Will Technology Spare Animals from Experimentation? Emulate and Jim Corbett are Working on it

Paul Shapiro: [00:00:00] Jim, welcome to the Business for Good

Jim Corbett: Podcast. . Paul, thanks so much for having me. Happy to be here. It is my

Paul Shapiro: pleasure to be chatting. Congratulations. I, I know that you testified before Congress for a bill that would hopefully reduce the number of animals who are used in testing, and lo and behold, that Bill got passed Amazingly, something happened in DC and legislation got passed.

to, to my knowledge, this is like the first time there's been any meaningful legislation relating to, animals used in labs, since like the 1960s or so. Is that, is that accurate or, you know, something that I don't.

Jim Corbett: It's actually goes ba takes back further than that. the FDA Modernization Act, which she has passed.

it really hasn't been amended relative to the use of animals in bringing therapeutics to markets since 1938. Wow. Wow. So, it's been decades and decades to say the least, but yes. it was lovely to see that bill come through. It was unanimously passed by the Senate, then went through the house, and then President Biden cited just the last week of.

Jim Corbett: December in [00:01:00] 2022. Yeah.

Paul Shapiro: Well, congratulations. So the 1938 law that you're referring to essentially requires any, drugs to be used for humans to be tested on animals First. I, I was referring to the 1966 Animal Welfare Act, which set standards for some animals used in labs about how they can be treated.

But, there have been. Efforts to amend that. And I think there have been some slate modifications, but I don't think any substantive modifications, since then. But either way, it's been a whole heck of a long time since anything happened in Congress, that was good for animals in labs. So, I, I know that you were not the only one in favor of this bill, Jim, but how'd you do it?

I mean, how, how, how did this come to pass if this actually.

Jim Corbett: Yeah, there was, to your point, there was a lot of, organizations involved in this. The Center for Humane Economy, the Center for Contemporary Sciences, many groups that have a passion about the wellbeing of animals and, the potential to try to reduce the amount of animals utilized in research.

So, their efforts align with our objectives [00:02:00] also, which is we believe we can deliver a technology that will allow researchers, altern. To produce their science and move their programs along and assess those technical questions they needs outside of an animal model. And so it was a natural partnership to work with these organizations that have a similar mission to, to reduce the unnecessary animals that are used in

Paul Shapiro: research.

So let's talk about what the bill does, or rather, what the law does and doesn't do, because A, as you mentioned, since 19, Drugs were required to be tested on animals. this doesn't prohibit any animal testing, but it does suggest that you don't have to do it. So what do you think will happen? do you think that companies just due to inertia will continue testing on animals?

Or do you think that they now will be freed from the shackles of animal testing and say, ah, okay, great. Now we're gonna use alternatives.

Jim Corbett: Yeah, I, I, I think it's gonna be a slow process, but, it has been, I would suggest, an overhang on the industry where the only way you could get through into a clinical trial was [00:03:00] utilizing animal models as part of that submission.

And now with this, option to be open. I think you'll start to see, creative companies, like ourselves and you see creative, biotech companies and pharma companies start to use these different technologies that are out there and submitting that in lieu of. potential animal data, and more than likely you'll start to see a reduction.

At first, you won't see a complete elimination. For instance, it's quite common for you to get into a phase one clinical trial trial, which is the safety component of it, where you'd have to test on two different species. If it's a small molecule, it's typically a rodent model and unfortunately a dog model.

I think over time what you'll be able to see is maybe we can eliminate one of those species at first to see how does something like an Organon chip work in addition to the animal model. And that might be that first step in starting to reduce. The number of animals, in, in the medical testing

Paul Shapiro: pathway.

Okay, great. Well, we're gonna talk all about [00:04:00] Organon Chip and what it is in just a few minutes, Jim, but I, I do wanna ask you just first about the efficacy of animal testing in general because, in your testimony in 2022 before Congress, I, I'm quoting you, you say that a growing body of evidence suggests that animal models are lacking in both sensitivity and specific.

Specificity when it comes to predicting drug toxicity in humans. So let me just ask you, like, you know, obviously you think that the organs on a chip that emulate is making are, are, are great, to use. Mm-hmm. , is animal testing just inherently flawed in your mind? Like, set aside the ethics of it, like, so we can talk about whether we should be, you know, forcing these animals to endure these experiments anyway.

Does it work? Like you're suggesting that they're really not that reliable of a model, so do you think that it, it works in these toxicity tests or any tests at all that are modeling for human medicine?

Jim Corbett: Yeah. And so let me, kind of give you the bigger picture on, on, on this. And there's, it's clear there's species, differentiations, animals are not humans.

And, it's been known for some time. And if you [00:05:00] look at the clinical trial of failure rates, I'll give you for instance, for every,for every 10 drugs that go into a clinical trial, nine of them will. and of those that fail the floor fail for two specific reasons. Number one, they won't hit their efficacy endpoint, meaning it didn't, accomplish what it was looking to do in, in, in curing that patient or treating that tumor or whatever it might be.

Or about 40% of them also fail for toxicity reasons. And even though they've gone through animal, , they still cause toxic events in humans in clinical trials, but it's the only framework the research community has had, and the flaws are quite known . It's well understood, but it is the only, framework that they've had.

And so now you need to be able to deliver alternative methods for these researchers to prove to a, the regulators and themselves that these drugs can be utilized appropriately and you can validate. both the safety and the efficacy with them [00:06:00] outside of the animal environment. So, you know, it's quite low in the flaws and limitations of animals and it's all comes down to species

Paul Shapiro: differentiation.

Right. So what I'm hearing you saying, and tell me if I'm picking up what you're putting down here, Jim, is that basically, non-humans have different biology than humans do. And so it's one thing that may be toxic to, to us, may not be toxic to them. And so you could end up having, a, a particular. Pass with flying coerce if you're testing it on rats, but then you put it in a human and it, it may actually be toxic.

And so I, I, I see you, you're nodding in agreement here. So let me just ask you like, you know, how do we get drugs at all then? I, I mean, if, if that rate is so high, you're talking about 90%, like, you know, sure. We, we must be missing a lot of things then that get screened out because they never make it to human.

you're absolutely right, and that's the unknown. We don't know how many, we don't get to trial because of the elimination of those compounds potentially in either the preclinical stage or in the clinical stage because the animal models aren't replicating what happens [00:07:00] in the humans. Right. So that is the unknown for sure.

Jim Corbett: And to your point, it it is, it's not, it's not sustainable. I mean, the cost to develop a. Today ranges anywhere from 2 billion to 3.2 billion. It takes anywhere from nine to 14 years. And again, the failure rate is incredibly high. It's not sustainable. And with all the new evolutions we've had in medicine, whether it's cell therapy, gene therapy, and so forth, we need to find a way to put only the best candidates into that clinical trial process so we can reduce the number of failures.

We can reduce the. and we can get the medicines to the market, in a more timely, efficient way.

Paul Shapiro: Got it. So, you know, you, you mentioned two species of animals who are commonly tested on both rats and dogs. you know, as somebody who has dog, who has a dog and has had many dogs, like, I can't tell you how many times I have been told.

Don't give them chocolate. Right. Don't give them chocolate. It's toxic to dogs. And that leads me to think, well good thing they didn't test chocolate on dogs before humans. Cuz otherwise we wouldn't have [00:08:00] chocolate. Right? They'd say, oh, it's not safe cuz it's, it's sickens them for what it's worth. You know, I, I've seen plenty of dogs eat chocolate and they didn't get sick.

So I don't know what, I don't know what the deal is with this. Don't go do this at home friends. But, you know, there must be some upper limit, you know, of that they can, that they can take at least. but then I know, I know that rats also like rats. Apparently, from what I understand, I don't know this firsthand, but what I've read is that, onions in certain quantities are really bad for rats.

And that if you feed rat, if you have pet rats and you feed them onions, they can get really sick. And if they eat too many onions, they'll die. Well, you know, I love onions and I mean, I could eat, you know, a whole onion a day and feel just fine. In fact, I think I feel pretty, feel pretty good. So I'm glad they never tested onions on rats, cuz then we wouldn't be eating onions.

Right. And it just makes me wonder. You know, it, it's one thing to talk about the animal welfare implications, which I think are gravely serious. but then the question is like, why do this at all? Like, like why are we doing this at all? And I guess then that leads to a company like em emulate. So what can you all do to.

Create tests [00:09:00] that actually do mimic what happens inside of the human body. Like what are the products that emulate makes that are realistic alternatives. And not only al alternatives, but preferred alternatives to feeding rats and dogs, substances that just find out if they get sick or not. .

Jim Corbett: Yeah. And that, that really was the basis for the founding of em.

Emulate. Maybe I'll start, start where it did. Actually, the technology came out of, Don ER's lab at Harvard, at the Lease Institute. The original funding came from darpa. And DARPA likes to fund what they call big challenges, and everyone understands the challenge of developing drugs. And so Don and team in the early days said, you know, there has to be a better way.

And that led them to the creation of an Organon. . Now for the listeners, the organ chip, imagines the size of like a computer thumb drive, but it is made of a polymer and there's two microfluidic channels in there. And you can imagine these channels, we, we can [00:10:00] mimic certain things that go on in the body.

We can mimic like blood flow going through. We can put nutrients through those. And what we do is we create. organ models that are specific for, that are required for different testing. So we create a liver model where we put four different cell types onto that liver model. Then again, we can flow nutrients through.

We can test. Compounds potential, chemicals or drugs to see, does it cause a, a drug-induced liver effect or, or some other effect on that model. We've got a brain model where we have six different cell types in our brain model. We have an intestine model, we have a kidney model and so forth. So the idea early on was how do we.

Look at the different organs within the body, recapitulate what happens in that body by using primary human cells or ipss derived cells. And so we can test basically in vitro but on on human cells. And the key here was. When you look at the organ chip, cells, you know, they've [00:11:00] had cell capability for a long time where you put it in a Petri dish and you try to test it.

But that's not what happened inside your human body. Your lungs are breathing, your liver, your, your, intestine is having persis. So the chip itself allows us to actually mechanically put forces onto it so it recapitulate what's happening in the human body, therefore, the predictability of what we get out of a chip.

compared to traditional cell culture models or whatever's been there before is, is much more enhanced. Hmm. And we've got several publications to show that. Interesting. Cause we are mimicking

Paul Shapiro: So you basically have intestine on a chip and kidney on a chip and brain on a chip and so on. That's what you're suggesting?

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. You know, I, I have wondered a lot about this because, I, I, you know, I'm, I'm rooting hard for you all to succeed cuz I think the world will be a better place. I, I do wonder though, like, If you put, you know, you write, like take, take the devil's advocate argument. You put this drug into an animal, you get the in vivo experience, and you can see [00:12:00] what happens to all of these, every single part, right?

The organ, all the intestines, that kidneys and liver and brain and everything. Whereas in your case, you're basically, isolating. Each one of these, but you're making it human, not animal. So you're doing like an in vitro rather than an in vivo model. And you are saying that it actually does a really good job of mimicking it better than what would happen in vivo in an animal.

Is that right?

Jim Corbett: Yeah, I, I'm saying that we can get a good picture of that organ model because we are using human cells and creating what's, what's more like the u the organ itself within the body as

Paul Shapiro: opposed to a different cells. And so are, are, are, are these, go ahead. Are these cells that came out of a human or are they grown outside of a human?

Like are there some donors who are, you know, you're giving, giving up parts of their intestines for this here?

Jim Corbett: Yeah, prob predominantly we use, it depends on the organ model, but our liver model is all primary human cells. So yes, a donor would, would do those. It would, donate those cells. We would cry, preserve those cells.

Mm-hmm. , then use them as part of the process. [00:13:00] Interesting. In our brain model, we use both primary cells and we use i p s derived. Brain cells, depending on which type of cell we're using. So we use a combination in our intestine model. We actually use what's called primary cells that have then transformed into organoids.

Hmm. And then we put the organoids on our chips. So the biologist builds the model using whatever they can to most, you know, to recreate how that mo the organ works inside the human body. Very cool.

Paul Shapiro: So when you say they're, it's coming from human donors, are these living donors or cadaver. .

Jim Corbett: these are typically sourced from, I should, you know, it depends.

we get them through, research, universities that, collect these cells and, I, I don't know specifically, the majority, whether they're human, living or Cadavers. I don't know the answer because

Paul Shapiro: I bet there's a lot of people listening who would say, Hey, you know, if you're taking, you know, donations, you know, maybe I'll be willing to give up some of my skin cells.

Or I dunno about my brain cells, but I might give up some cells to [00:14:00] aid in this cause here. So, so, if you find out, email me and we'll include it in the show notes of if, if, if there is a way to donate to organ on a chip, because I bet there's a lot of people, you know, a lot of people who would be, if, if you can do this.

Living human donors who would be, quite pleased to make this happen. Yeah. So, yeah. You know, your, your company has existed for 10 years. I know you've not been there the whole time that you became c e o just a, a couple years ago, Jim, but you all have raised like a quarter billion dollars. From investors.

So obviously you've persuaded, some deep pocketed folks that there's real potential and you're already commercialized, right? Like this isn't a futuristic thing. what I read is that, 10 of the top 25 pharmaceutical companies are currently today using emu emulates organ on a chip. So would you say like, already the company is achieving that mission of displacing some animal use and research?

well we look, we certainly are commercialized. We have, what we call our instrumentation, which runs the organ chips placed in actually 21 of the top 21 pharma, around the globe from, you know, a brand name [00:15:00] perspective and about how much they spend on r and d. but it's still early days, so there's a lot of, in.

Jim Corbett: There's a lot of interest for researchers, but, candidly it's very new technology. And so, they're experimenting with it. They're, they're, they're trying to see how this model can work into the workflow. They're comparing it to animal models. They're comparing it to other in vitro models, trying to see what is the output of this?

How does this help me as a researcher make a better decision? So we're, I would say we're in early innings of where this technology can go, but there is a lot of.

Paul Shapiro: Okay, so how much do you need, like if 10 years and a quarter billion dollars is still qualified as the early innings, like how much, support from the investor quest do you think emulate will need, let alone your competitors before this becomes a truly, widely commercially used in accepted preference to animal testing?

Jim Corbett: Yeah. You know, I, I don't know if I can put a number on that. What I can't tell you though is the FDA Modernization Act, I think is a milestone [00:16:00] and that really is a triggering point. Cuz I think the people who were sitting on the sidelines, you know, who, who, who, who maybe weren't as. Aggressive with innovative technology.

Now we're gonna have to come in and start to look at these, some of these alternatives. And there's certain diseases that absolutely require, they don't work in animals. And you, you, to be able to bring a a therapeutic to market, you have to find an alternative way. And I think that's gonna open up the doors I mentioned to you early on that,I'm flying out Right after this interview.

I'm going down to Washington to testify again with staffers to see if we can get more funding for government agencies or academics because it, this is going to take, as they say, a village to make this work. There needs to be technologies like Organon chips. Other technologies, there needs to be robust validation data that has to occur.

And so you have to have a body of evidence so the regulators get more comfortable with that. So I say it's early days because I think, the, the caution around bringing therapeutics to market. From a regulatory perspective is real. And [00:17:00] candidly, you know, the FDA is there to protect us as consumers of health that they don't want put something on the market that could cause harm.

So there's this balance and we need the scientific evidence to

Paul Shapiro: make that happen. Right? And and of course the irony is that we're relying on, on animal test experiment subjects is actually what's putting us at harm. but you know, lemme ask you, so the FDA Modernization Act is, is about basically drugs, right?

You know, should drugs be tested on animals or must drugs be tested on animals? but there's a lot of animal testing that doesn't go on for drugs, especially in the food industry. You know, you see the rise of alternative proteins. The industry in which I spend my profession and many of the companies in that space feel that in order to get the FDA a, to recognize their novel ingredient as grass or generally recognized as safe, that they need to do animal testing.

And so a number of. Products that are, you know, designed to displace the use of animals in agriculture are being tested on animals in laboratories in order to get the f d A to recognize this. Now, f d a doesn't mandate [00:18:00] animal testing to get a grass designation, but it certainly helps and many companies have done it for that reason.

So, can organ on a chip, by emulate or others be used, be useful in that type of toxicity testing tube, not just for drugs, but also for, let's say, novel food in.

Jim Corbett: I don't see why not. it, it, it, it, if we have built an organ model, and if, and just to be candid, we, we've actually built, other species organ models.

We published a paper back in 2019 where we created a rat liver chip, and the reason we did that was a drug went into clinical trials and kill, unfortunately killed five patients and it was a negative in. And what we did was we went back and looked at that particular drug. We created a rat chip, and sure enough it was negative in our rat chip.

It was negative in ratin vivo, went into clinical trials and unfortunately college fatalities. We then ran it on our human liver chip and sure enough, it showed as a toxic signal. So therefore if our [00:19:00] human chip was available back then, we could have prevented that drug potentially going into clinical trials and causing those fatalities.

So to your point, we can modify the organ model to have, whether it's species specific or human specific, if that was, if it was, so

Paul Shapiro: desired. Well, that's pretty riveting. I hadn't considered this. Obviously you can see the utility in making human organs on a chip, but if somebody really wants to know what's going on, And, you know, they, they can satisfy their curiosity with, with that too.

So, you know,

Jim Corbett: one, one times we're asked that though, the research have been living in this environment for so long. Yeah. They just, they, they, they can't move beyond, we're, we're obsessed

Paul Shapiro: with curing rodent cancer. so. You know that that's, that satisfies one of my questions on this, which is novel food ingredients and I, I, I mean, it sounds like you probably don't know if that has happened yet, but it would be really interesting to know, like if somebody was submitting a grass notice to F FDA and they've relied on emulate,generated data and, and the same would be so for cosmetic testing on [00:20:00] animals, you know, you have a number of states in the US that have banned the sale of cosmetics that are tested on animals.

In fact, entire countries have done so. , but it still goes on. And so I presume your answer is the same here, that your organs on a chip can be utilized, in cosmetic testing as well.

Jim Corbett: Absolutely. And to your point actually, Europe is even ahead of the US in this front where they've banned, testing on an cosmetics on animals quite some time now.

And, yeah, there's a real application here. We actually have a, a very good partnership with a. Cosmetic company working on a specific skin model, that will allow them to, do some unique things. And so, yes, the, the need for that segment is there. The push to stop doing that testing is there. And alternatives, I think, are gonna play a big role in cosmetic.

Paul Shapiro: Interesting, Jim. I was reading a fast company story about you all at EM emulate, and the story mentioned that switching to an organ on a chip model could save pharmaceutical companies billions of dollars. Since animal testing is [00:21:00] costly and often doesn't actually successfully bring new drugs to market for the reasons that we've already noted earlier in the show.

So if animal welfare advocates obviously would want this and it could save the pharmaceutical companies billions of dollars and get more drugs to market more quickly. who opposes this? Like who, who, what's the barrier? Like who opposed the FDA modernization Act? Like who, who are the opponents of your technology that are making it a hurdle for you

Jim Corbett: right now?

Yeah. You know, the status quo is the, is the, is my biggest competitor right now. And because there is decades and decades of doing this the same way there is. comfort level that, you know, animals are the next step in progression before going to human clinical trials. And there hasn't been large enough studies to, let's just say, to convince the naysayers that an alternative method is a also an option, and here's the scientific proof to do so.

Now with that said, we just [00:22:00] had a publication come out, and this is the one that was referred to in the Wired magazine in Dec, mid-December and Nature Communications. , and this was a very large trial that we did with our liver chip. And we tested 27 compounds for drug-induced liver injury. And of those 22 of those were deemed hepatic toxic by the F D A standings.

Of those 22, we were able to detect 87% of those with our liver chip. All of them, all of them had gone through two animal species and went into clinical. , they were missed. We got 87% of them. So this is the first study that's coming out now that's really starting to show the robust validation you can do with something like this.

And these compounds, they weren't chosen by us. We follow what's called the IQ consortiums guidelines on how to validate a psychophysiological system, which this is. And candidly, we, we. More than pleased with [00:23:00] the data that came out of this. And to give you some other perspective, of those 22 drugs have had aox, 10 of those caused 242 patient fatalities, 242 patient fatalities.

That was either in the clinic or post-market approval. And of those 10 drugs,all of them have been either pulled off the market, two of them remain on with a black box. . So we, we have for the first time a significant dataset. That's candidly from my mark. My position unquestionable that we have an alternative here, particularly in assessing

Paul Shapiro: drug-induced livering.

Well, definitely please email me the link to that article. I'd love to include it in the show notes at business for good podcast.com. but I, I, I guess I wanna just also reframe the last question I asked you, Jim, cuz you said status quo is your biggest competitor, right? But, you know, status quo doesn't show up to testify against a bill, right?

So like, is there any lobby, like is the animal breeders lobby coming after you won this? Like, like [00:24:00] surely there is somebody who submits testimony to Congress and says, don't pass this bill. Like, who is that? So, or am I mistaken? There's just, there's an an open. .

Jim Corbett: Yeah, no. So, if it's done, it's done. I would suggest in an area and venues that, I'm unaware of.

Got it. Got it. Look at, okay. There's, there's clearly, there's clearly financial interest and, animal breeders and that entire industry, right. As you know, that. It's very significant industry. So, you could assume if their financial interest are at stake, there's likely some activity there. but that would be, my, you know, only speculation on my behalf.

Paul Shapiro: Interesting. Yeah. An animal experimentation is huge business, obviously. the, you know, there's whole. Companies that all they do is contract testing for various pharmaceutical companies. So, surely I, I presume they're not a big fan of what you're doing, but,we'll see. so what's next for you guys, Jim?

So, you know, you, you have now passed this legislation. You're going down to DC to testify for funding, of course.[00:25:00] but what's the next step for emulate? Like, you know, what do, what does it take for you guys to get to the next. .

Jim Corbett: Yeah. So we need to continue to evolve the technology and, you know, it, it, it, it's in the hands now of the researchers.

it's probably what, what I consider version 2.0 of the technology. We've got five basic organ models. We've got, a supply of what we call our bio Kitts now, and now we, we'll be looking to optimize that technology, make it easier to use for the customer, have a higher throughput, and then we have to invest in, again, just like I described.

Jim Corbett: the nature publication, we have to have larger studies that shows this evidence so we can, again, build the confidence in the research community that they can utilize these tools. And so, it, it, it's not uncommon that, when a new technology is, is coming out, there has to be robust studies to, to substantiate it.

And we're in that study building stage. There's been a lot of publications, I mean, hundreds of publication on the technology. But you need to have it, in, in a.[00:26:00] a robust data set to really convince the

Paul Shapiro: marketplace. Got it. All right. Well, that's exciting. I'm looking forward to more of these studies coming out.

I, I hope that you do succeed in obtaining the funding that you're seeking from the federal large s as well. you, you're doing some pretty awesome things, Jim, but I know this isn't your first entrepreneurial rodeo, that you have been involved in many, companies in the pharma space in the past, and now you're working to.

Help try to make the world a better place by getting more accurate drugs to the market more quickly without having to cause so much animal suffering in the process. let me ask you, are there any resources, Jim, that have been useful for you that you would recommend to somebody who's listening and thinks, wow, I really like what this guy is doing.

I wish I could maybe emulate, pun intended, some of the things that he's doing. So, what do you recommend in books or anything else that have been useful?

Jim Corbett: Yeah. You know, look at startups are not easy. and you're right, I've, I've done this before. I was, in a, a cancer startup using AI before AI was popular.

And so, [00:27:00] evangelizing new technology is, is always a lot of work. And you have to, you have to hang in there and you gotta, you, you, you just can't give up. You know, you, you talk about books and I, I, you. I, I don't wanna, I guess date myself, but, you know, one of the, probably the most inspiring books I've read is always about, true life adventure.

And, back in the, early 19 hundreds, Ernest Shackleton, who used to sail to the Antarctica, had some tremendous, harrowing experiences. one particular experience called Endurance, which is a great book. He, he and his men were trapped there for almost two years. The whole survival story and how he as a leader had to steer his group.

And I could tell you, doing many startups that, it does not always go as planned. And, how you lead your teams through those times is probably the most rewarding. and, and, and, and, interesting. So that's one I would suggest. It would be, learn those leader. Stories from, someone like that than, it was true life or death

Paul Shapiro: situation.

Got it. Well, we'll certainly link to endurance in [00:28:00] the, show notes at Business for good podcast.com. And for listeners who are only hearing the audio of this, I can assure you, so Jim said he was wanting to date himself, but he wants to talk about a story that happened in the early 19 hundreds. this dude does not look like he was around from the early 19 hundreds.

he looks like he may have read a book about that, but. you know, he, he actually looks like in the upper, upper percentiles of fitness for men his age. So I, I, I, I, I think, you know, don't, don't think early 19 hundreds for him. cool. So that's, one book that you'd recommend. I haven't read it, but I certainly have heard of endurance and I, I actually would like to read it so you saying it maybe, maybe will push me over the edge there.

but being that you are somebody who. done a number of companies and are very familiar with life in startup land. are there any companies you wish somebody else would start? You know, I presume you're gonna be doing EMU eight for some time now, so, you, but you might have other d ideas about companies that could do some good in the world that you hope that somebody listening might start.

Paul Shapiro: So you got any recommendations for

Jim Corbett: listeners, Jim? Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting, we're, we're kind of on the front end of drug development and really trying to, [00:29:00] again, eliminate unnecessary animal testing, create these alternative technologies, and then only move the best candidate drugs into clinical trials.

But I could tell you what I, I see, which, you know, as these technologies evolve, the whole area of clinical trials and how we actually approve drugs and how we test drugs, Needs to be completely reimagined. It is incredibly expensive to the healthcare community. It takes way too long. And as our technology start to evolve and we start to put new candidates, that whole area has to be reimagined because the length of time, it's a billion plus to go through clinical trials now.

It's just, it's, it, it, it's really, really, really, Ripe for disruption. now you'd have to have the understanding and patience of working with regulators and, and the community. But it is, is, it is the next part in the equation that I see will, will be some, some bright company will tackle that at some point in time.

Paul Shapiro: Let's hope soon. Maybe, there will be a future time, Jim, where somebody [00:30:00] on this. well, somebody will be the guest on this show who heard you make that recommendation, and they'll be working with you at that point. So we'll see. But in the meantime, good luck in DC Jim. Good luck getting more and more pharmaceutical companies to be using organ on a chip rather than animals.

And, we'll continue watching, emulate and cheering on for your continued success.

Jim Corbett: Paul, thank you so much. I really appreciate the invitation.