Billion-Dollar Founder: One Gene Edit Could Replace A Lifetime Of Pills!

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_00] DNA is the blueprint for life and so for the first time in history we have a technology that can be programmed to target any region of interest within genomes, whether it's humans or animals, plants and so on. The vision is that you walk into an infusion clinic, you get your gene editing therapy, you walk out, you no longer have to take a therapy for the rest of your life to manage this disease. We call it genome surgery, right? You're precisely editing that one region within the genome. Every day that we don't have something moving forward is somebody who is a day later from getting a cure that they desperately need.

[00:00:35] [SPEAKER_01] This is Inspiring Women, I'm Laurie McGraw and today I'm speaking with Janice Chen, Dr. Janice Chen. She is the co-founder, the chief scientific officer and president of research at Mammoth Biosciences, a biotechnology working on CRISPR technology. We're going to learn all about what that is and what the next generation platform of what that looks like. Janice, thank you for being on Inspiring Women. Thank you, Laurie, for having me. Well, let's dive in.

[00:01:04] [SPEAKER_01] I mean, you are a scientist. You are a doctor, a doctorate. You founded a company, a pretty important company that went from zero to mega 60 in a hot second. And you started at a very young age, Janice. Can you just tell us a little bit about Mammoth, what you do? What is CRISPR technology? Let's just get grounded in the science.

[00:01:29] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. So I started Mammoth in 2018 with my co-founders, Jennifer Doudna, Lucas Harrington and Trevor Martin. And we all saw the incredible potential of CRISPR gene editing and the applications that it would unlock in research, medicine and health care.

[00:01:47] [SPEAKER_00] And the story starts before Mammoth. It starts during my time in Jennifer Doudna's lab as a PhD student, where I was really lucky to be at the forefront of this really exciting technology platform. As we all know, the discovery of Cas9 back in 2012 really changed the way and transformed the way we thought about how we can use these molecules to interrogate any sequence in the DNA.

[00:02:16] [SPEAKER_00] And that discovery ultimately led to Jennifer Doudna.

[00:02:21] [SPEAKER_01] What is that discovery? What's Cas9? You have to go a little bit more basic for me.

[00:02:27] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, of course. The discovery was that there were these CRISPR enzymes that were discovered from bacteria, which really worked fundamentally as an adaptive immune system. But this Jennifer and Emmanuel showed that you could actually reprogram what's called this guide RNA molecule that binds to this Cas protein to target any DNA sequence.

[00:02:50] [SPEAKER_00] So it was very fundamental, very basic for those of us that have been in the molecular biology or genetic engineering world. We all knew how challenging it was to have something programmable to target any particular area of a DNA sequence. And now something so elegant, meaning a CRISPR protein that could be reprogrammed by this guide RNA molecule to really attack anywhere that we were interested in the genome. So that was the fundamental discovery.

[00:03:18] [SPEAKER_00] Of course, a lot has changed and a lot of law has been built on that initial finding where we now realize that these molecules can actually be delivered into human cells, you know, into animal cells, the plant cells to really do all kinds of genetic engineering. And ultimately, our goal like Mammoth is to build human therapeutics. So it really touches on all aspects of research. Right. At the most basic level, DNA is the blueprint for life.

[00:03:46] [SPEAKER_00] And so for the first time in history, we have a technology that can be programmed to target any region of interest within genomes, whether it's humans or animals, plants and so on.

[00:03:57] [SPEAKER_01] So huge discovery. And you immediately saw like the great opportunity that came with that. But bring us to before that, Janice, like when like like how did this become sort of like your path and your sort of scientific pursuit, you know, in the beginning? What was exciting to you before the discovery happened that you decided to pursue this level of science?

[00:04:21] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, I've always been very passionate about science. You know, ever since I was a young child, I think a lot of that influence came from my dad, who was also a Ph.D. student at the University of Utah at the time. So I grew up in Salt Lake City and was really surrounded just by his passion for science and experiencing a molecular biology lab at a young age and being able to, you know, play with clear liquids and, you know, all of the consumables that you might see in a lab.

[00:04:48] [SPEAKER_00] I've learned how to run a gel for the first time, right, in elementary school. So I was exposed to a lot of these, you know, basic tools of molecular biology. And as I, you know, was figuring out my own path in college, I was really fortunate to join a course called Build a Genome that was led by Jeff Bucca at the time. And, you know, he had an incredible vision of building yeast or eukaryotic genome from scratch, right?

[00:05:14] [SPEAKER_00] The idea that we can actually figure out the building blocks of a living organism and actually build it from the ground up. That, you know, of course, took many years and many, many students and postdocs and grad students and so on. But I think that really instilled the possibility in my mind that biology can be engineered, right? If you suddenly think about something that is so complex, like a biological system, and that you can break it down into building blocks,

[00:05:39] [SPEAKER_00] I think that really unlocks the possibilities for how one might probe, you know, biology, how one might develop better therapeutics, you know, how one might think about new applications that really tie to, you know, these simple simplified components of this complex biological system. So that has been a theme, I would say, throughout my scientific career. And so after undergrad, I was lucky enough to join Pam Silver's lab at Harvard Medical School.

[00:06:08] [SPEAKER_00] And she, you know, is a leader in synthetic biology. So I was then exposed to just some really incredible trainees and grad students and postdocs who were tackling all kinds of really creative ways to, again, engineer biology. So one of the products I was working on was engineering these really obscure microbes to generate biofuels, right? So that was just an example of how you could reprogram a bacterial system to do something that it doesn't normally do in nature.

[00:06:36] [SPEAKER_00] At the time, we were using some very old school genetic engineering tools, you know, very laborious, took a long time, you know, poor hit rate to getting what you wanted. And that was when we were first starting to hear about CRISPR, right? This was in 2014 when I was, this was before I started my PhD. And there were some grad students in the lab that were trying to design, you know, mammalian cells to make steroids, right? And so thinking about these little mini biomanufacturing components.

[00:07:05] [SPEAKER_00] And so, you know, they were first looking at using CRISPR to do this genetic engineering for the first time. And so I think that was really like when the first conversation started to enter my world. Of course, other, you know, labs were still starting to tinker with it. But that was when I realized that I wanted to understand the fundamental mechanisms of these breakthrough technologies. Because having worked a little bit and dabbled a little bit on the application side,

[00:07:31] [SPEAKER_00] it was clear to me that understanding the foundational, you know, mechanistic aspects of these systems really would allow us to reimagine what they could be used for and how to make them even more transformative. So that's when I decided to apply for graduate school. I was really fortunate to get invited to interview at Berkeley. And actually, as soon as I got that interview, I just canceled the rest of my grad school interviews and accepted my invitation to join Berkeley.

[00:08:01] [SPEAKER_01] Well, it also sounds, I mean, I tell you what, like 100 million years ago, I worked in a lab at Children's Hospital in Boston. So they're doing, you know, sort of like, you know, ophthalmology research. And what I remember of that time is just like, wow, like the pace of science and research, it's slow. It's methodical. It's slow. There's these incremental types of advancements.

[00:08:27] [SPEAKER_01] What you're describing is sounds completely different. Sounds like you are very, very interested in science that appealed to you that, you know, because of your father and all of that. But then you entered the scene with your PhD and the labs that you are participating in at some of the most explosive growth opportunities, synthetic biology, editing genes, CRISPR technology.

[00:08:53] [SPEAKER_01] And you saw that with the amazing potential that right from the immediate, you understood the potential of what that can be. Can you talk about the pace of science that's happening? And is that what Mammoth is doing in terms of just like accelerating, working at the level of pace of the opportunity that this science affords us?

[00:09:16] [SPEAKER_00] Exactly. And, you know, I think you described it well in the sense that I was really lucky to be at the forefront, right, what I call frontier technologies in biology, in healthcare. And being, you know, being at that stage really showed me how creative one could be with science, right, and how much we have this incredible opportunity to experiment with these breakthrough

[00:09:46] [SPEAKER_00] opportunities. And at Mammoth, you know, we're also living through really unprecedented times, right? Now there's a convergence of all kinds of technology platforms, you know, well beyond our imagination, right, with frontier AI and gene editing and the ability to accelerate the development of potential cures. I mean, these are new concepts that even as a society, we're still trying to figure out how it all comes together. So I would say, you know, at Mammoth, when we started this was eight years ago, this was before, you know, AI was a part of, you know, every conversation we have.

[00:10:16] [SPEAKER_00] This was before, you know, we understood what it, you know, the world understood what it meant to develop a cure, right? Like we are very, our system is built around chronic therapies, but this for the first time we're talking about a one-time potential cure. And what does that mean? How does that get delivered to patients? How do we build a business around it, right? So all of these different aspects, we sort of had to figure out along the way. And, you know, of course, we're doing it on our own. There's other companies that have also been charting new territories.

[00:10:43] [SPEAKER_00] But at the end of the day, I do think that we have this incredible opportunity to think about how we want to build the future and what does that look like, understanding that there isn't really a playbook. And I think that's one of the areas that as an entrepreneur really excites me beyond just the science. It's really how do you build the system, right? The sort of systems engineering problem at the end of the day.

[00:11:01] [SPEAKER_01] Well, maybe let's go back a little bit. So you're doing your PhD, you're inventing things, you co-invented Detector. What is Detector? With CRISPR and gene editing, what did you invent during that time?

[00:11:16] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, so there are several inventions in the lab. A detector is one that I'm very proud of. And this is using CRISPR to not edit genes, but actually to detect, you know, DNA for use in diagnostics and biosurveillance. And this was really, again, motivated. My whole theme in science is really just side to the curiosity, right? It wasn't really like I had a particular goal in mind. It was really just that curiosity of like... Pursuit, pursuit, pursuit. Exactly. The pursuit of understanding, right?

[00:11:45] [SPEAKER_00] And we knew the CRISPR universe and diversity of CRISPR systems was incredibly vast, right? These are coming from bacteria and archaea and even phages that have really persisted over billions of years in evolutionary history. And so this, you know, really, this evolutionary pressure that's happened over, you know, this course of time has led to, again, just an explosion of incredibly diverse molecules.

[00:12:14] [SPEAKER_00] And so we had always came from it from first principles saying, look, the field got so lucky in discovering Cas9 and how well it works as a gene editor. There certainly must be untapped universe of other CRISPR enzymes that exist in nature. How can we understand how they work and then harness them for new applications? So again, that was the thesis that was underlying a lot of the work that we're doing. And detector was sort of the example of what happened when we started with, hey, we observed

[00:12:41] [SPEAKER_00] this really interesting activity from a certain class of CRISPR enzymes that were distinct from Cas9. And then we realized it actually could be reprogrammed for detecting DNA and providing a signal to say, hey, there's a presence of the sequence is in a reaction. And so that opened up a new field of CRISPR diagnostics. And again, you know, this also lined up with the, you know, COVID-19 pandemic. And so we were also just incredibly excited about the opportunity to push forward a new

[00:13:08] [SPEAKER_00] diagnostics platform to address some really significant unmet need at the time. And so, yeah, detector is a new method.

[00:13:15] [SPEAKER_01] So you invented that. And again, amazing. You're doing your PhD. And then most people who are in the pursuit of science and energized by these new discoveries, they do postdocs. They go on and be faculty researchers and those kinds of things. You started a company. You started Mammoth. So how did that come about? And then tell us what Mammoth does today.

[00:13:43] [SPEAKER_00] It's a great question. I, again, didn't come into grad school with the idea that I was going to start a company. If anything, I probably had the default plan, which is what you just mentioned, right? Finishing your PhD, continuing to explore postdoc, potentially looking at academic roles. I think what really changed for me, actually a couple of things. One is that Berkeley, I think, has done an incredible job of giving graduate students

[00:14:08] [SPEAKER_00] access to other former graduates who have done incredible things and all sorts of careers, right? Beyond academia. In fact, I think that was the name of the course. And I think a lot of what allowed me to... The name of the course is Beyond Academia? I think it was either called Beyond Academia or there was a specific conference called Beyond Academia, but that was the theme, right? It was what options, what career options are out there.

[00:14:33] [SPEAKER_00] Actually, when I was in grad school, it wasn't typical that one would start a company. But I think also being in the Bay Area and also other examples of students in Jennifer's labs or in their own companies, I think one thing that many people don't realize is a lot of trying something happens because you saw somebody else do it. It's just that simple, right? I saw somebody else do it and I realized that I had something that was just incredibly exciting from a technological standpoint.

[00:15:02] [SPEAKER_00] I felt that there was really no one better that understood this technology as well as we do. And so what is there to lose? I think there's that piece, right? There's nothing to lose. We were clearly the best people in the world that could bring this forward. And so we really just took the leap of faith to build a company around it because we felt that was the best way to reach the potential of these technologies and their impact to the world.

[00:15:27] [SPEAKER_00] So I think it really came from just that fundamental realization that it was an incredible opportunity and that there was just nothing to lose. Well, you were clearly right.

[00:15:41] [SPEAKER_01] You were clearly right. I mean, Mammoth has gone from, again, zero to 60. It was 2021 that you crossed the billion-dollar mark of valuation. You've raised over half a billion dollars of capital for the company. So you certainly understand the science. You understand the pursuit of science. What have you learned about building a company during that time?

[00:16:05] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, so much. I mean, I think that one thing that I think perhaps I certainly underestimated is how much time and capital required to really bring human therapeutics forward in particular, right? As a company, again, building this next generation CRISPR platform that had the ability to enable a number of applications and open up new industries. We started in diagnostics because it was a near-term opportunity. And of course, you know, in the craziness of the pandemic, it was very clear that we

[00:16:34] [SPEAKER_00] had a focused effort there. But all along the way, we were looking at other opportunities in therapeutics and beyond. And it was clear, too, that human therapeutics was a significant unmet need. And the technologies that we had, our ultra-combat CRISPR systems, which we can talk more about, really had the potential to overcome the challenges of delivery that all other CRISPR companies are currently facing.

[00:16:59] [SPEAKER_00] And so I think we all really estimated how much time and effort is really needed because, you know, at the end of the day, your end customer are patients, right? You are talking about ensuring absolute safety and, of course, efficacy in building therapies and navigating the regulatory environment and navigating everything that is involved in making that product takes a lot of time and a lot of capital. And I think that's where biotech is really unique from traditional tech, right?

[00:17:28] [SPEAKER_00] Everyone is in tech. You can ship products, right? You can ship prototypes and products and get user feedback really early on. And biotech, actually, it's the exact opposite because you never want to put anything out there that has any kind of risk and safety. And so that takes a lot of time. And, again, just making sure that you have all the information possible before you can even – and, of course, the regulatory clearances and alignment before you can even start to test your experimental therapy in a patient, right?

[00:17:58] [SPEAKER_00] So it's just a very different –

[00:17:59] [SPEAKER_01] So what are you doing? So what are you doing at Mammoth? So, like, I want to talk about sort of, like, you know, all the different things that you knew to do and then the things you had to learn how to do. But before we even get there, Janice, just, like, what are some of the opportunities? Like, literally, what can be done when you talk about human therapeutics? What does that mean? Give us an example.

[00:18:20] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. So I think, you know, the human genome has been sequenced, right? And that happened, you know, a couple decades ago. And that really opened up our realization that, you know, you could go from specific, you know, genes and basically the connection between genotype to phenotype. And now over, you know, the several decades, we've learned that there are certain mutations in our genome that can cause disease.

[00:18:45] [SPEAKER_00] We don't understand all positive mutations for all diseases out there, but there are some very well understood and some very famous examples, right? So there's a lot of, you know, the genes that can cause disease, right? These are all very well characterized genetic diseases. There's also a number of other examples in human biology where we understand that a certain gene actually can be removed to help give a therapeutic benefit.

[00:19:15] [SPEAKER_00] And so one of the examples is what we are moving forward into the clinic, which is a gene called ApoC3 in patients that have extremely high levels of triglycerides, which can be a risk factor for heart disease. It has now been shown through other, you know, again, through decades of studies that if you knock out an ApoC3 gene, you actually get durable lowering of triglycerides in the blood. And so what we are saying is, okay, well, that is a very clear connection between a gene

[00:19:44] [SPEAKER_00] and a disease and a treatment. And so if we can durably lower and knock out ApoC3 as a one-time gene editing therapy, patients who have no ability to control triglycerides have, you know, the vision is that you walk into an infusion clinic, you get your gene editing therapy, you walk out and you no longer have to take, you know, a therapy for the rest of your life.

[00:20:07] [SPEAKER_01] In one therapeutic sort of like intervention, in one shot, you can potentially know that you are lowering the person's opportunity for heart disease or curing the person's heart disease or both.

[00:20:26] [SPEAKER_00] It's more, I would call it, in this particular example, it's very focused on high triglycerides. The connection to heart disease is not yet proven. Obviously that has to be shown through clinical studies, but in this particular drug that we want to bring forward, the potential is to durably lower triglycerides, which causes acute pancreatitis in patients who are living with this disease.

[00:20:48] [SPEAKER_01] But we're talking, I mean, it could be this dramatic. It could be, I mean, I know there's a lot that you've got to figure out and that's what all the science is, you know, and the studies are going through, but we could be talking about literally one therapy, no more heart disease for someone who might have that.

[00:21:04] [SPEAKER_00] That's the potential. That is the potential, right? Because now we can understand, you know, at the DNA level, what could be preventing that outcome. And we're simply making that edit. Again, we call it genome surgery, right? You're precisely editing that one region within the genome to lead to these potential downstream effects. Like that is the potential. It's a transformative change from our traditional thinking of managing, you know, chronic disease with pills and, you know, lifelong therapies.

[00:21:34] [SPEAKER_01] Amazing. So Explosive Company, again, over just a few short years, you're going in a lot of different directions. You came out of the gate knowing a lot about the science. You learned a lot about the business, fundraising, capital raising. What are other areas of Mammoth that you were just like, boy, I had no idea I needed to think about this? What were those some of those kinds of things?

[00:21:59] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, I mean, everything, everything you can possibly imagine, right? Because when we started, you know, as a grad student, you are so deep on the science, right? I like to say you're a mile deep and an inch wide. And then when you build a company, it's the complete opposite. You have to be a mile wide and you sort of have to become an inch deep. But of course, as a scientist, you know, I really like the details. I like the data. But, you know, building a company and building products, building a movement is a completely

[00:22:26] [SPEAKER_00] different type of process than trying to, you know, focus on one scientific problem. I think at the same time, there are a lot of things that do translate because I do think that people don't realize that entrepreneurship is an example, is a type of experimentation, right? We are trying to do something that nobody else has done before. We don't know. Nobody knows the answer, right? And that's one of the exciting things about science, too, is that, you know, you go into it, you don't know what the answer is. You have hypotheses. You can test it. In a lot of ways, that happens as well with company building, right?

[00:22:55] [SPEAKER_00] We don't know what the right way to do, you know, what is the best way to, you know, set company goals? What is the best way to incentivize your workforce? What is the best way to, you know, pitch an investor to understand, like, what's your vision? What is the best way and the sequencing of how you're going to build a company, right? These are all, you know, everyone has their own prior experience and can bring in really valuable concepts and ideas. You don't have any experience.

[00:23:18] [SPEAKER_01] You don't have prior experience. This is, so how are you making these decisions?

[00:23:23] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Because I think what we realized as first-time founders was that even though people who have the experience are doing it for the first time, whether it's first time as a team, first time as this company, first time as this mission, right? So at the end of the day, I think that's the, like, grant equalizer. It's the first time for all of us, despite all of the, you know, prior experience. And I think when you have that sort of, you know, first principles mindset, then you can start to, again, reimagine and not be shackled. I think that's the other thing too.

[00:23:50] [SPEAKER_00] As a, by doing it first time, you're not shackled by, you know, the prior scars or, you know, it's sort of like for better, for worse, you're looking at this with fresh eyes. And the hope is that you bring in experienced leaders around you and experienced team around you so that you don't have to make the same mistakes. But the reality is that we are all charting a new territory. And so that's the excitement. And I think the, it's just very humbling, right? The whole process.

[00:24:15] [SPEAKER_01] Well, there's some things that are clearly working before we even started, you know, our pod recording. You were talking about how we're an in-office culture. I'm here in the office as a leader. I show up. I like to have the people here. For many companies who have studied this and pre and post pandemic, there's, you know, a lot of decision-making. You're just doing it. That is like, seems to be a great decision. Are there any things that you've hit where you're clearly learning on the job in a very

[00:24:44] [SPEAKER_01] aggressive and, you know, awesome first, you know, founder mindset kind of way? Are there any things that you've hit where you're just like, wow, I wish I did sort of like, you know, do that one differently? And when you hit one of those, how quickly are you able to move learning from, you know, things that you would have done differently?

[00:25:04] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Well, I think you touch on one thing, which is defining who I am and how I want to show up as a leader. And that, of course, has evolved over the eight years that I've been at Mammoth and leading the business. And even looking back when I first started, I can see the growth for myself, right, which I'm very proud of, right? I think I've also had the benefit of having, you know, great mentors and coaches along the way to help me figure out what is the type of leader I want to be.

[00:25:29] [SPEAKER_00] But I think what it comes down to is that, I mean, business is just all about human relationships. I think that's the one thing that is like one of those, it's like, it's like a lost, is it right? It's like, this is about human relationships. And so I think I've had just an incredible opportunity to work with amazing people who have just exceeded my expectations, even their own expectations about how they've made just

[00:25:55] [SPEAKER_00] impact, not just at the company, but in their own life and in, you know, the pursuit of building Mammoth. And I think in the opposite direction, I've also had the experience, you know, the painful experience of working with colleagues who were just not good fits, right? Whether it was because it was a not good fit in the role, because they had their own interests that were maybe not aligned with the interests of the company, or their purpose was, you know, just a different direction. And those were equally painful, right? And understanding, okay, what is the time to acknowledge that this is not working and

[00:26:23] [SPEAKER_00] that we have to part ways and, you know, that can happen at all levels of the company, whether it's a, you know, you know, someone who's taking an industry job for the first time, and someone who's been in the industry for 30 years, right? And so I think both the pleasure of like finding an incredible colleague, and also the pain of having to like, figure out how to part ways, I think that duality is the reality of business as well. And so the way that I think about it as a leader, it's like, my job is really to discover

[00:26:52] [SPEAKER_00] and cultivate everybody's special gifts. So everybody has special gifts, right? Everyone has their strengths, they also have their weaknesses, including myself. And we have to figure out, I have to figure out as a leader how to enable those individuals and teams to really reach their full potential. How can we be better as a team than we are as individuals? And I think that's part of the challenge and part of the thrill and joy that I get as well in building teams as we move towards this decades long, you know, vision of transforming people.

[00:27:18] [SPEAKER_01] But it's also like, it's a media for you as a leader, it's an exceptional pace in terms of, you know, what you've been able to accomplish. I mean, let's face it, Janice, you're, you know, you are a reasonably young age and you have led and grown and built from scratch, you know, a unicorn level company doing amazing, amazing technology breakthroughs, scientific breakthroughs.

[00:27:47] [SPEAKER_01] And in the area of biotech, you know, the number of women leaders, it's not like it's, you know, overrun with women leaders. Has that ever, have you ever sort of like felt that? Has that been a, it just strikes me that, you know, the number of obstacles you faced, I don't know if you've had any time to even think about them. Have you felt those along the way?

[00:28:09] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, you know, I definitely have, but I do also think that, you know, actually I didn't touch on this when we started about my story, but when I was young, I, one of the, one of my hobbies and passions was playing chess and chess for one reason or another is a very male dominated game, right? So I would show up to tournaments as the only and many times the youngest female player in the room. And, but the great thing about chess is that it doesn't matter who you are.

[00:28:36] [SPEAKER_00] At the end of the day, it's the game on the board and how you play that game and what's the result, right? And so at some level I've been able to compartmentalize like, okay, yes, there are things about being a woman that we all know, right? And those limitations. But the way that I think about it is how do you, how do you figure out the strength of that, right? Like that was the one thing in playing chess or even in playing poker, like people come when with certain assumptions that, oh, you know, she's a woman.

[00:29:02] [SPEAKER_00] She maybe isn't the decision maker or she doesn't really, you know, have the authority to do X, Y, and Z. But I kind of lean into that because then I can surprise people and, you know, then they have to challenge their own assumptions. So it's been kind of fun in that sense. But the reality is, yes, there are real structural challenges. I think I see it the most now when I'm mentoring other women entrepreneurs. That's another thing that I'm very passionate about is being a mentor and advisor to other

[00:29:31] [SPEAKER_00] science, especially scientific entrepreneurs who are women who are doing this for the first time. And they, you know, they have questions that I have struggled with as well around like, you know, how should I, how should I show up? In fact, you know, I'm actually a mom of two young kids now. And so I've now had to deal with the reality of being a mom and a founder and a leader and the challenges along with that. And, you know, one of my mentees was going through her own fundraising and pregnant.

[00:29:57] [SPEAKER_00] And, you know, her decision was to hide the pregnancy, to not have any excuses to an investor that she was going. And, you know, so those are some very real examples of like the challenges that we like women face that our male colleagues don't have to think about. Right. So and even, you know, beyond just founders, I do also mentor other women in the company who are trying to understand how do I build that muscle for leadership? How should I think about zooming out of the, you know, the day to day details and really

[00:30:24] [SPEAKER_00] thinking about how to straddle both the strategic side as well as the tactical side. And I think those are things that I've had to figure out. What do you tell them?

[00:30:30] [SPEAKER_01] What do you, what do you tell them?

[00:30:32] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. I mean, I tell them that you need to carve out time for creativity, right? I think talented people need to be able to zoom out and think about the bigger picture. And a lot of that really is just like dedicating the time. Like that's equally important than doing the, you know, the tactical work. And so it's almost just a mindset of like giving yourself the space to be creative because again, it comes back to people's strengths. Like I've been so surprised about people who, you know, they don't have a leadership role, but they show up as leaders and they come up with new concepts that change my way of thinking, right? Change the company's ways of thinking.

[00:31:01] [SPEAKER_00] And I think once you realize you can, you know, the other great, you know, phrase that I hear a lot is just leave your titles at the door, right? When you just look at people and what they bring to the table, I think that really changes the possibilities that, you know, we may just, again, our assumptions can block us from seeing.

[00:31:20] [SPEAKER_01] You know, Janice, as we, this is just like amazing. I'm just like so impressed with, you know, like all that you've done and just your mindset of, you know, how you've leaned in and showed up for all of it. Sort of, you know, with no apology, with no, nothing but curiosity driving you in terms of the pursuit of something amazing in terms of these breakthroughs. But as we close out on this Inspiring Women conversation, you know, it's been so fast.

[00:31:50] [SPEAKER_01] It's been so incredible. I don't think you would, I don't, I don't want to reflect back on, you know, what you've done in the past. What do you look forward to? How are you thinking about it now having accomplished so much, you know, from the beginning? Is it pace? Is it impact? Are you wanting to take a breath for, you know, your family, you know, and two children and then, you know, come back? What do you think about today in terms of like, you know, what's next?

[00:32:20] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. I mean, I'm a very impact driven person. And as you mentioned, curiosity is like the thing that drives me, right? Because, I mean, there's just so much that we don't know. And it just gets me so excited all the time around how can we sort of figure out and make sense of all, you know, all this data that's out there and what are we missing? So that's just like what drives me, right? And then what really excites me, as I mentioned earlier, just the unprecedented opportunity we have right now.

[00:32:49] [SPEAKER_00] And I think the areas that I'm really focused on at the company is understanding how do we bring frontier AI and gene editing to benefit humanity? Because at the end of the day, as I mentioned, you know, I was surprised when I got into this business, how long and capital intensive things are. What I'm realizing now, like those assumptions don't have to be true, right? We can actually imagine what are the things that can be compressed? What are the things that cannot be compressed? We have to be realistic.

[00:33:15] [SPEAKER_00] I think the other thing, you know, growing up in the CRISPR field, I now can understand how to, you know, not that I can understand is that I've learned how to dissect hype from reality, right? And that's super important because in this world, there's so much noise and we have to be true to the data. We have to be true to what's really practical, but we also have to, you know, imagine a future that doesn't exist. So I think it's really straddling those two worlds, but I'm so excited about how we can

[00:33:41] [SPEAKER_00] reimagine this entire process from soup to nuts, you know, understanding system, like systematically what can change and what cannot change. What are things outside of our control? The things that are within our control. What are those things that we can compress? Again, the goal, like right now we're in the business of developing cures, right? So every day that we don't have something moving forward is somebody who is, you know, a day later from getting a cure that they desperately need. And I've now spoken to so many physicians and patients and it's just, you know, there are people that have dedicated their lives, right?

[00:34:10] [SPEAKER_00] To help others live longer and healthier lives themselves. And I think, you know, we have an incredible opportunity to be that part of that solution in that journey. And so, yeah, for me, it's about building these, you know, frankly, disparate technology breakthroughs together so that we can really transform how, you know, at the end of the day, we all can live longer and healthier lives.

[00:34:36] [SPEAKER_01] Well, Janice, I have to say, I mean, it is just like, it is absolutely inspiring to listen to you and to just like know that you are passionately pursuing that for others. And so, and the other thing I learned is that, you know, I should have grown up playing chess, like as a woman, that's like apparently like the most important thing. Sincerely, thank you so much for this inspiring women conversation. I've been speaking with Janice Chen. And Janice, thank you. Thank you so much.

[00:35:06] [SPEAKER_01] Thank you, Lori.