In this episode from the MedTech Unplugged Series, David West, co-founder and CEO of Proscia, joins theCUBE’s Dave Vellante to explore how AI and digital pathology are transforming medical diagnostics. West shares the origin story behind Proscia and its flagship platform, Concentriq, a cloud-native SaaS solution designed to shift pathology from microscope-based workflows to image and data-driven diagnostics.
The conversation highlights how Proscia is helping pathologists and life sciences organizations handle massive diagnostic image datasets, some exceeding 100GB in size. West discusses the efficiency gains from using AI and agentic systems to streamline lab operations, reduce reporting burden and accelerate access to advanced therapies. With over $130M in funding and growing adoption across pharma and clinical labs, Proscia is well-positioned at the convergence of AI, precision medicine and value-based care.
Additional topics include navigating regulatory hurdles with the FDA and IVDR, Proscia’s dual pricing strategies across diagnostics and life sciences, and how large language models and multimodal AI are enabling new possibilities for patient stratification and workflow automation. West also offers his perspective on the future of AI in healthcare, including the growing role of agents, quality automation and the potential for diagnostics to evolve into a truly data-first discipline.
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Juliette Han, Cambrian Bio
In this episode from the MedTech Unplugged Series, David West, co-founder and CEO of Proscia, joins theCUBE’s Dave Vellante to explore how AI and digital pathology are transforming medical diagnostics. West shares the origin story behind Proscia and its flagship platform, Concentriq, a cloud-native SaaS solution designed to shift pathology from microscope-based workflows to image and data-driven diagnostics.
The conversation highlights how Proscia is helping pathologists and life sciences organizations handle massive diagnostic image datasets, some exceeding 100GB in size. West discusses the efficiency gains from using AI and agentic systems to streamline lab operations, reduce reporting burden and accelerate access to advanced therapies. With over $130M in funding and growing adoption across pharma and clinical labs, Proscia is well-positioned at the convergence of AI, precision medicine and value-based care.
Additional topics include navigating regulatory hurdles with the FDA and IVDR, Proscia’s dual pricing strategies across diagnostics and life sciences, and how large language models and multimodal AI are enabling new possibilities for patient stratification and workflow automation. West also offers his perspective on the future of AI in healthcare, including the growing role of agents, quality automation and the potential for diagnostics to evolve into a truly data-first discipline.
>> Welcome back to The Cube Studio here at the New York Stock Exchange. This is our MedTech Unplugged series in combination with NYSC Wired. And joining me now is Juliette Han, COO and CFO of Cambrian Bio. Welcome, Juliet.
Juliette Han
>> Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here.
Gemma Allen
>> I'm very excited for this conversation based on the short shot we had there off camera. But first, Cambrian Bio, a company that is essentially designing therapeutics to help with the very long-term and challenging problem that is aging. Break it down for me.
Juliette Han
>> Absolutely. And I think that in some ways, we don't think of ourselves as a longevity company, which is about living maybe longer, but we think of ourselves as a health span company, which is for the duration that you're alive, how can we live the most helpful, active and life with vitality? And that's really the way we think about our science. We're looking at fundamental mechanisms that are related to illnesses that come with age, which is a lot. I think one of the number one correlative or predictor of most of the ailments that we see today, whether it be cardiovascular or cancer, number one predictor is age. That is your biggest risk. So we're looking to uncover, through different R&D programs, what are the mechanisms that we can target today that can help us live a longer, more healthy life?
Gemma Allen
>> Talk to me about some of the results that you are leading on right now, some of the areas that you're solving for? I know you spoke off camera about dermatology or skin, and we had a number of things, but talk to me about what's closest to, I guess, market ready.
Juliette Han
>> Yeah. Right now, one of our biggest thesis is in metabolic health. There's dysregulation in your metabolism as you age that has great impact on types of diseases that you form. We have three distinct programs that pursue this thesis from different angles. One is in the obesity and diabetes space, and the other one is in intrinsic capacity or long-term vitality or how do we maintain health through the mTOR pathway. And then the third is actually in hair and skin space, both dermatologic, as well as over the counter. And we do have a commercial product launching later this spring in a couple of months that so far has gotten rave reviews from dermatologists because it's a really, truly science-backed skin solution that helps you reverse the age of your skin.
Gemma Allen
>> Wow.
Juliette Han
>> I would say that is one of the most market exciting products that's coming to the market in a long time because a lot of the products that we have out there in this space, it works well for that day, but perhaps doesn't target the root cause of aging that you see in your skin. And I'm excited to see how we can further develop that same science to apply to your hair care, as well as your prescription products targeting other skin conditions.
Gemma Allen
>> Well, as somebody whose body metabolizes Botox as fast as food, I can tell you I'm very excited to hear there's a product like that coming on the market, but talk to me a little bit about the development cycle for these products. We're in this AI and agentic era. One of the inspirational possibilities we hear about all the time is how AI can transform the health arena. What are you seeing in ways of how it's being implemented in labs, how it's being implemented from a development perspective? Is it a huge accelerator?
Juliette Han
>> That is a great question. Now, I'm a proponent of AI today and what it can bring for us in the future down the road. When it comes to healthcare or drug development, I think there's a lot more to be desired, even though there's been a huge progress. I think if you think about the R&D, both the discovery and the development of a drug product and the pipeline, there are many steps throughout the way, whether it be in the lab and then translating into the clinic. And a lot of the AI that's being done is accelerating the discovery path. So whether you see exciting companies that are testing the molecules, figuring out the drug targets to narrow down the candidate that can move into the clinic, and then when we look at the clinic side, ultimately, no matter how you can accelerate the stage before, you do have to test it in humans. The way we can age humans, we cannot accelerate, nor do we want to. So there will be some aspects that will never be replaceable with AI. However, there are, of course, companies that are working on the technology that can say, even if you can't completely replace the clinical trials, are there ways to create efficiency other ways? So whether it be using AI to better predict or target a patient population that could best benefit from that, or using AI to augment the data set, to best statistically identify the full scope and efficacy of the drug that you tested. So there's definitely room where I can see AI bringing value, but as far as testing something in a human trial and needing to see the long-term impact, that won't go away.
Gemma Allen
>> Julia, talk to me about the discovery phase of this. When you sit down with your colleagues and think about problems to solve, are there certain factors that weigh in to decisions that you make around what is worth, which is I'm sure a very timely and high effort investment. Is it based on areas that have been previously untapped, areas that might have been perhaps oversaturated with not a whole lot of outcome? What are you looking for when you think about this clinically?
Juliette Han
>> Yeah. This is a very interesting, one of the most interesting questions that we grapple with all the time when we think about, where should we focus on in the drug discovery. Because the drug discovery cycle is so long and unlike other consumer products where you can continue the iterative market testing in the drug process, because it's such a long and expensive path, you do have to make that decision iteratively as you launch your hypothesis. Now, in the beginning, there's a combination of, is there science that's progressed enough to assume that we can reach a drug product or drug therapeutic within a certain timeframe, a reasonable timeframe. And then, that combined with, is there a market big enough for this often? Now, of course, the downside of that is missing some opportunities in smaller patient populations like rare disease, but that is something that people do take into account in terms of investors' point of view, is that there needs to be a market big enough for us to pursue. And then there's, of course, around, is there enough expertise to bring this forward into the clinic? So those are all things that go into deciding what types of mechanisms to pursue. But having said that, there are a number of times where people have taken bets five, 10 years out, but five to 10 years later, even if the drug is promising, the market is either not interested or it's not interested with the data that you have created. So it's definitely a high risk bet that people have to take. But the thing is, with data, you have to constantly redefine the target drug profile that you're taking into the market as well.
Gemma Allen
>> Share a little bit about investor dynamics. It definitely seems as though biotech and health tech is a growing space, a lot of interest, a lot of signal. There's also this impression that at the top, it converges, right? You have giant pharma. There tends to be a lot of buyouts, et cetera. Talk to me about, and especially from the perspective of Cambrian Bio, how you guys think about the investment landscape and the journey as a whole, I guess.
Juliette Han
>> Yeah. You're right. There is a lot of conversions of investors at the top, and that is a reflection of how expensive it is to develop a drug. When you ask how many funds are, one, interested in the space as well as have the check size to take the drugs forward, especially in the last steps, that does mean that only few funds can really participate in that. And then one of those players happen to be pharma companies that have to scale, not just the investment scale, but investment into their infrastructure to see the last mile of that drug development process. So when I look at the investment space, I do think that there's an appeal to potential patients, the future market that will want this drug to be in the... There's a market education of getting them to be interested in the drug that you're developing, but at the same time, ultimately, the people that have the check to write, because it's so huge, it's not something you can crowdfund easily or the science is pretty complex that you can't really appeal to non-technical investors and they don't want to take that risk. So there is a convergence, but I do think that we can, and when I say we, I mean biotech as industry, can probably do better with sharing our science early so that we can broaden that investor pool in the future.
Gemma Allen
>> Talk to me about the process of bringing a drug to market. We know what we hear, I guess, rhetorically, right? Quite a bit that it's lengthy. There's a lot of understandable points of touchpoints and sign off points. You've got the FDA side of things. Are we seeing an acceleration? Are things speeding up? Are all of those, I guess, challenges or those redlining of particular parts of that process continuing? What's happening, especially in this world we're in right now, where you would imagine AI, again, maybe it's potentially helping with some of that assessment, right?
Juliette Han
>> Yeah. I think you're right. I think that given the magnitude of risk, which means human lives at stake with this, there aren't steps we can skip. So if I think about where we can gain efficiency or speed, there's either you can skip steps, which I don't think we're going to do that anytime soon, or we can accelerate those steps. And I do think that that's where there could be some efficiency around AI usage to vet some of the... The FDA announced recently that they're going to start to implement that more and more, not to completely replace humans, but to augment their function, to look at the files and data and then assess things more quickly and give companies feedback on their programs. And then creating more touch points throughout the process. So instead of the companies expending years of research and then getting a final input that says no is saying, "Can you have an ongoing dialogue with the FDA and then other KOLs to see where you need to pivot and make those decisions as you go?"
Now, having said that, I think where there is chances also for farther efficacy in the field in general is that there are a number of drugs that have in the eyes of investors or company have "failed." But it doesn't mean that they have completely failed or their useless compounds. They're on the shelves and I think that there's ability to repurpose them into new profiles that we haven't taken advantage of and there hasn't been a lot of incentives to do that. And I do think that there are also drugs that are currently on the market and approved, but we haven't been creative enough to say, "Where else can it apply to if you tweak this drug just a little bit?" So I think there's some efficiency to be gained by doing the tweaking more instead of just bringing constantly new product into the market. I do think that where we can also gain efficiency, and this is speaking from someone who's invested in the more preventative pathway, right now, there is no FDA path to a preventative drug. And I'm not talking about the vaccines, but I'm talking about things that can actually prevent illnesses before you age, because that doesn't exist yet. But the question is, when those innovations come, can the FDA match the progress and stay ahead of us? So I would say the thing that makes the biotech space very different from tech space is tech is more innovate and then the government tries to play catch up in terms of putting guardrails in after, but you can't do that with biotech because you can't just put drugs out in the market and then put guardrails in, which means that FDA does have to move faster for the biotech arena than tech, for example, for those regulations. So I do think that there are some headwinds there, but I do think that there is... I do see a lot of movement towards AI applications, people being open to different ways to push drugs into the pipeline in a way that meets the accelerated needs of patients. So I would say there's good promise in the future.
Gemma Allen
>> One other clear difference between tech and biotech is the attention economy and the fact that you can market so organically in the tech space. You can create a product, the oxygen around the hype comes very, very quickly. As a person who didn't grow up in the US, I have always found pharmaceutical advertising really crazy, right? When I see these advertisements on television and things like that, even when I was a visitor here many years ago. So again, is there some sort of economy of scale in terms of these larger players and the access points they have from the perspective of scale and repeatability and even like market spend on promoting these drugs, those drugs that stay on the shelves. Is there an element of the bigger lion takes bigger share to this?
Juliette Han
>> I do think... It's so interesting because you're right, I think US is the only country that you market these products, and even those marketing is very heavily regulated, and rightly so. You don't want to push drugs to the patients who don't need it. So I'm not sure if there's necessarily a way to... I wouldn't say the opportunity is in the way we market the drugs themselves. I do think that there is an opportunity for us to, not market, but educate the public on the drug making process so that we can share how the drugs are made and what types of drugs and how we make decisions around what those drugs are made. And then therefore, we can also probably, not just the general public, we can probably create more, better consortiums of data congregators where we can say, "We can put real brain power behind, can you come up with different ways to repurpose some of these drugs that are on the shelf?"
So I would look at it not as a marketing opportunity, but rather a way to share the process a lot more transparently across both the public, as well as the academic, or even potential future nonprofits to say, "Where can we find more opportunities where the way current behemoth of players, they're not built to do so?" So maybe it's more of giving opportunities to new types of players in the field to take a different perspective on the drug that we have today.
Gemma Allen
>> Wow. So Cambrian Bio, you're here because there's an IPO summit at the New York Stock Exchange. So I guess you guys are partaking in some conversation in this space. Talk to me a little bit about the company itself, this investment cycle stage you're at, and also what's ahead. What's next? You're going to go live with the drug, which is fantastic. Where do you guys go from here?
Juliette Han
>> Absolutely. Oh, my gosh. We have so many exciting therapeutic programs in the pipeline. In addition to the skin and hair care, there's really two that I'm most excited about that not only am I excited, but people seem to be excited about. The first is that we are right now gearing up for a phase two trial for amp kinase target, and it's in the obesity space. Now, obesity, we hear a lot about GLP, but it's not just about GLP and the weight loss anymore. I think that we are now thinking about what is next in terms of cardiovascular health. And it's not just about the fat loss, but what we're seeing is what's also important to people is muscle retention, visceral fat, maybe your triglycerides. So there's so many other markers of cardiovascular health that we haven't prioritized. When I say we, as just public, also as a health, we don't talk about enough. So right now, the market is hinged upon how many weight loss can you achieve, but our programs are really designed about what is the wave three of our next frontier of the conversation, which is, how does this drug impact the rest of your cardiovascular health, including weight loss, as well as other organ functions and cardiovascular markers? And then we have our second program called Tornado, which just won a big major ARPA grant. This is looking to study the impact of mTORC1 function or inhibition in our system and how it can really start for you to better regulate your metabolism as you age. Now, metabolism as a central foundation of aging is not disputed at all. That's why we see a lot of talk around calorie restrictive diets or the way people do intermittent fasting, is all around making sure your metabolism is working in a healthy manner. Now, we haven't figured out a way to target that specifically in humans, even though we have been able to do that in animals. Then the biggest difficulty comes from the fact that the Holy Grail pathway called mTOR, because it's such a holy grail big pathway, it's really messy when you start targeting it, but we have compounds that we are developing right now that can be very selective. So it doesn't have the downsides or side effects that we have seen with other analogs on the market, but we have a very specialized selective inhibitor that can really help us keep our metabolism health going longer. That's what we're working on with the ARPA granted product, or ARPA granted funding. So having said that, what's next for us is, number one, our focus always is and will be the scientific potential of our programs. So because these trials are quite expensive, it does take a lot of investors to put faith in us, which they have for the last six years, to continue our path of development. So for us, it's really figuring out what is the best source of capital. We call it patient capital, of course, because you got to be patient because drug programs run for so long, but we're dynamically eyeing the markets, listening to our investors, as well as listening to the public in the long run because they're the ones to benefit truly from any progress that we make.
Gemma Allen
>> Well, Juliette, it's fantastic to see companies like this. I love hearing about companies like yours and experts like you in terms of how, really, we can make a difference in society and we can change some of the most fun demented problems that have really prevailed for such a long time, right? Not just me having a younger looking face on camera, but all sorts of problems, right? So it's just fantastic to see. So we'll certainly be watching and tracking. And hopefully would love to have you back here for conversation perhaps on the female side of health, which is such a-
Juliette Han
>> Absolutely....
Gemma Allen
>> problem close to my own heart. So hopefully welcome you back.
Juliette Han
>> Thank you so much. It was a great conversation.
Gemma Allen
>> Thanks so much. I'm Gemma Allen coming to you from the Cube Studio here at the New York Stock Exchange. This is MedTech Unplugged, one of our NYSC wired programs. Thanks so much for watching.
>> Welcome back to The Cube Studio here at the New York Stock Exchange. This is our MedTech Unplugged series in combination with NYSC Wired. And joining me now is Juliette Han, COO and CFO of Cambrian Bio. Welcome, Juliet.
Juliette Han
>> Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here.
Gemma Allen
>> I'm very excited for this conversation based on the short shot we had there off camera. But first, Cambrian Bio, a company that is essentially designing therapeutics to help with the very long-term and challenging problem that is aging. Break it down for me.
Juliette Han
>> Absolutely. And I think that in some ways, we don't think of ourselves as a longevity company, which is about living maybe longer, but we think of ourselves as a health span company, which is for the duration that you're alive, how can we live the most helpful, active and life with vitality? And that's really the way we think about our science. We're looking at fundamental mechanisms that are related to illnesses that come with age, which is a lot. I think one of the number one correlative or predictor of most of the ailments that we see today, whether it be cardiovascular or cancer, number one predictor is age. That is your biggest risk. So we're looking to uncover, through different R&D programs, what are the mechanisms that we can target today that can help us live a longer, more healthy life?
Gemma Allen
>> Talk to me about some of the results that you are leading on right now, some of the areas that you're solving for? I know you spoke off camera about dermatology or skin, and we had a number of things, but talk to me about what's closest to, I guess, market ready.
Juliette Han
>> Yeah. Right now, one of our biggest thesis is in metabolic health. There's dysregulation in your metabolism as you age that has great impact on types of diseases that you form. We have three distinct programs that pursue this thesis from different angles. One is in the obesity and diabetes space, and the other one is in intrinsic capacity or long-term vitality or how do we maintain health through the mTOR pathway. And then the third is actually in hair and skin space, both dermatologic, as well as over the counter. And we do have a commercial product launching later this spring in a couple of months that so far has gotten rave reviews from dermatologists because it's a really, truly science-backed skin solution that helps you reverse the age of your skin.
Gemma Allen
>> Wow.
Juliette Han
>> I would say that is one of the most market exciting products that's coming to the market in a long time because a lot of the products that we have out there in this space, it works well for that day, but perhaps doesn't target the root cause of aging that you see in your skin. And I'm excited to see how we can further develop that same science to apply to your hair care, as well as your prescription products targeting other skin conditions.
Gemma Allen
>> Well, as somebody whose body metabolizes Botox as fast as food, I can tell you I'm very excited to hear there's a product like that coming on the market, but talk to me a little bit about the development cycle for these products. We're in this AI and agentic era. One of the inspirational possibilities we hear about all the time is how AI can transform the health arena. What are you seeing in ways of how it's being implemented in labs, how it's being implemented from a development perspective? Is it a huge accelerator?
Juliette Han
>> That is a great question. Now, I'm a proponent of AI today and what it can bring for us in the future down the road. When it comes to healthcare or drug development, I think there's a lot more to be desired, even though there's been a huge progress. I think if you think about the R&D, both the discovery and the development of a drug product and the pipeline, there are many steps throughout the way, whether it be in the lab and then translating into the clinic. And a lot of the AI that's being done is accelerating the discovery path. So whether you see exciting companies that are testing the molecules, figuring out the drug targets to narrow down the candidate that can move into the clinic, and then when we look at the clinic side, ultimately, no matter how you can accelerate the stage before, you do have to test it in humans. The way we can age humans, we cannot accelerate, nor do we want to. So there will be some aspects that will never be replaceable with AI. However, there are, of course, companies that are working on the technology that can say, even if you can't completely replace the clinical trials, are there ways to create efficiency other ways? So whether it be using AI to better predict or target a patient population that could best benefit from that, or using AI to augment the data set, to best statistically identify the full scope and efficacy of the drug that you tested. So there's definitely room where I can see AI bringing value, but as far as testing something in a human trial and needing to see the long-term impact, that won't go away.
Gemma Allen
>> Julia, talk to me about the discovery phase of this. When you sit down with your colleagues and think about problems to solve, are there certain factors that weigh in to decisions that you make around what is worth, which is I'm sure a very timely and high effort investment. Is it based on areas that have been previously untapped, areas that might have been perhaps oversaturated with not a whole lot of outcome? What are you looking for when you think about this clinically?
Juliette Han
>> Yeah. This is a very interesting, one of the most interesting questions that we grapple with all the time when we think about, where should we focus on in the drug discovery. Because the drug discovery cycle is so long and unlike other consumer products where you can continue the iterative market testing in the drug process, because it's such a long and expensive path, you do have to make that decision iteratively as you launch your hypothesis. Now, in the beginning, there's a combination of, is there science that's progressed enough to assume that we can reach a drug product or drug therapeutic within a certain timeframe, a reasonable timeframe. And then, that combined with, is there a market big enough for this often? Now, of course, the downside of that is missing some opportunities in smaller patient populations like rare disease, but that is something that people do take into account in terms of investors' point of view, is that there needs to be a market big enough for us to pursue. And then there's, of course, around, is there enough expertise to bring this forward into the clinic? So those are all things that go into deciding what types of mechanisms to pursue. But having said that, there are a number of times where people have taken bets five, 10 years out, but five to 10 years later, even if the drug is promising, the market is either not interested or it's not interested with the data that you have created. So it's definitely a high risk bet that people have to take. But the thing is, with data, you have to constantly redefine the target drug profile that you're taking into the market as well.
Gemma Allen
>> Share a little bit about investor dynamics. It definitely seems as though biotech and health tech is a growing space, a lot of interest, a lot of signal. There's also this impression that at the top, it converges, right? You have giant pharma. There tends to be a lot of buyouts, et cetera. Talk to me about, and especially from the perspective of Cambrian Bio, how you guys think about the investment landscape and the journey as a whole, I guess.
Juliette Han
>> Yeah. You're right. There is a lot of conversions of investors at the top, and that is a reflection of how expensive it is to develop a drug. When you ask how many funds are, one, interested in the space as well as have the check size to take the drugs forward, especially in the last steps, that does mean that only few funds can really participate in that. And then one of those players happen to be pharma companies that have to scale, not just the investment scale, but investment into their infrastructure to see the last mile of that drug development process. So when I look at the investment space, I do think that there's an appeal to potential patients, the future market that will want this drug to be in the... There's a market education of getting them to be interested in the drug that you're developing, but at the same time, ultimately, the people that have the check to write, because it's so huge, it's not something you can crowdfund easily or the science is pretty complex that you can't really appeal to non-technical investors and they don't want to take that risk. So there is a convergence, but I do think that we can, and when I say we, I mean biotech as industry, can probably do better with sharing our science early so that we can broaden that investor pool in the future.
Gemma Allen
>> Talk to me about the process of bringing a drug to market. We know what we hear, I guess, rhetorically, right? Quite a bit that it's lengthy. There's a lot of understandable points of touchpoints and sign off points. You've got the FDA side of things. Are we seeing an acceleration? Are things speeding up? Are all of those, I guess, challenges or those redlining of particular parts of that process continuing? What's happening, especially in this world we're in right now, where you would imagine AI, again, maybe it's potentially helping with some of that assessment, right?
Juliette Han
>> Yeah. I think you're right. I think that given the magnitude of risk, which means human lives at stake with this, there aren't steps we can skip. So if I think about where we can gain efficiency or speed, there's either you can skip steps, which I don't think we're going to do that anytime soon, or we can accelerate those steps. And I do think that that's where there could be some efficiency around AI usage to vet some of the... The FDA announced recently that they're going to start to implement that more and more, not to completely replace humans, but to augment their function, to look at the files and data and then assess things more quickly and give companies feedback on their programs. And then creating more touch points throughout the process. So instead of the companies expending years of research and then getting a final input that says no is saying, "Can you have an ongoing dialogue with the FDA and then other KOLs to see where you need to pivot and make those decisions as you go?"
Now, having said that, I think where there is chances also for farther efficacy in the field in general is that there are a number of drugs that have in the eyes of investors or company have "failed." But it doesn't mean that they have completely failed or their useless compounds. They're on the shelves and I think that there's ability to repurpose them into new profiles that we haven't taken advantage of and there hasn't been a lot of incentives to do that. And I do think that there are also drugs that are currently on the market and approved, but we haven't been creative enough to say, "Where else can it apply to if you tweak this drug just a little bit?" So I think there's some efficiency to be gained by doing the tweaking more instead of just bringing constantly new product into the market. I do think that where we can also gain efficiency, and this is speaking from someone who's invested in the more preventative pathway, right now, there is no FDA path to a preventative drug. And I'm not talking about the vaccines, but I'm talking about things that can actually prevent illnesses before you age, because that doesn't exist yet. But the question is, when those innovations come, can the FDA match the progress and stay ahead of us? So I would say the thing that makes the biotech space very different from tech space is tech is more innovate and then the government tries to play catch up in terms of putting guardrails in after, but you can't do that with biotech because you can't just put drugs out in the market and then put guardrails in, which means that FDA does have to move faster for the biotech arena than tech, for example, for those regulations. So I do think that there are some headwinds there, but I do think that there is... I do see a lot of movement towards AI applications, people being open to different ways to push drugs into the pipeline in a way that meets the accelerated needs of patients. So I would say there's good promise in the future.
Gemma Allen
>> One other clear difference between tech and biotech is the attention economy and the fact that you can market so organically in the tech space. You can create a product, the oxygen around the hype comes very, very quickly. As a person who didn't grow up in the US, I have always found pharmaceutical advertising really crazy, right? When I see these advertisements on television and things like that, even when I was a visitor here many years ago. So again, is there some sort of economy of scale in terms of these larger players and the access points they have from the perspective of scale and repeatability and even like market spend on promoting these drugs, those drugs that stay on the shelves. Is there an element of the bigger lion takes bigger share to this?
Juliette Han
>> I do think... It's so interesting because you're right, I think US is the only country that you market these products, and even those marketing is very heavily regulated, and rightly so. You don't want to push drugs to the patients who don't need it. So I'm not sure if there's necessarily a way to... I wouldn't say the opportunity is in the way we market the drugs themselves. I do think that there is an opportunity for us to, not market, but educate the public on the drug making process so that we can share how the drugs are made and what types of drugs and how we make decisions around what those drugs are made. And then therefore, we can also probably, not just the general public, we can probably create more, better consortiums of data congregators where we can say, "We can put real brain power behind, can you come up with different ways to repurpose some of these drugs that are on the shelf?"
So I would look at it not as a marketing opportunity, but rather a way to share the process a lot more transparently across both the public, as well as the academic, or even potential future nonprofits to say, "Where can we find more opportunities where the way current behemoth of players, they're not built to do so?" So maybe it's more of giving opportunities to new types of players in the field to take a different perspective on the drug that we have today.
Gemma Allen
>> Wow. So Cambrian Bio, you're here because there's an IPO summit at the New York Stock Exchange. So I guess you guys are partaking in some conversation in this space. Talk to me a little bit about the company itself, this investment cycle stage you're at, and also what's ahead. What's next? You're going to go live with the drug, which is fantastic. Where do you guys go from here?
Juliette Han
>> Absolutely. Oh, my gosh. We have so many exciting therapeutic programs in the pipeline. In addition to the skin and hair care, there's really two that I'm most excited about that not only am I excited, but people seem to be excited about. The first is that we are right now gearing up for a phase two trial for amp kinase target, and it's in the obesity space. Now, obesity, we hear a lot about GLP, but it's not just about GLP and the weight loss anymore. I think that we are now thinking about what is next in terms of cardiovascular health. And it's not just about the fat loss, but what we're seeing is what's also important to people is muscle retention, visceral fat, maybe your triglycerides. So there's so many other markers of cardiovascular health that we haven't prioritized. When I say we, as just public, also as a health, we don't talk about enough. So right now, the market is hinged upon how many weight loss can you achieve, but our programs are really designed about what is the wave three of our next frontier of the conversation, which is, how does this drug impact the rest of your cardiovascular health, including weight loss, as well as other organ functions and cardiovascular markers? And then we have our second program called Tornado, which just won a big major ARPA grant. This is looking to study the impact of mTORC1 function or inhibition in our system and how it can really start for you to better regulate your metabolism as you age. Now, metabolism as a central foundation of aging is not disputed at all. That's why we see a lot of talk around calorie restrictive diets or the way people do intermittent fasting, is all around making sure your metabolism is working in a healthy manner. Now, we haven't figured out a way to target that specifically in humans, even though we have been able to do that in animals. Then the biggest difficulty comes from the fact that the Holy Grail pathway called mTOR, because it's such a holy grail big pathway, it's really messy when you start targeting it, but we have compounds that we are developing right now that can be very selective. So it doesn't have the downsides or side effects that we have seen with other analogs on the market, but we have a very specialized selective inhibitor that can really help us keep our metabolism health going longer. That's what we're working on with the ARPA granted product, or ARPA granted funding. So having said that, what's next for us is, number one, our focus always is and will be the scientific potential of our programs. So because these trials are quite expensive, it does take a lot of investors to put faith in us, which they have for the last six years, to continue our path of development. So for us, it's really figuring out what is the best source of capital. We call it patient capital, of course, because you got to be patient because drug programs run for so long, but we're dynamically eyeing the markets, listening to our investors, as well as listening to the public in the long run because they're the ones to benefit truly from any progress that we make.
Gemma Allen
>> Well, Juliette, it's fantastic to see companies like this. I love hearing about companies like yours and experts like you in terms of how, really, we can make a difference in society and we can change some of the most fun demented problems that have really prevailed for such a long time, right? Not just me having a younger looking face on camera, but all sorts of problems, right? So it's just fantastic to see. So we'll certainly be watching and tracking. And hopefully would love to have you back here for conversation perhaps on the female side of health, which is such a-
Juliette Han
>> Absolutely....
Gemma Allen
>> problem close to my own heart. So hopefully welcome you back.
Juliette Han
>> Thank you so much. It was a great conversation.
Gemma Allen
>> Thanks so much. I'm Gemma Allen coming to you from the Cube Studio here at the New York Stock Exchange. This is MedTech Unplugged, one of our NYSC wired programs. Thanks so much for watching.
Gemma Allen
