Biotech & Health Extension: 2021 Goals & Opportunities | Your Input Desired
Allison DuettmannJan 15, 2021 at 1:19 pm1h 6min
Allison Duettmann
00:01Everyone, welcome back to asides biotech and health extension Strategy Group. I'm really, really looking forward to spending as much time with you again this year even if virtually only for now. But this year, we hoping that you can pick it up where we left it off in 2020. But then also pick up the pace and and perhaps do a little bit more of action focused opportunities for collaboration. So I will quickly walk you through the program for this year. And we will be meeting every second Thursday of the month, as kind of like our touch point or anchor point. And then from there, we're going to spin out probably, hopefully, a lot of meetings that that I invite you to, to propose. So if you have specific focus areas that you want this room to explore, then please please let me know. And then I'll make sure they get on the program. So we're going to have a little bit more decentralized community oriented programming this year, and a little bit more action oriented programming to and which is what I'm going to hopefully show you now. Okay, so here you see our program for this year. And then nutshell, really, what we are going to do this year is for the first half of 2021, we're going to try to really evaluate and look at a few key areas for progress and aging. And then based on that, hopefully spin out a few ideas for progress that we can as a community tackle together. And that is what the second half of 2021 is reserved for. And so hopefully in the first one, we kind of get down and really what what the major multipliers for progress are. And in the second half, we hopefully try to make some progress and create some prototypes. And Alright, so I'll quickly walk you through the bits that you can expect. We are in the session right now you meeting every meeting group members and finding goals. And then in February that we're going to tackle industry blind spots are specifically what work is not being incentivized right now that could dramatically advance progress on aging in industry, then the same thing for research. And we're going to ask the same question here. But with different fantastic folks. In March, we're going to have a focus area on clinical trials and analytics by with James Kirkland, who was here last year, and with the meeting that many of you really liked, and when so hopefully, we can continue that discussion on what kind of needs to happen on clinical trials. Then in April, I'm super, super happy to have on all kransky here. And we'll be discussing what can happen on an NAIA level really, in an institutional perspective on biggest multipliers for change. In April, we're going to discuss biomarker development for FDA recognized diseases. And then we're going to start with specific focus areas where we thought that they may be particularly promising for for getting work done. And for actually making progress right now. One of them is platforms, tools and data analysis for long term progress on aging. One is biomarker and aging, crop development. And then one is biomarker standardization for progress on aging. And then we have a final one. And this is an August on regenerative medicine. So this is kind of like the program for the first half of the year. And then from there, we're going to spin out hopefully, a little bit more decentralized, can focus groups that may be focused on specific opportunities in each of those areas, and see if we can make progress on those. And then we gather again in December, and see and see if actually, if we're able to hack together and prototype. And so there's a few different things that I'm hoping for this group, and we need to achieve there. Of course, one of them is that, you know, we continue just forming a really strong ecosystem and community together. And the other one will be that we actually get a document together and based on our meetings, and I'll be taking care of that together with Bullock was here on specific areas that we think that other folks should also be be taking upon them. And so trying to form more of a wider coalition with specific action items for those people who are interested in helping, so that could be on all kinds of different levels, just trying to get together kind of like an action plan with different bullets that different folks could take on if they're interested in helping. And then lastly, of course, hoping to get together actually a few prototypes of what solutions could look
Allison Duettmann
04:45like if we got it right. And so for those and we may even have the opportunity to have some initial funding and definitely some community support and mentorship from folks in this group. And for that we're hoping to really kind of grow stronger And more of a focused, kind of like, you're more focused on the members here and how we can help each other grow and ecosystem really from the bottom up and on. And so for that we have a membership form that I'm hoping many of you will fill out. And, yeah, with that, and I thank you very, very much for joining again, I'm really, really happy to have Sonia Harrison here, Sonia will be discussing a few of the group goals that we may have today based on the form that I send out to many of you. So please, answer the phone and answer the form that will hopefully give us a little bit more of a restructured way of assessing how each and every one of us can help each other more. For now, I'm very happy to welcome Sonia to be discussing the questions that hopefully, I get to hear from you on the forum and that we're discussing next time. And from there, we're going to launch into a broader discussion on what kind of goals could this group take on in the next year? And then we'll get more specific in the next month. All right, thank you very much. And welcome, Sonia. It's really, really good to have you here. Yeah, so
SSonia
06:03I was I was just saying that, you know, we were really hoping to push this group a little bit further. And you know, not only talking about interesting things in the longevity space, but actually sort of having more of a targeted goal, where we say, Okay, let's identify some of the key bottlenecks and the key stumbling blocks in the longevity space. And let's spend part of the year doing that. And then let's spend the second part of the year trying to figure out if we can be nimble, I mean, this is an incredible group of people, if we can be nimble, and all get together and kind of think about how we might build teams to, to go after fixing those goals. And, you know, if we can build a team quickly, maybe we can also help get funding for it quickly. And maybe we can actually, you know, do something here, like actually have an impact. It's not just an interesting salon. And, you know, it is an interesting salon, and there's great talks and all of that, but it'd be nice to actually do something as well.
Allison Duettmann
07:25So we're working behind the scenes, we have bullet cues are no takers. So we have a collaborative note taking tool. And so we're hoping to hear from all of you. And he'll be tracking most of the things that we discuss in the group. And then hopefully, I mean, the minimum, I think, for me is really just having a really structured, kind of like, talk on which everything that you know, this community agrees on that will be valuable to do and will be valuable to take on by different actors is in one place, and a nice thing, like, in a nicely formatted way. So we can share that. Second thing. Of course, what Sonia said is, you know, actually are trying to get something together and trying to collaborate on projects together. And other specific areas, Sonia that you're particularly interested in looking into, or that you want to draw attention to already?
SSonia
08:08Uh, well, I, there's so many areas that I'm interested in, you know, recently, I've been spending a lot of time looking at the brain, which has not been an area of focus for me in the past, because it's been so difficult to get data on the brain. But there's been a lot of advances in brain technology recently, you know, optogenetics, of course, but brain organoid work and, and, and that kind of and other things related to it. So I think I think this is going to be the year of the brain. So I'm at which is about time where it's a it's about time for that, isn't it? Because we can't live very long if our brains not working well. So I'm interested in that. But I'm interested in in a lot of things. And I'm super excited to hear about one of our fellows who's both of them actually sound like they have a connection with AI because you know, one of the things I spend a lot of time listening to pitches I'm spending all my time these days investing in companies. And I'm mostly focused on longevity companies, but I get pitched on other companies too, because I'm you know, I'm working with some other VC firms and I'm, you know, all the non bio, every, I would almost say that every single non biotech tech company that I meet is using AI, but not every single biotech company I meet is using AI. And I think that needs to change because biotech needs the AI more than the non biotech companies. So I would like to see more of a focus on on that. I don't know what to extent we can have an impact on that but, but I think we should all be pushing for more. Not, not the end As a goal in itself, but, but it's a tool, and I think it's a tool that biotech has been slightly slower to pick up, at least recently. And it's, you know, it's hard.
Allison Duettmann
10:11Yeah. I'm glad that we have quite a strong program on that particular issue. But would you also say that there's particular things which people are maybe focusing on too much right now? Or like, do you think there's anything that's particularly overrated or underrated at the moment?
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