How Peninsula biotech CEO navigated early HIV research before his work on Covid-19 - San Francisco Business Times
https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/c/how-local-ceo-navigated-the-choppy-waters-of-early.html
May 1, 2020, 1:44pm PDT
Dr. Bruce Patterson has seen this story before: A virus snakes its way into the population, killing thousands and throwing scientists headlong into the pursuit for any sort of treatment, let alone a vaccine or cure. Back during the emergence of the AIDS virus, Chicago-born-and-raised Patterson was a viral researcher in the early days of molecular biology doing the fundamental studies to figure out how the disease worked. “This isn’t my first pandemic,” he says. During this crisis, however, he is the founder and CEO of IncellDx Inc., a San Carlos-based diagnostics company that could play a major role in getting Covid-19 patients on a particular drug quickly. The company is ramping up its activities in the face of the coronavirus pandemic through its work with Vancouver-based CytoDyn Inc. and that company’s Covid drug candidate leronlimab.
How do you describe what IncellDx does? IncellDx has 87 patents for technology that allows molecular diagnostics in a cell without destroying the cell. New sequencing technologies put cells and tissue in a blender and answer the question, “What’s there?” We know how much is there, what’s it in and how it will respond to drugs. That links to pharma because it provides context into pathways. Basically, we do personalized cellular medicine.
What kind of timeframe are we talking about for these tests? We do what everyone does in solution but in the cell, and we get an answer in two to four hours, rather than three weeks. That makes a difference. I had a clinician tell me, “Some people with stage IV lung cancer don’t have two or three weeks to answer which therapy works for them.”
How was the company funded? We built the company on sales, not on big money raises and venture capital. The best way was to bootstrap, quickly prototype a product, get it in the hands of thought leaders, show its significance and promise and then do strategic deals with reference labs and pharma companies. Some would argue it’s a slower path, but we got to profitability relatively quickly.
What does your growth look like in terms of hiring? We’re looking to put people to work in areas like data entry, shipping, handling, all in support of clinical trials. When we get approval, we will need to scale massively. We will be selling these as a kit worldwide, once CytoDyn tells us where to go.
How was it moving from academia to business? It’s one of the hardest transitions ever, but now I can tell an academic from a business person from a mile away. You have to resist the temptation to want to look at the deepest levels of mechanism when you discover something. In business, it’s how quickly you can get a provisional patent. Instead of “why is this happening?” it’s “this happens, it’s reproducible and we can make a kit out of it.”
What’s been your most important lesson? In 1990, I was using colloidal gold in culture with HIV. It was a therapy for arthritis and it stopped the virus cold. I remember going home to my wife and saying, “I think I just locked up the Nobel Prize.” Now, I see studies where they put lice medicine in culture with Covid and it stopped the virus cold and I have flashbacks. We’ll see. I never want to dash innovation or hope, but after a while you have the experience after having worked in pandemics. The message is “the body isn’t a flask of cells.”
What advice would you give the president on the crisis? I would say there’s a way to phase reopening based on the serologic tests. They have to use rapid serology tests that, hopefully, patients can do at home and are confirmed by more-sophisticated tests.
Who is your mentor? My aunt (Mary Christensen). She was one of the first virologists in the 1960s and later head of virology at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago when I was in virology at Northwestern University. We overlapped a few years before she retired. She could grow any virus any day in any culture and do analysis of it. She was really a trend-breaker and a leader in the field.
What would you do if you had to change careers? I would race sailboats. It’s a chess match on water. The reason Larry Ellison and other smart people go into sailing is that it satisfies a profound intellectual urge while rolling in a physical aspect. It’s a great release: You can’t think of anything else while your body is hanging over the edge of a sailboat going 25 miles per hour and trying to figure out where to go next.
Where is IncellDx in five years? We won’t be around. We’ll be under some other umbrella we do and be bought out and join with some larger group with a broader reach. We have a full portfolio of oncology assays on top of Covid, HPV, HIV and others. Our approach of looking at cells one at a time is being validated.
Dr. Bruce Patterson
CEO, IncellDx Inc.
Education: B.S. from the University of Michigan; M.D. from Northwestern University
The Resume: Chief resident of pathology at Northwestern Memorial Hospital; associate professor and director of diagnostic virology at Stanford University
Reading list: I read books to escape. I love Stephen King, stories that have great character definition. It’s about getting away from it a little bit.
Favorite restaurant: Evvia Estiatorio in Palo Alto and Coqueta in San Francisco
INCELLDX INC.
HQ: San Carlos
Employees: 20
Founded: 2009
What it does: Diagnostics company that quickly identifies within a cell whether a gene, for example, is there.
Recent work: The company has focused on Covid-19 amid the pandemic, developing a companion diagnostic for CytoDyn Inc.'s leronlimab, an experimental HIV and cancer drug repurposed to treat patients with respiratory complications.
The (New) Routine
Patterson explained how his schedule has changed amid the pandemic:
Less family time, but more exercising with them
Less sailing and less working out
Less eating as he limits grocery store visits
More writing of research articles
Ah well 
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