Signals Before Symptoms

Ah!

Startups get party started— Whoo-hooo!! —startups get them partied startups getting parties startin' you want tech n tacos? Tacos Tech?! You know we got it hey!!! Startupz gets da pardee startupz gitta paarty staarted... Hey!!!! Startupz git tha passeee startupz guittha pahrtie starrted eyyyyyyy!!!!! Startupz kit thaa pawtie startupzz geetthaaa parti stavarteeyy yew antech nz tacoos Tacooz 'n Teck ya kno wii gooot it heyyy!?

Hahaha Welcome back to the Tacos and Tech podcast. I'm your host, Neal Bloom, and I'm thrilled to have on Adam Jacobs from Exome. Mr. President, how you doing?

Hey, good. Thank you, Neal. Thanks for having me. First of all, thanks for everything you do for the business community here in San Diego, in our region. Supporting founders, supporting startups, and just overall growth in the, in the sector. So thank you and your team for all you do. Of course.

Well, we do it for you. We do it for the companies, the companies which you guys are going to work hard no matter what. But we just want to help the companies, great technology companies, be as successful as possible because then we all win here in the region. So, so give us a high level.

What is Exome? At Exome, we've developed a platform technology that can isolate and analyze exosomes out of the blood. And we use it for a number of different things, but essentially it allows for a low-cost, accessible, point-of-care capable device that can be brought out to everyone everywhere, not just the folks that live within 10 minutes of a world-class healthcare system or have access to the best doctors in the world. We want to bring this to everyone everywhere, and this technology that we've developed allows us to do just that.

Amazing. The power of diagnostics, diagnostics has been going, I feel like just increasing both from the consumer angle. Most people now are used to having data about themselves a lot lately, right? So the empowerment is there. And then, you know, ChatGPT, you can pretty much just ask it any question about yourself as well. But doing this at the point of care and within the healthcare system, that is actually where the unlock needs to happen, where you guys are tackling it. I'm excited to talk about that because you have a really unique angle from kind of a business model slash like go-to-market that I think will be really interesting for people to hear about.

Yeah, so our goal was to build a platform that's capable of being all the way using to be used at home all the way back to a lab and everywhere in between, whether it be a doctor's office or a pharmacy or your clinic. And so that's how we can help keep the cost down as the platform itself is universal. It's disease, as I mentioned, agnostic. And the only thing that really changes in the whole thing is the chemistry on our consumable cartridge, which is the simple change depending on the the biomarkers that you wanna look for that are associated with a certain disease or condition. So it's really built to be able to go anywhere for anything for anyone. And we don't do all of that ourselves. We partner with other healthcare systems, industry leaders, research labs, et cetera, to develop those different tests on our platform. We might do an indication or two on our own, Um, but really this, the goal here is to get these into the hands of other people making a difference in the world. And as I said, making lives better.

Well, obviously San Diego has a rich history in building many companies around this. Uh, so no better place to do it, but you also have a deep history of, of doing things in San Diego. How— take us through a little bit of your journey, uh, your path to, to here and doing this.

Yeah, you know, I, I'm probably not your stereotypical biotech executive. I have a pretty eclectic background. I grew up here in San Diego, went to Torrey Pines High School, was a good student, always had an interest in business and biology and science, and then was a good enough baseball player that I had a chance to go play in college. So I went to Cornell University, studied business there. And played on the baseball team. And out of that, I had the opportunity to go play professionally around the United States and then eventually over in Australia for a couple of years. Met some incredible people from places you've never heard of around the US. Really opened my eyes to, you know, getting out of the bubble here in San Diego. But I often say that a lot of the lessons that I learned from collegiate and professional baseball are ones I can pick to, you know, in business, in life, in leadership. I've learned way more from that than any book could ever teach me. And I try and bring those life lessons to the business world, to the philanthropic world, and so on. And, you know, being a member of a pretty prominent family here in San Diego, I've also used that with myself in partnership with my wife and other members of my family to continue that legacy of giving back to this amazing community that's given us so much. And also not just in philanthropy, but, you know, doing things in business that's also for good. So, you know, we're developing a product and yeah, when it's successful, it's going to be a really great business. It's also going to help a lot of people. And both of those things are very important.

Absolutely. And I know we've actually, you know, well, first of all, we met, I believe, through a high school classmate of yours, Jennifer Shonick. We should give her a shout out here. We should. We should. Yeah. Uh, shout out to Jennifer, city of Escondido, who has been a collaborator of mine and many startup things. But when we first met, you and I, we actually met. We were talking, uh, some early stage investments in sports tech. I think you were, we were both looking at two different, uh, baseball tech deals.

Uh, yeah. So, yeah. So, uh, you know, before this I was doing consulting with a business partner of mine. And again, our rule was we only worked with companies that helped the world in some way. And so one was a company building a new internally internal combustion engine. That was going to be less emitting and more efficient than current engines out there now. Uh, another was a water filtration company to help get PFAS out of the waters— become a pretty hot topic these days. And then another was this sports tech AI company, I'll give it a shout out, called Mustard. And their whole premise was to take the best coaching in the world and democratize it. Because right now, only the folks that have access and privilege and the ability to get the best coaching can get it. And you have all these great kids who have a great opportunity to, you know, play baseball or soccer or name the sport, but they fall by the wayside because they don't have the best coaching. And so they get passed over. So how do you bring that to everyone everywhere? Utilizing technology, not that dissimilar to what we're doing now. At an exome, just with a, with a different genre.

Yep, that's true. Take us through a little bit of the journey then from, you know, you were investing in businesses to, you know, running your own. That's a big, big change, obviously. I mean, your family has, has been there, done that before, but, and you have as well too in a few other businesses. So take us through a little bit of that kind of your own entrepreneurial journey.

Sure. So as I mentioned, being a baseball player, my last game in college, I was supposed to be drafted by Cincinnati, but I get my knee blown out. And so I come home, I have surgery, rehab, and I can't just sit still. I'm not built that way. So I actually started a clothing company to keep myself, keep my mind sharp as I was doing my rehab and all that. Uh, and so what we did is we took a very popular, uh, baseball company or baseball team, the Lake Elsinore Storm, that, um, my parents are actually owners of. Their hats were the best-selling hats in minor league baseball at the time. And we did some research and people were buying the hats not even knowing that it was a baseball team's hat. They just thought it was a cool hat. So we took that and spun it into a lifestyle apparel brand, got it into a bunch of stores around San Diego and, and the Inland Empire. And really, that was my first, like, true foray into, uh, running and operating business. I learned a ton about that whole industry, uh, and business principles in general. Went back to playing baseball, as I mentioned. Uh, when that wrapped up, I started my own, uh, business, a fitness and yoga studio, uh, up in Carlsbad. And I did that to essentially give myself an MBA at the school of hard knocks. I had spent, you know, the couple years after college going after my dream of playing baseball. Didn't really want to go back to school. So I figured what better way to teach myself how to get into business than to start my own and really dive in headfirst. So started with finding a building. So I learned about real estate and demographics and market studies. We did the build-out for the facility, so learned about architecture, construction, and how to manage that. And then ran an ongoing business. So you learn people management, you learn customer— excuse me, customer service, strategy, forethought, and implementation. So ran that for a number of years. And then out of that, you know, COVID happened. We had a couple folks that had been with us for a very long time there. So turned over the day-to-day operations to them. I still remain the owner and then started that consulting business that I mentioned. And how that leads into today, who did we consult with? Mostly companies that had a really great idea or really great technology, but all of their employees were either software engineers or programmers or engineers or something where only the CEO, if that, was doing any of the business strategy or, uh, marketing or fundraising or anything like that. So we would come in and essentially be the business unit for those companies and help the CEOs come up with their strategy of how to go to market, come up— if they needed to fundraise, what's our fundraising strategy, what's our story, What's our branding? And we wouldn't do it all ourselves. We had a network of folks that we could reach out to to help with some of the legal setup, help with streamlining accounting practices and finance. If we needed to do any brand development work with folks, like it was our ideas, but those folks would actually put, you know, the pen to the paper, so to speak. And so did a lot of that with these couple of companies I mentioned and then many others. And then out of that came this opportunity here at Exome. And just some quick backstory of Exome. So our core technology spun out of UCSD about 15, 16 years ago to a former company that ran for about 15 years, maybe 14 years at this point. That company with this technology that's so powerful just got spread too thin, and over a period of time, the cap table got too wonky. And so it went through a restructuring and out of that was born Exome. And we inherited all the great assets, R&D, some of the great folks from the former company, and have been streamlined and focused on our approach to developing and now have developed our point-of-care capable platform that I mentioned. And so you just never know in life when things are going to come back around. For example, in college, the business program was in the ag school at the time at Cornell. So I was forced to take a couple years of biology and chemistry. And honestly, thank God I did, because now I can at least, uh, you know, draw on that and my background, uh, in this, in this industry. So it's, it's been great. It's been a great run.

Incredible. What was the original— I always love to hear you know, obviously a little bit more of the founding story. What was the original tech out of UCSD? What was the original premise? Because I want to compare and contrast to where it is now.

So it's similar to what we're doing now, essentially utilizing a technology called ACE. It's an alternating current. We can distill particles out of the blood that can tell a story about what's happening in the body. So, the original tech was this ability to get rid of things in the blood that don't have as much information or data that they carry and only focus on this area. And, over time, that was refined to, "Okay, what in the blood do we actually want to isolate and analyze? What will give us the best information to be able to make a call?" And so we've settled on— and it's, it's been a while now, but on exosomes, they're small particles in the blood that are used for cell-to-cell communication. We love them for a number of reasons. One, they're more abundant in the blood, which allows us to use a smaller sample volume. So all the way at the end of the scale, that means a simple finger prick blood test with a couple of drops of blood. But all the way back in R&D, Some of these folks that we're working with only have very small sample volumes of very precious and hard to find, uh, conditions or diseases. And so to be able to have multiple runs during the R&D work and not have to burn an entire tube of sample is a really big deal. Secondly, exosomes don't just carry DNA, but they also carry RNA and proteins in them, which makes them more data-rich. And in fact, That's known as the holy trilogy of molecular biology. And then third, as I mentioned, they're emitted from living cells, so we can actually intercept the messages being sent and see issues in the body earlier than you can looking at, say, DNA. And that's because DNA is emitted from dying cells, either through necrotic cell death or apoptosis, which is normal cell death. But let's use cancer, for example. DNA is great at detecting stage 3 and 4 because the cells will have died and leaked that DNA into the blood. With exosomes being emitted from living cells, one cancer cell could use an exosome to recruit another cell to become a cancer cell. And so we can actually intercept that message and detect cancer at stage 2, stage 1, or even what we like to call stage zero.

That's incredible. We're going to dive a little bit deeper into how you do that. You do it through unique ways. But take us through— can you give us a little bit of the history of exosomes in terms of in use and where, you know, where else exosomes are used now? Or is it kind of the next frontier for a biomarker?

We like to joke that exosomes in 2026 are what DNA was in 1996. So it's been around for a little while, decent amount of research being done in it, but that's where it's stuck. It's stuck in the land of research, and there hasn't been a tool or technology that's been able to move the exosome research from that place to translate it into a clinical utility and use case in the real world. And that's because a number of reasons. They're very small. They're very hard to isolate. There are current tools to isolate them out of the blood, but they're extremely expensive, laborious, and not always successful and take a really long time. And there are also companies that can analyze exosomes, but that means you have to do the other step first before you take and analyze them. We have the only technology that can actually isolate them out of the blood and analyze them all on our chip in 30 minutes. So cutting out all of that extra time, effort, money, hands-on time, and really being able to again unlock the power of exosomes out of research and into a clinical utility and translate it into actually helping diagnose or monitor or— and some people are actually using them for for treatment as well. And so they are around, they've just been stuck, and we're here to unlock their power.

Let's talk about how you guys are doing that, and we've got some hardware to show off how. We love a good— Yeah. Show and tell. Take us through a little bit of how you guys—

Sure. So this is our point-of-care capable device. As you can see, it runs on a cell phone and we have a consumable cartridge. So as I mentioned at the top, the only thing that changes in this entire system is the chemistry on this cartridge depending on the biomarkers you want to look for that are associated with the disease or condition or indication you want to look at. So the first part of our pillar is this consumable cartridge that, as I mentioned, this houses our core technology silicon chip that sits in the middle. You flow the sample onto the chip. Plop it into the machine. And then here we have the device that runs on a cell phone. We love the cell phone for a number of reasons, not just because Dr. Irwin Jacobs is our founder and main funder, uh, of Qualcomm fame and has obviously an affinity for, uh, telecommunications, but because billions and billions of dollars have been put into cell phones to optimize them. We already carry a supercomputer in our pocket. So why reinvent the wheel? Let's use the tools we already have. So we love that aspect. And also we turn the cell phone camera into a mini microscope. You can see here, and that's what does the reading of these exosomes on, on the chip. And then third, most importantly for us anyway, the cell phone is always connected. And so because of that, even when these are decentralized out in the field at doctors' offices, at rural health clinics, in ERs, wherever, all of the data on the cell phone is sent back to us so we can get smarter with every test, as can our partners that are working with us. So what do we do? Cartridge into the device here, cell phone reads, and then our AI on the backend gives the answer. And how does it do that? So what do we do? You isolate the exosomes out of the blood, as I mentioned. We run an assay, a simple immunoassay on top that fluorescently tags them, the biomarkers that we want to look at, with a different color. The cell phone, now turned into a microscope, sees that brightness of those fluorescently labeled biomarkers and then takes that against a calibration curve that we've already created on the back end and makes a call and says, Hey, based on the signature that we see here against the calibration curve, this person is healthy or sick, high risk or low risk, a vector score or whatever it is you're looking at. And again, because it's a platform, it could be used for detection. It could be used for monitoring someone who might be at high risk for something, recurrence monitoring. Say you got sick and you wanna make sure you don't get sick again. Could be used for treatment response. So you did get sick, unfortunately, and the doctor says, hey, take this pill, come back in 6 months, let's see if it worked. Forget that. You take this home with you, prick your finger every week, and you can see if your body's responding. And if it's not, call your doctor and you change the dosage level, change the medication, change whatever. You can intervene earlier to win that battle. Uh, other things we've talked with folks about organ transplant rejection monitoring. I mean, that's something you want to catch as quickly as possible so you can intervene so you don't have to go through that, that experience again. Even things like, like being a therapeutic companion diagnostic. So, you know, making sure that a certain drug is appropriate for this certain person that's carrying the biomarkers that, that are the ones that respond correctly to, to that drug. And the list goes on and on. And one thing I'll add that's really exciting that we love about exosomes specifically is that they cross the blood-brain barrier. So from a simple blood test, you can actually see issues in the brain, whether it be Alzheimer's, glioblastoma, traumatic brain injury, uh, etc. And so we're really excited about that and working with partners to develop panels for, for those as well. And again, it's not just detection, but imagine you got a concussion or a traumatic brain injury. Okay, that's somewhat easy to diagnose, but not always. But how, how do you know when you're ready to go back on the playing field or back on the battlefield? This could be a tool to do that as well. Uh, and so the possibilities are endless, and you could see how with this powerful technology how you could spread yourself so thin. And so one of the things I and my team really focus on is remaining focused on building this platform, partnering with people to get these into the, into their hands so other people can work with us to develop all these various different tests and get it out into the world to make a difference.

As I said, amazing. I love those use cases. And we're going to talk a little bit more of that in a second, but I wanted to just do a little bit of like breaking down some of the tech unlocks that you guys have done. You've gone from the benchtop to this like really mobile device, right? We'll also talk about kind of your assay plan of just like partnering to develop assays, but not having to do it yourself per se. Like take us through some of those unlocks. Like those are really more, even more than just the tech, it's kind of the full package platform piece that is unique from a device diagnostic angle.

Yeah, and I would say one of the important things here and for other folks who are running a business to think about is you always have your eye on what it— how— where you want to go, how you want to get there. And it's certainly not a straight line to get there, don't get me wrong. But if you always have— it's so cliché— but that North Star, all the steps along the way are always going to lead back to how do we get there. And again, not a straight line. So, you know, originally the technology was utilized for isolating different particles out of the blood. When the company, the former company, first started, they were isolating cell-free DNA out of the blood, switched from that to exosomes. They're similar size, but there was some tuning on the chip that needed to be done. Exosomes, uh, both have their merits. Exosomes we found to be much more powerful, but could still use both. And so originally started as a big benchtop tool that only isolated exosomes or other particles out of the blood, particles of a certain size. You would have to take it off of the chip and then run it on another panel to be able to, to do the analysis. So we switched from isolation only to then isolation and analysis, but on a big benchtop instrument. To now the future generation, which is going to be rolled out here pretty soon here with our Xceed platform, which is the isolation and analysis all on chip but in this mobile version. And so that's always been the dream, and we, we've gotten there now. And now we've done the execution. Now we have to get it out to the people so they can they can start to use it. Yeah.

Which you've already started to do. And so when we, Interlock and Rising Tide Partners, invested, um, in the last round of capital, the really, the, you were like just on the precipice of getting first device out. And with a very, you know, first test area was pancreatic cancer. Uh, it's, take us through what has happened. What is, what have you learned and the use cases that have emerged since.

So pancreatic cancer is an excellent use case for showing the power of exosomes in early detection. For those that don't— that may not be familiar, pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest cancers out there, and even if caught in stage 1, it's still only a 40% survival rate over the next 5 years. Caught in stage 2, that goes down to like 10%. 3 and 4, it is, uh, not looking good. So we use pancreatic cancer to be able to drive detection earlier as a perfect use case of why early detection is so, so important. And so we did a lot of work in pancreatic cancer. We continue to do that, and, uh, we have some great data including some sensitivity and specificity above 90%.. And for those that may not be familiar, that's the ability to call cancer a cancer and the ability to call a healthy a healthy. And so that data is great, especially because it was only on stage 1 and stage 2. That was published in Nature Communications Medicine in 2023, and we've done subsequent work since with our, with our devices. Still focused there with cancer, and there's many other— we've done ovarian, we've done lung, we've done 12 other different cancers, mostly on a feasibility, um, uh, level. But also, this is not just limited to cancer. So one of our other big partners down in Texas has a 50+ hospital system, and they have a huge problem with sepsis. Now, for those not familiar, sepsis is an absolute killer. It kills more people than cancer every year. It comes on quick. If you don't treat it immediately, uh, your percentages go completely down every 30 minutes that you wait to treat someone for sepsis. And they have a huge, huge problem there. So we are working with them to develop a test for sepsis because they get potentially 600 potential sepsis cases per day throughout their hospital system. Wow. And they need to know quickly, who do we treat? Who do we not? Right now they treat everybody. It's expensive. Hospital bed stays are expensive. ER stays are even more expensive. ICU stays even more expensive. They give a nasty cocktail of antibiotics because they're so afraid that if they miss the sepsis, you're gonna have a problem. So we're working with them to work on this rapid, uh, test where they can have this in the triage room or right at the bedside or in the ambulance, ready to go, ready to test, and can do subsequent time points to see if someone's progressing out of it or, or getting worse. And so that's an excellent use case for— if pancreatic cancer was for early detection of a cancer, Sepsis is an excellent example of supportive care capabilities and rapid turnaround time and, and low cost for, for our device. We're also about to partner with some folks to develop a test for preeclampsia and preterm labor risk, organ transplant rejection monitoring. I mentioned treatment response, companion diagnostic, and so on. So But again, we can't do this all on our own. We would spread ourselves too thin. So partnering with the best in their field in each of these areas to develop the tests, do the research, and really get this. And they know, we don't pretend to know what's best. These people are hands-on, boots on the ground, know the people they're dealing with, know what to look out for. And so we really value their partnership. Um, with us.

Well, I think it's a really valuable point for an entrepreneur to see, you know, bringing a product, a platform to, you know, a customer and then seeing where do they use it, where is their biggest need and pain. What a way to experience that firsthand, right? To say, hey, we have this thing that we think it does this, and they say, well, that's a huge need, but also this, like, that's way to catch the signal on that, but also to have a platform that is so flexible and you don't have to go back into the lab and tinker, it already can do that. Take us through, I guess, like, you know, what you're learning from the platform play in terms of by having— because especially in med device, the regulatory piece is such a big, big part, but you guys really are, you know, focused on the hardware in that regard and enabling the partners.

Just talk us through that a little bit. One of the things we've really emphasized is listening, and that's because you don't know as the platform technology, or if you're in a different line of work, you're not the boots on the ground that really understands who needs different tests, who needs a certain type of treatment, and so on. You think you know, but you need to rely on the experts. So we identified areas that we we believed that our platform would be quite useful for, and then went and found those experts. But when listening to them, you really get to drill down into, okay, what population are we going to serve? What's the important level of sensitivity or specificity that you need? What is it that they're missing if they're a clinician in their decision-making to make a call whether someone needs a surgery or not, or needs intervention or not. And that's where we can then lend the most utility to them, is working with these experts in the field to develop, to develop those, those tests. So, uh, you know, that's been a really great advantage to us, and, and I'm very proud of our team for really emphasizing that with our, with our partners and, and the experts in the field.

Yeah. Congrats on that. Take us through a little bit, like, you know, what's on the horizon where now that you are live with a partner in a hospital, like, what's the, what's the next hill to conquer?

Yeah. So the group down in Texas is developing with us this test for sepsis. We believe that it will be rolled out by the start of next year. And that will then generate revenue for us as well as data. And then we'll be able to take that through potentially the FDA to get that test approved and to get to a wider group of folks here within the United States and then internationally as well. And it's a similar path with all of the other indications and conditions that I mentioned. To get a test rolled out within a system and then commercialize that to the FDA, work on reimbursement, and then roll it out even further beyond that. And again, we couldn't do this alone. We'd have to build a huge team of assay developers for all these different indications. And instead, working with these partners, it's really been a rewarding experience for us. And so We've signed several of these partners. There's many more in the pipeline, and then we'll continue to build that pipeline over the rest of the course of this company. And, and check back with us in 6 months and we'll tell you how many people's lives we've saved by catching sepsis or another disease early. That's incredible.

And all using the same cartridge that goes into your device, uh, the same physical cartridge.

Again, the only difference is the chemistry for the detection reagent, as we call it, that goes on that cartridge. And what that basically will house is the, the probes that are fluorescently, fluorescently labeled that tag the biomarkers of interest. Every disease, every condition has its own biomarker signature. Many of them have overlapping biomarkers, but, you know, they all have their own biomarker signature. And it's not always if one's there or not, it's levels compared to others. It's some are upregulated, meaning that they're more prevalent when there's an issue. Some are downregulated, meaning that they are less prevalent when there's an issue. And so honestly, without the use of AI on the back end with our algorithm, this would be taking years and years and years. And so utilizing that tool as well to be able to sift through all that information and find out, okay, when you see this particular signature, that means this person does not have the disease that you're looking for. If you see a different signature, that means, oh, they do have it, and everywhere in between. And then a lot of people fall apart because they do their, their testing and their studies on the back end. With purely healthy people and then purely sick people. Nobody's purely healthy. Okay. You need to work in somebody's gray area types of samples to really train the algorithm to know what to look for and what to ignore.

Incredible. And with aspirations to eventually have this at the consumer level.

Yeah. As I said, we've built this to be even for at-home use. I mean, imagine you have one of these at your house and you go online and order a bevy of different tests for everything from the top 10 cancers that you are most at risk for, or you have a family history of, or whatever, but also like other conditions that you might want to— you're interested in, your doctor recommended because of some, you know, elevated this or that that you should test for. And you order it and it shows up, and then you test yourself, and 30 minutes later you know the answer. Uh, and it could again be for recurrence monitoring, it could just be for, um, just general health. I mean, the ultimate vision honestly is that you would be able to take your health records, your family history, where you go, what you eat, who you talk to, what your occupation is, and our algorithm would actually say to you, hey Neal, based on all that information, here's the top 10 things that you are most at risk for. And then you could test for those at a regular interval of every 3 months or whatever. Hey, here's the next level of risk based on your information, test for those every 6 months and so on. And so really, I mean, personalized medicine is like the hot button topic, but really making this personalized to each and every person based on all that information that I just said.

Yeah, I mean, that's, that's the empowerment that we have all learned now. One, COVID helped us understand we actually can do a few things ourselves, right? The at-home COVID test. But the unlock is, well, what else? And obviously using tools you already have. Like the phone and others. Like, I think that you can't take the, you can't put the genie back in the bottle. People want to be able to get the data that they want, that's for sure. So it's a great ride, a way to ride.

And I would add, it's very important. We're going to be making the analytics out of this actionable and usable. There's a lot of stuff out there that measures biomarkers, but you don't know what to do with that after you get that information. This will all be actionable, usable, whether by you, by your doctor, by, uh, you know, a pharmacist, uh, a pharmaceutical company, uh, you know, another diagnostic company, whatever. Uh, and so that's really the key difference, I think, also in that making this a usable tool, an actionable tool, not just information that Does it have, uh, an action? Yeah, totally.

Well, the tech's been in development for a while, but you guys are on a whole new trajectory now. Um, but it takes a bunch of capital really to bring it to market, right? And, and just from going, I mean, hardware is hard. People love to say that. Uh, but it's a whole platform in some regard. Like what are some of the future, you know, technology development that are, you're gonna be using future invested capital for?

So really getting this technology to a place where we can have it be— it's quite reliable already, but if when you get this out into the commercial space, it needs to work like it's bulletproof. You know, these are tests that need to get the right answer, and if it's not, needs to tell you, hey, do it again. And so working to really nail down the reliability, the efficiency of our platform, which is really good already, but we need to get to that next level. And then as we continue to grow our partner pipeline and develop more of these different pest developments, we'll begin to scale. And we have the ability to do so now. We are fundraising for our Series A, which will help us get to this commercial launch and then get to a certain level of scale. And after that, we'll need to do most likely a Series B to do the really big scale-up. Like, you know, Neal Bloom, in this, in this industry, scaling is expensive, but it pays off in the long run. So you have to, you know, manage, manage that as well. And so we have a really good plan going forward. So as I mentioned, unlocking that and then developing additional partnerships, getting these out into the world for different clinical studies, clinical trials, developing different tests, going through the regulatory process. Look, nothing in this world is easy. We know that there's a lot of hard work to come, but we're really excited about the technology. It's worth waking up every day, coming into work, working hard because we know this is going to save lives. It's going to change lives. It's going to improve lives. And on the business side, we're going to save the healthcare system a ton of money, time, effort, which will then benefit everybody as well.

Um, 100%. Yeah, well, we were excited to participate last time, last round, and we're excited to participate in this round as well.

Well, we're very grateful for you and your partnership, and, uh, not just the capital but the thought leadership, the network, the expertise. Uh, we very much appreciate that.

Of course. No, well, you guys are doing the hard work. The least we can do is just try to remove some barriers so you guys can keep running through walls. Um, but the one thing we're going to have to obviously add to, and I'll take on the development work on this, is a, uh, is a taco, uh, diagnostic, uh, so that when you are in person, you're saying, is this the best taco I could possibly have for my body? You know, you need the right taco for the right person. Which is why we need to know for you, what's the right taco for, for you, Adam?

You know, growing up, uh, right down the road from me was Roberto's Taco Shop down on Carmel Valley Road, right by Torrey Pines State Beach. And, uh, that place will always have a, uh, I would say a soft spot, but I actually like their hard crunchy tacos. So a hard spot, uh, in my— I would say on my heart, but in my stomach.. And so Roberto's to me is the top taco. It's my go-to. And I don't just get the tacos. Their enchiladas are quite good. Their guacamole is amazing. So, and unlike— there are some places out there that put sour cream in the guacamole to stretch it. That is not okay with me. That should be illegal. Down at Roberto's, they do it right. So that's my go-to all the time.

I was there yesterday. I picked up a side of just an 8-ounce side of a steak, and that was lunch, or I think it was more of a brunch, breakfast, and then a bag of their cinnamon chips for the team. Oh yeah, right? Oh yeah, they're deadly. Yep. Uh, so good. And come on, that patio, that view, like, where else is like— it's amazing.

And then right next, right next door, they, they share it with the, the pizza place, so you can you know, go to the bar there and sit outside. And it's— there's nothing better.

Nothing better. I think I was there at 10 in the morning.

And we got the coffee shop right next door too. It's like, yeah, you got one-stop shop.

Yeah, you got, uh, Bird Rock Coffee. Uh, but 10 in the morning, just as many people, you know, having tacos at 10 in the morning there because it's also a great place. I think a launching point. Many people go park there, take a walk, come back. Absolutely. Walk Taco. So absolutely fantastic one. Roberto's obviously— Roberto's legendary and so many spinoffs of the Roberto's. Yeah, but I think— I think that one might be the best real estate for sure in the whole chain.

Can't beat it. I could probably see me there on Tuesday. All right.

Good to know. I'll run and make sure I run into you there. But yeah, this is great to spend time with you as always. Now that we're semi-neighbors on the same road, though, across underneath the freeway here, we'll have to have you over. But congrats on what you guys are doing. Thank you. And keep doing it because, yeah, it's going to change a lot of lives.

As I said, I appreciate you, Neal, and your whole team. And I have to give a shout out to my team. Okay. I'm the one here getting to talk to you and getting to, you know, tell our story. But it's not just my story. It's our whole team story. Right now, as we speak, there are folks in the lab working hard. Making the magic happen, getting the science working, and doing that hard work. So again, I get to be the one here, but I know I stand on the shoulders of our team who are really, really the ones who we should be thankful for. And another thing, if I could add, you know, to all the folks listening, we're all busy, we all got stuff going on, but if you can get involved in the community in some way, I really encourage that, even a small gesture. My wife and I, even though we have 3 young kids, running this business, doing a bunch of other important things, you know, we still make time to give back. And whether that's the food bank, my wife's on the board of the Salk Institute, the arts and culture here in San Diego, you know, the Symphony, La Jolla Playhouse, You name it, there's a lot that can go on. Obviously, we all know housing and homelessness is a big problem. And, and if we all just do a little bit more to give back to our community, we can make a huge, huge difference. So I would encourage all the listeners to find some way to do that. And if you want to reach out to me, I have several different resources to be able to share. Which I could share with you, Neal. But yeah, I think that's an important thing to point out.

No, I think we should do a follow-up pod there because, you know, there's a lot to be said for what your family has shown in taking an active leadership, but even more for you while you're a busy company exec and young family and doing the leadership in the community now. Um, you and I are on a few of these boards, you know, the Symphony, a few others. We're, we're the youngest by decades. And, uh, I get it. People are busy. People are focused on building companies. I get it. But, you know, some, like the things, the richness that we're getting from network and just seeing the fruits of our labor now, as opposed to in retirement, which is when most people think about this. Is really fulfilling. Uh, it's really enriching. I would love for there to be more our age on some of these boards, but I agree. But it's just— no, thanks for doing that and being, being visible about it. It could be very easy to also just write the check, which some do, but I think showing up and doing it, um, is important that people see it in our community.

Yeah, and thank you for saying that. I don't do it for the praise, you know. Um, my, my grandmother, who passed away a couple years ago now, but I'm the oldest grandchild, and she told me that, Adam, you're a role model whether you like it or not. And that was in reference to me, to my, to my siblings and, and cousins. But really, being the family that we are, you know, we have to, to be out there and, and be those role models and, and show people what what they can, how they can be, uh, involved in the community. And so, you know, it's not always about the capital, it's not always about writing the check, but there's people out there with expertise in areas that these nonprofits in other areas could really benefit from. And it doesn't take a ton of your time or a network that you have or, uh, you know, uh, access to something that could help change, or a thought or an idea. And so I just encourage folks, you know, I know we're all busy. I know that there's a lot going on. We got families, we got businesses, we got jobs, but where can we give back? And like you said, you're going to get more out of it than you give. And I think it's really important.

Agreed. All right. We will do a future podcast on this, the power of giving while also leading. But Adam and the Exome team, thank you so much. Appreciate it. And we'll see you soon.

Okay, thank you so much, Neal Bloom, and we'll talk again.

Cheers.

We have beer and coffee, Makoto and yoga, posse fold the body, origami. We be surfing Coronado, eating tacos El Gordo, the taco stand in Puesto, lucha libre and sombrero. Gotta shout out Tecostecos by the ocean, watch the sunset, La Jolla shows entrepreneurs trying to get funded when San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer. Oceanside, Tijuana, SD, Be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach. Tech leaders who believe stars are within reach. We interviewing founders who be shooting for the moon. #SDTechos with your host Neal Bloom. 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. Startups get the party started! You want tech 'n tacos? Tacos n' tech— you know we got it ay! Startups get the party start ups... Get the party stahrted! Huh?! Startups get the party staht-ups! Startups get the party stahrt-ed! Ha ha! Startups get the paaarty startups geet tha paar-ty staart-ed! You want tech n tacos? Tacos n' tech—you knooowwwee gottt iiit hey!!