Taking New Ideas to Market | Pete O'Heeron | 521

Peter Winick, PhD.

How do you build momentum for an idea within the scientific community? The science should speak for itself, but what happens when the pace of new studies on the topic is so slow that very few people are noticing? In this case, if you're going to shift the conversation, you need to be proactive., and you may even need a bit of luck to stumble on the early idea and recognize it for what it could be. So today I speak to Pete O'Hearn. He's the CEO and founder of Fibrobiologix, and he's going to share with us an idea that was in a sleepy backwater of research, has now accelerated to active discussion, and he'll share what he's done to accelerate the conversation. I'm Bill Sherman, and you're listening to Leveraging Thought Leadership. Ready? Let's begin. Welcome to the show, Pete.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

So this I'm excited about because you're facing and have faced a challenge that I think a lot of people in thought leadership do face, which is how do you get people to think about a new idea that hasn't been top of mind, that may not have been on their radar at all. So where I want to begin is you're working in the space with fibroblasts, and you gave me some data, what the research around fibroblasts was 8 years ago versus what it is today. Let's start there to ground the conversation, and then I want to talk about how that happened.

So About 8 years ago, you, you might see 1 or 2 peer-reviewed papers on fibroblasts every 6 months. Now we're seeing 1 or 2 a day. And I think that speaks to the dramatic increase in the research around fibroblasts and, and the scientists worldwide discovering the therapeutic capacity that it has.

And with that, that volume, Because that goes from a trickle to, well, closer to a flood. If you're seeing that volume a day, it's hard for anybody to keep up with all of those papers, right? So in your perception, over that course of about 8 years or so, what drove that transformation? How did you go from silence to active conversation?

That is a great question. I think the Japanese were doing some work in, uh, fibroblasts, and they started— they presented at the World Stem Cell Conference a few years ago exclusively on fibroblasts. I think that helped pick that up. Then you had universities, University of Toronto, Ohio State University, where they were just independently working in the fibroblast field and developing research in that area. And when they would publish their papers, we would call them and say, you know, we, we have, we, we have the intellectual property surrounding that, but more importantly, we're interested in the research that you're doing. So I think that one, anytime you publish a paper and you start to explore the therapeutic capabilities of a cell that people had thought, you know, was relegated to the scrap heap of connective tissue, as they said before, it excites everyone and they say, wow, why wasn't I looking at fibroblasts and what can fibroblasts do? So I think that just every bit of published research just creates even more incentive to do more research. So it just kind of— it snowballs.

So let's take a pause here because I'm sure there are a couple of people in the audience, maybe more, who are going, what is a fibroblast and why was it on the scrap heap? Right. So can you give a little bit of an explanation of what we're talking about?

So fibroblasts are the most common cell in the human body, and while everybody's heard of stem cells, very few people have heard of fibroblasts. But if you're looking for a cell to regenerate tissue and regrow organs, treat chronic disease, there's a stem cell which everybody's heard about, and there's a fibroblast which not many people have heard about. The irony is that the fibroblasts appears to be a better cell source than stem cells, certainly in greater quantity, outnumber stem cells 5,000 to 1 in the human body. But the irony of all ironies is the entire stem cell revolution began in 2012 when Dr. Yamanaka from Japan created the first induced pluripotent stem cell. That is, he created a stem cell from another type of cell. Well, guess what cell he used? It was a fibroblast. And so that, with the running gag was that they thought it was relegated to the evolutionary scrap heap of connective tissue. I like to think, well, if you used it to create a stem cell, why weren't you intrigued by that cell itself? You know, why didn't you go back to fibroblasts and say, well, that's an interesting cell? But it opened it up for us to, you know, explore and really push the boundaries of the science. So I like to say that Fibroblasts evolved as the most common cell in the human body, and it evolved that way because it's, it's probably involved in every biologic process in the human body.

So how did you get into the world of fibroblasts? And we'll get into the technology piece of this in a moment, but what is your vector into this and how did you become passionate about them?

So I kind of work with doctors to take ideas. They're all natural inventors and they have the, usually the capacity to take an idea and prototype it and, and maybe even get approval and maybe even patent it. And then they kind of just stop on the rollout. So we found a niche a number of years ago where we could go in and help those guys get it to commercialization. And we had a set of surgical instruments that we told every venture capitalist in the country that we have the best instrument system in the world. And they said, no, you didn't. And well, 25 patents later, we returned 950% to those shareholders, and we thank those VCs for their guidance. And they all came back and said, we're checkwriters, whatever you guys do. And I said, you know, we just deal with individual surgeons. We like those angel investors. And, and one of the VCs came back and said, hey, my brother's a French neurosurgeon, his wife's a French dermatologist, and they have this idea that you could take a dermal fibroblast and in a mechanically stressed, low oxygen environment, it would differentiate into a chondrocyte, um, cartilage type cell. And you could regrow the disc because the vertebrae above and below created that.

And you're talking about a spinal disc here, regrowing a spinal disc, right?

Right. Right. And so we loved it because everything we've worked on in the past were kind of improved technologies. And this one was, you know, if it worked, it was a game changer. So we brought it back to Rice University here in Houston, and Dr. Tony Mikos there is the world leader in research to turn one cell into another type of cell. And he said, Dr. Mikos said, "I don't know if it'll work, but if it works, I think you guys really have a game changer." And it worked. And then we just continued to explore the science and challenge our scientists to push beyond just the spine and what other areas. And it's been a really an explosion of discovery for what these cells can do.

So this speaks to something that I think is absolutely true across science, but is also one of the hurdles and challenges, right? Because you listed a number of specialists that needed to be involved, not only to have that idea, but if to see the idea was possible, right? And so the two who came to you who are connected to the VC, they were going, hey, I think this is possible, but I don't know how to grow this into that. Right?

Right.

And so the idea, and I think from an entrepreneurship perspective as well as then also just an idea into execution and turning a possibility into a practicality, has to go through so many different connections before it can be tested, let alone validated as a product.

You know, it's a, it's an excellent point. A good friend of mine calls, uh, people that can conceive of the idea and then execute the idea a 1-percenter, because a lot of people can come up with the idea, but to take that and actually execute on that, that's the real challenge. Because, you know, we all have great ideas on how everything that we touch in daily life can be improved upon, but how many people actually stop design it, prototype it, invent it, and commercialize it. Very, very few people. So I think that's, that's the challenge.

Well, and I think in our last conversation you talked about the difference between hardware and biologic process and what that means in terms of going forward from a perspective of medicine. I would love you to talk about that.

In the, in the spine space, the traditional method is hardware. You know, they either fuse the spine or they put in a disc replacement in the spine. And that really is not a biologic solution. It's a mechanical solution. And that in the spine space actually creates a problem above and below that disc area. So it creates a cascading effect. So it moves the problem from that disc to another adjacent disc. So that's not a good solution. The other area that people are most familiar with in medicine is that Big Pharma. And I don't mean to criticize my brethren in Big Pharma because I use their products this morning and we'll use them again tomorrow morning. But in the 60+ years we've had Big Pharma, nobody can show me one example of a cure. For chronic disease. And when you think about it, I don't think we will ever see a cure for a chronic disease come from a man-made chemical compound. It's almost, to me, I think about the height of human arrogance to think that we can take a, a divine biologic process and create a man-made chemical compound to cure that process. You can have some that can forestall it, but to, to cure it is really not ever going to happen with chemical compounds. Cures for chronic disease and defects in the biologic process are going to come through cell therapy, immune therapy, and gene therapy. It's just that simple. It's not going to come from anywhere else. It's not going to come from some magic man-made chemical compound. It just won't happen. We've tried it for 60 years and we haven't done it.

Well, and I think that's one of the underlying ideas, that is not only within the field, but also driving your organization, the message that you're trying to get out of, how do you teach the body to cure itself?

That's a line that I've used a lot. When I first started saying it, I think people thought, you know, that was kind of granola or it was kind of hippie. But just think about it. What is health? It's your body curing itself all day long. And you have cancer in your body, you have viruses in your body, you have bacteria, your body's fixing all of that all day long. And that's what gives you good health. It's when the body can't overcome that that you get a cold or you get flu or you get a chronic condition. So to say we're asking the body to cure itself, we're just asking it to do what it's— what it did yesterday. Why today did it fail in that process? Or why yesterday was your immune system alerted to that malignant cell? And then today somehow that cell mutated and the immune system didn't see that malignancy, didn't understand it, didn't recognize that malignancy that becomes a, you know, tumor. So, uh, the having the body cure itself shouldn't be that crazy of a thought because it's what's happening every day.

Well, and if I go running, for example, like I will this afternoon, I'm going to put stress and strain not only on my cardiovascular system, but on my joints and in my knees. And I'm going to be making micro tears in those muscles. But that's what's actually— the healing is going to make my body stronger, right? And so by challenging the body to heal, we use it all the time to get healthier. So I love how on the surface it sounds paradoxical, but the deeper you dig into this, it's like, oh yeah, the body is doing this all the time.

It is. Your immune system's doing it all the time. And we've— we have a new area that we're looking, uh, into. And, and I presented at a conference last week, and I said, if you hear 1,000 companies present, you won't hear the term thymic involution from any of them except us. And the thymus gland, you know, the T-cells are, uh, everyone's heard of those, and those are thymic cells. The thymus gland, as you get into your 60s and 70s, begins to shut down. It's the teaching center for the immune system. It's what tells the cells which are good cells and which are bad cells. And when you get in your 60s and 70s, that thymus starts shutting down. Eventually it shuts down altogether. It's called thymic involution. Well, we're working where we're taking fibroblasts, or we're going to rejuvenate the thymus. You can potentially add 10 to 15 years to human life because, statistically speaking, A lot more people die of cancer in their 70s than they do in their 40s. What's different? It's the thymus gland. The thymus gland starts to shut down. So if we can go in there, instead of creating some exotic plant-derived cocktail that's going to extend our telomeres and let us live longer, possibly, I can't think of anything more direct than the thymus. To assist us in living longer because it's the, it's the teaching part of the immune system. So you may have a vibrant immune system, but it's just not being taught what to do because the thymus gland shuts down, and spleen a little bit, uh, to a lesser extent, but mostly it's the thymus gland. So you could talk to another 1,000 companies and you wouldn't find another one working in thymic involution.

Well, and here's what I love on a broader level. There are what-if questions that you and the organization are asking. And then it's digging deeper and sort of sometimes turning ideas on a 45-degree angle, right? And saying, if we look at it this way, how does the world change? And that is one of the things that I think is core to thought leadership. You have to be willing to ask a question that, as you said, 1,000 other companies aren't asking. And be willing to turn left when everybody else turned right. Now, it's risky that way, but with wisdom comes opportunity, right? And so there's a tension and a balance there. If you're enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a 5-star review at ratethispodcast.com. .com/LTL and share it with your friends. We're available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps, as well as thoughtleadershipleverage.com/podcast. So how do you analyze and choose when to turn left rather than right? What criteria are you using?

Well, we let the science drive us. We, you know, when we kind of developed the, the understanding of the importance of fibroblasts in the entire body as opposed to just in the spinal disc space, it really broadens you up for discovery in, in every area. So we want to push the boundaries of where fibroblasts can go, but there's really no no limit to what impact fibroblasts can have because it's such a prevalent cell in the human body. So I, I think we're just beginning to, you know, really touch the surface of where, of where these fibroblasts can go and the, and the, where the research will take us. And our research has to be impeccable. Our science has to be impeccable because we're in an area where other people aren't, uh, haven't gone before. And like I tell our scientists, And I tell my chief scientific officer, if you present our technology to 100 people and all 100 people say, I don't like it, that doesn't change the science. It just means they said they didn't like it. The science, it's like the gold miner who found a deposit of gold at the bottom of a waterfall and he went back and everyone said, where is it? We should go get it. It's right where I left it. It's not going anywhere. And that's what this science is like. If our science is great, it doesn't matter any pushback we get from the community because they're just not familiar with it. It doesn't change our science.

Well, and that makes me think, uh, the example you, you gave makes me think of the story, whether it's actual or not, but it's often attributed to Galileo. He gets put in front of the Catholic Church and having supported the argument—not originated it, but supported the argument—that the Earth goes around the Sun. And they showed him the tools of torture for the Inquisition and that, and they put him on trial, and they're trying to peer pressure him to go, "No, no, no, I was wrong." And the legend says—and I don't think we will ever know truth or not—that after the trial, walking out of the court, he mumbles to himself, And yet the Earth still moves, right? We're not the center of the universe. And so just like you saying the science can't be challenged, you know, it can be tested and refined and that, but what is true is true.

I always, I tell my CSO, I introduced him at a conference last week as the world's foremost expert on fibroblasts. And he is. And so anytime I talk to people and they say, well, let me go ask a, you know, a couple of friends of mine in the industry, I always tell them, that's fine, but you're going to be asking a lesser authority than our own chief scientific officer. There's just not that many working in that space. And so, you know, he has the advantage of being able to see and guide all the, all the science. And that has, that's, I think, one of the hallmarks, or should be a hallmark of our success, is that the We're so focused on credible science.

So let's push it there. How do you persuade, sway, even get people to be aware? Because I think there's a big education piece and you're talking about going to conferences and talking. You've talked about publishing, but how do you get these ideas into conversation from that point where 100 people say no to 25 say, well, maybe, you know, to that whole transformation process. What's that journey been like?

You know what, I think it's the best example of that would be our scientific advisory board. All of those members are world leaders in stem cells. So to call them without having a previous relationship with them and say, we'd love for you to be a part of our Scientific Advisory Board for fibroblasts, the, the, you know, there's always a hesitation. Now, what do you guys—

so was the first question of the, hey, did you not read my bio? Do you realize this isn't my expertise?

Or how did they respond? 30 years of international respect and stem cells over to you guys for fibroblasts? Yeah, I mean, it's, it is, it's quite the challenge. I often think about what they thought the first time we spoke on the phone about it. And I think what happens is they go do their research and they come back and say, well, this is a very interesting area. And if, you know, these scientists that we work with are at such a high level that they all want to be tip of the spear on the new emerging technologies that are coming out. So if you take a look at our scientific advisory board, these are world leaders in stem cells, really esteemed scientists. We even have a PhD microbiologist astronaut on there, first person to sequence DNA in space. And she's a fantastic microbiologist and fascinated with fibroblasts. So, so I think that to get people excited about it, you have to have the initial conversation, the initial, initial hesitation, and then after the research they say, wow, this is— looks like this could really be something.

So did you let the science do the talking, or how did the persuasion go? To recruit that advisor?

Well, I mean, you have to— I think that there's the initial conversation where you have to give them the points that would make them interested in the company. And then it's all about the science. I mean, you've got to get through that initial conversation to get them excited. But then these guys are at such a level that the science has to sell itself.

To clear that first hurdle of, okay, I'm not talking to a crazy person. Great. Now let me dig in.

Yeah, because that first hurdle, they think they're talking to a crazy person. That's the initial reaction.

So I want to ask you a question. Were you always a what-if guy looking for possibilities, or how did you get into this mindset of looking in the places that other people haven't looked?

I'm always a what-if guy. My CSO every year, every December, buys me a new sell textbook about sales. I just, I read everything. And the first time he did that, we came out and filed some intellectual property. He said, I told my wife if I bought Pete that book, we'd come out with a few patents, and we did. So I am, I wish that my brain wasn't occupied by that 24/7, but it is. And I'm just— I'm fascinated by science, fascinated by biology and medicine. It's where my family was. All of my family was in that. My wife was a nurse. I grew up around surgeons. So it's just kind of the place I always, always wanted to be. So I, I am fascinated by that. And I'm a natural ticket counter. This last weekend we were at an event and I looked at the— how much the tickets cost And I looked at how many people were there and immediately determined gross revenue. Or I look back 15 places in line and I do the processing time for the 5 guys in front of me. What the— at the front of the line, how much processing time does it take? I can't help it. At grocery stores, it's just I have to do the processing time and then I have to figure, okay, if I'm 15th in line, what point am I going to be up there based on the average processing time or checkout time for all those people? So It's just a— it's just something I've always, always been interested in.

So what I love here is the combination of the what-if and the process, because those two things are necessary. And I hope that listeners here can hear the passion in your voice when you talk about these projects and the fibroblasts and that, because to me, that's one of the big tells of someone who is not just, you know, casually interested or advocating, but they truly eat, live, and sleep an idea and want to get it out to the world.

I literally just told one of our significant shareholders this morning, I wish I could go an hour without fibroblasts in my brain without thinking about them at all times, but I can't. You know, I can't, you know, I usually try to get a walk in in the morning and I can't tell you how many times I've stopped on a park bench and written a patent during that walk and never finished the walk. So it's just, it's always a forefront.

I see you wearing the t-shirt in the park that says, ask me about fibroblasts. Yes, that's right.

That's a good, yep. That would be me for sure.

Or the kids or the grandkids go, dad, grandpa, not again. You know, just play with me.

That's right. That's right, that's right. I, I love, I love science. I love biology, you know. I enjoy when, I enjoy when someone gives me a textbook for a Christmas present.

I can't, I can't wait to read a textbook that's not in your field that you were trained in.

That's right, especially that, especially that. That's what makes me interested because it's not an area— I mean, I have a minor in biology, but not at the level these guys are. Sometimes when I'm out presenting and someone asks me a very technical question, I tell them they caught me out in the open without my PhD. I'll have to call him. So, you know. Right, right.

So as we begin to wrap up, I want to ask you a question. Many of the folks who are practicing thought leadership now are on that journey of saying, I've got an idea. How do I persuade others? What I want to ask you is, what advice would you give your younger self in this journey, knowing that there are people who are going, wow, I wish I could have, or I could have the same results that you're having?

Wow. Well, first of all, I'd tell my younger self, not everything you do is live or die. That is the first thing. And two, you know, this too shall pass. You know, I, when I was younger, everything I did during the day, I had to get it done. Tomorrow may never come. I just had such a heightened sense of urgency. And I see now that it probably didn't need that. I probably still have a lot of that in me, but if I was to, I don't know if I'd change anything because it's what ended up here, but if I was to tell a new student graduating college and he wanted to pursue this path, I would just say, If you haven't had a natural curiosity your whole life, this is probably not the pathway for you. Like, one of my children said they wanted to be— they thought maybe one day they wanted to be a director, a movie director. And I said, you know, those movie directors all were shooting movies in their backyard at 5 and 6 years old. It was just in them. And so, you know, this demands a high level of curiosity. If you are someone who scrolls through and just deletes your emails without reading through and seeing what's going on in your industry, then it's probably not the pathway for you because you have to have a— you just have to have a high sense of curiosity.

Well, and that goes back to, you know, like you said, your chief science officer giving you textbooks every Christmas and you diving through them. And I'm imagining you sort of highlighting and taking notes as you go through and ripping it out apart. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

And calling him. What is this? Hey, did you know that this could happen? Hey, this microglia thing in the brain, you know, we could impact that with fibroblasts. No, I don't think— well, go look it up. I think it could have a big impact with fibroblasts. So that's the conversations we have at all times. And I'm pretty honest with them when we hire them. I hope that's okay with you because I don't know how to change it. So you're You're liable to be a part of my thought process at any day, any time, day or night.

So, Pete, I want to thank you for joining us today and thank you for a great conversation about how to really shift thinking and explore things that, as you said, had been left on the scrap heap. Right. If somebody wants to learn more about fibroblasts, where should they go to look? How do they learn more about what you've been talking about today? They can go to our website.

We've designed it so that you can go through and read the current peer-reviewed papers on there. We have a little video on there that talks about fibroblasts. It's, uh, www.fibrobiologics.com, and you can spend time, you can see our patents, you can, uh, read about what's going on with fibroblasts.— you can send us a message if you have a question.

Fantastic. Thank you, Pete. Thank you. If you're interested in organizational thought leadership, then I invite you to subscribe to the OrgTL newsletter. Each month, we talk about the people who create, curate, and deploy thought leadership on behalf of their organizations. Go to the website orgtl.com and choose "Join Our Newsletter." I'll leave a link to the website as well as my LinkedIn profile in the show notes. Thanks for listening, and I look forward to hearing what you thought of the show.