136. (Replay) DNA of Defense: Alexander Titus on How NSCEB is Advancing Biotech for National Security Challenges

[00:00:00] Alexander: I have a much deeper appreciation for quote unquote the bureaucracy after having been on the other side for quite a bit of time. And it's easy to throw rocks at the castle and say, ah, they're just slowing us down. But in reality, policy is put in place to try to let things go as fast as possible without having to dramatically walk things back and play damage control.

[00:00:22] Alexander: 'cause that will ultimately slow progress down in a really serious way.

[00:00:30] Erum: Hey Carl. How's it going?

[00:00:31] Karl: Things are going great. Irem. It's full summer. We're about to hit, peak July summer season. How are you?

[00:00:38] Erum: I'm doing well. I am out and about traveling. Yes, it is the summertime and there's nothing quintessential to summer than fourth. The July, which it is 4th of July week. It's so nice. I already had s'mores. I did that already. So check off that experience. Summer experience, obviously pool, grilling, chilling.

[00:01:00] Erum: I'm doing a tour de nor

[00:01:03] Erum: I'm in the Catskills. and then

[00:01:04] Erum: I'm passing you in the Adirondacks, and then I'm gonna go to Montreal. I go every year. So listeners of the pod might have. Heard me mention Montreal. We go for the JazzFest. It's a beautiful, beautiful city if you haven't been. But also there's an ulterior motive because as you know, am advising the Merck Digital Sciences Studio and this upcoming cohort, it's not just going to be United States and New York City.

[00:01:27] Erum: It will also be in Montreal and in the uk. So biopharma companies that serve the drug development process. we're going to be meeting companies all around the world and in Montreal there's a few companies that wanna meet. there's one company not affiliated with the Merck Digital Sciences Studio yet, but I met them through another

[00:01:47] Erum: Global Star program I'm a mentor of, , and a company's called Nuo, and they are making, a high throughput testing platform for neurodegenerative diseases and any type of disease or, .

[00:01:57] Erum: Affliction associated with the brain and based here in Montreal. So I'm excited to, work and play. That's how we operate, Carl. We work

[00:02:04] Karl: Yeah.

[00:02:05] Erum: we play. Right? That's what we

[00:02:06] Karl: So first of all, manique. I love Montreal.

[00:02:11] Erum: Hello? Yes.

[00:02:15] Karl: and I know that there's strong, biomanufacturing in Quebec, so I'm a huge fan.

[00:02:20] Karl: I think those meetings will be great. I always wanna know what's going on

[00:02:23] Erum: yeah. There's also a company that hopefully I'll get to meet up with, that's making human milk by

[00:02:28] Erum: manufacturing using, precision fermentation. So no people are being milked. It's just precision fermentation. I just wanna make that clear. yeah where are you exactly right now, Carl?

[00:02:41] Karl: So for our, listeners who are in the Southern Hemisphere, it is full summer here. I know you guys are living through your winter, but I happen to be about four and a half hours directly north of New York City. If you drill a line between New York City and Montreal, that's about an eight hour drive, as you know.

[00:02:59] Karl: And we're about four and a half hours, five hours from there. But I'm coming back to the city tonight 'cause there's a lot of work to do.

[00:03:04] Erum: Yes, yes. We're working hard and it's been very busy with the podcast and also with messaging Lab. But we also need to take some time off. There's been a lot for listeners who've been listening to the podcast. We've been bopping around different events and conferences, meeting all sorts of amazing people.

[00:03:22] Erum: really understanding what the innovation opportunities are when it comes to commercializing biotechnology. But it's been so much that we need to process, we need to get away from our screens and we need to make sense of like, okay, where are we as individuals? How can we help those that are in our orbit and our listeners, what kind of information can we impart and who are those people that we can bring on the podcast or replay some of those episodes so that they can remember all the amazing people and information that we've had on this podcast?

[00:03:56] Karl: before we get into the episode, we have some exciting episodes coming up. So Yes, we're taking this tiny little break. With this little replay, but we're gonna come back strong. Next week. We have an episode we're doing with Shelby Noad of Compound, which is a venture capital firm focusing on all sorts of deep tech across crypto longevity.

[00:04:16] Erum: They did a biohacking demo day. Probably missed you, you weren't able to go.

[00:04:21] Karl: Yeah. So the episode comes right on the heels of the biohacking day, and it's very exciting to hear, Shelby and Youi rum because you went to talk about what happened at Biohacking Day. And Shelby even, gives us some tips on what biohack has made her life better.

[00:04:36] Erum: Yes, yes. You definitely don't wanna miss that. And then we have friend of the pod, friend of our lives, I have a friend of fashion to me because she has, given me some items of hers. I call it the Suzanne Collection because

[00:04:51] Erum: we're gonna be speaking with Suzanne Lee, bio fabricate, and she is going to be talking about what's new at Bio Fabricate. This new summit. What are excited to talk about with Suzanne?

[00:05:00] Karl: Well, I wanna hear about this event that she's gonna run in London, in September. And then I mean, always Suzanne enlightens us. She has interesting things to say. I want to talk to her about science communications in general. 'cause we have some ideas brewing in that. Space. and, I want to hear how things are going for her.

[00:05:17] Karl: she left, the US moved back to Europe, and I want to hear how that has gone for her.

[00:05:23] Erum: And also ask script for some tea in the buying material space. 'cause she's very prominent in that space. She knows a lot of people. find out, who's succeeding, who's failing, what's the drama. We would love to hear it.

[00:05:36] Karl: Well, and then talking about tea in the biomaterial space. We're going to have, Casey Larner, who's the executive director at Genspace and some tea that has been spilled from Genspace. So they're joining forces with. FIT, the Fashion Institute of Technology, Columbia University, and a co and, , coy here in New York City to create a biomaterials foundry near Columbia University.

[00:05:58] Karl: So Casey's also gonna come on. So we're excited about the next, group of women who are joining us, to talk about what's happening in the bioeconomy.

[00:06:05] Erum: Yes. Amazing. Amazing. Oh, that's so cool. Well, that's a lot of convergence happening, In our community of biotech and growing everything. So we're excited to bring it to you

[00:06:15] Karl: Exactly. So, for this week's podcast, we're actually doing a replay from an episode that we did a few months ago with Alexander Titus, who, among other things, is one of the members of the National Commission on Emerging Biotechnology.

[00:06:30] Erum: Yeah, it was a great episode. It's episode 103 Why did we pick Alexander Titers for the 4th of July episode?

[00:06:37] Karl: I think there's a couple of reasons. One is, you know, Alexander, or Titus, as he likes to be called, has played an important role in the government. He was at the DE Department of Defense, now he's on the National Commission and. It just felt appropriate, given all the political things that are going on and the importance of funding science and really the importance of this report that the commission put out.

[00:07:01] Karl: we also had Angela Belcher of MIT, who was also a commissioner on a few episodes ago, and I think, listening to Titus again, maybe going back and listen the Angela, we'll give you a better picture of what the commission has proposed to keep the United States competitive in the biotechnology industry and in growing the bio economy.

[00:07:18] Karl: So having Titus on again as a replay, we thought made a lot of sense.

[00:07:23] Erum: Yeah. Yeah. His role in the national. Security commission, but

[00:07:26] Erum: he was also on the board of Colossal Biosciences and they've been doing some really interesting things. Ben Lamb was on the, Joe Rogan podcast talking about, conservation and using genetic engineering to help conserve or bring back.

[00:07:40] Erum: Different traits in animals, which is very interesting. Alexander just touch on that a little bit in this episode. But I'm really excited to share this because, there's nothing like celebrating the 4th of July than talking about the strength and innovation that happens in this country.

[00:07:56] Erum: And, we can certainly level it up when it comes to biotech. So, hopefully this is, , an episode that. Gets you in a patriotic spirit, and also gets you thinking about what US is capable of.

[00:08:07] Karl: okay. And with that, let's let Titus take it away.

[00:08:10] Karl: Alright, Dr. Alexander Titus, we are so happy to have you on the Grow Everything podcast. We've got a lot of stuff to cover today. What's going on? Where are you today?

[00:08:26] Alexander: I appreciate you having me today. Physically I'm in Denver 'cause it's ski season starting and the snow, I'm doing my snow dance. Oh, right on.

[00:08:34] Karl: Yeah. Sounds good. So for people who don't know you, you are a commissioner on the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology, the N-S-C-E-B, which is an advisory board to the United States Congress. You're wearing your T-shirt. Yeah. Can you give us the who, what, and why of the NSCB in three or four sentences?

[00:08:57] Alexander: Yeah, for sure. It is a mouthful. We love to joke about it. So I always just call it the commission. So the commission is a bipartisan group that was stood up. So we have 11 commissioners. Four of our commissioners are members of Congress, two Republicans, two Democrats, two from the house, two from the Senate, and then seven other people who are experienced in government industry, academia, biotech, policy, et cetera.

[00:09:18] Alexander: And our job is really to advise Congress on what does it mean to write good legislation for the future of biotech in the us and then by extension in partnership with a lot of our partners and allies around the world. So we talk to experts, think deeply about these issues, debate fiercely about these issues, so we can come to, uh, really good decisions on how we can make recommendations to Congress about where we should be going from here.

[00:09:42] Erum: Yeah. That is amazing. Wow. That's quite the position that you have. I wanna know about debating fiercely with in Congress. I've seen some things on c-span, but I'll love to see videos of this. You've been a proponent of biosecurity and this understanding biology and how it can be used in industry, and you are famous for walking into the Defense department meetings.

[00:10:04] Erum: With the bio mason brick. And so our listeners are familiar with biomass. We've had Ginger Dozier, founder of Bio Mason on here a few times, but can you tell us a little bit of that story? Why did you bring the Bio Mason brick in the Department of Defense, and what kind of impact did it have on the meeting?

[00:10:20] Alexander: Yeah, so I always use a joke that the Pentagon's a rough place. You always gotta carry something with you. But in reality, I had the fortunate privilege to be the first person to lead the establishment of a enterprise strategy for biotech. I was the assistant director for biotech at Department of Defense, and this was in 2019 when I started and.

[00:10:38] Alexander: The Pentagon could barely spell DNA, let alone understand why it was important for everyone. And when I talked about biology, biotech, you could see little green blocks of jello shaking around in people's head. That's all I could think about is like biology. What? So bringing the green goo to the zoom and boom people is what I said in my job was.

[00:10:55] Alexander: And so I wanted to make it tangible. So I found the thing that was the most appropriately tangible product. 'cause people want capabilities and products when you're working with the Department of Defense and the biomass. Brick is a really great example of all of the same kind of performance standards and everything.

[00:11:13] Alexander: It's just a brick. It was a literal drop in replacement from thinking brick to brick. But this is produced with biology. Doesn't take the same amount of energy, doesn't have to be fired. It can be set at room temperature. You can have it in a forward deployed environment. So that's why I brought it around.

[00:11:30] Alexander: And it also did make some really interesting icebreakers. You walk into a room and put a brick on the table in a suit, and everyone's like. Who is this guy? Why is he here with a brick? But it did, and it's all about the whole point of your podcast is science communication, and how do you explain these things and contextualize them in a way that is relevant to the people who are trying to consume that information?

[00:11:52] Alexander: I. That's really what it was, is how do I come up with a product that resonates, that says, no, we're not talking about something crazy and out in left field. We're really talking about alternative ways to get the resources we need. And then we talked about a lot of other interesting things that led to discussions of can you build growable runways?

[00:12:11] Alexander: The Air Force and DARPA were working on this with biomass and others to say. Yeah, let's build growable runways. Let's see if we can spray this down and harden the surface. And then people started having those aha moments like, oh, I can land a helicopter on sand because now it's hard enough that I could actually touch down on it.

[00:12:28] Alexander: Things like that. But it became a big joke and, and became the brick guy around the Pentagon. But whatever it takes to get the point across, I guess.

[00:12:36] Karl: Yeah, I think it's really good that when you, Roman and I were coming up with the questions. I was like, you gotta ask a brick question. I mean, you and I have kind of known each other for a while and that story stood out in my mind.

[00:12:46] Karl: Yeah. And I just attended the BTO listening sessions up in Boston a couple weeks ago, and to me it's fascinating where they go from, Hey, we've got all these people from industry in this room. We want you guys to understand what we're looking at. It ranges from things like how do we keep our warriors safe to, how do we go into a location, use the existing materials that are there, maybe do a biotech process on them to create, I don't know, buildings if we want to say if that's what we need, but then how do we also leave the place so it's better than when we got there?

[00:13:21] Karl: And so it's really interesting that DARPA is thinking that way. I don't know if the defense department is thinking that way, but. Anything that we can do to get people to think about these technologies in a positive way, I think is really useful. Now, you're also the founder of Bioeconomy X, Y, Z. You started that publication and what were the key trends that got you interested in doing that?

[00:13:40] Karl: What did you wanna highlight to the public?

[00:13:43] Alexander: I started Bioeconomy X, Y, Z in May of 2020 because I had just left my job at the Pentagon when the pandemic started because we were all dealing with things at that time. The thing that I really realized when I was in that role in government was that there were so many really brilliant scientists.

[00:14:02] Alexander: Who were doing things that were highly relevant, but either didn't have the platform or the experience to be able to communicate it to an end user who they don't care if it was made with biology. They care it does what they need it to do. Bioeconomy, X, Y, Z. The entire point was to provide a platform for people to learn how to write and express the impact of biology in a way that was visually appealing.

[00:14:26] Alexander: Interesting to read and things like that. And it thrived for a long time and then just so happened to the person who was helping me run it, ended up working in government and having doing other great things. And so it's Sunset. But then I just started a new newsletter called the Co-Evolution Tech Policy in Our Lives, which is kind of an evolution of that thinking about how does technology and policy interface in a way that both sides can understand each other.

[00:14:53] Erum: Wow, that's cool. Yeah, I'm definitely gonna have to check that out. We'll put that in our show notes as well so our listeners can access that. I would love to learn a bit more about it. Your experiences are incredibly interesting. Your work spans diverse areas, so academic research, government strategy, corporate innovation.

[00:15:09] Erum: So can you help us understand like what experiences have uniquely prepared you for your current work on the commission? What are the things besides taking bricks and bringing them to department defense meetings?

[00:15:21] Alexander: Yeah, I think it's safe to say that of the 11 commissioners, I'm the only commissioner that has worked in industry, academia, and government, and been a practitioner to try to bring biotech to bear for national security purposes collectively.

[00:15:34] Alexander: And so we have commissioners that are really deep on federal finance or really deep on legislation, or really deep in intelligence, or really deep in building big technology companies or being innovators in academia and entrepreneurs. I am not as deep in any one of those things, and I am the living embodiment of the intersection of these technology areas in the respective domains as well.

[00:15:58] Alexander: So that to me, gives me a lot of insight into, oh, actually I. This is exactly the same thing we do in industry. We just call it something different. Oh, or government. Yeah, it's all the same. We just have slices and dices and one of the cultural differences that I often highlight for people is that a lot of times government people work.

[00:16:19] Alexander: There's no profit motive. There is public impact motive. But they also don't realize that everything they do needs to be funded. And industry is the same thing. It's like, why is everything so slow? And it's like, well, because we're using dollars, big, big amounts of dollars to move around and try to have influence on the industry or academia.

[00:16:37] Alexander: Or you say, Hey, we're gonna start a whole funding program out of the NSF or NIH or DOD. That shifts whole industries. And so that overlapping perspective is really useful. And so I can connect dots and then ask my colleagues, how would you do this if you were receiving this memo from Congress? How would you have responded?

[00:16:59] Alexander: And they could say, oh, well we would do it this way. We'd ignore it that way. We'd have all kinds of interesting approaches. There's too many good things to do for me to do any one thing. It's, you know, my greatest flaw is I'm interested in everything. And that actually has been super helpful because a lot of the ways we think about how biology and biotech is impacting national security and industry and things is not actually just biology, is biology.

[00:17:22] Alexander: To produce a chemistry that you turn into, a material that you put on a tank or a body armor or clothing, and so there isn't one vertical in any one of these workflows.

[00:17:33] Karl: Do you think that people veering from our questions? I keep seeing these quotes. I feel like I see 'em regularly. It just must be because it's a message to us in general that the biggest breakthroughs that are gonna happen in any industry are really gonna be much more about convergence of industries or outsiders looking at an industry.

[00:17:51] Karl: I mean, we're saying the impact of AI on biotech. The guy from philanthropic, the CEO, just wrote this long essay and on the biotech side or. Science side. He's like, we can expect to see 50 to a hundred years acceleration when it comes to discovery over the course of five to 10 years. And rum and I were just talking about it because we're like, yeah, well it's easy for him to say that 'cause he can just predict it from the AI side, he's not really having to physically do the work.

[00:18:17] Karl: But do you think that people on the commission understand the impact of convergence of all these technologies converging together to impact biotech and how that impacts all other industries?

[00:18:28] Alexander: Yeah. Yeah. We talk about it all the time. The AI and bio conversation obviously dominates a lot of airwaves and a lot of times, and we spend a lot of time talking about that.

[00:18:35] Alexander: That happens to be what my technical background is, the AI and bio interface, but we also talk about lab equipment, manufacturing equipment. That's electrical engineering, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering. We'll work across the board. Then they talk about energy and food and ag and industrial and how those work in each of those.

[00:18:55] Alexander: But I think that we are gonna see Denise, personally speaking, I think we are gonna see a massive acceleration in science. I actually funded a workshop when I was at the DOD to explore this concept of the Nobel Terrain Challenge. So the terrain challenge is when an AI chatbot is indistinguishable from being a person or a chat bot.

[00:19:15] Alexander: The Nobel Tour challenge is the idea. Is it possible to create a fully autonomous research lab that can do Nobel quality scientific discovery on its own? And then that has lots of implications, both good and bad benefits and risks for what's possible there. But there are companies working on this now.

[00:19:34] Alexander: We have these large, massive foundation models that are being much better at doing scientific understanding. So I think that we are gonna see leaps and bounds, and I think that a good example of that is alpha fold that everyone's familiar with and talking about, and they just won a Nobel Prize for their work.

[00:19:49] Alexander: But in reality, a problem that has been studied and thought nearly impossible to solve for decades, 50 years was computationally predicted. Seemingly, with the release of one model now it's still to be determined exactly how much impact that has. Because what you're saying, Carl, you have to actually do it in the real world.

[00:20:08] Alexander: That's the hard part. At this point, predicting design is gonna become trivial. You could argue it already is, but then building it, that's much harder problem. Yeah.

[00:20:17] Erum: Yeah, absolutely. I saw recently that there was a kid who made a fusion reactor prototype for like $2,000 in his bedroom. Yeah. I don't know which one he used.

[00:20:27] Erum: Was it clawed or perplexity? I don't know what he used, but just being able to have that conversation with AI and know what types of things he needs to build it and then actually do it in a intelligent way and making sure you're troubleshooting and it was very impressive. And the king think the kid was like in college or maybe younger.

[00:20:44] Alexander: Yeah. Yeah, but I have a lot of conversations on both sides of the benefit risk equation. Mm-hmm. When people have pushback again, well, we're not gonna have to think anymore, or things like that. People said that about the calculator, but I actually carry around an anti electricity advertisement from 1900 because there's this image where power lines is this skull and spider attacking people, and there were people who were against electricity when it was really coming around.

[00:21:10] Alexander: We have to do it responsibly, no doubt. But we also are seeing a lot of the similar, it might be accelerating, but we're seeing a lot of the similar conversation around pushback of technology progress because it's scary and it's the unknown.

[00:21:23] Erum: Yeah. Yeah. That usually happens with the scary unknown and then all of a sudden it just flips when people just turn on the switch and like, oh, that was easy.

[00:21:30] Erum: I don't have like candles anymore.

[00:21:32] Alexander: Yeah, exactly.

[00:21:34] Erum: But for our listeners and just in general, what should they know about emerging biotechnology? 'cause this is what the commission's focused on and. When it comes to biosecurity, how does that play a role in emerging biotechnology? And this is something that we talked to some of your colleagues about in terms of what is biosecurity, how you define it, what should people know about it?

[00:21:53] Erum: Because I think there's a group of people that see it as pathogens and warfare. There's another group of people that think of it as preserving the environment and conservation. So tell us more about emerging biotechnology, and especially with regards to biosecurity.

[00:22:07] Alexander: Yeah. So to a lot of this conversation, we're also talking about this convergence.

[00:22:11] Alexander: So the authorizing language for the commission actually says emerging biotechnology and related technologies, because biotechnology doesn't happen in a vacuum, and computing and electrical engineering and all these things are involved. So the traditional definition of biosecurity really is around public health and pathogens and things like that.

[00:22:29] Alexander: Our understanding or definition of what biology is and can do is changing. That's what bioengineering, crispr, all these modern tools, we're unlocking an entirely new domain of what you can do with biology. So when I think about biotech, I think about it in two categories. One where biology is the actual product.

[00:22:48] Alexander: So this can be a biotherapeutic or it can be an infectious disease or something like that, where the actor, the thing that does the action is biotic biology, and then there's abiotic where you use biomanufacturing to produce a product that is not biology in the end state. So whether this is doing nano metallic, templating with phages, or producing a chemical, you have different considerations for how you think about this in a biosecurity context.

[00:23:16] Alexander: But no matter what, especially in this emerging biotech area, I think of it a lot as products that have been engineered in some capacity. We think about if you engineer a bio, a microbe to do manufacturing. If that microbe gets out into the environment, what is the impact? I. It has on the environment. Even if you didn't have the intention for your product to be a biology, you still have to think about the biocon containment and the responsible manufacturing practices that go into those kinds of things.

[00:23:42] Alexander: It's even more so when your end product is biology. It's different when you're thinking of like an mRNA vaccine versus an engineered microbe for bioremediation. So there's different levels of containment and different levels of scrutiny that must go in as you think about whether or not you're releasing these things.

[00:23:58] Alexander: But emerging biotech in the way that I use the definition, it's really synthetic biology, genetic engineering, things that have been engineered to do what it wasn't naturally designed to do, but way more precise than we have ever had the opportunity to do in the past.

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[00:25:12] Karl: And is that how you think about biosecurity? Because you said the traditional definition is public health, but when we have talked about it, it's not just public health, it's also engineered organisms that potentially have an impact on human security.

[00:25:27] Alexander: Yeah. Yes, but I think that the broad sense of public health, there's not just, uh, wear your mask 'cause COVID is happening, kind of sense of public health, food insecurity. Pandemics for food is a public health issue. Pandemics for animals is a public health issue. Environmental degradation, and our natural habitat, that's a public health issue.

[00:25:45] Alexander: So I guess it depends on the scope of how you define these things. And so that's how we think about it in the context of food and ag energy industrial. Each one of these domains has massive benefits that we can be building new products and unlocking new markets and bringing new things to people who need them, and they have vulnerabilities and areas that we need to pay attention to because there's just as much concern about engineering a wheat virus that eliminates our wheat supply as there is for the kind of viruses that go through our livestock.

[00:26:17] Alexander: I'm saying virus, but it also could be bacterial, fungal. There's lots of concern and conversation of any of the microorganisms that go into that. Yeah.

[00:26:25] Erum: Yep. So I wanted to speak to you about a company that you've been affiliated with, which is very interesting. So, colo Biosciences, this company has worked on very high impact ambitious projects.

[00:26:37] Erum: For example, de Extincting, the woolly mammoth. So how do you approach balancing the promise of ambitious science? Which biology can afford, especially with the tools we have now with the ethical and security concerns that you've mentioned earlier, how do you balance the big vision with what is practical today and what we need to do in order to protect human and life in general?

[00:26:59] Alexander: For me 'cause I am an optimist. I'm a glass half full kind of guy. There's not a lot of us in the security world. Usually you're a glass half empty kind of person if you're worried about security. But I love my glass half empty people the way that I think about it. Lemme take a philosophical step back.

[00:27:14] Alexander: 'cause a lot of the concern is coming from now, it's easier to engineer biology and bad actors could potentially engineer biology in a bad way. But a lot of these big, ambitious projects are pushing the limits on what's possible and extending how good we are at engineering. I like to think of it as if we have all of these potential routes for scary things, the best way to handle it is to be so good at using biology that we can actually come up with some kind of response or countermeasure or something remediation to.

[00:27:47] Alexander: Said scary thing. And so that's why I love to work on these big ambitious projects because, and this actually gets back to the Bioeconomy X, Y, Z and why that was founded and everything as well. Since the Human Genome Project, we haven't had a lot of those big grand unifying challenges in biology. And the community talks a lot about like, what's our space race or things like that.

[00:28:09] Alexander: I was drawn to colossal because De Extincting, the wooly mammoth is a very tangible, almost visceral example of what we could do because you can imagine fur, you can feel fur in your head, you've pet big, fluffy dogs, things like that. You know what elephants are. So the idea that modern science can bring a species back from extinction is captivating.

[00:28:33] Alexander: It is a story that really captivates, but in reality, what it's doing is creating such ambitious goals that we have to, I say we, I'm no longer there, but the company has to advance. Science to do it. And so this is true, whether it's colossal or any of these other ambitious projects. Same thing with all these companies doing robotics.

[00:28:53] Alexander: Um, I'm just blown away with what we can do with robotics nowadays. You have to actually change the state of science to achieve some of these things. That's what I think is so wonderful about them. And we actually at the commission talk a lot about what are our grand challenges? How can we help foster a grand challenge in biology and biotech responsibly, but still to completely move the needle on what is possible.

[00:29:16] Alexander: My dream is that biology becomes so predictably engineering that it's an electrical engineering analog. I can do exactly what I want when I want reproducibly, and then that also gives us the opportunity to say, all right, well here we have a new flu variant. We can create a vaccine much more easily now because we're so good at doing that kind of engineering, and so that's why I work on these big, crazy things.

[00:29:39] Alexander: You have to be a little crazy to work on these big things, and so your colleagues are just more interesting.

[00:29:45] Erum: We love colossal. Like you were saying, that it's such an ambitious project that other science has to be done in order for it to happen, and we had been at Novak of Revive and Restore, come on the podcast and talking about de Extincting, but it's also de endangering.

[00:30:00] Erum: There's a lot of animals that are endangered. So how can we use the sciences that Colossal and these other companies are doing in order to protect some of these animals that are about to go and extinct how to be? Look at that. We need ex vivo wombs. We need other types of things to help with these animals, so that's really cool.

[00:30:16] Erum: I just think those ambitious projects can help tell the stories, but then also guide the Be the North Star. I love that way of thinking.

[00:30:23] Alexander: And then we have the commission think, okay, these things are happening and we want people to do great things. How do we provide the right incentive structure and guardrails so that can happen for public benefit over time.

[00:30:37] Alexander: We grow the net benefit rather than the opposite, whether it's economic productivity or all the wonderful things we can do with health and food and all that kind of stuff. So the commission's made up of commissioners, and I've talked about them, but there's also an amazing staff of. 20 to 30 people who have talked to everyone in the industry, and I'm exaggerating a little bit, but as many people as possible.

[00:30:59] Alexander: Hundreds and hundreds of people both across industry, government, and academia, to get that collective wisdom of what's possible today, where do we need to go, that kind of stuff.

[00:31:09] Karl: I wanted to just make a comment for our listeners who maybe don't know about Colossal, and you can correct me on this, Titus, but the idea of bringing back the Willy Mammoth is Yes, absolutely about driving the science forward because it's a very complicated thing to do, but there also is a environmental aspect to bringing back the wooly mammoth.

[00:31:29] Karl: The way I understood it is the reason to bring back the wooly mammoth had to do with grazing in the tundras. And then there was supposed to be an environmental benefit to that. Is that about right?

[00:31:41] Alexander: Yeah. Yeah. That is the theory and the pitch. We're a long way from seeing whether or not that's reasonable, but again, big ambitious dreams and trying to have big ambitious impacts.

[00:31:52] Karl: Yeah. You mentioned you've been in different sectors. You have this unique experience that you bring to the commission, but what are some of the lessons that you've learned going from DOD to Colossal to now the commission, and then also starting these different publications?

[00:32:08] Alexander: My number one guiding North Star is to do hard things with cool people.

[00:32:13] Alexander: The reason that I think that's so interesting is I've never had a job that existed before I took it because I've found that the most interesting areas are opportunities you couldn't predict and that you didn't know about before. When we're growing up, people say, what do you wanna do when you grow up?

[00:32:28] Alexander: What do you wanna be when you grow up? What I wanna be when I grow up doesn't exist right now, so I'll let you know when it happens and when I'm doing it. My number one lesson in all the moving between these cool things is that opportunities come up that you'll never expect, and then in retrospect, they intersect in ways that you couldn't have predicted as well.

[00:32:48] Alexander: So like I was saying, my unique contribution to the commission is having worked across so many of these different industries and verticals and things like that, I wasn't omnipotent, I didn't have this Babe Ruth style approach where I pointed out in left field and said, someday I'm gonna be a commissioner on the National Security Commission for emerging Biotech.

[00:33:05] Alexander: So these are the three things I need to do to get there. No, in reality, people call me now because they say we want to try and we don't know anyone dumb enough to try it. So you want to try it Titus. And time and time again, it, I mean, there's so much of it. It involves failing at something, but I don't really believe in failure.

[00:33:23] Alexander: I believe in just a whole bunch of not yet successes. It was famous for saying like, oh, I haven't failed 10,000 times. We just found 10,000 ways how not to build a light bulb. It's really true and it's not sappy. Keep working on hard things and you find out that they really have impacts everyone. My favorite book that really resonated from me was book called Range by David Epstein, which talks about this exact concept of bringing ideas across fields.

[00:33:49] Alexander: Really has innovative impact. And that's actually how we spend a lot of time with the commission talking about how do we figure out how things that are happening in one industry, we can bring them into another, or best practices from government. How do we help incentivize some of those best practices and industry and vice versa?

[00:34:05] Alexander: So it was a long-winded answer to say, just don't turn down cool opportunities is my number one lesson.

[00:34:11] Erum: Hard things for sure. You've been working on, I mean, you're working on Genii before it was a term I think. I mean, that was in 2015, so almost 10 years ago. So yes, cutting edge. But what we'd like to know is that if you go from cutting edge, it's so deep to come up for air when you're talking to people in government and your current position at the commission.

[00:34:30] Erum: So how have your technical skills been essential in your strategic and leadership positions?

[00:34:35] Alexander: So again, it's that overlapping experience, skillset, and so I am not the most experienced person in policy. I am no longer one of the most experienced people in ai. The person who builds AI models 60 hours a week, they're going to have more cutting edge technical knowledge than I am.

[00:34:53] Alexander: But the thing is, I have tried to do a lot of these things on both sides, and so when my AI colleagues or biotech colleagues say, oh, why doesn't government just move faster? I'm like, that's not how it works. So think of it this way. Department of Defense, department of Health and Human Services, their annual operating budget, the money they spend is the amount of entire industries.

[00:35:17] Alexander: So when you think about moving the total market cap of industries every year, it doesn't just happen on a dime or on the flip side, when I have a lot of conversations with my colleagues in policy who are worried about, for example, what is AI gonna do to our ability to do bad things with biology? I have long-term deep practitioner level experience saying that's not actually possible.

[00:35:41] Alexander: It's easy to say and it's easy to think about, but it is not physically possible, technologically possible today, or that's not actually how it works. So Carl, earlier your comment about biology is hardest to do in the real world. No matter how good a computer says, you have some scary new design. That's not the hard part, that's not the long pole in the tent oftentimes.

[00:36:04] Alexander: So my technical expertise is invaluable in these conversations. And this is one of my angles to bring to the commission cadre, is that I have built these models. I have struggled with these things on the AI side. And then if you think about each of the other commissioners, they have their own deep technical expertise.

[00:36:23] Alexander: Mc Dobb, who's another one of our commissioners, was the comptroller, the CFO for the Department of Defense. Talk about someone who understands the deep technical process of federal budgets. Wow. That is an expertise I will never have. But that deep understanding then to helping write policy, it's because, well, that policy would never fly because of X, Y, or Z.

[00:36:44] Alexander: I'll give you the 15 ways they could ignore that policy. And that only comes from this expertise. And so each of the commissioners have this kind of expertise. Eric Schmidt built Google. Angie Belcher has been leading science and being an entrepreneur out of MIT for years. Paul, who's another one of our commissioners, spent his career helping write legislation and get bills passed on the hill.

[00:37:06] Alexander: So the deep technical understanding of the inner workings of Congress. That makes it invaluable when we have these bigger conversations around what do we do and how do we actually get it done? And that's actually why I bring it back full circle again. Why I started bio economies five years ago is because there's a lot of people with deep technical expertise who have a hard time tying that the high level action impact.

[00:37:28] Alexander: And that's why I've been blown away at the staff and the commissioners and our ability to tie the most minutia to big, big thinking.

[00:37:37] Karl: Is probably a naive question, but is there any equivalent to the commission that's associated with other emerging technologies, or is it only around biotech?

[00:37:45] Alexander: No, there absolutely has been.

[00:37:47] Alexander: So the first one of this flavor was called a cyber solarium, which focused on cybersecurity. Then there was the National Security Commission for ai, which cyber solarium happened. And then four or five years later, we had some of our major cyber attacks. The National Security Commission on AI happened.

[00:38:02] Alexander: And then four or five years later, chat, GPT was released. So we have a lot of conversations around what is our version, what is the biotech version of that? Chad GBT revolutionized ai SolarWinds showed that cybersecurity vulnerabilities were everywhere. What is biology's thing? What is R attack? GBT moment for biology?

[00:38:22] Alexander: But I think that it was roughly four or five years lag after one of these big commissions and that aha moment. So we're hoping to find that threshold responsibly.

[00:38:31] Karl: And when was this commission started?

[00:38:33] Alexander: We officially launched in March of 23, so last year, and we had our interim report that was released in December.

[00:38:40] Alexander: We have our final report, which is a, a collection of our deep thinking and legislative recommendations and policy recommendations will come out in sometime in early 25.

[00:38:51] Karl: So you guys wouldn't think that the response to the COVID pandemic, especially on the vaccine development and Biomanufacturing side, would count as our chat GPT moment.

[00:39:01] Alexander: I certainly wouldn't discount it as a chat GPT moment. I think that the ability to produce a vaccine in under a year with a technology that has never produced a vaccine before is mind blowing. So that might have been, but I think that for me, the way that I think about these is the rapid democratization of the technology.

[00:39:20] Alexander: So chat bt everyone. Now there's a thousand competitors to chat. BT and everyone can find their favorite AI tool. Anywhere versus before it was specialized in Google and Microsoft and NVIDIA's products and things like that. Now cybersecurity, everyone is aware that there are cyber vulnerabilities and things like that.

[00:39:41] Alexander: The pandemic absolutely brought biology to the forefront of people's minds. In my mind. It was still in the health area. Yeah, and biology is health plus so much more and we haven't had that aha moment for everyone on the so much more, the grow everything aspect. We haven't had the chat GBT moment for that.

[00:39:59] Erum: We can't wait for that to happen, and when it does, we will have those people that participated in on the podcast. Yeah, I mean, it's very interesting you said, mentioned that you guys at the commission written a report and you'll have something coming out in 2025, so we'll also link that to the show notes if that's, I'm sure that's public.

[00:40:14] Erum: The

[00:40:15] Alexander: interim report is publicly available. Yes. Mm-hmm.

[00:40:17] Erum: Yeah. So we'll be sure to share that in the show notes, but what would be helpful for our listeners to know is at least your perspective on what are the potential security risks and the benefits of biotechnology from your role. Any specific examples that either you mentioned in this report?

[00:40:32] Erum: Or that you wanna share? Just to help us think beyond pathogens, what are those specific stories that we need to wrap our heads around? Because earlier said, it's safe, it's nothing to worry about, but clearly there are things we have to worry about. So you could give us some stories to help think about the potential security risks.

[00:40:50] Alexander: Well, I think that pathogens will always be one of the largest ones. The world had their painful aha moment with COVID for pathogens. I think that some of the other areas that are concerning are environmental release, so the impact on ecosystems, I. I'll give you actually, so it's another pathogen, but I'll give you one that most people don't think about.

[00:41:09] Alexander: There's a fungus pandemic epidemic going on in amphibians called kittridge, and it's killing, you know, 10 to 20% of amphibian populations a year, and that is an impact that the environment will suffer. As amphibians disappear. So it's not in the same kind of human health, immediate, like direct. Mm-hmm. But there is a indirect effect of that.

[00:41:32] Alexander: And so the environmental release of engineered organisms is one of the risks that I think that we need to be very deliberate about because it's no longer just in drug development. If people are engineering something for bioremediation, a lot of the interesting things I've heard in the remediation story, can we use biology for PFAS and PFOA cleanup?

[00:41:54] Alexander: I think that would be amazing, but we have to be very careful about putting an engineered organism into the environment. I. One of the areas that is concerning from an engineering risk standpoint is we're seeing that it's becoming easier and easier to engineer the production of toxins into these organisms, right?

[00:42:10] Alexander: It's a chemical, smaller molecule, and so I think that's one of the biosecurity risks that I. The conversation in the AI space is how do we put responsible guardrails on these models? The AI Safety Institute is doing some really awesome thinking, so about this topic, and for everyone listening, there are AI safety institutes popping up in countries around the world, and they're really deep thinkers around how do we move forward in a societally beneficial way with ai?

[00:42:37] Alexander: And I'm sure there's plenty more who don't want to speculate. I don't want to make up risks, so I'd be happy to share more later. I'm

[00:42:44] Erum: stuck on the fungus that's killing the amphibians. Where did it come from? That wasn't engineered, right?

[00:42:49] Alexander: No, no, no, no. Okay. That's just a naturally occurring fungus, but it's an issue.

[00:42:53] Alexander: Yeah. And so there are lots of conservation efforts and lots of conservation programs that zoos and others that have amphibian breeding programs as a way to be able to release healthy amphibians into the population because it is the major environmental problem.

[00:43:08] Erum: How do we kill the fungus? That's the thing with biology, it's so complicated, right?

[00:43:12] Erum: Like the fungus might be bad for amphibians, it could be helping something else. If we remove it, is it gonna mess things up even more? That's always a challenge when it comes to biology. You think of the lifecycle analysis is just so challenging. It's so challenging, right? And you

[00:43:24] Alexander: can't just dump antifungals medicine into the water because what impact does that have on the rest of the ecosystem?

[00:43:31] Alexander: It's the interconnectedness of biology, especially natural biology is one of the challenges and the amazing parts about it.

[00:43:39] Karl: Yeah, so this morning IAM and I were talking about the podcast and I flagged a news item about a human born pathogen that is a fungus as well. So when you mentioned the fungus, I thought that was what you were gonna mention.

[00:43:51] Karl: I think it's CRS, which is a fungus that is heat resistant and it's causing a lot of illness among young people. These things are emerging and they're biosecurity related. I think there's a lot for us to pay attention to there. So as we close out this conversation, Titus, the commission's tasked with both protecting and advancing biotech, how do you envision this dual mission shaping the future of policy in the United States?

[00:44:19] Alexander: It's a long and intentional and deliberate process. The commission's final report will come out in early 25 and with that policy recommendations and legislative recommendations, but that is also not exclusive to the United States. We're, we're a US Congressional Commission, but we spend a lot of time, I.

[00:44:37] Alexander: Talking to and thinking about how to work with partners and allies around the world as well, because biology largely doesn't respect international borders as we all learned, I think it's the next step in a long-term conversation. The commission is actually authorized beyond the release of our final report in early 25.

[00:44:55] Alexander: We're authorized through the end of 26, and so this will allow us to then continue to work and advocate for getting some of these policies, as many of the policies as possible into action and continuing to build collaborations with industry and international partners. One of the things that I personally really hope that it inspires as more of these conversations that are a bit more integrated with the practitioner community.

[00:45:22] Alexander: In general, the, the broader policy apparatus does a great job of trying to incorporate expert opinions, but one of my favorite programs in the US at least, is the Triple As Fellowship, which brings people with PhDs and postdocs into policy conversations to have deeply scientific informed policy. And one of the things that we spend a lot of time focusing on is what we call bio literacy.

[00:45:46] Alexander: So how do we help bring better awareness and understanding all the way from K through grad school? And we also include, uh, government. We want a bio lit of government. So we think of how do we have information and upskilling and reskilling and, and training programs even for our government. Employees who are making purchasing decisions and contracting decisions, how do we help them understand the trade offs between something that was produced with biology or not?

[00:46:14] Alexander: Is that different? Is it the same product at the end? How do we think about changing and shifting our acquisition policies to be more amenable to those kinds of things? I think that the education component in the broadest sense of education is something that. We are going to continue to focus on, and it's something that I've been passionate about for a long time with Bioeconomy and other things like that.

[00:46:35] Alexander: So there's no shortage of work to do. It's not a release our report and hope things happen. It's the, the report is going to be a way for us to say, this is the culmination of a lot of really critical input from a lot of people, and now it's time to go make it reality.

[00:46:52] Erum: It sounds like that big, ambitious projects that you're accustomed to taking on, right.

[00:46:57] Erum: Biliteracy of the population is a challenge. We're all chipping away at it, but yeah, looks like you have all the experience and people around you and you know, everyone's listening, so it's incredible. One last question, and you touched on this a little bit earlier, but you mentioned the practitioner, so we have a lot of emerging biotech professionals listening to the podcast.

[00:47:17] Erum: Can you give a piece of advice on navigating the complexities of innovation and regulation besides joining that program that you mentioned? That sounds like a really great program, but any advice?

[00:47:28] Alexander: I think the biggest thing is find ways to engage and that doesn't have to be going and engaging in this.

[00:47:35] Alexander: With your full-time job, there are lots of opportunities to provide input, to figure out what policy means to innovators, and then provide, this is what, this is how you actually would do that. To help inform policy. So car, you talked about the listening session with darpa. I'm starting to write a newsletter.

[00:47:53] Alexander: There are lots of forums with which to be able to be engaged, and I think that anytime that it feels like policy or regulation gets in the way, there is likely a very good reason for that to be there. At a minimum it's because someone did something stupid once and we wanted to make sure that didn't happen again.

[00:48:10] Alexander: But I have a much deeper appreciation for quote unquote the bureaucracy after having been on the other side for quite a bit of time. And it's easy to throw rocks at the castle and say, ah, they're just slowing us down. But in reality, policy is largely just put in place. To try to let things go as fast as possible without having to dramatically walk things back and play damage control.

[00:48:36] Alexander: That will ultimately slow progress down in a really serious way. There was an AI winter in the eighties because there wasn't a lot of progress happening. This is not related to policy, but can you imagine if we had a biotech winter? We don't want that to happen. So innovators just know that civil servants who are out there trying to write policy or doing it in your best interest, no one is there saying, how do we stop it?

[00:48:59] Alexander: Everyone's saying, how do we do it so we don't have to stop it? So just get involved.

[00:49:05] Erum: Get involved. Great advice. Thank you. Yeah.

[00:49:07] Karl: Yeah. I think that's a great note to end on. Titus, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us today. We'll look forward to hearing more about your progress and maybe be having you come back after the commission releases its report.

[00:49:19] Alexander: Yeah, that'd be great. Well, I appreciate it.

[00:49:21] Karl: Yeah. All right. Thanks a lot.

[00:49:23] Alexander: Thank you.

[00:49:28] Karl: Okay, rum, what do you think about this episode?

[00:49:31] Erum: This episode comes at a great time where there's uncertainty on what policies are going to be in effect in the coming months, and how government takes a look at our industry of biotechnology. It was great to hear Titus's perspective and the work that they're doing.

[00:49:49] Erum: In the report that Titus mentioned, it's gonna come out early in 2025, and that's when it'll be made public. They are actually working on a report now and it's due to Congress in December of this year, and that's in accordance with their initial mandate that it's going to be due December. But this report will be made public in early 2025, and we will let you know as soon as it is public because we'll be one of the first people to read it.

[00:50:12] Erum: I think a big thing that he pointed out that really validated the work that we do, Carl, in terms of grow everything, is this idea of like science communications and bio literacy. He gave us a shout out. He thanked us, which was cool, but I think it's everyone doing it. Grow everything isn't the Carl and Rum show.

[00:50:30] Erum: This is something that we created for everyone else to have a platform to talk about biology in a way that's easily understood. That's exciting that people can take action upon the National Security Commission on emergent biotechnology or the commission. That's what they're also doing. They're doing it from a policy government point of view.

[00:50:48] Erum: We're doing it from an economic business point of view, oftentimes an innovation point of view. We've gotta bring all these conversations together, so I'm excited to talk to TUS again. Maybe having someone else from the Commission on that's probably a senator or a Congress person. To hear from their point of view as well, and then we can continue having this conversation about what's government's role in advancing.

[00:51:11] Erum: Biotechnology and the bioeconomy 'cause we had this executive order. Hopefully it continues and we can continue advancing Biomanufacturing to replace petrochemicals. But let's see. Titus is really cool guy. I mean, you guys heard it, but what do you think, Carl, what did you think about that episode?

[00:51:28] Karl: I mean, I wish I lived around TTO so I could hang out with him.

[00:51:30] Karl: He's super cool and he said he was in Colorado and is gonna be skiing. I know he's a big outdoors person, which I try to be as well. So I really appreciate him taking this more macro point of view through the National Commission. But I think it's also important to look at his. Background. I mean, he's done some really exci exciting things.

[00:51:50] Karl: He is been at exciting companies. That whole conversation about being part of the team at Colossal and working on De Extincting, the Willie Mammoth, that is a fascinating story, and I think we've been trying to get those guys on the podcast because we think it's important for people to understand why they're trying to do it.

[00:52:09] Karl: It's not just like, Hey, we can do this. Mm-hmm. There's actually a purpose for bringing back the Willie Mammoth. Earlier we had had a spokesperson from Revive and Restore, which is really focused on preventing extinction from happening, but they're also interested in de-extinction. So super interesting topics.

[00:52:27] Karl: But the National Security Commission on emerging Biotech is very neutral. Their idea is to support. The growth of the biotechnology industry supporting innovation and hopefully helping the government develop policies that will continue to foster breakthroughs and promote the growth of the industry. So that's what we're all about as well.

[00:52:46] Karl: One thing you didn't mention in terms of what this podcast is about, it is also about the entertainment value of the biotech industry. Well, because people do respond to entertainment and Yes. So I think if we can keep it entertaining and we can have fun doing this, which we do. That helps our message and it helps more people understand and we demystify what this industry does.

[00:53:08] Karl: Yeah. Which I think is really important.

[00:53:11] Erum: I think a lot of that's to do some more special effects, like bing bang, boom, you know? I think that's entertaining. Right. But the guy from police academy, yeah. If anybody knows a police academy is, and listening to his podcast, you're one of us, right? In terms of age.

[00:53:23] Erum: But I really appreciated how Titus was talking about creating biological products and he used two terms, and I think these terms we should use moving forward a bit more, but to be able to highlight it and emphasize and underscore. Is the concept of biotic and abiotic.

[00:53:41] Karl: Yeah.

[00:53:41] Erum: So biotic being a microbe that's engineered, so it's genetically engineered.

[00:53:47] Erum: So GMOs being a biotic, the actual organism is different and we're using that entire organism, whether we're eating it or making something of it. The actual organism is engineered. But an abiotic system is oftentimes what we talk about here on Grow. Everything is. Engineering organism to make a product, make a molecule, make an ingredient.

[00:54:09] Erum: And that ingredient is a product, not the engineered organism. That engineered organism is a factory and we used it to make something else. And so that's abiotic. So moving forward, we talk about biotic and abiotic. You guys will know the difference. We can obviously talk about it again and reinforce the definition.

[00:54:26] Erum: There is a difference when we talk about how we're using biotechnology, it's not just creating new living things, it's taking living things and engineering or setting them up in such a way that they're making products that have different performance characteristics that we were first getting from chemical synthesis or using chemistry to make certain products, but now we can engineer microbes to make products.

[00:54:51] Karl: I think we should probably get someone on here to talk about that a little bit more because inky, the international nomenclature of cosmetic ingredients. The way I understand it, if you produce something in a microorganism, you need to list the microorganism that you use as a factory. On that cosmetic product or that ingredient.

[00:55:10] Karl: And I wonder if that's one of those things where I've heard people say that labeling holds back innovation. I don't know if that's the case, but it is something that I'd like to explore a little bit more because it's fascinating to understand those differences, uh, between biotic and abiotic.

[00:55:24] Erum: I will say though, just as a caveat on that label, is that.

[00:55:27] Erum: It's only if there's a certain purity. So if you have a very pure separation of the engineered organism and the end product that it makes, then you don't have to put that organism on the label. That's right. But if it's a certain purity level, there's still some organism that makes it through into the product, then you have to put it on the label.

[00:55:47] Erum: Yeah. So that's a good thing for people that are making abiotic products. To understand is that the more pure, the more separation you can get from the microbe that's making the end product, the better off you are in terms of the label. Yeah.

[00:56:02] Karl: And then just one thing as we kind of close this episode out, I wanted to say thank you to James Angus Chandler, the listener of the podcast, and he recommended a book called The Echo Wife.

[00:56:12] Karl: He heard us last week talk about wild robot and the substance, and apparently the Echo Wife is a gory over the top book about human cloning. So I think that should be. A lot of fun read. We love it when our listeners reach out and offer suggestions on things we should be reading. So I'm gonna add that to my list and we'll see what that's like.

[00:56:35] Karl: Anything else that you want to add, IAM, as we close this episode out?

[00:56:38] Erum: So what I would like to wrap up with is, like you said, we love when people reach out to us and recommend certain books or content or people to be on the podcast. So please continue reaching out. It's towards the end of the year, 2020 five's, right around the corner.

[00:56:53] Erum: It's going to be, again, a brave new world, but we're going be here. Please continue listening to the pod because we're gonna stay on top of things as things change for the biotech industry. So stay tuned for that. We're really excited to see how we can continue to innovate. And thanks for listening. Again, follow up, check on the show notes, reach out to us and stay tuned for the next episode.

[00:57:15] Karl: Alright, that's the pod.