#64: Walter Stockinger, Yoni Falkson - This was 2021 - A Year in Review Part 5/7

Part 5 of the Year in Review Recording.

1 hour minutes of inspiring conversations with speakers from previous podcast episodes and business partners of the hosts.

 What was hot in 2021, and what do our speakers expect for 2022?

In this episode, we talk about

• The Effects of the Pandemic on Business Life
• The Future of ADCs in Oncology
• Mental Health
• Psychedelic Drug Development
• Gilgamesh Pharmaceutical, Christian Angermayer, and Atai Life Science
• As well as Podcast notes

I hope you enjoy the conversation the same way I did.

Who are the Experts in this episode:

• Walter Stockinger
• Yoni Falkson

Video to the Episode: https://youtu.be/O8hsqfEVgmI

Timestamps:
(00:00) – Walter Stockinger - Introduction Hadean Ventures

(01:00) – Success 2022 – Hadean Ventures

(03:00) – Personal Interactions Matter

(03:36) – Work-Life at Hadean Ventures During the Pandemic

(05:18) – The Effects of the Pandemic on Travelling and the Learnings that Came with it

(07:18) – Portfolio Success in 2021

(11:52) – Difference of Ticket and Round Sizes in Europe and the US

(14:00) – Availability of Capital on the Market for Life Science Projects

(17:11) – Future Potential of ADCs in Oncology

(23:51) – The Future of mRNA Vaccines

(28:47) – Outlook for 2022

(30:00) – Yoni Falkson – Introduction

(31:05) – Gilgamesh Pharmaceutical and Podcast notes

(33:38) – Psychedelic Drug Development – Players on the field

(35:52) – Fundraising in the United States during the Pandemic

(38:04) – The Psychedelic Drug Development Area

(40:50) – Development of Mental Health in the US

(44:10) – Microbiome, Mental Health, and Diagnostics

(47:44) – Mission of Podcast Notes

(51:35) – Podcast notes, Beginner’s Mind, and the Antibacterial Space

(54:23) - The Podcast Notes Community

(55:37) The USP of Podcast Notes

(56:21) Outlook for 2022 – Yoni Falkson

Podcast Links:
Community Partner: https://linktr.ee/lsg2g
Christian Soschner: https://linktr.ee/soschner
Podcast Community: https://lsg2g.substack.com/
LSG2G Twitter: https://twitter.com/LGet2gether
LSG2G Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/life-science-get2gether
Podcast Episodes: https://pod.link/1493847125
Episodes on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlZfrwd6iXrQ3LIANISUpP22seS2CsCEV
Podcast Website: https://www.lifescienceget2gether.com/

Join Christian Soschner for expert coaching.
50% Off - With 35+ years in deep tech, startups/scaleups, and public companies, Christian offers power video sessions. Elevate strategy, execution, and leadership. Book Now.

Transcript

Christian Soschner 0:00

This is episode number 60 for this entire class of treatments is like 50 years behind where it should be, right?

Yoni Falkson 0:08

And part of our mission is to sort of accelerate that back into becoming a reality. And we all and the risk is so much lower, right? We we know these things work even before COMPASS, and now even more so you see COMPASS, you see maps of MDMA. You know, the clinical validation is there, even not just anecdotally anymore, and sort of legitimate, you know, large phase two and phase three studies. And so there's a lot of opportunity in general.

Christian Soschner 0:31

The fifth part of the year in review recording. This was 2021 and an outlook to 2022. One hour of inspiring conversations with speakers from previous podcast episodes and business partners of the hosts, you will find in this episode. What was hot in 2021 and what do our speakers expect for 2022? As a start into 2022, I will bring the entire recording of about seven and a half hours, live in seven separate episodes. And this here is episode number five, in which I was talking with Walter Stockinger from Hadian Ventures and Joni Falksen from Gilgamesh Pharmaceuticals and Podcast Notes. We were talking about the effects of the pandemic on business life, the future of ADCs in oncology, mental health, psychedelic drug development, Gilgamesh Pharmaceutical, Christian Angemeier, and Atai Life Science, as well as podcast notes. I hope you enjoy the conversation the same way as I did. Enjoy the show. Let's call in the next speaker. It's from Austria, and I hope I remember it right. Uh Sweden, Walter Stockinger, who founded Harley and Ventures. Walter, it's good to see you. Hello, Christian. Hello everybody. Astrid Matthias. Nice to see you again. Walter, how are you doing? Excellent. Although I'm not in Sweden, I have to say I'm in Austria. That's that's good. But I think your fund is located in Sweden and Norway, if I remember it right. That is correct.

Walter Stockinger 2:34

So our headquarters in Norway, but we do have also an office in Sweden, but uh as a team, we're quite spread around Europe. So we have team members in Germany, in in France, and and and and in Austria.

Christian Soschner 2:47

Walter, I'm curious in your successes from 2021, what was going on or is still going on in your fund? Yeah, still going on is actually the right way to say it.

Walter Stockinger 3:01

So uh I clearly, you know, it was an exciting year. But for all of us, lots of things happened that we've never experienced before. Um, on the Hadian side, uh, clearly raising fund number two in a very short period of time. We're actually having a first close because uh we expect the fund still to grow. Um that's it has to be on on place one. Uh so we've closed our second fund, the first close of our second fund, the uh fund size is already higher than uh fund number one was. So quite quite excited about this. Um and um, you know, and we already made the first investment, and we're gonna make probably two more before the end of the year out of fund number two. So everything is on track. Uh and the team is really the team has grown and has become a really good team now. So it's so much fun working with them. I know you just talked about you know being all virtual. I guess that has always been the case in life sciences. So we do invest globally. Um often we don't meet the companies we invest into for a long time, or very rarely. Um, so nothing new for us um with respect to our partners, business partners. Um that is something that was expected and has never hasn't changed much. Um, yeah, on the teams, but the team, our Haitian team is really fantastic. And actually, I I would, you know, I was listening a little bit into the other conversation. My impression is that actually the junior team members uh that would need more interaction, personal interaction. Um I think you earlier said, you know, you're from you know the people in the older generation who is used to personal interactions. I think actually it's the other way around in um in teams like ours, uh, the more senior people, you know, um they are used to they know what they're doing, hopefully. Um, the young people, they they still need some training. They would benefit more, I think, from personal interactions, from day-to-day coffee machine um kind of talk.

Christian Soschner 5:20

I'm curious, Walter, how do you handle the situation with the lockdowns with hard-end ventures? Um, do you have your offices open? Is it possible to meet or is everybody on home office?

Walter Stockinger 5:33

Well, we are, as I said earlier, right? We are spread across the continent anyway. So we are used to not meeting um each other that frequently. Having said that, for my life has changed dramatically. And I should also say, since you know our offices are the actual physical offices are in Norway and in Oslo and in Stockholm, they have a bit of a different lockdown experience between Austria too. Less lockdowns in Oslo, definitely fewer in Stockholm. Um so uh, but yeah, there was lots of home office even there. Um but uh for me, you know, I'm breaking out of my home office anyway. Uh what has changed really was that I'm not traveling anymore. I was on the plane at least twice, probably more often than that per week before the lockdown. And I've been traveling, I think, once during the last 12 months, and that is really, really very efficient now. Do you miss traveling? Yeah, we've done it for almost 15 years weekly.

Christian Soschner 6:44

No, not that much. Then it's there's a positive side. I miss it a little bit. I mean, I enjoyed um the conferences to meet also people in real life. I think also in in the life science industry, working from the lab or from home and working with people that are in different places all over the world is normal. But what I really loved was at least two or three times a year meeting at conferences and catching up and seeing people in real life. Uh, how do you see that, Walter?

Walter Stockinger 7:16

I do like to go and meet you at a coffee shop in Vienna.

Christian Soschner 7:20

We could do that. We could do that next week.

Walter Stockinger 7:23

You know, on a business trip or not. Uh yeah, I mean, you know, uh it's a necessity, but we never we we never travel for fun. Um, I think it becomes more apparent now that I do it so much less frequently, it becomes much more apparent how inefficient it is, how much time is spent on getting to the airport, being on a plane, you know. Uh yes, you may be able to work a little bit, uh, read a little bit, do some, you know, have even some leisure time. But um, I mean, all that time I'm now sitting in front of my computer and getting my emails done.

Christian Soschner 7:59

That's true. But when I think back to Bettina Resel, who said uh health literacy is also important, and she pointed out that walking. Uh, I think uh commuting or traveling, especially by airplane with airplanes, uh had some exercise built in. Or London, for example, the airport. Uh I did always I think six, seven, eight kilometers when I was traveling uh overseas.

Walter Stockinger 8:23

Actually, even that works better if I can't like see this in the background here is a stepper. Ah, cool. I get I get to do sport more often now. Yeah, yeah. I'm not traveling. Yeah. That's the truth. I I really I see you know, you asked me for the positive things. I I really, you know, I know there's lots of suffering and and and there's lots of personal tragedy and and all that, right? But uh, I mean, I I can honestly say I'm experiencing it in a very positive way, and I'm lucky. And you know, also our exit was in the context of COVID. Um, I should say, um, you know, very lucky.

Christian Soschner 9:06

Let's switch the conversation to your investments, the company you invested. What were the biggest successes of your companies in 2021?

Walter Stockinger 9:16

Ah, 20. I was hoping it's at 2020, right?

Christian Soschner 9:18

Because we can also go back to 2020. What was your biggest success in 2020?

Walter Stockinger 9:24

Well, clearly, clearly, I was now just like, yeah, so obviously, you know, we were uh investing in Temis that was sold uh to Merck in 2020. Um, but we had some very good news in 2012. Uh not everything was good, um, but even you know, a company, the one company where we really did not get the expected result, has a second project, and we are discussing offers now for that company. So even there, I I should I can say that um uh things are going fine. We had an oncology company that has uh very good safety data. Um we have a um a project a company that has an MS drug that uh also shows very good safety data. So on the clinical side, things are moving again. I think 2020 was a little different when all the clinical trial centers were were hauled, clinical trials were halted. Um lots of delays back then, and we were lucky again that uh most of our companies were pre-clinical stage in 2019. Um, so everything is moving, and um, you know, the proof is still in the pudding. Let's see, uh lots of critical data is coming out in 22. Like I mean, safety is good, but efficacy is better. So yeah.

Christian Soschner 10:40

Yeah, it's good to have some challenges still ahead. What about your other companies?

Walter Stockinger 10:44

Okay, so uh yeah, so so uh as I said, uh in September we closed, we had the first close of our second fund. And we have made already uh one investment, close one investment, uh closing one within the next four or five days, and probably a second one too. Well, which will be the third one then. Um those are really, I have to say, look, we're happy with fund number one, but I think fund number two shapes up to be better because um the the companies we invest into, we're really excited about. Uh the one that I can disclose already is uh maybe also a um uh a sign of the age of the time that we're living in. Um was an 87 million euros round. So we can imagine heavily syndicated, something that didn't happen in Europe until recently. Um that was an ADC, an antibody drug conjugate deal. I guess you know we discussed, we could briefly touch upon the hype around ADCs, but like which I think is absolutely justified. Um, so that was our first deal. Um companies called Emergence. And um and then um yeah, making maybe the one that it's an Austrian company, which also makes me always very happy because the board meetings are going to be close by. Um and um, you know, I'm actually I'm connecting again with people I met, uh people I know or have known since my postdoc times in in the States. Uh they're sitting on the their partner now in another fund who is also investing. And um and uh it's in the in the synthetic biology space, and I'm really excited about this. I think I think the sky's the limit um for this company. I I don't want to say the name yet because we haven't signed, and I think the company should first put out the press release about it. Um, but it's you know, uh very excited about it. I think that it's uh they have a fantastic technology. Um, we have mapped the the global spaces in the DNA synthesis field. Uh, nothing can do what they can do, time-wise, cost-wise, um, quality-wise. So it's and and it was really the first time you know we try to get, you know, this is a commercial product um that you want to sell, right? It's different from a drug development thing that you can basically do from your basement and with service providers. They need to sell products soon. Um, and uh that means they have to go to the United States right away, right? So we reached out to a number of US funds, and there was so much traction. I've never seen this before. So um, and in fact, most of them said no, the ticket sizes are too small.

Christian Soschner 13:40

So yeah, I think the ticket sizes or the the round sizes are still larger in the United States than in Europe. Do you get the same impression?

Walter Stockinger 13:49

So are the ticket sizes in Europe are getting larger? Is that what you what you just said?

Christian Soschner 13:54

Uh they are getting larger, but I think still in the United States, the round sizes and the ticket sizes are still much larger than in Europe.

Walter Stockinger 14:02

So I I wouldn't dare to just say, you know, the average is now, I but in my personal impression, what I'm seeing um through my filter, right, uh, is that more frequently in the states you have um you put syndicates, so even single funds with very large uh uh fund managers with very large funds uh investing big tickets into early pre-clinical stage companies. Obviously they go entrenched, I have no doubt about that. But you see a 40 million US round for a preclinical asset, something that was unthinkable in Europe until recently. So we were used to you know making a round and then hoping that the next round will come together with more investors. There was also a function, I guess various reasons. Um one of them is that the funds in Europe are not as big, although I have to say, with you know, LSP's recent fund, uh, their reaching size is comparable to what happens in the states. Um and so so we were always also having that financing risk right for the next step. So in the states, early stage, but financing it all the way, hopefully, to to to an excitable stage, right? While in Europe we had you know a seed round, a series A round, a series B round, every time new investors, every time the financing risk. And that is to some extent changing now. As I said, you know, we were just in an 87, 87 million round. Um, and and the rounds are getting bigger even here. Yeah.

Christian Soschner 15:39

Walter, I would like to use the opportunity. Astrid, you would like to say something, I guess.

Astrid Woollard 15:43

I was just wondering, you know, how can you see that there is actually increased competition for good deals? Is there actually more capital in general in the market now with you know all the life science hyper and COVID pandemic and whatever?

Walter Stockinger 15:56

Yeah, I'm not sure if you said this right. I'm I'm I'm talking specifically and exclusive about life sciences. So um no, no, but you reminded me Astrid that right, I'm talking about ventures, but obviously, you know, I I I have uh not much visibility uh to the rest of the uh the to other technologies and other um ecosystems. Um sorry now Astrid, can you repeat your question?

Astrid Woollard 16:23

Because uh we have heard today also already that you know there seems to be more capital floating into the life science sector. And I was wondering if you can also see that with uh when you screen for deals or when you actually talk to uh prospective investments, that it gets more competitive, that you also need to sort of display your edge as a fund or how you could really help them.

Walter Stockinger 16:44

Yes, absolutely. There's more money around the table. There are, I think, what also happens uh is that um pharmaceutical companies are now realizing that uh you know um you don't have to develop everything from the earliest stage yourself. So they're becoming more acquisitive at earlier stages. So and um and and that is absolutely happening. We have seen both. We have seen starting to see competition for certain deals um uh in hot spaces, ABC specifically, uh, where the competition was so big that uh you know that it was difficult to get in. More importantly, and more personally, I took the fact that you know we negotiated, we did a long due diligence on an asset uh um at the beginning of the year, end of last year, beginning of 21. Long-term due diligence. The company was not able to raise money for a long time, and we looked at the asset and we really liked it. Uh, and then you know, at the we had a term sheet signed, and then a second party was going to join the term sheet after a real effort from our side to actually raise money and get more people into the deal. And then suddenly um the pharma company stepped in and bought the asset. That was painful because I still think it's a great asset, and they did it, you know, they did the right thing. Um, would have liked to be part of it. Uh so that wasn't that's my negative experience. That's the most negative experience of uh the year 21 for me, losing such a deal to a pharma company.

Christian Soschner 20:09

It's a it's a good problem to have, I guess, because you had other successes uh also. Uh Walter, do you have a couple of minutes? I would like to use the opportunity uh to switch the break that we have between the speakers, or to use the break between the speakers to talk about trends in life science. I think you experience if you agree, Matthew Matthias and Astrid, that we handle it that way. Um, Walter, I think you have very excellent insights into the life science industry in Europe and the United States. And you already mentioned one trend, um ADCs, ADCs. Can you talk a little bit more about what you believe the potential is of this technology?

Walter Stockinger 20:50

Yeah. So to those who don't know what ADCs are, um, so the history is that obviously, you know, we have chemotherapeutics to treat cancer, and we know they are limited, and now they are, you know, um uh checkpoint inhibitors, which you know facilitate or help your own immune system to attack cancer. Because we knew for a long time that our immune system is relevant for the cancer, uh, and and companies have developed antibodies against certain epitopes targets on cancer cells. There are not that many, frankly, but there are a few. Uh the best known is probably her two on on in certain breast cancers. Um, and her septin um has been out there for a long time as an antibody that binds to the cell surface of these cancer cells. The problem with antibodies is that they are actually not the prime immune defense, the primary immune defense against cells in our body. They are actually meant to be, if you excuse my teleological argument, uh uh they are meant to be um targeting foreign invaders like viruses or uh or bacteria, right? To target cells in our body that go awry, that do something they shouldn't do, we actually usually use the cellular immune response, T cells specifically. Uh not only, and the world is always way more complex than than than you know. I'm trying, you know, as far as I don't understand everything myself, but uh, you know, I'm trying to paint a simplified picture here. So so cancers have been tried, company has have tried and failed, with a few exceptions, like receptin, to use our antibody immune response or use directly antibodies to target cancer. Receptin does work not very well, it does. Uh enough to get it approved, enough, you know, to help some patients, but the response is not very good. Now, because you know, once this thing binds to a cell to a cancer cell, what the cancer doesn't trigger cell death necessarily, right? Um now what com what people have tried now for a long time is actually to make this antibody into an actual killing machine by linking a toxin to that antibody. And you know, that this is a feasible way forward has been clear for a long time. The problem is uh that these toxins they have to be bound to a linker, and then the linker was released, although it shouldn't be released by the antibody still in the circulation. Um, or then it was not released, and I'm sure there are a thousand other problems. So these antibody drug killing cell cancer cell killing drugs. This commutate, right? That it just didn't work so well for a long time until uh until CLG genetics really uh had a breakthrough. Uh and um I don't know about all the details, but the breakthrough must be in picking the right toxin and picking the right linker. The antibody was clear, it's the same as receptive, right? Which is already proved. Just think a working toxin that really gets released only inside of the cancer cell, right? If you achieve that, then you've got a drug, and that uh and that drug uh is catsila. It's a little bit better. You would assume it's much better. It's only a little bit better than her septine, right? But it's better. And now and and and from that moment on, people have started to optimize LINKE and toxin. And I think last year or this year, a drug was improved uh that is just the you know, same target, still the same target, still HER2 as an antibody target, right? But linker improved, uh toxin improved, and suddenly you have a fantastic, fantastic response. So it really works much, much better than uh both um um catsila, the the antibody, the old antibody drug conjugate, and uh uh the antibody low receptive. So, what I want to say here is like by improving at you know the linker, the chemistry of the linker, the type of toxin you optimize around this, and suddenly out of a you know, somewhat working drug, you make a real super drug. And that I think, you know, because her two is not the only target, there's four, five, six other targets that one could think of uh for many different cancers. Uh and I think there's really there's really um there's really excitement about these new linker technologies and the new toxins. Um and uh yeah, I think I think this is this is the the most exciting in uh um development in oncology uh that I've seen last year.

Christian Soschner 25:45

I agree with that. I'm pretty amazed what chemists can do today uh to improve the technology and uh make it more effective and less dangerous at the same time um for patients. And since we are talking about holy grails, anyways, uh I think ADCs also have a holy grail potential. So if chemists uh get enough uh money to do what you said, take uh antibodies that already are approved on the market, link them properly with a noble toxine or with an existing toxine, they have a good chance of uh making treatments more much more effective.

Walter Stockinger 26:20

Yeah, I agree. I think it's it it moves to being a game of big pharma um because um now it's an optimization. I mean, I'm sure somebody will find a new target, uh, but it's good enough to to you know to use one of the existing targets that works also. Um and and you know, our investment was in is in in one of those cases where existing antibody drug conjugate is okay, um but you know, the new linker, the new the new toxin, uh in it looks really, really good in in at that early stage.

Christian Soschner 26:57

Now it's good to hear that also other areas are moving forward, but let's take a step sideways back to our current problem. I think everybody heard a lot about mRNA vaccines and uh their potential for uh treating the actual viral change. What I always was wondering um for investors in, for example, BioNTech, Moderna, Pfizer, was that it for mRNA vaccines, or are there also other uh is there also other potential in other indications? What do you think, Walter?

Walter Stockinger 27:30

Yeah. So mRNA vaccines were not invented for infectious diseases, they were considered uh, you know, it was in the manufacturing technology, you know, the cold chain, the problem that they uh, which is not, you know, that they are very uh very unstable, uh, although this is getting better. Um those are all problems that people are aware. Um, also, you know, the other technologies are established and can be, you know, you have the big you know uh manufacturers, they can they can pump out vaccines at the high amounts, uh, but it's still also uh uh old vaccines, right? Viral vaccines are difficult to make. So uh mRNA vaccines originally were made for oncology purposes, for cancer, mostly for cancer indications. Uh and were not a success, neither for moderna nor for biointed for a long time. These companies, you know, they were created on the promise of what's called neoantigens, right? Cancers have uh specific uh cancer and you know, may have a random mutation that is randomly, you know, uh possibly random, may stimulate the immune system, and you want to push the immune system by giving that body uh, you know, a vaccine that is exactly that mutation, so that even more is made and the immune system can uh attack the cancer. So it was a personalized approach. So you had to do something where you can easily change the vaccine by changing the secrets of the vaccine. So that's what what mRNE vaccines were made, uh, cancer therapy, uh no success so far at all. And then COVID came out, right? Uh and uh they were the fastest in uh among the fastest in approaching that because it's very easy to change um the secrets of an mRNA vaccine. Nothing else changes, right? And it becomes a vaccine against something completely different. So uh great to do something quick now. Uh with the rest of the world where vaccines are being used and this is infectious diseases in general, right? The question is what are we talking about? There are two big markets. There's the uh normal vaccination market where where that where we we all get vaccinated, like FSME or like Austria at least, right? But but smallpox or um any of those measles, right? And the question for me is why would you I mean those are I mean, yes, a very large amount of doses are given, but um it's a low-cost game. Right. Because uh, you know, it's a preventative therapy, uh sorry, it's a preventative uh approach. People who take it are healthy, you don't pay much money for healthy people.

Speaker 1 30:16

Right.

Walter Stockinger 30:16

Once they get sick, the the the you pay the you pay, right? But for so these these vaccines that prevent you know the standard disease, they are established. I find it hard to believe that the economics, although I I can't do the calculations, but I find it hard to believe that somebody would enter with an this space with an mRNA vaccine. Why? It's a genericized business uh with where the scale matters and and um and uh you know the cost change when you have cold chain involved. I find it I I my guess would be no, no, they're not going that down that route. The next is the travel max vaccine market, right? And travel vaccines uh are uh super small. The problem for travel vaccines is the global market of a travel vaccine is in the, you know, if you got 200 million globally, it's a big travel vaccine. And that's not interesting. And a pharmaceutical that sales for 200 million, and then it can't be expensive, right? It can't it can't be an expensive product, so the margins are low. So will they enter travel vaccines? Maybe because it's easy. Could be. Um, but I don't think this is kind of the a blue sky opportunity. Uh where they have a place, probably in the you know, and you know, I hope I hope there's no vaccine specialist listening, but but I I I think where they have a place or may have a place is in in in a flu vaccine that has to be changed every single year. Right. So the rapid change of epitopes, that's something you achieve very well with mRNA. Or in the next pandemic, right? Where you very quickly need to develop the next vaccine against the next uh uh virus.

Christian Soschner 32:03

New viruses will come anyways, I think, as far as I remember, every three, four, five years, something is happening in this world. And if uh Python Modiana, CuriVac, uh uh Biotech, and all other companies that are doing research in that field can really bring something quickly to the market. It's uh it's a great help. Uh I guess. Walter, we have two minutes left. What is your outlook for 2022? Open question.

Walter Stockinger 32:29

Uh open question. Two minutes. For me personally, as for our fund, lots of efficacy um data coming out. So very excited to uh I'm very uh you know, very much looking forward to that.

Christian Soschner 32:43

It's gonna be uh hopefully good news, but we we we will see when you have good news to share. We can always do a podcast to uh tell the world what's going on. Walter, thank you very much for your time. I wish uh you, your team, and your family all the best for 2022 and happy and merry Christmas. Thank you very much, you too. Bye. Have a great day. Let's move to the next speaker. Uh we had already colleagues from Shanghai, uh colleagues from Europe, uh, United Kingdom. Um, and now we are going to the east coast of the United States with Joni Faikson joining. Yanni, good to see you again.

Yoni Falkson 33:31

Likewise, thanks for having me. Very good.

Christian Soschner 33:34

Thanks for coming online. How is it going for you?

Yoni Falkson 33:38

Uh good. It's exciting times, you know, busy trying to finish out as many things as we can before the the year ends. So uh, you know, all good. Definitely keeping busy.

Christian Soschner 33:48

How is life on the East Coast in the United States these days?

Yoni Falkson 33:52

Uh it's great. I mean, I actually we recently moved down to North Carolina, so I used to be up in New York. Uh the weather here is warmer, uh a little bit sunnier. So we're we're very happy kind of being a little bit further south. Things are probably a little bit less uh restricted from that perspective as well, where I am now. So it's a little bit better for the kids and just more relaxed kind of atmosphere than being closer to New York. So um, you know, it's it's nice. It's literally 70 degrees Fahrenheit today. Um, so it's it's uh quite warm for the middle of December, I think, even for North Carolina, which is lovely. So in a good mood.

Christian Soschner 34:34

You're blessed. I'm in the middle of Europe and we have uh winter, so it's uh deep temperatures and it's very cold. Yoni, tell me a little bit more about your company. What are you doing with your company?

Yoni Falkson 34:45

Yeah, I mean, I think maybe I should give a little background myself and then and then the company if that's um Yeah, so I'm I'm currently the COO here at a small biotech, free clinical biotech known as Gilgamesh Pharmaceutical, which I'll be happy to talk more about. My background, spent a number of years in kind of global pricing market access. Uh, spent many years at regeneration advisor and early commercial development and new product planning. I was the prior co-founder of StreamWorks Therapeutics, which was a spin-out from Pfizer. So we took a number of their shelf programs. Um and now I'm I'm joined in about June to Gilgamesh. Well, prior to that, I was more of an advisor. So not too new to the company. Also on the side of that, we can, if you want to talk about the podcast, and also the founder of podcast notes. Um, and so that's actually how we, you know, Christian, we we usually connected. So that's the high level of me. I mean, Gilgamesh is, you know, I'm sure many of you are sort of familiar with the popularity of a number of kind of psychedelics-focused companies these days. Uh, you know, we're coming at it more as a traditional, you know, biotechnology company going at the space, right? So we are only developing novel compounds. We're looking to make you know clear improvements with clear composition of matter IP over the molecules you've probably all heard of by now, you know, psilocybin that compasses the developing and ketamine, uh, DMT type compounds and ibegain as well, which is uh potentially very, very valuable for treatment of opioid addiction and other kinds of addiction. So we have a pretty broad and deep portfolio. We're sort of in the late stages of preclinical. Um, you know, we're venture funded. We raised our series A in April. We're just kicking off our series B already, um basically being in January next year to raise additional capital as we go very quickly into the clinic for the first elite programs for next year. So busy times, uh exciting times, but in a very you know dynamic space, we'll say, uh, in the public and private markets.

Christian Soschner 36:47

So three questions to you, but let's start with the first one. Uh psychedelics, I think you are operating in mental health, uh finding solutions for mental health diseases, which especially in the pandemic, I think it's a big issue, and uh getting relief there definitely helps. Uh in Europe, I heard uh a lot about a Thai life sciences. I think they're also in a similar space. And uh one of the investors is uh a European, it's uh Christian Angermeyer. Uh, are you in a similar space operating like uh Thai life science or are there differences? It's just out of interest.

Yoni Falkson 37:17

Yeah, no, so I think it's certainly all connected, right? So funnily enough, our one of our co-founders, um actually both our co-founders, so their prior companies were acquired by a tie. So um Perception Neuroscience, which was acquired by a tie, which was their archetyme, uh, it was our CEO's company before this. Uh, and so he's still connected to the company and Christian and all of that. And another company for another founder uh on the chemistry side called Cures was also acquired by a tie. So there's there's kind of really close connections. I think you know, they're they're certainly early movers, they have a very broad portfolio, but they're our kennel is a really interesting program and it'll hopefully maybe be less associative. Um it's still an injectable. Um our, you know, in general, our thesis and approach is really trying to be make improvements and sort of be the next generation of psychedelics. So we're certainly behind them, you know, going public and doing all these sorts of things, but we're growing and we're also, you know, time is built by sort of combining programs of different companies. Our entire portfolio, which is now up to eight programs, is all internally developed. So it's all novel medicinal chemistry developed within the company. So there's certainly similarities. I think we're looking to be the next generation, right? So our ketamine that we're developing is orally bioavailable, which is in many ways a big improvement for ketamine, which is sort of use IV, uh, you know, a lot of advantages from you also think it, we also believe ours would be non-dissociative at therapeutic levels. So you could see a lot more at-home use, chronic use, experimenting with different treatment paradigms. But you know, I think they're they're certainly in the space on the ketamine side, they're going to be a competitor as well. Um, but we have many other programs in different targets within the psychedelic space.

Christian Soschner 39:02

We were talking about, coming to the second question, we were talking about uh fundraising uh in this podcast episode today, a lot with investors and entrepreneurs from Europe. And um also a little bit about similarities and differences with the United States. I'm curious about your series B. You said that uh you're in the process of fundraising. Uh, what's the goal for you as a US-based company? What are you aiming at uh with your series B? How much do we want to raise and what are the milestones that you want to tackle?

Yoni Falkson 39:32

Sure. So I can go into a little bit. So I guess some context, our series A was 27 million and we raised about seven before. So we've raised about 34 million to date. In the neurospace, trials are big and expensive, right? This isn't rare diseases. So to do what we're looking to accomplish, which is we have four lead programs, two which already been nominated and moving to the clinic. We're trying to do a lot. So we were pretty capital intensive for what we're trying to accomplish just because you know it's a lot of trials and trials are expensive. So we're looking to raise anywhere from 65, 60 to 75 or higher with series B. And we really consider this almost a crossover. Right. So we would expect, you know, all things go well, we'll raise this, we'll have a very, you know, a very nice long runway. We'll wait for our phase one B data, which should be in actual patients, which is kind of more clinical validation than just pure safety. And that would likely be a trigger for IPO. And, you know, that could happen in two or three programs, you know, not you know, probably by some point in the second half of 2023, right? So crossover series B around now, but 18 months later, IPO, uh, if the window is looking good. If not, at least we have raised sufficient capital that we're not, you know, needing to do something we don't want to do, and we continue doing what we need to do and keep progressing the programs. So that's the the general gist of that.

Christian Soschner 40:52

That's pretty quick within 18 months um going public. I believe you are aiming at the Nasdaq, I guess, as a US company. Sorry? I guess you're aiming uh to get listed on the Nasdaq as a US company, so it's quite logical.

Yoni Falkson 41:07

Yeah, that would be very, very likely, yeah. Almost definitely Nasdaq would be the goal.

Christian Soschner 41:12

I'm curious again, uh, in your valuation, because we had a discussion that the valuations in uh worldwide due to the pandemic uh just skyrocketing because there's so much capital on the market. How do you perceive uh this valuation discussion in the United States? Do you believe that you saw an impact also um in the United States on what's possible to put on the market valuation-wise due to the uh bailout programs that were uh uh brought to the world from all governments globally?

Yoni Falkson 41:43

So I'm I'm not a great person to speak to sort of the broader fundraising market, just because prior to, you know, I just came from Regeneron, right? So that was sort of not the world I was living into recently. Um, but obviously, you know, I'm pretty pretty proud of the Regeneron antibody treatment. Um, you know, and I think it's also confounded by the fact that psychedelics in general is a very hot space. And so, COVID or not, there's been a lot of you know excitement within biotech and without biotech for funding in these spaces. So, you know, certainly I think valuations are very strong in the psychedelic space. I can't necessarily draw a line from COVID to that. It might likely be through psychedelics, um, just because there's a lot of passion around the opportunity here and the fact that if you look at mental health treatment, nothing's happened in like 50 years. It's pretty terrible, right? We've we've not accomplished much as an industry. And to some degree, for political reasons, this entire class of treatments is like 50 years behind where it should be, right? And part of our mission is to sort of accelerate that back into becoming a reality. And we all and the risk is so much lower, right? We we know these things work even before COMPASS, and now even more so. When you see COMPAS, you see maps of MDMA, you know, the the clinical validation is there, even not just anecdotally anymore in sort of legitimate in large phase two and even phase three studies. And so there's a lot of opportunity in general, the risk for sort of totally novel treatments pre-clinically in neuro, you know, the the probability of successes are awfully low historically. Whereas in our space, they're much, much higher than sort of historical norms, right? So the opportunity of the size of the populations, the attractiveness of the mechanisms that we know they're sort of clinically validated, and the unmet need is just so enormous that there's massive upside. And I think that's kind of creating this groundswell, as well as just a lot of people's personal experiences with I think a lot of these compounds. You know, Christian speaks very openly about that at a time, right? You know, he speaks a lot about that as well. So I think all those are driving that, probably more so than anything COVID-related, to be honest. I think COVID probably delayed some programs that were already in the clinic just from more of the logistic complexities of trial sites being shut down and you know, all of that that I think has worked itself out by now, for the most part, you know.

Christian Soschner 44:02

I think I think your solutions are needed. I mean, I don't know the situation in the in the States, but uh here in Europe, um, what I hear from colleagues is that mental health issues are rising uh due to lockdowns and isolation. And uh, but as you said, I mean, there is nothing new on the market, and hopefully your solutions will help to solve that. Uh, how do you see the developments uh for mental health issues in the United States, generally speaking, with the lockdowns? Do you see also a change uh on the market?

Yoni Falkson 44:30

Yeah, no, I mean there's data and it's all terrible, frankly. Like it was terrible to begin with, and it's only gotten more depressing. You know, if you just want to think about overdose, I think this was this past year, it was over 100,000 overdose deaths in the US, which is unfathomable to think about, right? So especially fentanyl-driven, you know, opioid addiction in particular has been a huge problem. Depression rates are up in all ages, you know. In the US, especially on the on the, at least, you know, personally, and in sort of what's been going on relative to what I hear in Europe, I think the closures of schools and like aggressive use of massing down to like ages two is happening and continues to happen in many places in the US. I think Europe's been a lot more reasonable about, and that's certainly not helped anyone when it comes to sort of mental health issues in the young. Um, so I think depression, there's very stats, like depression is up way higher, you know, drug abuse, which is a function of a lot of these mental health disorders. So, whatever happened in Europe, I'm sure it's it's the same, if not worse, you know, for many parts of the US, unfortunately. So, you know, the problem is, you know, this is a long road, right? Where we're not going to be able to be on the market soon. Um, but it's it's not a problem that's gonna go away or fix itself, unfortunately. Um Yeah, and I think the you know the treatment paradigm of like try an SSRI and then I guess try another SSRI and try another SSRI is like this as great as it gets around here in mental health. And so there's really a big need for different mechanisms so you can really customize therapy to patients. And you know, in psychedelics, you know, in many ways they're they're amazingly useful, but they're also not solo agents, right? There's many reasons to believe that they're supplemental to psychotherapy and can make that more effective. If you saw the maps data in PTSD, which was spectacular, right? They did cognitive able therapy plus MTMA, and and you know, the combined response rates were you know amazing, right? Because it just seems logical. If you're gonna go through CBT, which is a pretty traumatic thing for someone with PTSD, if you have MDMA on board and you're sort of directly a lot happier and sort of open-minded to things, if you're trying to reintegrate that that memory, it's gonna make that a much more effective process. It's gonna improve compliance in the first place because that's kind of the problem with PTSD and CBT in the first place, is that compliance is very low because who wants to re- you know, re-experience this traumatic thing on purpose, which is basically what you have to do. And so, you know, this whole class of medications, I think, is will hopefully lead to a change in just the overall way that we treat mental health, which is not like, oh, I'll just take a pill, call me in four to eight weeks, we'll see if the SSRI is doing anything, versus you know, the rapid onset of like, well, no, in a week or a single dose in most cases, if you're responding well to treatment, right? So it's tons of big upside to all these classic treatments.

Astrid Woollard 47:17

Oh, I think that's very fascinating, you know, uh topic mental health, because there are so many unknowns that we still have in sort of diagnosing these. I mean, I recently read somewhere a study where it was that actually 70 or 80% of all mental health can be sort of uh derived back from imbalances in the microbiome. So again, you wonder, you know, how much does psychotherapy can really help there? Or also psychedelics or other approaches if there are some fundamental things that we still don't understand about mental health that still need to be sort of researched before.

Yoni Falkson 47:50

Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, certainly the second brain concept of the of the microbiome, I think is very interesting. I think that seems sort of like a high number. I think it may be connected, but what's causative versus correlative is I'm not too sure. I don't know that exact study. That seems high. But yeah, look, there's there's no doubt that our current the way that we even diagnose mental health disorders is kind of you know blunt at best, right? Like what is you know, treatment resistant depression or MDD? The the sort of heterogeneity between within that is is enormous, right? It's it's sort of, you know, if you think about the level of sophistication compared to oncology, right? We're not to it's like saying we're treating depression, it's like saying we're treating cancer. It's like I have a cancer drug. It's like good luck, you'll get response, and some people have no idea why, right? So getting better with predictive biomarkers, you know, trackers of response or relapse so you can you can sort of make adjustments to treatment over time, the level of sophistication is not there because the brain is really complicated, right? Basically. But we, you know, the good news is we know these mechanisms really are very powerful. But what they've not been done, and part of the reason why Gilgamesh exists is they weren't developed to be mental health treatments, not really, right? You have these, you know, they were either plant-based or sort of, you know, Shulgin came up with them in a lab, but no one optimized these to be sort of like safe, effective treatments, right? To the treatment duration of like a six-hour psilocybin experience isn't very practical for many people in many healthcare systems, right? Whereas one of our programs is a similar kind of two-way serotonin releaser type program, but it's it's optimized PK for an hour, right? So you go in, you have a one-hour experience, it's much more cost effective, it's much more convenient. Hopefully that's long enough to really sort of have a true experience and get some of the benefits, right? Some of these, so that's sort of an example of our programs. Some of our programs are non-lucinogenic, some are lucinogenic, right? There's a lot of debate as to do you need that experience. We're not going to just make a guess because I think everyone else would be guessing. We think sometimes it depends on the patient, depends on the levels of theory of their disease, maybe offer their initial onset experience. You need a true psychedelic experience for maintenance treatment. You can deal with something that's more subpsychedelic that can be used safely at home.

unknown 50:07

Right.

Yoni Falkson 50:08

And so we're trying to develop a portfolio to kind of check all these boxes and be customized to address the variability within the patient population. Right. We're somewhat stuck with known DSM DSM sort of levels for what diagnosis is and regulatory pathways, but it doesn't mean we can't come up with biomarkers and flexible treatment paradigms. You know, in the long run, that's where we kind of need to get to. Where it's, okay, you did try an SSRide, that didn't work. You know, try a 2A, try an NMDA. You know, you can can mix and match and experiment to see what works with patients much more rapidly and hopefully, you know, massively increase the response rates because most patients are not really well treated right now, as we know. And there's certainly side effects to the current treatments.

Christian Soschner 50:51

Sounds to me from what I hear that we have a lot of uh unsolved problems in that field, and it's a nice call to actually for investors to support companies like yours or Thai Life Science to come up with solutions and work on solutions for that. I mean, as you mentioned, the data that we see is depressing sometimes, uh, what's going on in this area. Um, let's switch to another topic to the last question I have to you. I mean, you mentioned it at the beginning. Uh, how we met, it was via your uh platform podcast notes. What uh is your goal with that platform?

Yoni Falkson 51:24

Yeah, I mean, it's it's I guess my passion project is a way of thinking about it. So we started in 2015 and it was just sort of a you know, something to play with, kind of blog that didn't have much traction and things like that. But that's kind of scratching your own itch, that sort of four-hour work week kind of concept of you know, experimenting. I was on the train commuting into Pfizer, and I had I had time to listen to a lot of podcasts and started taking notes and putting them online and that's sort of you know how things things began. Um, you know, where we are now, where you know, almost everything that we do is sort of free and without ads and just sort of open to the community. And so I think we've become to some degree, hopefully, kind of a useful service to the podcast world for useful evergreen notes on topics that are of interest to people, right? So that's how kind of we built like that fundamental base and our sort of user base. That's how we grow between like our newsletter subscriptions and our Twitter followers and uh and things like that. We obviously we have kind of built it into a little bit more of a business these days. And so we have a growing number of premium subscribers that get some additional extra kind of content. Uh and we monetize in a few other ways, but you know, it's because it's fully bootstrapped. This I don't have, I can be very patient, right? This is not a venture-funded thing where I'm trying to like, I don't think this is a venture-funded type business, right? Where there's massive upside. It's the sort of thing that, you know, we've had competitors over time, but it's very, very hard to get to any degree of scale or profitability. And almost everyone gives up like years before that happened. Um, and so that's our moat, I suppose, is just like grit. But, you know, to me, it's like I want to keep doing what we're doing. You know, part of the value is we kind of curate what we think are the most interesting podcasts. We take notes, we share those out, and we keep doing that and we'll grow our sort of subscriber set and kind of few other things. But you know, I just want to keep on growing it slowly. It's not, there's no big master of land besides kind of keep on doing what we're doing and and hopefully providing some useful things. And, you know, I personally enjoy having like this massive archive of notes and podcasts that I personally think are interesting. It's a it's a very useful kind of kind of tool, right? To the idea of just sort of you know scratching your own edge for the company. They don't all have to be venture level potential to be worthwhile. And so that's kind of what we've been what I've been focused on.

Christian Soschner 53:45

Here you are on you. Yeah. Uh you have built a nice platform, I think. Um I mean, the the reason why I reached out to you was uh the success you created with my podcast. Um when FargoMates did a deal with Biotech, um I didn't expect much impact on the podcast. Um, I had an interview with the founders of FagoMed last year and uh they're in phage therapies, and uh basically uh it was not very famous uh until um they closed the deal. And since then I had an uptake in downloads, and I was curious where this is coming from. So I did several things, uh, some things myself, like uh implementing a new content marketing strategy. Uh, then also I thought, okay, when Fagomet is making a deal, of course, a little bit of uh um download improvement should be visible, but I didn't expect uh huge impact. So now we have, I think, about 10x, uh, so 10 times the download numbers I had two months or three months ago. And um, I started uh using Google and trying to find out where is this coming from, and I saw a lot of traction from the United States. And one factor I found was uh your podcast notes and that you highlighted and featured the Fagomet episode. Can you tell me a little bit more what your reasons is that you are doing that, that you're just picking uh up podcasts and uh and highlights them in a way that you present it to a community that you really have an impact?

Yoni Falkson 55:14

Yeah, no, it was you know a little bit luck, I guess, as it always is. I think I came across a tweet about your podcast. I'm not sure exactly who where that came from, but uh and it it struck me as interesting. And so sort of I, you know, we we we worked up notes to it. Uh personally, the reason why I was interested is because, you know, as much as we talk about antivirals and viruses have taken over the whole world, it's all anyone talks about. Personally, you know, in the long run, I'm I I think we don't talk enough nearly about you know antibiotics and anti-infectives in that space, um, you know, was something that you know I was you know pushing Pfizer get back into back when I was there in the in the like around 2015, because I kind of considered it sort of like base level, like we don't have basic level anti-infectives, like your oncology portfolio is dead too, guys, because if we can't immunocompromise people and protect them with antibiotics, you can't give them oncology drug. But so it's sort of been like a pet issue of interest in mine for for many years. And so when I saw that, I was like, oh, let's go take notes on it. And one of our writers is you know very knowledgeable and has, you know, a master's degree in biology, and she's you know, best sort of situated for these kinds of podcasts. Um and so that's kind of why, you know, I saw it and I was like, oh, this is an interesting, you know, that's you know, let's let's take notes on it. You know, and I think that the upside is if you look across our you know, 24,000 newsletter subscriptions and our Twitter followers and our just sort of daily traffic, we also have a playlist. So every time we take notes on a podcast, it gets automatically added to sort of like a master playlist of what we take notes on, right? And so we have subscribers to that, and it's a possibility to track, but in many different places between Android and you know, Apple Podcasts and Overcast and whatever. And so that's going to trigger, you know, listens directly, there are their plays on our website. So anyone's like who's looking at the page, you can play and listen directly there too. So between people being driven by Google and by Twitter and by the newsletter and this and the and the the RSS feed for for the podcast playlist, you know, all those kind of come together to being pretty significant for most podcasters, unless you're sort of in the upper tiers where you know Joe Rogan doesn't care. Like he's not gonna notice, you know, when I take notes on something that we do, but you know, 99% of podcasters aren't there. And so I think that's what most likely drove kind of your spike. Uh, and I think it's it's something we've seen with other podcasts that we've taken notes on when you know, when we take notes on lesser-known podcasts, uh often you know, people like be like, Thank you. Where did that come from? That was kind of exciting, you know what kind of drove the spike. Um, so I think you did some good detective work. Uh, and so you know, humbly, I'm pretty sure most of that was was kind of podcast notes driven, I would think.

Christian Soschner 57:55

Can can you give us a little bit of background to your community? Uh, what's in your community? What are who are the listeners?

Yoni Falkson 58:03

Yeah, so I'd say it's majority male, probably like 65, 35 male, anywhere from like 18 to 35, right? So um I don't have like great data to be honest, but I mean there's certainly relatively um higher levels of income involved in or interested in tech. You know, there's a lot of well, we do a lot of content on like, you know, technology, startups, entrepreneurship, increasingly crypto. So there's a lot of, you know, there's a kind of growing part of our communities on the crypto side of things. Um, you know, Twitter is definitely our biggest sort of, if you think about Twitter in general as a medium and who starts to aggregate there, that's by far sort of our main location, right? So these people are kind of like lifelong learners, people interested in improving their health, creating side gigs, side hustles, you know, interested in joining startups or about venture capital. Those are kind of the major topics that we focus on. So it sort of attract people either working in those areas or interested in them at the very least. So that's kind of our community. You know, it's not um as much as I wish it would be, it's apologies for the dog. Um, it's it's not that we don't have like an active community where everyone's kind of talking all the time, because as a basic function, what we're doing is we're we're trying to save people time. So you don't have to listen to like 10 podcasts that don't have time for and they can find what's most useful. And we're sort of an efficiency benefit, right? Which means you're not going to then go spend an hour talking on a Slack channel with other people. Because like part of the point is to actually save time and spend less time listening to the podcast, but getting a lot of the learning from it. So I don't, as much as I wish we did, we don't have like an active engaged Discord or something like that on the community side of things.

Christian Soschner 59:44

No, it would be great to stay in touch because I think it's a great opportunity to link Europe with the United States via your tool. And let's see how to evolve that in the future. Yoni, I have one final question to you. We have four minutes left until the next speakers are coming. Uh, what's your outlook for 2022, your personal outlook? Open question.

Yoni Falkson 1:00:03

Oh, I don't know. I mean, I think I'm just I'm probably overly optimistic that that things will just go a little bit more back to normal, but it's probably just wishful thinking, unfortunately. Um, you know, that's sort of like the background of everything is like, what about all the COVID stuff, right? So, you know, we we try to try and like keep things as normal as we can for the kids. And I hope that that, you know, I think there's a lot of hysteria and a lot of, you know, misinformation and miscommunication coming from our governmental areas now actually is more my bigger concern, not the others where they called it misinformation. I think there's a lot of dishonesty going on, and I hope that people sort of start to calm down and try to move back to reality and understanding that like we have an endemic disease and we're gonna have to live with it. And it doesn't really matter what vaccine passes insanity that you're trying to do. Um, so maybe that's too political, but like I kind of hope all that stuff goes back a bit more to normal because I don't think it's helpful. Um, you know, on the business side, you know, I still spend the large majority of time is focused on Gilgamesh. You know, I think we'll we'll hopefully have a very successful Series A uh coming up, and that will give us the runway and the capital we need to be really aggressive in developing our programs and and growing the team and all those good things, which is very, very exciting. You know, we're a fully remote kind of company, so we're we're sort of built for COVID. Um, but it doesn't mean we don't like to meet up in person sometimes. So some travel trips and things like that put a hamper on things. But um, you know, that's that's kind of my focus. And then you know, podcast notes is really just kind of continue to grind it out and and grow what we do and keep it keep it running. But that's the I guess the the three parts of my answer.

Christian Soschner 1:01:40

Okay, thank you very much for joining our recording today, our session today. I wish you, your team, and your family all the best for 2022 and have a happy and merry Christmas. Thank you very much, Christian. Thanks for listening. Please, please share the podcast and make sure you've subscribed. Have a great day.