176. Dare to Commercialize: Damien Perriman’s eXoZymes Playbook

Damien When you get to see your idea, your method operate in somebody else's hands, that's sort of the student now becomes the master, right? If you can teach someone to do what you do, then you've developed and you've demonstrated a sense of mastery.

Erum Hi there And welcome to the Grow Everything Podcast, where we talk about how biotech is transforming every industry. I'm Iran Aziz Khan.

Karl And I'm Carl Schmeer. I'm happy to be here today to talk about the production of nutraceuticals, the World of Nutraceuticals.

Karl and the person who we have as our guest today is perfectly equipped to talk about that.

Karl And that's Damien Perriman, the Chief Commercial Officer of eXoZymes. Damien, great to have you on the podcast.

Damien Good day Karl. Good day, Erum. Lovely to be here.

Erum Yeah. Awesome. So, Damien, you are at DAO Chemical. You were at Geno, formerly known as genomatica. I'd like to say genomatica. and you, also advise, variety of startups like Cell G Protis, algae, and Persephone Biosciences, who we [00:01:00] had on the pod.

Damien Mm-hmm.

Erum Stephanie Color was on the pod. We had a great conversation with her. We recommend our audience listen to that episode. So you have a lot of experience that we can all learn from. So very excited to have you be here. And I remember when we first met, we were, having tacos out of a taco truck in a parking lot Yeah.

Erum After ABA beta event. And it was so much fun to meet you, Carl. Do you remember when you first met? Damian,

Karl I think we had met on the floor at Symbio Beta, but then I remember we ended up at like this open outdoor beer, live band thing and we hung out there for several hours. That's right.

Karl Eating pizza, not tacos.

Damien Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was at the end of a Symbio conference, so I think everyone was sort of coming down, diffusing. and uh, how nice was it just to have some live music and some beers and some just general chat, chat. 'cause I think the network and sort of empowering the network, connecting with your network is how so much of this gets done.

Erum Absolutely.

Karl Absolutely. Okay. so you serve as Chief Commercial Officer of Exosomes and now you're the driving force of this new spinoff [00:02:00] NCTX, and this is exosomes first spin out. It's the first time they've ever spun out a company. We previously had Michael Heen, the CEO of Exosomes, come on the podcast, and he talked about the power of cell-free manufacturing.

Karl That's a very powerful tool. Now you're taking it to produce a very specific molecule. what was it that led you guys to choose to spin out NTCX as its own entity versus keeping it as part of XYs?

Damien I think it's the discipline of knowing what you're good at, but then there's also the need to actually drive things into the market with great prejudice.

Damien And so eXoZymes we wanna stay really focused and become really, really good at spinning up better ways of making natural products with real performance advantages, but that means we need to go back to the well and keep doing that and become really, really proficient at creating what eXoZymes is there to create now the discipline of driving something into the market.

Damien Is a different discipline. You know, the first half is inventive, it's [00:03:00] creative, it's disruptive. The second half needs to have systems that work with acceleration. and so the cultures are different. So we thought from business model perspective, why not focus on what exosomes does best, but then create an ecosystem and create a different vehicle with a different culture, with different teams, with different partnerships that then will take on that role of driving into the market.

Erum Wow. Well said. We have to make that into a clip. That was, that was very good. That was very good. so this week you're here in New York City releasing a significant milestone. The company came in chemical, independently, ran your process a hundred times scale, and they hit 99% conversion and 99.6% purity at the first attempt.

Erum That's pharma grade purity we're talking about. Mm-hmm. And their head of catalog chemistry said he was genuinely surprised. Why does it matter so much to you?

Damien it gives me chills to be honest when I think about the investment you put into an idea, and I gotta give a nod to the team, particularly the development [00:04:00] team back in Monrovia at Exos, who poured their heart and soul in the last 12 months in sort of generating this process.

Damien Because when you get to manifest it in a scale up project. Their work now becomes a success milestone. And so I don't wanna take that moment away from them 'cause they absolutely deserve it. But as a business, when you get to see your idea, your method operate in somebody else's hands, that's sort of, the student now becomes the master, right?

Damien If you can teach someone to do what you do, then you've developed and you've demonstrated a sense of, mastery. So there's that element to it as well. But seeing them run it so easily. Out the gate that just speaks to like cell-free is kind of a different type of technology to scale up. it's a simple reaction compared to a fermentation process or maybe some other types chemical synthesis routes you have for making products.

Damien That simplicity was then demonstrated when we had such an ease of the scale up journey.

Karl Yeah, I would recommend that anybody who's listening should go on the Exosome site and watch the video because it's pretty impressive. And it kind of [00:05:00] speaks to this idea that being able to transfer a technology from a biotech company to A-C-D-M-O or another manufacturer is really the name of the game when it comes to scale up.

Karl and basically what it says for exosomes is you're able to take your recipe and hand it off to someone else. Give us some more details on what that Cayman validation means for exosomes.

Damien Yeah. You stepped into the importance of what that demonstrated a little bit when we were talking about the role of exosomes versus the commercial spin out, we have a very clear picture on what we do.

Damien We develop tech transfer packages with qualified contract manufacturers and qualified supply chain. So that our partners can take our technology and operate, right, focus on the operation, the production, the marketing, and all that brilliant, beautiful stuff that's responsible for putting product into people's hands.

Damien When we went to Cayman, we demonstrated we could deliver a product, So we moved out of this. We're a research organization, we're a development organization. Now we're a product delivery [00:06:00] organization. And so I think that was the first test of being able to do that. Do it well, and that sets us up to say, okay, let's do it again.

Karl Can I just ask a quick follow up? Of course. Does that mean that Cayman will be the manufacturer for NCT or was that just a pilot with them? Are they gonna be the partners? How's that gonna work out?

Damien Cayman has, certain assets, certain capabilities, which were sufficient for that. Scale up step that we did.

Damien Cayman operates across a broad set of industries, so I, couldn't be more impressed with how professional they are, how open they've been, are as a partner. We have other ideas of things we wanna do with Cayman, which I'm not gonna touch on, but once you find a good partnership. You work with it.

Damien and that's exactly what we're doing with Cayman. They turned out to be a great partner.

Erum Yeah. Yeah. very surprised by the outcomes.

Damien Mm-hmm.

Erum And I bet they're like, whoa, we need to work with exosomes. 'cause in that video, which we will have in the show notes, they were like, oh, there's so much we can do.

Erum And I saw like kinda the shock and awe and like the chemist eyes. It's like, I can't believe We're capable of doing this.

Damien and erum I was surprised too. I've sponsored scale up programs before. Yeah. I [00:07:00] remember dropping into a, site in Germany where we were doing a scale up project expecting to see fermenters running and, product moving into DSP.

Damien And my engineers were sitting outside the hotel, having a beer in the middle of the day and I'm like, what's going on? We're still waiting for the seed to grow, so you can hit unexpected results when you go from lab scale to larger scale and you always sweat it. I've had another one where, the material came out and s smelled different or the color was different.

Damien It's like, what is going on in these complex living systems? It can throw unknowns at you when you go to larger scale, and I think that's one of the things we really appreciate working in the cell-free system, which we should understand more of. But in a cell-free system, you're making one thing. So there is a lot less to go wrong mm-hmm.

Damien When you're going into larger scale. Yeah.

Erum A lot less drama. 'cause you don't have organisms trying to fight it out or Oh, absolutely. Stink up your ferment and, and a lot less chemical engineers sitting outside their hotel in the sun, just like waiting for the world to get better. Just drinking beer, hanging out.

Erum Wow. what it's like to work in Germany. Very [00:08:00] interesting. okay, so let's talk about NCTX more. It's going. To market first as a supplement. Mm-hmm. Before any pharmaceutical path. Yeah. So walk us through that logic. What's the advantage of leading with the supplement?

Damien Yeah. I think supplements and pharmaceuticals fundamentally serve different roles in our pursuit for human health span.

Damien Supplements is a way of actually being able to address human's needs for better health and better lifestyles early on in the journey towards healthspan. Whereas pharmaceuticals is really about correcting what's gone wrong. Yeah. And so when we think about supplements, we need to demonstrate that, NCT is a material that is safe for humans to consume, and we need to demonstrate that NCT works as intended in humans in the supplements game.

Damien the pathway to grasp for NCT has already been established. And so that's a market that's pretty close to hand for us, and so it makes sense as a business. To target that category that you can generate a return from faster, because we have to serve our investors on the pharmaceutical [00:09:00] side, that's much more targeted towards disease and to treatment.

Damien So that's a longer journey to demonstrate a product or maybe some variation of our product to serve that market. So we are pursuing it, but that'll be a parallel, longer term journey than the supplement space. But I think it's right. we want to help humans on their journey towards healthy, long lives.

Damien That's the role of a supplement, but also there is this opportunity to help people who have already got into trouble and they're suffering from chronic disease. Why wouldn't we look at treatments through the pharmaceutical path as well?

Erum Yeah. I'm excited to talk more about that. so let's talk about the supplement industry.

Erum Mm-hmm. Okay. it's very crowded. And consumers have been burned before by products that over promise and under deliver. How does NCTX establish credibility in that space, especially when you're coming from a biotech rather than a consumer brand background?

Damien Yeah, think a part of establishing credibility is first and foremost in what is the product that we're making. What is the rigorous toxicity and mutagenicity and other safety studies that we do to [00:10:00] ensure that we can say this will be safe as intended for its use. that's super important.

Damien and when you make an investment of the scale that we're making, you can't shortcut stuff like that, right? Yeah. Because we don't want this to be a 12 month success and. Wait for the FDA to catch up for this, right? This is something we want to go global. We want it to be massive, so you've gotta get those things right for us.

Damien The safety is important, but also the consistency of product is super important. So when we proudly talk about the purity of our product, there's a reason is because if we can make it pure and we can industrialize a process that's very, very pure means our formulators are getting the exact same composition every single time, and then they can deliver products to customers that perform.

Damien Exactly the same way every single time. So that trust is really important in building credibility in the supplements market. And then the commercial vehicle,that separation of here's exosomes, but here's a commercial vehicle. The partners we are putting around these commercial vehicles are partners who will have.

Damien Established relationships and established customer reach. [00:11:00] We want to be able to leverage that because you need to have a conversation with consumers in the supplement space. What are their needs and how does this address your needs? And that's also not forget, AI is gonna be playing a role in how consumers educate themselves and take agency in what they can consume.

Damien So, it's about understanding how that system and that network works. That's not an exosomes knowledge base. So the partners will become really important in that credibility.

Karl Yeah. Let's talk about, the actual molecule itself, NCT. So the way I understand it, it impacts a very specific metabolic pathway.

Karl Mm-hmm. Turns a switch on that improves, how cells burn fat. So scientists apparently have known about this switch for a really long time, but no one's figured out how to turn it on or turn it off. What does it mean to be able to do that in really plain terms that someone who really doesn't understand the science, could understand?

Karl And why is NCT the first molecule that can do that now?

Damien Yeah, so there's two important names to be aware of here. There is HNF4A, which is that. Metabolic [00:12:00] switch that you talked about. We've known about the importance in the role of HNF4A for a really, really long time. it's a switch that turns on metabolism.

Damien It's a switch which upregulates a number of other genes throughout the body that upload programs to control mitochondrial growth and mitochondrial formation. HNF4A though has been notoriously difficult to drug. It's been attempted numerous times by the pharmaceutical industry, but these programs have failed 'cause there was never a agonist, a molecule or drug that was able to go in there and switch on HN FR Alpha until they discovered this compound called NCT N Trans tyramine in peppercorns and hemp seed husks.

Damien And it had a molecular structure which looked interesting for its ability to agonize HNF4A. And sure enough, nature did hold the breakthrough that we were looking for, and it was discovered that NCT is now the only known agonist of HNF4A, but HNF4A [00:13:00] remains. Without a drug in the clinic, there's no approved drug for activation of HNF4A, even though it plays such a critical role in mitochondrial function.

Damien Not yet. Which is sort of key to healthy and functional, um, metabolism.

Erum Yeah. Not yet. Yeah, not yet. Not yet. I like that growth, growth mindset.

Damien that's kind of why we got excited about this is you've got a compound that's got a known performance effect. Well studied Sanford Burnham Prebys published a number of great clinical papers on its ability to activate HNF4A.

Damien But yet why has the industry lagged in turning this into a clinical candidate or turn this into a, uh, you know, ingredient of choice for the industry? And the heart of that problem lies in. It's only available in vening, small amounts of nature. So it doesn't present itself as a compound to be farmed.

Damien Mm-hmm. Or a compound to be sourced. You have to produce it, but it was difficult to produce. Until now, right? Until now. [00:14:00] Until now. Until now. Until now.

Karl Uh, that's amazing. one of the things we talk about a lot on the podcast is how nature has the answers. and now we're able to really tap into those answers.

Karl Now, in preparing for the podcast, we looked at some of the preclinical data, and what we saw is that. It works. I mean there's less weight gain in mice that are put on high fat diets. Mitochondrial activity is up, like you said, liver fat is down, but that's mice. What's the path to get that kind of data in humans and,what are the next steps for NCT in.

Damien Yeah. Now that we've got a developed method for production of NCT, we can reasonably step into a lot more human use studies for this compound. So that's sort of taking the, preclinical animal model work that's been done. there's been two human studies that have been enrolled around different indications, so that's also useful to showits effect in humans and NCT has been available.

Damien In the supplements industry, although in trace dosing. So I mean there's precedent we're following in, but none of [00:15:00] that source, and none of that work below is really relied upon a consistent, high, pure abundant source of NCT, which we now have. So that means we get to really amplify the human use. And the human use is important for two reasons. One is we obviously wanna build a pathway towards pharmaceutical. Yeah, but also we just wanna understand how humans react under different conditions, under different dose regimens, under different sort of methods of taking so that we can start to decipher what is the role it will play in our strategy as humans to live.

Damien Longer lives and, longer quality lives, how does it play alongside GLP ones? There's a lot of fascinating questions around the treatment of sort of chronic illness and the support of treatments for chronic illness that I think we, we need to understand next. And that's the sort of exciting frontier for us now that we have an abundant high quality supply.

Erum Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned GLP ones, so you're positioning NCT as different from GLP ones. It's considered [00:16:00] metabolic restoration. Mm-hmm. Rather than appetite suppression. Is that a genuine scientific distinction and how do you see NCT fitting into the broader metabolic health conversation happening right now?

Damien Yeah, and I think it's important to sort of come out and be very, transparent with our listeners. None of our statements have been reviewed by the FDA. Yep. So we are really leading forward with just what scientific evidence we have, and we're trying to be very honest about what we don't have.

Damien Yet, GLP ones have been sort of a fascinating restoration for chronic health to the medical community in that it suppresses appetite and has allowed medical practitioners to help obese people lose weight and move into a healthier, condition. Yeah, but that's a, a rescue, that's a correction.

Damien What we see in the NCT animal studies has been the treatment of healthy mice. In the presence of a high fat diet and they gain less weight and their livers stay healthier than if they did not take NCT in that situation. So on the basis of that [00:17:00] evidence, which is all we really got to work with right now, we've been thinking about NCT as more of an earlier treatment.

Damien or a supplement that could provide earlier support to people who are early in their health span journey so as to help, you know, those people who work hard, who eat convenient foods, who have really hectic and stressful lifestyles move away from dysfunction and still have healthy metabolism even though you're, suffering some of these lifestyle issues that sometimes are frankly, unavoidable.

Damien Right? We think of that as a real community to engage with and learn more about how NCT can help that community. But also if you are. Suffering with chronic illness and you have been rescued by GLP ones. There's this bounce back issue when you stop taking GLP ones. Yeah. Yeah. So then how do you help those people, who have perhaps got back to a weight that's good and healthy for them, not return to where they were before?

Damien we can't just continue dosing GLP ones. We need to find other ways of, supporting those people. I think as we do more study, we'll understand if NCT can play a role [00:18:00] in that, uh, situation as well.

Erum Wow. Wow.

Karl So there's kind of an ongoing debate about what is natural. I always say, you know, natural because people have different definitions of what natural is.

Karl And so when customers find out that this was a trace compound found in peppercorns, that you've been able to scale via industrial biotech, how does that change the dialogue? What do you think people are gonna ask and how are you gonna address that story?

Damien we could have an entirely.

Damien Separate podcast just on the subject of,natural. In my career, I've moved through fuels and plastics and textiles and personal care, ingredients, fragrances, nutrition, now nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals and, and natural has a different definition everywhere you play. And when you bring in biology.

Damien Natural has an interesting definition in that regard as well, using biological processes. Versus sourcing biological materials. But let's be honest, when we talk about health span, what matters is safety and performance. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Whether it was sourced from a natural [00:19:00] ingredient or whether it was produced using a natural based process, whether biology was involved in the inspiration of this method at all, our secondary features to whether it works.

Damien And whether it is safe. So those are the two things that are most important to our audience. We like to add in, can we then produce it sustainably? And sustainability is probably the next definition that has the most very number of definitions depending on who you, for sure. Yeah. But for us, the importance is like, can we make this ingredient without the destruction of ecosystems and natural habitats, can we make this reproducibly at high quality?

Damien And can we do it as a company that is economical? So that we're not actually doing harm to the environment, we're not doing harm to our supply chains and we're not doing harm to ourselves in trying to produce this and do so for a long time.

Erum Yeah. This is why I love biotech. There's a lot of,boxes You can check off the sustainability box.

Erum Yeah, the definition a little gray, but sustainability, keep it green, and then the performance and the costs, which I know sometimes people say biotech is expensive. [00:20:00] Maybe in the world of pharmaceuticals, but then we can see that the costs are coming down or that there's technologies that are enabling the costs to come down.

Damien I gotta take on it like this. When I first started working with industrial biotechnology, sustainability was not a part of everyone's lexicon. I spent a lot of time traveling the world talking about technology and how it could change what companies are doing and how they're addressing their products to the world.

Damien today, every company I talk to has a biological department Back then none of them did. So the tools for biology have certainly become more ingrained and sustainability is a part of everybody's.

Damien Language. Mm-hmm. But I think what biology has always done is it's given us the opportunity to rethink how we're doing things. Mm-hmm. And so I see biology as a great inspiration. So today, even though sustainability's everywhere and bio departments are in every company, biology keeps giving us a reason to rethink how we're making things to serve what humans.

Damien Going forward.

Erum Yeah. Another great clip. Ah, you're so good, Damien. You're so [00:21:00] good. Okay. All right. So NCTs found in trace amounts of peppercorns. Can you give us an example of another molecule found in trace amounts that was amplified integr quantities that was then used for wellness or therapeutic purposes?

Damien the pharmaceutical industry is absolutely full. Okay. Of examples like this, erythropoietin, uh, there's a number of pain meds, which were found in nature, which needed to be amplified in terms of their expression or needed to be turned into a host to produce them. this is not a new idea that we look to nature for the inspiration of a molecule that does something but nature.

Damien Produces those molecules for nature's own needs. Hmm. So often what we do is we look for a function, do we need a barrier or do we need some type of boost? Do we needsomething to absorb free radicals? Like what's the function we're looking for? And with that inspiration in mind, nature's been able to provide.

Damien But I think where humans have had to intervene is to get to a way to use that natural system and amplify it. So then we can, industrialize. Industrialize is about [00:22:00] bringing volume. Mm-hmm. And consistency, which nature's not good about volume and consistency. Nature will produce what they want, when they want it.

Damien Yeah. In the way that it wants it. So we have to bring some human intervention to that to make it useful for us.

Erum Cool. Okay, so next question. Mm-hmm. All right. On the regulatory side, getting a novel biotech derived ingredient to market in the US is getting more complex. Mm-hmm. That's right.

Erum So grass approval alone can take two years or more, and the rules rounded are actively being rethought today. So what's your plan for navigating that timeline? Does it change how you sequence the business?

Damien the FDA has always been an important partner for,ensuring that Americans have access to safe ingredients and safe products, and I think it's important that that continues.

Damien The FDA in its prior wisdom had, developed a self grass pathway where the burden of demonstrating safety falls upon the companies who are bringing the ingredients to market. And that's because. There is [00:23:00] a huge number of supplements and health and food products that we as consumers in America have access to.

Damien that's a volume far greater than any agency I think could have ever handled. But they developed a procedure, and that procedure for self grass is you develop your dossier and then you assemble an independent panel of experts to review your information. And it's that panel that then declares.

Damien Whether they believe your assertion that this product is safe for its specific use. That has been a pathway that has unlocked the journey for, in numerous number of products to enter the marketplace. And I think it's been very supportive of innovation. There is an extra step whereby you could take that assertion to the FDA, and that's what people refer to as FDA gra, and it's not that the FDA declares.

Damien To be safe is the FDA agrees with your assertion that it is safe By statute, they're supposed to do that in nine months. In reality, you're right, it takes closer to two years. And so our pathway, which [00:24:00] is a pathway so many take, is self grass, allows you to enter the marketplace. But you do need a sufficient body of evidence to support that assertion.

Damien And then you go to the FDA and you have your meeting and they say, it looks like your dossier is sufficient for us to do a review. We'll undertake a review, and then you forget about it. And then two years later, hopefully they come back and they agree with your, assertion. I thinkthat FDA sign off is critical if you want to become a massive ingredient.

Damien If you want a partner, if you want a global brand to invest, then maybe even acquire your supplement line is the risk of them doing so with that FDA question overhanging is sort of like that needs to be resolved. Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. So that's important for that type of angle, but also if you're gonna be touching a lot of people.

Damien Then the FDA should be paying a lot more attention. And so I think it's important. You're right, there are perhaps challenges to that process that's been,entertained, by federal government at the moment. I'm hoping smart and cool heads prevail in [00:25:00] that, the fact that it. Should take nine months.

Damien It takes two years. Speaks to a process within the FDA in just doing their, agreement with your assertion that's already overwhelmed. I do believe the government is looking for ways of improving the safety of what Americans consume, but also not to sort of destroy business and destroy the function of government at the same time.

Damien So, you know, I hope they find a way that, even streamlines that process further. Whilst preserving safety, I think doing away or changing that self grasps process would be a great challenge to a lot of companies. Yeah. I

Karl want to circle back to what you talked about when it comes to industrial biotech and your experience.

Karl We recently helped, co-author a report called The Molecule Manifesto for the Advanced Biotech for Sustainability Coalition. Worked with a lot of big companies. Mm-hmm. And McKinsey served as a data partner and the assertion there was. That industrial biotech has stalled for 20 years because the focus was on creating platforms.

Karl And the path forward is to be more molecule led as opposed to, focus on molecules that [00:26:00] have real demand. given that you've worked on the industrial biotech side, specifically on the commercialization side, do you think that assertion is true? And if not, What needs to change?

Damien there was probably an evolutionary step that even predates the one that you just mentioned. around 2006, 2007, we had sort of a huge surge in oil prices and I dunno if you remember Al Gore and the Cherry picker and the Inconvenient Truth showing where carbon dioxide levels were going, right?

Damien Yeah. It was a really big aha moment for a lot of people. And the Department of Energy actually published a report called the Top 10 Biobased Chemicals, and that was a product focused. I won't call it a manifesto 'cause I've read your manifesto. It's fantastic. but it was more of like, here's some guide rails to the industry of, what you should be working on.

Damien A number of academic labs, a lot of startups around the world focused in on those top 10 chemicals. One of the things that was missing is what's the market side perspective of what they need? Yeah. It was more of a, we have a capability to produce certain products, let's push that [00:27:00] product forward. in looking at your manifesto, one of the things I really, really like is that it's almost like a call for business cases.

Damien Yeah. Yeah. In that. We should become product focused as we were originally. And I a hundred percent agree with that. but in becoming product focused, we need to understand where those products go. Lemme come back to that in just one moment. What happened in the middle is venture capital got involved.

Damien Yeah. And if you speak to a venture capitalist about a First of a Kind technology, the insurance they look for is if your first product fails, what are you gonna work on next? And so you had to have a platform. And a platform gives you that, that story that says we're gonna have this sort of slow ramp.

Damien When we get the first product into market, then everyone realizes it works and our platform value will balloon and will hockey stick up. If you didn't have that in your story, you weren't getting funded. So it's sort of like the nature of how money works in this industry forced the great surge of platform companies.

Damien even in my experience at Gena, the [00:28:00] platform story secured us our series B investment. yeah. And that was a big one. It enabled us to do a lot of things, but we couldn't have got there. If it wasn't for the platform story, but again, you've gotta go somewhere. So I wanna come back to the moment that I parked.

Damien I have great empathy for new companies starting out in trying to understand what do we work on. I have lost count of the number of companies who have come forward and said, we're working on this product. Why? Because we can, and now I'll create a story of why I think it's gonna have a compelling market effect.

Damien And when I do product number two, I'm gonna have a lot more market insight because you have to live this journey a little bit before you can master it. Yeah. And so we have to be forgiving of people who make an attempt to dare to commercialize something you're generating learning. I do think those companies have the opportunity to focus on products two and three and four really have that privilege of,

Damien Into market perspective. Yeah, and I think in your manifesto, as you call upon, the importance of that is a hundred percent correct. [00:29:00] Then let's just layer on the support structures to help people get more of that market side insight.

Karl Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned the venture side because it's something we talk about a lot and between us and also when it comes to the podcast, because we know that venture, once you accept that money, you're on a sprint and industrial biotech takes a lot longer than.

Karl Three to five years. We're talking about a potential, 10 to 15 year journey. But we tried to a lot in the, Manifest. We really try to say these are the molecules that can be done in the next five to 10 years. Yeah, Given the technology, given potential investment and given the infrastructure that already exists or needs to be built.

Karl Mm-hmm. So I'm glad you agreed it and you enjoyed it.

Damien If you look at what bio-based chemicals we have in the market today that are successful, most of them are, are new compounds that didn't have well understood applications when they started out and they've taken 20 years. To kind of grow into the market.

Damien So if you're a VC and your entrepreneur is pitching to you a 20 [00:30:00] year return on investment, that just doesn't, doesn't work work. So then the art becomes in these sort of innovation journeys is how do you find sort of interim valuation points where one group of investors can have their lifecycle? Move on, but then the next group of investors can carry you to that next phase, into that next phase.

Damien Hopefully though we don't need five to 10 years for everything. Mm-hmm. Uh, and I think that's one of the things we're trying to tackle with exosomes is why supplements? Well, because we'd like to target a return on investment in more of a three to four year timeframe for our investors, then say five to seven.

Damien And in doing that, we build muscle memory. In the organization. So it's not just vision and foresight, it's like as an organization, having the systems and the people who are developed and trained to go and tackle something more ambitious.

Karl So, beyond NCT, ExoSyms is already produced cannabinoids, santine and sustainable aviation fuels, also known as saf.

Karl How does a team choose what to work on? [00:31:00] And then this point of how do you choose what you're gonna spin out to be its own entity?

Damien I loved joining exosomes when I did, 'cause it was a time when we were thinking through. What are the markets we want to impact and, why? when I joined Exosomes, I had come over from a at Gvo where I was chief business over there, and we were very much focused on sustainable aviation fuel.

Damien But that was a company that was very mature. it was long, long into it journey. And to look at a startup and say, sustainable aviation fuel is one of the options we have is like. Yeah. Okay, great. We might have a technology that can make a great impact here, but that's a long journey. So let's focus on where the journeys can be shorter.

Damien We can build the muscle memory that I just referred to. So NCT floated up to the top as we were going through our ideation for a couple of reasons. One, it was a natural product, so we knew that there was a pathway that existed in nature. So we had something to be inspired by. Two, there was a demonstrated preclinical result.

Damien So we knew this was a performance compound. [00:32:00] And three, it struggled because you couldn't make it. Mm-hmm. And so that spoke directly to the heart of what we were capable of doing. So that sort of trifecta came together and we said, aha, we need to now go and tackle this opportunity. But beyond NCT, we have what we call an IDM Management system inside the company, which is sort of a formalized process.

Damien And what I love most about this is that hopper of new ideas gets filled by the employees of the company. what's the science they can get really excited about? Because if you can excite a scientist, then you're on the edge of something really creative. But then the discipline becomes, well, how do you build a business case around each of those ideas?

Damien And it's the business case that then helps the ideas float outta the hopper to come into consideration of like, what do we invest in next? Which I think lines up very nicely with the molecule manifesto.

Erum Yeah. Yeah. I love that idea management system. we need one of those, because I think we do too.

Erum We always, there's too many ideas floating around. I know. Just still floating around. We gotta scrap one. oh, we had the idea of podcast. Here [00:33:00] we are. Yeah. So, okay. All right. So now we're gonna do a bit of visioneering. Okay. Okay. So looking ahead, if everything goes according to plan, how does the world look different in five to 10 years because of what exosomes and NCTX are building today?

Damien the obvious and the first thought that comes to my mind is delighted investors. it's sort of one of those disciplines, I think in general in the industrial biotechnology, synthetic biology world has been a little elusive. And it touches on what you say, Carl is like, this is a hard game.

Damien Yeah. Changing biomanufacturing. So changing manufacturing is, a hard, hard game. So visioneering would be delighted. Investors 'cause delighted investors means more investors. Mm-hmm. More investors means more ideas. More ideas means even bigger change for better for humankind. So there's a nice sort of ecosystem that gets established there.

Damien I think another interesting indicator would be every major global company that works in the space of human health or even human [00:34:00] progress, has a cell-free department. To me that says that what we've started has become much more mainstream. And then if I look at our babies, our children is, they've found their homes.

Damien Like NCT is helping to make the lives of people better. The other products we have in our pipeline. Also moving into a role in commercialization. And I'd love to think in that five year to 10 year timeframe, we're looking at the company exosomes as being more. Mainstream, but also

Damien is this innovation cycle really gonna work? Like we want it to work as in five years, we need to almost be redundant. You know? What's the next amazing thing we could be working on?

Karl That's amazing. Yeah. All right. So we're gonna move into the kind of fun quickfire part of the

Damien Okay.

Karl interview.

Damien I think I've seen others perform on this and, uh, I've been a little bit nervous thinking about what's gonna happen here next.

Karl Well, it's kind of up to us and to you, you know, depending on how quickly you know, you answer the questions. so let me kick it off and then you'll go next. if you could put NCT into one unexpected [00:35:00] food or drink, what would you put it in?

Damien Ooh. Selfishly, I just love ice cream. it's something I completely indulge in, anywhere in the world. I remember when we saw the first results of NCT, it was like this really nice, sharp, crystalline powder, and it reminded me a little bit like malt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so malter my ice cream is just a absolute to die for.

Damien So if I could put NCT on ice cream, I would be a very happy, happy individual.

Karl Awesome.

Erum Wow. Yeah. That a nice balance. Yeah. Eating the fat. Burning the fat

Damien Guilt-free. I know. Guilt Free. I know.

Karl My mitochondria are cranking away.

Erum Yeah. Oh my. That's awesome.

Damien It's like burn, burn, burn, burn, burn.

Erum Maybe burn. Yeah. Okay. So if NCT were a superhero, what would its superpower be?

Damien I'm reminded of that movie, WALL-E

Erum a great movie.

Damien Yeah. Isn't it? And it's like humans are up in space in their pods doing their thing, and then there's this tiny little robot down on the surface of the planet just like cleaning up the disaster that we left. I think [00:36:00] of NCT a little bit like I think of,WALL-E, like that character that's just running around, just doing its job, happy to be doing its job and in doing so, sort of making.

Damien The earth, the body of our home. Hopefully better.

Erum I love that.

Damien That's, that's such a good,

Erum I will remember that forever. Thank you. Thank you for that.

Karl so one of the powers of the exosomes platform is the ability to scale the production of nature's molecules, mm-hmm. That are produced in very small quantities.

Karl What's a molecule that's in nature that is produced in very small quantities that you know about, that you would like? Put in the platform to scale up,

Damien cannabinoids. I think there's a moment now for cannabinoids. I think the White House is starting to lean into this subject, which means sort of general Americans are becoming more informed on the importance of our endocannabinoid system.

Damien I think cannabinoids can play a really, really important role in helping to modulate. Mood pain, even appetite regulation. but we haven't been able to successfully take these. [00:37:00] Many, many, many compounds that have known sort of therapeutic effect and commercialize 'em. I'd love to see that. we could unlock that because I think it would be a, massive unlock.

Erum Yeah. And some of those molecules are very complex. Yeah, no, no. I was gonna say, yeah, I mean, uh, I think one cannabis plant has about 400 different compounds.

Damien Yeah, exactly.

Erum So one of them could really unlock something.

Damien It's an amazing amount of diversity, but I think a lot of people don't understand is, is they actually regulate.

Damien Known regulatory system in our body. Yeah. So I mean, it, has a pathway, it has a mechanism, but we just need to unlock. Safe nons, psychedelic cannabinoids that can actually target those benefits. And then I think there's a, massive amount of therapeutic benefit that could be created from that.

Erum Well, psychedelic too, for some of the mental things can also be helpful.

Damien But I'm talking about a pathway.

Erum Yeah, that's, well, mental pathway, research,

Damien a commercial, a commercial pathway that, uh, folks get behind. But yes, I don't wanna take away from the other side. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Erum We'll have, have another podcast about the endocannabinoid system. It's very interesting. It's,

Damien we need an idea, a management system [00:38:00] for this other podcasts.

Erum We'll put in yours. We'll put in yours. Yeah. Great. Okay, so here's another fun one. So you're at a dinner party and someone asks you what you do, what's your one-liner that gets them interested?

Damien Oh, I'd start with G Day. That always works well for an icebreaker. They'll be like, good day. My name's Damien and I turn nature's potential into human breakthroughs.

Erum Love it.

Karl Amazing.

Karl And what's one thing about cell Free Biomanufacturing that people don't understand that they should?

Damien I think people need to understand that self free is about a pathway.

Damien When I talk to people about what we do, that seems to be sort of the common misconception. It's like, for one, what are exosomes, and I talk about enzymes that operate outside the cell. I talk about the limitations of the cell, but I think people still have this mind that enzymes were about single point transformations.

Damien Mm-hmm. Which is true, but we deploy a cascade of enzymes, so we're about a pathway. So we're transforming [00:39:00] multiple times. And I think that's the thing that a lot of people should understand because each transformation opens up a little more potential for diversity, but you can still do it in a targeted way.

Damien So it means we have ways of solving for many, many, many product needs through that diversity. But still, ultimately, we're a pathway that goes from an input. To a desired output, and that's where microbial engineering fermentation sort of became first important to us. Its ability to make absolutely anything via a pathway or we can make anything with a pathway.

Damien But if we take that pathway outta the living system, we now have a simple system that scales more like traditional chemistry.

Karl Amazing. Well thank you Damien, for coming on the Grow Everything podcast. This has been great. Yeah, it's been so much fun.

Damien I've been very excited about it. I have long drives between my home and San Diego and the office up in Monrovia.

Damien 'cause I come up once a week to be with the team, which means I get. Plenty of podcasts listening time and you guys have become a [00:40:00] constant companion for me, so thank you for that.

Karl Oh, thank you.

Erum oh my god I'm gonna cry

Karl so you know everything about us.

Erum Yeah, no, and we wanna wish you and the team at Zy all the best, very, very excited about what you're doing. So fascinating.

Karl Yeah. We can't wait to have you come on again to talk about your progress

Erum and cannabinoids

Damien and cannabinoids. We'd love to. And so that means to successful milestones ahead for us all.

Karl Yes. Excellent. Absolutely. Thank you.

Karl Iran, what do you [00:41:00] think of that episode?

Erum I loved it. Wow. Damien, you can tell that he's such a professional. He's been in this work industry for quite some time, and you can hear the experience when he was answering those questions. I felt like there was so much information that biotech founders or leaders of companies can take away.

Erum Like he spit out playbooks. Yeah. In those answers.

Erum Yeah.

Erum What about you? What did you think that was?

Karl No, I thought so too. There were a couple things that really stood out to me. One was everything he said about industrial biotech, kind of molecule led planning and why it makes sense actually to spin out NCT from XI.

Karl Which is something we'd asked 'em about before and so gave such a great, explanation as to why that makes sense. Totally makes sense. Commercial entity versus research entity. I really appreciated, you know, this explanation of self free. For our listeners who don't really understand what that is, go back and listen the episode of Michael Helson, the CEO of Xzy to get more of that.

Karl background and su free is an incredible tool and it kind [00:42:00] of confirms something we talk about a lot on the podcast that all the answers are in nature and if you find those answers with su free, you have the ability to scale up the manufacturing of those answers. So that's something that, XZY is, and Damien really is showing something they can do.

Erum Yeah. And then, you know, we talk a lot about the science, but we also talk about business. And the idea of commercializing and how that is a different challenge than the scientific challenge or the technology that you have to be able to build out. And I loved when Damien was saying, dare to commercialize.

Erum I was like, wow, that's like a great, like a tagline, exercise, dare to commercialize. It's so good. I feel like it gives people permission. he used the analogy of, you know, venture capital being able to. Be a good investment vehicle when you're able to do that whole DBTL cycle, the design, build, test, learn cycle.

Erum And you have to try, and if you fail, that's okay. Try again. And how does that play out in the [00:43:00] world of biotech? But I think that was,great to hear him say it, 'cause he's out there, he's building, he has been building, he has been commercializing. Over the years and he sees it and he is like, all right, yes, there's companies, yes, but the commercialized yes, are challenges, but let's overcome them and move forward.

Erum And I really appreciate that Damian, with all of his experience was able to share that with us in our audience.

Karl I'll just add one other thing. Being able to take your technology. And hand it off to a chemical company or A-C-D-M-O so you can scale out. That is a very special skill, and I think it's something that early stage founders really need to be aware that that is something that they're gonna have to do at some point if they wanna be able to scale faster.

Karl A-C-D-M-O or an external partner really makes that possibility easier. And I think the way that Damien described exosomes methodology for doing that, particularly with Cayman. And NCT is pretty amazing. And I said it during the interview, you should watch the video because it's a really [00:44:00] amazing video.

Erum Yeah. Yeah. And how about that idea management system? Carl? We need to get something like that set up. there's so many ideas and we can't do it all. I think we talked about this, like having something that's available online so people can scan it. We'll do like a, rough idea of an idea and be able to be like, all right, there's directionality to this, there's some substance.

Erum You go take it on. And then, let us know and then we can follow you. So, hey, listeners, if you have an idea or if you hear an idea on our podcast, I'm gonna take it forward and somehow attribute it to us. Let us know because we're happy to support you and, be able to again, grow everything.

Erum There's a lot to be grow, right?

Karl Yeah, I love that idea. I've gone through years where one of my daily practices is to generate ideas every day because that is a very specific muscle in your brain.

Karl one year, I spent a whole year just doing biotech ideas every day.

Karl Yeah.

Karl And those have shown up in the work that we do at Messaging Lab.

Karl They're not all public, but it is stuff that we. Talk about it. I've done, and this podcast was one of those ideas.

Erum Yeah. But [00:45:00] you put 'em in a journal that's on a shelf in your house that I don't have access to.

Karl Yeah. Actually they're an Evernote. But you're right. It's the equivalent of being on a journal on a shelf.

Erum Yeah. I think that is Share it. Share the ideas. Yeah. I think that's it. I mean, I had a great time. Look at our setup. This was so cool. I feel super professional. Yeah. Super profess as the kids would say.

Erum Yeah.

Erum I love it. We could do this again.

Erum so thank you so much for tuning in to the Grow Everything podcast. We really enjoyed this conversation. If you have any questions, comments, I, we just want to share some ideas and put it in our idea management system, reach out to us. Our contact information is in the show notes. And thank you again.

Erum Let's grow.

Karl So like, subscribe, follow us on YouTube, follow us on substack, and thank you so much for listening.