Episode 30: One Woman, Many Hats! A Day in the Life of Biotech Key Opinion Leader Elaine Hamm

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I'm James Zanewicz, the Chief Business Officer for the Tulane School of Medicine.

And I'm Dr. Elaine Hamm, the Executive in Residence for the Tulane School And this is Bio from the Bayou.

Welcome back to Bio from the Bayou. Today's guest is Dr. Elaine Hamm, who you know is one of our hosts and the executive in residence at Tulane School of Medicine. But what you don't know about Elaine is that she apparently never sleeps as she wears many, many hats. It's true. She is also the executive director of the Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and involved in several startup companies. Including being the COO and founder of Cadenza Bio, the CEO of Clarigene, the president of Otologic Pharmaceuticals, and the founder and CEO of Ascend Bioventures. And there's a little side hustle we'll talk about later as well. As usual, I'm exhausted after introducing anything Elaine is involved in because she does so much. Welcome back to the show, Elaine. I just want to point out that we talked about a few things, and our listeners can check out episodes 4 and 5 to learn about your role as our executive in residence, and episode 26 to learn about your role in the the AAIH, or the Alliance for AI in Healthcare. So if it's okay with you, I wanna skip over those today and focus on what has prepared you for these other roles, namely your life in the C-suite of several companies. So let's start with kind of your umbrella organization, Ascend Bioventures.

Yeah.

Tell me more.

So Ascend Bioventures, actually, the company I founded about 5 years ago, and it's a pharmaceutical accelerator. And the goal was really to find a way to help develop really promising early-stage pharmaceutical drugs, especially in the early stages. And doing that by first identifying really cool drugs that we think can make a really big difference in a patient, or their disease indication rather, and then finding a management team that was really suited to help move those compounds forward. And of course, also the all-important piece is helping fund those companies as well so that they can do the cool science, then go help the patients. And Ascend really came out of a failed accelerator that I was a part of prior. The accelerator that I was a part of had— we also managed a portfolio of companies that ranged from infectious disease to diabetes and kind of everything in between. 3 out of 4 of those companies failed, frankly. I mean, that's a pretty good startup statistic.

That's great. You know what I'm saying? It's usually like 9 out of 10, right? So you were way ahead of the game.

Yeah. Yeah, when you add the layer of preclinical drug development to success rate, it definitely is a much lower success rate. So it still was a success in many, many ways. Um, we, we found that these drugs were not viable as drugs to go into human clinical trials. And to me, that's a success. And one of the companies did go on to be successful, and I'm still currently operating that company now. And I'll kind of talk about that in a second. But the board asked me to reboot the concept, and that's where Ascend comes in. And the first thing I did was make everything virtual. That's right. Previous accelerator had all the bells and whistles. We had an animal facility, we had a med chem lab, a wet lab, wonderful office spaces, an incredible coffee machine that I still yearn for today. We served as the management for all of the portfolio companies. So the first thing I did was make it virtual, and that had 2 effects. One, we didn't have the massive overhead that we had in terms of, you know, trying to operate an animal facility and all those other things. And 2, it also allowed us to recruit management teams that really had an expertise and the related Rolodex for each of those portfolio companies, and that they could be anywhere. They didn't have to physically move to Oklahoma, which is not necessarily known as the biotech mecca. We were able to really, each company we created, we could recruit management that was specific to that particular indication, and that we could do the work anywhere as well. And I think that's something that is really unique to the pharmaceutical industry is that it is, relatively modular in that we can do studies in contract research organizations or CROs. As the drug progresses, you have different requirements anyway. And so the lab space that we used at the beginning wouldn't necessarily be useful down, down the road as we moved into IND-enabling studies. So it really made a lot of sense to do everything virtual. And that was one of the first steps for Ascend. And then we started looking for— the second step was Okay. Well, now what are the drugs that we can find in this? And we first started out with a drug that was to address fatty liver disease, or nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, which is also known as NASH. And that was the first company we formed. Our biggest question for that was, can we make a big difference in this disease? And the biggest difference was, can we reduce fibrosis in the liver? We did not. So—

Oh.

Yeah.

Yeah. Spoiler alert, we did not. To me, it was a really great success in sort of showing the purpose of the model, which we did it for under $1 million. We did it under budget. We did it well in advance of the timeline that we had expected to do it in. So we had a very specific hypothesis. Can we impact fibrosis? No. And that allowed us to then, you know, move on and find a different drug that we could have a bigger impact on. And, you know, it was the first time I actually got to return money to investors. And I think, again, This is a really hard and very labor-intensive and very expensive industry. So being able to do it relatively quickly and as low cost as we possibly could was, I think, a good testament to the model.

And you got to do it from at home on your couch.

Yeah, not from my couch, definitely in a chair. Um, but definitely the pandemic did not impact us in that sense because we were, we were already virtual, but this was also a good lesson for me in that I really needed to work on things that I was extremely passionate about and Not that I wasn't passionate about NASH, and it's obviously a horrible disease that impacts a number of different patients, but I needed to have more of a personal tie to it. And so that's where my other portfolio companies really come into play.

Well, that's a perfect segue. Can you tell us a bit more about those? Which one do you want to start with?

Let's start with Cadenza. So that's a company that we recently closed an oversubscribed round of funding for.

Okay.

And this company is focused on the development of, of new drugs for MS. And, you know, you may think that there's a lot of drugs out there for MS, and there are, but patients are still suffering. Patients are still becoming slowly handicapped. It's a very debilitating disease. And that's because most of the drugs out there just address one aspect, and that is inflammation. There's still all of the sort of the root cause of the debilitating factors of MS, which includes demyelination. So your immune system system is attacking your nerve cells and they're slowly losing that myelin sheath that surrounds them. And so our drug takes care of both, which is, is such a cool value proposition in that it addresses the immune system as, as it should, which is a very important piece of MS, but it also helps from a remyelination standpoint, which in current status, that's a, a big holy grail for the MS field. So just got funding for that and we're doing some preliminary studies to move it into the IND.

Wow.

So, I need enabling process. I have a sorority sister that has MS, and I keep her picture right on my computer screen because it's a really important piece of why I'm doing what I'm doing and why Condensa is so important to me.

Well, and so many disease states have been impacted, I think, by people who become C-suite executives at companies or at foundations because they know somebody in that space. And that's something that we, we talked about with Caitlin Barrett from the Milken Institute, chatted with her on a previous podcast as well. So with that, so I know you've got a few other companies as well. Could we touch on ClaraGene next potentially?

Yeah.

Which has an amazing logo, which of course I had nothing to do with helping you choose.

Yeah. It does have an amazing logo. It also had 5 like other logos that were just horrible. And I really appreciate you helping me sort through that because I am not good at naming things. I am not good at designing logos for things. So definitely appreciate your help on both of those. ClaraGene, so it's also preclinical stage and is developing gene therapies or specifically epigenetic therapies for neurodegenerative diseases. And again, a passion project, but one I've frankly been trying to stay away from for over a decade, and that's the field of Alzheimer's disease. When I was first straight out of grad school, I was a chemist at a pharmaceutical company working on Alzheimer's drug, and it failed. It is such a complicated disease, and there really hasn't been— as much as we know about it, it feels like there's equal amount of information that we don't know about this disease. And so Over the past several years, I've been actively not looking at Alzheimer's drug assets just because they tend to all target one thing. You know, it's the amyloid plaques or the tau tangles, not really addressing the fact that this is a really pleiotropic disease that has a number of different targets that we need to address. And then I came across this particular drug when I was paired to a woman in the Duke University through the Osage Equalize Programs, which is an amazing program that pairs female founders with entrepreneurs and mentors that can help really develop and mentor their product and the women as entrepreneurs. And really loved the woman I worked with, Dr. Ornith Chiba-Falik, who's at Duke University and the co-founder is the head of Duke's Viral Vector Core Lab. But I also ended up really liking the target. The target was something that is— it's APOE4. So if you've ever taken a 23andMe test, APOE4 is what reveals whether you are at high risk for Alzheimer's And we found that APOE4 also impacts a number of different pathways in Alzheimer's disease pathology. It impacts amyloid beta, it impacts tau, neuroinflammation. It was just something that could really, I think, address a number of different aspects of disease. And then on top of that, my father, my own father died of Alzheimer's disease. And so it was really, I hate to say the word calling, but it was just all of these things sort of came at the right time.

Yeah.

stage of just, you know what, this is something that I think that really has a shot impacting a really terrible and devastating disease. And so again, I knew that it was something that I could really get behind and I could be really passionate about.

That's fantastic. It's almost like it found you at this point where you were ready to make a difference.

Yeah.

So the final member of the Ascend family we're going to talk about today is Otologic Pharmaceuticals, not pharmaceuticals, but pharmaceutics.

Yes.

Can you tell us a bit about that? I know that relates to hearing. Can you give us a bit more info?

Yes, it does. And this is actually one that I think was from the previous accelerator that I was, I was with. And we have 2 assets, one of which is a clinical stage asset for a devastating disease called tinnitus. The other is really this fascinating program that's focused on— I mean, I hate to say this, but I'm going to put it out there— curing hearing loss. And I say that very specifically because It's one of the causes of hearing loss. There's, well, there's lots of causes of hearing loss, but essentially you lose these hair cells, what we call inner hair cells within the cochlea in your ear, and they don't come back. And so once you have experienced hearing loss, it doesn't come back. And so this is something that our drug is aiming to actually regenerate those lost hair cells so that we can hear again. And so it's a really incredible company that I think has a lot of potential. We've had a longstanding partnership with the Hoff Ear Institute, which is a private research foundation that's really hyperfocused on developing new therapeutics for hearing loss and hearing-related disorders like tinnitus. It's a challenging indication though, because there's absolutely nothing out there as it relates to hearing loss, definitely not tinnitus. It's one of those growing patient population that, and everyone knows somebody that is impacted by hearing loss or tinnitus or vertigo even, which can be related. And there's nothing out there. It's hard. I mean, I did, I described a really challenging process that we're asking the body to undertake, which is to make new hair cells, which is a hard thing to do. And so the disease indication itself is very challenging. And so we just haven't really had anything out there. Both of these, Assets have had clinical partners, so that's why I call it sort of the success. We've had clinical partners that we've collaborated with to move these programs forward. But there's a lot of really great potential in this particular field to making it what I think would be just a monumental change in patients' lives, particularly as it relates to tinnitus. It's the one indication I get an email at least once a week from patients just begging, begging to be put into a clinical trial. But it's it's a really hard clinical trial to run, and we really need the pharmaceutical industry to. to take note of this incredible market potential and the big impact that they could have in patients' lives.

I think what I'm hearing is you're looking for partners potentially to work with you and help move this forward and impact patient lives.

Yes, absolutely. All of these companies, they're preclinical stage, and sort of the model of Ascend is to de-risk it as best as we can. Preclinical stage being the really riskiest part of biotech is where The valley of death definitely is. Sometimes it's the shadow of the valley of death occasionally, but it's a big risky area. And our goal is to de-risk it as much as we possibly can, and then find a collaborator that we can really, really work with to translate what the work we've done into, into patients through clinical trials.

I want to close out with our discussion on companies. By transitioning a bit to a more agricultural company that you're involved in that is involved in science, but the science of wine. Can you tell us a bit about the study, which I know is a completely different beast, but still it's in your portfolio and it's something we should talk about today?

Yes. Drugs and alcohol is the name of the game. Yeah. The study. So my husband is a certified sommelier and I was trained as a microbiologist. So I know the very fundamentals of winemaking through my in-depth research and Wine and pizza. Yeah. And he was really wanting to start— Oklahoma, again, not, not a mecca of wine either. And, but we were wanting to— there was no wine bars here. We really wanted to create something, or my husband did. And he just like, man, there's not a wine bar here. I want to make a wine bar. I was like, you know, I start companies for a living. Why don't I help you do this? We tricked my best friend and her husband to joining us in this endeavor and opened a wine bar. We did it 2 days before the city shut down for the pandemic. In fact, we didn't actually really open. We pivoted to a virtual model by offering wine, doing wine sales curbside, and then wine tastings virtual. So I got really good at doing those. Still, honestly, being in biotech startups, opening a wine bar in a pandemic was almost kids' play at that point for me because I've had so many Harder things that I've had to do in terms of startups. And so it really prepared me for, for the crisis and chaos of opening a public-facing business during a pandemic.

So, well, and as I recall, you designed this with introverts in mind, so you had lots of separate spaces. So it worked out really well for you once you were able to open up.

Yes. I look like a genius of all of these sort of separate spaces when in reality it was just because like, I want to go to a wine bar and be there, but not necessarily be near people. So.

Well, now that we've talked about all the things you've done and referenced the podcast with all the other things that you do, work-life balance, Elaine. How do you keep everything straight? And I guess to kind of delve into that, I have 2 questions for you. First, what does a typical day for you look like?

Well, work-life balance is a funny phrase. On the outside looking in, it probably looks like I don't have good work-life balance. But I have to say, I disagree in the sense of I really love what I do and it's challenging and intellectually stimulating. And I'm just not the type of person that, left to my own devices, I occasionally, you know, will watch trashy TV. But for the most part, like, I really like to challenge myself. And so I get really excited to do all of these things. And every time I hear a new project, I constantly actually at this point have to remind myself, you cannot Take on any more projects or your husband will divorce you, which, fair. I really love all of these things that I get to do because they're really challenging and very exciting. And I also think that they are going to have a huge, big impact. And that's what really drives me. But as far as a typical workday, there's no such thing as a typical workday, to be honest. I do have a weird schedule because my husband works night, being at the wine bar. So I definitely have a different work schedule, but it kind of works out because I work with people. In Europe, I work with people on the West Coast. So there really wasn't ever going to be a typical workday for me in terms of timeframe. But every day there's just a new— I work on every single company. Being in startups, you know, you'll have things that are cooking along and don't need a lot of help. And then there are some that are in absolute chaos crisis mode. And so you focus on those and only occasionally do they all have some kind of chaos crisis mode, maybe 4 or 5 times a year where it's all hands on deck. But the biggest thing is I have a great team for all of these companies. that are just as passionate as I am about making sure that these move forward. So typical workday ain't such a thing. I mean, I just— everything is a little bit different. And honestly, that's how I like it. There's no such thing as monotony in my life, and that's, that's by design.

So given that atypicality of every day, what advice can you give to someone else who perhaps has divergent interests in work like you do and is trying to balance their attention across multiple different positions? How can they do that? And what, what are your Yeah, so I think it's—

the biggest piece is like what I really— why I like my job so much is that it allows me to do the thing that I'm good at, which is project management, which is not a very sexy thing to be good at, to be honest. But I think that really helps enable me to really enjoy my job because every day I get to do something I'm good at, which is project management. And having that skill set is what really helps me. And there's lots of different— I think everyone has a different way of doing project management. You just kind of have to find the thing that works for you. But yeah, you definitely have to find ways to help yourself focus and be able to delegate and have a team that you trust that can help you carry out all of the things that you're wanting to do. So I think the advice is, if you want to get into something where you have to balance a lot of different things, make sure that you're good at multitasking. Multitasking. is hard because sometimes it can just mean that you're able to focus on one thing and a whole bunch of things kind of in a mediocre way. So you kind of have to be careful with that. I like to think of it more as project management and making sure that you have a good, efficient system to carry that through and a great team that can help you.

Well, I know our producer Ian was excited to hear that because he was— this was his favorite question. He was ready to hear about to learn how to balance some of his various projects.

I hope I answered that, Ian.

All right, well, Elaine, thank you so much as always. You know, I love getting to hear more about the work that you and I aren't doing together, as it gives me a little more insight into the rest of your days, although obviously your favorite parts are the ones spent on Tulane or the AAIH where we work together.

Yes, absolutely. And it goes back to the team part of it, James. I mean, one of the— my favorite things about working on those organizations and being a part of an incredible team like the team at Tulane School of Medicine and the group that you've really curated and brought together is, is one of my favorite things.

Well, spoken like a true investor, which you've also done in your past, because investors, every investor I talk to, they're like, the technology is one thing, but we look at the team and if the team's not there, we're out. And I mean, this comes from your background as well. It's something else people don't know about you.

Team is everything. And thank you for allowing me the chance to, to share my, my other passions and letting me wear multiple hats when we, we go out on stage together. And I really, I really appreciate the opportunity to shine a light on these really important disease indications too, because ultimately, no matter what hat I'm wearing, it all comes down to a patient. That's the common theme, and that's the important piece to remember.

Absolutely. And, and as always, we're gonna have your contact info and informational links on all your companies, including the study, in our show notes. We're gonna have links to our prior podcasts that we've referenced before and some that we haven't yet so that people can check those out and learn more. And for anyone who's at BioEurope or BIO 2024 or any of the other BIO Look for Elaine in the partnering system if you want to meet with her and learn more about any of these companies or how you can collaborate or partner with her.

Absolutely. Looking forward to it.

All right. Thanks, Elaine. I'll see you soon.

Thank you.

Thanks for joining us for Bio from the Bayou, and we hope you'll join us again.

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