Surviving the Biotech Funding Crunch | Samir Khleif (Part 4/4)

Intro - 00:00:06: Welcome to The Biotech Startups Podcast by Excedr. Join us as we speak with first-time founders, serial entrepreneurs, and experienced investors about the challenges and triumphs of running a biotech startup, from pre-seed to IPO, with your host, Jon Chee.

In our last episode, Samir Khleif shared how he transitioned from academia and government to biotech founder, why he built Georgiamune around internal discovery, and how alignment, not just capital, is key when selecting investors. If you missed it, check out part three. In part four, Samir reflects on the company-building journey, how he scaled the team, advanced a novel drug pipeline, and kept science at the center of Georgiamune's mission. He talks about what set their approach apart, how he's navigating a shifting market, and why self-awareness, curiosity, and asking for help are essential leadership traits in biotech.

Jon Chee - 00:01:11: And so now you have a portfolio of intellectual property. Did you have co-founders, or how did you build your early team?

Samir Khleif - 00:01:18: Actually, I did not. I founded it myself. But the early team was bringing back one of my ex-postdocs who was working with me on the development of those ideas from the beginning. He was one of my people that I had worked with for a few years, so I thought the best thing would be to convince him. He was working in the industry at that time anyway. So I gave him a call and said, "Look, I just started this. This is something you worked on with me when you were here. Would you like to come back?" And he did. So we started that team with him and I, and then we built it as we went. We started at a small incubator site in Gaithersburg, then we went to a larger site, and then to another site. Now we're here. We built it bit by bit. We developed the first drugs, and based on that, I started raising funds. I raised my first seed fund, then a Series A, and now we're here.

Jon Chee - 00:02:19: Very cool. And with this portfolio of intellectual property and all the platform and pipeline development that you've been working on, just to set the table for the listeners, what is the state of the market, and how is Georgiamune's technology disrupting the status quo?

Samir Khleif - 00:02:39: So everything we are doing is first-in-class. The company is a science and discovery company, which means we are developing completely new immunobiology for the immune system. Our discoveries are very novel and shed light on phenomena in immunology that we didn't know about before. Because of that, as I always say, what we know about immunology is the tip of the iceberg, which is true. We've made major progress on that tip of the iceberg, whether in oncology, autoimmune diseases, or others, but there are lots of things about immunology we don't know.

So at Georgiamune, we're concentrating on what's under the water level. We're trying to learn something new and not recycle what's up there. I'm not diminishing the importance of that; it's extremely important. But again, if you look at cancer, what immunotherapy does is phenomenal, but it still only works in fifteen percent of cancer patients. Eighty-five percent don't respond. In autoimmune diseases, there is a spectrum of conditions where we still don't know how to manipulate the immune system.

So what we're trying to do is really disruptive. We're trying to discover and understand the physiologic things that we don't currently understand. Based on that, we develop tools, which are the drugs, to reset the immune system or reprogram it in a way that would be helpful for a particular condition. This is what distinguishes us from many others. So we now have a pretty broad pipeline. We've developed almost ten drugs so far, three of which are already in the clinic for cancer and autoimmune diseases. They hit on the fundamental issues of immunologic dysfunctionality in cancer and autoimmune disease. This is where we believe we're making a difference, and we hope to continue to do so.

Jon Chee - 00:04:38: That's impressive. As you're developing these pipeline candidates and getting them to the clinic, are all of these candidates developed from your platform? Do you have any external collaborations, or is everything done internally?

Samir Khleif - 00:04:55: No, so far, everything is done internally. We have two discovery platforms, and both of those have produced drugs that are in the clinic. But all are internal discoveries. We built a great team over the past few years. I told you how we started, but we started with the things that we licensed and have branched out completely from that. All the drugs we've developed were developed internally. We have small molecules and large molecules—both antibodies and biologics—and all were developed internally based on the novel discoveries that we put together.

Jon Chee - 00:05:30: Holy crap. I'm curious, is it a strategic decision? Are you opposed to external development and collaboration? What are the considerations for when someone wants to develop internally versus externally?

Samir Khleif - 00:05:44: It depends on the model and the mission of the company. We are a science and discovery company. That means we are a science-based company and a discovery company. Some other companies will form and then license from the outside. We're not opposed to any collaborations, but we haven't needed them so far because we were able to develop all those ten drugs internally based on our novel discoveries. We are discovering the science, confirming the science, and understanding its physiologic relevance and why it exists. After understanding all this, we're developing the drugs. Since this is the model of the company, this is the soul of the company. It's the DNA of the company, no pun intended.

Jon Chee - 00:06:31: Yeah, yeah.

Samir Khleif - 00:06:32: We are a science and discovery company. We discover the science, and we develop the drug. Accordingly, we know everything about that particular drug from A to Z. We even know how it thinks, how it behaves. So that's the intent. There's no opposition to collaborating, but that was not what we were doing so far.

Jon Chee - 00:06:53: You're like, "We have our core competencies, so we're just going to lean into it." Reflecting on the journey thus far for Georgiamune, what are some surprising lessons? You created a cancer center, you were in academia, you were at the FDA, but now you have a for-profit commercial entity. What are some surprising learnings on this journey that might be different from your previous experiences?

Samir Khleif - 00:07:18: Everything is different.

Jon Chee - 00:07:19: He's like, "Everything."

Samir Khleif - 00:07:21: To be honest, every single experience was different. You learn something new. But in this case, it's the whole structure of it, from investors to the company's soul and employees to how you deal with pharma. That's all new. Well, not new, but different. So all this is a very important thing that you need to realize and distinguish from other experiences.

Look, leadership has a common thread. There are lots of leadership principles that are the same: how you develop a team, how you build team spirit, how you think of ideas that are beyond what currently exists, how you plan for bad days, how you plan for good days, how you troubleshoot. All these are principles. But each of those principles is applied differently from one condition to the other, even if the principle is the same. It's about how you do it and how you think. When you're in academia, you don't plan for the market.

Jon Chee - 00:08:29: Right.

Samir Khleif - 00:08:29: When you're in a company, you plan for the market. When you're in academia, you might not plan for what an ex-politician says. When you're in the market, you need to think of those things. You need to plan for it. So it's very different. When you're in academia, you don't care about an investor or who has the money. Here, you need to care about it, and you need to build alliances. You need to build alignment with how people think. It's all different. This is why I wouldn't say "surprises," I would say "new stuff."

Jon Chee - 00:09:04: Yep.

Samir Khleif - 00:09:05: You have to be amenable to this and not say, "Oh my god, what's this?"

Jon Chee - 00:09:09: Yep.

Samir Khleif - 00:09:10: It's, "Oh, yeah. That's another one of those new things that I need to deal with." Then you learn. Or, what did I say? You call someone.

Jon Chee - 00:09:18: Oh, yeah. You phone a friend, like on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Samir Khleif - 00:09:22: Exactly.

Jon Chee - 00:09:23: But you have more than just one phone-a-friend. You can just keep phoning friends.

Samir Khleif - 00:09:27: Exactly.

Jon Chee - 00:09:28: Just keep it going.

Samir Khleif - 00:09:29: As a leader, you need to learn how to adapt. A big part of leadership is adaptability because you need to adapt as you go through these ups and downs and curves.

Jon Chee - 00:09:40: Yeah, absolutely. And so you mentioned learning what the market expects and having to plan around that. I know the market has been topsy-turvy for the past couple of years, especially in raising capital, and I know you've had great success in it. When you think about your philosophy on fundraising and investor selection, how do you approach that?

Samir Khleif - 00:10:03: That's a great point. Look, I think the most important thing is a word that I mentioned before: alignment. It's about mentality, about how you can develop a team out of the investors, not just get checks. At Georgiamune, we have amazing investors, and they're a team. They're part of the company. So this is how you choose. You choose people who believe not only in you, not only in your team, and not only in the idea of the company, but who can also add, help, and be part of the thought process. I call our investors very frequently to pick their brains on something. I always do that, and it's critical. This is how you choose them. You need to choose people that believe in you, believe in the company, believe in the mission, but who can also contribute and be part of it—not only by writing a check, but by being part of that spirit and mission. That's very critical.

Jon Chee - 00:11:04: And as you're selecting them—you said the heart and soul of the company, the DNA, is the science—you're speaking to investors who may have a science background, but they come from a different world, the investor world. When you are going out and trying to assemble your team of investors, how did you learn to speak their language? When speaking their language and making the investment opportunity make sense for them, what did you learn through that dance and the new stuff you were learning?

Samir Khleif - 00:11:41: First, everyone is different, and every investor, similar to every academic or every employee, is really different. You need to talk with them in the way they are interested in talking. You get to learn them, know who they are, and know more about them. Things might work or they might not work; it depends on those kinds of discussions. But at the end of the day, everyone wants one thing: for your company to succeed. That's why they're coming. So that's the key common denominator. They want you and the company to succeed.

So you say, "Well, here is how we think we can succeed, and this is the team that we assembled—which is really the best team you can assemble—that thinks we can succeed. And that's our mission." The moment that aligns, that investor will align or at least be part of the more serious discussions. But I think at the end, this is where you need to focus: "Here is how this company can succeed, this is the track record, this is how we're going to take it forward, and this is why." I think that's the most important thing: openness and complete transparency.

Jon Chee - 00:12:55: Absolutely. And I think something that really stands out is just knowing your audience and knowing your personnel for their unique attributes. Just like with talent, when you're hiring someone or assembling leadership for the cancer center, it's the same for an investor. They're just as unique as hiring someone to be at the bench or in a leadership position. I love that. I think right now, it's incredibly important to tune into these things because with the market, you have to make sure you're speaking their language and appealing to what they are ultimately trying to do. So when you're looking throughout your Georgiamune journey and reflecting on it, what would you say were your biggest challenges, triumphs, and lessons learned while running the company?

Samir Khleif - 00:13:44: I think all the challenges and triumphs are about lessons learned, to be honest. When building anything from the ground up, as in any other experience—not necessarily just at Georgiamune—you come in with a lot of bases and pillars that you carry with you that help you in your next endeavor. I think the main challenge in any of those endeavors is to realize what you do not know and to understand that you do not know what you do not know.

This is why it's very critical to utilize three major things in business, in life, in anything you do. One, you need to educate yourself. You need to read, study, and learn. Second, you need to get the best of the best around you—not necessarily as employees, but people who know, have done it, understand, and have the experience. In Georgiamune, we're talking about drug development, understanding the whole process, and the best way of doing things. One of the best things we did at Georgiamune—and many things we did were, retrospectively, really great—was getting the best of the best medicinal chemists and protein chemists who had worked at large companies, and we brought them in as a whole team to work with us. So second is that: get the best to work with you. I think at Georgiamune, we have a kind of dream team in this.

The third is to never hesitate for a moment to pick up the phone, send an email, or call anyone and ask them a question, a favor, or their opinion about something. No one will tell you no. I get lots of calls, and I answer all those questions. I help as many people as I can, and I've never, in my whole entire career, picked up the phone, called somebody, and had them say, "No, I'm not interested in answering a question." So those three elements, Jon, are extremely important in taking on any endeavor. No one in the world comes to lead any endeavor fully prepared. No one. As much as you think you are prepared, you're not. Or colloquially, "you ain't." This is why you need to assume that you don't know a lot, and you need to know that you don't know what you don't know. These are very important aspects for moving forward.

This led to a lot of successes. So when you talk about favorite moments, one is that we were able to attract very good people. Second, the whole environment of the company is about discovery and innovation, so it's really buzzing with energy. We discovered very novel science, very important biological phenomena, and we were able to develop, by now, eleven drugs. Three of them are already in the clinic. For a company that is four-and-a-half to five-years-old, that's pretty good.

Jon Chee - 00:17:12: Understatement.

Samir Khleif - 00:17:14: I'm very proud of it, and hopefully, we'll continue doing that. But that's where we are.

Jon Chee - 00:17:19: I love that. And the openness to say, "As a leader, there are things I do not know," is probably a refreshing thing when you're trying to attract talent because it's very honest and real. Out there, there's always a story of, "I did it on my own, alone, and I'm this self-made individual." But it's not true. You're standing on the shoulders of giants.

Samir Khleif - 00:17:44: Very, very true. You are standing on the shoulders of giants. But more importantly, I believe the worst leader is the leader that thinks they know everything, because no one does. Really, no one does. When we recruit people, when we hire people, when I talk to people... we're probably one of the companies that has so many advisers. People ask, "Why do you need so many advisers?" Because each one is an expert in an area that I do not know, and the others don't know either.

Jon Chee - 00:18:16: Yeah, yeah.

Samir Khleif - 00:18:17: This is why. I believe that the most important talent for a leader is to appreciate their deficiencies and assume that they have way more deficiencies than they expect. That's critical.

Jon Chee - 00:18:30: Yep. Absolutely. I love that. You're assembling an Avengers team of experts around you, where everyone has each other's back. Everyone has weak spots, and if you can assemble that Avengers team, that's where magic happens. So as you're looking out one or two years for Georgiamune, what's in store for you guys? If you were to look into the crystal ball?

Samir Khleif - 00:18:56: I think the most important thing for Georgiamune, as an innovation, science, and discovery company, is to continue that DNA because that DNA is the backbone of what the employees can do, what the scientists can do, and what Georgiamune can do. So if I look at the next one to two years, I believe there are three goals that we hope to accomplish.

One is to continue discovery, to continue understanding basic science. As we discussed, the issue with immunology is that we only know the tip of the iceberg. We don't know a lot. For us to be able to break into unmet need areas that do not have specific drugs currently existing, it's critical to understand more science rather than just swirling around the tip of the iceberg. So, one is to continue science and discovery.

Second, to continue our advancement in our clinical trials and expand on that, particularly as we are developing more drugs and advancing them to clinical trials. There's no one drug that's going to solve everything. Accordingly, for a company like us, having multiple shots at really helping patients is critical.

And then the third is to continue having a sustained, tempered growth that is the minimum needed to sustain both of the areas that I discussed before. So that's our goal. The more we go into the clinic, the more we help patients, and the more we develop new drugs that could help other types of patients, the happier we are. This is why the scientists are here. This is why everybody is sitting at their bench working, in the vivarium working, or at their desk working. That's our intent for the next couple of years.

Jon Chee - 00:20:54: That's amazing. And just thinking about your whole journey is, frankly, incredible. Everything that you've achieved with Georgiamune thus far—you talk about having so many candidates going into the clinic on a remarkable timeline—is nothing short of amazing. So I'm so excited to be in the stands rooting for you guys and watching you execute.

Samir Khleif - 00:21:16: You're the best. And coming from you, it means a lot.

Jon Chee - 00:21:20: Thank you, thank you, thank you, Samir. And in traditional closing fashion, we have two questions. The first is, would you like to give any shout-outs to anyone who supported you throughout your career?

Samir Khleif - 00:21:32: Look, the number of people that supported me during my career is many, really many. In every single step, I got support, whether from family, mentors, colleagues, students, or patients. So the answer is there are many of them. I mentioned some as we were talking. But if I'm going to give a shout-out at this stage, it has to be to patients. The amount of learning that we got from the patients that we treated is major, particularly for those of us who spend most of our careers on the development of new drugs and the conduct of clinical trials. By no means is this a cliche; that's the absolute truth. I would absolutely give a shout-out for that.

And to everybody else that has been part of my life and career, and all our employees here. The amount of learning that you do every day from every one of them is just phenomenal. I would thank every single one, and I'm not going to mention anyone in particular because otherwise, I will be missing the other hundred. I'm not going to be living with that guilt for the rest of my life. So good try, Jon.

Jon Chee - 00:22:55: Yep. I tried. I tried and failed, but it's okay. I think about that too, and it's just like, it takes a village. It truly takes a village, especially in the sciences where anytime something gets approved, I always think it's like a little miracle. There are so many people involved, so it's really hard to pinpoint one. But, the last closing question I have for you is: if you could give any advice to your 21-year-old self, what would it be?

Samir Khleif - 00:23:22: That's a great question, and it requires a little bit of thinking. Maybe have a little bit more fun along the way.

Jon Chee - 00:23:30: That is good advice.

Samir Khleif - 00:23:31: I would say one piece of advice and one only: Follow your passion. I'm not sure that would have changed the path, but absolutely, I would tell everyone to follow their passion. Passion is a very, very strong driving force toward accomplishing what you care about, what makes you go to bed sleeping and thinking how wonderful your career and your life are, and what you do. More importantly, it's a powerful driver towards doing good. So that would be my advice, and I probably would have done it the same way.

Jon Chee - 00:24:12: That's amazing. I have to remind myself that too. Like, set aside time to go have some fun.

Samir Khleif - 00:24:19: Yeah. This is why I said that first. Yeah. Smell the roses, man.

Jon Chee - 00:24:24: Exactly. That's exactly it. Smell the roses. Enjoy the moment. You can always look forward, and there are always more things to do. But sometimes, the moment is a special one, and you shouldn't let it pass you by. So I love that. And also, following your passion as well. I love that tip because, through having so many conversations, I've learned it's always a roller coaster. It's never perfectly up and to the right. When things get tough, if you don't have the passion, that's usually when you throw in the towel.

Samir Khleif - 00:24:55: Yeah. That's very true. It requires a thick skin, and you should have it. But passion will make that thick skin easier to build.

Jon Chee - 00:25:02: Far easier. It's far less gritting your teeth and clenching your fists. Samir, you've been so generous with your time, and I've had a blast. I've learned a lot from you throughout this conversation. It's been incredibly insightful and, frankly, inspirational. There are so many lessons I'll be taking with me on my journey with Excedr as well. So thanks again.

Samir Khleif - 00:25:23: Thank you, Jon.

Jon Chee - 00:25:24: Thank you. And the next time I'm in your neck of the woods, maybe we'll grab some tea. Or maybe I'll join you in Vienna next time, and we can eat some good food.

Samir Khleif - 00:25:31: Some schnitzels.

Jon Chee - 00:25:32: Yeah. Exactly. Well, again, Samir, thank you. I look forward to the next time I see you.

Samir Khleif - 00:25:38: Thank you very much.

Outro - 00:25:41: Thanks for listening to part four of our conversation with Samir Khleif. From founding Georgiamune to advancing a portfolio of first-in-class immunotherapies, Samir's story is a testament to what's possible when deep science meets thought leadership. If you enjoyed this series, be sure to follow the show, leave a review, and share it with a friend.

Thanks for listening. Join us next time for our series featuring Michael Newton, CEO of Qorium. Qorium is revolutionizing the global leather market using cutting-edge tissue engineering technology that allows them to create high-quality, genuine leather without the drawbacks of traditional production. By removing the cow from leather production, Qorium's material has minimal climate impact, low water and chemical usage, no land use, and no animal impacts. Michael is a seasoned operator who's built and scaled both physical and digital products for global markets with end-to-end value chain experience, from manufacturing and sourcing to product management and consumer engagement. He is a hands-on technologist and leader who solves problems in the trenches and inspires large teams to move fast and build with purpose. A former Nike executive, Michael led cutting-edge initiatives that delivered world-class sustainable products without compromise. At Qorium, he leads with the conviction that only through great products can we achieve our environmental goals. With deep expertise in product innovation, supply chains, and sustainable materials, Michael offers a rare perspective on turning breakthroughs into scalable solutions, making this a conversation you won't want to miss.

The Biotech Startups Podcast is produced by Excedr. Don't want to miss an episode? Search for The Biotech Startups Podcast wherever you get your podcasts, and click subscribe. Excedr provides research labs with equipment leases on founder-friendly terms to support paths to exceptional outcomes. To learn more, visit our website, www.excedr.com. On behalf of the team here at Excedr, thanks for listening.

The Biotech Startups Podcast provides general insights into the life science sector through the experiences of its guests. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from the podcast is at the user's own risk. The views expressed by the participants are their own and are not the views of Excedr. Reference to any product, service, or company in the podcast is not an endorsement by Excedr or its guests.