get into trouble is like when you start getting that deal momentum and you're just like eye on the prize, you get caught up, you get swept up and you start like, ah, that's just a little tiny misalignment of incentive. That's actually should be what is raising the red flag. It's like, hey, this can turn into something massive. Perhaps it doesn't look like it and it doesn't feel like it could blow up right now. I would imagine you've probably seen, having seen so many M&A transactions, that they don't go perfectly every time.

Neela - 00:30:30: It's honestly never perfect. There's no deal without twists and turns along the way. But the more experience that you have, the more you know to ask the other party. You didn't make any comment on that. You were silent on this matter. Is that on purpose or was it an oversight? And did you really mean this? You know, so just when you're getting to a non-binding term sheet to really try to ferret out. Some parties are just better at articulating it and they weren't trying to hide anything. They're just like, oh, we assumed that that would work. And I was like, oh, this is going to work for us. Good thing we don't know. Right.

Jon - 00:31:08: Yep. Yep. Get ahead of it. It's kind of this thing. It's like, don't go months into diligence and you're just like, oh, that was like, so like, just like when you're doing like research without all the proper tooling, that was like six months of like, we definitely could have had just like coffee over this, like early up front. And it's not like, you know, it's not about like trying to hide things. It's just like, hey, let's talk about it. Like, let's get ahead and save ourselves like the future pain that we might, we might experience here. Sorry. I realized I did a little bit of a detour. We're at Sujan now.

Neela - 00:31:42: Oh, okay.

Jon - 00:31:43: Yeah. Yeah. We're still there. But so, you know, it sounds like you were thrown into a therapy area. You basically were tasked of like, like kind of like I was thinking about the movie, the 300, which is like kind of like push you into the lions and just like having to figure it out on your own. How did the, you know, your SUGEN experience kind of, as you were kind of charting like uncharted kind of waters. How did that reaches like climax and culmination of that new therapy area for you? 

Neela - 00:32:13: It was a really great experience. I have to say that I give all the credit to my boss at the time, Tony Hallett, for believing in me and just handing me this thing to do. For me, the culmination was not so much the program that I was working with. We did actually do in record time, bring the program from clinical candidate to a decision about whether or not to file an IND. And ultimately we decided, we made a recommendation not to because the therapeutic index just wasn't big enough. But we did it in 10 months, which even for Pharmacia and SUGEN was record time. So I was proud of that. But I felt like... The work that I did with my colleagues to establish an ophthalmology therapy area was actually the pinnacle of what I got to do there. Because what we did was there were a bunch of us who realized we were all working on ophthalmology programs, but they were living under different roofs. And this was at a time where Zolotan, the brand name for latanoprost, which is used for glaucoma, was a billion-dollar-a-year product for pharmacies. So they had this anchor product, commercial product, and they didn't really have... Pipeline, but they obviously had a sales force. And it was like, gee, we're incubating these programs. There's some in immunology, some living under oncology, some living under these various TAs. Let's bring them together under one roof because we want to be able to you. Share resources, share possibly KOLs. Different things like that. And then some projects, oh, you're working on dry ice, so am I, but from a different angle, let's bring them together, right? So what we thought was we have this nucleus of a pipeline. We need to have a plan for a sustainable pipeline. What does that plan look like? Oh, you know what? These projects are early. We're going to need some clinical stage anchors. We should do some in-licensing. We should look at opportunities to flesh out that part of the pipeline while our first part grows, our homegrown grows. And some of the common resources, oh, an iBank. That sounds silly, but all therapy areas need access to human tissue for the area that you're working in, right? And most things are a little easier to get. We were lucky to interact with a PI named Greg Hageman, who was at University of Iowa. And he had spent a couple decades applying for and getting NEI grants to build a longitudinal iBank. And because Iowa... Is a state with a relatively small-ish population, people with complicated medical things end up all in a few centers. So he actually had, in some cases... Hear it. And child. Samples. So he himself was doing a lot of genome-wide scan research to try to find different causes of diseases in the eye. But that's the sort of thing that we kind of married that all up and said, look, these are the resources that are needed. This is the in licensing, this is the budget. This is when you'd start to see benefit from it. And Pharmacia signed off and we were really excited. And then Pfizer bought Pharmacia. So that's how I ended up leaving. 

Jon - 00:35:52: I was going to say what you just described right there almost was like, 8. Just like speed run intense, like airdropped into something that you didn't know, start to inception, like a company, like almost like standing up your own, like startup within SUGEN basically. And then, you know, obviously as things happen, M&A happens and it's almost like a little mini startup life that you've lived. 

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Neela - 00:36:19: Exactly, exactly. And in fact, it's funny you say that because my next position was at Genentech. And we can talk a bit about that experience as well on the biologic side and so on. But I left there to start a company with Greg Hageman.

Jon - 00:36:34: Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Cool. And so that was the in-between of the Genentech experience.

Neela - 00:36:44: After Genentech and before I was full-time at Poniard Pharmaceuticals, I left Genentech.

Outro - 00:36:52: That's all for this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast. We hope you enjoyed our discussion with Neela Patel. Tune into part three of our conversation to learn more about her journey. 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 on The Biotech Startups Podcast. For part three of Nela's story. 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.