Episode 115: Exploring New Frontiers of Biotech and Healthcare Innovation Through Curiosity and Connection

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Serving the entire Gulf South, but recorded in the heart of New Orleans. Welcome back to BIO from the Bayou. I'm your host, Dr. Elaine Hamm, the Executive in Residence at Tulane School of Medicine. And with me I have Aziz Abadsafian, and he is with Nissan Chemical America. And I would love for you to tell our audience what your role is there. I've known you for many years, but let's let our listeners get to know you too.

Yeah, my name is Aziz. I work for a 137-year-old, 138-year-old chemical company, Nissan Chemical. We work in a lot of different verticals, but my job is primarily working with the Open Innovation Office, the healthcare division. Yeah, we do a lot of different things, drug discovery, we build reagents. We do a lot of different topics, but my role is more blue sky. I'm interested in the new latest and greatest technologies. I'm the eyes and ears for the organization when it comes to finding different opportunities broadly anywhere in the life sciences. So they give me a pretty wide mandate.

Yeah, I was going to say, that's a pretty wide mandate.

They say I have a wide mandate, but when it gets down to it, they reject quite a few things.

It happens. It happens. So what gets you— what are you looking for these days?

So Nissan Chemical has a very long history in drug discovery. That's always something that we're constantly trying to improve our platform on. There's infrastructure we've developed in terms of antisense oligonucleotides, siRNA. We have a strong small molecule history, but we're kind of moving away from that, more towards ASOs, siRNA, peptides as well. It's also interesting to us.

Yeah.

So any adjacent or complementary technologies, drug delivery modalities, different ways that we can improve our platform are interesting to us. We're happy to collaborate or in-license or things like that. But that's what we're looking for on the drug discovery side. That's the older stuff. More moving forward, though, is we're looking for other ways besides the kind of traditional drug discovery path to build business in the life sciences. I think this is what we're looking for, and this is what I've been tasked with finding. So finding different ways. Interesting.

Finding different ways. Okay, I like that. Okay, well, I like to tell our story. Our story is these.

Our story.

Our story.

The Elaine and Aziz story.

The Elaine and Aziz story. It's, it's honestly a story about the importance of building relationships. And I hate networking. You probably hate networking. It's, it can be miserable. It feels very perfunctory. It feels very transactional. And it's why I hate it. But you and I met in a way that is how probably you and I like to do business too. And that is more about the relationship and building a relationship and not more like what we could do for each other. And what do you have to sell and what do you have to buy? Kind of situation.

A game of Go Fish, right?

Yeah.

Do you have any X you're selling?

No. Yeah, just going through the list of like, no, yes, no, yes. Yeah, yeah. It was really just more, we met at a conference via the partnering system, I think, down in Miami. And it really was just like, well, you know, hey, I work at Tulane. I started, I was wearing my Tulane hat at that time. And it was, you know, what types of things are you guys specifically interested in? And I can keep my eyes out for you and serve your metrics if I can. And if anything comes up, then fantastic. But otherwise, Let's have a good conference and get to know each other. So that was cool.

That was great.

That was so fantastic.

That was so— it was a highly— this is a highly differentiated relationship. I'll put it that way.

Highly differentiated. Oh, I've had many a man say that about me. What a highly differentiated relationship this was.

You're a very differentiated character. Yeah.

I need to put that on my LinkedIn.

But like you said, like networking can be cringe sometimes. So when you have a better relationship with somebody or it seems to be more organic, Like, you can put more value into that. You spend more time on that. It's more human.

More human.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, what gets you excited? Speaking of human, I always like to ask people, like, what they're excited about because, I mean, I get so geeked out about science. Maybe a little too much so. I sometimes have to push up my glasses way too often when I start to talk, and then people go shark eyes sometimes when they talk to me because I'm just like, and then this science thing that happened was cool! But I love hearing other scientists of, like, You— and your whole job is finding new science. So, like, what are some of the cool science things that you're jazzed about these days?

I think that there are quite a few.

And it doesn't have to be Nissan-related either. It can be, you know, some crazy thing that you read in Scientific American on the plane ride.

I think that one of the, like, the big frontier problems, not in the short term, but in the very, very long term, medium, like, 10 years to 50 years horizon, is certain demographic changes. I think this is really interesting. This is like the push towards the way certain societies are oriented, the way like governments are acting right now. This is all oriented about how many people there are and how old they are and how much they can work and how long they'll be able to work.

Yeah.

So I think from a market perspective, a patient perspective, like the edges of these populations are important, which is really, really young people and really, really old people. These are kind of The hottest topics. One of them is the future, one of them is the voting class.

Ooh, that's a good way to put it. Yeah.

I think anything that kind of focuses on these populations is pretty interesting. So longevity and neurodegenerative diseases, these are, I think, these are some of the hardest problems that we're trying to solve right now. I think these are the stuff that— it's inspirational. Some of the other stuff is not to say that other diseases are boring or anything, but this is the frontier. And I know a lot of Researchers, innovators, they want to be on something that's particularly the sharpest edge they can find.

Well, and it's funny you said that because we just had another podcast with Kane from KDT Ventures where we were talking about how the drugs that we've made today have been so good at increasing longevity. However, with longevity, there's new problems that happen. We're talking about sort of GLP-1s and that kind of thing. So as we think about doing our job, we've done it so well, now we've created a new problem, new populations that are living longer, and they have brand new problems that we have to solve. So that opens up a whole new sort I don't know, bucket of worms, I guess, is the phrase, but also interesting problems to have to solve.

Yeah, the scope of our, like, awareness of health in— as a society is getting bigger and bigger.

Yeah.

That frontier of unawareness is also—

Yeah.

The area— what is it? Circumference versus the area, right?

Yeah, right, right.

It's getting bigger and bigger.

We're getting into physics. Nope, nope. But I think about as people are living older, they wanna live well too. I mean, before it was just like, well, you're just getting older and that's just the deal, you know? Yeah. But now we're able to— we want to, instead of just getting to a certain age, we want to be able to enjoy that time because we're having to work longer too. So you want to be able to enjoy that time. I think about, like, women's health too a lot from my perspective of, like, not— we don't have to just survive menopause. Like, let's think about that disease a little bit differently. Yeah.

I think one of the other things that's like— they say it's women's health, but it's human health— is, like, the early age of embryo fertility, embryology, like IVF.

Yeah.

There are frontiers here that, like IVG, in vitro gametogenesis, like these, we're getting close to some very, very sci-fi stuff that I think normal, I don't want to call them normal people, but like the uninitiated, right? They get very, it's an overwhelming level of technology that's approaching. And we have so many new tools that maybe we don't know what to do with all of them yet.

Well, I think about that embryology piece that you mentioned, that epigenetics side is so very cool too. And I think we're unlocking more and more of that information as well. And so I really do like the concepts you're talking about in terms of just like the edge of science, and it's not sci-fi. I do like to position it as my new favorite thing to talk about, which is day science versus night science.

Day science versus night science?

Yeah. This graduate student I met last week at a conference said this to me, and I was like, that's perfect, because day science is what you talk about in your business meetings, and you're gonna have incredibly well-thought-out hypotheses, and you're gonna have all of this data backing you up, and you've thought through it very carefully. Night science is talking about epigenetics and embryology and helping to live longer and just saying the craziest things because we don't know. There's so much things that we— I think that our discoveries have really pushed us further and faster than we ever anticipated. And now there's so many places we can go that we don't even know which way we can go. So that's— that, my friend, is night science.

Night science.

Yeah.

I'm particularly inspired. I didn't— I just heard about this word now.

Yeah.

Night science is inspirational.

I'm gonna do a whole thing about it. So it's just those things that you talk about at night and you're like, wouldn't it be cool if we could do this? So it's nice to dream about because sometimes we get so focused on our experiments and our day-to-day scientific life. That we forget to get that curiosity piece of it, which is why we kind of got into science in the first place.

I feel like if you don't have an inspirational story, it's hard to rally the troops, or it's hard to get support from anybody.

Anybody.

The public.

Yeah.

The public. You need— the masses need to support us in our quest to push the boundaries of human health, right?

Absolutely.

But that means it needs to be inspirational to some degree, or it needs to be somewhat frontier or on the fringe. Nobody gets excited for boring stuff, right?

Yeah.

I've already heard this story before. I need something new.

I need something new. Yeah.

People, people want to get excited about something.

Absolutely.

I think that's maybe, I don't know, there's room to improve there.

There's room to improve there. Yeah.

Yeah. I feel like we can and should be following those things, those things that really inspire us. Yeah.

But what's so great is your job is all about finding that. So what led you to this type of— I mean, you did it as a little boy. So you know what I want to do when I grow up?

I want to work for a Japanese company.

Japanese company, working in business development is your dream job. I mean—

I have to wear a suit like a salaryman all the time. I don't actually have to do that.

Yeah, I was going to say. I mean, you are wearing suspenders. Our listeners can't see that, but they're pretty rad. So yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. But no, how being— I mean, you have a very interesting background, but how did you think about getting into this job in particular?

I think like a lot of people do for professions is really like personality-oriented. So I'm personally interested in these more inspirational things. So like science in itself is discovering new things. It's a frontier methodology, right? And we want to find new things. That's the goal.

Yeah.

We're trying to uncover, right? So it's like curious people fall into this type of role. I want to see what's out there. I want to explore. I have good vision, like literally.

Literally and figuratively.

I like to see. I like to look out in the horizon. So I think some people are just kind of oriented like that. And other people are maybe a little bit more diligent than me and stay a little bit better focused over longer periods of time. So like shiny objects syndrome.

Shiny objects syndrome. Yeah, I have that happen, unfortunately.

But I know I started out just as a benchmarking just like everybody else. And I kind of worked my way. I realized that maybe the academic environment wasn't good for me or being a researcher in a larger organization, that one didn't work out either. A small organization researcher didn't work out either. I eventually got my MBA and I realized that I'm more interested in kind of the— The biz side. The biz side, yeah. So, but I didn't want to forego completely this innovation. I didn't want to become like a banker or something like that.

That's boring to you. Yeah.

So it needs to be interesting enough that like I want to get out of bed. But so anyway, and I found, I guess I don't know if I should say Nissan Chemical found me or I found Nissan Chemical, but I think one of the—

Timing worked out.

Timing worked out.

Yeah.

So I found this, they were looking for somebody with a broad expertise anyway. I feel like you need to have, it's better to be a jack of all trades in this kind of work, like search and evaluation. Like you should, if you're not an expert on these topics, you're expert at asking questions. You're really good at finding different opportunity seeking, like you're looking for opportunities and it's like, wow, this is interesting. I want to dig into this. Maybe there's something, uncover these rocks, you know?

Well, any advice for our listeners, some of which are students still, graduate students, postdocs, or even that bench monkey that is tired of moving stuff from one tube to the next? And I was that person myself. Any—

I'm so glad the automation frontier of that is coming. Like, this benchtop automation is—

The carpal tunnel alone. I mean, I left my original major of being a piano performance major to become a scientist because I hurt my hand. And then I'm sitting there doing 96-well plate assays, and the listeners can't see me pretending to pipette, but imagine it. And it hurt my wrist too. And so then we started seeing the robotics come into it. So that was a relief. And I don't know how we got on that topic, and now you guys know about my carpal tunnel. But science is great, but sometimes the lab work can be really monotonous at some times, and also very disheartening because a lot of science is built on a lot of failed experiments too. So thinking, looking— what kind of advice could you give those graduate students? All the way to the bench monkeys that are looking to explore.

I used to teach undergrad students as well. And I was a lab manager and had a lot of projects under me that was driven by the undergrad students. So I think the first thing I'll say is that you don't need to be a grad student to make contributions. So you can get started now. And there's plenty of initiative that you can take. And you don't necessarily need so much permission these days from people. There's lots of different ways to—

Yeah. Like get an MBA.

Get an MBA. You're a researcher. You have— or Honestly, MBA is overrated.

I was going to say, do I have to get an MBA?

No, you don't have to get an MBA. You can go to YouTube University. Yeah, I'm a proponent of that. Yeah. Your skills are more important than your resume. Yeah. So I would say like focus on your skills more than trying to impress somebody or trying to build that resume, your LinkedIn, whatever. Like the most important thing is like what you can actually deliver and what you can perform, you know, because one day you'll be asked to do it in real life.

In real life.

Yeah. Better sharpen your axe, right? Yeah, absolutely. I think I always can give some advice is like, try to know yourself and find out like what you're well-suited for.

What you love.

What you love, you know? I mean, there's an intersection of what you love and what you're good at, right?

And that's the sweet spot.

That takes a long time to find. Like, people spend decades of their career trying to find that. So if you don't figure it out in the first couple years, first decade, it's not a big deal.

You got more. Yeah, you'll figure it out. Yeah. And it may not be the sexy thing. I mean, I like project management. That's not something that people tend to like brag about, but it's what I'm good at. It is what I love. And that's that good intersection. And there's lots of projects to be managed. So, and you don't have to have it all figured out either. So this isn't going to be my last job. I'm going to have many more. And I'm excited to see what else I can do too.

This whole thing is like on a science-based perspective, all of this is iterative. Like if you don't have this iterative mind or tolerance for like massive amounts of failure before one success, then this is not something you're well suited for. You need to be capable of withstanding that kind of constant rejection by the natural order.

Yeah, that is very true. You have to get used to failure. But hey, As scientists, we're kind of used to that. I mean, how many failed experiments have we gone through? And then that one is incredible. And so—

It's satisfying.

Yeah, really satisfying. You never get so excited over a Western blot. You're like, oh my God, I see the band. So, but, you know, that's, I think that goes back to that curiosity piece that you mentioned earlier too. And I think that also brings us right back around to the networking too. I mean, getting to know people, getting to learn.

I genuinely want to know.

Yeah, I'm just curious. Yeah, stay curious. Oh, is that our new phrase? Is the stay curious? It's not— that's better.

I like it.

I like it.

It's better than living—

Instead of live moss.

Living moss. Live moss, stay curious. But it's true though. I mean, that's how I was curious about you, got to meet you, and we're both—

She had awesome glasses.

I had awesome glasses.

I need to figure out what's her deal. She's bringing something to the table. I don't know what it is though.

What's this goofy lady up to? Why are her glasses bigger than her head? But no, that curiosity though is what good science and good relationships are built on. So yeah. Well, hey, thanks for joining us. Thanks for letting me drag you into the podcast room and have a great conversation, because I think that that's again the point of doing science and having these kinds of relationships. One day they can be on your podcast.

All right.

Just like I dreamed of it as a little girl.

It's Elaine's long con.

Yeah, the long con is finally executed 45 years later. Well, thank you again for joining us, Aziz.

Yes, thank you guys.

And well, of course, as always, we'll have information about Aziz. We'll have information about Nissan Chemicals in our show notes. So if you'd like to learn more, make sure you check those out. And thank you again for joining us from Bio from the Bayou.

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