Providing Cure Through Innovative Technology With Mark Gergen of Poseida

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. You want tech and tacos, tacos and tech you know we got tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keeper captains counting beans Contador quentan frijoles found us trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times a crappy my coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing coronado eating tacos el gordo the tacos standing puesto lucha libre and sombrero got a shout out to cost angels by the ocean watch the sunset la Jolla shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded when San Diego Startup week is popping in the summer Oceanside, the Tijuana esti be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach Tech leaders believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the Moon hashtag SD TechOS with your host, Neil Bloom.

Come on.

Startups get the party Startups get the party started.

Welcome to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I'm your host, Neil Bloom, and I am thrilled to have you here on the Talkers and Tech Podcast. We interview builders of technologies, of companies, of communities, and we do it weekly, so thanks for tuning in. Every Tuesday, new interview, and on Fridays, we talk about what's new in the San Diego tech ecosystem from a news perspective. So make sure you join us there as well too. We also have a tech newsletter that comes out every other week@freshbroodtech.com you can subscribe to listen to it without further ado. Enjoy this episode and welcome back to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I'm your host, Neil Blum, and I am joined today by Mark Gergen, CEO of Poseida Therapeutics. Hey, Mark, thanks for being on the show.

Hey, Neil, thanks for having me on today on the podcast.

Absolutely. It's great to have you here. We've, you know, obviously seen Poseida in the news a lot as San Diegan's doing some pretty cutting edge technology work there. You want to give us a quick overview of what Poseida is doing?

Sure. At a highest level, obviously, San Diego's a big biotech hub. We are a cell and gene therapy company, so there's many of them. It's probably the hottest area of drug development these days in biotech, where you're actually looking at modifying living cells or modifying cells, whether inside the body or outside. The body to create therapeutics. There's many, many companies in this space. I think what sets us approach is our technology very, very different from most of the others. So if you look around the space, most people in this industry that are doing cell and gene therapy are using viral based technologies and we do not. All of our core technology platforms are non viral best technologies. What I like to say to people is if the pandemic taught us nothing else, it taught us that viruses are bad. Okay, so we're focused on 9 viral technology currently. Just the stats. We've got about 260 employees here in San Diego headquarters labs. Obviously we just opened a small GMP manufacturing facility right here on our campus. So we're doing manufacturing for some of our lo car T products right here in San Diego. So that's pretty exciting for us. And have a number of programs in development. There's really two parts to the company. We do cell therapy. So we do. Which we'll talk about, I'm sure, car T therapies for mostly treating oncology so far. And then we also do gene therapies for correcting genetic diseases. Very broad technology, interesting space, really been growing quite rapidly over the last couple years here in town.

Yeah, that's awesome. This is absolutely the gene hub. We're going to dive a little bit into that, but a little bit to your background. You've got a deep background in life sciences. How did you come up into that world? And then also how did it take you to San Diego?

Yeah, as I tell people, I'm old so I have a lot of experience. I was actually born and raised in North Dakota, which can't get much different than San Diego. Started college actually as a math and physics major, but then pivoted majoring in business in college. I then went to law school, so got a law degree at the University of Minnesota. I like to tell people that for me that was a path to business. So I'm mostly over it. Although friends and family might tell you I'm not completely over it. But it was a good entree, I think into the business world. And then relatively early on in my career I actually went to be an in house lawyer at a big medical device company up in Minnesota called Medtronic. So you may have heard of them. They make pacemakers and defibrillators and all kinds of other things.

Diabetes pumps, insulin.

Correct. Yes, exactly. All the medical stuff. Devices mostly. And so at Medtronic I really very quickly moved out of law and into business development and corporate development. Really enjoyed that much More like the business side of the equation and started heading down that path. It was actually with Medtronic that brought me to San Diego. So we had a business unit out here. I came to San Diego in the late 90s to head up corporate development for that business unit and within six months we did a major acquisition and decided to close the San Diego facility. And so they said come back to Minnesota and I said no. And that is the rest of my career is saying no to jobs that were going to try to get me to move from San Diego. So that's really how I got here. I mean, you know, Medtronic was my first entree into healthcare. And then once Medtronic pulled out of San Diego, my first job actually in San Diego was with a biotech called Advanced Tissue Sciences where they were one of the early pioneers in cell based therapy back in the day. And you know, that just started me down a path of a career as a basically a startup guy in biotech. So I did Advanced Tissue Sciences for a number of years. I was at Amlin Pharmaceuticals, which you may know that story, we sold back in 2012 to BMS for seven and a half billion dollars. I was then basically a co founder of another company called Marathi Therapeutics here in town, which is now about a 7 1/2 billion dollar company as well. I did a short stint at Halozyme doing a couple of deals for them and then joined Eric here at Poseida back in 2018. My wife says I can't hold a job and I guess that maybe is true, but I really just, I love startups. I like the innovation and the excitement of every day being different in a company like this.

Absolutely. Real quick, back on your Medtronic piece. The major acquisition was that the Mini Med acquisition that happened?

No, it wasn't that. Although I was involved in that as well. It was a company called Arterial Vascular Engineering. So if you're familiar with the heart attack world. Stents, coronary stents. We acquired a company that was based up in Northern California and then consolidated all the operations. But Medtronic was a very big into M and A back in the day.

So yeah, definitely. They recently acquired one of our companies in San Diego this year. So still active for sure. But take give us a little lens of what Santa was like when you landed here because one we all know that most we don't want to leave once we get here. Was it as just as big a biotech hub back then or was it scrappy startup scene only under the radar?

It was still Mostly startup scene. Right. So that was back, that was pre biogenidec merger. It was pre, you know, some of the bigger transactions that occurred. San Diego has always had a bit of a rep for developing companies to a certain point. And very few companies maybe other than Illumina and a few others have really stayed the test of time. But I would say back then it was very much more venture driven both in biotech and in medtech actually. And so, you know, I think it's evolved. I think there's a lot more, there's obviously a lot more company these days. The last two years have just seen an explosion of new companies being started here, many in our space, in the cell gene therapy space. So it's definitely much more active, but it has been cyclical. I think what we're still waiting for in San Diego is, you know, to get a couple of companies that really stay independent, grow into sizable companies. I, I think that would be good for the area. You see that in the Bay area. You see that in Boston. We haven't really had enough of that here. So who knows, maybe we'll be the first.

I love that. Yeah, the, the kind of, the double digit by billion kind of public companies. We got a lot of single digits. Dexcom's kind of broken out there in that world. But yeah. Who love to see our biotech world continue to just light on fire as it's as we have been during the pandemic, just fund things more and more. We know real estate wise people are building big biotech campuses, anticipating that. With that, take us through a little bit of Poseidon, Poseido, like where was the founding story And I'd love to know if what you're working on today was the original idea because entrepreneurs love a good pivot, right?

Yeah, yeah, I think it's interesting. So to really understand Poseida, I think you need to somewhat understand our founder and our CEO Eric Osertag. So Eric is an MD, PhD. He went to school at the University of Pennsylvania, which is the birthplace of cell and gene therapy. And he was there probably 20 years ago. And while he was there, he was actually the first ever graduate from their gene therapy program. So 20 years ago, human gene therapy wasn't much of a thing, but he was the first ever graduate there. So while he was still in school, he got focused on developing better technologies for doing genetic engineering. So the technologies that had been used and still are used by most companies in the industry today are virus based technologies. So viruses are good at getting into cells and so they use Them to insert genes into cells. Eric thought there had to be a better way. So even when he was still in school, he started focusing on that. He actually founded a company while he was still in grad school that was really the parent company of Poseidon. And back then, you know, gene therapy for human therapeutics wasn't really ready for primetime. So he focused on developing the technology and doing things like animal models and kits for big pharma. And he built that into a relatively nice business over the course of about 15 years while he was maturing all of these novel technologies. And then back in 2015 or late 14, he finally decided it's probably ready for prime time. So he created Poseidon Therapeutics out of that parent company, which was called Transposogen, to really focus on going after human therapeutics because he thought these technologies now were more or less ready for primetime to start going after more interesting applications.

Ah, interesting. Okay, so take us through a little bit of the development of CAR T alongside that as well.

Yeah, sure. So really what prompted the beginning of the company was a deal that he did early on with Johnson and Johnson or Janssen Pharmaceuticals to look at developing an allogeneic or an off the shelf CAR T program. So CAR T, as your listeners probably know, is chimeric antigen receptor T cell. So basically, in simple terms is you take the human T cell from either a patient or a healthy donor, you then use these genetic engineering technologies outside the body to modify that cell to make it even better at attacking cancer. So you may know that T cells are like your primary immune cell in the body. So you're basically just taking nature's own best killer and best immune protector and modifying it to just make it even better. And then you grow those cells outside the lab or outside the body, and then give it back to the patient. And the results have been spectacular. You've seen response rates in many patients certainly being cured of their cancer, basically by using the body's own cell. And so that original deal started. Big Pharma sometimes are waffly. So after about two years, they decided to walk away. So Eric likes to say that the Janssen deal was both the best thing that happened to the company and them stopping it was the second best thing that ever happened to the company because we got all that technology and all those rights back. And because of that deal, though, we had started down the path of doing CAR T therapy for oncology. CAR T is just one form of gene therapy, right? You're genetically modifying a cell outside the body. There are many Other forms. Eric's actually first love in grad school was true gene therapy, where you're trying to connect or correct a genetic defect in a patient that could be very serious or life threatening. And really, that was his first love. It's more complicated if you're actually trying to correct a cell in the body. So that original deal started us down the path of CAR T, but we're taking a very different approach. Like I said, there's lots of people in this space, but our technology is quite different.

Got it. Okay, so where is the technology Just from where you guys are at today? From a commercialization process, We've got several.

Programs in the clinic. So if you. The CAR T field, there's two types of CAR T. One they call autologous CAR T. That's where I take a patient's own cells who already has cancer, and I modify those cells to go in and attack the cancer and give their cells back to them. So that's a Talis CAR T individualized product. Right. For that specific patient. So we have two clinical trials ongoing in autologous CAR T. One is for a blood cancer called multiple myeloma. The other one is for metastatic resistant prostate cancer. Those two clinical trials are going on, phase one trials, currently starting to collect data. We just announced some data here a couple months back on the prostate cancer trial. That was very exciting. So those programs are moving forward. The other type of CAR T is called allogeneic, or off the shelf CAR T. And that's where instead of taking the cells from a patient, you take the cells from a healthy donor. You do the similar modifications so that you can then give those cells to any patient. So you can put those cells in the freezer and then have a product that's readily available off the shelf. And that's really the holy grail, I think, of cell therapy is you want something you can just have ready, and when people need treatment, you can treat them. It does require some additional gene editing so that the patients don't reject those cells because they're not their own. But those programs are very close to the clinic. So in August of this year, we announced, we just got cleared for our first IND on a program for multiple myeloma for our ALLO product. And so that'll be going into the clinic here very shortly. We're in the site ramp up period. And then we will also be getting clearance on a second ind, hopefully by the end of this year for another program for solid tumors, which we call MUCON C, which is the target that you're aiming at that actually could apply to multiple different types of cancers. And so that clinical trial will probably start up early in 2022. This is real time stuff. 2022 promises to be a pretty exciting year for us because we'll have four at least programs that are starting to read out with clinical data next year.

Wow. Good times all during the pandemic, which, you know, has painted a good and bad picture as you've talked about a little bit here as well too, including last year when you guys went public, is that correct? In 2020?

Indeed. Yes. That's an interesting story as well. But we were one of the first companies to go public during the pandemic. So we went public in July. It actually started a little earlier. We. Well, really, to back up a little bit, the company is, when I joined in 2018, had just done a Series A, you know, the 30 people at the beginning of 2018, shortly after I joined, we did a Series B. And then we started growing fairly rapidly. We actually looked originally at going public back in the end of 2019 or 2018, and you may remember beginning of 2019, that period where the government shut down for two months. So that actually got in the way of our first attempt at an ipo. But it actually had an unintended benefit, which is we ended up doing a Series C financing that was led by Novartis, which was very unusual. Novartis, big pharma companies usually participate. They don't usually lead financings. So that bought us, you know, we did $110 million financing that bought us some time. And then at the beginning or at the end of 19, we started preparing to go public again. The pandemic was starting to bubble up. We ended up doing a Series D financing led by Fidelity, who also doesn't usually lead financings, and that pivoted quickly into an IPO in July. We've been very fortunate, have had strong financings. I think if you look back on that, if you know the space, having buy in from Novartis, having buy in from a Fidelity is a strong testament. I always tell people, you know, if you want to invest in biotech, follow the smart money. And I would probably put both of those folks in the category of smart money. So I think it's been good, it's.

Great, and I think it's interesting. We always love to compare in San Diego. One, it's easy to say, look at all the venture money that's here, largely to the biotech community, but also just the path to IPO is so different for biotech versus tech.

Right.

It's not necessarily an exit for a biotech to go public. It's actually more of an accessibility to more capital as opposed to a liquidity event that everyone's getting excited about. So any comment on kind of that ipo?

I agree completely. I think, I do think the pandemic has changed the world of biotech IPOs forever. I did the IPO from here in my office, never left. And I think the world was trending that way. I think it's trending more that way. The pandemic is just going to accelerate that. And I know things like the J.P. morgan Conference and things like that are probably going to go the way of the dinosaur to a certain degree, because if investors can sit at home in New York in their pajamas and, and do all their diligence, they're going to do that and it's just easier for them. So I think that's part of. It's interesting, but you're, you're exactly right in biotech. I mean, the amount of money it takes to develop these therapies and to really build out, grow, especially when you're developing, I would say, a novel therapy that you don't have other history to rely on. It just takes a lot of capital. And so you really do need access to those, to the capital markets. And I would also say that given my history biotech, working in biotech and investing in biotech is not for the faint of heart. You should like roller coasters if you're going to work in this space, because there's plenty of ups and downs along the way. But. But at the end of the day, it's obviously rewarding when you can help patients and get drugs into the clinic and onto the market.

Absolutely. You mentioned smart money and smart relationships from Janssen, which has a San Diego presence. Novartis, I know you've got a relationship with Takeda too, kind of. What's. And they also have a Senegal presence as well. So obviously benefiting from local relationships. What's the kind of big announcement coming with Takeda?

Yeah, so we just recently announced what is our first strategic collaboration, which was with Takeda Pharmaceuticals. So for people that don't know them, Takeda is obviously a big multinational corporation in the top 10 for sure. Historically, they were viewed as a Japanese company. I mean, they have their roots in Japan, although these days I think they're based out of Boston. Takeda also bought a company called Shire, who historically had some roots here in San Diego as well. And Shire was very big in gene therapy and rare diseases. So we just struck a deal with Takeda. We think it's actually the largest gene therapy research collaboration ever. It spans up to eight targets. It involves all of our technology. The total deal value I think was $3.6 billion plus royalties. And it is entirely focused on the next generation of gene therapy approaches. And again, it will not surprise you when I tell that's because it is non viral. Right. Most of the gene therapy Companies use old 30, 40 year old viral technology. But this whole collaboration and that whole half of our company is focused on non viral approaches. So we think it's a great validating deal for us. It's something that we will continue to do, we'll build on that with other partnerships because the technology is just very broad and will allow us to do that. So pretty exciting.

Yeah, congrats on that. Something you mentioned around how the pandemic changed the world, conferences and other things. The one thing in biotech that I'd love to hear your opinion on changing the talent attraction. You still need people in a lab. You cannot virtualize labs in the biotech world. What's that been like during the pandemic and having an already tight knit community, what does that do now, coming out of this pandemic as well?

Yeah, I think there's a couple of aspects to that. I think you're right. In biotech we need labs. So even throughout the pandemic and we had probably half our employee base on site working in the lab because that's the hard part. And you know, blood of a development stage biotech company, I honestly think that's been good. It's good to have people still together, collaborating, even if you have to wear a mask or. But I think it's been helpful and it's allowed us actually to continue to make a ton of progress in the midst of the pandemic. We know other companies that really had some struggles, but I think for us it's been good. The virtual hiring I think will be helpful for San Diego based companies in a different way, which is because a lot of companies have not grown up and matured here. We that don't have a huge talent pool for things like commercialization or manufacturing talent. And I think with this new virtual environment that you know is being accelerated by the pandemic, that will make it easier for San Diego based companies to tap into that talent because they can get really comfortable with people working remotely in remote locations. So it really actually should help San Diego companies that are starting to grow up and mature, attraction talent and be able to get real expertise in those areas that aren't, you know, specifically local to San Diego. The one other thing I would mention just while we're talking about talent is biotech's one of the top three hubs obviously with the Bay Area and Boston at the moment. Even though I sometimes find this hard to believe, we're still cheaper than they are. It's not hard to attract some talent to San Diego, but that's also attracting many other companies. Right. Not just in biotech, but in tech. Apple, Amazon have moved into town in big ways. So there is just a lot more competition for the talented is here which ultimately I think is good. But it definitely in this interesting pandemic world is creating a real. I don't. It was. They used to refer to it as a war for talent. I'm not sure if we have a new name for it now. But talent is, you know, talent competition is definitely intense and so you know, we need to be focused, attracting people because they love the science. Making sure we're competitive on all the other aspects of pay and whatnot. Which I, you know, believe we are. But it is definitely an interesting dynamic. But overall I think San Diego is actually going to benefit by the, the more virtual and hybrid work environment over the long term, especially the biotech community here.

Yeah, it's a really good point. Thanks for that. Obviously it attracted you and you stayed and you're a model example of what we hope many and most do. Like you don't want to leave once you're here. The other piece to attract people is our taco scene which is obviously pretty phenomenal. And I gotta imagine you've got a few favorites. Do you have a few that you can name for us?

That's probably the hardest question but. Right. Because there's. There are so many. But I would say recently and probably my growing favorite is I recently went to not Not Taco down in Little Italy.

Oh yeah, right.

So that's the. One of the Sam the cooking guy's restaurants had the short rip Taco I think maybe makes me a convert forever. But the day to day Taco I would say is probably Yesenia's. If you know Yesenias. There's one in Carl Mountain. I think there's one in Miramasa as well.

On the other side of UTC. Right, on the other side. 805 there. Yep, yep, yeah, yeah, good one.

Yeah, exactly. So those are probably the two that are the most frequent. But. But it's not hard to find a good taco in San Diego.

It's true. It's true. You know, I also very much like not, not Sam's cooking taco spot and it has not been mentioned yet on the show. So it's a good new one to, to add to our database. So thank you for that.

Absolutely.

Thanks so much for the time giving us a deep dive into Poseida. Really excited to continue to watch and support what you guys are building here because like you said, it's, it's life changing technology and that's, it's really what we work on here in San Diego. It's pretty cool to.

Absolutely.

So thank you very much for being on the podcast.

Yeah, thanks for having me, Neil. Appreciate it. Awesome.

Cheers. Thanks. Thanks for tuning in to Tacos and Tech podcasts. You can find all of our episodes on freshbroodtech.com as well as on Twitter at Tacos and Tech Pod. Also follow Fresh Food tech on all of our social platforms and make sure to share and give a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. Thanks again.

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. You want tech in tacos, tacos in tech, you know we got it.

Hey.

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. You want tech and tacos, tacos in tech. You know we got it.

Hey, Sam.