The Healthy Enterprise

In this episode, Eitan Akirav shares his journey from academia to the biotech industry, discussing the importance of mentorship, innovations in diabetes research, and the role of AI in healthcare. He emphasizes the need for a holistic approach to biomarkers and the future of oncology treatments. Eitan also provides insights into the challenges of consulting and the importance of building strong client relationships.

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to Eitan Akirav and His Journey
03:13 Transitioning from Academia to Industry
06:03 The Role of Mentorship in Career Development
09:04 Leadership in Academia vs. Industry
11:58 Innovations in Diabetes Research and Patents
15:02 The Future of Diabetes Detection and Prevention
17:56 The Impact of AI in Healthcare
21:03 Disruptive Innovations in Life Sciences
25:31 The Concept of Cure in Cancer Treatment
28:09 Balancing Technology and Human Touch in Healthcare
29:52 The Economic Challenges of Drug Development
32:50 Advice for Newcomers in the Science Industry
36:46 Challenges in Consulting and Marketing Yourself
44:44 Final Thoughts and Reflections on the Journey

Guest Information:
Guest's Name: Eitan Akirav
Guest's Title/Position: Founder & CEO
Guest's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eitan-akirav/
Company/Affiliation: KonKai Ventures https://www.linkedin.com/company/konkai-consulting/posts/?feedView=all
Guest's Bio: Eitan Akirav is a seasoned biotech leader with over 17 years of experience bridging scientific innovation and business strategy. From leading global biomarker programs at Cerba Research to launching rapid COVID-19 diagnostics at Enzo, he’s driven impactful solutions across the biotech and healthcare landscape. Earlier in his career at NYU, he secured multimillion-dollar research funding and led clinical trials in autoimmunity. With work featured in PNAS and Nature Immunology, Eitan continues to advance science at the intersection of research, innovation, and real-world application.

Takeaways:
  • Eitan Akirav has over 17 years of experience in biotech.
  • Mentorship plays a crucial role in career transitions.
  • The transition from academia to industry can be challenging but rewarding.
  • Innovations in diabetes research are focused on early detection.
  • AI is a powerful tool that can save time in healthcare.
  • The future of oncology may involve re-engineering immune cells.
  • Customized medications based on genetic information are on the rise.
  • The drug approval process is lengthy and complex.
  • Newcomers in biotech should pursue their passion, not just titles.
  • Consulting requires effective self-marketing and client relationship management.

Creators and Guests

Host
Heath Fletcher
With over 30 years in creative marketing and visual storytelling, I’ve built a career on turning ideas into impact. From brand transformation to media production, podcast development, and outreach strategies, I craft compelling narratives that don’t just capture attention—they accelerate growth and drive measurable results.
Guest
Eitan Akirav
Eitan Akirav is a seasoned biotech leader with over 17 years of experience bridging scientific innovation and business strategy. From leading global biomarker programs at Cerba Research to launching rapid COVID-19 diagnostics at Enzo, he’s driven impactful solutions across the biotech and healthcare landscape. Earlier in his career at NYU, he secured multimillion-dollar research funding and led clinical trials in autoimmunity. With work featured in PNAS and Nature Immunology, Eitan continues to advance science at the intersection of research, innovation, and real-world application.
Producer
Meghna Deshraj
Meghna Deshraj is the CEO and Founder of Bullzeye Media Marketing, where she partners with eCommerce brands, healthcare institutions, and small businesses to scale profitably without outside funding. Under her leadership, Bullzeye has driven over $580M in annual growth and more than $1B in collective direct revenue for its clients. With a background spanning corporate strategy, IT, finance, and process optimization, Meghna brings a unique blend of data-driven marketing expertise and operational leadership. A Certified Six Sigma Black Belt with deep experience in program management and business transformation, she has successfully led global teams, large-scale integrations, and organizational change initiatives. Her superpower lies in marketing strategy and consulting, fueled by a passion for helping businesses grow through innovation, efficiency, and strong client relationships.

What is The Healthy Enterprise?

Join host Heath Fletcher on The Healthy Enterprise as he explores how healthcare leaders and innovators are transforming the industry from the inside out. Whether you’re a provider, tech entrepreneur, marketing strategist, or industry executive, these conversations deliver actionable strategies, innovative solutions, and human-centered insights to help you grow, lead, and make a lasting impact.

Created and produced by Bullzeye Growth Partners — let’s make something great together.

Heath Fletcher (00:13)
Welcome to another episode of the Healthy Enterprise. My guest today is Eitan Akarev. Aitin is a dual focus biotech leader in scientific innovation as well as business strategy. He has over 17 years of experience working with top tier academic institutions and leading biotech companies. So he's gonna share his personal journey with us today and ⁓ let's get started.

Welcome. Thank you for joining me for this episode on Healthy Enterprise. So, yeah, for our listeners, why don't you introduce yourself and ⁓ give everybody little insight as to your background and where you are right now.

Eitan Akirav (00:58)
Thanks, Heath. I really enjoy it. Thank you for inviting me. I enjoyed the opportunity to kind of share my experience with you. I'll tell you a little bit about my background. So in my core, I'm a scientist. I'm a trained biologist. I did my undergraduate in Israel and did a master's at the University of Toronto, spent two years in the cold weather. And after that joined...

Yale University is a PhD student ⁓ working in the field of immunology. ⁓ I have a background, family background of autoimmunity, which kind of pushed me towards that field. ⁓ I joined the famous lab of Nancy Ruddall, who was one of the pioneers in multiple sclerosis and had the opportunity to work in the field of autoimmunity.

⁓ and when I completed the work, I really felt that like, I wanted to make a clinical impact, not just do basic science for the sake of science. ⁓ I joined the lab of Kevin Harold also at Yale, and it was my first foray on working on clinical assets, mainly diagnostics and therapeutics. I completed my training and moved, ⁓ to NYU as a professor. I, ⁓

spent about seven years training students, ⁓ medical fellows and so on, publishing papers and had the wonderful opportunity of having my work patented and licensed. And that opened yet another level of recognition that, hey, you can actually make an impact through industry. You don't really have to do everything. So through academia. And in 2017, ⁓ I closed my lab, left my academic position.

and joined biotech companies called Enzo Life Sciences. That was my first ⁓ exposure to industry. And since then, I've been floating between academia and industry. My last gig was at Harvard University. I was director of business development and the office technology development. And today, ⁓ as of about six months ago, I started my own consultancy firm. The name is Konkai Consulting. Konkai means Japanese.

word that means right now, which goes, I'm pretty proactive and I believe in writing. Yeah, that's pretty much it.

Heath Fletcher (03:19)
that's a good...

⁓ How did you manage the transition from academia to corporate?

Eitan Akirav (03:30)
Wonderful question. ⁓ get asked that question all the time. And I think there are two layers. There's what I call your inner circle, what you can actually do and what other people perceive you as doing. Many people look at it academic track as almost a track to retirement. At least that's my generation when I was in school. Today it's a lot more fluid. ⁓ And I think for me,

⁓ The ⁓ biggest issue with the transition is how do you take those skills that you developed as an academician, which is technically running a small business. I ran my own lab. I hired and fired. I published papers. I brought about $3 million of external funds into the lab to support it. ⁓ So I think ultimately, can you communicate it to the private sector? And if you do it successfully,

and you hit the right person that believes in you, I'm willing to talk about that too, the importance of mentorship in your career. ⁓ I think that is a transition that is not, I wouldn't call it smooth, but it's not too rough either.

Heath Fletcher (04:44)
Right. Right. Well, let's talk about that. It's more about mentorship. I mean, I guess from, I guess, moving from as a professor working in an academic environment, you are the mentor and then you transition into the private sector. And so did you have to find mentors for yourself at that point? Yeah.

Eitan Akirav (05:06)
So I think you're 100 % correct. In a way, ⁓ you're always being mentored. It could be your parents when you're younger, it could be your friends, could be your family. I've been really blessed to have good mentors during my academic track. ⁓ And when I made the transition, I was actually hired by the former CEO of ⁓ Enzo at the time.

who for whatever reason, so that I can run a business development operation. mean, I'm a scientist. I hold pipettes and publish papers, you know, right. And, ⁓ I worked together with Kara Cannon, the current CEO of the company. And it was really both, ⁓ intense in many ways, but very constructive and fruitful because they help you fill those gaps, which

you should be able to fill on your own, but it just accelerates the process. So getting mentors like that, that's important. Of course, I had mentors outside the company that can always help me through my next level. Yeah.

Heath Fletcher (06:17)
Yeah, sure. People you meet along the way. Yeah. You keep tying them in. So from, yeah, I guess another area that would be a bit of a change in that transition is leadership is understanding. Were you leading teams ⁓ of people? I guess in both cases you were, but were you provided, were you in a position where you had to lead more teams or more people when you were in the private sector? Yeah.

Eitan Akirav (06:44)
So, again, team leadership really happens, ⁓ when you in academia, at least when you set up your own lab, ⁓ nobody really prepares you for it because you're always a MNT officially, you're either a grad student or postdoctoral fellow, what have you, you do research. but I, mean, I always enjoy human interactions. I'm an extrovert.

⁓ so for me, ⁓ always seek companion and working with people. ⁓ so even as a postdoc, I always try to get involved when met with mentoring undergraduate students and other students that came over. So leadership and, and kind of, ⁓ handling your own team at the end of the day, ⁓ luckily for me came pretty naturally. ⁓ so once I established that in academia, I was then able.

to make a relatively, I would say small adjustments to industry. I think that's a fair statement.

Heath Fletcher (07:50)
Well, that's probably a, you know, having a characteristic or some innate, ⁓ talents at working with people, managing people. I mean, cause being put into a position like that, now you are, you're now responsible, ⁓ for, for outcomes and, and, and also having to make hard decisions. Like if you bring someone on board and, and that doesn't work out, do you have to let them go and having hard conversations? A lot of times that's what people really struggle with.

is getting through those days and those situations ⁓ because those can be difficult.

Eitan Akirav (08:25)
Absolutely. Absolutely. would add that luckily, I I really go by my gut at the end of the day. And I can count on one hand situations where the people that chose me or I chose them to work together didn't ramp up. I mean, I believe in a lot of the kind of the far east.

philosophy that every stick has a use, a short stick, a medium-sized stick and a long stick. You just have to kind of understand where everybody fits and gets the most out of them.

Heath Fletcher (09:04)
Right. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good, that's a good theory. So you talked about a patent that you had done. ⁓ is there something around that that you'd like to share with us about, yeah. Yeah. Film me in with that.

Eitan Akirav (09:14)
Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. So as I mentioned, my transition into research was because of, family history of, ⁓ type one diabetes actually, ⁓ apropos Toronto, ⁓ when I finished my undergrad at Tel Aviv university, I decided that I'm going to go to the place that actually discovered insulin. That's that was my, so it was discovered in the 1920s.

Heath Fletcher (09:37)
⁓ yeah, that's right!

Eitan Akirav (09:41)
by Banting Invest and ⁓ I was actually blessed to work with Dr. Mladen Vranik who since past who was one of the mentees of these two Nobel Prize winners and saved countless lives.

Heath Fletcher (09:58)
Wow,

amazing.

Eitan Akirav (10:00)
⁓ so I'm, I've been always kind of focused on autoimmunity specifically on diabetes. And when I joined Kevin Harrell's lab, as I mentioned at Yale, when I was working on clinical assets, ⁓ the juvenile diabetes research foundation came up with a what's known as an RFP or request for proposals, asking the scientific community to find a biomarker that can detect type one diabetes earlier.

Because unfortunately, even today, the only way that you know that a person has type one diabetes is when they either have very high levels of sugar in the blood or they're ketotic or they went into a coma. I mean, it's really a hard diagnosis. so working together with him and, researchers in cancer, we took a biomarker concept that measures the level of

DNA released from cells into the blood and not to get too technical, you're able to then identify if you're losing a lot of cells in your body or not. And that was very novel for outside of the cancer world. That was patented. We actually ⁓ published it in the proceeds of the National Academy of Sciences and back in 2011. And ⁓ when we got the patent, ⁓ I worked together with the Yale

⁓ tech transfer office. And we ended up finding a company at the time was called Islet Sciences. Today, their name is, Key Health. and they, they are taking this concept and they're bringing it to market, not just for diabetes, for multiple of other biomarkers, to. Yeah. that's.

Heath Fletcher (11:43)
Right. there,

is that, yeah. Sorry. ⁓ is there, is that indications now that, diabetes, can be identified genetically in, in before symptoms actually start to present themselves?

Eitan Akirav (11:58)
It's a great question. ⁓ people with first degree relatives with type one diabetes are certainly more susceptible to the disease. But if you want to, if you don't want to talk about stochastic and craziness in nature, ⁓ concordance, twins, these are identical. Twins don't really, I mean, they're the same, they're the same person just split into half when you come to think about it.

One can become diabetic and there's only 50 % likelihood that the other one will become diabetic. So it's wild. It's just beyond our comprehension from a scientific point of view.

Heath Fletcher (12:32)
Is that right?

I mean, there's lots of conversation around the whole, ⁓ you know, when a gene gets turned on or off that trigger, that is for a particular disease, it may be there, but that the gene has not been activated. therefore, ⁓ maybe that's part of the, that's part of the, part of the knowledge, right? Of understanding what gene will turn that off and turn that on.

Eitan Akirav (13:06)
Exactly. think it's ⁓ the term for it is epigenetics, which technically changes the gene after it's being expressed, even if it gets if it ever gets expressed. But I'm a firm believer in environmental factors, ⁓ because, you know, the example of the twins just tells you that maybe they get exposed to different factors. Maybe their eating habits are different. ⁓ You know, so we know that stress, got it.

Heath Fletcher (13:33)
Yeah.

Eitan Akirav (13:35)
You got it. Just your life experiences also doesn't just work on your brain. It works on the rest of your body too. Yeah.

Heath Fletcher (13:44)
Now Key Health, was the company that they changed their name to? ⁓ And isn't that where you are now again?

Eitan Akirav (13:52)
Yes,

yes. that's, ⁓ that's very exactly. ⁓ So the company is today led by Jenna Anderson and Robert Moons as co CEOs, ⁓ really talented, energetic, ⁓ young founders, they took over the company a couple of years ago. And they've asked me to join the scientific advisory board, ⁓ which ⁓ is a great ⁓

Heath Fletcher (13:55)
Full circle, right?

Eitan Akirav (14:21)
privilege and pleasure for me because I get to stay. Yeah. So they, you know, for a couple of years I served on the SAB. And then to your point, which you just raised, ⁓ I recently joined as a bona fide consultant working on ⁓ building up the proposition to other indications, not just to diabetes. So that's very exciting to me.

Heath Fletcher (14:23)
That's amazing.

Yeah, very exciting. What kind of, what are you seeing has changed? What innovation is coming through ⁓ KeyHealth now that you, that maybe is a surprise to you or something you haven't ⁓ experienced before?

Eitan Akirav (15:02)
Yeah, so I know some of the stuff that they do is ⁓ still being developed and on the background, but I think what I really like about them today in the past couple of years is that they're really holistic. They really believe that not a single biomarker would determine the outcome of whether you're going to get sick or not, or whether you're getting better or not. So the fact that they have such a holistic view and they combine different biomarkers together.

⁓ That is going to be a huge added value for patients, but also for clinicians. Because a lot of the times the doctors just, they can't diagnose the disease until certain checkbox have actually appeared. So if you can check those boxes before any serious symptoms actually started, I think that would be a huge advantage. And I really support that mission.

Heath Fletcher (15:57)
And then understanding that in advance, guess the person can actually, is there something that the actual ⁓ person can do to avoid the disease, the onset of the disease then? Is that the idea? It's almost more preventative than reactive?

Eitan Akirav (16:15)
So if we still talk about autoimmune diabetes or type 1 diabetes, which is very different than type 2 diabetes, and I can talk a little bit about that too, because the assay we developed is good for all diabetes. We published it for gestational diabetes, for type 2 diabetes, for type 1 diabetes. So to your question, unfortunately, once that chain reaction, that domino reaction starts with the immune system,

⁓ it's relatively hard to stop it. Now, another, another project I worked on, ⁓ together with Kevin Harold, ⁓ through the biomarker was the anti CD3 therapy. And again, not getting too technical, but it's almost like a stop sign for the immune system to stop. And, he's been a pioneer in this immune tolerance type of approach. And it actually.

is today commercialized by Sanofi. The drug is called, ⁓ the antibody is called the plizumab ⁓ and it is an intervention for people who are about to become diabetic. ⁓ Yeah, it's amazing. And the jury's still out on whether it will block it completely or will it delay the disease? But having a milder disease is normally associated with better prognosis.

Heath Fletcher (17:28)
Amazing

Eitan Akirav (17:42)
at end of the day. really hopeful that the real world evidence will show that it's going to be beneficial.

Heath Fletcher (17:54)
That's good news for a

Eitan Akirav (17:56)
of

people. know, I know because it was just you know once you get diagnosed or pre-diagnosed ⁓ you're almost like waiting. It's kind of waiting for it to happen which is a horrible situation to be in and it affects ⁓ children. It's mainly in individuals under 20 you know it's just

Heath Fletcher (18:16)
Is that

right? So is it increasing? Is that increasing?

Eitan Akirav (18:19)
So there is a steady increase in juvenile, I call it juvenile diabetes. So there is a steady increase. Nobody really knows why, but it's been increasing in the past few decades in relative, I would say relative ⁓ proportion in the general population. So it is increasing. Nobody really knows what's the underlying cause for that, but it's good to know that there's some sort of a

intervention that you can take when that happens. Yeah.

Heath Fletcher (18:51)
Yeah.

What kind of technologies are you experiencing in any of your consultancy arrangements? What kind of technology are you leveraging and able to take advantage of that's hit the market? mean, there's tons of things coming on now with AI and other innovative approaches to particularly in healthcare and life sciences. So anything you're taking advantage of or you're seeing being implemented that's interesting?

Eitan Akirav (19:22)
⁓ I think AI is definitely a buzzword. A ⁓ few of my clients are playing in the AI world. ⁓ To me, AI is, I know there's a lot of discussion on whether it's one day going to destroy us or what have you. ⁓ But I think ultimately AI is going to be almost like an auxiliary tool that people will use, particularly in the sciences.

I don't think it will fully replace a human. Maybe it will, maybe in a hundred years from now, but not, I don't think in my lifetime. ⁓ Yeah. And, and I keep joking with some of my clients that, you know, it took me two years to screen Google, PubMed, what have you, before you actually start to understand it. And this thing just spits it out in about 30 seconds.

⁓ You have to spot check it. Sometimes I get some wild things when I do a query.

Heath Fletcher (20:21)
It has a mind of its own almost.

Eitan Akirav (20:23)
Exactly. They call it hallucinations, right? So the AI can actually go to areas that it doesn't make any sense, but I guess from an algorithm point of view, it does. Yeah.

Heath Fletcher (20:33)
Yeah.

Yeah. Point was made in a chat the other day I had was that it that the thing we can't the thing we can't compete with it and was probably the greatest benefit is of it is that it is the greatest, potentially the greatest collective resource of information. Because to be able to glean and potentially potentially for the future of healthcare and health related industries that

being able to collectively bring all of the intelligence and the studies and the research and the data into a place like in AI, where it can be processed very quickly and information can also be found very quickly, can probably be one of the greatest benefits ⁓ to humanity that we know of is that we can't

Though no one person could actually research all the information, all the data that it could be actually accessing as quickly as it can.

Eitan Akirav (21:39)
Exactly. Exactly. It's just the game of saving human hours. That's really how I define it. You're just saving a lot of human hours.

Heath Fletcher (21:50)
Yeah. And I mean, a lot of times in healthy too, you know, whether it's medical practitioners or healthcare providers, whatever, I mean, they're, they're only working off data anyways, every time they take, submit blood work or what have you, they're pulling back data and they're just, you know, comparing data with other data to come up with some sort of prognosis or diagnosis. And so the faster that can be done with more variations of the same kind of data would be just beneficial. So.

Yeah, but you're right. mean, it still has to be verified and cross-checked and cause even with even for writing a blog, you can't let it go without reading it through because

Eitan Akirav (22:33)
Exactly. Exactly. I think you're 100 % correct. think you're still going to have to be somewhat of an expert in the field if it gets really technical. So you can spot check it. Make sure it makes sense.

Heath Fletcher (22:49)
Yeah, don't think, yeah, we still need people. We still need people because people can actually find errors, especially experts, right? When they're looking for certain things. Yeah, I think it's much easier for them. Life sciences is growing very quickly in a lot of different directions. ⁓ What do you see the next big disruption in that area?

Eitan Akirav (23:14)
Yeah, I think, I think that's a great question. ⁓ you know, we've seen the, we've seen the really, I mean, sort of a word of miracle of cell-based intervention, especially in oncology. ⁓ I personally know people who are alive today because of that particular technology where you can re-engineer a cell that comes from the body. In most cases, it is an immune cell of some sort, a T cell or B cell.

⁓ make it into a smart weapon, if you will, a very smart and targeted weapon, it back in the body and eliminate the tumor. But we know that that method is just not perfect. It's not there yet. And to me, the biggest ⁓ disruptors, at least in the field of oncology, will ultimately be whether we can A, generalize

this method of re-engineering the immune system, either doing it inside the patient or doing it outside the patient as they call it off the shelf cells, which is crazy. mean, who could think about off the shelf cells like, you know, 10 years ago? Um, you know, it's not a supermarket, right? It's kind of interesting. Um, so, so I think that's it, but the flip side and making it affordable, which is one of the reasons you want off the shelf, it's very expensive today to do. Uh, but on the, on the flip side of it,

I think it's the ability to ⁓ maybe go beyond cell-based therapy, right? A lot of viral-based therapy like adenovirus that people have used for gene therapy, which has a lot of detrimental effects and you can't treat patients with those repeatedly because your body will start rejecting the virus. ⁓ Ultimately, if there's a way to crack that nut and actually bring it

⁓ so, so it could be a generalized therapy. think that would be a huge disruptor because then you would look at diseases that today require chronic treatment, which, know, by one or two administration of cell therapy, you're cured. mean, medicine doesn't really talk about cure today. We're in an era which is disease management. yeah. So I think cure would be, would be a big, big disruptor. People will think about the actual cure.

Heath Fletcher (25:31)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. The word cure is loosely, loosely used. I guess we have the, the idea of a cure is a very, can be a very long process. It's like, you know, you're cured within five years or if nothing else happens, right? We, we clarify you as a, as a cured survivor of X cancer after five years or after two years or after four years. Um, uh,

Something else that's come up is the customized medications based on genetic information, particularly in cancer treatments where they customize the chemo ⁓ drugs or whatever drugs are being prescribed to maximize outcome and minimize ⁓ side effects. ⁓ What's your thought on that area?

Eitan Akirav (26:33)
Yeah, I think that would be brilliant. ⁓ I think it's there are already companies that would offer ⁓ direct phenotyping of your own tumor, both from a genetic and non genetic like proteins and so on. So I think that would be huge. ⁓ I would add to that, that we know that cancer evolves. Unfortunately, tumors do have a way of finding it's the nature of evolution.

has a way of finding ways around therapies that you introduce. So you can imagine you always kind of play a little bit of a catch up. Uh, but I think ultimately if you're able to in real time understand where the tumor is moving, you can imagine, and you have, of course, the drugs available on the shelf. That's not always a terrible, um, I think in that situation, you definitely will be able to kind of do a little bit more of a catch than, know,

wait for it to happen. And that's going to have an impact on the outcome and the longevity of people with cancer and other diseases, not just cancer.

Heath Fletcher (27:41)
Yeah.

Yeah, it's a, it's a, and it's a balancing act between, you know, at leveraging all this technology and innovation while still, you know, having a human touch and, and, ⁓ you know, I'm you, I think you've mentioned it earlier is that you vote, you know, most people in the industry are, are their goal is to help others is to find some way, ⁓ through whatever, ⁓

whatever area of expertise they're in, some way that they're going to make improve someone else's life or find a cure or save people's lives. But then we've got all this technology now and all this innovation. So do you think that can get lost in that combination?

Eitan Akirav (28:29)
I'm not sure that it would get lost. ⁓ I think that the balance between the financial incentives and the real, mean, I believe almost everybody I've met so far has done research at one level or another really wants to better humanity. mean, really, God knows people don't go into that for the money because you really make no money when you go in grad school and there's a

postdoc. It's just not, it's, that's not the incentive, including myself when, when I started my research. So, so I think, you always, when, when I meet with patient advocate groups from time to time, you actually see the push and pull between, yeah, we really want to cure every rare disease under the sun, which is great, but it takes billions of dollars, not millions, but billions of dollars to get a clinical trial.

Heath Fletcher (29:00)
Right.

Eitan Akirav (29:25)
done properly and actually get approved by the FDA. So ⁓ I think a lot of the times some companies, biotech companies and pharma companies will make an economic decision because it is a full profit ⁓ world that we live in, particularly in the United States, which is driven by profit, also in the health care, ⁓ which is different from Israel or Canada or other places with.

with more available, global available public health and so on.

Heath Fletcher (29:59)
Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I've had talks about this too, how overcomplicated that is, ⁓ that process of getting it to the human trials process is too long, too complicated, and that it should be, they should be fast tracking things. And I don't know if there's a way out around that, that takes a lot of, again, that takes a lot of work.

try and change that system.

Eitan Akirav (30:29)
Yes, yes. ⁓ So, so the when you bring a drug to market, you have the preclinical work, which they call is pre IND, then you apply for an IND ⁓ with the FDA. I'm using the US as an example, and then starts that long, long process of phase one to phase three in order to bring the drug to market. Going back to your point about AI, I think it will definitely shorten the time and the

effectiveness of how you design your trials. And that should automatically translate to cheaper cost of bringing drug to market and hopefully cheaper cost to the patients when they're actually owed to the, in the U.S. again, it's the health insurance providers to actually approve it and put it as part of the medication basket that they offer to the patients.

So AI, going back to AI, this would have a significant impact before you do it. I genuinely believe that my thesis, which took almost five years, I could have probably finished it in three years if I was a student today. Particularly when it comes to data analysis. mean, things like experiments will just inherently take long. But by the time you get that,

Heath Fletcher (31:44)
Is that right? Yes. Really?

Eitan Akirav (31:56)
to get the data, clean it up, do all the stats. I think AI would have shaved months ⁓ of actually doing the work. Familiarizing yourself with the topic, we are the bottleneck today, the humans are the bottleneck. That would have taken me the same amount of time probably, but doing the work ⁓ would definitely be ⁓ shorter.

Heath Fletcher (32:20)
Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, that's a good point. So there will be areas where that's, that could be, that could actually save us a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of effort. Yeah. The data crunching. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. What about, you know, new people coming into this industry, you know, following your footsteps, what do you, um, they're entering a kind of a different world. What advice would you give somebody who is coming in and maybe following, uh,

Eitan Akirav (32:29)
Absolutely.

Heath Fletcher (32:50)
the same similar route you took with your career. Um, or maybe what would you advise yourself if you could talk to him 20 years ago?

Eitan Akirav (33:02)
Yeah, I think the Frank Sinatra song I did it my way. So no regrets. I think I think I've been really blessed in every step of my career. I can't think of a way that I would change my career trajectory. I do. I mean, I do get questions from particular people who are looking to go into a terminal degree like a PhD or farm D or one of those. Right. ⁓ And the question I really asked them, which is to me is the

the it's not the million dollar question, but the five year question, because you're going to commit five years of your life, right? Question I ask, are you doing it for the three letters after your name, or are you actually doing it in order to use the skills that you obtain? And you'd be surprised how many people tell me that I really want to be called a doctor when I grow up. And I mean, I'm not everybody can do, you know, whatever they see fit. I know that if

Heath Fletcher (33:36)
Yeah. ⁓

Really?

Eitan Akirav (34:00)
I would, that would have not been a motivator for me. you know, I did it because again, I was interested in diabetes and I really, really wanted to be part of a cure. So the, the, the, the answer your question is if anybody is choosing any type of, ⁓ any type of career track, make sure you have the passion. I would say, ⁓ and I would say if you went into a certain track,

It's not the end of the world. You know, you can always pivot. mean, I pivoted from academia to biotech, from biotech to CRO, from CRO to back to academia, but on a business side of things and a business development side. And today I have my own consulting firm. it's, you know, it's a beautiful thing to live in, in North America. think Canada, the U S ⁓ Europe, you know, they offer a lot of opportunities.

We no longer stuck in a certain class or a certain status. So you can pivot. You just have to decide to do it ultimately. Yeah.

Heath Fletcher (35:09)
Yeah, I think that's good advice. And don't do it for the letters.

Eitan Akirav (35:12)
Don't

do it for the... Maybe that's a motivator. don't know. It never really spoke to me to do it just for the letter. You have to have a cause, especially in science, because it does demand a lot. I think when I was a student, I worked 24-7, mean, truly 24-7 in the lab.

Heath Fletcher (35:18)
Yeah.

That was it.

Yeah.

And what was it about diabetes? Was it something from your, from your past? know, what was it that had drawn that drew you to that particular disease?

Eitan Akirav (35:41)
Yeah.

So I have a family member with type one diabetes and that really was what pushed me. my third, so undergrad in Israel is actually three years, not four years. It's the same amount of material. They just cram it down in three years for many reasons, ⁓ including the mandatory military service, which you already 21 when you go to school. Right. You're older. So they do it in three years. And in my third year, I was gone home and going to vet school.

⁓ but that event in my life just changed my entire perspective. And I said, Hey, I'm acquiring tools that can actually move science forward for this particular indication. ⁓ and then I started working on it and I worked on MS too, because that was my, what my lab was focused on. So.

Heath Fletcher (36:31)
Interesting. And that took you down that path. So I now as a consultant, you're running your own business. ⁓ what are some of your challenges? What do you, what do you struggle with? with that? Yeah. that's a, it's a, it's a different beast.

Eitan Akirav (36:46)
It's a different beast. think the biggest challenge I would say in consulting ⁓ is to be able to convey your value to your buyer at the end of the day. ⁓ I love the consulting Bible book by Alan Weiss. I don't know if you had a chance to read it, but ⁓ I think he's a smart individual.

⁓ he, does a lot of, ⁓ corporate training and so on. But the point of it is you have to convey the message that your job is really to make the, the, the buyer or your client better. I mean, you'll hear to make themselves, to make the business better, to make the process better, to make whatever better. So I think, ⁓ to me, marketing myself is a new experience. I haven't really marketed myself from a.

from a consulting angle. ⁓ Funny enough, science, have to sell yourself all the time. People think you just sit in the lab, but it's not true. You publish papers, you give talks. ⁓ yeah, you have to sit in multiple review panels in order to get recognitions. ⁓

Heath Fletcher (37:53)
Get funding. ⁓

Yeah,

you're always pitching. You're always trying to get attention, right? Yeah.

Eitan Akirav (38:04)
In every profession, but I think in sciences it's even, it's on a larger scale because you have to make a lot of noise. And it's the same in consulting. You just have to build a reputation for yourself. So that is something I'm working on.

Heath Fletcher (38:18)
And how do you do that?

Eitan Akirav (38:20)
⁓ so I am a big ⁓ proponent of LinkedIn. So LinkedIn for me has been a wonderful tool. ⁓ I've almost always been a LinkedIn premium subscriber, whether it was paid by my former employers today, I pay for it ⁓ through my company. So I think that is very, very important. ⁓ This may sound a little bit of an A type.

Heath Fletcher (38:40)
Yeah.

Eitan Akirav (38:48)
comment, but I'm a big believer in CRM, is customer management software. ⁓ When you run your business as a sole proprietor and you don't have a bona fide team that works with you or under you or above you, you don't have a secretary, you have your own secretary, you have your own marketer, you have your own, of course you have to provide the services that you commit to. ⁓ a CRM just helps me keep everything. ⁓

Heath Fletcher (38:54)
Yeah.

Eitan Akirav (39:18)
in one place. So I can, I can almost, you almost have to be bipolar. You have to kind of one time, you know, jump on a call and talk to somebody and, then back off and say, okay, what do have in my pipeline? Who do I need to talk to? How can I beef it up? And so on. So yeah, it's a lot. Yeah. It's a lot to judge. I know it's very anecdotal, but Sierra made a big difference in my operation.

Heath Fletcher (39:35)
Juggle.

Which one do you like?

Eitan Akirav (39:42)
So I actually use Salesforce. ⁓ Not to say that it's the best ⁓ out there. I heard that there are other platforms, but it's just a force of habit. I've used it for so many years. ⁓ They have kept up with technology. They have a beautiful AI tool. get no payment for promoting them, just to put it out there, but they're really good.

Heath Fletcher (40:07)
You

know, and they're not a sponsor of this show either. Yeah.

Eitan Akirav (40:10)
That's true, maybe we should talk to them.

Heath Fletcher (40:13)
⁓

CRMs and project management tools, there's no one that actually does at all. It's like there's one for each industry or each personality type or whatever. And so try and get everybody on board to use the same CRM and like it or the same project management tool and like it. God, I don't know how many I've gone through.

in the many years of running an agency. like, you know, they're just, uh, yeah, it's just hard to match them up with everybody. You can never know everyone. It's never, everyone's never happy. It's like, it's, it's something that doesn't work. Right. But they are very effective tools. You're right. I would agree with you on that one. They do. It's a great place to consolidate the data or the information on each customer or client or project or lead. Yeah.

Eitan Akirav (41:09)
Exactly.

Heath Fletcher (41:11)
Let me

hear your elevator pitch then. If you're talking to me and you're wanting to get me as a client, how do you present yourself?

Eitan Akirav (41:23)
Yeah, I think that's a good point. ⁓ There's no single ⁓ elevator's pitch. I think that goes back to your point about my career track, which is really diverse, right? From basic science to clinical science and obviously to business development. So for clients that are looking for my services in the BD side of things and the business development side of things, I normally try and... ⁓

I normally tell them that I'm going to be a door opener. So because I'm located in the greater Boston area, I'm about 40 minutes, 45 minutes north of Boston. Boston today is the Mecca of Boston.

Heath Fletcher (42:04)
Yeah. Biotech hub. Yeah. Yeah.

Eitan Akirav (42:07)
And when I was at Harvard, I mean, we had universities from all over the world asking, you know, what's the secret sauce? And the secret sauce here is money, great academic institutions and pharma. And when you put this in biotech and you put them all together, it's a winning, it's a winning combination. So I use ⁓ my 5,500 first connections on LinkedIn ⁓ to open doors and.

kind of introduce the value of my clients. I will never onboard a client that I do not believe in the product or platform. I just will never do it because I want to bring value to the buyers of that client. And I want to obviously my reputation intact. So it's kind of a balancing. So all of my clients are people that I strongly believe in what they have to offer. And that is what I tell them. I really have skin in the game.

Most people think about consultants as an outsider. For me, it's a real commitment. I have skin in the game.

Heath Fletcher (43:09)
Yeah.

Yeah, you care about results.

Eitan Akirav (43:16)
Absolutely. And how can I make my clients situation better when I'm done with my six months or 12 months or two year project? They're going to look back at me and say, Hey, Aitan, you did a great job. You know, if I have something else, I'm going to hire you again. That's the best, the best outcome that I can be.

Heath Fletcher (43:34)
Yeah, that's when you're building bridges that moving forward there you can always rely on and vice versa. They can rely on you too. Yeah, that's great advice. I mean, that speaks to your ⁓ leadership vision and your leadership ability too, is you probably infuse that into your work and the people you work with and that's going go, that's going to carry on forever. Yeah. Yeah.

Eitan Akirav (43:59)
Yeah, I think work ethics is something that's that you build as a scientist because you have to be very persistent and 90 % of your experiments will fail. So you develop a real thick skin.

Heath Fletcher (44:12)
Yeah, yeah. And failing is where the learning happens, right?

Eitan Akirav (44:16)
Exactly.

Much more than success, for sure.

Heath Fletcher (44:19)
Well, I think your diversity too in your experiences and the areas that you've, ⁓ you know, know, waited into and tested out would you, you bring a lot of variety to the table. So I think that's probably an advantage rather than just having done one thing for a long period of time. Then you become a bit too niche in that sense. But yeah, yeah, I can see all that adding up. ⁓

Aitin, this has been a really great conversation. I really appreciate your time. Is there anything you want to, ⁓ you know, any final thoughts or takeaways for anybody or anything we haven't talked about that you wanted to chat about?

Eitan Akirav (44:58)
I think this was really nice and comprehensive. ⁓ I certainly have my wheels turning now as you ask me questions, because when you work on your own, you don't have lot of interaction where people ask you about your own business and so on. So, I appreciate it. And I really appreciate the opportunity to be here and speak to you.

Heath Fletcher (45:11)
Yeah.

Yeah, well, I appreciate you. So thank you very much. And ⁓ yeah, thanks for coming on the show. Very enjoyable conversation with Eitan today. I liked hearing about his leap of faith journey from academic to private consultant with his company, Konkai Ventures. ⁓ He's absolutely right. When you go out working for yourself, you're wearing a lot of hats. And so one tool that he recommended is a CRM to help keep you organized.

and keep track of your clients and their activities. ⁓ He also offered great resource, a book by Alan Weiss called Million Dollar Consulting. So that might be worthwhile checking into. And I really appreciated his perspective on setting a standard of integrity around selecting clients to work with and that he has to believe in the product or service they're offering.

before he can get on board and provide them with his expertise. So, ⁓ great position to take. So that's it for today. Thanks for listening and stay healthy.