Episode 130: Bridging Collaboration Across Biotech Ecosystems for Greater Impact

2 regions.

2 innovation engines.

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Serving the entire Gulf South, but recorded in the heart of New Orleans. Welcome back to BIO from the Bayou. Dr. Elaine Ham, the Executive in Residence at Tulane School of Medicine, and today we're going to be talking about how the Gulf South and San region can collaborate. Well, I'm obviously representing the Gulf Coast. However, we needed someone to represent the West Coast, and it just so happens we have someone like that.

A temporary co-host, me, Melanie's second favorite person after her.

Yes, James Zanewicz, CEO, Esquire, and OG founder of this podcast, is here with us today, and we are talking about—

And you left out that I was a really crappy scientist back in the day.

You were also a really crappy scientist. I was a bad scientist. Well, you were watching paint dry, so I mean, you weren't— it was never meant to be, but that's all right. We are going to be talking about the Gulf South, and this is a new word for me, the binational San Diego region and the ways that we collaborate. So step 1, we got to answer, what does binational San Diego region mean, James?

This is the interesting thing. And so another word that folks use for it is the nearshore. when I talk about it, which is probably also a word you'd never heard of. If you pull out the little map of San Diego, we are literally on the border with Mexico, with Tijuana and the Baja just below us, which makes us incredibly international in a way where there's so much cross-collaboration. And especially when you look at a lot of like medtech manufacturing or even some AI and healthcare type stuff, there is a lot of what people here refer to as a workforce both on the San Diego side, Often in large part for the deeper bio and the tech and some other things, but then a workforce on the Mexico side working on computer algorithm optimization or LLMs or manufacturing of devices that layer on. And so we call that the nearshore because if you live on either side, you can drive across, work with your colleagues for the day and be home for dinner.

Okay.

And so this is a tremendous binational region in a way where you often talk about that, but it's still more difficult. And here it's so simple and so easy, and they both have beautiful weather. So you almost never have any problems going back and forth.

I love learning a new word, which I totally did, and this episode is brought to you by the word binational. But why is that such a powerful model for innovation and commercialization?

I think you always, when you step outside of what you know, it drives you to think differently in many ways. And also when you look at different countries, they often will offer different incentives or have different financial structures or allow you to do things in different ways. Often different pieces of which could support different necessary pieces of a business or commercialization pipeline. And when you can do that next to each other and learn from each other and learn from each other's innovations in a way versus having to be, you know, 12 hours away in a different country where it's harder to talk, or if we're gonna brainstorm, it's at 3 in the morning, which would be Elaine's favorite thing in the world, where for us it's just over lunch, some great tacos and margaritas. Those kinds of things It's interesting watching it in motion because you, having seen kind of international collaborations before, I always saw the value. I see it so much more when it's literally across the street. Across the street. In many ways. Yeah.

Yeah.

It's like going to your neighbor's house to brainstorm versus driving the next state over in many ways.

Yeah.

And so what I wanna do now is turn that question back on you. How is the Gulf South continue to establish itself as a growing hotspot for biotech innovation? Because you're focused on more than just the city of New Orleans.

That's such a good question. One of the reasons I even came to New Orleans and joined Tulane is I was very much struck by how collaborative and, you know, you always hear that phrase like you look for the helpers. Well, this region is built by helpers and it continues to grow and flourish because of helpers and not just helpers within your, the smaller biotech ecosystem. of New Orleans, but within the region. And one thing that I, I mean, I've said this time and time again that I was struck by is Tulane and LSU, you and Patrick working together to do biotech together. And then you started bringing them more and more people into the fold. And I feel like it's become much more family-like in that it's not just, it's not just Tulane, it's not just New Orleans, it's not just Louisiana, it's this whole region.

Right.

And that maybe we're not as easy to navigate in terms of going across the street because usually, I mean, everyone knows the challenges of, it's probably not even gonna be a direct connection. However, we're always a phone call away of like, hey, I really need help on something like XYZ. And they're going to connect you to 5 different people in 5 different states that can 100% help you on that problem. And I also think that's something that I'm very struck by is the community of wanting to help from a health perspective. Like, I have never seen a community so dedicated to make sure that there's health equity for all as well. And I think that's really important.

I think the interesting thing that we have both seen is, you know, we've been part of multiple different ecosystems throughout our careers. And so I'd love to talk a bit about collaboration formats that we've seen succeed or fail in other ecosystems, whether that be demo days, you know, diligence, visiting founders. Where do you think we could do things together that would work between the Gulf South and San Diego? What things have you seen that we should try?

I will say that we kind of start off a little bit ahead of the game because in biotech, we're sort of used to having to collaborate across distance. I mean, it's an international market. Patients are everywhere, and sometimes resources just aren't going to be in your own backyard, whether it's manufacturing or finding primate models for your drug discovery program or finding certain patient populations too. We're sort of already primed for those broader collaborations. So to me, it just always seems like, well, bio is the easiest one because we're already doing that. I already have relationships, for example, in San Diego before you even moved there. And so I think it's relatively easy for bio to be able to cross borders. It's just, you know, and I think that also was made a little bit easier with the pandemic that we're all used to Zooms, right? So I think that helps too.

So the kinds of things that I think could be really helpful here, like I'm curious, especially as we have lots of conferences and events here as well as New Orleans, much like Patrick and I used to do some joint meetings where it's like, hey, We can provide both the more inexpensive ecosystem that has majority minority population of African American folks, or the larger, more robust one that has a majority minority population of Latino. But I think there's just so much where our regions can come together and perhaps, you know, do partnering together like we used to do. But this would be a whole new twist where it's not just neighboring institutions. It's a, it's a complementary diversity. of ecosystems that take meetings together at events and do things that I just, I don't know, they just, it was not something I'd literally thought of before this moment, but it popped in my head as we're talking. And I can see it. And I'm like, and now, and now I've said it. And both your team and my team will probably hate us and be like, hey y'all, we have this great idea.

Let's do it. We have a new idea. Hooray. I hate it when they get together. I think that we have toyed around with like, how do we do a rotating conference, for example, where it's BIO on the Bayou and then BIO on the Bay, BIO on the Beach. You know, there's so many different ways that it can, Bring these, what feels like disparate areas together. You just gotta think about it differently, honestly. And it's not just because we have a deep friendship that has spanned the test of time, but it's also because we're super passionate about moving things forward and however that looks.

Yeah. And I think highlighting our companies to each other's regions, even outside those kinds of things, is huge too, because there's so much value there for the healthcare systems, biotech. So like, there's just so much potential. Especially as we kind of re-envision the Alliance for AI in Healthcare as the organization now powered by Connect and the fact that we're probably going to collaborate a little closer on what that looks like, which is great for New Orleans and great for San Diego.

You just can't get rid of me. That's the deal. You just— I can't get you.

You can't.

I won't let you. I really love that. And we have to start from our strengths. So like, what do you think our mutual strengths are between our regions where collaboration would make sense besides biotech? I mean, life science, obviously.

But also when you look at that area, like we both have military strengths, we both have climate as tremendous areas of interest and strength. And those things affect life science, like whether or not you think of them as life science disciplines, they are. And AI, data, LLMs, engineering, those all impact life science in such a tremendous way.

Definitely.

Like literally there is almost no vertical that is not involved in life science in some way now. And there are multiples that we dovetail in. And when you look at life science in particular, like neuroscience, we're both incredibly strong in cancer, lots of strengths and potential. When you dive into bio, there's lots of distinct areas that we can really become kind of world-tier collaborators in as well. That's where I get excited is the strengths also, I think, go beyond the sciences and in many ways into The similarities and differences politically for us, where regardless of what kind of administration we have in between the 2 regions, we should be able to work together and leverage strengths of both to benefit each other in ways that can ensure that, that as a collaborative duo, we're both able to ride out any kind of changes in the environment that often affect regions, but a strong partnership can help. regions that are perhaps more impacted and be more stable in those times.

Yeah, I like that.

I don't know if that made sense or not.

It did.

But you know, it's something I said, so, which usually means it doesn't make any sense.

It's recorded now. Well, let's brainstorm a little bit because I, what I hate is that people, I just feel like sometimes collaborate is such a throwaway word. You know, we just say it, but we don't actually—

What does it mean?

Like do it in a reasonable way, I think you and I are good at finding ways to collaborate and try to see how to connect what feels like disparate dots and make it real. Not just because we love working with each other, but again, like, I do feel like we, we also find a lot of common connection because we are so passionate about things. And we also know a lot of people. So a lot of the ways that you and I collaborate are just connecting our Rolodexes together.

And, you know, in our, our group text. Yeah.

I mean, There is that.

When are we not in constant communication? And sometimes we'll come back from meetings and be like, what happened? There are 37 notifications and they're from the same text chain. Yeah.

Yeah. There is that. I mean, communi— I mean, obviously communication is a big piece of it, but I think it's also being creative and thinking about different ways to connect. And I'm gonna say this as a, and not just as a way to connect to this story, but—

It's the best word ever.

One of the things that is a big struggle being in the Midwest is, hey, where are you located? And they hear not the coast, or they hear not Boston, they hear not San Diego, San Francisco, and talk to me about like, what if you just had a, you set up an office here, and that would enable you to be able to access XYZ and able to come and take part in all of these different conferences and things that we're having here. And I thought that that was such a great way to do it. And the converse piece of it is you established something when you were at Tulane of getting people to come. from New York and San Francisco to come to New Orleans and be able to office out of an incredible vibrant city.

That's— I'd forgotten that. We got national press for that because we put furniture and a printer in an office. That's crazy.

And sometimes, if you build it, they will come actually works out.

Yeah.

And sometimes, and I kind of go just back to one of our other episodes where it's like, sometimes it's just doing stuff. I mean, you and I are willing to take a couple of risks and Let's just try this out. And if it doesn't work, well, we'll figure it out. Yeah.

Yeah.

And then we'll figure out a way that we can work together and we don't try to force it. I think that's the other piece is like, if it doesn't make sense, we're not going to try to squish this square peg into this very round hole. So, well, for listeners who want to start building meaningful connections and don't have a James and Elaine in the East, West, or Gulf Coast, what are some ways that they can take some next steps to move from a conversation where collaboration is really just a word?

As you go out and are open to these conversations and you start to talk about it, that you actually set the follow-up meeting before it ends. And this is something I learned from Elaine that I did not used to do, and I freely admit it. Before you leave the meeting, someone has to say, okay, here are our next steps and the dates we're gonna do them at.

Yeah.

Then you hold yourself accountable to that and you get that meeting on the calendar. And maybe it's that one person has to take on that, hey, 2 weeks in advance of this meeting, I'm gonna send a reminder, be like, reminder, here was your homework. And then people panic and get it done the night before, but at least it gets done before the next meeting. You have to have people who are passionate. Both in the vision way, which I may have been accused of being too much like, and in the operational way, which is where Elaine finds all her happy, happy, joy, joy. I'd say find your yin to your yang, Thelma to your Louise. You know, what else are we, Elaine? I don't know.

That's what I think. I think we get into some, some blue areas there. I think that's exactly it. I think the tangibles, you have to have someone that's the dreamer that can think and find the ways to connect pieces, but then you have to have the doers, the people that are gonna be like, all right, that sounds amazing. How do we execute on that? And what is the milestone that is successful for us? I think that you have to have those two people at the table. Luckily—

The silly person who's like, you have to pay for that somehow. I was like, eh.

I'm patient. In the spirit of dreaming and doing, let's talk about sort of what are the takeaways?

I think here's an example, Elaine, of something we just talked about. So, we are making our offer to our director of life sciences right now, who will hopefully be joining us very soon. How about once you guys figure out your BIO plan, we get our person together with your people coming from the Gulf South, and we figure out— so let's say in a month, we'll have set a meeting between them, and they'll figure out how can they collaborate at BIO 2026 together here in San Diego. And that is our example for the rest of the world that in a month, we're going to have them introduced to each other. And we're going to start working on what does June look like for us for one thing we do in tandem.

Oh, that's perfect. Yes. OK, so yes, BIO and also the rest of the region.

Today, the role of Dr. Elaine Hamm will be played by James Allen.

I know. Look at you. But no, what a good connection. I mean, right there we have this big meeting. It's gonna have all of the people in biotech are gonna be there. Why wouldn't we join forces and throw a hell of a party, which we know how to do very well, and find ways that we can actually bring these organizations together? And that's what we've done.

So for our listeners, they have to think that they're one person, reach out right now if they're going to BIO together or wherever they're going to say, let's set a meeting and talk about how are we gonna collaborate and do this as a dual region together.

Perfect. As always, we will make sure to have our contact information, probably information about that reception in future show notes posted in our show notes, and be sure to check them out. And thank you once again for joining us from Bio from the Bayou.

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This podcast was edited by Resonate Recordings.