Talking Biotech 362
The Gut-Brain Axis: What it is, associated problems and new therapies.
Nancy Thornberry, Founder and CEO of Kallyope
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Kevin Folta: [00:00:00] Hi everybody. And welcome to this. Week's talking biotech podcast by collabora. I live sort of a hypocritical existence. In plants, I can tell you about the elaborate different systems, that sense and monitor the environment and tell you how they integrate together to control growth and development behaviors, and metabolism in animals though.

I'm a little bit more old school anatomy and physiology, and tend to think of the body's different systems. I think the appear in the textbook the nervous system, digestive system, the endocrine reproductive, skeletal, muscular, whatever. Different systems in each chapter. Now, of course, they all interact and respond to each other.

And those with a more sophisticated understanding, understand the role that hormones play to link the systems together still. I've always compartmentalized animal and human physiology into these discrete buckets, but biology [00:01:00] never is so simple. Today, we're learning more and more about the communication that happens between the digestive system and the brain, the digestive system.

It's a place of constant change and necessary for acquiring nutrition, water things like that. The nervous system. On the other hand, the steadfast hard drive making decisions on inputs from the other systems. But how does the digestive system communicate with the brain? What is this neurological limb called?

The gut brain access and how might it be a target for either disease prevention or therapeutics? And today's guest is Nancy Thornbury. She's the founding CEO and chair of research and development at call OPPE. So welcome to the podcast, Nancy. 

Nancy Thornberry: thank you very much, Kevin. I'm delighted to be here. 

Kevin Folta: I think it's really a fun topic.

And over the [00:02:00] years, I've been a little bit skeptical of, because I tend to think of physiology. As I mentioned before, as very compartmentalized linear systems working within themselves, maybe with a little overlap here and there, but the idea of communication between the digestive system in the brain always seemed a little.

Too far for me. So could you tell me a little bit more about how I was wrong and, and about this gut brain axis? 

Nancy Thornberry: Sure. So probably the reason that this area seemed a little far out for you is because there really has not been a detailed molecular understanding of the communication between the gut and the brain.

So the gut brain access. Is formally defined as the bidirectional communication between the gut and the brain. And it typically is involves both hormonal circuits. So hormones that are released from the gut in response to a variety of stimuli that communicate [00:03:00] with the brain and other organs or the nervous system where there are nerves, that project from the gut.

To the brain directly in this bidirectional communication controlling many aspects of physiology. 

Kevin Folta: so what's really interesting about this is that it is bidirectional. So the digestive system is communicating information up to the nervous system, to the brain, which is part of the nervous system.

And then back the other direction. And you mentioned hormones, but are they the signals or, or what are the signals that are triggering the communication between these two very different compartments? 

Nancy Thornberry: right. So it is hormonal and neural. So it's both. So for example, you could picture when you eat a meal your, your stomach dis descends.

And so there are stretch receptors in your stomach that communicate via the nervous system to your brain. When nutrients get further down into the intestine hormones are release. Depending on where the [00:04:00] nutrients actually are in the gut. And they communicate with the brain and the pancreas, for example to stimulate insulin secretion or in the case of the brain to modulate feeding centers.

Kevin Folta: okay. So what's really interesting about this is that there has to be a huge suite of different signals. So what are some of these signals? I know you've mentioned insulin, but what are some of the other ones that we don't normally think of? And, and what are their sensors like? What's connecting the digestive system to that central nervous.

Nancy Thornberry: right. So let's take metabolism. So there are many areas of physiology that have been linked to gut brain biology, but metabolism is probably the best understood. So in this case, again, as nutrients enter the small intestine there are specific receptors that sit on, what are Called intra endocrine cells that are in the gut.

These are [00:05:00] cells that are in the epithelium and it really represents the largest secretory system in the body. And by binding to these receptors, it triggers the release of multiple hormones more than a dozen. And these hormones have various functions. So some of them bind to receptors in the brain stem for example, and they're triggering circuit.

They give one, for example, a feeling a satiety to trigger your body, to stop eating. There are other hormones that bind to receptors on beta cells in the pancreas. So these are the insulin producing cells and trigger insulin secretion, which of course is vital for managing the, your the glucose.

That one is basically absorbing during food ingest. Does that make sense? 

Kevin Folta: Absolutely. I mean, it's perfect. That's a good example of maybe one hormone and one pathway that can play a role in [00:06:00] this process. I guess what I'm really interested in is how deep this goes with reque with, with respect to questions, like say deficiency of vitamin deficiency, something like that.

Do we get cravings? Because our brain is sensing something from the gut. That's not quite. Something physiological or biochemical that the brain is saying, Hey, we haven't seen this nutrient for a while and, and maybe we need to ask for it. Is that what this is all 

Nancy Thornberry: about? Yeah. It's so interesting. You would ask that because this whole area of food preference is a really hot area right now.

And there's certainly evidence that this is controlled via gut brain circuit. That there are certain preferences for food. And, and this is determined for example, by the release of dopamine in the brain. So certain food types may stimulate either hormones or various receptors on the vagus nerve to then produce dopamine in the brain that gives you a feeling of.[00:07:00] 

You know feeling of pleasure. And so that may dictate the preference for a particular food type. So this is a very active area of investigation that I think is, is incredibly interesting and really holds promise for the whole area of. Nutrition and metabolism going forward. Well, 

Kevin Folta: you really just helped me understand how a friend of mine loves kimchi, but I hate it.

for him. It's a cultural touchdown. It reminds him of mom of comfort food. And for him, it's something that. It probably connects with like a dopamine surge when he hasn't had it for a while and finally gets it or even smells it. So I guess you see where I'm going here. Is there really a way that the gut is asking for something potentially based upon what are really just cultural cues?

Nancy Thornberry: Yes, it's so interesting. And again, back to your initial comment, the reason that this has been a poorly understood system, and this is the whole [00:08:00] idea behind Koppe is to build a more comprehensive understanding of what we call this circuitry between the gut and the brain. So again, this is hormonal circuitry.

It's neural circuitry. Sometimes it's a combination of both and it's really only been in the last decade or so that the technologies, the tools have been available that enable us to start to dissect this system at a molecular level. So I'll give you an example, understanding how particular hormone, where that hormone interacts with its receptor.

It could be, for example, on the vagus nerve, which is the primary neural conjugate between the gut and the brain. It might instead travel. The hormone might travel through the circulation to interact with receptors that are in the brain stem, which is just outside of the blood blood brain barrier.

And from there. You can use additional technologies called optogenetics and chemo, genetics that allow you [00:09:00] to understand the function of the cell that contains that receptor. For example, does it stimulate dopamine release in the brain? And so I can go into more detail, but essentially there are a variety of new technologies when integrated together.

That can help you actually map these circuits and give you a better understanding of the the physiology. And that was really the basis for Cal. The whole idea behind the company, 

Kevin Folta: but see, that makes sense to me that you would have certain molecules that are associated with the gut and digestion things like insulin, things like, you know grillin or leptin, other types of molecules, which have roles in stimulating different responses that we understand are associated with with digestion and metabolism.

But what about when you start to step out into other issues like Alzheimer's or autism. and people have mentioned for a long time. Okay. There's this gut brain access [00:10:00] that plays a role in autism or plays a role in, you know, other neurological disease. That kind of seems like a little bridge too far for me.

So how much evidence is there that this gut brain access is actually influencing these kinds of conditions? Like, like Alzheimer's or. 

Nancy Thornberry: Yeah, there are very varying degrees of evidence for some of these other areas. So when I think of the gut brain access, and we think at Calle about disease areas that are relevant to this system we think about metabolism.

We do think about neuroscience and I'll get to that in a bit. We think about gastrointestinal disorders since the gut brain axis controls, gut motility, for example, and Even diseases of immunology and inflammation because the, the gut is actually the largest immune organ in the body. So part of the reason actually I joined Kelly bay in 2015 was because of the very broad opportunity.

That [00:11:00] this better understanding of this system really presented to develop therapeutics, to improve human health. But back to your question on neuro, I would say that this is the area that's the most challenging to understand in terms of potential connections between the gut and the brain, but there's certainly an increasing body of evidence that there is such a connection.

When you talk about autism, I think it's generally true that parents of autistic children say diet is, is critical in helping to essentially well set a different way that, that perturbations to the diet can have a dramatic effect on behavior. There's evidence from preclinical models and I believe some human studies as well, showing differences in the microbiome.

Which is also a very critical component of this system in patients with autism. But for other diseases, there's even I would say [00:12:00] stronger evidence Parkinson's disease. So this disease has, is believed to be caused by alpha andan, which is a protein aggregates in the brain. And this results in some of the manifestations of Parkinson's disease, while it's now clear that these aggregates also occur.

In the gut in the enteric nervous system. And in fact, constipation is an early manifestation of Parkinson's disease in some patients. So this has led to hypothesis for which there's increasing evidence that these alpha alean aggregates can actually travel from the gut. To the brain via the begus nerve.

Similar to some of the work you may have heard around PreOn S so again, it's an early hypothesis, but one that's super interesting and, and suggests this gut brain connection in Parkinson's disease. The other thing I would note is be nerve stimulation because the [00:13:00] efficacy of be nerve stimulation in certain diseases can give us a clue.

As to whether or not the gut brain access is involved in specific diseases. So vagal nerve stimulation has been approved for epilepsy has been approved for. Some forms of migraine and cluster headache, and also for treatment resistant depression. And so that also gives us a clue that by modulating the system we may have potential for the development of therapeutics in those disease areas.

Kevin Folta: Well, how useful are animal models in talking about the gut brain? . 

Nancy Thornberry: Yeah, that's an excellent question. So what I can tell you is from our work and the work of others, as it relates to metabolism, these circuits appear to be quite well conserved, as you might imagine, since feeding is kind of so fundamental to life kind of across the board.

So the animal [00:14:00] models have been pretty predictive in that space, how predictive they will be for some of these other areas, I think is still unclear. 

Kevin Folta: Yeah. I guess I was thinking about other human disorders. So you mentioned Parkinson's disease and it's potential reliance on gut brain communication, but this is a late.

Onset disease in most cases. Anyway. So is there any kind of genetic predisposition or any other kind of evidence that suggests that there's some sort of change in a receptor or a ligand that may be predisposition, predisposing, a microbiome to Parkinson's disease or other disorders? You 

Nancy Thornberry: know, I, I can't give you an example.

This is, I know there's a lot of work in this space. And in fact, at Kelly OPPE, we're doing a lot of the, the type of computational mapping that you described in order to first understand, you know, where, what the circuits are, which ligands are communicating with receptors and where they [00:15:00] are. And then we've also developed a proprietary human genetics platform where we're looking for genetic links to disease that can be that we can explore once we have a better understanding of the circuitry.

So again, this is work that I think is resulting from. Better understanding of that brain communication that's emerging. Yeah. 

Kevin Folta: I'm sorry. I didn't mean to throw a speculative one at you there, but it's really intriguing to me. And maybe a place where a little more work has been done has been with something like GLP one.

Could you explain more what that is and how that's being targeted to treat type two diabetes? 

Nancy Thornberry: Yes. So GLP one or glucagon like peptide one, I would say is the poster child gut hormone. So this is a hormone that's released in response to food intake. It's actually, as I described earlier, released from these secretory cells in the gut.

In response to [00:16:00] nutrients binding to specific receptors. So by nutrients, I mean free fatty acids, for example. And it is released from the gut it's called an incretin hormone. And that is because it's one of two hormones that stimulate glucose dependent, insulin secretion, again, by buying the receptors, sit on data cells in the pancrea.

And and trigger insulin secretion, but very importantly, in a glucose dependent way, which means there's a very low risk of hypoglycemia. With GLP one based therapies. And so these therapeutics really GLP injectable versions of GLP one and a different play in the GLP one space called DPP four inhibitors that I was very involved in.

During my tenure at Merck these have been, become the most important drugs for the treatment of type two diabetes. In the last two decades. They, they came out and in 20 2005, 2006, and they've continued [00:17:00] to play an incredibly important role in the treatment of this disease. More recently it's become more clear that GLP one also binds to receptors.

As I mentioned earlier that are in other regions of the gut brain access, including the Heim brain and control feeding. So they are also satiety hormones that basically induce a feeling of satiety. And so the more recent GLP one analogs have been optimized for weight loss. And so for really the first time those of us who work in the therapeutic space in metabolism are very excited because for the very first time we now have GLP one analogs that are producing 10, 15 close to 20% weight loss, which is really a game changer in the field.

Well, 

Kevin Folta: that's outstanding. And you know, we've been looking for solutions for things like type two D diabetes or obesity, other [00:18:00] diet related disorders for a long time. So what's really different today. What's made this relatively unexplored area of biology possible as a, as a realistic therapeutic. 

Nancy Thornberry: Right.

So with GLP one, it's, you know, even though, again, these have both been the most important therapeutics in the last two decades we're still learning about exactly how they work. Exactly which neurons in the brain stem GLP one interacts with and how that's triggering feeding centers. And it's with an increased understanding of that biology that you can then.

Really optimize these analogs to produce the type of weight loss that we're currently seeing. But in terms of other potential approaches to diabetes and obesity and other diseases associated with gut brain biology I I'd like to just briefly walk you through what's really needed in order to understand this.

So. When you think [00:19:00] about the gut brain axis, you think about the gut in the brain, but it also involves the inter nervous system, which is the sheath of nerves that surround the gut often called the second brain that also has connectivity to the brain itself. You need to think about the microbiome.

You need to think about the immune populations in the gut. And so to get an understanding of all of this where we started was with single cell sequencing. So as you and your viewers may know, this enables you to really understand. What all of the different specialized cell types are in a particular organ.

And that's where we started by saying, okay, we wanna understand what every specialized cell type is in all of those regions of the gut brain access that I mentioned, because in, so doing then you can take it to the next step, which is understanding the circuitry. You know, what lichens are produced in the gut and where do we think they're [00:20:00] binding in the rest of the gut brain?

And then we can turn to technologies such as what I mentioned earlier in terms of optogenetics and chemo, genetics, which is an amazing technology developed in the systems neuroscience field that allows us to get genetic control over specific neurons and activate them either with light. Or with a ligand to a designer receptor such that we're only activating that neuron.

And then we look at the resulting physiology. So for example, we can activate a neuron and see, look for effects on feeding, or we can activate a neuron and looks at effects on cytokines, whatever behavior or readout you can imagine can be explored using. Approach. And so this enables us to not only understand what the cells are, but understand their functions and how they function in a circuit.

So this is the kind of work that's [00:21:00] giving us real insights into the molecular underpinnings of the gut brain access that we believe will help result in the next generation of therapeutic. 

Kevin Folta: Yeah, it's really interesting because of all of the dysbiosis that we already understand that are dependent upon the gut brain access and then all of the others that are so speculative and potentially there, that that may be really important and can unfold once you understand what they are, what the.

Pathways are and then ways to modulate them pharmacologically. So this is really cool. So we're speaking with Nancy Thornbury. She's the original founding CEO and chair of research and development at CPE. This is the talking biotech podcast by Cora. And we'll be back in just a moment.

Now we're back on the talking biotech podcast by collabora. And we're speaking with Nancy Thornbury. She's the founding CEO and chair of research and develop. At Kelly Oey and we're talking about the [00:22:00] brain gut access and this series of circuits, bidirectional circuits that are intertwined to continually monitor the, the status of the digestive system and connect it to the central nervous system.

And it seems to be playing a bigger role. In a wide set of different diseases and disorders Calle is defining is designing new therapeutics that may be able to help and solve some of these important problems. Now, one of the underappreciated parts of this is the inter nervous system is second brain.

So what are its roles? Are they just in digestion or are there bigger roles in communication between the gut and the brain? 

Nancy Thornberry: Yeah. So that's a great question. And this. The nervous system is, is not well understood. And it lines the gut. So there are different likely, very different functions of the inter nervous system, depending on, you know, which part of the intestine it's [00:23:00] proximal to.

But clearly the inter nervous system has been known to play an important role in gut motility. You know, as we have done single or performed single cell sequencing, On the inter nervous system. We now understand what all of the neuronal cell types are. So we are seeing receptors for some of the hormones that are released from the inter endocrine cells.

There appears to be crosstalk between the immune system and the inter nervous system. But again, this is a very poorly understood area and With the technologies that we're developing and are part of our platform. We actually have a very active effort at trying to understand the functions of individual inter neuro 

Kevin Folta: neurons.

And this is really interesting stuff. Not only are you getting signals from say the food that you're eating and the hormones that it triggers, but also the metabolites that are coming through bacterial activity within the microbiome. And how much of a role do these metabolites play? When they're signaling.

[00:24:00] Brain gut axis. 

Nancy Thornberry: Yeah, that's a, that's also just an incredibly cool area of, of, of work. As you know, the microbiome is incredibly complex. And so I would say untangling, the biology, the microbiome may be even more daunting than. Really untangling the biology of the gut brain access. But nevertheless, it's very clear that the microbiome is extremely important and the metabolites that it produces many of the metabolites do bind to some of the receptors, for example, that nutrients bind to bind to other receptors that sit on the epithelium of the gut.

And so clearly. Are very likely play an important role there. And again, this is an area that's in its infancy. I would say in terms of our understanding of exactly how these metabolites are working at a molecular level, what I will also tell you is one [00:25:00] other component of our platform are organoid.

So, I don't know if your viewers are familiar with organoids or your listeners. But essentially these are organ systems in a test tube. And so we do quite a lot of work with gut organoids where we take samples from different parts of the intestine. And we actually grow these into. What we call actually enters because they're from the epithelium of the gut and using these systems, you can start to interrogate, for example, how a particular microbiome metabolite works.

You can add that metabolite to the test tube with the organoid in it, and you can see. Stimulation of various hormones, you can start to untangle that biology. And what's exciting about that. That gets back to your earlier question on translation is that we have found that the correspondence between what you see in mice and it from mouse organoids and a test tube to mice and [00:26:00] vivo and to human organoids in a test tube that there's excellent correspondence.

So we believe it's a really good translational model for starting to understand the biology, the metabolites, not only in mice, but in humans. And 

Kevin Folta: that's a really cool system. It's really neat. And I guess if you're going to be looking for a needle in a haystack, you really need the most powerful system to do that, especially because seem to me that in the complex microbiome, you may have some very minor species that could be secreting, some sort of metabolite.

Which could have a profound effect on something like say, you know, depression or something like that, is, is that consistent with the way that you're thinking at this point? 

Nancy Thornberry: I think those are the questions to, to ask for sure. And there are we're not working on the microbiome per se, other than the types of experiments I just described where we're looking to see how metabolites interact with receptors in the [00:27:00] gut.

But there are labs that have shown that particular metabolites can have a pretty profound role on behavior in preclinical species. So whether or not. Will translate to people remains to be determined, but it's a super exciting area. And I think just again certainly. Gets me extremely excited about the future in this space.

There's an increasing interest, I think not only in the lay community but the scientific community is working very hard on these various aspects of gut brain biology, microbiome gut brain is another term. And I think that over the next couple of decades, we're gonna learn a tremendous amount.

That'll hopefully be helpful for the discovery of therapeutics. Yeah. 

Kevin Folta: Yeah. This is really blowing me away and I'll be honest for a long time. I just thought this was complete BS. I thought there's no way that there's something in the intestine. That's informing your brain of some sort of issues that could affect the chemistry [00:28:00] within the brain.

And so I'm really turned a corner on this in the last couple of years, and I really believe that this is an important question to look at. Here's a good question though. If you look at different cultures around the world who have maybe rather discrete regional diets maybe who are relatively genetically, rather homogenous.

If you look at these populations such as maybe the Japanese or, or Eskimo or in different groups they have really interesting diets, real specific diets. And do they have diets that really associate with specific disease presentations within those groups? Has anyone really looked at that at that epidemiological level to see if there's something about the association?

Nancy Thornberry: Such an interesting question. I'm not aware of those studies. I would not be surprised. If. if there have been studies, for example, looking at the microbiome. Of individuals from different regions, almost certainly that has happened, but I'm not familiar with that area. I do know that there's a fair amount of work that [00:29:00] is ongoing and I believe the gates foundation is doing the mil.

Bill and Melinda gates foundation is doing some of this work really to try and understand the gut and the microbiome in in some of the areas of the world that are, you know, development are under development and where there's quite a lot of poverty and poor nutrition in order to understand.

You know, what is the biology of the guts of young infants and and, and women who are pregnant to see if there is an angle there where gut health can be improved. 

Kevin Folta: Yeah, that's really excellent. I think we could easily do the same in the industrialized world too. If you look inside the poverty of inner city food deserts, if you look at rural areas and rural for food deserts, where fresh vegetables, fruit, and vegetables can be scarce different times of the year.

There are a lot of comorbidities that are generated because of problems in the [00:30:00] diet, especially issues related to heart disease and obesity that accumulate and understanding the corresponding microbiomes and, and brain gut access health may illuminate opportunities for different therapeutic interventions that may actually help these target populations.

So what's happening right now in terms of development of therapeutic agents that may. Address some of these particular issues of brain gut. 

Nancy Thornberry: right. So we are really focused in three major therapeutic areas. We're working in metabolism since, as I said earlier, that's probably the best understood area and there's still just this remarkable unmet need in that space.

In fact, globally, there are now more overweight than underweight or more obese versus underweight. Individuals globally. And so the magnitude of the problem is just immense. So we feel there's an incredible unmet need [00:31:00] there. And so we're working to basically use some of the information that we.

Obtained from our platform to elicit the release of hormones from the gut that have beneficial roles in glucose control and in, in food intake. So we're targeting type two diabetes and obesity as an initial indication there. The second program is actually around gut barrier function, which we have not spoken about.

But the it's an increasingly important area of research because it's clear that an intact barrier, a healthy barrier. And this is really, you know, how really the, the health of the epithelium is very important for overall health and wellbeing. And that a defective barrier is linked to numerous diseases of high end met need.

And these include inflammatory bowel disease allergy. Celiac disease but also you can there's even evidence with autism to your earlier question that some of those [00:32:00] patients may have a defective barrier, although I think more need needs to be done there. So. There's a whole host of diseases you can think about for something that might modulate or improve the health of the gut barrier.

So that's the second major area we're focusing on. And then the third is CNS disorders and we're particularly interested in migraine there. Yeah. 

Kevin Folta: Yeah. I'm sorry. I really neglected dimension the immune response and the gut. And it's really an important question because we know about celiac disease and inflammatory bowel disease.

All of these, we know this already and it would seem like that would be really the low hanging fruit here. So are there therapies that are being specifically designed for those disorder? 

Nancy Thornberry: well, we hope so. I mean, there are certainly really good agents that control inflammation in something like inflammatory bowel disease but the whole area of mucosal, healing, or restoration of the gut [00:33:00] barrier.

Is an area, very active investigation. There are no agents currently approved for that purpose, but as we develop better models in which that we can use to study this again, going back to organoid systems there's a lot of interest in. In building these systems like in a test tube that not only include the epithelium of the gut, but where you can also introduce the immune populations, you might also be able to introduce the microbiome.

In some cases, there are investigators that are working to incorporate the inter nervous system into more or less a You know, an ex vivo system that can be used to look for agents that may have beneficial effects on barrier function. So that's gonna be a very exciting area to watch going forward, particularly if you can build those human systems and get us get a real feeling for how translational.

Kevin Folta: Maybe. [00:34:00] Yeah, no, you're going back to this idea of translational systems that you've mentioned the organi organoid type systems for in vitro work, but are there other cool tricks that you do inside the company that give Koppe a specific way to look for these important questions? 

Nancy Thornberry: well, we're using our genetics platform again, to try and, and with all of our programs to see if there's human genetics, evidence or particular pathway or a particular target, that may be interesting to us.

But beyond that, you know, we're really focusing primarily on these organoid systems since we have been really, so I guess, impressed with how how Translational. They may actually be. 

Kevin Folta: Yeah, technology's really cool stuff. I, I really appreciate your approach. So what does that pipeline look like?

I mean, your company has been looking at these novel methods to identify small molecules, which are potentially ligands and modulating the gut brain access. Where are we in terms of [00:35:00] potential therapies in these three major investigation area? 

Nancy Thornberry: Right. So we're either in or approaching clinical development in those areas that I mentioned.

And then as you know in a biotech, it's, it's very important to have programs that are continuing to come along. So behind each of those lead programs, we have earlier stage programs that are Advancing again in each of those three major areas, 

Kevin Folta: Are there other companies doing similar approaches and looking for the gut brain access modulators, 

Nancy Thornberry: there are other companies that are working on aspects of gut brain biology.

To the best of my knowledge, I don't know that anyone has built the fully integrated platform that we have. For interrogating this biology at a systems biology level. But there are certainly companies that are working very hard on the immune system, in the gut and how that communicates with the gut [00:36:00] epithelium.

And there are other, there are a number of microbiome companies that are working to do exactly what you mentioned earlier, which is to understand what communities are important in different disease states and what particular metabolites might be important, either binding to receptors in the gut.

Or potentially absorbed and binding to proteins elsewhere in the periphery. 

Kevin Folta: Well, one of the other questions I frequently am asked by listeners. We have a lot of students posts, other professionals who are considering a little change of gears, and they always want me to ask when I have a CEO of a company like you on What do you look for in someone who may work for you?

So when, you know, if, if I, if I'm trying to give advice to somebody, you know, what are you looking for in an employee who might be able to forge a successful career in an exciting area? Like this one? . 

Nancy Thornberry: Yeah, that's an excellent [00:37:00] question. So we are based in New York city. New York city is a relatively new place to build a biotech.

But it's been really terrific for us because because there are so many amazing academic institutions in New York city and we're right next to the pharma corridor. In New Jersey. So we have been drawing talent from all of those places. And what I like to say is where the magic happens is really the interaction from our.

Employees that have come from academia together with those employees who have come from pharma who have kind of deep expertise in drug discovery and development. So certainly those who are listening to your podcast who are still in academia you know, I think that we, we really look for people who have been incredibly well trained.

Not necessarily in our specific areas of interest, but training. The quality of training is critical. And then you know, in terms of personal traits, we look very much for [00:38:00] people who can work really, really well in a team. So teamwork and collaboration really needs to be in the DNA of a company like Kelly OPPE.

And so the whole cultural bit is really equally important to the scientific background. Yeah. 

Kevin Folta: That's really helpful because there's so many good students coming out these days and they ask me questions and I really need to start incorporating it into the podcast when I have someone like you on who can give me a good answer for that.

Now, if want people wanna learn more about your company, where should they look? 

Nancy Thornberry: well, we, we are, we do have a website we're currently upgrading the website, so there should be even more information going forward. I would say in terms of just more understanding on gut. Gut brain biology. One person I would point your listeners to is em, Emma and Meyer from UCLA.

A very quick Google search will show you that he's been deeply involved in this area for a [00:39:00] very long time. And I'm sure there's some content from him. That would be really interesting to your listeners who want to know. 

Kevin Folta: No very good. It's really an exciting area. And I hope that as things continue to unfold in your company, that new discoveries are happening and new products coming out.

I hope you can revisit with us just because it's a fun area to think about. So, so Nancy Thornbury, thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast and keep me posted as new developments come along. 

Nancy Thornberry: oh, I would be happy to thank you so much for having me 

Kevin Folta: and thank you again for listening to another episode of the talking biotech podcast.

This is an exciting example of where researchers have been looking for some time. But it's just the perfect area of time where technology and genomics and single cell sequencing and all the things that we can do are really starting to come together to produce new possibilities for the design of [00:40:00] therapeutics to help different human conditions.

So think about some of these novel areas. Think about some of these ways in which they could use your talents, think of ways in which you can incorporate yourself into the cutting edge of the next generation of technologies. This is a talking biotech podcast. And we'll talk to you again next week.