Episode 48: Discover Auburn University’s Biotech Strategy with Key Opinion Leader Patrick Reed

On today's episode, you'll learn about where Patrick Reed went, what's going on at Auburn University, and how biotech extends through the entire Gulf South. Listen now to learn more.

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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 James Zanewicz, the Chief Strategy Officer at Tulane School of Medicine, and today's guest is someone you may recognize as he's also one of our frequent hosts, Patrick Reed. Earlier this year, Patrick moved from being the Assistant Vice Chancellor of Innovation and Partnerships at LSU Health New Orleans to his new role as the Executive Director of IPX at Auburn University Patrick, we're excited to have you back on the show, and I'm glad for the opportunity to catch up on what's been going on since you left New Orleans.

Thanks. It's great to be back and on this side of Alabama and an honorary member of the Bayou, I hope.

Absolutely. And it's nice to put you in the hot seat for a change. Instead of asking the questions, I get to ask you the questions. It'll be fun. So first up, I want to hear more about your new position as the executive director of IPX. What exactly is IPX and how is it different from your previous roles?

IPX is Auburn's traditional tech transfer office. It has historically been known as the Intellectual Property Exchange. We are removing that branding, as I thought that kind of pigeonholed us a little too much. I don't think it's expansive enough to capture what we're doing and what I want us to do. So again, traditional tech transfer, also a lot of the startup support in conjunction with our new venture accelerator out of the College of Business. We're also responsible for all the NDAs, MTAs, data use and transfer agreements on campus. So really trying to make that a swift and simple process to get out of the way for the researchers to do what they're wanting to do. And then finally, that external partnering business development role, you know, and I kind of learned from the best and trying to bring that here at Auburn and emulate a lot of the things that you did at Tulane.

Wait, wait, are you saying I'm the best? Because I want, I want that down.

Yeah, I was saying it. You got it on record.

Anyway, now getting back to being serious, you talked about the BD function and a lot of the pieces that really augment that research pipeline as well, Patrick. And so I'm curious, what are some of the challenges you've noticed in translating research from the lab to the marketplace at Auburn? Are they the same? Are they different? Kind of what's going on in your market?

It is a lot of the same obstacles that we faced or I faced. You still face in New Orleans and we're not on the coasts. There's a lack of concentration of venture capital dollars, dollars looking to invest in the companies that we're trying to prop up, a lack of large anchor tenants, partners that might be beating down the door at the Tech Transfer Office wanting our available technologies. So it definitely is a lot more about getting out there in front of those potential partners where they are instead of inviting them to Auburn. Getting folks to New Orleans was not that difficult of a proposition. I mean, we like to go to New Orleans. It's a fun place.

Yep.

I particularly am very much enjoying myself here at Auburn. It's a fantastic college town. Much like we did in New Orleans, we got to make our own business and give people a reason to come and partner with us.

And you have a tremendous research base. Can you talk about what some of your areas of strength are and some of your research funding highlights?

Auburn is well known for its engineering program. We've also got a large program in agriculture. We have a College of Veterinary Medicine that is very well known. We've got a College of Science and Mathematics, which is our life sciences focus, along with vet med and pharmacy and others. So we've got a lot of engineering research, a lot of NSF-funded research, DOD dollars.

You're, you're getting to put a different spin on things, and you still have some life science healthcare, but you're approaching it from different angles, which I love.

That was one of the things that attracted me the most about this position, is that I got to move from something that was focused almost exclusively on life and health sciences to a more comprehensive institution. And, you know, I think we all think of the STEM fields as being where the innovation is coming out of a university. But it's been at least my experience in the few 6 and a half months that I've been here that there's innovation in every corner of all campuses. And so that's been a big part of what I've tried to do is get in front of the College of Human Sciences and their consumer-facing research, or go out to the National Center for Asphalt Technology and drive on their test track. Which is a world-renowned facility.

That's got to be fun.

Yeah. Yeah. You can't— you couldn't go fast. It's about a 30-mile-per-hour type deal, but—

Well, that's less fun.

Yeah, but it's a really cool resource. And so there's a ton of stuff here at Auburn with a lot of different research, which is far afield from what I was doing in New Orleans. And it's been a lot of fun getting to learn about all that going on on campus.

Well, you gave me a couple of highlights, but I'm curious then what startups, innovations, or research programs coming out of Auburn are you most excited about right now?

The first 6 months has been getting to know people on campus, getting to know the local community, understanding where our research strengths are. And the next 6 months and definitely next year is when I want to go out there and kind of beat the drum and wave the flag and let people know about Auburn. But in particular, I'd say we've got a really active space in additive manufacturing and all of its various facets. We've got a very, very strong aquaculture program. Our vet med program is top class. We've got a lot of things coming out of our College of Human Sciences. Again, that consumer-facing work and about how does a geriatric population shop at Walgreens and how can a smartphone help make that a better experience? We have a rural health initiative that's deploying remote clinics all across the state. We've got a very active undergraduate startup community. Last night, they won the inaugural SEC Startup Championship that was aired on the SEC Network. So we're equal.

Oh, cool.

Yeah, but so we've got a lot and we're also trying to build out the translational output of a lot of our life sciences work. We've got 2 faculty entrepreneur efforts that we're pretty excited about. One, VivoSphere, which I hope to bring to New Orleans for Bio on the Bayou. Maybe we'll talk about that here in a little bit. And another that is a safer and cheaper alternative for imaging contrast agents. Auburn also has a rich library of microbes that have been validated over the year in the ag space, and that's everything from seed coatings to promote growth and resist disease to applying them in aquaculture to combat invasive pathogens. Yeah, we've got a lot going on across a lot of different spaces, and it's just a lot of fun now at a comprehensive institution.

A lot of the things you talked about are not what people think about when they think of biotech, but they are all biotech, like especially ag, because, you know, it's food going in our body and food as medicine is a huge thing. And then the manufacturing, for so many years we sent manufacturing abroad and that's where so much innovation happens and that's manufacturing for bio and pharma and other things as well. And the fact that you guys are innovating in that space has the power to both transform industries, but also bring jobs back home.

No, that's an excellent point. And also, I love how you highlight manufacturing. And that's one of our— we try to say umbrella themes is advanced manufacturing. And I think that there's this connotation that manufacturing has to be engineering, but it isn't. We've also got a lot going on in the pharmacy space and drug development in that regard, which we consider also under that advanced manufacturing umbrella. So couldn't agree with you more there.

Given what you just said, it piques my interest in the biotech scene in Alabama, what's coming out from that, and what is going on in biotech, given a lot of what Auburn and some of the other great universities in Alabama are producing. So where do you see the state of biotech in Alabama now, and where do you see it going in the future?

With the caveat that I am definitely still learning about both Auburn and the ecosystem statewide as a whole, I'll definitely say locally, hyperlocally here at Auburn, biotech is definitely an area of focus for us. As I mentioned earlier, we have our College of Science and Mathematics, Agriculture, Veterinary Medicine. We have also got a College of Pharmacy, College of Nursing, and College of Forestry and Wildlife. So our investigators are really working in every aspect of quote unquote life sciences. Our state affiliate of the BIO organization, so BIO Alabama, it's also very active in the state, and I'm hearing that it's become more active in the past few years. So Right time, right place for me, certainly. And I'm eager to get plugged into a lot of their events. And they actually have their annual conference coming up in Birmingham on August 28th. So I'm going to be there. And hopefully next time we talk and you have me on in the hot seat, I can tell you a lot more about biotech in Alabama.

Given that you have that conference coming up August 28th, if I remember correctly, what is the conference going to be like and who should look at attending that?

It sounds as if it's going to be pretty startup-heavy focused. So you're going to learn about a lot of the startup activity happening in this space in the state of Alabama. I know that we've also just recently announced the deployment of our SSBCI dollars, and that's out of Innovate Alabama with our Invest AL and Loan AL program. So that's $98 million that can be deployed for a lot of these startup companies and other smaller companies in the space. So I'm really looking forward to meeting, number one, all of these startup companies and learning more about what we've got in the state of Alabama, but also trying to connect with more investors, both our local partners. And certainly I have shamelessly been pushing out announcements about BioAlabama in the hopes of attracting additional investors in my network to come to the event, because I think it's going to be a really good opportunity to come learn about some things that they might not have learned about before.

And speaking of shameless plugs, I want to ask, are there any collaborations that you're looking forward to, say, say with Tulane, Xavier University of Louisiana, LSU Health New Orleans, Ole Miss, and now Auburn? Is there anything you want to talk about? Anything on your mind?

I think there is something on the horizon. Yeah, I'm definitely excited about BIO in the Bayou. End of October, October 29th and 30th. So first off, it'll be lovely weather down there. Second, it's right before Halloween. So Halloween in New Orleans is definitely an experience if you haven't had that happen yet. And I'm just thrilled to include Auburn University in the mix of folks that we've been able to attract to the symposium over the years and really excited to increase that exposure and bring Alabama into the mix.

Well, and it's exciting for us because not only are we adding Auburn in Alabama, and Auburn is a full partner presenting university, but we're bringing in the Bullpen this year, which will be fun for us. And some interesting things coming on with the Bullpen joining us with some events and offerings they're going to give. And then also we have the BioInnovation Center in New Orleans bringing back the BioChallenge in partnership with BARDA, which is a pretty great exposure on Halloween Day. Oh, that's awesome. We'll get you down here for a few days of some biotech and bioadjacent type things. It's exciting.

For folks listening that have not attended BIO in the Bayou before, it really is— I mean, we've put a lot of work into this, and a lot of people have put a lot of work into it and have really curated an excellent group of folks really to bring together academic investigators and affiliated startups with potential strategic partners and investors. It's just a great time. It's a smaller feel for an event. And I think the networking opportunity is probably the best that I've had at a conference of this size. And I'm really looking forward to expose some of the Auburn investigators I'm going to bring down to that network and get them really involved in our partnering system that we have from the EBD Group, Partnering One.

Right.

And we have a whole podcast coming out on how to use that as well, which is great.

So excellent.

Good, good cross-plug for the Bio from the Bayou podcast. Well, Patrick, is there anything else that you feel that we should know about your new role? Anything coming up? Anything you're excited for?

I'm just excited about everything. This place is fantastic. Between 2016 and 2022, we doubled our research expenditures. We became an R1 research institution in 2018. The president has a goal to double research again in the next 5 to 10 years.

Oh, wow.

It couldn't be a better time for someone in my position in this role and activity to be at an institution that is so laser-focused on innovation and external partnership and really growing that research base. I'm excited to wake up every day and come to work. Plus, it doesn't hurt that it's now a 10-minute commute rather than a 30-minute to an hour commute. So it's just been fantastic. And certainly, if anyone is looking for a partner in Alabama, in the Southeast, and you haven't spoken with anyone at Auburn University before, please reach out to me. I'm happy to talk to anyone.

Patrick, I want to thank you for joining us once again and coming back home to the podcast you helped start.

It's been great. I love this and I promote it locally, and I'm happy to still be involved in it.

Well, speaking of promoting locally, maybe next time we can get you on with one of your researchers from Auburn so we can learn a little bit more about the science.

I bet we could hook that up.

As always, we're going to have Patrick's contact information and his links posted in the show notes. You can learn all about Auburn, all about Patrick himself, and BioAlabama. I want to make sure you connect with Patrick if you haven't yet and check those out to learn more about the biotech scene in Alabama. Patrick, thank you once again for joining us. I appreciate it.

Thanks so much. It was great talking to you, James.

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