Episode 76: How to Partner with Global Biopharma Companies, featuring Industry Expert Lidia Sobków

Learn about AbbVie, how to work with them, and stay tuned for Lydia's final thought. You're listening to Bio from the Bayou, empowering biotech leaders with the tools, assets, and expertise to improve healthcare outcomes. Each episode provides insights and information to expand your network, advance your product line, and help your company thrive. Serving the entire Gulf South, but recorded in the heart of New Orleans. Welcome to today's episode of Bio from the Bayou. I'm James Zanewicz, the Chief Strategy Officer at Tulane Medicine. Today's guest is Lydia Sobkow. She Lydia is the Senior Manager of Technology Licensing and Collaborations at AbbVie, a global biopharmaceutical company focused on developing medical solutions to address complex health issues. Welcome to the show, Lydia.

Hello. Hello. Thank you for having me.

It's so great to have you here. So you've been to BIO on the BIOU, the event, and now you're doing BIO from the BIOU, the podcast. You're getting all the BIO things in your repertoire. It's kind of great.

Yes.

We love that. Well, before we dive into your role at the company, I'd like to talk a little bit more about AbbVie itself. What are some of your guiding principles at AbbVie and your core areas of therapeutic interest?

Well, as you know, AbbVie is a massive, massive, massive pharmaceutical company. But across the board with all the science that I work, the guiding principle for everyone is how to help patients. So we call it transforming life. This is one of our guiding sort of principles out of 5. Transforming lives of patients is something that drives pretty much everyone who is at AbbVie. We are very dedicated to driving innovation through science. Everybody who works on each project, all the drugs, all this, everything is driven by science, right? A few other things that are important for us are also diversity. AbbVie has an interesting program that we are somehow dedicated to, is to make sure that we have a Proper diversity of patients in our clinical trials. This is something that we pay attention to, but also diversity and inclusion within our ranks. So we have everybody. Our company represents the people that we serve, really. The last of the principles is what we call acting with integrity, which I think, you know, it's somewhat self-explanatory, right? All of those things tie I love that.

And that's the perfect thing. And so we've talked about the organization and how they tie to patients. But can you tell us a bit about your role as the senior manager of technology licensing collaborations? Who do you work with? What does that entail? And how do you find your collaborators and your projects?

My role is to work with our scientists. I primarily work with discovery scientists, as you can imagine, of the has a big discovery arm in addition to clinical development and clinical trial teams that work on our assets and our drugs that we develop. So I work mostly with discovery teams, and our scientists are pretty much like any other scientists everywhere else in the world. They are interested in new mechanisms. They're interested in discovering new things and learning how things work. We are specializing in very specific technical areas, right, like neuroscience, oncology, immunology, eye care. But at the same time, to be able to explore different avenues and answer questions that are important to us to answer for our development, we are teaming up with academic institutions outside of AbbVie. We are teaming up with other companies, startups, smaller companies outside of AbbVie who have specific technical skill set or specific tool that we would like to use that would give us a meaningful answer. So I team up with my scientists. I partner with external groups like universities, like yourselves, people who are on the other side in technology transfer offices. I work with them routinely for our projects, and we set up an agreement for either a collaborative project or a feasibility study or sponsored research agreement, right? I also work with our scientists to look for specific tools that they would like to use, and we would like to license them internally. So those are some of the activities that I get involved in.

And we know you don't have favorites, but of course Tulane is one of your favorites. I'll say that because I know you can't. But so that kind of brings me to my next question, though. So obviously, what a collaborator brings to the table is important, but what traits do you look for in your potential collaborators? Or I guess another way of phrasing that is how could academic or startups position themselves as strong collaborators to a company like AbbVie? What makes them attractive to you?

Our scientists participate in all kinds of scientific conferences across all the important technical areas for us, right? We go to all kinds of meetings related to neuroscience, oncology, obviously. Not only scientists, but also our research and evaluation teams go to those meetings. Our business development team goes to those meetings. We look at the science, right? The key aspect that we look at is science and how this science is innovative, how this science matches what we are looking for, how this science can complement what we are building internally. We try to find and figure out the way how can this match together, whether it will be working with a scientist at the university. On their specific tissue model or an animal model that they developed and answer specific mechanistic questions for the science that we are looking for. With startup companies, sometimes we team up and we evaluate them. We want to partner with them in a way that we would like to see how their technology is working and can this technology improve what we have, for example, or can this technology replace what we have or make our work easier? What we are looking is really something that will either make us better, make our work easier, faster, and will take our work closer to the patient. We look at so many different things, and it's not only like licensing an asset from someone for this asset to become a drug, but everything across the board, across from discovery to development, any type of thing that would help us make the process easier and faster and more thorough, more effective.

So, being a cultural fit and professional to work with, all those things are equally important to you. I mean, I guess science is king because that drives the bottom line, right? Or queen, I should say.

Yeah. You mentioned, actually, this is interesting. Cultural fit is also, it's also important. But in the end of the day, because AbbVie is a global company, right, we always find a way to match those things. We have a global footprint. So, some of the things that you were interested in, like being a global company, how do we find the match, right?

Right.

HAVI has a global footprint. We are almost everywhere. We have people who are from every country. And—

Are you with the penguins too? It's the one place you're probably not. I mean, penguins might do good science. I don't know. You know, you should have known this was not an entirely serious podcast. We have fun too.

That's fine.

That's fine. But no penguins. Everywhere but penguins, right?

I'm pretty sure everyone but penguins. But, you know, we have people everywhere, right? We have people from all cultures, and we find ways to accommodate and to make everybody work with us in a way that it's respectful across the board. So this is one of our principles.

Are there ways you see then— I love that, because are there ways that you see that we, as potential partners, can help you enable those cross-cultural collaborations better? Are there things we can do, or Are there ideas you have where cross-regional collaborations, whether that be within the US and the Gulf South or with other countries or other continents, are there ways that we can partner with large companies like AbbVie better and make your lives easier?

So, you know, I thought about this question before when we talked before about that, and partnering and collaborations is a very tricky and loaded question, right? People can partner on so many different platforms. One way to collaborate, of course, is to have a one-on-one direct relationship to collaborate and develop something. The other way to partner with industry is, for example, through consortia. There is multiple consortia that AbbVie is part of, like any other company across the globe, right? The 2 massive ones that come to mind is Critical Path Institute or Michael J. Fox Foundation. Those are the ones that basically bring all people who are involved in those specific diseases, they bring all of us together and precompetitively pull all those minds together so everybody can benefit. So universities, I think, play an important role in those as well, bringing key opinion leaders, key talent from academic environment. Academic institutions have access, and you do have this sort of famous academic freedom where you can venture with your ideas and your projects. anywhere the heart desires. Our scientists are fantastic, great as well, right? It's just that we are very committed to a very specific technical area.

You have a bottom line and you have obligations. Yeah.

Bottom line is one thing, but at the same time, you know, we can't just go and venture and come up. We do have certain flexibility when it comes to—

You can be a little creative, but not crazy.

We can be somewhat creative when it comes to putting pieces together and trying to figure out how For example, the next best Alzheimer's drug is going to work, or any oncology drug that we work on. So those are the things that we get creative on, and those are the things where we joined consortia, for example, and discuss with everybody and pull all the brain knowledge that it's out there. This is one of those, I think, really cool ways for everybody to sort of team up and partner across the board. One of the ideas. The other idea is also— making sure and trying to understand what, what type of capabilities the university has. And I'm not talking about patent and invention. I'm talking about a specific maybe facility, right? Where either, for example, some mastery in imaging or some animal models that you guys are expert in, right? Or maybe a library of some information or library of tissues that could be valuable for biomarker searches, right? Everybody's looking for biomarkers, trying to figure out how to profile a patient more effectively, right? So those are all ways that universities can sort of look inside and see what do we have that can be helpful to any company really, right? Or anybody who is developing anything. in healthcare. What do we have that we can pull together and help other people take advantage of this tool or this asset or this capability and move something forward? So those are some of the ideas that I was thinking about. I'm sure there are some others, but—

And so if we can do a deeper dive into that, are there one or two specific examples that you can share of collaborations that have worked where you've been able to impact patient health?

So I have 2 collaborations that I could talk about. Like one of the collaborations that I could talk about is Gideon Richter. It's been a long, long time collaboration with this company. We've partnered with them before and brought Vraylar to the market, right? Vraylar is one of our more popular, more successful drugs. And it's designated for bipolar disorder or major depressive disorder, right? We continue working collaboratively with this company. Recently, we We renewed the collaboration with them. It's a trusted partner. It's in the field. They have expertise that we look for. We have expertise that they look for. It's a good match for us, right? And we continue collaborating with them and hope that this will continue to be successful. So, the other kind of collaboration, it's a little different. It's something that you probably know that everybody in companies like ours, we try to develop our own tools, right? That we use in clinical development. And one of those tools that we recently developed was a PET tracer that could be potentially used for imaging of tau protein.

Right.

And there are some other available—

So there's several potential applications for that then.

Right, exactly. So we developed this, but because this is not our primary business, right, we don't develop—

You don't brag about that as much. Yeah. It's like, oh, it's something you use.

Right.

Tell the stories.

Right. We don't develop tracers, but we do develop tools that could help us potentially. And we happen to have developed this 4R repeat tau protein tracer. Could be applicable to all, some other neurodegenerative diseases, but because this is not our main business, we looked for partners outside to develop this further. Right. And we partnered last year with a company called Enigma Biomedical Group. Basically, they are famous for developing tracers. Right. And this is another type of collaboration that we enter into. This one also was published last year, I think in January. So—

Yeah, because companies publish too. It's like they may not as much as academics, but corporations are equally interested in publications for certain things.

Absolutely. When we partner with academic institutions, we partner for unbiased academic perspective. We understand that our academic partners, their primary goal would be to publish the data. And disseminate the data, right? So, we partner with academic scientists with that in mind.

Yeah, you're picking those projects strategically, like these are the ones where that's okay, and there might be somewhere, you know, keeping it under wraps until you're ready to go to market is more important, and you do it in-house or other ways, right?

Right, exactly. But again, we obviously, specifically from what I'm seeing, we do like having conversation with academic scientists. And publish the information. So publish the data so everybody benefits. We like that.

Well, if folks heard something that resonated with them or they think they have something that might be of interest to AbbVie coming up, do you have any conferences planned for the year that you do know you're going to, or is there a best way for people to get in touch with you? Is that LinkedIn? Is that like an AbbVie site? So, A, is there somewhere they can find you this year? And B, if not, what's the best way to get in touch with you?

Either through LinkedIn or just email me. The conferences, this is a little tricky because again, as we talked about this, it depends on, it depends on what—

TBD.

Exactly. Conferences TBD. Our scientists and our search and evaluation team is on a lot of academic conferences. Typically they are always specific to our technical areas. So any neuroscience consortium like ADPD conference, for example, those are the, some of conferences like that. They are not the big conferences, although we do go also to, for example, Neuroscience Festival, SFN, this one.

Which is massive. Oh, I know.

Yeah. Exactly. This conference is just, yeah, I think everybody goes to this conference in neuroscience. Obviously we go too, but our preference would be a little more intimate where it's very specifically dedicated to a topic to either Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or psychiatric Conferences. Whoever's working in this space knows what those are, right? So, we are on the same page.

So, we know you're interested. Yeah, absolutely. That makes total sense. Before we close out today, are there any final thoughts you have or final words you want to leave folks with? What's your big knowledge for the day?

Oh my God. That's—

I don't know.

I'm not sure.

Or it could be something fun too. It doesn't even have to be super insightful. It can just be a fun thing you want to say.

Oh my God. That's— you know what? This is— Okay, this is cool. This is my first podcast ever.

Yeah, you're doing great. This is why we had you on because we love you. We love having you here. Like, you're always a bright light in a room and we knew you'd be fun.

Oh, thank you. I really appreciate you saying this. This is my first podcast and I was a little scared. I'm not afraid to say this. I was a little scared to think like, what am I going to say? Right? And like, how do I talk about this? I would say I hope that people will never lose sort of drive to finding new things and looking for answers. I really do. I know I don't want this to be in any way profound or anything, but I really hope that people will never lose drive to search for new things.

I got chills when you said that. That is so great.

I really like learning and studying, and I'm just a naturally curious person. So I love discovering new things. I love finding new things. I love learning new things. And I hope people will never lose drive to do that.

I like that. That is one of the most positive endings I think we've ever had. That is so great. And I wanna thank you so much, Michi.

You know what? You know what? I, I'm going to remember this because this is a very cool thing and it's, it's super important to have this type of fun thing to say, right? So thank you for, thank you for this. It's a good lesson to me.

And now it's easy, right? It's like, you know, you've done this once, you're like, oh, I can do a podcast.

Well, yeah, I am. Thank you. I appreciate this really, because I was, I was a little scared.

You should have known that if I can do a podcast, anyone could do a podcast, and I do them all the time. Our producer Ian's over here laughing at me. We'll pull him on mic for a second. He'll tell you. He'll be like, he'll be like, I edit James. He's terrible.

I edit James.

You sound good.

It's fine.

He even made his father sound good in that whistle mark. So his father's one of our scientists as well, and his dad came on and his dad put on this deepfake podcast voice and we're like, who is this?

How's it going?

Like, it was very—

yeah.

But we digress. Oh my gosh, Lydia, I wanted to thank you so much. I know you're super busy because you guys have a million assets thrown at you every day to look at, a million kinds of partnerships. I think it's really important also to get the word out because people who hear this can understand a little more about AbbVie. a little more about you and how they can interact. I always want to encourage folks because AbbVie has always been such a tremendous partner to us in the Gulf South. You're willing to look outside of the main areas in Boston, San Francisco, San Diego, and partner where the science is and where the brainpower is and have such amazing innovation that has come out before and is going to continue to come out. Thank you for taking time and being so engaged outside of yourselves. It means the world to us.

My pleasure. I had a lot of fun doing it. And thank you so much for inviting me to the BIO at the Bayou conference. I had a lot of fun and so many wonderful talks. I enjoyed this meeting immensely.

It's October 28th and 29th next year. So mark your— or this year, 2025. We are in 2025. It's October 28th and 29th. Mark your calendar. I don't even know what year it is. It's sad. As always, we're going to have your contact info, your LinkedIn, informational links about AbbVie in our show notes so people can check them out and learn more about Both yourself and Abby, and I want to thank you one final time for joining us. And I can't wait to see you again wherever that is. Hopefully in Boston at Bio 2025 or sooner.

Thank you. Hopefully. Thank you. Have a great weekend.

Thanks for joining us for Bio from the Bayou, and we hope you'll join us again. To never miss the latest updates in biotech, hit the subscribe button now. We'll catch you on our next episode of Bio from the Bayou.