01:58:34 · John Coogan, D.A. Wallach, Jordi Hays
[01:58:34] S1: it. Yep. [01:58:34] S0: I believe it was from the decode data set that they actually figured out the mechanism for one anti cholesterol drug that's been very Wow. That still has benefits that will be harvested for years to come. Yeah. Now, the new thing that's happening is the AI labs are prospective buyers of biological data sets. And there's varying levels of sophistication inside of those companies. So Anthropic, a couple weeks ago, announced a number of partnerships with biotech companies. They're all trying to sell to the big pharmas in various ways. And as with all these questions of data sovereignty and so forth, the pharmas are a little bit in a difficult place. [01:59:21] S2: Apprehensive. [01:59:22] S0: They want to be innovative, they want to tell the street, they're doing everything on AI, but then they are a little guarded about their data. Mhmm. So I think it's going to be very interesting to see both how the big players decide to treat their own proprietary information and also how much the labs are willing to spend. Because, right, they've exhausted the Internet, they're paying Mercor and whoever else to go and generate expert style But this biological data, which really is intrinsically big data, I mean, you know, one experiment might create petabytes worth of information. You know, it it they think is an interesting place for them
01:59:22 · D.A. Wallach, Jordi Hays, John Coogan
[01:59:22] S0: They want to be innovative, they want to tell the street, they're doing everything on AI, but then they are a little guarded about their data. Mhmm. So I think it's going to be very interesting to see both how the big players decide to treat their own proprietary information and also how much the labs are willing to spend. Because, right, they've exhausted the Internet, they're paying Mercor and whoever else to go and generate expert style But this biological data, which really is intrinsically big data, I mean, you know, one experiment might create petabytes worth of information. You know, it it they think is an interesting place for them [02:00:01] S2: to try and suck up... How how is... How how do pharma executives view... Well, like what is their general view on the rhetoric within the tech industry around, you know, I think like this year everyone in AI was like, we really should cure cancer to help our popularity. [02:00:19] S0: When they're smoking cigs now. [02:00:21] S2: Yeah. Yeah. No sunscreen, all this stuff. Like what is the sort of pharma view on the rhetoric within tech? Do they laugh at it? Because they're sitting there being like, we've been curing cancer and helping... We're hated. And we're just hated. Yeah. [02:00:36] S0: Look, I think there's a mix of naivete and sophistication among the AI folks. So when they hear AI people say smart things, they go, cool. Yeah, let's run at [02:00:46] S1: it. [02:00:46] S0: Sure. Everyone respects Demis. [02:00:48] S1: Yeah,
02:00:48 · John Coogan, D.A. Wallach, Jordi Hays
[02:00:48] S1: Yeah, [02:00:49] S0: yeah. But when Demis says we're going cure all diseases in ten years, think people who have two PhDs and have been doing this for forty years ago, come on, man. One, you're giving a sort of false hope [02:01:00] S1: Sure. [02:01:00] S0: To a lot of people who are legitimately out there suffering or have a loved one who's on death's doorstep. [02:01:06] S1: Yeah. [02:01:06] S0: Like, that's a little messed up. Yeah. But on the other hand, they they also just think like it's not... [02:01:11] S1: Well, might be long tobacco So maybe he's pushing... [02:01:15] S0: I mean, I think it's an open question whether [02:01:17] S1: it's okay to just sort of [02:01:19] S0: sheep's clothing hedge fund manager. Probably. [02:01:22] S1: This this is a very [02:01:23] S0: long game that he's been playing. [02:01:25] S1: Exactly. Occam's razor. Occam's four d razor. [02:01:28] S0: I think it's legitimacy. [02:01:30] S2: What about robotics in a in a lab setting in an era like Kevin like Kevin Wheel has his his new company trying to sort of reassure stuff on the the R and D side. But but like that's been happening. Like people have said like we should automate labs. [02:01:52] S1: Every time someone picks a bottleneck goes and builds a business around it, the biotech community is like that actually wasn't the bottleneck. Like... [02:01:59] S2: Well, no no. But Kevin's Kevin's like strategy I think is more... It's honestly like a like a national security Totally.
02:01:59 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan, Max Siegelman, D.A. Wallach
[02:01:59] S2: Well, no no. But Kevin's Kevin's like strategy I think is more... It's honestly like a like a national security Totally. [02:02:08] S1: Think it's super valid. I I just think the biotech community is fantastic at getting something from the tech community and be like, yes, that is what that was a bottleneck but we have actually Right. 12 more bottlenecks for you [02:02:18] S5: to work Okay. [02:02:19] S0: I mean, this gives us a chance to talk a little bit about China. [02:02:21] S1: Please. You guys love China. Huge fans. We have Gong over there for China. [02:02:25] S2: Thank you. [02:02:25] S0: So the the... In in a way, a bigger a bigger shift than AI for the biopharma industry is the rise of China. [02:02:37] S1: Oh, yeah.
02:02:37 · John Coogan, D.A. Wallach
[02:02:37] S1: Oh, yeah. [02:02:37] S0: This is real. This is already material. This is already changing the whole industry. So what's happened is over the past, let's call it five to ten years, China has both invested tremendously in early stage development, like discovery work. So this is the idea generation part. And then preclinical biotech outsourced labor. So before you take a drug into a clinical trial, you've got to run it through this whole battery of tests. You're testing it in mice, maybe non human primates, you're doing a lot of laboratory work. You're trying to characterize this thing as well as you can to minimize the risk to people. And then in The US, you take it to the FDA and you ask for permission to go and put it in people. In China, what they have tried to do is all of that work at a quarter of the price. And because the big pharma companies are multinationals, increasingly they've been comfortable doing that work in China. And just like any outsourcing, if it's faster and cheaper, why not send it there? Now it also turns out the quality of the work is outstanding. Because guess who's doing it? Lot of Chinese scientists who got their PhDs in The United States and then we kicked out because we're idiots. [02:03:48] S1: Yeah. Sure. [02:03:48] S0: So we've got all these... That's what I'm talking about. [02:03:51] S1: It's crazy. Mean, that's
02:03:51 · John Coogan, D.A. Wallach, Jordi Hays, Keller Cliffton
[02:03:51] S1: It's crazy. Mean, that's [02:03:52] S0: what it sounded like, right? Yeah. That's what it sounded like. So Stephen Miller out here kicking ass Yeah. Sure. Our new our new chief of staff. Congratulations. By the way, hear Susie Wiles is gonna be joining TBPN as a nice week. That's huge [02:04:04] S2: for you guys. Don't even know what's [02:04:06] S0: going on. China is ascendant And now Yeah. The lifeblood of big pharma, which is buying new drugs from little biotech companies Yeah. Now they are buying double digit percentages of their new drugs from China. That's what that's what I said when I heard this. [02:04:27] S1: Yeah. [02:04:28] S0: And it's it's a normal... Buy American. Yeah. Yeah. Course. [02:04:32] S3: The new balance. [02:04:33] S0: Of course. You know, buy American, make American, buy American. [02:04:35] S1: Yeah. So [02:04:37] S0: this is this is a big story and and like as with a lot of outsourcing, the potential to bring... [02:04:43] S2: Here's here's like Got all it. Where we we potentially... So automation is one thing. The other thing is like so much general excitement around AI Mhmm. Is gonna push it... Has already pushed a huge amount of capital Mhmm. Into bets that traditional biotech investors would be like, I've never... Right. I would never... I could never underwrite that. [02:05:01] S1: Right? Sure.