Hatch Podcast: EP7

1. The Science Behind DNA Nanobots: How DNA is used to build nanoscale devices for targeted drug delivery.
2. Game-Changing Innovations: Why non-viral gene therapy is the future of medicine.
3. Overcoming Challenges: Lessons learned in transitioning a biotech startup from idea to execution.
4. Entrepreneurial Advice: Chris’s tips on simplifying your story and building impactful partnerships.

“We consider ourselves the FedEx for pharmaceuticals, delivering medicine exactly where it needs to go.”

“Our nanotechnology approach is like a rocket ship—precisely targeted and consistent in design.”

“Simplify the story. Less is more when it comes to explaining innovation.”

Learn more about DNA Nanobots: www.dnanobots.com

Hatch Fairhope: www.hatchfairhope.com

Learn about Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy: Cure Duchenne

Explore DNA nanotechnology: Research by Dr. Carlos Castro at Ohio State University.

Follow Hatch Fairhope on social media for updates, and subscribe to the Hatch Podcast for more inspiring conversations with innovators pushing the boundaries of technology and entrepreneurship!

Subscribe & Listen: https://www.hatchfairhope.com/podcast

Introduction to Hatch Podcast
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[00:00:00] Host: Hatch. This is the Hatch Podcast, where technology comes to life.

[00:00:05] A Hatch Fairhope production.

[00:00:08] At Hatch Fairhope, we’re all about cultivating creativity, driving innovation, and accelerating growth. Welcome to the Hatch Podcast. Each episode will bring you inspiring conversations with innovators who are pushing boundaries, solving problems, and building the next wave of success.

Meet Chris Lucas of DNA Nanobots
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[00:00:26] Host: Today, we’re thrilled to have Chris Lucas, co founder and chief scientific officer of DNA Nanobots, a biotechnology company at the forefront of gene and drug delivery. Based on patented DNA nanodevice technology, DNA Nanobots is revolutionizing the way we approach gene therapy by enabling targeted delivery that minimizes side effects and optimizes therapeutic outcomes.

[00:00:53] With their technology validated in both in vitro and in vivo studies, DNA Nanobots is now forming strategic partnerships in the pharmaceutical industry. Join us as we dive into the science, the journey, and the future of this exciting biotech startup. Welcome to Fairhope, Chris.

[00:01:12] Chris: Thank you. Thank you very much, Stephanie.

[00:01:14] Yeah, I’d like to, you know, thank you and as well as Keith Glines, Rick Miller Chris Danek, as well as Chris St. Pierre for the opportunity to be in the inaugural Hatch Fairhope powered by Bezel Cohort. What a great experience it’s been.

[00:01:26] Host: Yeah, it’s been really exciting for us, too. So you are actually the only biotech startup in the group, right?

[00:01:33] Chris: That’s right. Yeah. A bit of a lone wolf in the cohort and it’s been a great experience for me to learn about all these exciting new medical technologies that are impacting the industry. And, to look at it through a different lens through biotechnology has been really cool for me.

[00:01:46] And so it’s been it’s been great being a cousin to the med tech community for sure.

The Journey of DNA Nanobots
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[00:01:51] Host: So just start by sharing a little bit about your backstory and what brought you to where you are today.

[00:01:58] Chris: Sure, absolutely. Yeah, our story is one that began about 10 years ago or so when I was doing my postdoctoral fellowship with Professor Carlos Castro.

[00:02:07] He’s a mechanical engineer. I’m at the Ohio State University. My background is in biochemistry and biomedical science, both from Ohio State University. And during my postdoctoral studies, I actually had the rare opportunity to transition from becoming a biomedical scientist to also dabbling in engineering, which is something that I never dreamed I’d be doing, but I met Carlos.

[00:02:28] He was really excited. About some of the work we were doing as a, when I was a grad student and so forth. And so he invited me to work with him and I’m so glad I did because Carlos is a biomolecular engineer.

Understanding DNA Nanotechnology
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[00:02:39] Chris: And so he works on a field called DNA nanotechnology which is actually using DNA as construction material to build tiny objects at the nanoscale.

[00:02:48] And so during my postdoctoral studies, I was. Always thinking, how can we use this technology, this platform technology as a biomedical device? And so the answer actually came when I met one of our other co founders in the laboratories named Patrick Halley. He was an undergraduate at the time and he was part of a team of undergraduate students.

[00:03:07] And they wanted to deliver cancer drugs with this DNA nanotechnology to improve the performance of the chemotherapy. And so I was all in, I was so excited I began to mentor the team and before I knew it, we had our application and that is targeted drug delivery and the idea to deliver medicine only to unhealthy or diseased cells and not healthy cells.

[00:03:28] So we can maximize how well the drug works and minimize off target side effects. And so for the last 11 years now we’ve been developing our IP portfolio in drug delivery and licensed our technology out from Ohio State University in 2023. And also earlier this year, this summer, actually another critical license from uc, Berkeley, out of Nobel Laureate, Dr.

[00:03:49] Jennifer Dena’s laboratory in 2024 to pursue and develop non-viral gene therapy.

[00:03:55] Host: So what inspired you to start working with this technology?

[00:03:58] Chris: So truly, I was inspired by the potential of the technology to deliver medicine in a targetable manner and had to do everything I could to bring this technology to society to save lives.

[00:04:09] Host: So what was the specific problem that you guys were trying to solve?

[00:04:13] Chris: Sure, so we consider ourselves, Stephanie, the FedEx for pharmaceuticals. We want to deliver medicine only where it needs to go in the body to prevent those bad side effects and to optimize the performance of the medicine.

[00:04:25] And we consider ourselves tool builders. So since we’re the tool builders, we thought that the greatest impact we could deliver was to partner with biopharma and help them develop new medicines.

Challenges and Solutions in Gene Therapy
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[00:04:34] Chris: So first we thought that targeted drug delivery would be what the market wanted, but we quickly found out that this was not the case.

[00:04:41] However, we also found out very quickly that one of the greatest unmet needs out there in medicine is to find a new way to deliver genes since viral gene therapy is extremely expensive to manufacture. It causes side effects because it’s not targeted delivery and is limited to a single one time dose administration because of the immune response that it elicits, right?

[00:05:02] And so an ideal solution would be one that is inexpensive targeted only to disease cells and causing little to no immune response. And that is exactly what we have to offer to our partners. So we are solving the problems associated now with viral gene therapy with our DNA nanotechnology based solutions.

Simplifying Gene Therapy for Everyone
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[00:05:21] Host: Okay, let’s break that down for the average listener who has no idea what you just said or anything about gene therapy. What kind of treatments are you really talking about, like specifically that we would be familiar with?

[00:05:32] Chris: Absolutely. So certain diseases that right now that have approved medicines for viral gene therapy, one is Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

[00:05:40] The DMD approval came from Sarepta Pharmaceutical Company late last year. And it’s been transformative in terms of the best way to deliver genes known and so forth. But there’s some problems associated with viral gene therapy. For example, it’s a very high cost to make this type of therapy.

[00:06:00] It’s currently priced at around 3. 2 million per a single one time dose administration. Which is just crazy to think about. And so non viral is certainly the way of the future and the next generation of gene therapy. And we truly believe that with our approach, we can achieve a great result just based on some of the things that sets us apart from our competition.

[00:06:24] So one is we have structures that our gene therapy system is highly programmable, meaning we can add targeting molecules, and we’re targeted as well only to disease cells and not healthy tissue. And then lastly our non viral nature of our delivery system believe we’ll only see a very small immune response.

[00:06:44] And so redosing potential is in play with our technology because of the lack of virus associated with it. So not only can we cut costs by at least 50 percent because we don’t have the viral gene vector but we’ll have a targeted therapy that is. Low immunogenicity or an immune response, and so we can redose.

Development Process and Business Challenges
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[00:07:05] Host: So walk us through what the development process looked like.

[00:07:09] Chris: Sure. Actually the, our approach to the developmental process is in our, is a partnership model. And so the way it works is that our partner who’s a biopharmaceutical company or large academic medical center, the two types of partnerships that that we have, they will send us starting material for their gene.

[00:07:27] Therapy. We will then reformulate and add targeting molecules to the product to take the medicine where it needs to go within the body. And then we’ll send that to our partners to conduct proof of concept testing and ultimately help them through the preclinical and clinical stages of development.

[00:07:45] Host: Yeah, so

[00:07:46] Chris: actually, yeah, the major challenge, believe it or not, has not been on the actual technical side of things, but it’s for us, actually, in the first year of operations, it’s been on a business related item, and that has been on our conversion from a limited liability corporation to a Delaware C corporation.

[00:08:05] That held us up. Unfortunately for a long period of time, about five months it held us up from securing a very important license as well as not being able to fundraise. And so once that process finalized, we were able to quickly finalize our license agreement as well as raise our next bridge convertible note round.

[00:08:23] So far, that’s been our biggest roadblock.

[00:08:25] Host: So what really makes this product different from what’s currently in that space?

[00:08:30] Chris: Sure. Yeah the, what makes us different is our ability to control our next generation non viral gene delivery system. We set ourselves apart from our competition in terms of Program ability, meaning our ability to control where the gene delivery system goes, not only in the body, but within the cell where it needs to go to the nucleus.

[00:08:50] Secondly, a target ability. We have the ability to send our system to only regions of the body and tissue specific. Targeting capabilities. And thirdly, we have a uniform device, meaning all the same in terms of the gene payload. This enables our partners to develop a new gene therapy with little batch to batch variation and deliver only to unhealthy cells in the body.

[00:09:14] Exactly where it needs to go.

[00:09:16] Host: Okay, so can you break it down a little bit for the non technical listener who may be Okay. Trying to understand this technology a little better.

[00:09:26] Chris: Absolutely, Stephanie. Yeah. So our major competition is something called lipid nanoparticles. And so these look like weather balloons.

[00:09:35] They’re unstructured and they look differently and different sizes of balloons as well, if you will. And they do not all look the same. They’re very difficult to control. With our DNA nanotechnology approach to gene delivery and gene therapy our products They look like rocket ships, like my six year old likes to say.

[00:09:54] We can control exactly what they look like, and they all look the same. The ability for all of these gene delivery systems to all look the same is very important when developing new medicine.

[00:10:06] Host: How is the technology improving patient outcomes so far, or just the healthcare process itself?

[00:10:11] Chris: Sure.

[00:10:12] Ultimately, I’ll talk about the potential for sure. We’re still early stage proof of concept in terms of the exact technology and showing impact in in cell culture as well as a mouse model systems and so forth. But our early stage technology, Certainly has the potential to cure disease by replacing a bad copy of a gene with a good copy of a gene to save patient lives.

[00:10:36] And we’re beginning with children. We have two partnerships with folks in patient facing organizations in the Duchenne muscular dystrophy space. Destroy Duchenne and Cure Duchenne who are coming in as partners to help us with proof of concept studies towards developing a targeted non viral gene therapy system with the full length gene that that, that will hopefully help the children.

[00:10:59] Host: So you guys just finished up the 10 week cohort program. What are some key takeaways from the program, or what was your experience like?

[00:11:06] Chris: Sure, yeah, key takethis program has been phenomenal for me and really helped me realize some of the things that I could do better, for sure. And that is really Telling a clear story.

[00:11:18] I’m a scientist by nature. And so I tend to jump into technical terminology and so forth. And so really the key takeaway for me, the first has been to learn how to clearly and concisely tell our company story. Less is more. I’ve learned over and over again that less is more new partnerships.

[00:11:36] This is a second takeaway is new partnerships can come from anywhere. Yeah. Someone may know somebody else that does something similar and there could be an introduction and the camaraderie that we have in this cohort has been phenomenal. We’re all willing and able, to help each other which has been amazing.

[00:11:51] So yeah, always take, and the third is always take the opportunity to plug into a new network and always offer to help others on their journey to save the world through med tech and biotech innovation.

Future of DNA Nanotechnology
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[00:12:01] Host: So how do you envision the nanotechnology evolving in the next few years?

[00:12:06] Chris: Sure. So right now our initial market penetration has been in the rare disease space and in particular Duchenne muscular dystrophy and limb girdle muscular dystrophy, but we see this evolving into additional gene therapy treatment areas, including autoimmune diseases.

[00:12:19] As well as cancer, but yeah, my dream certainly is that our next generation targeted non viral gene therapy system will revolutionize the way genes are delivered to ultimately cure all genetic diseases and save many lives.

Advice for Aspiring Innovators
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[00:12:33] Host: So any advice to someone looking to get into the startup space?

[00:12:38] Chris: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:12:39] We’re all excited about the technology, especially as co founders and so forth. And so I would give myself this advice give myself the advice as well as everybody else, but simplify the story, the technology, and the ask at the end of any, conversation that you’re having and with with the specific ask and next steps.

[00:12:57] The most important skill, certainly that I would advise for a medical or biotechnology innovator is to develop the ability to convince people from all professional backgrounds, all backgrounds, that the innovation that you’re working on is something of value. It will be impactful. And that they are the person to deliver the innovation to society, to improve human health and save lives as well as make a little bit of money as well in the process.

Conclusion and Contact Information
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[00:13:24] Host: Stephanie it’s been great to sit down with you. Thanks so much for taking the time. So if anybody wants to find out more about the technology, where can they find more information?

[00:13:33] Chris: Chris Willis, Ph. D.: Sure. Yeah, you can check out our website first. Thank you, Stephanie. Again, it’s been a privilege to be here today on the podcast and It’s a great opportunity for us to sit down today.

[00:13:41] So I appreciate that very much. Yeah, please check out our website www. dnanobots. com. You can learn more about our partnership program there as well as the investment opportunities that we have.

[00:13:53] Host: Awesome. Thanks so much again.

[00:13:55] Chris: Thank you.

[00:13:56] Host: Hatch. This has been the Hatch Podcast. A production of the Hatch team in Fairhope, Alabama.

[00:14:03] Host, Stephanie Glines. Producer, Tim Scott. Executive producer and creator, Keith Glines. Visit HatchFairhope.com for more information.