[00:00:00] Speaker A: With Promocos, when you're activating your body's natural abilities, then it's an ecosystem that is able to work in harmony, and that's really what you're doing. It almost reminds me, Katarina, of. Have you heard of a concept called rewilding?
[00:00:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:16] Speaker A: So I don't know if you heard the same story as I did, but I guess in parts of the. The Midwest, the. The wolf population had gone down, and of course, they weren't hunting deer. And so the deer were then, you know, eroding the. The edges of the river, which was then changing the river path, which was changing the ecology. So anyway, by rewilding, by reintroducing wolves to their natural habitat, everything came back. All the plants came back, and the river systems came back and the fish came back. So it almost seems. And maybe this is a crude analogy or an imperfect one, but by restoring the ecosystem in the body's ability to do what it does, then everything is in natural balance and we're not just masking the problem with antibiotics.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I love this analogy.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: Welcome to Stand up to Stand out, the podcast where we help you master clarity, confidence, and influence.
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[00:01:29] Speaker A: So let's dive in.
So this is the first episode of beyond the Lab, and I'm so excited to have Katarina here.
So just to let everyone know what this is about, we met through the Harvard Innovation Lab. You're at Harvard and have a phenomenal idea that we're going to get into.
And the whole concept of what you're about to hear is going to be a discussion between you and I where I'm going to apply my lens on storytelling and messaging and see if we can extract a different approach to the way you bring your science out to the world. So let's start at the beginning. Maybe you could tell me a question that I always love to ask, which is, when did science become, I don't want to say an obsession, but when did you first become really interested in it? And was it a person, A course? Was it a teacher? When did science become something that you really actively pursued?
[00:02:28] Speaker B: For me, since I remember myself, I had an obsession specifically with biology and with living things and how they, you know, how they grow, how they behave, just have a very big interest in living things.
[00:02:44] Speaker A: And so how did that lead to eventually getting your PhD, and what was your specific specialty and how did you keep choosing that? Was that something that chose you, or it's a path that appeared for you?
[00:02:58] Speaker B: I was interested in many different things around biology, of course. Like, I was interested in how bacteria grow or viruses, you know, immunology. Eventually, I chose my PhD based on who was the. Who was the professor. It was a very inspiring person, a very good teacher that I wanted to work with him. And that's how I chose how to. In which discipline of biology, essentially to pursue my PhD, and that was microbiology and biochemistry.
[00:03:34] Speaker A: So. So microbiology and biochemistry due to an effective teacher. What made him so effective for you that you wanted to pursue this specialty?
[00:03:45] Speaker B: He had a special way of teaching. He was asking questions pretty much what you do.
Instead of telling you things about biology or about what he does, he was asking questions until you discover the answer.
That was his method.
And back then, in the 2000s, he was one of the few people where you were giving exams with open books, right? Like, you didn't need to memorize anything. You just need to be able to think. And that was something pretty special.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: Well, it's funny, somebody just broke down the concept of philosophy that all PhDs have, that ph which stands for philosophy, which is the love of knowledge, or really what is the purpose, but it's thinking as a path to a specialty. The reason we have all these subspecialties is because people are thinking about the nature of questions and the nature of inquiry. And it seems like this, this teacher really spurred that in you, that it wasn't about blunt memorization, but about asking questions and thinking.
[00:04:50] Speaker B: And there's something very special when you figure it out yourself, when through questions, you figure out the answer yourself. First of all, it sticks with you. And I don't know, maybe it's human nature, but you start believing it, you know, and then you go home, you're still thinking about it. So the knowledge is also.
It gets deeper into your head.
[00:05:13] Speaker A: And just for everyone, including me. But what is microbiology? What is immunology?
[00:05:19] Speaker B: Well, microbiology is the discipline that studies essentially microbes, which is bacteria, parasites, anything that it's small enough that you cannot really see by eye. Viruses. Virology is a little bit of a different discipline. And then immunologies, our immune system behaves, how it interacts with microbes, but not only just with microbes, with all the stimuli that it receives from the environment.
[00:05:50] Speaker A: And so talk me through the journey of being, you know, know, through your doctoral degree and postdoc and Then into the launch of the company that we're going to talk about today, which is Promoco. So let's start at the beginning, which is, I want to talk about that transition where you're doing research and you're seeing something, I'm guessing that led to more questions which ultimately led you to, to starting this company. But maybe you could walk us through the process of understanding there was more here to be done and your need to do something about it.
[00:06:29] Speaker B: So I was very happy pursuing basic research and satisfying my curiosity. But over the years, I started feeling that there is something very special when you try to develop a product. Just to give you an example, right. For example, there was a professor, several professors that published that, you know, maybe our immune system, maybe our immune system kills cancer cells. Right. And that was a very important discovery, but only when we actually turned that into drugs and we saw that, okay, that's actually true. This, initially it sounded like science fiction, but when we turned it into drugs and we had like some phenomenal drugs that actually could take target cancer cells specifically for the first time, like we had only chemotherapy that kills all cells. And now you have your. You trigger your immune cells to kill cancer cells with better results.
Then we realized the importance of this discovery. And also it ended a little bit the philosophical debate, because when you discover something new, you publish it and now the world knows. But, but you can never be certain if this is true unless you actually.
Unless it's proven it's true. So usually through a product like a drug, and sometimes we scientists tend to get into these philosophical discussions about if something is true or not with arguments, but there's never a definite answer.
And I started getting very excited by the idea of having. Of going to the next step where you are actually taking a scientific discovery, breakthrough discovery, and you develop a product and now you actually see, you can see with your own eyes that, yeah, that was true or no, that wasn't true. Right. And yeah, you were wrong. But I start finding this very fascinating.
So I had this idea that, that, you know, I didn't necessarily know that I want to commercialize something, but these seeds were in my head while I was doing research, the latest years.
[00:08:42] Speaker A: What was that, what was that that you saw?
[00:08:45] Speaker B: So during, during COVID I started reading some literature that was a little bit outside of my field because what I was doing it was I was studying at Harvard how bacteria segregate their chromosomes. Right.
But I had a lot of knowledge about bacterial life in general. And then I started reading a little bit about the Microbiome and diseases that clearly correlate with microbes, but we don't know exactly what. What are the molecular mechanisms? Okay, there's clearly a correlation here, but what exactly should we target or should we change in order to modify the disease?
And I observed something in the literature that was touching upon, something that I had a very deep understanding and specifically about things that bacteria secrete.
And I thought at the time that it got perceived not exactly the right way by the field of immunologies. So I started talking to them to see if my idea is something that if we think a little bit differently, we can make a new drug. Now, this, I understand that this has a lot of technical aspects behind it, and I try to describe in a very high level.
So.
[00:10:11] Speaker A: Well, so let's get into it. What. Because this is the, this format and forum. And I want to understand as, as a layperson, this is not my specialty, but I want to understand you noticed that there was something in the secretion that was not fully understood. That if you could, and I'm going to let you explain it, but if you could take that mechanism and harness it, there's some benefit that you could get from it.
[00:10:36] Speaker B: What happened, Right, is that there was obviously there was a quite obvious good target, that if we target it, it's going to be beneficial for autoimmune disease.
But people were thinking that this cannot be the answer because this target is always working fine because we have bacteria that secrete molecules that keep it functional.
And that's true. Like all bacteria have these molecules that keep it functional, but only few can actually secrete it due to complicated processes that are happening inside these cells. So, yes, it is true that all bacteria have these molecules that can keep this receptor active, but only few could actually secrete it. So if people with disease have fewer of these bacteria that can secrete it, then this receptor wouldn't be active. That was the hypothesis that we wanted to test in order to start this company.
[00:11:41] Speaker A: So.
[00:11:41] Speaker B: And this receptor was very well known, sorry, by the work of fathers, like, 20 years, the work of more than 20 years, that it's super important to be working, because if it's not working, you get autoimmune disease.
[00:11:55] Speaker A: Okay, so we're getting to the core of how it works. If, if I'm understanding correctly, and I'm, I'm. I'm pretty sure I'm not. But the people who need to receive that the receptor is not activated. Is that correct?
[00:12:10] Speaker B: Correct. Exactly.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: So that means that they cannot receive the, you know, the. Any information that would help them manage symptoms or conditions, prevent autoimmunity, actually, because.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: There is receptor tells to our body, you know, things are fine.
Don't get overactive. That's the part of the immune system that gets overactive. Don't get overactive. Things, things are fine. Right. But this happens only when this receptor is actually active.
[00:12:40] Speaker A: Okay, so that was your original aha moment. Of course, it's not to over dramatize it, but when you saw that and you started to put together what was possible, where did it go from there? When you saw that this was happening and this observation wasn't maybe fully understood, it's clear that you were doing some sort of calculus to say, what if we could or some version of that, help me understand that moment. And then how that led you to the formation of the company.
[00:13:12] Speaker B: So from that point, right, we needed to test, because this was still a hypothesis, right, that. That this receptor may not be active actually.
So we need to test this hypothesis. And we needed some human samples essentially to test this hypothesis.
So actually at that point I did start the company, there was enough information in the literature to support that that's a good idea. And that this may be happening, although we didn't have the actual proof. This experiment that I told take the human tissue that has samples that are needed to prove that this receptor is actually not active in patients specifically, but it is active in healthy individuals.
So we served the company and we raised our first money to actually do these experiments.
[00:14:04] Speaker A: And when was this? What's the timeline on that?
[00:14:07] Speaker B: 2021.
[00:14:08] Speaker A: Okay, understood.
[00:14:10] Speaker B: And then we did these experiments. We started collaborating with clinicians mainly that provided us with the samples. And then it turned out to be true.
And by the moment, actually it turned out to be true. There were publications from universities in China that also made exactly the same observation, which gave us confidence that actually we're on the right path.
And then we went to more clinicians and said, this is what is happening with this receptor and was overlooked. But in patients it's actually not activated. And if we activate it, maybe we can actually reverse autoimmunity. And they really had an aha moment, the clinicians, because they all knew about the biology of this receptor, specifically, they were gastroenterologists, right? And we started with essentials and they all knew the biology.
Many of them had studied during their PhDs, the function of these receptors. And when we gave them this piece of information, they had an aha moment. And then we started building active collaborations. So right now there are many very important people like Clinicians and researchers in that field that specifically we are working, that are doing experiments in their labs based on that idea.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: So if I understand correctly, looking at. Looking at this receptor in a new way, you thought, okay, what if we could get that receptor to function and thus it would trigger the immune system's defense mechanism.
[00:15:52] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: So sort of like, hey, there's a light switch that no one knew was a light switch. If we could switch it on, it would trigger the immune system's defense, and thus people would not be suffering from autoimmune diseases.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: Correct, Exactly. That's a very nice description. I should write it down, bro.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: This is why we're doing beyond the lab. This is it. I have to. My look, my brain might be like a two stroke motor a tractor, but eventually I'll get up the hill.
So, okay, so if we understand that now, I'm going to zoom out a little bit, and I want to now understand it from a business perspective, how many people, and maybe it's in the United States or wherever, have that, you know, receptor that's not active and thus not turning on their immune system?
[00:16:42] Speaker B: So we started with a disease with patient samples, actually, from a disease. It's called Crohn's disease. It's an inflammatory disorder of the gut.
And this affects, in the U.S. approximately 1 million of people, and worldwide, approximately 3 million.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: Okay, and what are the current treatments for Crohn's disease?
[00:17:07] Speaker B: So the current treatments are antibodies that you inject in your body, and they go. And they bind certain proteins of our immune system with the idea to suppress the immune system. And there are several variations of. Of these antibodies, like antibodies that bind different proteins of the immune system. So what happens when you have inflammation is that the immune system gets activated, and then you have circulating high amounts of proteins that further activate the immune system. Right.
So these antibodies are focused on binding these proteins.
[00:17:53] Speaker A: Okay. And so. And, you know, just from a lens of effectiveness for. For patients, what is inferior about that process for people who are suffering from Crohn's disease?
[00:18:07] Speaker B: So the problem is that these treatments approximately work in one out of four patients.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: So of that million, it's working for a quarter million. And 750,000 in the US or, you know, whatever, two and a quarter million globally are not getting that treatment. Correct.
[00:18:29] Speaker B: Actually, they have a 30% market penetration, which is like approximately all of these different treatments. Right. All these antibodies, they're called biologics. Collectively, 30% of patients take them. And why 70% don't take them?
Well, there are several reasons One is the immunosuppressive part, which can have very serious side effects. So people, if the disease is milder or if they have other diseases, they don't want to be immunosuppressed, because immunosuppressed means that you cannot fight very well, cancer cells. You cannot fight bacteria, you cannot fight viruses.
That's one reason. And the other reason, the obvious, right, is the efficacy itself. It just, it doesn't work.
So usually it works in the beginning, but then after a year, it stops working for most of patients.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: So it's not effective. It's, it's. It's. Could be potentially harming your body's ability to. To protect itself. And it's, it's just not addressing the underlying problem.
[00:19:42] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:19:43] Speaker A: What you're doing is you're trying to say we can help you restore your body's ability to turn on the immune system.
[00:19:52] Speaker B: Exactly. Instead of suppressing it, we think that we can restore, we can activate, if you want, a different part of the immune system that actually, that will actually restore this natural ability that we have to not have actually excess inflammation.
[00:20:12] Speaker A: So now it's, it's 2025, it's been four years. What's the current status of your company? Headcount wise, building your team? Where do you stand in your timeline?
[00:20:24] Speaker B: So right now we have, we have a molecule that can activate this receptor.
It's inspired by the natural molecule that we actually have in our bodies, in our gut. We started with that. We had to modify it a little bit because this is a pill, right. You take itself, survive the stomach. It's pretty close to the natural molecule that we have in our guts and activates this receptor. And we have shown that it works in mouse models, that it goes in the area of interest, which is the gut, and that it activates this pathway that we wanted to activate the receptor and that we have, as we call in pharmacology, a desirable pharmacological response, which means that it lowers inflammation in animal models that do have inflammation, gut inflammation.
And, and right now we are at the stage where we want to find, finalize these experiments that I told you and proceed to the next step, which is extensive safety studies. They're called IND nailing studies, to make sure that your drug is safe and it can be tested in humans.
So if everything goes well in 2027, we can start our first clinical trial in healthy volunteers.
[00:21:49] Speaker A: Okay. And so thus your imperative over the next six to 12 months is to do what? To go from where you are now to what's Your next goal, what's your next marker?
[00:22:02] Speaker B: Our next marker is, well, experimentally, there are some, some over optimization that has to be done. For example, how are we going to know in the clinic, when we're in the clinic or in the patients or healthy volunteers that actually this receptor is getting activated? How are we going to select our patient population?
We are about to start a big study with the KU Leuven where we are going to test hundreds of patient samples to see exactly which patients have the highest chance of responding to our treatment. For example, one of the things that we are doing, and of course one of our goals for the next months is to raise the money that are needed to do this IND neping studies and the clinical trial.
[00:22:59] Speaker A: And how much do you think you need to raise?
[00:23:01] Speaker B: Approximately 13 to 15 million.
[00:23:03] Speaker A: Okay. And what that will allow you to do is what?
[00:23:06] Speaker B: So at the end of the studies, you will know if your molecule is safe with humans, in humans, and you will know what is the dose that you should give to patients. Or at least you will have, you know, two doses that are looking good in order to be tested in patients.
And you may also have some, some idea about this biomarker that I told you about, which patients will actually. They have the highest likelihood to respond to your treatment. And therefore, when you will start recruiting for your clinical trial with patients, you will start with those that have the greatest chance of benefiting from what? From our treatment.
[00:23:55] Speaker A: If we look at where we start to attack any assumptions, right, because you're very close to this. Obviously, you have deep scientific experience. You have, you know, a very unique lens in this science. You've look at what's happening, you know, on the molecular level here. If I zoom out as far as I can, why should we care? And I mean as a society, as, as outsiders, why should we care about this different way of treating autoimmune disease like Crohn's?
Given that there's been no real progress on this before, was no one seeing it a different way? Was there no incentive? In other words, why should we care? Why now? Why should we care about this solution?
[00:24:43] Speaker B: Well, what we want to do as society, right, is you want to make people that don't feel well to feel well. You want to make the sick healthy. Right? There are a lot of benefits for that. Well, the first is the human aspect, of course, right? That someone who is young, this is a disease, the average age is 30 years old, has a debilitating disease that often leads to disability, right? They're losing time from their family they're losing time from the work, they're losing time by worrying.
So if you make these people healthy, the society becomes healthier and the people become happier. Another aspect is that we spend a lot of money as society and treating these diseases or handling actually these diseases.
And the 70 to 80% of the money that we spend is because of hospitalizations, because of the need of surgery, because patients have to go to the clinic very often.
The administrative costs that are associated with everything I told you, and with changing prescription drugs because drugs are failing after a year. So that's 80% of the cost, right? So if you have, you have a pill, you save all this money, right? The healthier costs are going to decrease very significantly.
So we really need, as a society, more effective ways to treat chronic diseases.
[00:26:15] Speaker A: So I'm looking at it three ways. Number one is the quality of life for people who, who are, you know, burdened by having to, you know, give up their time and energy to, to treat the, the symptoms. Number two, there's the economic impact, right? What, what are we losing from those people not being in the workforce, generating, producing, providing for their family? And then the third is the cost to the system that people are being hospitalized or in the clinic, and thus there's a burden. So did I miss anything on the impact?
[00:26:51] Speaker B: No. And when, you know, when you have a pill in 18, 20 years, from the moment that it will get, let's say that it will get approved, then the cost for this pill, it would be like an aspirin, right? It would be like nothing. So the society, treating this disease for society would become super cheap forever.
[00:27:13] Speaker A: I'm curious about your story. And then we'll get back to the fundraising. But when you look at, you know, a young person interested in biology and then following a, a curious professor who looked at, you know, microbiology and immunology through an open lens, and then doing research, and you said, perfectly happy doing research, and then seeing this receptor and seeing something possible that hadn't been seen before, where you're kind of solving a puzzle that no one had told you was a puzzle to be solved. And now, as the CEO and being the leader of this entity, that can make a massive impact, what's the story that you tell yourself?
Are you just following one door into the next, into the next and letting it pull you forward? Is there a push element where you feel like this is something that you must do to leverage scientific innovation for the benefit of humanity?
Maybe it's a combination of those. Like, where is your story in this.
[00:28:16] Speaker B: Katarina Well, I don't really know.
I, I, you know, I just try to do what I have to do every day. I have a very strong push. I don't know where it's coming from.
Like, I really want to do this. I really like it. I really want to do it. A very strong motivation.
There is something, you know, very noble or uplifting when you think that you're doing something that can affect lives of millions of people.
Yeah. Strong pose. And I just try to do what I have to do every day, but I don't really tell any stories of myself. You know, I usually just spend my time trying to push forward.
[00:29:02] Speaker A: So those who and the reason I'm asking is because I.
I'm starting to see the future through your lens, and I don't want to put my words on it. I want you to tell me, paint me a picture of the future when Promo coast it could be 20 years from now and how it's affected people with Crohn's. How it's affected the patient population, their caregivers, the community, society at large. Like, let's go 20 years out and wave a magic wand. And all the wishes that you have for this science and this innovation, let's say, play out in the way that you imagine they could or even beyond your imagination. What does the world look like through that lens for people with Crohn's?
[00:29:46] Speaker B: So I think that the obvious thing to say here is that ideally, you have millions of people that are not sick anymore, they're healthy, that previously had autoimmune diseases, and now they're taking a pill and they have no symptoms. That's the dream, right? No symptoms at all.
But also, I think that there are some fundamental aspects of how our immune system works that we are missing.
And I'm hoping that through this company, we can uncover these things and it can have, you know. You know, if you understand how really your immune system works, you can start imagining things, right? You can start imagining that you can protect yourself from any kind of infections. Maybe for some infections, you can become completely impenetrable and that you have a way to handle autoimmune general inflammatory diseases in a much better way than we do now, ideally, as I said, without any symptoms. It's like asking me, okay, what's the effect for the society from the, you know, for the GLP1 agonist, right?
Well, a society that is not obese and a society that's not diabetic.
Everyone's healthier. They feel better. They feel better with how they they look, they feel more energy and I'm referring to that because these drugs exist right now and it's easier to make the image in our head. Right.
[00:31:32] Speaker A: I love it. So those who have come on board, part of your support is already, you've already been successful in raising some funds.
I'm curious if you've spoken at length with those who have already partnered with you. And I don't know, what's the current headcount of Promo Coast? Right. How many people are on your team, on your board? What's the, what's the headcount?
[00:31:54] Speaker B: So we are a team of three full time employees.
And then we have four very closely collaborating labs that we run experiments with. A lot of experiments with them. And then we have many advisors. Yeah, several advisors and consultants that help us move forward.
[00:32:14] Speaker A: You've successfully raised funds. Where have those funds come from? Are they from institutes, from, from nonprofits, from investors angels.
What is the source?
[00:32:24] Speaker B: The nih, through their so called SBIR grants.
A patient foundation, it's called propellicure for Crohn's disease, that's supporting us.
And then we have angel investors and biotech funds. Okay, yeah, so all of them both. There are many people, especially angel investors, that resonate with our mess, that there may be a different way to treat chronic disease by make our immune system functioning better.
And that makes sense to a lot of people. And then when it comes to biotech investors that, you know, they do deep diligence and they have a lot of knowledge, when we can, when we get into the details about how we can do that, it makes a lot of sense to them as well as it makes to the, to the clinicians that work with us.
[00:33:16] Speaker A: And so this fundraising round of 13 to 15 million, who will you be targeting? Is this going to be funds? Is this going to be more foundations, more angels?
[00:33:27] Speaker B: I think the easier way to start with, right, it's Barto funds. And because we are going, we, we, we're thinking of going to the clinic with these funds, then it becomes a bit more specialized and more knowledge in that space becomes more important. So we will start with funds, biotech funds, without excluding anyone else, of course.
[00:33:49] Speaker A: Okay. Why would they want to partner with you? Not that they wouldn't, of course. We all see the magic of what you're doing. But what is their value prop for. For whether it's funds or, or other sources of capital so that you can deploy what you're doing?
[00:34:03] Speaker B: Well, the first reason is because people like to associated themselves with something noble that has a Potential for a big upside and for society. Right. And then it's the financial aspect of it, which is also pretty big.
So every time that we have a drug, a new drug that is a part of shift in the way we treat disease and now you can actually treat a lot of patients, then you have the so called blockbuster. For example, going back to these biologics that I described, the drugs that don't work very well, right. For autoimmunity, however, when they were first introduced 25 years ago, it was a big advance because the only thing that we had was corticosteroids, which is actually much worse than these drugs that do targeted immunosuppression. So they introduced 20, 20, 25 years ago. There was a market expansion. The market was growing like 25% every year, year by year.
And one of the biggest blockbusters that we, we have, it's called Humayra, it's one of these drugs and has a revenue of 15 to 20 billion per year. So that's what it means to have a new way to treat disease.
And imagine that this only works in one out of four patients, right? So imagine if you can make something much better than that. The same has happened with cancer and when we had the first immunotherapy. So there's a big financial incentive for investors who want to invest in us.
[00:35:45] Speaker A: So what's the symbolism to Promocos? I know there's something connected with mythology.
[00:35:51] Speaker B: I was, I was born in Greece and promojos means the first to enter the battle.
But the way that it was used in ancient Greece is that promejos were the soldiers that you put at the very front of your army so that the enemy will get intimidated and the battle will not even start.
And that's exactly what we want to do with the immune system and the autoimmune diseases.
We want to empower certain cells so that the battle with cold inflammation will never start.
[00:36:29] Speaker A: That's very elegant. So, so the value prop is clear. There's a huge market opportunity, there's unmet need, there's a clear uniqueness to it. I guess since you've started, you know, looking around are other people coming into your this world and trying to also, you know, play in this, in this landscape and what you're doing or you know, is this a game of first mover or what else have you seen in, in the market since you've been around?
[00:37:02] Speaker B: Yes. People have tried, you know, to follow this idea of fix the root cause. Instead of putting a band aid, for example, microbiome Companies, especially for gut disease, are trying to do something similar, right? Yeah, I see some ideas here and there, but I haven't seen an explosion yet. But definitely people are trying to play with this idea.
[00:37:26] Speaker A: Okay, but you feel you have a unique advantage?
[00:37:29] Speaker B: Yeah, we certainly feel that we have a unique advantage.
We are pretty advanced. We know a lot of things right now about the biology of this pathway, essentially, that we are targeting, which, of course, people can catch up, but it will take some time to catch up because there are many nuances in the biology that you have to know in order to create a good track.
[00:37:55] Speaker A: When. When we're talking about people with Crohn's disease, what's happening in their system, in their gut, that. That they're experiencing Crohn's.
[00:38:04] Speaker B: The symptoms could be like, extreme pain in the belly, vomiting, diarrhea, these type of symptoms. And then they try to figure out what. What is going on? Why do they have these symptoms? And then usually it takes quite some effort and time to get diagnosed with this disease, because there are several other diseases that can have similar symptoms. So you have to exclude things. And several disease markers have to come together to get diagnosed. Right. Once you're diagnosed with a disease, what happens is that people are starting medication, which could be the biologics that I described. And this depends on how severe the symptoms are.
This is something that happens with chronic diseases, is that they can appear and sometimes they can disappear. Right. And never come back, if you're very lucky. Right. But it can happen, or you can have a very mild disease. But. But people that have a more severe disease, they definitely take this. This treatment that I described, and then you have to wait for months to see if it works or not. And if it works, it's fine. You continue on this treatment, there's unfortunately, a high likelihood that it will fail after some time, and then you have to switch to a different treatment, to a different type of biologic.
So that's what happens with patients. Very often you need surgery just because the drugs have failed you, and you need surgery to continue managing symptoms. The surgery is not curative, but it helps with managing symptoms. So that's what happens to the patients. Right, the patient.
Now, when it comes to the. To the disease, what we observe in the gut, right, it's inflammation. And the way that I was told about inflammation, autoimmunity is like, oh, it's a fire that we absolutely have to suppress, and that your immune system suddenly starts attacking your own cells, your own tissue. We don't know why, but it Gets out of hand and we have to stop it. We have to suppress.
And what we're saying is, you know, what if actually there is something there that our immune system sees?
It's not that it went crazy, there is something there, but it cannot effectively fight it to clear it out. And instead of suppressing it, we actually need to help to fight it out.
And what we think is happening in particular in this disease, but I can expand in other diseases as well. How this applies, but for Crohn's specifically, is that you have some changes in your microbiome. You have a so called, let's say infectious microbiome. It's not one species, not Salmonella or two. Percy, you know, it's not a specific species of bacteria, but your microbiome has changed in a way that it becomes infectious. And at the same time, your immune system, the, the, the first line soldiers are not responding as they should be. They aren't as strong.
And that's what is causing this invasive microbiome to be there instead of getting cleared out. And then your immune system reacts not because it went crazy, but because it sees this infectious microbiome being there and trying to clear it out.
[00:41:37] Speaker A: Okay, so the theory is that the inflammation is your body's inability to clear out the microbiome.
[00:41:48] Speaker B: The invasive bacteria. Exactly.
[00:41:50] Speaker A: Yes, the invasive bacteria, the invasive microbes. Yes, the invasive microbe. Okay, so that's what the inflammation is. And what Promocos can do is by switching on that receptor, you can empower the soldiers in this analogy to then fight that infection and thus restore balance.
[00:42:13] Speaker B: Exactly. Yes.
Yes, that's exactly how, how we see about.
[00:42:18] Speaker A: So it seems like if I kind of go back and we start to put together the story, if we start with the individual who could be a 13 or 14 year old boy or girl, who's going to go through years and years of diagnosis and treatment that can come and go, which can not only deal with nausea and sickness and diarrhea, but could be surgeries and just a whole quality of life, let alone expense, let alone keeping them out of the system. What if what's really going on for them is that their body is seeing an invasive microbiome, right. And is unable to deal with that infection or that infectious microbiome.
But what if our system could activate the body's ability to fight that? So again, we help that happen and thus not only can it fight in the infection, but restore balance and almost have symptom free condition for people who have Crohn's disease, Is that correct?
[00:43:21] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:43:22] Speaker A: If we look at what's happening in the patient population, the million people in the US there's 750,000 who never even address what's going on with Crohn's. They just live with that. Correct?
[00:43:35] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:43:36] Speaker A: Okay. And so the people who are seeking treatment are getting subpar treatment because of multiple factors. Maybe they're being misdiagnosed. Maybe they're being given treatment that is not dealing with the underlying cause but is masking the symptoms. Is that correct?
[00:43:54] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:43:54] Speaker A: Okay. So rather than do that, what if you could. And I love this question that's driven by my. What you're telling me, your natural predisposition to be drawn to questions. These. What if. What if. And I'm sure you use this already. If we could restore the body's ability to be able to fight infection and thus, you know, be in a. In a natural state. And that's. That's what your mechanism is, is. Is after. To restore the body's ability to do that.
[00:44:27] Speaker B: Exactly. Just to say something here, because it's something that people ask me a lot, is, you know, if it's just an infection, then why antibiotics don't work? Right.
And the. The answer to that is that if you had one specific species that causes infection, then we have some success with antibiotics. We have a lot of success. If the. If in tissues that are not supposed to have bacteria, then we have a lot of success in tissues that are supposed to have bacteria, like the gut, for example. The C. Difficile is a tough one, but it is a specific infection.
But Crohn's does not come from one species. It comes from many different species that become infectious. And what antibiotics do is that you get rid of most of the bacteria, right? But then the ecology recovers as it was before you take the antibiotics. So you cannot really get rid. You cannot really change the composition of your bacteria, and you cannot really change the infectious population.
If this makes sense to you, sort.
[00:45:45] Speaker A: Of say it again that you know, because this is a key part of the story.
So just say it again so that I don't have to try to rephrase it in a way that I don't fully understand.
[00:45:56] Speaker B: Right? So you take antibiotics, the bacteria reduce in population, some species may completely disappear, but then eventually you stop taking antibiotics or you continue taking, and then the resistance spaces come back. Right? But as they come back, it doesn't mean that you got rid of your infectious bacteria.
[00:46:22] Speaker A: Right?
[00:46:22] Speaker B: Because bacteria live there. It's their natural habitat, and they will come back. And the infectious Species will come back as they disappeared.
[00:46:33] Speaker A: Okay. So you don't want to, that's a partial fix, whereas what you're doing is a permanent fix.
[00:46:40] Speaker B: Right? It's a partial fix and yeah, it eventually come back. Right, right.
[00:46:47] Speaker A: And so that's your, the argument against antibiotics. Correct?
[00:46:50] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:46:51] Speaker A: Okay. And so that may just have to be part of the story, what that you insert, even playing devil's advocate during your own story. So why not just ma, you know, deal with antibiotics and just being able to pay that off? Because you're only doing partial fixes and then they change. They're like a shape shifter. Right. They come back. And, and so whereas with promos, when you're, when you're activating your body's natural abilities, then it's an ecosystem that is able to work in harmony. And that's really what you're doing, is you're just able to. It, it almost reminds me, Katarina, of. Have you heard of a concept called rewilding?
[00:47:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:31] Speaker A: So I don't know if you heard the same story as I did, but I guess in parts of the, the Midwest, the, the wolf population had gone down and of course they weren't hunting deer. And so the deer were then, you know, eroding the, the edges of the river, which was then changing the river path, which was changing the ecology. So anyway, by rewilding, by reintroducing wolves to their natural habitat, everything came back. All the plants came back and the river systems came back and the fish came back just, just from doing so, it almost seems, and maybe this is a crude analogy or an imperfect one, but by restoring the ecosystem in the body's ability to do what it does, then everything is in natural balance and we're not just masking the problem with any.
[00:48:22] Speaker B: I love this analogy. I love it. That's exactly how we imagine it.
[00:48:25] Speaker A: So what I'd like you to try here because we've been going for over an hour and I, I, I, I finally feel like a lot of things have fallen into place.
We have maybe an, you know, something to try, what I'd like you to try because you're a natural scientist and the, the, and you've indulged me in a very useful way to get deep into how this works for, for a non scientist. However, storytelling and fundraising and, and pitching and all of that requires that we go across the top of the lake or the river and not always get pulled down into the details yet. Now you'll be in front of very smart people who understand what you're Talking about. But I feel like a flow of your story is starting with the story of one. Could be a teenager talking about the symptoms, misdiagnosis, time lost impact and cost to the system. And there are three quarters of a million people. So we go from the story of one to many.
Then we talk about what's happening with Crohn's, that this inflammation is because the body is in unable to empower the soldiers that can fight this microbiome. But what if we could restore its ability, the body's ability to fight this and how that's different from what's the partial treatment? Why. Why am I drawing a blank on this word?
[00:49:50] Speaker B: So it's either antibiotics or biologics.
[00:49:53] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And why this is different? Yeah, it is because that while those are temporary fixes, this will actually restore the ecosystem. Similar to rewilding when you reintroduce the natural predators, everything comes back to life and balance is restored. And I feel like that concept of homeostasis. Right. Is really about restoring your body's ability to. To fight.
To fight infections. And so that's how I'm hearing it. But I want you to correct me where I'm wrong or make it your own.
[00:50:26] Speaker B: Well, I don't have much to say because I like the story the way you said it.
That's pretty much how I tell it, but with a lot more technical details, for better or for worse, depending on the audience.
But, but, but yes, that's how. That's a story about how you can restore a process that has been going wrong and the reason why it has been gone wrong.
These soldiers just missing piece maybe. Right. Why are you may wonder. Right. These people are being born perfectly healthy. They don't have any. It's not a genetic disease. Right.
So why your soldiers are not functioning properly? Right. You may be wondering that. Well, it is again because of the microbiome. Because our microbiome, one of the things that does is it trains our soldiers to be fit.
So when it changes, this ability can become.
Can.
Can become wicked.
That's what.
Why we think that you actually have to boost it.
[00:51:41] Speaker A: So looking at this exercise, you know, you tell this story, but with more technical details and there's a simple version for. For the masses. What. What do you think your big challenge is as you look towards the next six to 12 months in fundraising and bringing on that 13 to 15 million dollars so that you can go to the next phase?
What is the most challenging component for you that you feel like you really want to be able to articulate in your messaging.
[00:52:10] Speaker B: So maybe challenging for me is to persuade people that that's something that's worth, you have, I don't know, maybe one minute, you send a message or you talk for five minutes. And these five minutes you have to persuade people that that's something worth investigating. Because I think that if someone sits down and they go through the deep science, right, or our data, that's a win. So maybe the difficulty here is to persuade people that that's something, it's worth their time spending two or three hours of their time thinking deeply about that and looking into the data.
Because you know, there are so many other things that are going on, people have to prioritize. Right. So I think that maybe that's the best challenge. So I think that this five minutes, the story you're going to tell in this five minutes, that it should not have a lot of technical detail, it should be very high level, it's really important.
[00:53:16] Speaker A: So some thoughts for you here.
Number one, I think it's important that we feel an emotional connection right away. And so this could be an, a, a patient story, it could be, you know, an Adam, a Sarah, a Catherine, you name it. But somebody who's in that so that we can see them and we, you don't have to go into much detail here but really understanding, you know, this is what they're affected by. And then I think about the second thing is the problem stack. It's not only the misdiagnosis and, and the pain, but it's also the, the cost to the family and the, and the, and the patient and it's the cost to the healthcare system. So I would talk about that three problem stack right up front. Now if you can articulate that in, in 20 or 30 seconds and you can, and I can help you, then you can zoom out and say how big a problem is this? Which you just did. You know, this is a million people in the US it's 3 million. Now at that point they might care a little bit about the emotional hook, the pathos of this patient. And now they see the logical connection. This is a big problem. What they then need to understand is that the current way of managing right with, with, you know, masking the conditions or dealing with inflammation as the problem is not the right way to do it. And it's misappropriating resources, let alone patient impact. And so you have to sort of in the mind of the audience, try to trace this path into the future where we're just going with these second rate solutions where you have an actual first rate solution to a problem. And now we have loss aversion at work. Well, I don't want that to happen. Well, that's what PROMOS is here to do. After years of research and seeing that what if there is a receptor that if activated in patients, the natural ability to manage the body's balance was at play and it was restoring the body's ability, like rewilding an ecosystem to be in balance. So there's a PROMOS element where you get your soldiers, but soldiers are not really the point. It's balance and homeostasis. That's the point. That's the actual intent. We just have soldiers who are being held back from dealing with infection.
And you're saying it's, that's actually part of the natural system, that is the body's immune system and thus with us. So this fundraising to get proof of concept and in the clinic will be the fast track to get us to that better future and not away from the current, you know, standard of care.
[00:56:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I like it. I like it a lot.
[00:56:03] Speaker A: I think that's a storyline worth exploring and of course we recorded so we can, we can map that out.
I, I would think that if you can articulate that and I know you can, and it's not only about a patient of one, but sometimes when we open with numbers, I saw some of the earlier pitches and they're, they're fine. But sometimes when we start with this number, it's a little too abstract. But when we can enter through the lens of one, sometimes we can identify. Now I know that a lot of people can get exhausted with the patient story, but it really doesn't have to be overdone. I think it's just so that we can empathize enough to pay attention to the next thing. Because I truly believe that effective Messaging is not 60 seconds at a time, it's sort of three to six seconds at a time. You go in through one door, they give you permission to keep going and keep going. And so I think that as an a story, a meaning one version where you would say the patient, the size of the problem or the impact, right? The three problem stack, it's pain to the person, it's cost to their lifestyle and family, and it's cost to the system. That's the three problem stack. Then the current treatment and why it's masking the real problem and then the better solution based in science, from your epiphany that you saw there was a different way to do this and thus our Full Thesis has been testing and validating and testing and validating. And now we're continuing that journey. And this is about sprinting from where we are to the next phase so that we can continue to get as quickly as we can into the hands of patients.
[00:57:42] Speaker B: Well, the truth is that you highlighted an angle that although it is in my story, and if I sit with someone and I talk for one hour and nine minutes, it comes out. It's not something that I say the first five minutes, but it's crucial for my story. It's the rewilding part that you mentioned that maybe if I said earlier, people, it becomes obvious to people why this can be a treatment, that it's, it's not just a band aid, but it's a long lasting treatment where has a. Has a real benefit to the patient.
So that's something that you definitely brought in.
[00:58:33] Speaker A: For me, I think what, what's interesting about the rewilding and I think this is something that I would explore as the bee story as well, which is, and this is how I would tell that story, that, you know, there's a piece of the forest where the fish were dying and the bunnies had all gone away and, and there was no more grazing from the deer. And the reason that it fell apart was because the wolves had been hunted to extinction. What does that have to do with anything? When they reintroduced the natural, the, the predators, everything came back into balance because then they were able to hunt and that which caused less erosion, which caused less sediment, which let the waters flow naturally, which let the fish reproduce, and, and the ecosystem was imbalanced. So what we're seeing here is that it's not about removing things, but restoring. So that's gotta be that narrative. And that's exactly what's happening in patients with Crohn's disease is that they have the inability to restore balance. But what if they had that ability? That's the whole mission of Promocos, is to allow the body to restore balance. And then I think you can walk through, you know, and you have to do it, you know, elegantly. I think the magic of storytelling is going from one thing to the next to the next. But that's worth exploring. This rewilding analogy, I think that people can see takes a little bit, though. We have to first understand why you're explaining that. But I think what I'm getting, which is what you're getting, which is an ecosystem imbalance can do its job, and thus an immune system imbalance can do its job and fight infection and Fight disease. But out of balance you get Crohn's disease. And if it's, and that's our thesis here, let's restore balance in the system.
And that's how what partnering with us means. And I think that's a very poignant story to tell that will get people on board. And, and I would think about it, as you're going into this season, you need as many tools to tell the story as possible. It's not about a five minute story. In another five minute, it's going to be the five second story, a 3:50 second story. And, but that's okay. That can be developed and then you'll have the tools to get people on board here because your job is not really to tell the story over and over again, but it's to get people to come to listen to the story.
So you have to light the campfire to bring people around to make sure you get your investors.
Because the more time, the more time you spend bringing in investors is the less time you have to keep pushing the science ahead.
[01:01:10] Speaker B: Right.
[01:01:10] Speaker A: You need that season of fundraising to be very effective.
[01:01:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:01:15] Speaker A: All right. That's as good a spot as any. I hope you know that there's some good takeaways here. I definitely really enjoyed diving into the deep science and I feel like I sort of put on my scientific cap here for a little bit, but really trying to understand what's happening here and the uniqueness of your solutions. So I really just enjoyed that deep dive. And of course, we have now a transcript so we can pull out quickly if there's any useful elements here for you as you get ready to go out and tell people about it. I think there's some interesting assets here, but there's one other thing that I want to leave you with, which is your story coming to Promo coast, because I know that you have deflected that attention to focus on the science, focus on what's next.
But to me, and maybe it's just because I naturally, I like people and I'm interested in their story, there's something very compelling about your curious journey to being an innovator in biotech. Because I wouldn't say that you're reluctant and you're definitely not an accidental entrepreneur, but it's almost like you're the surprise.
It's, it's, it's like the evolution of an entrepreneur through inquiry. That's, that's how I would coin your story. And, and to me, that's very compelling because your confidence comes from the science and looking at the deep data.
At the same time, you need the market to come on board and tell themselves a story. Katerina, this is why we're partnering with promocos. Because remember, it's not about how accurate your story is to your scientific colleagues. Of course accuracy matters. It's how accessible that story is. When investors are talking to their board, when it. When the angels are talking to their spouses or friends, you have to remember that the power of storytelling is about the portability. So I want you to remember that when you put on your scientist brain and you look at this transcript or you, we share some notes and you kind of get back into that granular science. It is absolutely imperative. But I'm also telling you that the accessibility is as important as the accuracy. And you have to keep those two uncomfortable bedfellows front and center. Accuracy and accessibility.
And that's what's going on here.
[01:03:45] Speaker B: So this question is about, you know, my journey or how did I end up with this? How did. And I started this company. Right.
It's maybe or sometimes why you do this, what way you do, what you're doing, or why you became an entrepreneur are hard questions for me.
Because you don't think about these questions very much. Right.
[01:04:11] Speaker A: But don't worry about it. I mean, I'm the same way. I have my own business and I never set out to do this.
[01:04:18] Speaker B: Right, right.
[01:04:19] Speaker A: It's by accident. But the truth is the market has asked me for. For help. And then so what I see it as. And that's why I was saying the evolution of the curious, you know, scientist become entrepreneur. That's your story.
You're always been interested in science, and then you really got interested in this special field. And then as you were looking at it, perfectly happy doing research, you saw something that you couldn't unsee and that solved a puzzle that hadn't been solved before.
Is this puzzle worth solving? Yes, I think so. And then you tested a hypothesis, and that's the evolution here. And you should own that because you are the CEO, you're the founder. And it's not a look at me, it's more a. This has been an evolution. So just remember it is an evolution. You don't have to be anyone. You're not. But you do have a moral responsibility as the CEO and founder to translate this science for people like me and others. Because the more we understand, the more we can bring assets and resources. And it's funny, I'm going to have, you know, on Tuesday, I'm going out to have drinks with a Friend of mine who I just met, who's working at a biotech fund. And when we talk about what's going on, I'm going to tell him what's going on with Promocos. Now, I feel pretty confident after spending this time with you that I can get within striking distance of what it is now. Who cares? But I'm one person. But if we could get a hundred people or a thousand or ten thousand people to do that because they feel empowered to tell the promo code story, now you're building an army, an army that supports this mission. And that's what I want for you, and that's what I want for all entrepreneurs. And that's why I think I'm here on this earth is I want to help you accelerate and amplify your message.
[01:06:14] Speaker B: I totally agree. I like the word you used. It's a moral responsibility.
I think that's true for US CEOs, but also for the scientists to be able to articulate what they're doing to people that are not scientists.
[01:06:33] Speaker A: Yes.
And one other thing. You know, people tell me a lot of times, because I work in science and biotech, people will say things that are true to me. They'll say, I'm an introvert, or I'm quiet or I don't like crowds. And I'll say, that's all fine. I said, but what if you had a friend who was about to be hit by a train? Would you be quiet and say, you know, I'm a quiet introvert. I just. No, you would adapt to the situation and you'd say, move.
[01:07:01] Speaker B: Right?
[01:07:01] Speaker A: And that is the same as being the CEO or fundraising. You now have to put on the hat that is in service of the science. And it's not disingenuous. When you're yelling, you're not angry. You're serving the situation.
And so we all have to adapt. And that. And that's something that I love when you weave in your story in a way to justify. Not justify. Sorry, wrong word. To explain how you're here because it's compelling, but you're also in service of a bigger goal, which is to. To serve the patient population and to get this science into the hands of those who need it. Because commercializing something is not the same as doing the research. Those are very different mechanisms. What you saw through that paper and through your own insights is not the same as launching a global phenomenon of a small molecule that can fundamentally change the way that our body's immune system reacts. They're very different. But it's the same person, just in a different mode.
[01:08:03] Speaker B: I agree that something that I have learned the last years through this company is that if you want to push an idea forward or a new way for doing things, you just have to adapt and do what it takes, like it or not. You know. And you asked me something during our conversation, why this hasn't done before or is this something that people didn't think about before? And I never really have a very good answer to that question why this hasn't done before. But I know that if you look at the scientific, at the history of science, Even with the GLP1 agonists, right, there were tested in the clinic in the 90s with very good results and then they were abandoned. Why? Right.
You don't have the answer. But we tend to overestimate or underestimate technologies and you need people that will really, really push things forward. Because it's not easy for a new technology or a new idea to be adopted and nothing is obvious. It's not that you will go and you say your story and people say, oh my God, that's it, right? No, you have to fight for it.
[01:09:15] Speaker A: Ideas don't sell themselves, Katerina. It is people. You helping people to help people. Patience. And it is a people science as, as smart and as qualified and as credentialed as you are. Ideas will not sell themselves. So we are on your team. I'm so thrilled to have this time with you and also to really indulge in the deep science. I hope anyone who is listening, who is, you know, getting into this and dealing with my questions, you know, to be a participant in this journey and see it through, what's possible, that is what gets me excited every day is it's, it's what is possible and how can we change the future. So very excited, more to come and I'll look forward to speaking to you on the next time. So thank you.
[01:09:59] Speaker B: Thank you, thank you, Stuart. I really enjoyed talking to you.
[01:10:02] Speaker A:
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