Loading summary
Transcript48 lines
- [00:00]
A
You're going to see in the future little babies who have been diagnosed with genetic disorders being treated to reverse the disorder. They're also looking at even prenatal.
- [00:10]
B
So Molly McLaughlin is a visionary, mission driven biotech leader and the CEO of Revolution Biomanufacturing Inc. Drawing from her background in military leadership, biotechnology and advanced manufacturing, she is helping shape the future of personalized medicine through innovative MRNA solutions focused on speed, precision and patient impact.
- [00:30]
A
We are really focusing now into manufacturing personalized medicines for people who have cancer who with chemotherapy hasn't worked. So they're at end of life and this is their chance to possibly find a cure for their cancer.
- [00:46]
B
What will you learn about your hardcore science as an individual on this planet, as a woman in power?
- [00:51]
A
It is about a promise. It is about a future where we can really solve most illnesses, not all. But you know, even if we save one life, it's one life saved.
- [01:05]
B
It spans the globe like a super high cold Internet Elvis Presley. Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone. It's not over until I win. The Living youg Legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy that's extraordinary. The impossible has been. Oh, that is sensational. Open Chicago with the lead. You said Paul is the fastest man on the planet. You can live your dream. Welcome to another amazing episode of the Living youg Legacy podcast, the Women in Power edition. For Inside Success. I am Ray Gutierrez. Joining me today is Molly McLaughlin. I've got amazing notes about you. I'm going to read this off. She is a woman in power because she is the leader of the next generation of American biomanufacturing, turning groundbreaking science into life saving realities with purpose and global impact. Gosh, Molly, what an intro. Welcome.
- [02:11]
A
Thank you. Thank you.
- [02:12]
B
How does it feel? You literally finished filming your episode of For Women in Power. How does it feel?
- [02:16]
A
It feels good. It feels good. I think it's just empowering to have gone through the story and understanding. I mean it just reinforces why I'm doing what I'm doing for sure.
- [02:27]
B
How often do you go back and tell your story? Are you on stages talking about your story or is this your first time on camera?
- [02:32]
A
I think it's probably talking about. This is probably the first time I've been on camera on it. I mean I've won some awards in cell and gene therapy but I never had an opportunity to really speak. I mean I do present at scientific conferences or at industry conferences, but it's about a scientific topic or capability, not about me and my story. So yeah, this is probably the first time.
- [02:55]
B
Right on. I have earth shattering news. I am not a scientist.
- [02:59]
A
It's okay.
- [02:59]
B
So what is it that you do?
- [03:00]
A
Some would say I'm not either.
- [03:02]
B
What is it that what you do and how do you do it so scientific. Scientifically.
- [03:06]
A
And so we at Revolution Biomanufacturing, it's really an onshoring of a capability of a company that I used to be the CEO of before the investors pulled out and closed it down. And we have a innovative technology platform for manufacturing drugs or biological drugs that are MRNA based. So this is mRNA. Most people know MRNA from the pandemic COVID vaccine, which is the. There's really only three on the market right now and two of them are Covid vaccines and one is an RSV vaccine. But the MRNA platform is what we have from an intellectual property standpoint and we are really focusing now into manufacturing personalized medicines. So medicines not focused on infectious disease or not focused on what I would say upper respiratory infections, which the COVID vaccine addresses, but really more personalized medicines for people who have cancer who where chemotherapy hasn't worked. So they're at end of life and this is their chance to possibly find a cure for their cancer. Or for people that are born with genetic disorders, rare and ultra rare, to do genetic editing to correct the mutation of the genetic disorder. And then also for things such as hiv, we have proof of concept in HIV to help improve how well the drug works by over 65%. We have been working with people in the autoimmune area and then also things like metabolic disease like diabetes.
- [04:50]
B
Wow. So this is all obviously very fascinating talk about the day to day lifestyle. Back when I grew up in the 80s and 90s, AIDS was a deal breaker. You got HIV, you're done for now. It's very much, you're living with it. But then again it was 10, 20 pills, now it's just down one to two. Talk about the evolution of the science. You even said editing, bio editing, gene editing, gene editing.
- [05:15]
A
It's like genetics.
- [05:16]
B
It's so casually like we're at that level now.
- [05:19]
A
We are.
- [05:19]
B
Give us some insight, please.
- [05:20]
A
Yeah, so I mean for HIV we're not doing drug development, we have a manufacturing platform. Be very clear about that. So what we're really looking for is helping innovative companies that are doing drug development really make it a reality. They stop to go through your clinical trials, you still have to do that. So we have a proof of concept that you can increase how well the drug works, but it's still not even in clinical trials yet. So it'll be some time, but it'll be in my lifetime that we're able to basically cure hiv. In addition to that, for the rare and ultra rare genetic disorders, it really is about taking MRNA to deliver a protein in a sequence that then changes what's wrong in the genetic code. Right. So mRNA, what's cool about it is it's programmable, you can come and go and fix it the way you want it. And so it really is in the future you'll see it's going to take some time because people have to get through clinical trials, but you're going to see in the future little babies who have been diagnosed with genetic disorders being treated to reverse the disorder. They're also looking at even prenatal. So you know, going into before and it's not for changing baby's eyes to blue or any of that stuff like, I mean that's an ethical issue. It really is more for these, these children that are born with these, these conditions and then for cancer, you know, it really is creating them MRNA to express a protein in the human body that then attacks the tumor that the sequence came from. So. And you know, rapidly doing it.
- [07:03]
B
I owe a lot of my career to the way technology's advance, it's become simpler to do complicated tasks, especially in production and video and film and photography and audio and so on and so forth. How has technology essentially advanced your line of work? As my question is, there's no possible way you could have been doing what you're doing today in the 80s, because technology wasn't.
- [07:22]
A
Well, I mean, MRNA was around in the 80s for sure, but it was, it was still very archaic. Well no, it was just in the early infancy. Sure. And you know, but, but biologics in general were starting to come around. So you had monoclonal, you know, monoclonal antibodies, proteins and vaccines. Vaccines almost exclusively are biologics. And so you did have the, the technology there. It just wasn't to where it is today. And there have been some pretty substantial breakthroughs, Cas9CRISPR for gene editing in particular, but also just like the modalities of viral vectors and mRNA, plasma DNA, things like that. And it really figuring out how to deliver them to the tissue that they need to be delivered to, that was a big problem is not being able to actually get it to there. But now there's mechanisms with lipid nanoparticles to be able to do that. And so we're advancing technology left and right on this. So I think a Lot of people thought, like the COVID vaccine in particular, they just made that up overnight. But they didn't. They'd been working that for 20 years. And, you know, it was just that they said, hey, let's pivot and do it. And they did. And Moderna and Biontech and Pfizer did it very successfully.
- [08:35]
B
That's the thing. Behind the scenes, it was all successful, but it took a lot of time for it to remove that stigma. We grew up in movie culture. We've seen 12 monkeys, we've seen Outbreak, we've seen what these mass pandemics are like, Hollywoodized. So I feel like that brought up a lot of stigma and fear when it came to folks doing these mass vaccinations. How much of what you do day to day is educating folks or bringing them up to code and going, here's where we're at, here's what we need to fix, here's how we move forward.
- [09:06]
A
I don't necessarily deal with the general population very often.
- [09:10]
B
So Area 51.
- [09:11]
A
No, got it. So I cannot deny or confirm, but I do deal with the, the companies that are developing the drug. There's, there's about 230 products that are in development right now. Most of them over 60% are in preclinical. So, you know, this is, it's still kind of early in the drug development line. But I think you're probably right. I think people still feel afraid of mRNA. You know, our current Secretary of Health and Human Services is, you know, basically defunding some very critical research in this area. And based on it doesn't work for upper respiratory infections, which is great. I mean, we're not working on that. We're working on personalized medicines, totally different. But I think, you know, I think the general population need to stop listening to everything they hear on or read on the Internet.
- [10:04]
B
Oh, good luck with that. Yeah, man, this is America.
- [10:08]
A
I know, I know. I mean, go for it, go for it, but at least, at least be open to have the other part of the conversation. And I think that, that, you know, that that's where the rub is, right? They hear one conversation or one voice and they don't hear all the voices. And really to get the big picture and just look at the data and the science, follow the science, you need to listen to all the voices.
- [10:32]
B
Speaking of listening to all the voices, folks that are watching this, I hope they're familiar with the subject, but folks that are also watching this, they watch a lot of Netflix. I hope their familiarity is Something like Theranos, where you have this very pragmatic, eccentric blonde woman, you know, preaching, you know, things that only tech folks in Silicon Valley would understand. How much of that is guff and science. Because it does take time to create what you're creating versus what we see on television.
- [10:59]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think, I think we can make it. I know we can make it. I mean, that's what I do. We make it. So it really is selling it.
- [11:07]
B
Right.
- [11:07]
A
And I am raising money now to build this agile personalized medicine facility here in the US the company that I used to lead, that we carved out of, had its facility in Shanghai. So this is really the onshoring of that capability. But that was an infectious disease pandemic facility, which was huge. It was a mega factory. And we're looking to really make it more flexible, more tailored to personalized medicine. But, you know, I need to raise the money for it, and so that's my mission.
- [11:39]
B
Now how is that mission going for you? You mentioned already some investors pulled out.
- [11:43]
A
I was gonna talk and ask you about. Yeah, so for the, the previous company, the one with the facility in Shanghai, they pulled out and they had just a strategic change. They just didn't want to be in contract manufacturing, they didn't want to be in manufacturing, and they wanted to focus on therapeutics. So that is why they pulled out. Right now is probably one of the worst times to raise money, given the soft financial markets. And you have private equity firms not deploying capital, you have venture capitalists that are very shy to deploy capital. So it's, it's just an interesting time to raise money.
- [12:21]
B
How are you thriving in these interesting times? We always got to pivot. We got to stay clever, we got to stay resilient. How are you staying resilient and using your power as a woman?
- [12:29]
A
I think a lot of it is basing it on the innovation. I know the data shows that what we have in our intellectual property portfolio is powerful. It makes a difference. It is, it enables the ability to do some of these personalized medicines that you wouldn't have had before. And so I think that just staying behind and developing the science even further is going to be my, you know, my short term strategy. And then long term, as I raise the money, we'll build out the personalized medicine for, you know, clinical trial material and then commercialization eventually. But it's going to take some time for the drugs to actually get there. Just because clinical trials for good reason take time. The regulatory path is very strict and for good Reason. And so, you know, it will take time. But in the meantime, just being able to apply the technology to improve how these drugs work is the short term mission.
- [13:29]
B
I love how you use time, time and time again. How does one stay excited and motivated every day waiting for results? Yeah, well, it, yeah, for trials to give you, like, how do you stay in the game when you're just like,
- [13:43]
A
all right, well, you have to, you have to make sure that when you know, like, when you're really designing what indication you're going after, what illness you're going to go after, that the science works. So it's all based on hardcore science. And if the science isn't there, if it doesn't work, if it doesn't meet the target, then you can't take it forward. And too many companies take stuff forward that probably shouldn't have been. And so then their trial data is not good. But I think that that's really key is making sure that the hardcore science is right.
- [14:17]
B
What will you learn about your hardcore science as an individual on this planet, as a woman in power? What will we learn about you and your episode?
- [14:24]
A
Well, I think a lot of it is the challenges that I've had, not only just as a person, as a leader, as a soldier, as a mom, but I think it's also really, what is the science, the basis of the science? What is it that we have that's different from everybody else that's out there doing this and how the promise of it, because it is about a promise. It is about a future where we can really solve most illnesses, not all. I'm not going to say we can. There's no blanket statement there at all. But, you know, even if we save one life, it's one life saved. If it's one child who doesn't have, who can actually live functionally versus not it, it's significant. If we can save one cancer patient, it's significant.
- [15:16]
B
Well, I hope that the clinical trial called the Inside Success podcast past your, your examination and that you've had a very amazing, fruitful and joyous day. It was quite, quite the way to end our day to day. So thank you so much for your time and energy.
- [15:31]
A
Thank you. Appreciate it.
- [15:33]
B
How can folks find and learn more about you on the Interwebs?
- [15:37]
A
Yeah, so I think going to my website again is probably the best way to find me in my LinkedIn profile as well. And Revolution Biomanufacturing also has a LinkedIn profile right on.
- [15:48]
B
Well, Molly, thank you so much again for being such a powerful, amazing woman with that. That concludes yet another amazing episode of the Living youg Legacy podcast. I'm Ray Gutierrez. Sam.