The 3 Power Partner Types That Generated $780K

[00:00:00] John: we are now at this point where we can engineer ourselves, we can do stem cell therapies, we can engineer The DNA in the cells to enhance them, for some particular function and then put them back in

[00:00:16] Erum: Hey, Karl, how's it going?

[00:00:18] Karl: Things are going great. How are things going with you? Erum?

[00:00:21] Erum: Oh my gosh, Karl, you'll not believe this, but I went to Broadway last night as one can do in New York City

[00:00:29] Karl: you notice the tone because Karl never goes. Hardly ever goes to Broadway.

[00:00:34] Erum: Shame on you, Carl.

[00:00:35] Erum: You call yourself a New Yorker.

[00:00:38] Karl: I've been enough times, but it's, it's not really high on my list. I think I'm way overdue for going to Broadway. But what did you see?

[00:00:45] Erum: Yes, so I saw Death Becomes Her and so there's been a lot of movies from the eighties and nineties that have been made into Broadway shows, obviously also television shows I mentioned that had gone seen Stranger Things, on Broadway.

[00:00:57] Erum: But I went to go see Death Becomes Her. I went because I was recommended to go see it by Sarah Graham, who's a co-founder of Light One Bio, which makes Bio Die, and we would love to talk to them and have them on the podcast soon. But anyway, and I was like, really? There's a Broadway show about death that comes from, which was a great movie made in 1992 at Meryl Streep, Bruce Willis, amazing cast of characters and what a wild storyline. And why I bring this up is because the storyline is all about longevity and living forever. It's so topical. I recommend you see the Broadway show if you can, if you come to New York. But of course you can just see the movie. You can just watch it from streaming and it's about these women who are very into their looks, one in particular. and she's, you know, very visible. She's on Broadway or on herself, and she's getting olders. Aging, and she's done all of the nip and tuck, but needs to do a little bit more. And, it comes across this woman who has this elixir.

[00:02:02] Erum: And the way that this woman describes it, she says it. That it defies the laws of nature. And I was like, wow. And the way that this woman's selling this potion, I'm like, does L'Oreal and Estee Lauder know about that becomes her? Because they would get a lot of great quips. I could see like a whole like nostalgic commercial with Meryl Streep in it and like Bruce Willis coming together to re redo it. Maybe The Super Bowl ad for next year could be that. Anyway, this is what we're doing. We're brainstorming, but you need to go to Broadway, Karl, you have to go. It's very inspiring.

[00:02:40] Karl: Yeah. Okay. So, it seems like it's one in a long line of, Broadway revivals of shows you mentioned Stranger Things. I know there's Harry Potter on Broadway, back to the Future. Heather's was redone as a Broadway show, Mean Girls was a Broadway show. So, I know the stories in the movies. I'm not sure I wanna see 'em on stage. I'll go see something that's just a Broadway show at some point, but you uh, I'm glad you went.

[00:03:06] Erum: Yeah. Well, and then I know to give you credit, you don't go to the main stages, but you do see a lot of more off the beaten path type of things, and you introduced me to an event that we're gonna go to next week.

[00:03:18] Karl: So we're gonna go see, the Susumu, yada world listening tour. If you don't know who sh mu yada is, he was a ambient musician, and so there's a place in Brooklyn called Head Hi-Fi, which is a bookstore coffee shop, and they're known for having this incredible speaker system. And I imagine they're gonna be playing this album on vinyl. So it should be a. An experience. I, I'm not gonna say it should be a lot of fun. I think it's gonna be a lot of fun, but it's gonna be for sure an experience to go in there and, just be around a lot of other people who are listening to this album. And there is this trend of listening bars. I think it started in Japan, these bars where people just go to listen to full albums. And, I've never gone to one, but I was excited to go to this event next week.

[00:04:08] Erum: Thanks for introducing me to it and I can't wait to go. but speaking of ambient and chilling, and we also were talking about longevity. You've seen some interesting news, or not even news, but a perspective in the New York magazine about peptides.

[00:04:24] Karl: Yeah. so peptides have been in the news. A couple episodes ago we mentioned that the New York Times had run a front page article about Chinese peptides. It had a picture of our friend Elliot Roth at his lab at the Frontier Tower in San Francisco

[00:04:39] Karl: And New York Magazine did this whole. Long, very long article about peptides, and it starts out by saying life on peptides feels amazing. They talk about weight loss, they talk about injury recovery, and they talk a lot about people gaining energy back by taking these peptides, which weightlifters had been using for a long time. They became mainstream through the GLP ones, which were originally for diabetes, but now people are using them for weight loss, and a lot of other health effects. you might remember that a couple years ago, Scott Galloway, the host of the Pivot podcast, said that GLP ones were actually more important, their GPT or chat, GPT. And from a health point of view, it's interesting to see how mainstream these peptides are becoming because these peptides are not at all legal in the United States. many of them are. sold through Gray Market. They come from China. There's people who have testing labs that test their purity. And I think this is gonna be a global phenomenon. We're seeing the beginning of something where, people are taking these stacks of peptides. Personally, I can't wait. What do you think?

[00:05:46] Erum: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, health is one thing, but then of course we're just talking about beauty and people will pay. I mean, we had Alessandra Zonari of one skin on the podcast talking about their products that have unique peptides to, modulate cellular senescence to keep it at bay, which is this process of aging that one of the biomarkers, and they identified it and created peptides to be able to regulate it.

[00:06:13] Erum: So peptides can do an amazing job of communicating with their cells and make it do different things, or not make it do different things. You know, it can control a bit more of your cellular production. So there's going to be a lot of peptides, but then it's like, what are the ones that work correctly? 'Cause there could be ones that. To have some consequences. we don't know. I mean, and just making sure that, with any type of new technology or new innovation, we need to make sure that they work, that they're regulated and that they're safe. So interesting. I'm excited that it's becoming more of a mainstream conversation.

[00:06:50] Karl: Yeah,

[00:06:50] Erum: for sure. And, of course we'll have more people on this podcast to talk about peptides that enable us to grow everything and live healthier longer and hopefully more beautiful lives.

[00:07:01] Karl: I'm going to switch gears a little bit and talk about a little bit more of a somber topic, as we record this. the Trump administration just revoked a foundational scientific ruling that greenhouse gases are a threat to public health. This is one of the legal underpinnings of the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to act on climate change under the Clear Air Act. And, people have been trying to

[00:07:27] Karl: undermine or eliminate this legislation. For more than 16 years, I've been following the coverage in the New York Times and the BBC we'll put a link to the BBC, story in here. But basically what this means is that the government doesn't need to follow, the Clean Air Act. people are saying, oh, this is gonna give polluters, the right to pollute again, I think that, maybe we've moved on beyond that, but I think that there will be people who take advantage of this. really what it does is it makes our environment much less healthy. And I'm not sure that this is something that everybody wants. I think it's probably just a few billionaires who are happy that now they can go back to polluting. What do you think Erum?

[00:08:07] Erum: Oh my gosh. I hope that is not the case. there's one thing to be contrarian and just say, oh, well, we didn't create this clean Air Act and it's causing more regulation than necessary. And so we need to alleviate some of that regulation in order to create more innovation or, um, enable, new things to come onto the market that might not have pollution as a outcome. but I don't know all the nitty gritty of what, the Clean Air Act entails.

[00:08:37] Erum: But if you're saying that this is a signal for, people, at big companies to pollute, that's just wrong. Right. And. How does this affect what we talk about here on the Grow Everything podcast, when it comes to bio manufacturing is it doesn't, and here's why. we talk about buy manufacturing because when we talk about biology, we say that the Venn diagram between biology and climate is a circle. It's the same thing. And that came from our friend Kristen Ellis, who was at Lower, Carbon Capital and now at Convergent Research, we say that sustainability and climate is table stakes when it comes to buy manufacturing.

[00:09:16] Erum: And that what. Biology and biomanufacturing enable areproducts to be made that are either drop in or novel that are low cost, or not but just new types of molecules to be made in a safer easier, low cost way because when we think about chemistry, we think about a lot of energy being used when biology operates on ambient temperatures.

[00:09:42] Erum: And anyway, long story short. We look at bio manufacturing as an economic developer, yes, it also helps the planet. I just hope that. This isn't a signal for people that are building valuable companies that are, we can say they're climate forward, that they are, not harming the environment.

[00:10:04] Erum: So hopefully. business as usual for our industry, but

[00:10:09] Erum: let the market forces enable bio manufactured products to be more used than petrochemical products. But who knows? You know? that's what we hope for. any other thoughts, Karl? I mean this was something that was a bit of a shock to a lot of people and shock and awe is what this administration has been doing a lot of talk to me about it.

[00:10:30] Karl: Yeah. I mean, what I see is it's another step in relinquishing, clean energy to China and Chinese innovation, because what this says is our old technologies are fine. There's no reason for us to change technology. we can continue to keep burning, fossil fuels and pollution doesn't matter.

[00:10:52] Karl: Whereas like the tactic that the Chinese. Our taking seems to be really that focus on solar, wind and cleaning up their own environment, which in turn allows them to sell those products externally. And you know, we don't get Chinese EVs, which, is, unfortunate because it means that we don't have competition. And we know that competition is a good thing when it comes to corporate interests or corporate, innovation. So I see this as tragic. I'd like to understand what the economic impacts of it are gonna be. but think what I said earlier was it is going to make, the US less healthy overall. And it's too bad because people have dedicated, entire lifetimes and entire careers to environmental causes that have made, the United States a lot cleaner than it was, 30, 40, 50 years ago. Yeah.

[00:11:44] Erum: one of the things a, about, the Clean Air Act and just having these regulations to say what's the life cycle of the products and ingredients and, fuel and everything are putting out there? Like, what happens at the end of life? And I think that, a, it's a forcing function for innovation when you're saying like, okay, let me think about how mm-hmm. What I'm producing affects the environment and the health of people. And if it has negative effects, people aren't going to wanna use it.

[00:12:14] Erum: And one of the things I mentioned on previous episodes is, the idea of, food dye is that a lot of food die now. They're made, from petro chemistry and it's in our food. Parents, me, us being parents, we don't want our kids. And like and humans too, or, I mean, all humans don't wanna be eating food that has negative consequences, so we need to stop. But then it's like, what's the solution? What's the alternative? And if that alternative is not only not as toxic, but healthier for you, and of course at the same cost or less. There's no question to use that option. But if there's no other option out in the market, what else do we have?

[00:12:56] Erum: Right? So it's very interesting. I hope that all the innovators and, people working at these large companies, or even obviously the petrochemical industry, even you know, the people in those industries to look at cleaner alternatives as a forcing function for innovation. Hopefully,

[00:13:13] Karl: yeah, hopefully.

[00:13:14] Erum: but speaking of energy and clean tech and technology in general, did you see the, conversation between Larry Fink of BlackRock and Elon Musk during the World Economic Forum talking about AI and space?

[00:13:29] Karl: No, I, I didn't see that at all. I, I kind of paid a little bit attention to this idea of, data centers in space and, Elon's pivot to putting, a colony on the moon so he could launch satellites from there. That's been the extent of it. What was the conversation about?

[00:13:44] Erum: it was interesting because it was like. Elon before he got involved in politics, Elon, so he was really talking about, you his whole mission and drive to create civilizations across the solar system and interstellar solar space and how to get there.

[00:13:59] Erum: And that's what's striving him. 'cause Larry, I think wasasking him questions about. And I thought it was really interesting because the topic of ai, of course, came up and, energy usage and how much energy is needed to power AI to create robots. And one of the things that Elon was saying is that, he sees a feature where there'll be more robots than humans, and which I thought was okay.

[00:14:22] Erum: That's interesting. Yeah, that's one, one. Future. That's one future. but then obviously they only need be powered. Yeah. And so where's his energy gonna come from? And one of the things he was talking about, I don't know if he said this exactly, but this is where my mind went. he was talking about solar, and solar being the most abundant energy that we have. and then How can we harness it? And it has to be harnessed through space because on earth, we have, first of all the, day, night cycle. So at night you don't have access to the solar.

[00:14:55] Erum: and then you, obviously we have a lot of weather, so weather conditions cloudy. if you have them in the desert, you have, you know, sand blowing all over the place. It gets dirty and rain. And so to be able to create, energy plants in. Space, like in space. Alis, I don't know if you talked about that or I, I was just dreaming this up, but to be able to then harness that energy from outside of Earth, just outside of Earth and to be able to somehow get it back down to earth and then that's just abundant energy for everyone. Where then petro chemistry, or. oil doesn't have a role to play when it comes to energy dependency. Right. And I thought that was really interesting to see. Like, first of all, is anyone working on that? Listeners, if, you know, if anyone's working on, creating solar energy in space to bring down to earth, that is really interesting because that then is pure abundance right there.

[00:15:52] Karl: Yeah. I don't see that as being a new idea. so I think that. if Elon is talking about it, I feel like I've heard this a lot in the past.

[00:16:01] Erum: have you heard it, uh, in reality or in sci-fi?

[00:16:05] Karl: good question. I don't remember. I don't think I've read it in sci-fi. I think I've read it more in scientific press.

[00:16:11] Karl: I know that. data centers has become controversial. You know, they're building these things all over the country. They're driving up energy costs. public opinion has been turning against data centers. They create a bunch of jobs when they're being built, but then it just takes a handful of people to run them. And, Elon's talking about data centers in space. I can get the behind The solar energy part of it. That makes sense. But it's still expensive to send things into space. So is it really cost effective to be talking about, moving data centers into space now, maybe in a few years as things get cheaper it's gonna make a lot more sense than right now.

[00:16:49] Erum: Yeah. I mean, we'd said, obviously satellites in space. Yeah. So is it like a modular thing where those satellites then become, solar energy vessels? Yeah. but anyway, I'm dreaming and that's what we do here often. And, hopefully that gives people some, fodder for their imaginations.

[00:17:07] Erum: but yeah, of course we love dreaming and someone who we love to dream with. John Cumber, who we are interviewing today, or I don't wanna say we're interviewing him 'cause this is his fourth time on our podcast and he's definitely a friend. You've known him longer, and you wanted to have him back on. Tell us a little bit more about John.

[00:17:27] Karl: Okay. So. John, for those of you who don't know him, is the founder of Symbio Beta, which is an organization and an event, and it's the hub for really emerging engineering biology or synthetic biology. John and I wrote a book together, which we published in 2017, what's are bio strategy, and John is the first guest we've ever had who's been on four times.

[00:17:50] Karl: So I'm really excited for, I'm really excited to catch up with John and hear what's going on.

[00:17:55] Erum: and we have a little surprise for our listeners towards the end of the episode, to attend SynBioBeta. So stay tuned for that. But let's let our conversation with John take it away.

[00:18:08] Karl: Dr. John Cumber, friend of the Grow Everything Pod. We are so excited to have you on. It's the fourth time you've been on our podcast.

[00:18:17] John: Thank you for having me, Erum, Kyle. So good to see you both.

[00:18:20] Karl: Great to see you too. Let's kick it off by talking about this year's Symbio Beta. One of the things that strikes me about this upcoming event is that you're gonna moderate a session with a guy who's been bitten by snakes more than 200 times, and this guy wants to create a universal anti-venom. Why are you into this story and what does it tell us about the kind of science that people can expect at this year's SynBioBeta.

[00:18:45] John: So this is a amazing story that captured the imagination. It was on CNN, it was in the New York Times when it came out last year, and this guy is an amazing individual. His name is Tim friede and he just is a snake geek. Specifically a snake bite geek, and I don't know why he got into it, but many years ago he just started getting bitten by snakes on purpose and demonstrating that he could build up immunity to snake venom. So he's been bitten by a ton of different kinds of snakes, like black mambas a bunch of different biting snakes. and he stopped doing it, but he now is this walking, hybridoma of, antibodies against snakes and against Snake Venom. And this is actually a really big problem. Like snakes kill many, many thousands of people every year in countries like India and Australia, and, and they don't have a good source of anti-venom.

[00:19:54] John: And so Jake Glanville, who you both know, has been at Symbi Beta for many years. Jake is is the founder of a company called CX and. Jake was at Stanford. He did his PhD there. He was one of the founders of the field of immuno repertoire sequencing. Immuno repertoire sequencing is sequencing your antibodies. So he's an expert on immunology and Centivax is his vaccine company and he's making a universal flu vaccine, which very interestingly just went into clinical trials in Australia last week and is looking really good. I'm actually an advisor to Centivax, so I know the company very well, but

[00:20:34] John: Jake is always looking at new projects and new things, and so Jake has been looking at this snake and venom problem for a while now, and he heard about Tim Friedy and he said, I wanna sequence this guy. I want to sequence the immuno repertoire of this guy because inside of that guy's blood are gonna be all of these amazing anti-venom antibodies that could be then used and produced recombinantly and be able to produce then tons of this snake, anti-venom for all the people who get bitten around the world. So he reached out, they started a collaboration. They sequenced him. They did find these really potent anti-venom antibodies, and they're going on to the next steps in terms of looking to commercialize these. So we thought, let's bring him to the sin bio beta. Let's, put it on the stage and let's have the people talk and, and listen about this. Really interesting individual, but this really amazing project,

[00:21:34] Karl: you know what it reminds me of is, have you, do you know this book called The Sting of the Wild?

[00:21:38] John: No, I don't.

[00:21:39] Karl: this guy. Justin Schmidt, I had to look it up, but I do have the book and I've read it. He ended up creating the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, and in the book it actually has a description of the pain that you feel when you, you're bitten by different insects. And, like his descriptions are so incredible. And I think it's like a scale from zero to a hundred, where like a hundred is the absolute worst, most lingering pain that you get from, I think these, California desert Wasps, apparently it feels like you've got, ants crawling inside of you after you've been stung and the, the feeling lingers for days. So this guy getting bit by the snakes reminded me of. Of the Schmidt Pain Index.

[00:22:24] John: Well, we, I will bring it up. I'll ask him where, rank the snakes you've been bitten by in order of pain uh, that you felt.

[00:22:31] Erum: Yeah, that thing makes me so fascinating to hear what he has to say about like, how he even started this and yes, the scale of pain. Just what a fascinating topic to have at SynBioBeta. and SynBioBeta has come a very long way, and I wanted our listeners to hear a little bit about the history of SynBioBeta. It's been over 10 years going, and we wanted to know like, why did you come up with this and how has it evolved over the years?

[00:22:58] John: It's now 14, years And I started it because I've always been passionate about events and passionate about synthetic biology and biotechnology.

[00:23:11] John: Also, I have dyslexia, and so I learned from meeting really interesting people. So people have described Symbio beta, like John and friends coming together because literally everybody that you meet at Symbio Beta has got some interesting story or some interesting reason that they're there, or some interesting venture fund or startup company or technology that they're looking to find a co-founder.

[00:23:35] John: so I started it because I'm just so passionate about bringing interesting people together, and ultimately I've got big dreams of things that I hope biotechnology is gonna be able to achieve in the next few years.

[00:23:48] John: One of them is human longevity, so that's a big theme of the event, human health and human longevity.

[00:23:54] John: The other one is space in terms of biomanufacturing being able to produce food and biomaterials and anything that you might need for future human settlement.

[00:24:04] John: But then all of these things are are very applicable to the big problems that we see and that we're having on earth, like climate change, like aging populations, like food scarcity.

[00:24:15] John: So it's really just a collection of really interesting people, interesting companies, entrepreneurs and investors who come together each year. and now we just do focus on this one big event a year. in 2016 we did events in Singapore and San Francisco and London, and those are fun. but we find we're bringing more value to the community by creating this network of people who come together in one place every year and listen to the biggest advances, learn about the new technologies, meet the people who are announcing new products or new investment rounds, and seeing for themselves in the expo all the products of the bioeconomy that people are making as well.

[00:24:55] Karl: Yeah, it's definitely our, highlight of the year for me, for us. and I've also been going almost from the beginning. it's always a treat to be around a lot of, people that I only see once a year. one thing that you've got going on this year is a session called Bio 500, and it's about the world's biggest companies transforming their value chains with biotech.

[00:25:17] Karl: Is the bio economy finally being driven by demand, or is it still a supply push from startups hoping that someone's gonna buy from them?

[00:25:25] John: I think that there is a lot of demand coming from the marketplace. In that session in particular, we have the head of biotechnology from Unilever who's coming to the conference, and he's been at this for more than 20 years, trying to push a boulder up a hill to try to get a big organization like Unilever to turn and, and look at moving away from petrochemicals, moving towards biochemicals. He's done some really interesting work in, polymers and, materials and also, in, palm oil replacements. So I think that's a really, really big deal. And that fireside chat is gonna be with Alex Zangellini, who's the founder of Arzeda

[00:26:12] John: spun out of David Baker's lab. So it's all about AI and how we're applying, AI to building new and different kinds of enzymes that are having a big impact on planetary health and sustainability. I think that's a big market signal that we have the head of biotechnology from Unilever who's gonna be coming to the show. And I think it's also important that they're partnering with the innovation ecosystem that they're choosing to partner with Arzeda to make these new kinds of enzymes using ai.

[00:26:40] Karl: Yeah, I mean that is super exciting.

[00:26:43] Karl: we know that p and g has been a big supporter and a big part of SynBioBeta We just had them on the pod a couple weeks ago. and yet we also know that there's been a lot of challenges when it comes to the biotech industry. One session that I also noticed is you're gonna be talking about. Plant-based sales and how they've been slowing down. Our thesis here at Messaging Lab has been that consumer bio is gonna leapfrog industrial biotech. Do you think that this slow down when it comes to plant-based sales shows the opposite?

[00:27:14] John: First of all, how did I forget about, Proctor and Gamble as well? So we have not just Unilever, but Proctor and Gamble, who are a big sponsor of the event, and Amy Rejo is gonna be there. And Jose Carlos Garcia is gonna be there as well. So I think that is really important. going back to, plant-based sales,

[00:27:29] John: There's been a chilling across the whole industry for the last year because of the Trump administration coming in and just tearing up all of the climate policy, from the previous administration. So yeah, it's difficult for that industry, which was very nascent and very fragile to grow. Before it was really getting good signal from the government, like, this is important, bio manufacturers important. Climate change is important, renewable, products are important. The circular bio economy is important. And then when that. Disappears overnight. it just creates a chilling effect across the industry. So it wasn't just plant-based foods, but yeah, all bio-based chemicals and materials. were hit by that.

[00:28:19] John: Now. It is interesting, that you mentioned plant sales because I thought there's one really interesting plant sale, which, I think are gonna be coming back to the conference to give us an update, which is light bio. The bioluminescent petunia, you've probably had Keith on your show to talk about what they're doing.

[00:28:39] Erum: Not yet. Not yet. Yeah, we will,

[00:28:41] John: well, you should do, if you, if you need an intro, I'd be happy to, connect you. so that is going gangbusters. That's going really well. And they are gonna have a big announcement about a big public, company that's gonna start selling their ERs to consumers. so that, but they're already doing very, very good. They're already doing great sales. So, I switched topics on you to another more interesting plant-based sale than plant-based meat. but also going back to plant-based meat, we have Bruce Friedrich from the Good Food Institute who's going to be speaking at the conference.

[00:29:12] John: So, he's got a new book out called Meat. He's a big advocate for. Cellular agriculture. And so I think he's gonna give a big update from the stage about what's going on in that field.

[00:29:22] Erum: that's gonna be really exciting to hear because I think there's been a lot of, downturn in that space when it comes to cellular ag. You know, we had some big companies out there, Ginkgo had their company, remind me of their name.

[00:29:35] Karl: motif. Motif.

[00:29:36] Erum: Motif. Yeah. Um, and, but. People are still fans of it. We recently had a gentleman by the name of Daniel Trough of Startup, CPG, on our podcast. And he admits he's not a bio person, but he did work at, just Egg. And so he did know a lot about. You know, cellular ag, and hopes that that will be more prevalent and we get the economics right, so that more people can enjoy cellular agriculture. So I love that. I can't wait to hear that session. It's in bio beta. and so to go on this topic of companies that have big aspirations raise large amounts of funding, yet unfortunately, they aren't succeeding or they have failed. And we have looked at a lot of, stories of companies that have failed. We had, Veronica Breckenridge of First Bight Ventures on, they wrote a report called the Graveyard Report. I don't know if you've seen this. John? I

[00:30:30] John: did. Yeah, I saw

[00:30:31] Erum: that. Yeah. Yeah, and it was very interesting and one of the big takeaways was that 80% of those companies failed on execution, not science, the science was right. Are we still over investing in discovery and under investing in commercialization, like go to market strategies?

[00:30:47] John: It's interesting. I feel like the majority of synthetic biology founders have become enamored with the tool, the technology that they developed, and then they went out there with that hammer looking for a nail.

[00:31:05] John: And I think the next generation of synthetic biology founders are gonna be looking at the market first and then going out and saying, what tool or technology is out there? I mean, this is the trouble. We're all bio geeks, so we want to use biology as the main tool. There's the main hammer. you know, we don't wanna be in non-bio solutions, but interestingly, when you bring in seasoned business executives, like, um, like Nicole from Allonia, the spin out from Ginkgo. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think their main technology now for, removing PFAS and other things from water is a bio-based solution.

[00:31:53] John: you can start with the problem or you can start with the tool or technology, and I think when money becomes tight, people need to switch and really focus in on what is the problem that people in the marketplace are gonna pay for.

[00:32:05] John: that's, I think where you're already seeing a lot of value being created with companies like, Nova Nordisk producing the GLP ones, or Lilly producing the GLP ones, or Arzeda that I mentioned before, that's producing, enzymes for converting stevia, to make artificial sweeteners.

[00:32:24] John: so I think there's a lot of. Potential for the next generation of bio founders to start with the problem and to grow companies from the bottom up. even bootstrapping companies. I met a really interesting founder, from a company called Anomaly Bio. And they're gonna a breakout session at the conference this year on Default Alive Companies.

[00:32:47] John: the founder told me it's from an essay by Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator, and the Default Alive company is where you don't go into the business needing to raise money from VCs. it's similar to a bootstrapped company, but, it's a little different that you find the problem, you get contracts with the people that you're gonna solve the problem for. And this company, anomaly Bio, is doing scale up and Biomanufacturing. but they're, they're getting the contracts ahead of time and they're going out and they probably don't need to raise VC money. They can probably raise traditional, debt financing from, banks in order to do that. So a default alive company, I think we're gonna see a lot more of those. Because the interest rates are still high. Venture capital is gonna take a, a long time, I think, to, to come back to what it was before and it may never come back to what it was before in, 0% interest times.

[00:33:39] Erum: Yeah. I think that's so fascinating. I would say a couple things. One is I, first of all, I love that you have this running Rolodex of companies and what they're doing in your head to draw from. I mean, if this is what you do, it's, so fascinating and helpful because you're grounding a lot of these, concepts and actual companies and people that are doing things and so helpful to understand. so thank you for that.

[00:34:01] John: it's difficult to keep up, particularly in an exponentially growing, uh, technology field. It, it's not that pleasant to have to keep up with everything

[00:34:09] Erum: yeah, but keep the shark, you know, you have to, you know, you have on stage, you're at the hub, the center of this ecosystem. but good job. Keep it up. Keep it up every morning. I can imagine you're just looking through cards or say it.

[00:34:23] John: I just, no, I don't, I don't memorize them, but I do just introduce people prolifically. You know, whenever I meet somebody I can't help but say, oh, have you met this person? Have you met that person? There's like three, four or five people that come out of every call that I have that, I then got a very nice system for. Introducing people, but, yeah, it takes a lot of work.

[00:34:41] Erum: Yes. Yes. And we've have been on the receiving end of those introductions, so thank you so much. That's

[00:34:45] John: right.

[00:34:45] Erum: Thank you so much.

[00:34:46] Erum: That's

[00:34:46] John: right. Yeah. Welcome.

[00:34:48] Erum: Yes. And then I wanna go back to this idea that you, mentioned about biotech solutions, the, hammer that's looking for a nail. And there seems to be a lot of similarity in the world of AI where there are all these AI developers or programmers that have created some novel ways of processing data or pattern recognition, and they're looking for applications.

[00:35:11] Erum: And I always mention a quick story is that I had gone to this AI summit and everyone there were programmers and they're talking about all sorts of things, like transformers and stuff, and I'm like, whoa, this is crazy. And then I introduced myself to some people. I'm like, oh yeah, I'm in the world of biotech. And as I was talking to people, like I suddenly became like the cool kid in the room. Everyone's like, oh, an application application. And everyone's like, well, tell me more about biology. Like what's going on there? I'm like, well, there's so much information. There's so much we can do. You can grow everything. Subscribe and listen to the podcast like, and they were like, wow. and so like AI's been doing this for quite some time, but then all of a sudden we had this ChatGPT moment, right? Everyone's on it. All of a sudden there's this huge use case with these LMS bill searching and talking and befriending ai. but so I wanted to ask this question and frame it this way because. At SynBioBeta, you had this session called the data Reality Check, and that basically admits that most AI models fail when they hit the wet lab. Is that moment further away than we thought that biotech ChatGPT moment, or is it close?

[00:36:18] Erum: Yeah, I've been meeting with a number of companies that are developing these multimodal models. So for the last couple of years we've seen a lot of LLMs that have taken the DNA sequences and produced LLMs for Ute, and then produced new DNA sequences and then viral genomes. We, we had, EVO two was, talked about on the stage by Patrick Tsu from the Arc Institute, and then last year from, his colleague. Brian, he at Stanford.

[00:36:46] John: And then we have other companies like Sintensa who are using whole human genomes for feeding into large language models and companies like Atomic ai. Raphael Townsend spoke last year on RNA world and producing, LLMs from RNA.

[00:37:05] John: So I think the, where people I'm most excited are these multimodal models where you're not just taking RNA data or DNA data or protein data, but, one of the companies that's gonna be speaking this year is Noetic. And they just announced a $50 million deal with GSK upfront payment to license their model. And this was the first, maybe the second, example of. A new business model for these AI model companies, which is a pharma company's actually coming in and licensing the model. and so I think that's a big deal.

[00:37:43] John: And so I don't think the chat GPT moment is gonna come until we have closed the loop on organism design going through the design, build, test, learn cycle really quickly so that you can vibe code a genome, vibe code a bacterium, and have it booted up and put it in a, in a tank, a stir flask, and see, see the fruits of your labor. I think that's the chat GBT moment.

[00:38:16] John: Or maybe it will come later when it's the design of a plant. Something that you can actually see or design of a mushroom. And you've got your engineered spores that you've just created in your synthesizer, and then you plant them and then overnight you see the next morning, boom, popping up outta the soil your, beautiful mushrooms. Wouldn't that be amazing?

[00:38:39] Erum: Yeah, that'd be really amazing. I will say really quick now, we did this predictions episode for this year, and one of the things that we predicted was that we could write and boot up a genome this year because we saw the rate at which everything was happening. Do you think that'll happen this year? I mean, are we getting, is it the discovery and the, DVTL the design build test learn, happening at a faster rate that we could see that happen this year? Or is that just too ambitious?

[00:39:04] John: did you see the Sidewinder paper that came out in Nature Biotechnology a couple of weeks ago?

[00:39:09] Erum: Yeah. Can, no, can you brief us on that really quick?

[00:39:11] Karl: Tell us about it.

[00:39:12] John: so this is a scientist at Caltech called Kai Hang Wang, and he. He was at Jason Chin's lab at the medical research lab in Cambridge. Then he went on to become a professor at Caltech him and and colleagues have invented a technology called Sidewinder, which allows you to put into DNA assembly page numbers so you can have a multiplex reaction of oligos in a pot. You can create then genes and genomes from that. Based on these clever, ways to connect the, assemble, the, the oligos together with these page numbers. So it says, okay, this bit goes number one, this bit goes number two, this bit goes number three. And then when it's all assembled, you can take out the, the joins, so you don't see the joins in it this is pretty revolutionary. It could drop the cost of synthesis and assembly by two to three orders of magnitude, which is the kind of step change that we've been looking for to make. Biology, truly programmable and they've spun it out into a company, the CEO, and the founder of the company is called Adrian Wolfson, and he just had a book launch in London just this week. So they've started this company, it's called Geno, G-E-N-Y-R-O. And that is gonna solve a big bottleneck in the build. And so my prediction is that we had a bottleneck in design AI fixed, that we had a bottleneck in build. General and other assembly technologies and synthesis companies are fixing that.

[00:40:50] John: So I think the next one is gonna be in test and automation. Uh, self-driving labs are about to solve that piece. so the design, build, test and cycle kind of has square wheels and we can get stuck on one piece for, a few years or even a, even a decade.

[00:41:08] John: twist, move the wheel forward on, on Build significantly 10 years ago when they announced their first product at at SynBioBeta. then we were stuck on, on design for, for many years until AI came along and said, oh, now you can design genomes with ai, with EVO two.

[00:41:27] John: so yeah, I think the next, the next, big and exciting area is gonna be self-driving labs. And we have, Trillo Bio is doing a breakout session on self-driving labs. Looking to do another session with some of the big AI companies who are excited about, self-driving labs. Ginkgo just had a big announcement with, um, with, open AI on this topic as well.

[00:41:46] John: I think the step changes are coming and, will we boot up a, I mean, we've already kind of booted up a synthetic genome with Craig Venter's work on mycoplasma. so I think it's not about will it be this year, I think it's more about will we get to a point where the designers, the genome designers, can rapidly iterate and see the products of their labor.

[00:42:09] Karl: Yeah. That's amazing. okay, let's, let's switch gears a little bit. One of the things that our listeners might not know is that you are a huge traveler. You travel all over, the world. You visit labs, you visit different people, and you also travel for fun with your family. You've gone to China a bunch and you just published a piece. Talking about the profitability of Chinese biomanufacturing firms. Well, we've had some challenges here in the west. We've seen a lot of failed scale-ups. What do you think industrial biotech can learn from what you've seen in China?

[00:42:44] John: Yeah, I've been to China over 10 times over the last 25 years, and i'm taking a group of 30 CEOs and founders to Shanghai Tojo, Hong Jo Beijing in July of this year. And maybe that's something you guys are interested in, joining us as well.

[00:43:05] Erum: Oh yeah. It's

[00:43:05] John: cool. Yeah, and we're gonna be visiting some of these scale up facilities. We're gonna be visiting some of the investors. We're gonna be visiting some of the giant biotech parks, like the Suho Industrial Park, which I've been to twice before, and showing people with their own eyes what is happening in China.

[00:43:23] John: And my God, China is just going gangbusters, not just in the bioeconomy and synthetic biology and manufacturing, but just it's like a future high tech country. it's leaving the rest of the world in the dust.

[00:43:40] John: I was in Tokyo last year twice, and then in Shanghai twice as well. And China's just got nothing on, on Japan now, Japan used to be this amazing futuristic place, right? And you go to Japan and it just feels like a backwater uh, so does Singapore compared to what's going on in China.

[00:43:58] John: from a biomanufacturing point of view, Chinese have been doing fermentation for thousands of years with soy and tofu and many of these fermented products that you can get. So they understand the power of fermentation. They understand the power of s scale up and for the last. 30 years, maybe more. They have dominated the amino acid market, and this is a big product of fermentation. They used to have a lot of plants in the US. It all got outsourced to China. I don't think we make any amino acids, right now. so they've done a lot of, You could say predatory business practices to, grow particular industries and dominate particular markets and wipe out competition.

[00:44:40] John: And then, once you've got the, the monopoly, you can raise the prices. 'cause you're the only amino acid supplier in town, for example. And they've done that in many industries. Um, I'm not saying it's good. I actually prefer competition. I love capitalism and the ability to compete. they compete very much internally in, in China, to find the winners of, of the companies. so they have incredibly competitive economy, internally, and then they export that to the rest of the world.

[00:45:06] John: From a biomanufacturing point of view, they care about it because China is run by technocrats. They understand climate change. They understand circular economies. They understand sustainability. And they understand that, hey, if we can get these systems. That are circular and renewable in the long term, if we develop that technology internally, they will be sustainable and they will be more profitable. So the US was doing that, with under Biden, under, you know, various administrations in terms of the Biomanufacturing Act. And now it's just being, as I said before, the chilling effect across the whole ecosystem.

[00:45:42] John: Well, China hasn't had that chilling effect. And what's more, when I go visit some of the companies in China and see these facilities. They're right next to the manufacturing plants that are gonna be making furniture or curtain linings, or cases for iPhones. And so that technology that comes directly out of the scale up facility is going directly into a market and into a product and then shipped around the world. So they've not just got the foresight to invest in the infrastructure and the, scaler, but they've also connecting it directly to the manufacturing and going straight into products, which are going out the door.

[00:46:21] Karl: I just read breakneck, and I think you and I talked about it a little bit.

[00:46:24] John: That's Dan Wong, right?

[00:46:25] Karl: Yeah, Dan Wong's. But, and I'm actually

[00:46:27] John: gonna see him at Stanford next week. I'm speaking at an event. He's gonna be, he's gonna be speaking at it.

[00:46:31] Karl: the thesis is, China's Run by Engineers, you said Technocrats. And the US is run by lawyers. So lawyers put up a lot of shade and prevent things from happening very quickly.

[00:46:41] John: down with the Epstein class.

[00:46:43] Karl: Yeah. And then, uh, you know, and China with its engineers is very successful at building, but sometimes not so successful when it comes to social engineering. it's a very interesting contrast and you can tell Dan that the part I loved about the book the most, I mean, the whole book was great, but I loved at the end where he is talking about he wishes his parents would move to Sunset Park, which is a couple neighborhoods away from us. It's a very vibrant Chinese and Mexican, neighborhood. but, he wishes his parents would move there because it reminds him the closest to what like a Chinese neighborhood would be like in China. But, I continue to be impressed by what we see coming outta China. We've been very lucky to work with a number of Chinese firms over the year. And so, the, the whole thing from the current administration anti-environment has turned biotech into a defense industry is very interesting. And, unfortunately a bit shortsighted.

[00:47:37] John: agreed.

[00:47:38] Erum: Yeah. And a lot of manufacturing writ large happens in China, and you know, when we talk to people that are not in our industry of industrial biotech or biotech, and we talk about it affecting all industries they think of pharma first, and pharma has really been working with China when it comes to producing pharmaceutical grade products, which of course has a different type of manufacturing than what we talk about here when it comes to industrial biotech, which is all the chemicals and other types of materials that are being made through biotech. And I'm curious, I mean. you touch on this too. You talked about the technocrats, running things in China. this idea of centralized planning and that's core to how China has been developing their five-year plan and how they offer resources to their the population in order to how this industry grow. Thinking of that and perhaps other insights, what do you think we could do here in the US to speed up our game a bit?

[00:48:39] John: It's a good question. I think one thing we could do is make our economy more competitive and we are surrounded by corporate monopolies. Oligopolies, whether it's your cell phone service or your supermarket, or the fertilizer that you put on your crops or the tractors that you drive in the fields or the computers that you buy, or the cell phones that you purchase. And part of the reason that we have these corporate monopolies is because of the regulatory capture that goes on in Washington DC and part of the regulatory capture in Washington DC is because of Citizens United and the impact of money in politics.

[00:49:26] John: you can see that in the, in exactly in the Epstein files and the coverup that's happening there. It's just a disaster how corporatized, corporatize our media is and our politics is. It creates an economy that doesn't work for everybody.

[00:49:45] John: So I would love to see a more fair marketplace of businesses, of ideas. And I think the more competitive we can make the US economy by breaking up the monopolies and the oligopolies, will share the wealth and create more economic value.

[00:50:06] John: And if we continue to shield the American economy, particularly from Chinese innovation, by saying China's producing better electric cars than us. So what do we do? Well, we ban them from importing electric cars. And we say, well, China is producing better drugs. That's, well, what do we do? Well, we ban them from, ban our companies, from doing business with Chinese companies. same with the chips. that is so shortsighted because Japan tried this in the 1980s, and I was, watching a, an opinion piece from Reed Zacharia at CNN who talked about this, and he said, Japan did this. It centralized its economy. It, picked winners and losers. And it invested heavily in electronics in the 1980s. And what did we get? We got the Walkman and we got these flat screen TVs, and we got all this innovation coming outta Japan, which was amazing and Japan looked like it was unstoppable.

[00:51:10] John: And then what happened?

[00:51:12] John: Well then these big giant corporate centralized planned electronics companies run out of steam because they're not these organic innovative organizations. They're these brittle structures that can't bend and flex and adapt to technology and adapt to the economy. And so they, they all fell over.

[00:51:32] John: And so there's very little left of the Japanese. We don't buy hardly any Japanese, electronics anymore. So to compete with China, we don't want to copy what China's doing in terms of centrally planned innovation or central economy. We wanna do what America is great at, which is free market capitalism. But as I said before, I don't think we live in a, in a free market. I think we live in a very corrupt, market, and we need to, at its core, try to do things to make the US economy more competitive.

[00:52:05] Erum: Well said. You're here.

[00:52:07] Erum: Yeah. Yeah. you mentioned a little bit about what's going on in the US economy and politics and. one of the things that we heard from other attendees of SynBioBeta last year, we were there. We loved it. It was great.

[00:52:20] Erum: course 'cause you're always meeting people and you're always introducing us to people and we love that. But some attendees felt that AYA Beta was too quiet on political threats to science funding. Does the biggest synbio conference on the planet have a responsibility to say something from the main stage about that?

[00:52:38] John: I think that. It's an open platform and, people apply to speak and, and I welcome all voices. I, found it interesting because, people didn't say this at the event or in the lead up to the event. I only heard about it after, mm-hmm. After the event. publicly, I'm pretty apolitical. but, I'm actually very passionate about, politics but I, I feel like there's a time and a place for it. Mm-hmm. And we wanna welcome everybody to Symbio Beta. we don't want it to be a partisan thing.

[00:53:12] John: I mean, we are right in the middle of California, so it's, the demographics. Say who's, gonna be coming to it.

[00:53:18] Erum: how many people from all over the world have come? Actually, it's really interesting to see, right? The delegations from Australia, Japan, everyone there for the spirit of the innovation that's happening in biology and biotech. Um, I think really here, the thing was, for a lot of the innovators who are in the US and rely on some government funding, when all of that funding was pretty much eliminated, they felt that it was taken away from them and they weren't able to innovate as much and maybe not taking a stance, but having that discussion maybe would be more cathartic for the people that felt that they didn't have the resources, that they were ignored by the government.

[00:54:03] Erum: And, especially because there were people from the government that were attending. But, I just more thinking of where is, where do we have this type of discussion so that the innovators can ask for that type of help from their government.

[00:54:16] John: Yeah. I mean, we had the heads of, upper H we had the head of Darpa, BTO, we had, um, somebody from the White House, office of Science and Technology Policy, and they were all there receptive listening. so even though we didn't shout about it from the main stage, it's, clearly disaster for, for science and, a lot of our strategy is misguided.

[00:54:38] John: yeah, if I thought it would help, I'd, be glad to do it, but I'm preaching to the choir. but, I'll put my political chips, into the fight when they need to be, But other than that, I'm not sure that my, talking about it is gonna be quite, as, as helpful as, as people may think.

[00:54:55] Karl: All right. Let's switch. Let's switch gears a little bit. you touched on this a little bit at the beginning, and one of the areas that we've been tracking and we're seeing a lot of activity in is longevity. Mm-hmm. And last year you had a session with Jason Kelly of Ginkgo Bioworks and Brian Johnson, founder of the Don't Die Movement. What exciting developments have you seen in longevity over the past year

[00:55:20] John: Yeah. There's two areas that I think are very, very exciting. One is cellular programming. So using these Yamanaka factors, these transcription factors that turn on and off. cellular differentiation and then being able to use these for, programming IPCs, stem cells that can turn into, into any other cell.

[00:55:40] John: we have gene Loing who's coming back from, one of the founders of Aspen Neuroscience, that's got a Parkinson's treatment for. putting, stem cells back into the brain and, and rejuvenating the brain. We have John Hebert, who's coming. He's got a new program at ARPA H on brain rejuvenation.

[00:55:58] John: And we have David Sinclair coming. He's gonna be doing A-A-V-I-P dinner, with us on the Wednesday night for the biopharma industry. And he's also done some recent work on reprogramming and Curing, blindness in mice and, macular degeneration. So there's a lot of human health and longevity that's coming.

[00:56:19] John: Oh, and a new company called Poly Fron, which I'm particularly enamored with. And, Matt Osborne is the founder of Poly Fron with his, co-founder Fabio. And they're both gonna be coming and they're gonna be talking about their company, which is a company that can take your own cells and stem cells and make banks of frozen stem cells of different kinds of tissue. So take your skin cells, convert them into IPCs, differentiate those IPCs into different kinds of tissues, and then be able to freeze those tissues so that you've got then a, a ready supply of any kind of stem cell in your body. so. If anything breaks or you need to be replaced, you've got this, uh, tissue bank lined up to be able to, I

[00:57:04] Karl: love that.

[00:57:05] John: Doing that. Isn't that great?

[00:57:06] Karl: Yeah,

[00:57:07] Erum: that's cool.

[00:57:07] John: And it's so much, yeah. It's so much less scary than the idea of clones or body parts. It's just tissue banks of cells. It's yeah.

[00:57:15] Erum: I wonder how much that'll cost. Be a discount. Yeah. What's the promo code?

[00:57:26] John: I love it.

[00:57:26] Erum: Yeah.

[00:57:27] John: Yeah. I'll take two.

[00:57:29] Karl: Yeah,

[00:57:29] Erum: yeah,

[00:57:29] Karl: same here.

[00:57:30] Erum: Yeah. of course like longevity is so hot. everybody wants to live longer. there's always the conversation of you wanna live forever. you want more life to your years, not more years to your life, you know, type of situation.

[00:57:41] Erum: Right. And, it's interesting to see what products are coming out there too. So it'd be great to, because you know, a lot of people, a lot of the entrepreneurs I come to Symbio, betas, they're making very fundamental technologies that can then be incorporated into products, whether they're skincare or nutraceuticals, or injectables and you start seeing a lot coming out from these big, CPG companies or these beauty companies like L'Oreal has their longevity institute. And so it's going to be really interesting to see. a little funny side stories. Last night I went to go, to see a show on Broadway.

[00:58:13] Erum: it was Death Becomes Her. I dunno if you've seen that movie. It came out in the early, I haven't 1990s,

[00:58:18] John: but I think I remember. Is it Angela Langs Bury? Is she in it?

[00:58:21] Erum: no, um, I think it

[00:58:23] Karl: was Meryl Streep.

[00:58:24] Erum: Yeah, Meryl Streep. Meryl Streep's in it. Yeah. Bruce Willis is in it too, and it's about they live forever, but it's like this potion. This potion, the woman that, has found this potion, they say it defies the laws of nature. And I was like, wow. I was like, that's a cool tagline for a product. because, everyone's like natural, natural. It's like, well, natural, we're here. We're just here stagnant at natural. We wanna defy the laws of natural and nature and go beyond and what does that look like? so anyway, a little aside. I think there's so much value to be had when it comes to longevity 'cause people will pay. People will pay for those products. and in the movie death that comes, or they pay a very pretty price for that. Besides money, it's their, you know, life. But, um, anyway, yeah,

[00:59:15] John: I heard, Omri Druery who's, at NFX Capital, you guys know Armory, and he's, he's gonna be speaking at the conference and he gave an example.

[00:59:24] John: He said, I might screw this example up, but he said. If you gave somebody the choice of having another healthy 10 years now, or a billion dollars when you are 80 years old, which of those would you choose and. He said, it's pretty obvious which of those you would choose. What use is a billion dollars, when you're 80. And of course what use is 10 years of healthy life right now. And so he said, well, that gives a market price for longevity, which is that practically people will pay anything

[01:00:04] John: To stay younger. so I think it's an interesting way to, way to look at it. But, yeah, I think there is a huge market out there for this. but I wanna see radical things.

[01:00:13] John: I don't wanna see like single, enzyme protein therapeutics or, concoction of. Different drugs to help me live longer. this is why I'm a big fan of replacement and Jean Hebert that I mentioned wrote a book called The Replacement Theory of Aging. The idea that you can just replace bits of your body as you, go, as you age, I think is phenomenal.

[01:00:31] Erum: Yeah. We definitely need that stem cell bank for that. So when we get the promo code, we'll put, we'll put it on the podcast for everybody.

[01:00:40] Karl: So John, you know, we've had you on, as I said at the beginning, this is the fourth time. We've talked a lot about the event this year, but what else are you excited about that you think our guests should know about, before we get into our quickfire segment?

[01:00:55] John: Oh, well, the topic that we haven't covered is AI and bio, and we have a ton of model makers. We have a ton of hands-on demos where people can learn the skills of how they use these AI models, and we have a lot of partnering sessions for the pharma industry who's looking to license these models or meet with the founders of these, of these AI models. So. It is just the singularity is, is here. and um, I think we haven't seen that ChatGPT moment in, in ai, but it's definitely coming for biology. and I think. That remains to be, to me, the most exciting thing that we're seeing at Symbio Beta. And we're also welcoming a whole ton of new people to our community. People from the AI world who haven't got into biology, as you said, Erum, those people that you were chatting with at the, at the conference you were at. so we're seeing a lot of people get excited about all of the novel kinds of data that you can collect with biology, feeding those into the models, and then being able to, create these multimodal understandings of what's going on inside of cell.

[01:02:03] John: And ultimately then being able to use those AI tools to design cells and organisms for doing things that we want. I was chatting with a former postdoc in George Church's lab, Sergey Ko, who is a fascinating person He's another one of these companies that's doing, stem cells and um,Looking at the different differentiation of stem cells into, into different things for fertility treatment. And I was chatting with him about this brave new world of, human genome engineering and how we are now at this point where we can engineer ourselves, we can do stem cell therapies, we can engineer The DNA in the cells to enhance them, for some particular functionand then put them back in or for embryo selection. I'm having this conversation about humans being able to edit their own code right at the same time. I have another conversation with somebody about, malt book. the AI platform where these AI agents are chatting with each other, and it was a very meta experience where you can think about these ai, chatting with each other about creating their own language so humans can't, listen to them, And then talking about how can they edit their own programs so that they can improve themselves and enhance themselves, And I was like, whoa, that's so meta. We are looking in at this, simulation of life. and I bet there's somebody else outside us looking in at us and being like, oh, look at that. They're trying to now edit their DNA. They figured out recombinant DNA or they figured out how to read the whole human genome. Oh, they figured this out. so I think that's just super fascinating, on a meta level, us being able to look into this test tube below us and, and see ourselves.

[01:03:49] Erum: Yeah. The simulation wrapped in a conundrum. Wrapped in a mystery. Here we go. This it

[01:03:54] John: exactly.

[01:03:55] Erum: It's so deep, so many layers, and thanks for taking us there. It's, um, a lot to think about. But we're gonna take it a little bit light right now because we have a, a new segment. we have a quick fire round.

[01:04:07] John: Nice. I love

[01:04:07] it.

[01:04:08] Erum: No, you didn't. So we're gonna ask you some questions, quick answers. And Carl, you can go first and I'll go.

[01:04:13] Karl: So, John, do you remember Lantern Bioworks, the company? You did? I

[01:04:17] John: do,

[01:04:17] Karl: yeah.

[01:04:18] John: I have the product here on the shelf. Have you seen it before?

[01:04:20] Karl: Oh, no, I've never seen it. So why don't you show our, our viewers what it looks like. And while John's picking out the product, I'll just remind listeners that, lantern Bioworks had a product that you could ingest that would change your, oral microbiome so that you would no longer get cavities. You

[01:04:39] John: it's a powder. Yeah. I think you put it in water leave, like

[01:04:42] Erum: rub it on your teeth and your gums just, which is a weird

[01:04:45] Karl: Yeah.

[01:04:46] Erum: White powder rubbing on your teeth and gums is a little strange of a modality. Yeah. But,

[01:04:50] Karl: yep. Yep. Very cool. Okay, so now that we've introduced, lantern fireworks, I can do the quick fire question.

[01:04:57] John: and I

[01:04:58] Karl: guess

[01:04:58] John: they've changed the name 'cause it says Lumina on it.

[01:05:00] Karl: Oh, okay.

[01:05:01] John: And I'm an advisor to this.

[01:05:02] John: Company, by the way. Okay. I

[01:05:04] Karl: know, I know the family. So you're perfect for this, for this question. Okay. Lantern bioworks. Are dentists safe?

[01:05:10] John: Well, I'm not sure how effective it was. I used it. It's supposed to get rid of cavities, get rid of the bacteria that is supposed to replace the bacteria that cause, buildup of plaque and it's supposed to replace them with another version of bacteria that doesn't do that. So I used it. I got some, like a couple of years ago, probably 18 months ago, two years ago. I mean, it's difficult to tell whether it, whether it worked or not. I still brush my teeth. I just had a, a crown, my first crown put in yesterday, but that was, but that's not a

[01:05:38] Karl: cavity. That's not a cavity,

[01:05:40] John: exactly.

[01:05:41] John: so, uh, ENT, isaf. Um, yes.

[01:05:44] Erum: Okay. So a while ago you had created, an event, online. for people to apply to attend Sin Bio Beta 2030 on the moon. Is it happening? Yes or no? Yes.

[01:05:56] John: Yes.

[01:05:57] Karl: can you give us a hint of who will be awarded a SynBioBeta award this year?

[01:06:02] John: No, but we just announced the nominations on Wednesday and they're open through the end of the month, so, Carl, you should nominate Aaron Rum. You should nominate Carl for the pod, for the pod, for the podcast to get an award.

[01:06:12] Karl: can we nominate the podcast itself?

[01:06:15] John: Yeah. Yeah, you can. That would be awesome.

[01:06:18] Erum: The podcast is for the people. It's not the Carl Rum show. It's the For Everything show, although we're on it a lot.

[01:06:27] Erum: Amazing. Well, John, I mean look, it's always a pleasure to have you on. We're gonna see you in person soon. Thank you so much for coming on, grow Everything. We really appreciate you.

[01:06:38] John: I love you guys. You guys are doing an amazing job and, I look forward to the, to the email with your podcasting each week to see which interesting people you've interviewed.

[01:06:47] John: So thank you for having me on. Look forward to seeing you at Sin Bio Beta, and I believe we have a discount code for your. Listeners, wanting to come to the conference. They can type in, grow everything, and it will give them a, a hundred dollars off.

[01:07:01] Erum: Amazing. Thank you for your generosity, and we'll see you soon.

[01:07:41] Karl: How do you feel about this catchup with John?

[01:07:43] Erum: First of all, it's always great to catch up with John. We learn so much about what's actually going on on the ground when it comes to biotech innovation.

[01:07:50] Erum: We really got a wide perspective of innovation. Starting from antibodies to oligos to IPCs, which we wanna thank Lizette for helping us define some of those things. They're really important, but it's always great to learn what's new, what's going on, and who's doing what.

[01:08:10] Erum: I mean, John, what that Rolodex of. People, places who's doing what? Movers and shakers is so helpful for anyone who's looking at the larger landscape of biotechnology. What about you?

[01:08:24] Karl: I mean, it's always a joy to talk to John because John sees it all happening not just from the innovation side, but also globally.

[01:08:32] Karl: We talked to him about his travels to China, but I know that John spends a lot of his time on airplanes, John's biotech innovators, you know, from everywhere in the world. And I think that's one of the really nice things about being a part of his community.

[01:08:46] Karl: I think there's probably very few countries that we could point out and say we don't know someone from there. and that is the nature of. His event and also the nature of the podcast and the nature of the networking that we do in this industry. But just hearing what people are doing in China is fascinating.

[01:09:03] Karl: Hearing, you know, what Japan is doing and just hearing what other countries are doing, that's always been one of the missions here at Grow Everything. And so I really appreciate having John come on and talk about, biotech with that global view.

[01:09:17] Erum: I do love the fact that John goes to China often and really is looking at what's going on over there, because I feel like living in the United States is such a mystery about what's going on over there in China and.

[01:09:29] Erum: I have, I don't, have you been to China, Carl?

[01:09:31] Karl: I've never been. Yeah. No, I, I'm really looking forward to going one of these days.

[01:09:35] Erum: Yeah, maybe you go on that trip with him. Yeah, maybe. I mean, I wanna go. Yeah. I, I, I went, I've been to Beijing, and, it's beautiful. It was great.

[01:09:43] Karl: It was about like, I would wanna say like. 10, 15 years ago. and it's really just the air quality is what's, the challenge. And actually when I went, I had gone like the week after Obama had gone to China, and what I heard was that they like shut off their, manufacturing, facilities in the area.

[01:10:02] Erum: Near Beijing, yeah. to help clear the air. So when he came, the air quality would be better. And so when we could ride, I was like, oh, this is so beautiful. And then after like two or three days, the air quality started to get a bit more challenging, I guess.

[01:10:15] Erum: But besides that amazing food, amazing people I went for a conference and there were a lot of, individuals that were, let's say high net worth individuals. So I probably have a very, particular perspective hanging out with them. So, and I just, long story short, we would go and have dinner and we went in this area.

[01:10:35] Erum: In near Beijing and they had airplane dealerships.

[01:10:40] Karl: Oh wow.

[01:10:41] Erum: I was like, wow, this is really cool. and John was talking about, just how much innovation, and. Production's happening in China, and I would really love to go along on that trip that he mentioned where he's gonna have 30 CEOs go there and just see what's going on.

[01:10:58] Erum: And especially from the biotech side, we know people that are in China working on biotech by manufacturing and you know, we see them posting on LinkedIn or we see them at conferences and they tell us a little bit here or there, and then we get perspectives. But to go there and see what's going on with their own eyes.

[01:11:16] Erum: Would be a very fascinating thing to do. So, um, we should definitely have John back on, or someone he takes to China, on this trip to come on the podcast and talk about what they're seeing and what's going on. And if you're living in China right now, listen to the podcast. Hello?

[01:11:33] Karl: Yeah.

[01:11:33] Erum: Let us know.

[01:11:34] Karl: We wanna know.

[01:11:35] Karl: Yeah.

[01:11:35] Erum: Ne Niha. Um, we wanna know, we're just, just so curious because. I wanna know what products are being produced at scale that we are saying, oh, you know, it's too expensive to make, through Biomanufacturing versus the traditional way of making it yet, China's proving us wrong. that's what I wanna know on like, just a list of products, that are bio manufactured that we, Just can't do here because of the economics. We just can't get it right. So that'd be really cool.

[01:12:04] Karl: Here's what I'll say.

[01:12:05] Karl: that we do know we've been lucky enough to work with a number of Chinese. Biopharmaceutical companies and also a Chinese company focused on Biomanufacturing that was in the nutritional space. And

[01:12:18] Karl: China, you know, also has a very different playbook that we take than we take here in the west. John mentioned that the states compete against each other. They have state. Backed industrial policy and they've been promoting a, in, large scale biomanufacturing build out. So what that means is they're putting in a lot of pilot facilities in different locations across China.

[01:12:41] Karl: So if you're an innovator, you're gonna be able to pilot the production of a product a lot faster, and we don't have those pilot facilities. it's something that the Advanced Biotechnology for Sustainability Coalition has also mentioned.

[01:12:54] Karl: So what this does is it creates a lot of competitive pressure, both for companies here in the west, but also governments in the west, to really accelerate, Scale. I know that that's kind of going off script he wrote, but

[01:13:08] Erum: I mean, yeah, we talked about that a lot during the Biomanufacturing 1 0 1 episode we just had.

[01:13:13] Erum: So for listeners that wanna go into it a bit more. Deeply pleased us in that episode. But overall, I'm just very excited to go to sit, buy a beta this year. I hope they do have a delegation from China. I know there's that, there's companies here and there that attend, but it'd be cool to have a session about it.

[01:13:28] Erum: I'm just fascinated by what's going on there. I mean, if, they are more advanced there, like what does that look like? Uh, but. Besides that, you know, there's a lot of intersectionality that happens at SynBioBeta. You know, he mentioned AI and bio sessions. There are Bio 500, so it's gonna be a lot of fun.

[01:13:47] Erum: It always is. What are you excited about for this year in bio beta?

[01:13:51] Karl: I think for me this year, I'm really gonna be thinking a lot more about the business of biotechnology. You know, who's focused on commercializing, what does scaling look like, who's funding that? What kind of partnerships are being created?

[01:14:04] Karl: love all the rest of it, but my, my focus this year is gonna be on that.

[01:14:08] Erum: Amazing. Yes, of course, partnerships, collaboration. We love it. So listeners, thank you so much for listening to the Grow Everything podcast. Please join us.

[01:14:17] Erum: That's Inva Beta. John mentioned promo code. Grow everything. Please come. It will be so much fun. We'll get to meet each other, talk about what we're seeing, who we're meeting. It's always a great time in sunny California. So thank you so much for tuning in to the Grow Everything podcast. People text us, email us, call us. You have questions, we might have answers, and if we don't have answers, we will find some answers for you. We know someone who does. We know someone. Clearly. This is a episode 169. We're gonna keep going and going. We have all the information in our show notes. Thank you so much.

[01:14:54] Erum: subscribe to our substack, subscribe on YouTube. We're all over the place. Thank you so much and have a great day.

[01:15:01] Karl: That's the pod. Thank you.