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Founder's Story
The French Industrialist Betting on Robotics to Cure Disease (And the Ethical Line He Won’t Cross) | Ep. 316 with Hervé de Malliard President of Maison MGA
00:23:32
Daniel Robbins speaks with Hervé de Malliard, the builder behind Maison MGA, about what China taught him firsthand in the 1990s: clear vision and “Speedy Gonzales” execution. Hervé explains TechBio as the shift from mass biotech production to engineered, personalized medicine where hardware, software, robotics, and AI loop directly with the patient. The conversation also tackles the promise of curing major diseases alongside the ethical limits society must define as technology gets powerful enough to extend life dramatically.
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Transcript27 lines
- [00:00]
A
I'm here on the job site with Dale, who's a framing contractor.
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B
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A
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B
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B
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A
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B
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A
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C
So good.
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B
Get a commercial auto insurance quote today@geico.com and see how much you could save. It feels good. To geic. So I'm excited today, Herve, because we're going to talk through something that I've been wanting to understand when it comes to manufacturing, like what is China doing? Right? What can we learn from your experiences there? But also you're talking about tech bio, which I've never heard before, the phrase. But I mean, it's obviously something we need in our lives to live longer, to live better. I mean, everyone's talking now about AI and robotics and it seems like you're, you're kind of putting a lot of things together. So let's go back to your time with China. What were some of the learnings that you had around speed, efficiency and manufacturing?
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C
Yeah, well, hello, Dan. So I'm very pleased to chat with you today. Yeah, well, I'm an engineer by design. I started my career in China. And this is back 30 years ago. Okay. I'm a bit old now. It's back 94 to 99. And I was doing that, basically developing the business for French Industrial Group, which was the Dietrich. And what we were proposing to China were some chemical reactors which are used for the pharmaceutical synthesis. And you know, at that time, China, back 30 years ago, I mean, I mean, most everybody, almost everybody was driving bicycles, you know, almost no cars there. And you didn't have so much high rise skyrise skyscrapers in Shanghai. It was only the TV tower in, in Shanghai. And I was amazed because the, all the industrial firms that I was visiting there, all of them had a very clear vision of where they wanted to go. Okay. They were very interested in new technologies and partnering with innovation, new equipment and basically modernizing the factories. And all these factories were very old and with very poor equipment, very poor performance, very poor capabilities. And the thing that was very, very interesting is that each time one factory would decide to move ahead, they would execute the plan like Speedy Gonzales. I mean, the speed was of the Essence everywhere. So once they decide to go, then they make it happen. And very quickly, much, far quickly than what we could do in the west at that time. And at that time 30 years ago, we were much faster in the west than what we are today. And this was absolutely incredible. So the thing was the speed and the vision, they were very, very smart, very, very clear where they were, where they wanted to go and then execute a plan with a huge amount of speed. And what I can tell you is when I left China in 99, everything that is happening today was already written in the plan. It was written, they knew at that time that they wanted to, they already understood that their industry, our industry in the US or in Europe is, I mean the essential brick of the industry is the automotive industry. And they had decided at that time that they would go after this industry. And basically what you can notice today is that they actually executed the plan. And now their electric cars with BYD and others are amongst the best in the world, if not the best. And they made that as an execution plan. And this is very key. And basically it was very clear to me that that plan was clearly driven by some sovereignty, was clearly driven by innovation, by investment. And every time a Chinese company would build a factory state of the art with the modern technology, then they would duplicate, replicate that in other provinces. And it's clear that they just executed a plan. And this was a very, lessons learned for me was industry is having a right prospective, know where you want to go and then execute a plan, being very patient in execution, but very fast on a day to day basis in order to execute that plan. And that, that has been, I would say the real kickoff of my career.
- [05:45]
B
I mean it's amazing to think only 30 years all that has that advancement has happened. And the fact that they planned it, we could take a lot away like you said as business owners, we could take a lot understanding away of long term planning because I think we get so caught in the minutiae of day to day. We're not always planning 20, 30, 40, 50 years out. We're just planning in the next five minutes. And I've heard they have like each city manufactures like something different. One day I'd like to go to Shanghai. I've heard it's incredibly advanced technology and all the robotics. I love byd. I, I, I hate to say it, but it might be my favorite EV car. I mean it's incredible what they've done with that. So you get back to France and you're in my favorite city in France, which is Lyon right now. But you get back to France and you're, you, you start Maison mga. What was the problem that you were solving?
- [06:40]
C
Well, MJ started a bit later than that. In, in the meantime between 99 and 2010 where I started Maison MGA, what happened is that I've been on boarded back in the industry and basically I've been I would say coming from machine to integrated system and complex engineering systems, including turnkey greenfield factories. I had to basically get into the complexity of building a greenfield plant. I was very, very impressed at that time because I followed a project which we incorporated in wuxi, which is 100 kilometers basically from Shanghai. And when we decided to invest and build a greenfield factory in Wuxi, we signed the land three months after the factory was finished. Again, speed, but also understanding the complexity of engineering a complete process plant, basically aligning all the necessary bricks for the technology and building that for the future with already a vision of different workflows necessary and basically the process necessary to have it performant. And so I did that for about 10 years first in the UK and then France and then built factories all around in the us everywhere on the five continents. I was running an engineering firm at the time making a process plant both for the pharmaceutical industry, making vaccines, mixing plasma blood plus fractionation and all these complex engineering for bioprocessing. Those experiences China and then making those complex systems engineering drove me to. We could see at that time that the digital was coming up. Robotics was already deployed in, in the car industry and some other industries, but very little, very seldom in. In the life science industry almost no robots were there. So I decided to basically put all our energy into those complex systems engineering into clean environments. So basically putting those complex engineering into clean rooms in order to serve mainly the life science industry. And so that's what we've been doing with mga. So putting robots, tailor made machines, instruments in order to address those complex engineering and put more and more robotics also with all the digitalization which was already happening back 15 years ago. And so that's where we are.
- [10:14]
B
Yeah, can you talk more about. And thank you for sharing that this tech bio. Why is tech bio even important? And I'm very interested about robotics. I feel like everyone is talking about, you know, we will all have robots in our homes. Like you're going to look outside and robots will just be walking around everywhere. So I'd love to go, I'd love to, to understand your perspective around how robotics is changing all of these industries. But I think start by what is tech bio?
- [10:45]
C
So tech bio is, is not like biotech. Biotech is basically you put in a pan, some media and then you basically are growing life into a pan. This is biotech bioprocessing. So you make first cell culture and then you clarify the cell culture with downstream processing with ultra filtration, chromatography and those type of things. And then you put this in a vial into a fill and finish process. Try angel stuff for your tushy. It's made by angels soft and strong budget friend I need the choice is simple. Pick up a pack today. Angelsoft this is biotech. Biotech has been developed over the past 20, 25 years very intensively into the vaccines business. And basically the trend in biotech was to make bioreactors bigger and bigger and bigger. And this is, and of course the ultimate of this is the MRNA vaccines that we have been developed very, very fast during COVID that has given a very huge, I would say acceleration into this biotech business. And then what happened is that opening the MRNA application also in parallel to that has been developed all these cell and gene therapies. And basically the volumes which we consider for those type of biotherapies are down to a single vial, one vial, one patient. So I mean those big bioreactors are no longer relevant. And then tech bio is basically putting all the engineering capability, the complex engineering capability to personalized medicine and basically reverse this tech all engineering capabilities to bio to biology. So basically the engineer doing the engineering for biology and so integrated, you have all these instruments, processes, instruments to make those personalized medicine. You have all the, I would say the instruments for IVD for in vitro diagnostic. You have also all these implants which have some robots embedded into the body. You have sensors that you can implant in the brain and you have also all the artificial intelligence that can be used for instance on those heart diagrams. You can analyze this with image and then basically detect errors or special patterns that can give you some idea. And further to that, you also with digital you can have a loop with the patient, because if you develop one particular drug for one patient, you can also through his smartphone, he can also report all the of the, of how he feels on a day to day basis through simple questions. And this also helps on, on improving the treatment for the patient. So basically all this engineering capability, whether hardware, software, driven to one patient and looping with the patient, that is take by you.
- [14:40]
B
Wow. So how do you see, I mean that's, I mean the fact that we could put like robots in people and it could maybe solve problems inside them or do surgeries or you know, whatever other put it in our brain. What excites you the most about when you think of robotics in tech bio health care, but what also scares you
- [14:59]
C
the most, what we can see now with those generative AI is that you basically can foresee that some diseases are going to be treated. So we are going to find solutions for cancer, for all brain disease. So if you, if you prospect, if you make prospective in the next 20 years, 25 years, if you, if we are back in 2050, in 2050, it's very clear that almost all the known diseases of today will have treatment. That's very clear. Now the downside of this is of course some people with regeneration, cellular tissues, you can imagine that you can basically replace your heart if it's, if there is a problem, you can replace your liver, you can replace your muscles, you can replace one eye and so on. So possibly some people could, with a lot of money, they could maybe live 500 years or 1,000 years. So this is of course not very acceptable ethically. I think we will have to define as a society, as a world society, we will have to define some limits where this is not no longer acceptable. This we should not do, we should not play with life in terms of what God gave us. And we need to make sure that all these new technology respect life, respect humanity. And that's the, I mean a frontier that a border that has to be defined. But on the other hand, you will no longer have those 5 years old children that die of cancer. And this is absolutely insane in terms of, I mean this cannot be accepted. So if we manage to save lives that have to be saved, this is of course an ultimate dream. And this is where what I'm working from, and you were questioning about my vision about robotics. So I see robots as a tool, like. Of course a pen very nicely drawing or writing a book. You can also use it very badly. And it's the same for AI, is the same for robotics, it's the same for tech bio. So all these have to remain tools for the help of better living of humanity. And this is what I'm striving for. I of course do not accept the idea of technology compromising life or compromising morality. This is my limit.
- [18:08]
B
Maybe I want to live to 300, I don't know about 500. But it kind of reminds me of CRISPR like a decade ago. I know CRISPR was kind of just becoming a thing publicly and they were talking about the ethics and you know, should you clone things? What do you call, like there's so many things that they were talking about, but it almost seems like we're in an interesting age where there's so many technologies coming together as one. Like there's so many things that, that like you, I mean, you said we could possibly cure cancer and diseases and fix things. How incredible is that? People can live a better life. But of course there's always people that might do something, you know, bad with it. But the fact that we can do that excites me a lot. So if, if you want to get in touch with you, I mean, it's fascinating, right? But if you want to get in touch with you, they want to find out more about Maison, about what you're working on, maybe some partnerships, learn more. How can they do.
- [19:06]
C
So can I give you a few examples of what we've done recently? For instance, we developed an instrument that is working on chips. We did that with the startup called Stila Technologies, which has been acquired by a company in California which is called Bio Rad. Maybe you know that company, they made an in vitro diagnostic instrument, an IVD instrument. And this allows basically to analyze 8 milliliter of a solution, explode those 8 milliliter into 20,000 nanodroplets and each of these nanodroplets individually become a PCR reactor. And you can detect positive or negative, basically any, any DNA trace that you would look in that. And that of course allows for much more precise diagnosis. And you can for instance, loop during a cancer treatment, the oncologist can basically check whether the particular vial that he has injected in the patient is efficient or not. And if the, the cell tumor, the tumor cell have been reduced in numbers or if they have increased, and that of course is considerably increasing the efficiency of the treatment of the patient. This is one, another one. We're working with another company that has recently deal with Vertex. The, you know, Vertex is a very advanced R and D company in, in, in cell therapy. And they have made a deal with the tree frog therapeutics and, and here they are making a cell encapsulation in order to basically the first divisions of the cells being very, very nicely arranged in 3D in a capsule like in an egg. And therefore the quality of the first division, which are very, very critical for cell therapy are much improved. And we are developing this technology for them. Of course we work together, but these are the types of instruments that we are working on. And this is extremely exciting because all these IPS based cell therapy are incredibly promising. I mean it's clear that we are going to completely change. It's a real game changer in, in, in, in biotherapies.
- [22:03]
B
I mean, this is amazing. I can't wait. Super exciting. 20, 30 years from now, our world is going to be so different, like, and I hope it's for the good and you're going to look back and say you were a part of that. That's your legacy right there. Like you, you completely changed the world.
- [22:19]
C
I am, I am very optimistic and I prefer to, to be optimistic and, and being wrong rather than pessimistic and being right.
- [22:27]
B
I like. Is that a French thing or is that just you?
- [22:30]
C
No, no, no, this is not a French thing. This is something I, I forgot who, who said that, but doesn't matter. It's a, it's a, it's a mindset. The mindset is if you make prospective. I think progress can really change. Our lives can change. Also all the issues that need to be addressed there are in the draw a number of innovation that we can really put together and reduce all this carbon footprint of, of the industry and transport. And I think the big, big challenge as a humanity is to basically make sure that the poor countries increase their life standards into an acceptable level. And basically the rich countries also increase their standard of living in order to live better, longer, happier. And I think we have everything in the draw with all these new technology to make this happen. And I'm very excited to see this coming.
- [23:44]
B
Hopefully, as humans, sometimes we have the habit of screwing things up. So I want to be optimistic like yourself, that we are going to do the right thing. It's going to be great. I love the level playing field. Right. Like you're saying, certain countries might have, you know, the, might have issues that with, with whatever that is, they can solve those with uplift. That country uplifts the people. I mean, hopefully this is going to spread everywhere. But thank you so much. By the way, President of Maison. I appreciate your time today. I'm excited for the future.
- [24:17]
C
Thank you, Dan. I'm very excited.
- [24:20]
B
If you like the show, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe. It really does help the show to grow. Thank you for listening.