EP260: The Cell as Detector: What a Platform Technology Reveals About Drug Discovery
Kambiz Shekdar sat with Jens to talk about Chromovert, a platform technology that models human disease inside a lab dish.
In this episode, Kambiz shares the story behind the UAE's first inventor Golden Visa.
He walks through how a family of genes called GPCRs could reshape drug discovery.
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The Cell as Detector: What a Platform Technology Reveals About Drug Discovery
I sat down with Kambiz Shekdar to talk about drug discovery. The economics of the field are difficult, and well known inside the industry, less so outside it. Roughly ninety-eight percent of drug candidates fail somewhere along the path from lab to patient. Some fail in early testing. Some fail in animal studies. Some fail only after years of clinical trials, when failure costs the most. Nearly all of it starts with a cell in a Petri dish, built to stand in for human disease long enough to test which compounds might work against it.
Kambiz's technology, Chromovert, starts there. While CRISPR edits genes inside a living body, Chromovert engineers cells in a dish, building better disease detectors. A cell that poorly mimics human biology carries that weakness into everything built on top of it. A cell that mimics it well gives the compounds discovered against it a better chance of surviving the stages that follow.
The scale of the approach is what caught my attention. A family of genes called GPCRs has roughly four hundred members, and about half of all FDA-approved drugs target this family. Most biotech companies commit to one disease and one target, then spend years testing it without knowing in advance if it will work. Kambiz builds detectors for many targets at once, watches which ones produce viable compounds, and lets that evidence narrow the field before committing years of resources to any single path.
The company behind this technology never raised venture capital. It was funded entirely by customers, close to one hundred fifty million dollars in customer-funded projects, because the results worked in cases where other methods had failed. Owning the technology outright, without investors attached, now shapes how Kambiz is building a second company to industrialize the same method.
The effects of this work reach beyond one company. The UAE, moving away from an oil-based economy toward a knowledge-based one, created a new visa category to bring him in: the inventor Golden Visa, after he did not fit any of the existing paths for scientists or investors. China now produces a growing share of the world's clinical drug candidates, up from almost none five years ago, because it has found ways to move compounds into human trials faster. The US Department of War has approached him too, interested in a dual-use application. The same array of targets that helps identify a drug candidate can also help identify countermeasures against chemical threats. Technology built for one purpose rarely stays confined to it.
One part of the conversation traces back to team, not technology. Kambiz described interviews where a candidate would meet six team members in short rounds, and where a single dismissive comment toward a receptionist was enough to end an otherwise strong candidacy. The technology took nearly a decade to prove out. The judgment about who works on it next may carry just as much weight.
Platform technologies like this one are proven in isolated pockets long before they reach the scale their creators imagine. They get validated in academic papers, customer contracts, and quiet visa offices. Few of them ever close the gap between proof and scale. Whether this one does will depend less on the science, which already works, and more on whether the right partners recognize what they are looking at while there is still time to act.
Human Innovation with Jens Heitland is produced by Heitland Media Group.*
Guest Links
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kambiz-shekdar-51a52a34/
Business: https://www.secondcellbio.com/
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Jens Heitland: Amit, it's great to meet you. H- Really happy to have you on the podcast and that you made the time.
[00:00:05] Jens Heitland: How are you doing? Thank you,
[00:00:06] Kambiz Shekdar: yeah. Good. How are you? Thank you for making the time.
[00:00:09] Jens Heitland: Yes. No, it's amazing. Um, especially that you're now back in New York and the time, time, time difference.
[00:00:16] Kambiz Shekdar: Right.
[00:00:17] Jens Heitland: So I would love to talk about something that is not the obvious question that you might get asked all the time, but let's, let's talk about what is the difference between music and science for you?
[00:00:29] Jens Heitland: Because I have seen that you do a couple of things with music, not that you're a musician as far as I have understood. Terrible
[00:00:36] Kambiz Shekdar: musician.
[00:00:37] Jens Heitland: Yeah. But, but, but still, what, what, what is the difference be- between musicians and working with s- um, scientists?
[00:00:45] Kambiz Shekdar: Actually, it's a, it's a great question, and immediately pops to mind, I think is less the difference is more the similarities.
[00:00:52] Kambiz Shekdar: You know, one, one point on, on the science, but more than that, a, a lot of my friends are artists of different kinds, including, including downtown New York artists and classical musicians, and, I used to be on the board of a amazing chamber orchestra called the Knights Chamber Orchestra. There were a bunch of kids who were at Juilliard, which is a top music school in New York.
[00:01:16] Kambiz Shekdar: They would hang out, and then eventually they formed a chamber orchestra, and they, they tour in Europe. They've, they've ... I've seen them at the Musikverein. They, they, they are a resident orchestra at Carnegie Hall, and, I think creativity is the common thread. And also if you ever, not too many, I don't have too many scientist friends because I have some great ones, but if you get too many scientists together in a room, it quickly becomes very, very boring.
[00:01:45] Kambiz Shekdar: So I love, I love having friends who are creative in different disciplines and, so many pop to mind. As a kid growing up, I would always go to, classical con- concerts and philharmonic halls in different cities where I live, and I'd usually close my eyes and just listen to the music, and I'd, I'd be very transported.
[00:02:11] Kambiz Shekdar: I just, I remember once, I would rush from the lab at Rockefeller during grad school to Lincoln Center, always just making it in time. I'd still be thinking about my work, and it was a milestone concert, I think their thir- 13,000th or 14,000th concert, something like that. And right, you know, leaving the hall for the reception, for the intermission, a reporter put a mic in front of me and said, "What were you thinking?"
[00:02:41] Kambiz Shekdar: And I was imagining cells in a Petri dish and, you know, adding genes to them, and they were trying to resist it, and I was babbling all this into the, into the radio, and just, it's a very, for me, music and color are, they really transport me. The, the scientific thing that comes to mind, there are actually songbirds that learn a song every year, and there are some that learn one song and that's it.
[00:03:09] Kambiz Shekdar: They don't have the repertoire to keep adding new songs. And that's been drilled down to a genetic difference where, where the songbirds that learn a song every year have a different version of a gene than the ones that, are stuck. And one of my classmates at Rockefeller, she, she studied in a neuroscience lab, and she found a gene that makes, mice learn faster.
[00:03:36] Kambiz Shekdar: And so she's actually checking people with more creativity or less creativity, do they have different versions of this gene? Yeah. I think it'd be very interesting to look at creative artists, scientists, and, you know, see how much are we like songbirds, how, how much plasticity do we have, how much are we rigid in, in what we've learned.
[00:03:58] Jens Heitland: That's cool. Yeah, it's, that, it's, it's definitely interesting. For, for me, music is, like right now at least, it's n- not a big part of my life. Obviously, like, when I'm driving in the car or something, I'm listening to music. I was, I was a musician. I played trumpet for 24 years when I was young, but since then, like never.
[00:04:19] Jens Heitland: I'm, a- and I'm like a typical, still a typical German engineer from my brain perspective. My brain is still Excel tables, and I, I know, like, music is a lot of math as, as well, but I was never good in math, so I, I stick more to the engineering only. I
[00:04:34] Kambiz Shekdar: tried to play violin and I, I loved it, but I have zero talent and I was one of the worst kids in, I think the second to worst kid in our high school orchestra.
[00:04:46] Kambiz Shekdar: And whenever we'd do a concert and it would get to the fast parts, you know, I wouldn't wanna mess things up for everyone, so I would just lift my bow above the violin and play along with no sound
[00:04:59] Jens Heitland: And talking about that, you, you have been living in different countries, uh, and grew up in different countries.
[00:05:04] Jens Heitland: Where, where, where did you go to school?
[00:05:06] Kambiz Shekdar: I was born in Tehran. I went to a, an American Montessori there in, And then after my family left Iran, we were in Karachi for a while. I went to a private school there. Then, then London for a couple years, Hong Kong for a couple years, Manhattan, and then the suburbs of, Princeton in New Jersey before, before moving for grad school to Manhattan.
[00:05:37] Jens Heitland: Yeah, Manhattan is like, is, is, is what you call home today, or?
[00:05:41] Kambiz Shekdar: It used to be. When, when I first came to the city, I thought I would never leave, but... And it, New York maybe still has, but it, for me it really felt like it had a lot of energy when, when I first went to grad school. But recently, I, I explored the UAE and the, I really think it's electric there.
[00:06:03] Kambiz Shekdar: There are, you know, grocery stores that are 24/7. There are restaurants that are open till 4:00 AM. Starbucks is 24 hours. Not, not that you need all of those things, but it shows the amount of life activity, work activity.
[00:06:19] Jens Heitland: Yeah. Yeah. I've never been, and this is definitely on my list to, to go.
[00:06:25] Kambiz Shekdar: Yeah, I rec- recommend it.
[00:06:27] Kambiz Shekdar: They, the population there, there are about 10% who are local Emiratis, and the rest of the population are people who are, coming to the country for opportunities, and also people who are imported, because the UAE knows that it, you know, it doesn't even call it human resources. It calls it human capital.
[00:06:46] Kambiz Shekdar: Yeah. They know that to create new sectors, to create new projects, they need to bring in a, a lot of experts and a lot of workers from different countries. And interestingly, even laborers, like in the US, laborers are blamed for taking jobs even though no one usually wants to do those jobs. In the UAE, they welcome everyone.
[00:07:07] Kambiz Shekdar: If you can find a job, you can stay. But no one's turned away. If you can hustle, no matter at what level, and I got to know many taxi drivers, many, Listening to their stories of how they would start in a vegetable market washing food, and then became a taxi driver and what they want to do.
[00:07:28] Kambiz Shekdar: There's this total mobility there.
[00:07:30] Jens Heitland: Let's talk about Abu Dhabi's Golden Visa. Let's start with that story. How did you get to the Golden Visa? And then we go all the way back to your invention and, like, the IPO and all the other business topics as well.
[00:07:46] Kambiz Shekdar: So originally, UAE was not on my radar. After my family left Iran, I'd never been back to the Middle East since, since I was a little kid and- You know, I, I, Dubai was not at all a destination I was interested in.
[00:08:01] Kambiz Shekdar: I thought it was a place where tacky people went for vacations. And I'm bad with geography. I thought Abu Dhabi was in Ethiopia. I had no awareness of it. A friend of a friend was visiting, she lives in Dubai, and she said based on what I'm doing, I should really come and explore UAE. They want to start non-oil sectors, including biotechnology.
[00:08:25] Kambiz Shekdar: And she, convinced me to come visit. I stayed with her. She set up some meetings and, I got to meet people in the sector and thought about it and decided, okay, this is, this is, this is a real adventure. They're not looking to start a company or invest in a company, but start an entire, biotech sector from the ground up.
[00:08:48] Jens Heitland: How did that then lead to the Golden Visa?
[00:08:51] Kambiz Shekdar: I didn't originally want a Golden Visa. It was just- You can go to the UAE, but my trips would be really extended, more than a month. And if I'd have a date where I would fly out, people would request meetings right on that date. So the trips were beyond the visa period, the automatic visa period, and every time I would get, fined.
[00:09:16] Kambiz Shekdar: So I, I spoke with people about how do I get a normal work visa through my UAE company, and they said, "Oh, we should actually get you a golden visa." And there are many paths in the UAE. You can get a golden visa if you're an investor, if you own property, if you're an artist, if you're a scientist. And they were, first suggesting for me to get it through the researcher path, but it wouldn't fit the boxes.
[00:09:46] Kambiz Shekdar: You had to have apublication record, and we never published our technology. So after months of trying these different paths, but I was just not fitting, they created a new category, which is the inventor golden visa. I'm the first recipient, and that process took a, a single day from nominating me to, you have to get medical exams, certain diseases that they screen for, eye tests, fingerprints, all of that.
publication record, and we never published our technology. So after months of trying these different paths, but I was just not fitting, they created a new category, which is the inventor golden visa. I'm the first recipient, and that process took a single day from nominating me to, you have to get medical exams, certain diseases that they screen for, eye tests, fingerprints, all of that.
[00:10:18] Kambiz Shekdar: That entire process took one day from nomination to getting the, the visa.
[00:10:24] Jens Heitland: That's nuts. Like, one day. In other countries, that would take, like, five years.
[00:10:31] Kambiz Shekdar: Actually, I had given up because we were exploring these other paths, and I went to the visa office to say I want to get a regular visa via my company, and I needed some questions answered.
[00:10:44] Kambiz Shekdar: So I called the folks who had wanted to help, and I said, "Look, I'm here. I'm just getting a normal visa." And they said, "No, no, no. Hang on a minute." And then the, and then the, the sped-up process started.
[00:10:55] Jens Heitland: That's cool.
[00:10:57] Kambiz Shekdar: Yeah.
[00:10:58] Jens Heitland: So let- let- let's talk about your invention, Chromovert. So you, you have been doing your PhD and dr- as far as I have seen, during your PhD, or was it before already, you have found something.
[00:11:15] Kambiz Shekdar: It was during my PhD. I started my PhD when I was 19 years old. Yeah. So I was pretty young. I was growing up during that time, and I would take on the projects that really interested me. These were often the, the hardest projects that I would come across, and some of them needed, required a lot of tedious work.
[00:11:37] Kambiz Shekdar: You know, eight years is a long time to get to do your PhD, and the dean's office was pressuring me to finish. And, uh- The pr- main project I was working on just tanked. I was, I was creating cells that were engineered to h- to have many cell- many genes. The whole thing just flopped, and the starting point was a cell I bought from a vendor that was supposed to be pre-engineered for certain, you know, certain genes already.
[00:12:09] Kambiz Shekdar: And I called them and I said, "Look, I need to reorder these cells to restart this process." They s- they said, "Sorry, there was a, um, quality control problem with these cells. We don't longer sell it." So I was at zero. I, I had spent a lot of time. Everything had just crashed, and I desperately thought of, "How do I speed up this process?"
[00:12:32] Kambiz Shekdar: And that was the birth of this, uh, technology. It was a thought, thought experiment that, that I thought could speed up creating these cells.
[00:12:41] Jens Heitland: Yeah. And, and, and then what happened?
[00:12:44] Kambiz Shekdar: The university filed the patents, and we spent about two years negotiating rights to obtain, uh, a license to this invention to start a company.
[00:12:57] Kambiz Shekdar: And, at one point they said, "This is a crazy idea. It, it will never work. We shouldn't have filed a patent. If you pay us the money we sunk into the legal fees, you can buy it." So we bought, we bought the invention, and we, my professor and I started a company around, around it, and we, we developed it and got the technology to work from an idea to a product.
[00:13:24] Jens Heitland: That's cool. So what does the technology, for someone that has no idea about, like, anything, like, scientific, what, what does the idea do? What, what does Chromovert from a technology perspective do?
[00:13:39] Kambiz Shekdar: So you've heard of CRISPR. CRISPR is a way to engineer genes inside the body. Chromovert is a way to craft cells inside the Petri dish.
[00:13:49] Kambiz Shekdar: So usually in drug discovery, you try to make a cell in the lab that, that, um, mimics human disease, and that's is your detector to test many, many compounds to see which compound blocks a certain gene, and that's the drug candidate you then de- develop. So the cells in the Petri dish are your detectors.
[00:14:12] Kambiz Shekdar: Right now, traditional methods, it's very hard to create a cell that accurately mimics human disease in the lab dish, and we-- our process improves, uh, that step so we can make cells that are better models of human disease in the Petri dish.
[00:14:31] Jens Heitland: Which means if I translate that is if I want to develop a new drug that is, let's say, curing a disease, I can do that faster?
[00:14:41] Kambiz Shekdar: That's right. the, industry average failure rate for the drug discovery process is ninety-eight percent, and drug candidates fail at many stages. They fail in the lab stages. They can fail when you take a compound into animal tests, or they can fail in the clinical trials. But the starting point is using the cell as your detector to find that initial spark.
[00:15:04] Kambiz Shekdar: And if that cell is, not valid, if it's defective, it's not a good foundation to start on. So we improve that early discovery point to, discover compounds that have a higher likelihood of success through this very long and expensive process.
[00:15:24] Jens Heitland: Yeah. So I-- business-wise, I'm just curious, why did the university then say, "Hey, this is never going to work"?
[00:15:32] Kambiz Shekdar: I can't speak for them. I'm, I'm not sure what went into their calculus. I think at the time people were, were-- this is a tech-- this is a platform technology, a discovery technology. People, I think, were focused on compounds, initial, you know, molecules that might be drugs. I think that's one thing. The other thing is my idea was, there were several aspects that were already in the literature in very different fields, and my idea was to combine them in a, in a coherent sequence of steps, and there was no proof that it would work.
[00:16:08] Kambiz Shekdar: It was, it was a, it was a, uh, it was like, let's say you don't have a bicycle, but you have a wheel, you have a chain, you have handlebars, and they were in different places. And someone said, "Hey, let me put this together and start pedaling, and I'll move." So, so once you do it, it's obvious, but when, when it was taking things from different fields and combining them, it, it, it feel- felt far-fetched.
[00:16:32] Jens Heitland: So then w- together with your professor, you built a company?
[00:16:35] Kambiz Shekdar: Yes.
[00:16:36] Jens Heitland: And what happened? Like, how did you start the company? How, how did you develop it going forward? And, like, how, how big did it get?
[00:16:46] Kambiz Shekdar: There were-- It was definitely not a straight line 'cause we never had venture capital funding. We never had in-investors, so there wasn't a cash cushion.
[00:16:56] Kambiz Shekdar: There were many bumps. Our funding was from customers tied to delivering results where, where traditional technologies had failed. And, definitely very bumpy. There were many times where my professor would say, "We're gonna go belly up." We were very close to going belly up. The main outcome was Taking this idea to make better cells and showing that for some of the most difficult biological targets, it actually did work where, other technologies failed.
[00:17:29] Kambiz Shekdar: And because we didn't have investors, I now own the validated platform technology.
[00:17:35] Jens Heitland: That's cool. So that means you, took this, you developed it, and it was all financed in the end by real customers that paid for the results they got.
[00:17:48] Kambiz Shekdar: Correct. About in, $150 million of customer-funded, projects.
[00:17:54] Kambiz Shekdar: The first company really incubated the method, did, did projects for people. It was not an engine that industrialized the technology to scale it. There were no venture capital partners, pharmaceutical strategic partners. That's what now I'm trying to build in the second inter- iteration in my second company.
[00:18:13] Jens Heitland: That's interesting. So you, have built it, you got it to 150 million, and now you're, literally looking into commercializing it even, to the next level with a new company.
[00:18:28] Kambiz Shekdar: Exactly. Like, in the past, we did projects for our clients. Now I have a method that we can show, you know, uh, there's a demand for, it does things that are not possible.
[00:18:39] Kambiz Shekdar: It's automated, it's debugged. It's like a conveyor belt system. Let's now set up an industrialized technology arou-- uh, industrialized operations around it and scale, scale it up.
[00:18:51] Jens Heitland: Why didn't you do that with the first company? I'm just curious. And, and, and how does Abu Dhabi play a role in this as well?
[00:19:00] Kambiz Shekdar: I think the first company just developed in a certain way, and when, when, when you have a lot of clients that have a lot of funding, you get absorbed by the projects that are important for them.
[00:19:10] Kambiz Shekdar: So there, there wasn't room to think about, in-house development of the, the method. There wasn't the capital to do that. It was really project-focused for our clients. So the, the new setup lets us breathe and think about how do we do this, internally with, with strategic partners who are focused on the technology.
[00:19:33] Jens Heitland: And if, if we look at that, how, how, how do you develop this now so-- Le- let's say, what can it be in the future if we compared that to something that people that listen to the podcast know? I mean, I understand you have the technology, you have the methodology, how you can leverage it. What can it help do in the world, and what are other companies that do similar things or other things that can be as big as, as this?
[00:20:03] Kambiz Shekdar: Great. So maybe one more piece of background before I dive in there. So we went after the most difficult, the, the high-hanging fruit. For instance, with Nestle- We went after the biology of salt taste. There's lots of sweet ingredients, saccharin, stevia, all of that. But we cracked the biology of human salt taste cell that's like a little ta- salty tasting taste bud in a dish.
[00:20:29] Kambiz Shekdar: We found the first natural ingredients that tickle this system and make salt taste more salty. On the other hand, we found a non-addictive pain drug candidate that the FDA fast-tracked and that has gone past clinical phase one trials. So from salt taste to pain blocking, it's a true platform. What's different about what I wanna do, most therapeutics companies, they pick the indication.
[00:20:56] Kambiz Shekdar: I work in diabetes. I work in cancer. Here's a gene that's important. I'm gonna target it. I'll find molecules. But you don't know are, are those molecules gonna work? You just have to push them and do your best and push them through the funnel, and we have the 98% failure rates. What I wanna do is there's a family of genes, biological targets called GPCRs.
[00:21:19] Kambiz Shekdar: There's 400 of them. About 50% of FDA drugs target GPCRs, so they're a treasure trove to find drugs. We worked with about three dozen. We can show we can get at them better than traditional methods. We made these in a matter of months. What I'd like to do is go after all 400. It's not to say let's make 400 drugs, but it creates a funnel.
[00:21:45] Kambiz Shekdar: You can have 400 targets. For which ones do you get good compounds? For which ones are they safe in the lab? For which ones is there patentability? Based on the compounds that check off the most boxes, you say, "Okay, here are the three, four, five compounds that are staged for success." At that point, use clinical input, business input to say, "These are the few we're gonna cherry-pick to really focus on, do pre-IND-enabling studies, and license to pharma."
[00:22:16] Kambiz Shekdar: But because you have all 400, you can keep cycling and discovering more and more drugs. So what I'd like to set up is very different than a traditional biotech which works on one disease, one target. It, it's about creating the drug discovery funnel.
[00:22:34] Jens Heitland: So, so it's, it's like you, you said it's, it's a true platform that is enabling others with what you do to, to develop drugs as well.
[00:22:44] Kambiz Shekdar: Absolutely, because, for instance, we can crank out these 400 medically important genes, but we're not subject matter experts. So if we have the cells that dis- discover- uh, good candidate compounds, we then need to collaborate with the biotechs who are experts in this disease or that disease to complete the knowledge base.
[00:23:07] Jens Heitland: That's interesting.
[00:23:08] Kambiz Shekdar: Also, I think in addition to UAE, China is a very interesting, uh, venue because last year about 30% of drug candidates that were licensed to pharma were discovered in China. Five years ago it was zero. And the reason is China has made it possible to take candidate drugs into human trials faster.
[00:23:31] Kambiz Shekdar: And until you get human data behind a candidate drug, it's just a hypothesis. So if we have an engine that bubbles out many, many drug candidates, I'd be very interested to see how do I plug into the Chinese clinical trial ecosystem to see can we get, can we cost effectively get, as fast as possible, human data behind these compounds to see which ones are real, which ones should we really be focusing on?
[00:23:58] Jens Heitland: And what you would then do is you, you then go, like, more specific on, on those ones, or would you then collaborate with others, like you mentioned?
[00:24:06] Kambiz Shekdar: Both. I think both are options. I think maybe there would be one or two or a small number where we, we commit to developing them in-house, but I think it would be great to form collaborations, strategic collaborations with pharma and biotech who are specialized in specific diseases and join forces.
[00:24:25] Kambiz Shekdar: And if we can, if we can create detectors for hundreds of programs, why not do that? You know, it's like the Human Genome Project. People used to sequence little fragments of DNA, but, but this was when they automated and we did the whole genome. Right now we're going after drugs one at a time, but why not hundreds at a time or thousands at a time?
[00:24:47] Jens Heitland: How does AI play a role in this?
[00:24:49] Kambiz Shekdar: I use AI all the time. I, I prefer Claude. It, it's a multiplier of, of your creativity, of your data. AI needs good quality data to, to, to be at its most reliable. Right now, drug discovery data has a 98% failure rate, so the AI drug discovery efforts that are based on that, garbage in, garbage out.
[00:25:15] Kambiz Shekdar: But if you have better cells that give better data, and you have this in volume to feed that into AI and to get the power of AI to take those compounds further, figure out what tweaks should, should we make so that a compound hits this receptor but not the other 50. You know, that's, that's where I think the two approaches can really complement.
[00:25:38] Jens Heitland: If we translate, like, the possibility of what, what are examples that you could support in curing if, if we look at the bigger picture, what's the impact to society? What's the impact to people, um, with what you're doing? Because I, I understand the clinical trials will take a couple of years and so on, but if, if we look at the bigger picture, where do you think that that can lead to?
[00:26:03] Kambiz Shekdar: I think if we had the full resources to crank out all these cells that, you know, there are entire biotechs working on one GPCR. If, if we can crank out all 400 and get, get interesting compounds to all of them, and then form collaborations where we feed these compounds into companies that exist that are working to develop drugs in their therapeutic areas, uh, we could, we could maybe unleash a, a, a, a, a torrent of, you know, much more effective drug discovery.
[00:26:41] Kambiz Shekdar: Why, why are there just a handful of FDA-approved compounds? Because everyone's, you know, uh, struggling with, with clinical trials that are very error-prone. We could put that on much better footing.
[00:26:53] Jens Heitland: So, so which, which means you, you can build the foundation, and the foundation is way stronger, and y- like, in the end, you're shortened the time spent when it comes to success rate, or you increase the success rate.
[00:27:04] Kambiz Shekdar: Both of those things. On the shortening time, usually when people have cells and you do high throughput screening, that's when you test thousands or tens of thousands or hundred- hundreds of thousands of compounds. Usually those cells do not immediately work in animal models. You have to go through rounds of chemical optimization.
[00:27:22] Kambiz Shekdar: In our hands, the cells from the primary screens work directly in animal models, and in some, in some cases with the taste examples, directly in humans. So if your cells are predictive, you cut out rounds of optimization. And the second thing, because they're more predictive, it should count where it really matters in, in the ultimate success in humans.
[00:27:48] Kambiz Shekdar: If, if our cells are keyed into human biology more accurately, then the compounds we discover at the earliest stages have a higher likelihood of technical and regulatory success.
[00:28:01] Jens Heitland: So in, in, in the end, it's good for, I mean, even for humanity as, as, as faster it goes, as faster, like, diseases will be cured, which obviously is helpful for everyone.
[00:28:12] Kambiz Shekdar: And that's why I'm very attracted and very impressed by what China has done and is doing and what the UAE wants to do. Some people look at this as competition and threats, but it's great. It's great if there are other venues that are developing things that can help humans, that can, that can save lives, improve lives.
[00:28:30] Kambiz Shekdar: It's great if the Middle East-- Right now, outside of Israel, there is no biotech center. The Arab world has so much oil money. If it would put a drop of its oil wealth in biotechnology, it could create an entire new sector. There are many technologies like mine that are platforms that are validated, and it takes money to scale them.
[00:28:50] Kambiz Shekdar: If, if a place like UAE or Saudi cherry-picked six, seven, a dozen platform technologies and funded them, some will fail, but it could launch an entire new discovery sector. If China has figured out how to, how to find out which drugs work in humans faster than the FDA, great. That's an amazing accomplishment, and we should try to do better.
[00:29:14] Kambiz Shekdar: But it's, it's great that other places are, are making strides.
[00:29:18] Jens Heitland: If we go to Abi- Abu Dhabi, so y- you, you went there and you have seen there's development going on, which, which you can leverage for your idea and for your platform. W- what is different if we go to specifics? Like you are, you're, you're having like three foots like we said at, with Boston, but in the end it's like the US and, and the Middle East, and now you talk about China as well What, what is the detailed differences when, when you look into your platform and the future when it comes to these different worlds?
[00:29:53] Kambiz Shekdar: I think each venue has different strengths and weaknesses or different challenges. For instance, in UAE, one of the things that's daunting to create a new biotech sector is the, the workforce is limited. There, there's a limited number of people who are Harvard-level trained PhDs and post-docs. there's a limited lab space that, that, that's, that's suitable for this kind of work.
[00:30:21] Kambiz Shekdar: Also, the country is transitioning from a purchase economy to a knowledge-based economy. In a purchase economy, something costs this much, you pay 10 times more, you can get it faster or the best version. In a knowledge-based you can't always do that. And I think, I think the-- I think the country is transitioning to adding knowledge-based sectors, but it takes work and, and, uh, deliberate intention.
[00:30:49] Kambiz Shekdar: In Boston, there's just so-- You know, you, you-- I find it a little bit boring because it feels like the whole town is involved in biotech. You go to a restaurant and the, all the tables next to you are talking biotech. But that, that momentum, that connectivity, that, that community is really, um... You know, they say Kendall Square, the-- where MIT is, Harvard is, is the most, uh, innovative square mile on the planet because there's the most innovations, the most patents, and that, that's its strength.
[00:31:21] Kambiz Shekdar: I think China, China has-- it's, it's not just its workforce. They have so many talented people trained at the best universities abroad and in China, and now, now they are systematically making better processes for, for FDA-type regulations.
[00:31:39] Jens Heitland: If we look at, at the business where it is right now, so what are the activities that you're focusing on right now and, and where do you see it going over the next, let's say, half year, year, two years?
[00:31:52] Kambiz Shekdar: Because I own the technology, I'm, I'm very open. I, I can be very creative in structuring a deal. What drives me is to make the biggest impact for science and medicine. That's, that was what gravitated me to Ab-Abu Dhabi, because if I would succeed in creating a company there, it could maybe help spark the biotech sector.
[00:32:13] Kambiz Shekdar: That's exciting. But I spent a good part of two, three years focusing on the UAE, and they haven't really plunged in. You know, they're, they're looking at a dozen different non-oil sectors, and biotech has a lot of, challenges to solve. So they haven't yet dived into it, and I decided I couldn't just wait forever.
[00:32:35] Kambiz Shekdar: I'm in touch. I've been there twice since May. I keep, keep the contacts there. But about a year ago, I started focusing on the US, whereas in Abu Dhabi I was looking at a government joint venture where they would co- invest and own a company, and I would add the technology and the team. In the US, I'm starting discussions with venture capital groups.
[00:32:59] Kambiz Shekdar: It's also challenging because I don't have a history with venture capital groups. I raised all my funding from customers. So I'm going to them as an unknown entity, and most of them look for compounds, not platforms. And, and so, uh, it's very difficult to, to, to have discussions, uh, starting from scratch when I'm looking for a lot of money to scale this up.
[00:33:26] Kambiz Shekdar: But I'm making progress, especially with tech bio sp- space.
[00:33:31] Jens Heitland: What, what's quite interesting, in, in-- and for, for me, I have never had funding s- similar to you as well. Like, I've built my businesses and financed them myself and figured it out with customers paying. Um, that's for me the biggest validation, like you said in between as well.
[00:33:48] Jens Heitland: Like, if, if you have customers that are paying you, that's the best thing that you can have for a technology or for any company that you build. So that should be already the validation to give you money. But it, it seems like it's not that easy.
[00:34:03] Kambiz Shekdar: I think if it were easy, I wouldn't be interested in it. I like-
[00:34:06] Jens Heitland: Yeah
[00:34:06] Kambiz Shekdar: difficult puzzles, and I, um, lose interest when things are, when things are too easy, like some- someone else can do it. It's, it's someone else can tie the, you know, bow. I, I like putting the whole thing together. And one interesting thing that has come up, usually it's me trying to push the idea forward and convince someone.
[00:34:30] Kambiz Shekdar: But, uh, the Department of War reached out to me, formerly the US Department of Defense, and that discussion, they are moving forward, where their interest is in biodefense. So their, their thought is, if I have a whole array of all these medical targets where people just have one at a time, they would like to develop a dual use biodefense application, which is, let's say you sprinkle chemical warfare toxins- And you see which of these targets respond.
[00:35:06] Kambiz Shekdar: Well, there's so many FDA drugs to these toxins already, you can, you can then match a warfare toxin with an existing FDA-approved drug as an immediate countermeasure. It might be a mixture of FDA-approved drugs, but, but having the whole array of targets is what would enable it.
[00:35:25] Jens Heitland: That's cool. Should-- That also means it goes the other way around.
[00:35:29] Jens Heitland: Like, in case you don't know exactly which, which one is working, like you just said, it's-- you, you can test which one is working and then can just apply the right drug for it.
[00:35:40] Kambiz Shekdar: Exactly. And it, again, it might be a mixture of drugs, right? Yeah. Yeah. And having, having the whole array of targets is the key to unlocking what, what is the combination that works.
[00:35:51] Kambiz Shekdar: Of course, that same data can be used to develop, in the wrong hands, can be used to develop more potent toxins.
[00:36:00] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:36:00] Kambiz Shekdar: And when, when these discussions started with Department of War- You know, the, the, the US and many countries have signed treaties a long time ago stating that we would not develop, um, worse toxins.
[00:36:16] Kambiz Shekdar: But technologies have evolved now, and technologies like mine and others that may be out there could potentially be used to develop even worse toxins. And I think this is the time where, where, um, countries like the US must be aware of the capabilities that are there to see, to see how do we, um, stay a step ahead.
[00:36:38] Kambiz Shekdar: If, if someone does develop worse toxins, do we have the tools to quickly find, uh, antidotes to those?
[00:36:46] Jens Heitland: So if, if we, if we take, uh, an, an example like COVID, for example. At, at the time when it break out-- broke out, like, nobody knew what, what will help against it. So could, could you have used your technology at that time to test it or?
[00:37:05] Kambiz Shekdar: There is, uh, one, um, application we, we, together with my collaboration partner on that, Don Landry, he was chairman of medicine at Columbia University Medical Center. The, the, the salt taste compounds we found are to an ion channel which is in, you know, it conducts salt. So wherever salt goes, water follows, and it's also expressed in the lung where, where, uh, it's involved in fluid balance.
[00:37:35] Kambiz Shekdar: So one of the reasons people would die from COVID is the lungs would flood up. So, so we-- there was a, there was a call for proposals from the US government for compounds that could maybe clear fluid from the lung. And we, we submitted the idea that we take these salt taste molecules, but as opposed to food ingredients that you ingest, what if we made inhaled formulations to directly bring them in the lung?
[00:38:03] Kambiz Shekdar: That grant application was well reviewed, but it wasn't funded because they were looking for an existing drug that could be turned around without additional clinical trials. That's maybe the closest that, that I came to COVID. The other area is, you know, our technology is about getting genes into cells, into lab cells.
[00:38:26] Kambiz Shekdar: So there are some molecules of COVID that form the, the sort of the capsule that the virus has, and people try to get cells to produce those things as, as new vaccine, uh, as ways to develop new vaccines. And because we can make cells with many, um, proteins, our technology has potential there. But unlike drug discovery where technology is demonstrated, there's no more adaptation needed.
[00:38:55] Kambiz Shekdar: Those applications need more tinkering.
[00:38:58] Jens Heitland: Yeah. Ma-makes sense. So, so the, the drug discovery is, is the, basically the MVP, if you call it. It's, it works. I mean, it's, it's not even MVP anymore. It, it just works. It's just about scaling it, right?
[00:39:12] Kambiz Shekdar: Absolutely. And I appreciate the chance to share about it because I think, you know, one reason I love being in Boston is that it is such a tight community.
[00:39:21] Kambiz Shekdar: Because we never published, you know, people don't know about this, only in the- Yeah ... patent literature. So, so meeting with people there, letting them know that, you know, this could potentially transform drug discovery is, is, uh, is, is what I am up to a lot.
[00:39:38] Jens Heitland: There must, there must be even, I, I mean, I'm- I've no idea, but there must be investors that are in this field or even outside of this field, they, they see the opportunity that, that sh- should, should at least in my eyes, like run after you.
[00:39:54] Kambiz Shekdar: What, what I'm seeing going, newly going to these types of events where there's lots of companies, you know, 100 companies in the room with a little poster about their technology, there are thousands of te- companies out there. I think no one can assess them, right? Yes. And each one, you know, it is you, you have to learn about the domain.
[00:40:16] Kambiz Shekdar: So typically what I see, what I've seen is a lot of VC firms have criteria. They say, "You must-- We're-- We only invest if you're working in diabetes, if you have a compound that's this far along, that far along." And so, so that's the only way they can make sense of thousands of opportunities. And, um, we don't fit those criteria 'cause people, uh, are looking for compounds, not a discovery method.
[00:40:45] Kambiz Shekdar: I think there are, there are VC firms that focus on platforms, but they are much more rare. And what I've heard is a lot of them are in the West Coast, like in, in, in Palo Alto, in, in the San Francisco Bay Area. I, I'm not there, but I'm, but I'm seeing about, uh, reaching out.
[00:41:03] Jens Heitland: Ju- just curious, from a business perspective, what, what would be an enabler for you from an investment, like money-wise?
[00:41:10] Kambiz Shekdar: The two most interesting things that I think could feed into and jumpstart the venture capital are the defense discussions we're having. Yeah, for sure. That's a need they, they identified and, and, um, and those meetings are Moving well. I have, uh, uh, next week a in-person meeting with DARPA, which is, which is a big, uh, research arm of, of the military.
[00:41:39] Kambiz Shekdar: Uh, but in addition, a medical nonprofit reached out to me, and some of these are large organizations, half a billion dollars, and they said, "We have a pain point. We're trying to go after this one target." We-- You know, these groups have a lot of academic expert labs, but they're unable to make a cell for this target.
[00:41:59] Kambiz Shekdar: So they said, "We, we don't typically fund 100%, we fund 50%." That made me think, what if we get a small number of medical nonprofits where they have all their expert labs, but what we can add is this technology to make a cell to find a compound to feed into their expert labs for, for collaborative development.
[00:42:23] Kambiz Shekdar: So I'm, I'm also exploring getting some non-dilutive funding from a couple of these nonprofits.
[00:42:29] Jens Heitland: Okay. That's even better for you because you still own 100%, right?
[00:42:33] Kambiz Shekdar: I'm not concerned about the ownership. I, you know, I-- anything to get the th- the, the ball moving. Yeah. And, uh, I think the VCs would, would definitely value the, the non-dilutive aspect.
[00:42:45] Kambiz Shekdar: But, you know, if we can-- if, if the nonprofits get certain rights in their field of use and medicines are developed, great. And if it, you know, whichever way gets this off the ground, this, this industrialized version off the ground, I'm, I'm all for.
[00:43:02] Jens Heitland: So then, then you have as well, um, uh, an in- for me, always exciting to, to see what, what people do.
[00:43:10] Jens Heitland: You do LinkedIn Lives, which I really love, because you talk with or you interview biotech founders. How, how did this start, and how, how did you-- did you decide to, to do kind of a mini show and, and interview people?
[00:43:25] Kambiz Shekdar: I, it started a few years ago. The, the impetus was I, I have friends who do very interesting things and, and I wanted to myself learn about it.
[00:43:36] Kambiz Shekdar: So, so I would invite them to, to chat live and, and you know, I'm not bad with-- I'm not good with technical editing, so, so it wasn't a podcast idea. It was more to just record the conversation and share it, and doing it in LinkedIn Live was the easiest way to do it. Uh, and recently, especially spending more time in Boston and meeting a lot of CEOs where I have very little idea about them, it's making me to learn more about them, thinking to conduct these interviews.
[00:44:10] Kambiz Shekdar: People are always excited to be on an interview. They're, they're always open. And I thought, if I am getting to, uh, this time with these people, maybe I'll put in some more effort, transition it from an, a Zoom-based system to an in-person system. So I've, I've just, just newly started doing it live in person.
[00:44:33] Jens Heitland: I've seen it. It's, it's great, and it's, it's directly different vibe o-obviously.
[00:44:37] Kambiz Shekdar: Yes. Thank you. And, and, uh, you know, uh, learning about making shorts and things like this, and there's so many automated ways to, to help these days.
[00:44:48] Jens Heitland: The, the interesting thing, obviously I'm, I'm biased because I have a media company, the-- what, what, what I like about this, like you, you get them talking about what they do and, and try to explain like, like we do today.
[00:45:03] Jens Heitland: Because you're-- people in biotech are not the, the communicators like in, in other industries who are shouting everything from the rooftop. They're more, like, conservative, most of them at least. And I think that helps as well to get more out what, what, what the knowledge is, but also like the things, the amazing things like you are doing, but also others in the field are doing, so that more people hear about it and see, hey, there's so much good things happening that can help the world going forward.
[00:45:37] Kambiz Shekdar: Absolutely ...
[00:45:37] Jens Heitland: because the impact is huge. I mean, with your platform, if, if, if we look at that and really it, it scales globally, I mean, that will help so many, like, people saving lives and everything. It's huge.
[00:45:52] Kambiz Shekdar: Right. You know, what, what drives me is, again, that we went after these high-hanging fruits, like the first salt taste en- enhancers, the first natural ingredients that enhance salt taste, and then, uh, one of the leading non-addictive pain drug candidates, and that we did that with no venture capital.
[00:46:10] Kambiz Shekdar: And, you know, every single project we touched succeeded. So, so I feel like we scratched the surface, and if we now systematize this, you know, that, that, that potential is what drives me. And absolutely for money, too. The, the money for me is the way to attract the, the best people, right? Yeah, absolutely. And in- incentivize them and bring, bring in the, the best of the best at all positions of the team.
[00:46:39] Jens Heitland: Yeah. No, really looking forward to, to, to see it grow and, and it's going to happen, I'm 100% sure. What, what are, what are things that, that we have missed that we still should talk about?
[00:46:52] Kambiz Shekdar: When I think about what drives me, the, the... I, I take the technology as a given. I think anyone that starts a company must have some product or idea.
[00:47:03] Kambiz Shekdar: But, what, what I think is most important is the team, and it's, it's an area that, you know, right out of grad school, I, I was not formally trained in, running or managing a team. But, but I found that if you pair people, if, if the job function existed that you need in the company, and you can pair people with what they're interested to do and their skill sets, they just flourish.
[00:47:33] Kambiz Shekdar: And, and for me, I, I love those aspects, getting, recruiting talented people and then, and then having a team effort.
[00:47:42] Jens Heitland: Yeah. I mean, h- how did you do that in, in the first business? Was it the two of you or did you add on people as well as part of it?
[00:47:51] Kambiz Shekdar: We, we, one of... I recruited one of my classmates from Rockefeller to, to join the company.
[00:47:58] Kambiz Shekdar: We hired, a first technician who was fantastic, and we, we also had a colleague who was our CEO, who was a former, former lawyer. And first we got the first proof of concept before we expanded the company stepwise. We had a very systematic approach to interviews. We would, you know- Thoroughly review everyone who re- who applied, and when we would bring them in for interviews, each, each candidate would meet with six team members, short 20-minute meetings, and we would meet as a group to discuss all of them.
[00:48:37] Kambiz Shekdar: And it was surprising, like some, some t- even our receptionist would cycle. And- Nice ... for instance, there was once this, uh, candidate who was so rude to the receptionist, wouldn't even talk to the receptionist, and the receptionist shared that. And of course, this, w- the rest of us thought he was a great candidate, but when w- when we heard this, of course, we wouldn't hire this person.
[00:49:00] Kambiz Shekdar: Yeah. For, for some of our top scientists, I would go to, one conference in particular, the biophysics conference, which is very academically very rigorous, and I would put a job ad in, in their career section. And I recruited three PhDs that way. They would, they would, send me their resumes, I would read it, and during the conference set up meetings, and I would look for, again, a given that they knew the te- their technology, but I would look when you're talking with them, whose light, eyes light up.
[00:49:37] Kambiz Shekdar: Like, who gets really excited about what, what they're doing. And, and then those candidates I would invite back for meetings at the company. And if they were very senior, in addition to the, you know, round table interviews, we would have them do a presentation of their work, sort of seminar form.
[00:49:55] Jens Heitland: This will help you obviously now in the new company as well, hugely.
[00:50:00] Kambiz Shekdar: Definitely. Yeah, and many of my colleagues, you know, over time go to different companies and they're kind of in the wings keeping them posted- Yeah ... where, you know, if and when I get funding, depending on the scale of the funding, I, I, uh, hope to pull some of them in.
[00:50:17] Jens Heitland: It's going to happen 100%. I'm pretty sure.
[00:50:20] Jens Heitland: Please. Kambiz, thank you very much for spending your afternoon with me. It was a pleasure to interview you, and I think, um, I'm definitely, uh, watching from, from afar and hope we meet in person one day, 'cause I think you, you have a technology that is changing lives and changing society, and w- with that, I think you, you do a big favor for a lot of people around the world, and I think that need to be seen and that need to be out there, and I hope I can do a little bit of support with that as well.
[00:50:51] Jens Heitland: Thank you very much for being on the podcast.
[00:50:54] Kambiz Shekdar: Thank you for spending your evening with me, and, uh, I really enjoyed our chat.