Centivax CEO Jacob Glanville on a universal flu vaccine targeting 80-95% efficacy and a single antivenom for all snakes

who's at we're flipping the schedule a little bit. Let's bring in Jake and then we'll go to Craig. Nice to meet you, Jake. How you doing, Jake? Welcome. Thanks for having us on, lads. Yeah, thanks so much. Great to have you. Uh, we're we're uh we're dealing with a bunch of different scheduling stuff today.

Would you mind kicking us off with an introduction on yourself and your company? Sure. Yeah. So, my name is Jacob Glennville. I'm the founder and CEO of Cineac. Um, previously at Fizer, I also founded a company called distributed bio. Um, at Cinevac, we focus on universal immunity technologies.

Uh, that's a universal flu shot that we recently closed a series A to be in humans in eight months. And then some of you may also have seen some of the news around our universal antivenenom program that's a single antivenenom that can treat all snakes. That's amazing. I hate snakes.

I uh I actually am like it's the one thing I'm terrified of. John always checks his boots for snakes. I do my hero growing up. You you raised a series A and you you're going to have a drug in market in eight months. Is that how how much how much did you have to raise prior to to get to that point?

You know, usually we hear about bio companies having to raise pharma companies having to raise a billion dollars to even have a shot at getting something in market. Trials. We're going to be in humans in eight months. So that's the first human trial. So there'll be more more to spend.

Um we've raised uh prior to the series A we brought in about $50 million. Half of that was non-dilutive from like the Gates Foundation, SEPY, the Navy, the Army, the Naval Medical Research Command, and Rare U and a number of other places because what we work on is a a it's a bio threats problem.

It's also a global collective goods problem if you think about how much money's been spent on, you know, 90 billion dollars of productivity loss just on flu alone in this country every year. And so in addition to that, we had uh NFX and the Global Health Investment Corporation that were our backers.

And then now we're raising we've just raised another 45 million. So nearly 100 million raised gets us into humans, which is a really big deal because we we show it's safe, but then we also show it's effective.

And so we have we can establish the first universal vaccine and a platform technology that we can make more universal vaccines out of. I definitely feel the productivity loss every time. Every time I feel myself getting sick, I'm like, "This time I'm gonna power through it.

I'm gonna be just I'm gonna be just as effective. I'm not going to let it like let my email pile up because I just feel terrible. " And it's very difficult to How How different is is this path from the traditional biotech path? I feel like a lot of biotech companies, they go public really early.

It's just a completely different path from like what we typically see in venture.

Are you taking more of like a Silicon Valley venture path or or do you see yourself as the same kind of strategy as the biotech companies that we've seen like um like the other companies that have just kind of gone through the normal like IPO early then the stocks trading based on the you know the FDA uh results and that type of stuff.

I I historically have always tried to ignore the normal path and go what's the best path for this company. So my last company I actually never raised any venture capital. I built a series of profitable verticals and we um exited to Charles River Laboratories without taking venture.

Here I need venture because we're going to go through these very expensive phase trials and even there we have accelerated approval and some other tactics that make it much less expensive than some of the ones you described. So what's going to happen for us is uh human trials after that.

There are sources of uh potential non-dilutive funding that could give us write really big checks once you're in phase one to potentially cover the phase two and phase three or we do a series B and then maybe a series C to to get the first product out. And the whole idea is to prime the pump.

Once you're profitable, then it's a rounding error to run your other programs, which is like so torturously expensive for the first product. like once you once you've got something commercialized, then you can go build the other ones.

You know, it's also possible that we get kind of some FOMO going because the current $7 billion flu market, there's four companies that are all competing over that and all of their vaccines are like 10 to 60% effective. Like one in three people who got a flu shot last last season actually benefited from it.

And so I'm I'm imagining those groups are going to be like, I I want to work with these guys otherwise I might lose market share. And so there might be an opportunity there for an acquisition or partnership earlier. Yeah. On the non-dilutive funding side, what has been your take on the NIH uh discussion publicly?

We had Andrew Huberman on the show and he was uh talking about some of the risks of cutting some of that early stage funding. The the number that was being thrown around was around 40% cuts.

Um I don't know if that affects you directly because you're kind of already running the company, but uh what's your take on on the NIH situation? Well, look, I'm you know, I'm in biotech in general. I think we've benefited and we're able to bring this technology forward because of non-dilutive sources out there.

So more is better. Um we our antivenenom program has been supported by an NIH award. Um that said, you know, there I'm working on a fundamentally new technology and sometimes we've had a hard time convincing uh grant agencies to go in at the NIH in particular.

I think some people just didn't get it because it was too different and new. that changes as we have more data, but also I think a little shakeup sometimes is helpful to be able to have them invest and try new things rather than just reinvesting in the past because the past technologies just weren't working.

I think we need new stuff. So obviously I think I think the United States needs to maintain its preeminence in biotechnology.

It's one of the 21st century sectors where we have dominance and you don't want to lose that because you know there's China and other organizations out there that are countries that are very happy to try to fill those shoes and once you lose that the brain drain goes the opposite direction and that's part of the reason why we maintain the preeminence is that we have the the institutions that are propped up partially by government money to be able to go make all these breakthroughs and have your genentex and and so forth.

So I I think for those reasons I think the United States should remain the the global epicenter of biotechnology because of macroeconomic reasons. Yeah. Janentech the original VC uh what 100bagger or something like that. Fantastic return. What what what kind what what are your kind of goals on the efficacy side?

Obviously the goal would be 100% but if this typical flu vaccine is 10 to 60% effective what what are you aiming for? Yeah, we're looking at like we'd like to see somewhere between 80 and 95%.

It's hard to get that last 5% for any vaccine because you have people that have significant um you know immunosuppression or or some sort of deficiency. But what we're seeing in the animals and all the work so far, I think probably 85 90% maybe 95 is sort of what we're aiming for. Like and that's a big deal, right?

That's that suddenly changes the not just like you get a you get a shot and that Pavlovian thing. I mean that's a big problem with vaccine skepticism is people like I got the shot and I still got sick, right? And so you can solve that. People like I took the shot, I didn't get sick for two years.

That's a that's a better outcome. But the more profound thing that happens is that when you start distributing a vaccine like this around the world, the pandemic era is over because you don't go, "Oh god, there's an H5 in1. It's getting in cows. It's getting in people. " There's just like, "Hey guys, there's a reminder.

Um, we're seeing some H5 and1 in people. If you haven't had your centiliflu shot in the last two years, go get a booster. " And then you don't have a pandemic anymore. And so that's a crazy transition compared to how humanity has been operating since the beginning of time.

Um what uh what is the key unlock for the universal antivenenom? Yeah. So it's the same biology. It's the idea that there are these little Achilles heels on these proteins that the like the viruses that can change just about anywhere but they can't mutate a couple key sites. Snake venoms.

There's 650 species of venomous snakes around the world and they all have different venom but they share certain toxins and those toxins have conserved sites.

The origins of this antivenenom was I found a guy named Tim Frey who had for 18 years he had injected himself with escalating I was about to I was about to ask we cover we covered that story and it was just like it was such an example of dude's rock this guy what what a hero. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Tell us the full story because it's like it's an incredible story. This guy just he decided he was going to make himself immune to snake venom but like all of them. And so he started collecting a managerie of snakes in his basement like of all the gnarliest snakes around the world.

And he started off with tiny little doses. It was I don't know if you guys saw Princess Bride, but it was like the powder of Princess Bride. Starts with tiny little doses and he would slowly increase the dose until he was he'd be able to tolerate a full dose. So normally he would kill a person easily.

And then he started letting the snakes bite him. And so he had 202 bites and 654 immunizations over 18 years of 16 of the most deadly species from around the world. And so I heard about him and I'm working on universal flu vaccines.

And I was like if anybody has the beating through their veins right now a a universal antivenenom it's it's going to be this guy. And so I contacted him. We we started doing a research project together and it was phenomenally successful.

So it it just speaks again to the power of universal immunity to be able to completely change the face of 21st century medicine. What is the what is the distribution of that antivenenom going to look like? I imagine we should put it everywhere, right?

First aid, you know, growing up I mean growing up in California like being in the country a lot I it was always in the back of my mind as a kid of this like fear because I'd come across snakes all the time.

you know, this fear of, you know, you you don't necessarily know what bit you and then you don't necessarily, you know, first of all, is it is it venomous or not? Hopefully, you're not getting bit by snakes a lot.

But then, you know, you know, if a person is getting treatment, are they even going to have the right, you know, um, so I'm curious what that kind of go to market looks like. How do you get this distributed as widely as possible? So, I mean, the way you described it, that's that's right.

And it's worse in the developing world. So there there's a lot more people who die and get permanently messed up by snakes than you might think.

It's 140,000 people who die every year and another 300 to 400,000 that lose a limb, which really sucks if you're in a village because then your your family's having to take care of an invalid when really they need everybody to be able-bodied.

Um, and so yeah, right now there's 650 venomous species of snake and they make one antivenenom for each snake or sometimes a couple snakes in one bottle. But so you get bit and first off they have to bring you probably multiple hours sometimes to get to a hospital has IVs and then they go, "Oh, I'm sorry, bro.

Were you bit by like a super venomous snake? Did you happen to have the presence of mind while you were being bit to ruffle through the grass and grab the snake and bring it in a doggy bag so we can take a look at it so we can check? " Yeah. Did you bring the killer snake that just bit you? Did you bring it with you?

Otherwise, we don't know if if they we stock the anti if it even exists and we don't want to give it to you because it's made out of horse antibodies and it can cause a whole bunch of like gnarly side effects. And so that's that's the world that we're trying to replace.

What this is now is a single uh we're halfway through. We've got half the 300 species of neurotoxic snakes and we're working on the other half. That was what the cell paper was. But the idea is to have a single product. Um it's fully human antibodies so they don't have all the side effects of the horse antibodies.

Um, you can liophilize them, freeze dry them. And so the idea is like an epipen for snake antivenenom. You have some solution and you have some dried powder, you just you get bit, you turn a little crank, shookie shookie, and then you stab it into your leg and you get the antivenenom immediately.

And that means it can be in backpacks. It can be out in villages outside of um refrigeration. There's no multiple hours of waiting. And they don't need to know what kind of snake bit you and that that will change uh change a lot of people's lives. That's amazing. Very cool. I'm glad you guys found each other. Yeah.

you know. Uh yeah, thank you so much for stopping by. We we have a slam schedule today, but uh this is fantastic and uh I thank you for fighting the good fight against snakes. I there's nothing I truly hate more. So So I really appreciate it making the world one man one man versus my my literal only phobia.

So thank you. I I have no problem with spiders, no problem with anything else. I hate snakes. So thank you so much for doing what you do. There's a part of your brain that actually is umworked. So if you you're shown a bunch of pictures, you'll spot the snake picture first.

So there's something deep in our brains that has taught us recognize and fear snakes from primordial times. Yeah. And so what you're experiencing is not unusual. We've been built to to tell these things. And I'll I'll tell I'll pass on your thanks to Tim because he's the one who really deserves credit for this. Yeah.

I'm I'm also Irish, so there's probably something about the Pied Piper and wanting to rid the world of snakes. It's in my blood. But we'll we'll get to that. the Snake Eradication Project. Second, uh, thank you for making the world safer from Congrats on the raise. Uh, and congrats on the raise. Good luck.

We'll talk to you. Cheers. Bye. Uh, next up we have Craig Pigot