Episode 46: New Tech STARTS Here

Episode 46: New Tech STARTS Here

Karie Dozer [00:00:07] I'm Karie Dozer, and this is TGen Talks as a world leader in genomics research, TGen explores the genetic components of complex and common disorders and diseases. Even though genomics is a relatively new field of research, the pace of innovation at new technology within the field is quick to stay. On top of emerging tech, TGen has created a new unit dedicated to finding and developing the best new research tools that haven't yet made it from the prototype to the marketplace. For this episode of TGen Talks, I sat down with Stephanie Pond, vice president of Emerging Technologies, to find out why she came to TGen and what she hopes she and her team will discover.

Dr. Stephanie Pond [00:00:51] It's great to talk with you and thanks for interviewing me. So I started at TGen in May, so I've been here less than a year. I came to TGen to start a group called Start, which is our Scientific Technology Assessment Research Team, which focuses on supporting our faculty in bringing new technology to TGen. So in working with the faculty, a lot of them have something that they would like to be able to detect. They have some research problem that they can't solve today because the tools that they have to measure DNA or proteins or cellular structure aren't sufficient. And so they're always interested in, Well, how could I measure something new? How do I go and extend my research? How do I help patients by understanding something that I can't understand today? So what my team and I do is we look for companies that are developing new methods to answer those questions that our faculty are interested in. And then we look to set up projects where we can bring that technology in-house, assess how well it works, set up projects with faculty to really understand its capabilities at a biological level and hopefully bring new and exciting things in-house.

Karie Dozer [00:02:19] So you're looking for new tools for teachers and scientists to use in their research. How do you find them? Are you knocking on doors? Are you Google searching? How do you find a project that nobody knows about yet?

Dr. Stephanie Pond [00:02:31] Sure. Well, luckily biotechnology is still a little bit of a small, a small world, so there's a number of ways you can do this. First is personal network, the people who are in biotechnology companies that are developing this technologies. We tend to bounce around from company to company. And so the personal network is always a great way to leverage that. But there's also other sources that you can use for companies where you don't know anybody. Venture capital announcements for funding companies are a great way to find out what people are doing. You can also search the literature, and you can also look for there's a funding mechanism through places like the NSF and the NIH for small technology companies to get government grants to do technology development on high risk areas. They're called SBIR grants. And so if you have an SBIR grant, the NIH publishes those lists because it's a public funding mechanism so you can go through and search at the NIH for people who've recently gotten grants in the area that you're interested in.

Karie Dozer [00:03:40] But you're just as likely to talk to someone at a Christmas party or talk to a fellow parent at a tailgate and hear about a friend of a friend who's got something that TGen needs.

Dr. Stephanie Pond [00:03:50] That's right. It's really reaching out and asking questions and searching for what people are doing.

Karie Dozer [00:03:57] How many great tools are you looking for at any one time?

Dr. Stephanie Pond [00:04:00] Oh, well, my list is very long endless. But I have a really great team is here at TGen that can do all of the lab work in the bioinformatics and really the actual project. So we're really looking to do about one to three projects at a time. Hopefully, we're looking we can do five to six in a year.

Karie Dozer [00:04:23] How do you prioritize what you're looking for? And then once you've found something that you think might be a great fit, how do you vet it? How do you figure out if it's the right fit for TGen?

Dr. Stephanie Pond [00:04:32] So first, in terms of priority, it's a mixture of things. We're looking for projects that impact multiple areas of research. So if it's a technology tool that multiple faculty could use or that would be broadly applicable, those are a higher priority than perhaps a project that would impact just a very specific area of research for one faculty. The other areas are, you know, a lot of it is timing and opportunity. So the technology that you're looking for your partner on the industry side. Needs to be far enough along in their development that you can really assess what you think their final capability is going to be. So a lot of it is timing. You might have a phone call and you might say, great, when are you going to launch? And they say 20, 26 and you're like, Great, why don't we talk in two years? Yeah, when you're so you're really looking for those companies that are, say, 18 months to a year before they launch, they have a really strong prototype. You can really assess what they're able to do, and they have a very clear roadmap and funding to say we're going to deliver what we're promising to deliver in the next 12 months.

Karie Dozer [00:05:46] What is your background and how did you bring this expertise to TGen most? I would imagine most of the new hires at TGen are in charge of researching a particular project or working in a particular lab. And yet you have a very different focus. How did you get here?

Dr. Stephanie Pond [00:06:01] I do. I'm really, really excited to be here. You know, I first encountered Titan a decade ago when I was in industry, so I was one of those lucky industry partners who got to work with Jan and I. They made such a big impression on me, and because not only were they doing really great research, but their mission and how they impact patients is really, you know, permeates every part of TGen and is so impressive. So a decade ago, 10 really made an impression on me, and I always thought that would be a great place to get to work with. And I never thought that I would actually be at TGen because I was in industry and I'm not a biologist. I'm not a I'm not a professor. But when this particular position came up, I had to apply because I really felt that my skillset really complements and brings a new perspective that can really help TGen meet its objectives. So my background is, is an industry. So I started off as a physical chemist, so not a biologist. So I spent a lot of time in a laser lab in graduate school. Of course, yes. I decided I didn't want to pursue an academic career after I did a postdoc at the Scripps Research Institute and I went since I was in San Diego. I went into the biotech world, so I worked for very early stage startup companies I worked for. It was a company called Prognosis Bio Sciences. And once I left there, I went to work for Illumina. So Illumina is a biotechnology company that builds the instruments that do the vast majority of sequencing in research today. So it's called next generation sequencing, and it's really the technology that has enabled genetic profiling of four diseases and tumors. So I was there for about five years in product development. So product development is really focused and you take and you build a product that other scientists are going to use right to do their discovery work. And you know, I learned a lot at Illumina, and after I left Illumina, I decided I wanted to go back into the small startup world. I started co-founded a biotechnology company.

Karie Dozer [00:08:28] And what did you make?

Dr. Stephanie Pond [00:08:29] So it was a very early, early stage startups. Mostly, we were focused on prototyping, but it was a software company to help people to help people analyze their sequencing data in an easier way.

Karie Dozer [00:08:42] Sounds like you've been at almost all of the stages of this development slash startup process, so it probably gives you a pretty unique view on what's going to work and what's not going to.

Dr. Stephanie Pond [00:08:52] It does, you know, I really love building things, and my focus has my focus. This has always been in measuring. I love building tools. I love answering the question of what can we measure? How well can we measure it? How can we use this? You know, it's a very different mentality, but I think it's very complementary because if we can give scientists and biologists better tools, they're going to come up with better answers for us and that's what we all hope for.

Karie Dozer [00:09:26] There are already success stories and companies that you've interacted with in your short time here at TGen, and one of them is a company called Deep Cell. What is deep cell? What kind of company is it? And basically, what does it do?

Dr. Stephanie Pond [00:09:39] So Deep Cell is a startup company. It's in the Bay Area in in California, and it's still pretty early in development. And what they are building is a new system that is focused on cell imaging and cell sorting. What they're trying to create is a system where you can predict how cells will function based on how they. Look, generally

Karie Dozer [00:10:08] speaking, you have to name a particular company or a product, but is there a technology out there that you are most excited about, hopefully helping bring to market

Dr. Stephanie Pond [00:10:19] in the short term in the next two years? I'm most interested in seeing new companies bring improvements to sequencing to the market, and that's primarily interesting to me because next gen sequencing companies have really changed clinical care for patients. The ability to sequence today allows us to make treatment decisions for oncology. It allows us to and it allows us to diagnose rare diseases. And these are really important missions that impact patient care today. There's a lot of regions of the genome that are difficult to do this for. And so I think in the next two years, we're going to start to see these really difficult areas of the of DNA that are hard to do today become accessible through new technology. And so that really excites me because I can see a very near term impact to the patient.

Karie Dozer [00:11:26] Does that mean a quicker answer for someone seeking what it is that's affecting them?

Dr. Stephanie Pond [00:11:31] Yes, it could be a faster answer. It means that we can access more areas of our genomes that are causing diseases that we don't have a good way to measure today. It goes to treatment. And so for me, this is a very exciting area because I can see it impacting patient care very, very soon. I think if I look farther out, there's been a really big push in the last year around funding companies that are doing studying proteins, so studying what's called proteomics, which are all the proteins that are in the cell. So this is an area that we've wanted to study for a long time, and I don't know if any of these companies are going to be, you know, like a silver bullet. But the renewed funding and interest in these companies will accelerate research and more things that hopefully in the next, let's say, three to five year time window, we will be able to we look at all of the proteins in a cell and a really high throughput, easy way. So what we're hoping is that these companies that are doing proteomics in the next couple of years will really open up research and health insights in the same way that genomics did in the last decade. I think it's the next big opening of understanding what causes disease

Karie Dozer [00:13:04] and what sounds like you've got some goals in the near future and some goals way down the road, so you'll have plenty of things to do. You're never going to look around for something to do here, are you?

Dr. Stephanie Pond [00:13:13] You know, I we're going to be very busy and we're very excited to see what we can, what we can bring to TGen.

Karie Dozer [00:13:21] Sounds like a lot of fun, a lot of work, but a lot of fun. Stephanie Pion, thanks for your time today. It's really good to meet you.

Dr. Stephanie Pond [00:13:26] Thanks. It was wonderful to meet you, too.

Karie Dozer [00:13:29] To find out more about this quest for better research tools and how it furthers TGen's mission to develop better and more personal treatment options for patients. Go to TGen Dot Org Slash News. TGen, The Translational Genomics Research Institute is an Arizona based nonprofit medical research institute dedicated to conducting groundbreaking research with life changing results. TGen is an affiliate of City of Hope. You can find more of these podcasts at TGen Dot Org Slash TGen Talks or on Apple Podcasts. For TGen Talks, I'm Karie Dozer.