Justin Chickles, CEO & Co-Founder of Glycyx Therapeutics

Could opioids be silently undermining cancer immunotherapy?

This week, Justin Chickles — CEO and co-founder of Glycyx Therapeutics — explains how his team is tackling this overlooked challenge with axelopran, a breakthrough therapy now advancing to Phase 2 trials.

From his early career at Johnson & Johnson to leading multiple startups, Justin offers a rare, insider’s perspective on driving biotech innovation from concept to clinic. If you’re interested in cutting-edge oncology, translational science, and biotech entrepreneurship, you won’t want to miss this episode.

Transcript

Julio Martinez-Clark (00:01.783)
Welcome back to another episode of the Global Trial Accelerators Podcast. Today, my guest is Justin Chiklos. Am I pronouncing your last name correctly, Justin?

Justin Chickles (00:12.171)
You are, but I've heard lots of other versions of that, whether it's Pickles or Tickles. At least those two rhyme so you can get people to like kind of little, you can say my name right, but you did perfect.

Julio Martinez-Clark (00:15.884)
I'm sure you have!

Julio Martinez-Clark (00:23.466)
Excellent. So Justin is a biotech executive, medical device entrepreneur, and also a yoga instructor, right?

Justin Chickles (00:32.965)
Yeah, I would say let's focus on the pharmaceutical piece rather than medical device. So, because our trials are all in pharmaceutical right now. I've been a medical device and pharmaceutical, but I'm leading a pharmaceutical company.

Julio Martinez-Clark (00:39.468)
Alright, will we do that? Yes. Yes.

Julio Martinez-Clark (00:47.53)
Yes, I was going to get to that in a second. So just for the audience, Justin is a prominent figure in the biotechnology industry, currently serving as the CEO and co-founder of Glykix. Is that how you pronounce it? Gly-six. Thank you. Therapeutics.

Justin Chickles (00:50.351)
Okay, sorry about that. I'm sorry about that.

Justin Chickles (01:05.103)
Glycix. Glycix.

Do we want to start over or are just gonna, are you gonna piece together? Okay, yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (01:12.126)
Let's go for it. let's go. A clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on cancer treatment innovation. Beyond his business ventures, he's also a registered yoga teacher who brings a unique perspective to wellness and healing. So welcome to the show Justin.

Justin Chickles (01:29.787)
Thank you, Julio. It's great to finally come onto the show. I've been excited about all of our conversations around clinical trials and they've really enjoyed your podcast.

Julio Martinez-Clark (01:38.378)
Excellent, All right, Justin, tell us about your journey. How is it that you got to where you are today, your personal professional journey?

Justin Chickles (01:47.225)
My journey kind of has begun, you know, I've been always curious about science. I started out in, when I was in college, really studying computer science, but then I also added in the creative side and English literature. So that is the very beginning of this combination between how do you do science? How do you add creativity to you? Which has kind of led me through my whole journey in my career. Most of my career has been about how do you do the fundamental

translation of science into a commercial strategy and then launching it globally. So that's led me to working at Johnson & Johnson, where I actually led building out a new innovation, as well as actually leading an almost billion dollar product in Johnson & Johnson. And then from there, I've actually ended up starting my own company previously, which was called Mobosense, which is a cardiac monitoring device and digital health platform. And then more recently, I've been working on Glycix Therapeutics, which is actually a immune restoration

Julio Martinez-Clark (02:22.285)
Hmm.

Justin Chickles (02:44.208)
therapy in cancer and it's dealing with a really interesting problem which is that opioids are currently blocking cancer treatments from working and that awareness has only been happening over the last couple years. So my journey has kind of led me through devices, it's led it through therapeutics and I'd love to be able to get down both in the product side, the clinical trial side, reimbursement and regulatory. What are the strategies and what do you need to actually make a product successful and bring it

Julio Martinez-Clark (03:11.777)
Fantastic, Justin. So tell us about your yoga activities. I know it's unrelated, it's personal, but...

Justin Chickles (03:17.348)
That's probably a longer story. mean, the yoga side of things is actually, I first got into meditation when I was about 10 years old. I was living in Japan at the time. My dad was actually in the military, he was in the Air Force. And during a part of actually learning Japanese, they actually have you go through this meditation practice. And it's, you you're kind picturing clearing your mind, you're thinking about what you're gonna learn and what you're gonna go forward with.

Julio Martinez-Clark (03:24.811)
Wow.

Julio Martinez-Clark (03:29.964)
Mmm.

Justin Chickles (03:43.377)
And that ended up guiding me through to when I actually, you my first job out of college, I actually found a great yoga instructor and I've followed that path of through yoga for basically my entire life. Um, it's been more recently on the, the becoming a yoga instructor as well. I really do that in the evenings and it's more for my fund and my benefit and also sort of bringing a little bit of those learnings and that holistic aspect of things into the rest of my life. And what's interesting too, is just that level of intersection between

Julio Martinez-Clark (03:55.297)
Hmm.

Justin Chickles (04:12.878)
becoming aware, looking into your body, understanding even the mechanistic aspects of breath control, meditation, how that can really bring down the autonomic nervous system and calm everything down. That has also led to some of this intersection even with what we're doing at Glycix. even though it might seem a little different, it's one of the things I'm really passionate about.

Julio Martinez-Clark (04:34.454)
Yeah.

Justin Chickles (04:39.17)
I enjoy getting up there and really kind of leading people through a mindful as well as exercise driven yoga classes.

Julio Martinez-Clark (04:47.083)
No, I mean the reason I ask is because going through your bio you have a fascinating background and you start as a software engineer,

Justin Chickles (04:56.642)
Yeah, I did. Yeah, was, I know it's funny now. my, when I was in college, I actually worked on some machine learning and AI when I was first starting out. So it's interesting watching how much that has evolved over time as well. So I've been deeply involved in understanding like how you can use computers and leverage that into building and creating new things. And, know, that's pretty heavy in the medical device world where of course software is a big component.

Julio Martinez-Clark (04:58.123)
Wow.

Julio Martinez-Clark (05:05.708)
Okay.

Justin Chickles (05:26.392)
And of course now it's starting to come into pharmaceutical world as well in terms of that development and how you can use AI even to leverage into sort of daily business practices. I've actually been finding that AI is now becoming into as a CEO, what can we use to leverage it for marketing? What can we use to leverage it for actually review of documents, creating and taking synthesizing information is actually really incredibly powerful. So I've always had a curiosity.

Julio Martinez-Clark (05:41.865)
Yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (05:45.696)
Yes.

Justin Chickles (05:55.134)
when it comes to software and being able to develop and build things that comes from sort of that, I think, computer science aspect of things.

Julio Martinez-Clark (06:02.729)
Fantastic. All right, so let's talk about trends and industry dynamics. Justin, as you know, this is a podcast focused on global clinical trials. What do you see happening in the space, in the biotech space? What do you see happening in regards to companies moving forward with their studies? Is it getting more difficult to do them in the US? Are they going overseas? What's your take on what's happening?

the clinical trial work in your space.

Justin Chickles (06:33.104)
That's a great question. It's interesting because I think clinical trials, there is still a gold standard of having trials run in the US. In oncology, which we're doing with glycics right now, it is definitely challenging trying to recruit patients. Patients, if you're trying to go for a specific cancer, like say head and neck cancer, our study is gonna be starting in September, finding...

Julio Martinez-Clark (06:51.529)
Hmm.

Justin Chickles (07:00.718)
those patients that are gonna meet the criteria is really difficult. What's interesting about what we're doing with Glycix that is kind of makes it a little bit easier for us is that we're actually gonna be able to be in combination with standard of care. So we're not looking for a very specific genetic variation. We're looking for sort of a broad use and the enrollment is relatively going to be relatively straightforward, but we're still having to compete probably against, I think right now at one of our sites in Pittsburgh.

Julio Martinez-Clark (07:05.162)
Mmm.

Justin Chickles (07:30.491)
They're running 32 trials in head and neck cancer. So trying to find a way to find patients is becoming a challenge. I say there's two aspects of way that's changing right now. One is actually did work for Hawthorne effect, which was a way of being able to decentralize clinical trials and actually bring the clinical trial into somebody's home. And you can actually still do blood draws. You can do freezing of samples and then

Julio Martinez-Clark (07:33.949)
Wow.

Julio Martinez-Clark (07:53.972)
Hmm.

Justin Chickles (07:58.907)
Basically, it makes it so that the people who have a hard time coming from long distances to a clinical trial site can actually join in clinical trials. The other one, like you said, is actually working more on a global scale. And I think the global scale is really, you know, enables being able to bring in patients and not, you know, again, there's top centers around the world. We've actually looked at centers in Europe, looked at centers in Latin America, we've looked at centers in Asia and Australia. So I think that also expands your pool of patients.

Julio Martinez-Clark (08:20.169)
Mm.

Justin Chickles (08:28.112)
One of the biggest criteria is though, will the patient criteria meet what the FDA need? So we need to have the ability to enroll the patients correctly, do the follow-up correctly. Also understanding what is the prevalence of a particular cancer type might vary based on population. So we know that, you know, in Asia, head and neck cancer is actually fairly prevalent. So actually it's a good market for us. Same thing with lung cancer. You know, we're...

Julio Martinez-Clark (08:45.266)
Yes.

Justin Chickles (08:57.632)
have a clinical trial strategy of first going for head and neck cancer because that's one that have the highest opioid use. And opioid use is being used for pain because it's getting the most painful cancers coming in from the head and neck cancer. So that gives us the ability to really go out and enrich our patient population already because right now there's a very limited response rate that's happening head and neck cancer and we can broaden out who's eligible to be able to include into the trials. And then going globally,

Julio Martinez-Clark (09:20.006)
Okay.

Justin Chickles (09:27.482)
you know, we're looking at other areas and we've actually created into our protocol the ability to expand internationally to really be able to increase our recruitment rates. We know that our key centers at Emory and UPMC, the Pitt and University of Pittsburgh Helman Cancer Center are gonna be our major centers and they're gonna be the lead on the study that we're doing head and neck, but trying to be able to bring in additional patients is really.

Julio Martinez-Clark (09:36.457)
to wear.

Julio Martinez-Clark (09:54.651)
Yes, yeah. But the FDA forces you to have the study in the United States or at least a large percentage of the population of the study in the United States. Is that correct?

Justin Chickles (10:06.97)
For approval, that's correct. So for phase three, that's correct. For phase two, which is the stage we're at right now, you can actually have a big portion of those patients internationally showing the safety and efficacy. But when it comes to actually approval in the United States, you definitely need a big portion of those in the United States. So there's a bigger trend, I think, going to phase one, phase two internationally, both for costs as well as enrollment.

Julio Martinez-Clark (10:24.7)
Yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (10:33.128)
Yes.

Justin Chickles (10:33.236)
Again, patient enrollment is one of those biggest challenges that actually people face right now. you know, again, we see it in sort of our study designs. Again, what's interesting, I think, is where therapeutics are moving in general is they're moving to, they've moved towards more genetic-based versions or they're looking at bispecific antibodies. So that's also the toxicity that's coming with a lot of these new therapies is actually when you combine it with, PEMBER,

primorylizumab, it actually increases the overall toxicity in the body. And because of that, that means patients are not necessarily getting better outcomes. They're actually seeing an increase in their immune response and immune reaction. What we're seeing in sort of our data and what we already sort of have kind of analyzed is that we're actually restoring the immune function and we don't have nearly that toxic level of immune toxicity because we're not a

Julio Martinez-Clark (11:10.92)
Hmm.

Justin Chickles (11:31.543)
using the immune system in combination with another immune activator, we're actually sitting there enabling the immune system to act and work on its own and be able to go and actually fight the cancer without having to sort of deal with sort of that toxicity element. That actually really is gonna open, I think, possibilities, because I think we're also gonna able to find patients that are much more interested in saying, hey, this is actually going to make it better. We have another study that's gonna be starting in September.

which is going to be up at Health Partners in Minnesota, which is looking at end-of-life advanced cancer patients. And that one, again, is designed to look at several other different endpoints. It's also looking at cachexia, gut function, as well as progression of various survival and overall survival over time. But it is kind of looking a little bit more holistically in the body. Like you said, coming back to the yoga piece, we are trying to look at what we can do to extend life for patients.

Julio Martinez-Clark (12:24.177)
Yeah.

Justin Chickles (12:29.288)
And we know that we can help restore the gut. We can help restore the immune system. And we also have some really interesting data on the effect on metastasis. So, and that actually came in our preclinical work that we've done over the last couple of years and was published in JITC back in November, where it showed that we could reduce metastasis and reduce tumor growth when you put our peripherally active mu receptor antagonist.

Julio Martinez-Clark (12:57.959)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Chickles (12:59.492)
Now that is something that's very different, I think, from what people are used to in that we're going into a category that nobody's been looking at. Everybody's looking at these very niche, narrow cancer types, and we are able to go across a broad reach of cancer types because almost every cancer in the body expresses the mu receptor. And because of that, they're very sensitive to artificial opioids being put in.

Julio Martinez-Clark (13:11.441)
Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.

Justin Chickles (13:28.154)
but also they're sensitive to endogenous opioids. So opioids that are being produced by the body like endorphins and enkephalins also have an effect in the tumor microenvironment. So almost every cancer is producing opioids on their own as a way to do immune invasion, to promote tumor growth and to cause metastases. And one of the fascinating things that we've done at Glycix is understand why that's

Julio Martinez-Clark (13:57.316)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Chickles (13:57.561)
And that's been probably one of the most exciting things about our journey is that we now know more about opioid biology, why the opioid network exists in the body and why that's become a bigger and bigger concern in cancer in particular. And I think the easiest way to say it is the opioid network is designed as an injury response network. It is meant to be that

Julio Martinez-Clark (14:09.05)
Hmm.

Julio Martinez-Clark (14:21.657)
Interesting. Yeah.

Justin Chickles (14:26.478)
you get a cut or you get an infection, it goes and activates the innate immune system to go and sample that injury site and try to go and focus all the energy of the immune system towards that location. And it shuts down the adaptive immune system, which is what is being used in cancer treatments. The other part that the opioid network do in injury response is it begins blood vessel formation into the injury. So it begins the angiogenesis process and begins forming blood vessels into the tissue.

The more fascinating one, and this is the one I think what we're most excited about, is that the opioid network is also tied into epithelial mesenchymal transition, so EMT. And what it does is it takes cells from one part of the body that are healthy and translocates those into the tissue area to help rebuild the tissue. That's how the opioid network is supposed to work. And pain is actually a byproduct of that, the ability to block pain.

is actually comes along sort of for free in that whole injury response mechanism. But actually the main mechanism is really about injury response and trauma response. Now what's interesting is when you flip that on its head and you figure out what cancer is doing with that mechanism, that's when you go, wow, what is happening here? Because cancer essentially, it's figured out how to flip biological mechanisms over and use it to its own advantage.

Julio Martinez-Clark (15:48.643)
Yes.

Justin Chickles (15:51.502)
And that means that...

Cancer is taking that ability to block the immune system so that it can hide and not to get killed.

Julio Martinez-Clark (15:59.749)
Hmm. Hmm.

Justin Chickles (16:05.228)
It's using the ability of angiogenesis to grow blood vessels into the tumor and have it build and grow and expand.

Julio Martinez-Clark (16:14.629)
Hmm.

Justin Chickles (16:16.334)
And the one that's probably the worst is being able to take that EMT aspect of things, be able to detach cancer cells and spread them through the body as metastases. And that's all being caused by the opioid network.

Julio Martinez-Clark (16:29.573)
It's amazing to understand that you guys have now.

Justin Chickles (16:34.574)
Yeah. And the thing is nobody knew about this. So my co-founder, Dr. Lauren Johnson, he first found this several years ago, back in 2017. And it was an insight that came from clinical observations. It was a phase four post-market surveillance study looking at what's happening in the population. And that's when we saw the signal that if you gave an antagonist to patients, they were living longer. And at first,

Julio Martinez-Clark (16:58.479)
Hmm.

Justin Chickles (17:04.366)
We went down this whole sidetrack of saying we thought it was about the gut, we thought about his motility and cachexia and try to reverse that. When we started doing the fundamental science at Glycix about understanding what was happening, it kind of blew our mind because it was much, much more than we thought it was before that. And putting all those pieces together and building out this

Julio Martinez-Clark (17:09.796)
Yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (17:20.441)
Hmm. Hmm.

Justin Chickles (17:32.865)
understanding of the biological mechanism has led to a number of different insights and why they all kind of work together. And if you start to put it all into that same lens of this is injury response meant to be acute injury response being chronically activated and that's causing this whole system to basically go a little bit haywire when cancer takes advantage of it. It's been fascinating.

Julio Martinez-Clark (17:59.78)
Yes, it is.

Justin Chickles (18:02.286)
The other big thing is there's been clinical validation that's come out in the last three, four years. There was a publication by Dr. Cordellini out of Rome, and while he was at Imperial College London, over a thousand patients treated with checkpoint inhibitors, it showed that if you gave an opioid to those patients, it decreased their overall survival by almost 50%.

Julio Martinez-Clark (18:32.484)
Mm.

Justin Chickles (18:32.812)
And we now know that we can reverse that effect and bring that opioid patient up to normal baseline or maybe beyond, which is what our clinical trials aim to try to prove.

Julio Martinez-Clark (18:43.181)
Amazing, amazing. So what's the goal of Glycix? mean, eventually you want to get acquired by a larger biopharma company or what's really the vision for the company?

Justin Chickles (18:59.152)
Eventually, that's our goal. Right now, our lead goal is get through the phase two trials, working with the FDA to make sure we can work across all the different cancer types we think we can address. And we think that that's going to lead to potentially through a breakthrough status when we get our phase two results. The impact is so high that we do believe that should be possible. Once we get to there, again, we're going to be open to partners, potentially to acquisition.

Julio Martinez-Clark (19:05.102)
Yes.

Julio Martinez-Clark (19:26.402)
Hmm. Yeah.

Justin Chickles (19:28.364)
We do want to make sure we keep building out the company, build out the asset, build out the potential indications that we're aiming for. That's really going to, you know, in the end, that is where we would like to make sure that we can have the scalability that comes with the partnership or comes with an acquisition. But that's still several years down the line. And we're really looking for making sure that we can find a right partner to work with. That includes people that are making anti-PD-1s. So we do think there's an opportunity for a partner right now to work with us.

Julio Martinez-Clark (19:36.131)
you

Julio Martinez-Clark (19:43.491)
Yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (19:49.987)
sure.

Justin Chickles (19:56.559)
where we could create some unique combinations that could really show and highlight a specific drug in combination with ours. And really that could be something that would be a unique opportunity for them to be able to build and create new markets and be able to steal market share.

Julio Martinez-Clark (20:11.779)
So Justin, is this your first startup company or are you a serial entrepreneur?

Justin Chickles (20:19.874)
No, this is my second one as a CEO. I have also worked in startup probably for almost 15 years now. Most of that's been kind of in either working as head of product, leading commercial, and really also then as CEO. So startup is interesting when you're wearing all the different hats. I act as finance sometimes, I act as clinical, I act as reimbursement.

Julio Martinez-Clark (20:23.809)
Okay.

Julio Martinez-Clark (20:42.721)
Yes.

Julio Martinez-Clark (20:46.741)
Yes, yeah. As a bookkeeper sometimes.

Justin Chickles (20:49.84)
you know, I'm actively raising money. mean, that's the startup life for you sometimes. You know, and also it's making sure that you bring in really good people. You know, I think we have a great team in Glycix right now. Lauren is an amazing chief science officer. David Taggart is our chief business officer. He's fantastic. One of the most brilliant people I've worked with. Both of them are. And our acting chief medical officer, Bridget Martell.

Julio Martinez-Clark (20:56.375)
Yes.

Yes, I was going to say that.

Justin Chickles (21:15.79)
She is an MD, she's worked on oncology, so we've got a really solid core executive team that really kind of helps each of us build work in our space and be able to add a lot of value to making it happen. I think that's a big part of making a startup successful is having a good core team.

Julio Martinez-Clark (21:17.591)
Hmm.

Julio Martinez-Clark (21:31.46)
Yes, that leads me to my next question. Now that you mentioned your team, think it's extremely fundamental for a startup company to have a world-class team because that adds to the credibility of the company when you speak with investors. So my question is, how difficult do you see the investment?

know how difficult, how difficult, how easy it is to raise funds right now. So how's investment sentiment right now in the country, and from your perspective?

Justin Chickles (22:03.66)
Investment right now has been exceedingly difficult the last couple of years. The biotech market has shrunk in terms of number of investments year after year, especially into new investments. And also they've been shifting the goalposts for what they're willing to invest in. Later stages. So we've heard that feedback that come back when we have our human data and they'll invest.

Julio Martinez-Clark (22:07.458)
Hmm.

Julio Martinez-Clark (22:22.977)
Yes, later stages, right? Not so much.

Julio Martinez-Clark (22:30.891)
Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Chickles (22:33.348)
which is a really a big chicken and egg problem because we need the capital to run the study to get the human data. But I've been hearing it pretty consistently. Unfortunately, I know quite a few CEOs who've actually shut down their companies in the last year, or they've sold the assets for pennies on the dollar. We're not in that stage right now. Luckily, we're fairly well funded, at least to get through this first study that's coming up right now. We do...

Julio Martinez-Clark (22:35.765)
Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (22:47.489)
Really?

Julio Martinez-Clark (22:56.076)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Justin Chickles (23:02.54)
in process right now on an SBIR grant, which is actually going to help fund that study. And we've had some philanthropic study funds come forward the study in health partners in Minnesota. So we're continuing to make sure we get out there and find new sources of funds. But we are trying to raise $30 million right now because that actually gets us all the way through phase 2B and potentially even start the phase three. So

Julio Martinez-Clark (23:05.13)
Nice! Yeah!

Julio Martinez-Clark (23:19.809)
Yes.

Julio Martinez-Clark (23:29.813)
Okay.

Justin Chickles (23:30.96)
That gives us the money to really move forward in a way that we could get this study done. We could be on market by 2029, 2030 with that infusion capital. Without the infusion of capital, we're delayed. We're delaying that ability to come.

Julio Martinez-Clark (23:40.001)
Mmm.

Julio Martinez-Clark (23:48.17)
I see. So Justin, what do you think about the investor mix now? Because I've been reading some news about family offices getting into early stage investments, startup investment. I've seen a few of my clients tap into their friends and family network even more and more and more than before because VCs are not funding.

early stage companies as fast as they were before. So what's your take on that, on the mix of investors now?

Justin Chickles (24:24.272)
I agree. I think that we've definitely seen the trend. The conversations that have moved forward the farthest with us have been with family offices. So that has been, I think that's true. We're, I mean, we have VCs that are interested in their own kind of the wait and see game. We're also definitely seeing friends and family have actually invested into Glycix, you know, over the last couple of years.

Julio Martinez-Clark (24:33.857)
Hmm

Justin Chickles (24:51.652)
So that actually has been one of our sources of funds as well. yes, I think, and we're considered late stage. We're not pre-clinical, right? A lot of these startup companies are still in pre-clinical trying to raise $30 million. We're clinical, phase two, drug is currently being put into capsules in preparation for our study. We have CMC complete. Our IND is filed. It's active.

Julio Martinez-Clark (24:56.513)
Mmm.

Julio Martinez-Clark (25:05.536)
Yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (25:14.048)
Hmm.

Julio Martinez-Clark (25:18.751)
Yeah.

Justin Chickles (25:21.563)
we're literally on the edge of starting the study. And we also, and you know, I was in an investor conference probably three weeks ago, and that was still the consistent feedback we were hearing. like, oh, we're looking for later stage. I'm like, well, we're phase two, we're later stage. I'm like, oh, okay. But then I was like, so, and then you start to probe and try to find out where they're willing to go. And they're like, oh.

Julio Martinez-Clark (25:27.115)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (25:40.477)
You

Justin Chickles (25:49.646)
Well, maybe when you come back with human data, I'm like.

Julio Martinez-Clark (25:51.585)
We already have human data. How do you define later stage specifically?

Justin Chickles (26:00.336)
Right. If we're completely de-risked, if we've already done our human trials, most likely we'll get acquired by a pharmaceutical company at that point, or we're going to have a good partner who's going to license the asset. So, I think there's a wait and see that's happening in the VC community, which means they're going to wait so long that they're going to miss out on some really good opportunities. On the other hand, I think there's the other side of that too, is that the VCs are looking at these like dropping valuations and companies getting desperate that they're snatching up assets very, very cheap.

Julio Martinez-Clark (26:05.087)
Yeah. Yeah, you're the risk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Chickles (26:30.668)
So there's a bit of a mix of what's happening I think in the market right now. For us, we're gonna continue moving forward. We'd love to find a good partner. We'd love to find a good either VC or family office or somebody who could really bring in that effusion of capital that we really want to go to drive the rest of way forward. If we have to, we're gonna go down the slow route. It's not our ideal route, but it's the route we're gonna end up having to go down sometimes.

Julio Martinez-Clark (26:30.858)
Hmm.

Julio Martinez-Clark (26:57.121)
Sure, Alright, Justin, before we end the show, we're close to 30 minutes now. One last question in terms of regulatory strategy with the new government in the US with the layoff of the FDA and the...

changes, political changes and administrative changes in different government agencies. How do you see that unfolding in the next couple years or so with the FDA? Is it getting harder to get pre-submissions or get some measures done? Is the response from the FDA being delayed? What's happening at the FDA level now, in your opinion?

Justin Chickles (27:35.601)
I would say there's definitely some uncertainty and some indications in the FDA right now. We received responses relatively quick after our submission that we just did several weeks ago. So we're still seeing activity coming from the FDA. I think we're the focus of the FDA is still unknown. It did take a fair amount of time for the NIH to kind of understand where they were going to be coming from, which is again the grant.

Julio Martinez-Clark (27:45.268)
Okay.

Julio Martinez-Clark (27:57.502)
Hmm.

Julio Martinez-Clark (28:03.784)
Hmm. Okay. Yeah.

Justin Chickles (28:05.424)
that we have in process right now. So I think there's a lot of uncertainty. And if you would ask me nine months ago where the venture capital market was gonna go, everybody was like, things are gonna open up in January of 2025, we're gonna be making new investments. And I think a lot of that uncertainty has created, again, a pullback on the VC community in particular to make those investments until

Julio Martinez-Clark (28:22.397)
Yeah. Yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (28:31.24)
Yes.

Justin Chickles (28:35.31)
things have sorted themselves out. I don't fully know where that's gonna go, but at least for us right now, we're having good conversations, we're still moving things forward, that, at least oncology is still definitely a focus, and we're not impacted by the changes right

Julio Martinez-Clark (28:50.963)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Julio Martinez-Clark (28:57.543)
Excellent, I'm glad to hear that.

Justin, I think we're close to the end of the show. It's been a delightful conversation. Any final words of wisdom for new founders? And there's a reason why I ask if you are a new founder or not. I see that you have already some experience as a founder and also CEO. But what would you say to a new founder, somebody who is just learning the ropes of studying companies and the exciting biotech field?

Justin Chickles (29:28.688)
The biggest one is the team. I know you've probably heard that before. The team is so critical. Understanding who you're working with, their commitment to it, and how truthful they are. I think that is probably one of the biggest things. Can you trust the people? Can they be there for you? Can they help add and complement all the skills of the team and work together to really build something out? That's by far one of the

Julio Martinez-Clark (29:32.092)
Hmm. Yeah.

Justin Chickles (29:57.189)
biggest pieces that I think is the most important. It makes all the difference in the world. It makes you wanna go into work every day, talk to people, meet with the team, and you move together. When you're in sync and you're moving together, things just happen. For new founders, I think one of the, you're always learning the ropes. I think there's something beautiful about being the new founder too, because you're sitting there trying to learn how to do this. my goodness, I gotta learn accounting.

Julio Martinez-Clark (30:09.488)
Exactly.

Julio Martinez-Clark (30:23.656)
Yeah.

Justin Chickles (30:25.88)
Accounting when I went to business school was not something I wanted to learn yet when you're the CEO You have to learn accounting You're forced to right so all of a sudden I had Become that I mean, yes, you can still hire an accountant But when you're first starting out, you don't usually have the funds to hire like a good outside accountant. So, you know Yes

Julio Martinez-Clark (30:27.87)
You

Julio Martinez-Clark (30:33.503)
You have to, you are forced to learn.

Julio Martinez-Clark (30:41.106)
Yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (30:45.754)
Exactly, yes. Yeah, yeah. I used to do bookkeeping myself and reconciling bank accounts and all that was part of my daily activities, yeah, when I started my company.

Justin Chickles (30:55.756)
Debits and credits, I love them. I love them, they're so logical. They're like, oh yeah, that's great, of course you're do all the debt. I look at them and I'm just like, this makes no sense. Why do we have five accounts for the same amount of money that's being put into five different accounts? How does this work? That's part of that process of trying to go through the accounting side. again, the other big advice is tap into your friends. Join the communities.

Julio Martinez-Clark (30:59.944)
Yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (31:11.132)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (31:21.821)
Yes.

Justin Chickles (31:23.492)
Become a part of an accelerator. Go out there and actually make sure you, know, there's something special about sitting down with other people. They might be working on something completely different from you. Yet, their understanding and their ability to help you as an entrepreneur is critical. It opens up your awareness of things that you didn't know were problems and opportunities that you didn't know.

Julio Martinez-Clark (31:25.544)
Mmm, yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (31:40.594)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (31:52.272)
Yeah, that's a great point. know...

Most people think, at least in my experience, you think that people are not as generous. But once you approach people, once you make friends with them,

people are very generous in general. mean, they give out so much information and knowledge and they share their experiences very openly with you if you're just a nice person. I mean, at a conference, you meet people and they just start talking and talking and talking and you wish you had a recording or something on that conversation because you learn so much just by speaking with people.

Justin Chickles (32:33.584)
I agree. I agree. think reaching out to the people and you know, that are around you. I mean, you never know what conversation that you have with somebody where that might come back to you in the future. And somebody you meet now who is an intern might very well be the CEO of a company in 20 years. So you, you don't know what that conversation you had with somebody that impact that you might have on them and the shaping of their direction.

Julio Martinez-Clark (32:47.261)
Yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (32:51.78)
Exactly, exactly, exactly.

Julio Martinez-Clark (33:01.956)
Yeah.

Justin Chickles (33:03.778)
or their shaping of you. Because again, you talk to somebody who's coming in with fresh ideas, they might look at your problem and go, why didn't you think about this? I I think that happened probably about a week ago, where I was just having a conversation with our intern and she came up with an idea and I'm like, you know, that's really interesting. let's try that out and see what happens. And all of sudden it opened up a whole new pathway on our discovery process. So you never know.

Julio Martinez-Clark (33:22.608)
Wow, interesting. Yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (33:30.479)
Excellent.

Justin Chickles (33:33.514)
what insights people can bring to what you're working on.

Julio Martinez-Clark (33:36.796)
Yeah, and also part of being a CEO is being very friendly and very social, right? You have to be out there, just talk to people. I mean, I just can't picture a shy CEO. You have to speak with investors, you have to service report, right? So that's an important piece of it.

Justin Chickles (33:58.481)
Yeah, it is. It's an important part of the skill set as well. I think being genuine in your approach to like, you've got to be who you are and not being able to shy away from maybe all those elements of yourself too. Because like, I thought it was really interesting, Julio, that you brought up the yoga side of things right at the beginning. Because again, it's always been a part of me. And there was a time when I would not...

really share that because I was a little bit afraid of people's perspective of it. But it is a fundamental part of like who I am and it's what grounds me. It also, you know, helps me kind of focus my thoughts and brings me awareness to places that I haven't been before. And also moves my body and keeps me flexible, especially as I'm getting stiffer.

Julio Martinez-Clark (34:30.97)
Yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (34:50.608)
Yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Chickles (34:53.968)
I think those things that make you more interesting as a person can really help out with everybody's willingness to want to talk with you as well. In fact, I don't even know what your hobbies are. What are yours, Julio? I need to, now I'm gonna have to ask, what did you do that was most excited you like this last weekend? I gotta be on Switching Around here a little bit.

Julio Martinez-Clark (35:04.708)
I'm supposed to ask the questions, not you.

Julio Martinez-Clark (35:18.78)
Well, I like to cook a lot actually. I socialize a lot. I usually go out with friends who have drinks once in a while. But cooking is my thing. Honestly, making bread, making pizza.

Justin Chickles (35:28.4)
So what was the favorite thing you cooked this last weekend or this week?

Julio Martinez-Clark (35:34.636)
Torta de patatas, Spanish tortilla, you know that? You've seen it, right? You've been to Spain or yeah. It's one of my most... I mean, everybody wants me to make that because it just comes out really well. I just love making it because it also brings people in. Yeah, yeah.

Justin Chickles (35:39.14)
Yeah, exactly, yeah.

Justin Chickles (35:48.997)
Wha-

So what do you do? mean, what do you do to make it special? Because you've got to, what do you do with the potatoes? You do something with the eggs? What do you do to make it special? Like, how do you make it special?

Julio Martinez-Clark (36:03.347)
I, the way you cut the potatoes is important. The shape of the potatoes, they have to be very, very thin, very thin. something that I have found out, one common question when I serve the dish is, so you cook the, people ask me, you cook the potatoes before.

cooking the potatoes. You know what I mean? So they think, no, no, no. What I do is what real Spanish people do. They just cut the potatoes raw and you put them in olive oil, hot olive oil, on a frying pan.

Justin Chickles (36:30.894)
Right, yeah, that's what I would think you would do. Yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (36:50.177)
and that will cook the potatoes really quickly, surprisingly. You don't need to pass them through water, through boiling water or anything like that. You just go straight to the olive oil and that makes a very soft and crispy potato too. Because part of the tortilla, part of the secret of the tortilla is that it has to be soft inside, but outside it has to be a little bit brown, a little bit crispy. Just a little bit. You just learn by experience. That's one thing. The other thing is that the final dish needs

Justin Chickles (36:57.744)
Hmm.

Julio Martinez-Clark (37:20.11)
to be moist, it cannot be dry. It's not a dry tortilla, it's a moist tortilla. And I think those two things are kind of important to make a great tortilla. And the way you flip it, and the way you flip it, really key.

Justin Chickles (37:33.412)
That's really insightful. mean, so do you end up taking like, Do you take the egg? When do you put the eggs in though? Or do you put eggs in your tortilla? Or is it just the potatoes? Because that's a critical component. I think if the tortilla is being, yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (37:42.326)
Okay, alright, alright, so this is what you do. take, yes, it is a critical component. You take the, while you're frying the potatoes on the olive oil, you take a bowl and you just mix eggs and salt and pepper and that's it.

really, really well mixed. And then once the potatoes are soft and a little bit brown outside, then you kind of drain the oil a little bit, and then you take the frying pan and put it on top of the potatoes. I'm sorry, the frying pan on top of, the potatoes in the frying pan on top of the eggs that are in the bowl.

Justin Chickles (38:26.456)
top of the eggs. Interesting. Yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (38:28.474)
Yeah, on top of the eggs that are in the bowl, right? And then you mix it all again, you mix it all together, so it creates a weird thing. mean, it's a mix of eggs with potatoes. And then you take the frying pan with one hand, and then you take the eggs with the potatoes here, and then you flip it, everything, on the frying pan. Right? And then it cooks very evenly. And then you let it rest for a little bit.

Justin Chickles (38:40.068)
Yeah.

Justin Chickles (38:52.218)
Okay.

Justin Chickles (38:56.57)
So actually the potatoes would heat up the eggs a little bit. That's really interesting. I'm gonna have to try it now because I love to cook too, but I've never tried making a tortilla before. that's interesting.

Julio Martinez-Clark (38:56.762)
Yeah, so he has his trick. It's not that easy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (39:07.594)
Exactly, yeah. And also you fry the potatoes with onions, a little bit of onions, like half an onion. It gives that sweet flavor to the whole dish. And also very, very important, very pivotal in the final dish is the way you flip it.

you have to flip the tortilla. mean, it cannot be served like it is on the stove. So you have to take a plate and then you have to do, you put the plate on top of the frying pan here and then you flip it. Right? And then it gets all brown and you present it very nicely. The crispy brown and very soft inside. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Chickles (39:47.312)
So you get that crispy outside, yeah.

Justin Chickles (39:55.216)
Great, that sounds, I'm gonna have to try it. That actually sounds delicious, so great, that's awesome.

Julio Martinez-Clark (39:58.717)
You know what is even better? You take French bread and then you open the bread and then you make a tortilla sandwich. A tortilla sandwich. Anyway, we went off topic.

Justin Chickles (40:08.348)
I it. I like it. That's awesome. I think my daughter would love that. Bread, potatoes, and eggs. And I'm pretty sure my daughter would love that.

Julio Martinez-Clark (40:17.271)
Yes, I'm sure she will. All right, Justin, thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast. I really enjoyed the conversation. I'm sure the audience will enjoy it as well. And I look forward to staying in touch.

Justin Chickles (40:19.696)
Alright.

Justin Chickles (40:30.544)
Okay, great, thanks Julio and have a great day.