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In this episode of all about business, James Reed sits down with Dame Kate Bingham, the Managing Partner at SV Health Investors, specialising in biotechnology investments. Kate has over 30 years of experience in the healthcare investment and led the UK's vaccine task force during Covid-19.
She shares the ins and outs of health care investment, the challenges that came with leading the UK’s vaccine taskforce and what she did when the press questioned her credentials.
About Kate
Dame Kate Bingham is a venture capitalist and biotech investor. She is best known for her role as the chair of the UK Vaccine Taskforce during the COVID-19 pandemic, where she led efforts to procure and distribute vaccines.
02:22 Kate Bingham's career journey
05:42 precision medicine and disease modification
12:01 the future of healthcare and AI
14:18 dementia discovery funds and new drugs
20:32 the challenges and rewards of venture capital
24:29 the importance of constructive relationships in venture capital
30:37 challenges and successes of the vaccine task force
40:32 navigating political and public scrutiny
49:59 Women in science and leadership
Follow Kate on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-bingham-19553a11/
Visit Kate’s company website: https://svhealthinvestors.com/
Follow James Reed on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chairmanjames/
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:28:15
Unknown
Welcome to All About Business with me, James Reed. The podcast that covers everything about business management and leadership. Every episode I sit down with different guests of bootstrapped companies, masterminded investment models, and built a business empire. They're leaders in their field, and they're here to give you top insights and actionable advice so that you can apply their ideas to your own career or business venture.
00:00:30:23 - 00:00:46:23
Unknown
Well, this afternoon, I'm really delighted to welcome Kate Bingham to the All About Business studio. And full disclosure. Kate. Now, I've been friends for a very long time, and, Kate actually introduced me to my wife making it, so I'm already hugely grateful to Kate for that.
00:00:46:23 - 00:01:05:13
Unknown
Kate, I want to start. You've just told me that you've been in the same job since you left business school back in 1991. You started the company that is now CV Health Investors. What drew you to that line of work, and why have you stayed in it so long?
00:01:05:15 - 00:01:27:17
Unknown
I mean, it's fantastic to be here, James. Thank you for having me. And thank you for your great pink, picture that goes with my pink coat. So I joined Schroder Ventures as it was in 91. Because I'd been working in a biotech company in Cambridge, Massachusetts that had been venture capital backed. And so when I got a call out of the blue to say, did I want to join a venture capital company?
00:01:27:19 - 00:01:48:11
Unknown
I thought that was pretty interesting. Opportunity, because one of the key things I was interested to do as part of doing my MBA was to bring back those skills back to the UK, to really help drive the growth of a of what was then a very nascent biotech sector in the UK. So I thought it was a great opportunity to do that, and I came in right at the beginning.
00:01:48:15 - 00:02:05:07
Unknown
So I've basically seen the growth of this sector into something that now is bigger than any other European country. And, not obviously as big as the US, but absolutely the second major, part of the sector in the biotech area.
00:02:05:07 - 00:02:07:16
Unknown
your scientists on how you studied biochemistry.
00:02:07:16 - 00:02:27:19
Unknown
I think I did I can pronounce the words I wouldn't say I'm a deep scientist because I've not done a drug discovery per se, but I, I know the basics. You are a scientist. So you studied science and you got into this sector right at the beginning. And it's and it's been an incredible journey. And now the UK, as you say, is world leading in this space.
00:02:27:23 - 00:02:55:13
Unknown
Correct. And and we've been able if you think about where innovations come from, they come out of academia. So there is a relatively linear relationship between academic research funding and patents and innovations. And you know how that comes out of that. So sitting here in London, which is the Golden triangle, London, Oxford, Cambridge, we are in a very rich place for brilliant minds to be coming up with great new inventions.
00:02:55:13 - 00:03:12:12
Unknown
So that's why we're so lucky to be based here as part of setting up biotech companies. So the way this works, as I understand it, SVP, Health Ventures, you raise a fund of money from investors, and then you go and look for companies to invest in on their behalf. Is that right? Yeah. So
00:03:12:12 - 00:03:14:03
Unknown
is a standard venture capital fund.
00:03:14:03 - 00:03:36:08
Unknown
So ten year funds you invest over up to five years. But by the end of ten years you will. The goal is to have return cash back to the investors because it's in a liquid fund. As in, once you've committed you can't get out at all easily. We have to deliver returns which are materially better than any than other investments in the stock market.
00:03:36:12 - 00:04:02:01
Unknown
So that is the promise that we make. And so we are completely performance driven. If we don't make money for investors, they're not going to give us money again because it's we are the extreme risk end of the investment. So that's and we raise money from you know pension funds, insurance companies, family offices. You know, public and private pensions, I mean, all all over, just for the benefit of our listeners, how big is one of these funds?
00:04:02:03 - 00:04:06:02
Unknown
$500 million, $500 million. So a substantial amount of money.
00:04:06:02 - 00:04:23:09
Unknown
and then you look for these academic sort of geniuses in Oxford, Cambridge, elsewhere, coming up with new ideas to treat people. Exactly. So what we're interested in finding is, are there some interesting biological insights? It tells us about what is the cause of a particular disease in groups of people.
00:04:23:13 - 00:04:46:24
Unknown
And are there new ways, better ways to actually halt the progression of that disease so that you can actually either treat or potentially cure the patient? So when I first started 30 years ago, the sorts of drugs we were developing were very much addressing the symptoms of disease, but not getting into the underlying cause of of the disease itself.
00:04:47:01 - 00:05:05:10
Unknown
And now we now we understand so much more about biology. We had the human genome sequenced in 2000. And we now have much, much greater tools to really understand what's going on. I mean, still, it's the science has moved on. US science moved on hugely. I mean, we're still a sort of fraction of the iceberg. I mean, there's a lot more to do.
00:05:05:12 - 00:05:06:04
Unknown
But,
00:05:06:04 - 00:05:32:07
Unknown
being able to actually identify the drivers of disease and work out which patients have diseases caused in that mechanism then enables us to develop drugs which are very precise. So it's precision medicine, to get to the cause of the disease so that you are trying to you're trying to develop disease modifying drugs, not symptomatic. So is is there an example of an investment journey that you could share that, you know, a company you started.
00:05:32:09 - 00:05:55:01
Unknown
Yeah. Investing in that's then. Well, the most recent, big success we've had has been, in a company called AI bio, which is, company we formed. So we worked with a entrepreneur that we'd backed twice before, actually, an American physician who'd been hugely successful. And he, created the first class of drugs to treat macular degeneration.
00:05:55:03 - 00:06:12:23
Unknown
That's an eye disease. That's a that's an age related eye disease. And what happens is you get blood vessels that grow behind the back of the eye, and then they leak fluid into the back of the eye. And it's that fluid that forms cysts at the back of the, the eye that causes the blindness. And so we'd worked with him twice before.
00:06:13:00 - 00:06:34:22
Unknown
Each time actually led to an approved drug. And he called us again and said, he'd like to do it a third time. So we said, fantastic, this is great. And so we identified a particular pathway, which is a regenerative medicine pathway, which we thought was a very plausible basis for developing a new drug to treat blindness.
00:06:34:22 - 00:06:44:22
Unknown
We license. I did, actually, from California. We found a, entrepreneur there, and we then recruited the team, put the business plan together, built the budgets, put the financing together.
00:06:44:22 - 00:07:11:02
Unknown
So we then raised that was we. So we invested about $6 million to seed it, to basically get to a point at which we could then go out to investors to then say, okay, come and join us for a series A, then early 22, we raised $65 million from US and European investors. But also, crucially, the corporate venture arm of Merck, the US pharmaceutical company.
00:07:11:04 - 00:07:21:09
Unknown
And that funding was to generate the initial clinical data on the lead asset, but also to bring in one or possibly two other assets,
00:07:21:09 - 00:07:26:24
Unknown
and, you know, sometimes everything goes right. And in this case, everything went right.
00:07:27:03 - 00:07:46:24
Unknown
And so the company's I think it's worth saying for $3 billion, $3 billion, not all upfront. So we go but it's a big number. Yes, it was one which was upfront 1.3 billion upfront from an initial investment of 6 million from initial seed of 6 million. Yeah. So no, I mean, this is an amazing drug. I mean, because a lot of people suffer from diabetes.
00:07:46:24 - 00:08:11:21
Unknown
And yes, I know that all of us are aging. So it's and it will treat macular degeneration too. So we saw we saw efficacy there. So Merck are particularly interested in this area because they've got one of their big cancer drugs comes off patent in 2028. And that is has sales of something like 30 billion right now. So I bio is one of their bets as to how can they make up that lost revenue.
00:08:11:23 - 00:08:31:22
Unknown
And so if if it all pans out they should be launching the drug at the same time as Keytruda comes out of patent. So that is the strategic bet from Merck. And they took the whole team so they don't have an Up technology franchise. And so they basically said to David and the team, we want you to deliver these clinical trials, get the drug registered.
00:08:31:22 - 00:09:01:12
Unknown
And then and then David's the original entrepreneur. Yeah, yeah, he's a physician. So you've lost him now he's going to come back a fourth time. You never say never. I'm saying I think there's a good shot. We did. We didn't think it necessary to come back a third time. You know that's very he is a phenomenal entrepreneur. And this was an interesting company because we actually set up as a UK company even though, David is, is based in New York because we led manufacturing and operations and finance out of here because there's a lot we can do that's really good.
00:09:01:14 - 00:09:30:02
Unknown
And we were able to basically build a transatlantic company taking the best out of each different region. And a pretty virtual company. That's the way you, you run your business. So transatlantic is a leg in both places, as we do, because we see it from the UK perspective when when our companies grow up, it's very helpful to have somebody from the US bringing that US perspective, because fundamentally, we're always going to raise money in the States.
00:09:30:08 - 00:10:01:19
Unknown
So we will list our companies on Nasdaq. And obviously there's much greater sources of funding in the states. So we want our companies to have a view to the US. And so my partners can help with that, but equally want it the other way round, where we can take US companies and bring them to the UK or to Europe to run clinical trials to partner with, with different strategic in the UK we've got fantastic big data sets, whether it's Biobank Genomics England, our Future Health, we've got data sets that are vastly better than anywhere else in the world.
00:10:01:23 - 00:10:19:18
Unknown
And those are the sorts of things we can help a US company, well, all our companies tap into. It's good to hear you being so positive about the UK because, you know, it's had a bad couple of years, I suppose, less so in our sector. I mean, I think we've said this is a growth that. So for young people listening, this is a good sector to join.
00:10:19:20 - 00:10:28:05
Unknown
Young people listening, do science degrees, get your heads down, learn something and start businesses. It is a fantastic sector to be in.
00:10:28:05 - 00:10:44:04
Unknown
can't imagine how I could be in the same job after 30 something years if it wasn't interesting. So if you think about the sort of the macro level, most diseases are not cured. We've got faster rate of scientific innovation than we've ever seen in the world.
00:10:44:06 - 00:11:07:24
Unknown
And we've now got, an explosion of new tools that allow us to basically interrogate what's going on, including, obviously, AI. And that is just a fantastic place. So whether or not you're interested in the the wet lab, the computational side, the clinical trial side, the commercial side, working with patients, I mean, there is a very broad range of areas for people to get excited about.
00:11:08:01 - 00:11:33:19
Unknown
And then you think about, well, what about prevention and diagnosis and actually just stopping these diseases because we don't want to wait till people are highly symptomatic with cancer or dementia, and then you start treating them. We want to stop those diseases from even happening. And maybe not all diseases, but a large portion of diseases are where your immune system isn't working properly.
00:11:33:23 - 00:12:01:17
Unknown
So cancer is an example where your immune system is not picking up the fact you've got these right mutant cells floating around and dividing. And so we've got immuno oncology, which is about how do you provoke your immune system to actually specifically take out those cancer cells. You've got the same with the brain. So, the same idea of stimulating your, your immune system in the brain to, again, clear plaques, clear all the stuff out there that shouldn't be there.
00:12:01:19 - 00:12:22:19
Unknown
But, you know, could you do that with vaccination? Could we all be vaccinated in our Middle Ages? You know, going to boots at age 40. They take they take a blood test. They say, well, you got some circulating tumor, you know, colorectal. And they zap here with a, with a vaccine and you get Alzheimer vaccines. I mean, there'll be lots of exciting things.
00:12:22:19 - 00:12:41:03
Unknown
Boots will do. Well, if you could do that, wouldn't that. Well, I think, but so would so would the taxpayer. Yeah. Yeah. Because you know health care as it currently is, is is becoming increasingly impossible to, to pay for. And you only need to look at America. I mean, our health outcomes in many cases are as good as America.
00:12:41:03 - 00:12:49:09
Unknown
And yet they're paying more than twice as much for it. So it's not just spending more money doesn't isn't necessarily the solution. It's being smart about it.
00:12:49:09 - 00:12:52:06
00:13:01:11 - 00:13:03:08
00:13:03:08 - 00:13:16:09
Unknown
So you you mentioned dementia. I believe you've developed a whole new range of drugs in that space as well. Is that right? Yes. We have two concerns. So two classic venture capital funds called the Dementia Discovery funds.
00:13:16:11 - 00:13:38:05
Unknown
And they, designed to do what it says on the tin as a new ways of treating different forms of dementia. So at the moment, we have to approve drugs which are antibody based drugs and what they do, clear the plaque. So if you've got amyloid plaque in the brain, they're very good at clearing the plaque.
00:13:38:07 - 00:14:03:16
Unknown
And there is a very close genetic correlation between a certain genetic pattern. The likelihood of getting amyloid plaques. The challenge has been that even though these drugs are very good at clearing the plaque, they have a relatively modest effect on cognition. So you're intervening in the disease too late, and by that point you've got severe neuronal loss.
00:14:03:16 - 00:14:26:13
Unknown
So this is not this does not replace does not renew your neurons. So what we've been looking at is not dissimilar to sort of the cancer playbook, but trying to identify the different paths or the different causes of different types of dementia. So we don't talk about breast cancer anymore. We'll talk about Her2 positive or triple negative breast cancer.
00:14:26:13 - 00:14:51:16
Unknown
We'll talk about the the causes and the drivers of the different diseases. And so therefore there are different kinds of cancer, which is we still talk about Alzheimer's. And Alzheimer's obviously is caused by a whole range of different biological mechanisms going wrong, but we haven't really yet teased those out. So we have two funds that are trying to start teasing out some of those different mechanisms for the different types of dementia.
00:14:51:16 - 00:15:13:09
Unknown
So some of them are rare genetic dementias and some of them are more broad. But we're looking at, you know, different cell types, different drug types, obviously different targets and mechanisms. So I think we've got 13 different clinical trials running right now. So I'm hoping that some will be in time for me and you, that there will say, so am I listening to this?
00:15:13:11 - 00:15:16:14
Unknown
So we'll see the effects. Yeah. But
00:15:16:14 - 00:15:40:03
Unknown
them the fact that there are two drugs approved now is a big step forward because up until then we'd had nothing but failure. So billions and billions of dollars has been spent in this space, which is all failed. So the fact that there are two, two drugs now which which are not approved by nice here, so they're not available, in the UK but are available elsewhere and they're working to an extent.
00:15:40:05 - 00:15:41:21
Unknown
Yeah. I mean it's,
00:15:41:21 - 00:16:08:18
Unknown
slows down cognitive impairment. But for a short period and it's not a signal. It's it's statistically significant. But it's not hugely clinically significant. Right. So there's masses to do. Masses to do that. Sounds like so could you just I mean these are fascinating examples, but could you give me a sort of sense of you're bringing the science from a university into a business context and building a team.
00:16:08:20 - 00:16:33:15
Unknown
Yeah, quite a lot of interesting components there that don't necessarily sit together normally. Yeah. So the most recent company we've set up is in, precision psychiatry. So of course mental health, severe mental health is still a massive clinical need treatment resistant depression psychosis schizophrenia. And they hit young people. And so we have just set up a business with, sounds coming out of Cardiff.
00:16:33:17 - 00:17:08:00
Unknown
And really exciting. It's still in stealth, so there's no website. It's named, in Welsh after the Welsh dragon as a Welsh drug driver. Okay, we'll look out for this. Yeah. And, we'll what we've done here is backed two key, two keys. Academic founders who have actually spent their life in industry. So one out of neuroscience and one out of GSK neuro each of Merck and and GSK closed down their neuro divisions.
00:17:08:03 - 00:17:43:09
Unknown
And those two came together and carried on doing basically the work they'd been doing in pharma. But in an academic setting being funded by grants. And they worked very closely with one of my venture partners, Ruth McKernan, who is genius. And, they basically Ruth was talking to them and agreed that actually, rather than trying to license out individual assets, they'd be much better setting up a company de novo putting putting the different, new lead molecules that they'd been developing, of which the most advanced had just gone into the clinic.
00:17:43:13 - 00:18:05:19
Unknown
But they've got a range of, you know, range of different. So what let's do this drug. So this, this will so it sounds like a stable of drugs. So a whole bunch the the lead is looking at treatment resistant depression and it will basically improve the cognitive impairment that you otherwise see in long term treatment. Depression.
00:18:05:19 - 00:18:40:23
Unknown
But that's just an example. We have these two fantastic academic founders. The first thing we do is to do the due diligence to make sure we really understand what is the data sets they've got, which are basically lab based tests to understand what is the secret sauce, what is the innovative science that they've been developing, and how does that set relative to all the other different approaches that are out there from companies, academia, from everything we look at the IP so the patents and understand have they have they actually secured protect your rights so that we can actually
00:18:40:23 - 00:18:59:08
Unknown
build drugs around these. And then we get to work which is putting together Gantt charts to say, well, what are the key value inflection points that will show us that these particular interventions are likely to be safe and effective? What does it cost us to get there? What you know, how many people do we need? What is an org chart look like?
00:18:59:08 - 00:19:27:24
Unknown
So all the things you do build up? Yeah, build up the C-suite, build up the key capabilities. And so this, you know, they're sitting in our office around the corner. So, and we're just closing a big series, a round now to run a series of larger clinical trials. I was thinking the trials is the next stage. So our companies are loss making R&D companies and our assets, clinical data and pre-clinical data and patents.
00:19:28:01 - 00:19:59:09
Unknown
So that's what we go out. And so and it's those companies only will become profitable or even revenues once you've got a registered drug. But that's the years in the making. Those. Yeah, probably, you know, 1213 years on average. And the bit that makes it hard is 90% of drugs that go into clinical trials will fail. So so we've got to be very smart about how we back those companies to make sure you double down on the winners and you don't back the losers for too long.
00:19:59:18 - 00:20:19:03
Unknown
So picking winners, picking winners is critical. And and you know, you need to focus on, you know, the lemons right from for the plan. So you want to kill the lemons quickly and then double down on the plums. That's an interesting. So so you might make a start on something and think that's enough. Yeah yeah yeah. Oh yeah.
00:20:19:03 - 00:20:41:19
Unknown
So we will we will as part of our. So we call them lemons and plants. Yeah. So we don't we don't tell the companies. No probably no. They've been well you might be planning on an 11 or next. That's a job. Well yeah. Absolutely absolutely. So but what we do do is have very, very explicit conversations about what are the key data sets, which give you confidence that this is a an approach that's working.
00:20:41:21 - 00:21:02:19
Unknown
It's ultimately you don't know if it's working until you've done your pivotal studies and you've got a regulator to say, yes, we will approve this. I mean, that's that's the end game, but you've got plenty of steps along the way. And if you take cancer, for example, the ultimate test is do you improve survival now you can't do survival tests right at the beginning of a company's life because they take too long.
00:21:02:21 - 00:21:27:19
Unknown
So we have to use what's called biomarkers. So other surrogates of efficacy to give us a sense both of safety as well as efficacy. And so it's those, those milestones that we need to, to achieve to give us confidence to carry on putting money in. So 90% of drugs don't succeed at trial. And and those ones, once they're launched, there will be a decent fraction that never, returns succeed in business.
00:21:27:20 - 00:21:46:01
Unknown
Yeah. So this is a tough game. It is a very tough game. But you're good at it. Yeah, we're still in the game. We're still in business. Have some successes, return some money to our investors. So what is it about your approach? You're sort of mental approach. Do you think that has made you still stay in the game this long?
00:21:46:03 - 00:22:01:23
Unknown
You have talking Kate Bingham now what is it you you had to have Teflon skin, right? Because it is you know, you kind of have a lot of losers. And if if every investment you make is a is one of your children, it is really difficult. And so
00:22:01:23 - 00:22:10:09
Unknown
getting to a point where clearly we're close to our, you know, if we're building the companies, we're very close to the teams that we're putting together.
00:22:10:11 - 00:22:29:06
Unknown
So being able to have incredibly well understood plans that if you're clearly not going to make the plan and it's not about, you know, you've just missed it because we want these companies to succeed. So if it's a matter of a of a, you know, some extra money or a bit of a pivot, actually all that is fine, but it fundamentally is not going to work.
00:22:29:08 - 00:22:46:24
Unknown
We need to make sure that that is not a confrontational process, because that's understood from the from the beginning that we are trying to do the same thing. And, you know, we invest personally in our funds so that every investment I make has got my money in it, and we have our management teams and our founders all have equity in the company.
00:22:46:24 - 00:22:50:17
Unknown
So we want them to make money correctly. So we want to be on the same side.
00:22:50:17 - 00:27:53:01
00:27:53:13 - 00:28:12:12
Unknown
How can you tell how good a scientist is? I hire some fantastic scientists in my team. So you got scientists? Absolutely. I'm not the one who's going to be judging the the fund because that's I mean, highly technical, isn't it? So you get other scientists. Oh, I've got a kickass team who absolutely no one. So hiring the right team, next thing everyone is really important.
00:28:12:14 - 00:28:52:01
Unknown
Yeah, yeah. And and this is. So there's there's two types. There's the technical expertise you need to really not understand the, not just understand the basic academic science. What is the new insight or whatever. But how do you actually turn that into a drug. So the drug discovery skills, take some time. I mean, that is that is a, a, important, valuable, deep experience we need and then you've got the venture skills, which is all about, well, how do you turn that into a business so that you're not in the lemon category, and you make sure that you're, you know, back in the plums, and that's an apprenticeship business.
00:28:52:05 - 00:29:13:12
Unknown
So that is one where, you know, you start in the business, but it's you don't know how good you are going to be for a long time, because it takes a long time to build the companies to see whether or not they're going to be financially successful. And so you may be backing some fantastic science, but if you can't make an investment return, you know, invest is not going to come back and then you're out of out of business.
00:29:13:14 - 00:29:37:15
Unknown
Quite. It's I can see that it's going to work commercially and scientifically and medically, which is a unique combination. So okay. Thank you. Thank you for that. Overview of ETFs ASV Health Investors I mean, one of the, you know, standout moments of your career has also been the vaccine taskforce, which you chaired, in 2020. And I think it's generally seen as a great success.
00:29:37:15 - 00:29:57:08
Unknown
The work you did. Yeah. But it was pretty challenging, wasn't it? And you had a tough time sort of from the press at points in time. And you just said you need to be resilient, resilient. So it was a great challenge actually, because I joined in May 2020 and committed to six months because we just raised a new fund.
00:29:57:10 - 00:30:03:09
Unknown
So actually that was the core driver for why I didn't want to do longer is because I had to go back and do a day job.
00:30:03:09 - 00:30:16:19
Unknown
And it's worth saying you joined on a pro-bono basis, not by no one was paying you. I don't know, I think that's worth stressing. Yeah. As a volunteer. Yeah, yeah. And it was the right thing to do also.
00:30:16:21 - 00:30:37:14
Unknown
And so I was everything went well. One of my CEOs called me up literally the day I was called, by the government and said, I think you need a deputy, and I think I can be that deputy. And he's called Clive Dix, and he's brilliant. And I'd backed him twice as CEO. He used to run research for Glaxo as it was.
00:30:37:20 - 00:31:01:03
Unknown
So he knew everything cold. We knew each other incredibly well. And so I was thrilled and said, absolutely. Come and help. So the way it worked in the vaccine taskforce is the conditions I set, which I did with Jesse, my husband, which actually were the defining moments of getting that job right, was setting out the basis on which I do it.
00:31:01:03 - 00:31:20:22
Unknown
So the first was to report to Boris. So anything political has not done political stuff before. But what you know is that is what politics is, is people sort of trying to kill each other and take credit. And so actually being able to recall Boris Johnson, you talk about he's the prime minister, he's the boss in 2020. So being able to report to Boris
00:31:20:22 - 00:31:25:01
Unknown
we thought would help get rid of the sort of political side which it undoubtedly did.
00:31:25:01 - 00:31:44:10
Unknown
It was incredibly helpful. And then the second one was I got to recruit my own people. Again, incredibly helpful. So what they wanted from me was the, the expertise in, in our, in our sector, knowledge of the vaccine companies and then to work out just like venture capital does, which are the ones we want to invest in.
00:31:44:10 - 00:32:02:15
Unknown
so being able to recruit many people was very helpful. Once the budget wanted them to make quick decisions. And then there's was a six month term. So, setting that out as the criteria on which I would take the role, probably was the and that was all agreed. Was it that the. Yeah.
00:32:02:17 - 00:32:07:08
Unknown
So they said, fine, that's the way we're going to do it. Yeah. And then what was the foresight that you,
00:32:07:08 - 00:32:27:04
Unknown
Boris said to me again, he had the right instinct, which was we've got people dying every day. We want you to do this as quickly as you can, because speed matters. And so this wasn't about, getting some sort of bureaucratic making things perfect, but it was get work quickly.
00:32:27:05 - 00:32:38:08
Unknown
We didn't talk about, you know, make sure this is as cheap as possible. We didn't talk about cost at all. Actually, as it turned out, we all roughly paid the same.
00:32:38:08 - 00:32:50:00
Unknown
There wasn't any. There wasn't a huge amount difference between what we paid, what the Americans paid, what the Europeans paid. It was all and the vaccines were cost between sort of three and $30 a shot.
00:32:50:00 - 00:33:06:07
Unknown
to achieve that sort of vaccine rollout faster than any other country today. Yeah. And we we were the first to get. So my, my job was to procure vaccines for the UK for the rest of the world and then to help with planning for, to prepare for the next pandemic.
00:33:06:09 - 00:33:30:15
Unknown
The UK was the first to get the first registered vaccine. And so that wasn't, you know, that wasn't me. That wasn't that was you and your team, but also the regulator. So we've got our regulator, our medicines regulators because MHRA and they are globally recognized, very brilliant regulator. And they, they just pulled a complete blind.
00:33:30:17 - 00:33:53:04
Unknown
So they basically moved from being as June Rain calls it, a policeman to an air traffic controller. So basically working collaboratively with the vaccine companies to help them get their vaccines regulated now to show they they've obviously got to show they're safe and effective. But instead of saying, well, give me your data when it's already, they were saying, give us the data, is it going along?
00:33:53:10 - 00:34:02:07
Unknown
And then we can look at it. We can give you feedback. We can tell you if we need more. And then when you've got the final data sets, we will be ready to go.
00:34:02:07 - 00:34:14:05
Unknown
I mean, there are people who say some of these vaccines have had negative impacts on people or caused, well, there's clots and heart issues and things. I mean, is that is there any truth in that? Yes, of course there's truth in that.
00:34:14:07 - 00:34:19:13
Unknown
What's the downside? I suppose. So the challenges, where there are
00:34:19:13 - 00:34:56:14
Unknown
the world has never done, a vaccination campaign of how many billion, I think 11 billion doses of vaccine have been given, some enormous number. And of course, that scale of dosing anything has never been done before. So even though the clinical trials were much larger than have ever been done in any and any time before, and if you have events that are very rare that and say the the trials were up to 50,000 people, if the event is less frequent than one in every 50,000, you're not going to pick it up in the clinical trials.
00:34:56:16 - 00:35:23:03
Unknown
So you'll only pick that up when you start to deploy. And then the question is, can you then identify who might be getting that, that rare event? Trouble is, you can't tell that when when you're, you're conducting mass vaccinations, but it is inevitable that, you know, people are different. We will go. Everyone will have different genetic backgrounds and different environmental inputs.
00:35:23:09 - 00:35:46:18
Unknown
And so it's very difficult to be able to predict what all the potential harms will be. But I think you have to be open that there could be harms, which is why you focus on those who are most vulnerable. So there's no question that the people who are vulnerable, the groups one through nine, irrespective of of of blood clots, will have been safer having taken the vaccine.
00:35:46:18 - 00:35:55:06
Unknown
They're not taking the vaccine because the consequence of severe disease with with Covid is, is blood clots that are way worse and potential death.
00:35:55:06 - 00:36:02:09
Unknown
So I think you've written a case study about making difficult decisions, you know, looking at this story. Is that right? I haven't written it. No, no, no, it's okay.
00:36:02:11 - 00:36:21:06
Unknown
I wrote it and it's all the business school. Yeah. And they virtually. Yeah. So what? So what were the decision points that you found. Well you had to really think about the, you know, students at Harvard Business School would be discussing the if they put themselves in your shoes, what would I do here. It's not a decision making so important in business.
00:36:21:06 - 00:36:39:09
Unknown
You know, good decisions, you know, talk about the good investment decisions. But hey, what were the sort of difficult decisions. So it's not a classic HBS case because normally you'll you'll have your protagonist and then they come to a crossroads. And the question is do they go right or do they go left. And then you debate, you know, which way.
00:36:39:11 - 00:36:58:24
Unknown
The main decision that, the case focused on is should I take the job? Right. Which is an interesting hearing, hearing the students talk about it when they come up with a catalog of reasons why you shouldn't take the job. You kind of think, you know, I say, okay, I'm fine. I'm very pleased. I hadn't heard them talk about it.
00:36:58:24 - 00:37:17:18
Unknown
All right. Okay. So that was one of them. And then it was more about decision making, sort of in a vacuum. So, you know, we didn't know, really what this virus was doing. We didn't know if any of these vaccines were going to work. How did you do that with such limited knowledge? It's difficult making it so you have to make decisions with limited knowledge all the time.
00:37:17:18 - 00:37:21:09
Unknown
But when it's so new and so unknown. Yeah. So what we did is,
00:37:21:09 - 00:37:49:15
Unknown
try to put processes in place so that we least had a framework for how we would as and when we had knowledge. For example, you know, we started off with, I think nearly 200 potential vaccine candidates. And so as we started whittling them down, we started refining more and more as to what were the criteria for deciding which ones would go into our shortlist to really drill into, and then we would then start thinking about, well, for the manufacturing, what are the different things we need to put in place.
00:37:49:15 - 00:38:14:04
Unknown
So for example, manufacturing many ways much harder than the clinical trials. The clinical was straightforward. We've done that lots and lots. But manufacturing typically to get to population scale will take years and years. So speeding that up was something that's never really been done. So we had the, you know, the best experts making great judgments. But even so that was the right limiting step.
00:38:14:06 - 00:38:31:14
Unknown
Yeah. And so not knowing which vaccines we were going to use, we knew though that some were going to need a cold chain. So that was something we could do. We could say, okay, go out and buy -70 degree fridges. We're not sure we're going to put it in yet, but there's a good shot that some of the vaccines are going to need that cold chain.
00:38:31:14 - 00:38:56:21
Unknown
So that's an example. Then you've got the process of manufacturing the actual vaccine itself. And there are lots of different formats that we, funded. But then you've actually got to put them in a vial so that somebody, some health care professional can then give them the jab. And so again, that's another bottleneck. So we built two years worth of what's called fill finish.
00:38:56:21 - 00:39:16:13
Unknown
So basically putting the putting the vaccine into a, into a vial. We didn't know what we were going to put into it, but we knew that having that capability was going to be important needed. So as those are the sorts of sort of planning decisions you can make before you actually know what it is you're going to do, because you need to make sure that you've covered all the bases.
00:39:16:13 - 00:39:30:08
Unknown
Okay. That's interesting. So I'm thinking listening to that. Yeah. You're through and through a scientist business person. But through this process you had to deal with the press and you had to deal with government and public servants, which are people we don't typically deal with.
00:39:30:08 - 00:39:47:18
Unknown
No. And, and so let's, let's take one each in turn. So the press, you were given a pretty hard time, I think, by the Guardian newspaper. Oh, yeah. Definitely. What did they do? And I mean, it was, except me. But I remember reading it and thinking, that's not fair. They're not being fair about Kate. You know, during at the time.
00:39:47:24 - 00:40:09:01
Unknown
Yeah. So luckily all of that started in November. So had all of that started right at the beginning of my appointment in May. It may well have derailed the whole thing. Because it was all they saying. They know three things I'm corrupt, incompetent, and a crony. So those were the that's why I was calling you. Those are those corrupt, incompetent crony.
00:40:09:01 - 00:40:29:03
Unknown
Yeah. Those are the one that's put the record straight. Yeah, exactly. No, no. Corrupt? No. Absolutely. I think I said I'm not incompetent. And then the crony aspect is the fact that I'm married to an MP. So Jesse Norman, who, it's a conspiracy in the MP. Yes. And he was in the Treasury at the time. And so he's actually he was the financial secretary.
00:40:29:03 - 00:40:47:09
Unknown
So he's responsible for the furlough scheme. And so the idea was, yeah, that I rub shoulders with all these politicians all the time. The only reason I got the job was because of that. Now, the fact that I've never got into politics, I don't know any of them. And, politics is not my gig. Yeah, kind of missed the point, as far as I can tell.
00:40:47:09 - 00:41:06:22
Unknown
The Guardian sort of ever said, well, we got that wrong. No, I say that we make a note of it here because they did get that wrong. They did. They made, it took months and months for them to make the occasional sort of word correction, but they never took anything down. And, they've never apologized. But anyway.
00:41:06:22 - 00:41:31:01
Unknown
But now I'm just fine about it. It's it's just it. But in hindsight, annoying is massively annoying and annoying me and and, you know, there were lawsuits, you know, provoked by the Guardian, supporting claims against the government on my appointment. And so, you know, I had to the government had to spend a lot of money defending claims that this was a corrupt appointment, all of this sort of stuff.
00:41:31:01 - 00:41:57:03
Unknown
And actually having defended taxpayers money wasted, having defended they, you know, the claim was dropped, but it's just a complete waste of time. And knowing what I know now, the government's scheme of how they manage the press is basically to give very defined lines. I wasn't allowed to respond to the press. So number ten and the business department with their comms guys, would determine what the response was.
00:41:57:09 - 00:42:14:07
Unknown
What I know now, which I wish I knew then, was you can just speak to the journalist off the record and say, these are the facts, you know, don't print stuff that says you're upset because you'll know that's not true. I wasn't allowed to do that because they said you're not allowed to speak to anybody. But now I know that that's actually how you do it.
00:42:14:12 - 00:42:15:12
Unknown
It's much simpler
00:42:15:12 - 00:42:21:00
Unknown
I think in politics, you know, if one side's doing something good, the other side still attacks them and vice versa.
00:42:21:00 - 00:42:46:07
Unknown
And I think that's a sort of something I find slightly. Yeah, it it's not, it's not good at all. And just the nature of it, it just the nature of it. And again, another thing I would have done differently is I was not allowed to brief the opposition. And, you know, I'm not doing a political job. And again, in hindsight, I should have laid in the tracks to say no, I need to make sure that anybody needs to know what it is we're doing.
00:42:46:13 - 00:42:47:05
Unknown
We tell them,
00:42:47:05 - 00:42:56:23
Unknown
And so then you were made a Dame Kate pantomime dame. Is that what you think it is? So with all the blame. But you got a, you get an extra badge for being a girl.
00:42:56:23 - 00:43:14:07
Unknown
You get you get, you get one man. That thing that sort of goes on your face, on your chest and then you get one for your sash. Oh very good. Some of that does show, but, you know, you are formally recognized by society for the work that you did. And, yeah. That's good. I'm. Congratulations. I feel you'll be recognized.
00:43:14:09 - 00:43:15:08
Unknown
And,
00:43:15:08 - 00:43:33:00
Unknown
you know, the team was phenomenal. So that's the bit that's always slightly irksome is is everyone always focuses on the person who's the sort of the the lead face when actually, you know, as you know, this is all about having a great team, all of whom work incredibly well, who don't get that same level of recognition.
00:43:33:06 - 00:43:51:19
Unknown
So that's the bit that that feels less comfortable. So for the team. Absolutely. Yeah. I think that's really important to stress. You can't do anything on your own an iPhone that you can be 100 meter runner. You know, that sort of thing. To me I have pretty they have coaches and stuff. You have good shoes and all that.
00:43:51:21 - 00:44:18:09
Unknown
So what about the other side of what we just mentioned? So dealing with officials, public servants, because there's a very different culture between commerce and. Yeah, and government. Anything I mean, any advice you would share for people who are doing work across both sort of cultures or communities? Yeah. So I was again, I was very lucky in during the vaccine task force because everything we were doing was remote.
00:44:18:11 - 00:44:51:04
Unknown
So I wasn't in that sort of Whitehall, you know, ecosystem. We had handpicked senior, people working from government. Actually, all the senior guys had all worked in the private sector as well. So that would be the main, recommendation I would make is if you want to be go into civil service, make sure you have some experience outside government so that you understand what it is to actually be at the coalface to deliver something.
00:44:51:10 - 00:45:16:03
Unknown
And it's not just about writing policy papers and being super smart at economics or whatever it is, but that you actually know whether it's selling something, buying things, building, creating, running teams. But but in a commercial setting, not just in government. So I was I was frustrated that there was in the business department, there was precious little experience in business and actually, reasonable.
00:45:16:03 - 00:45:46:03
Unknown
I mean, hostility may be too strong, but real nervousness about, the motives of industry, which again, in the case of vaccines was not we had AstraZeneca doing this for nonprofit Sanofi doing this nonprofit JNJ, GSK, all of these major pharma companies were providing vaccines, for nonprofit. And so this sort of suspicion of motives I didn't like at all that pervades Whitehall generally certainly pervades Department of Health.
00:45:46:05 - 00:46:08:18
Unknown
And so and then you don't have, in civil servants and I've scientists. So there's 10% of of civil servants have stem degrees. And yet in a highly technological society, it doesn't make sense to me. So so I think there needs to be a greater emphasis on actually having the skills that you need to function in this sort of society.
00:46:08:18 - 00:46:21:06
Unknown
So whether or not you're in government or engaging in government, there needs to be a better, discussion between the two really, without each side feeling slightly suspicious of the other.
00:46:21:06 - 00:46:34:24
Unknown
So I'm reasonably optimistic that the government support for life sciences is going to continue, because we are a big revenue generator for the for the UK is that is the AstraZeneca is the largest investor of R&D in this country.
00:46:35:01 - 00:47:00:23
Unknown
It's a hugely successful pharma company. GSK is smaller but doing great. So this is an important sector and if we can continue basically doing what we did in vaccines across all of drug discovery and development, you know, the UK could be in a good place then. Well, think about the future. You know, one of the things I remember you talk about at the time of the pandemic was that we should prepare for future pandemics when we have the opportunity to build up data.
00:47:01:00 - 00:47:05:23
Unknown
Has that happened? Is that happening? Or are you concerned that there's a sort of void
00:47:05:23 - 00:47:24:09
Unknown
I'm not close enough to? It is the first answer. We've clearly got greater manufacturing capacity than we had before. We clearly have a understanding from government that working with industry cooperatively is a good idea, which is positive. And we've got national clinical trial capability.
00:47:24:09 - 00:47:48:17
Unknown
So all of that, I think is better. What I would like to see more of which I haven't really seen is greater engagement between government and industry on the next generation of new vaccines, because even though these vaccines were incredibly effective at preventing severe disease and death, they're still not great vaccines. I mean, you still have cold chains like they don't prevent transmission.
00:47:48:21 - 00:48:10:16
Unknown
They're not pan coronavirus. I mean, you still have different vaccines called in different strains, but like flu, they delivered by needles. I mean there's lot they're very short duration. So again, for the elderly who are the ones who are most vulnerable, they have to keep being jabbed in order to promote their immune response. So I would like to see a lot more innovation in that.
00:48:10:16 - 00:48:36:18
Unknown
So that so that actually getting a vaccine is much more straightforward and much cheaper. So in during my watch, according to the National Audit Office, it cost more to give the vaccine than it did to buy the vaccine. Now that is an expensive legacy. So we've got to get into a place where you have a patch, a pill or, you know, a spray and you take your vaccine that way, go into boots rather than all these injections.
00:48:36:20 - 00:48:56:16
Unknown
Yeah. So that's how things should hopefully. I think so. And that's what I'd like to say for greater resilience in the future. So one of the, one of the things that, I wanted to ask you about is about women in science, and there were a lot of women involved in the work around the vaccine. They're women scientists and they don't get the sort of credit or the well.
00:48:56:16 - 00:49:22:17
Unknown
So some I will say. But, and how do we how do we encourage more women to go into science? And I mean, it's very interesting. We women played a huge role in the pandemic. So obviously Sarah Gilbert is well known in terms of having designed the, the AstraZeneca or the Oxford vaccine. We have a regulator, John Raine, that led, MHRA and was the first to approve.
00:49:22:17 - 00:49:56:14
Unknown
And she's a physician, Oxford trained physician, public health regulatory background, completely superb, practical, pragmatic and incredibly thoughtful. So making really good decisions. We had Emily Lawson, who did the rollout. PhD, geneticist, incredibly organized, who who came in in November 2020 to basically, absolutely take the bull by the horns and figure out how you're going to, do the whole national rollout.
00:49:56:14 - 00:50:20:16
Unknown
I mean, work had been done before that, but she then came to spearhead it. Then we had people like Sharon Peacock who did, created the database to look at all the different, variants. So incredibly important to see how the how the virus was mutating. So you can figure out whether or not the vaccines were still going to work and what, what we should be concerned about in terms, you remember the alpha, beta, gamma.
00:50:20:19 - 00:50:42:23
Unknown
Yes. Omicron variants. So there were lots and I had women in my team. Divya, in running on the clinical side, Ruth, who used to build submarines. So all our vaccine candidates were all named after submarines, codenamed after submarines to to disguise them. So we had a lot of important, women who played critical roles,
00:50:42:23 - 00:51:08:04
Unknown
think you might have a talk coming up on this theme of women in science. Is that right? Yes. I've got a lecture at Imperial College called the Athena Lecture, which is all about women. And I'm going to talk about resilience and challenges and how our experiences leading into the pandemic actually helped the key women leaders in the, in the pandemic actually really respond and do a great job.
00:51:08:19 - 00:51:47:04
Unknown
So looking back over your career, both in business and with this task force, it what what qualities of you sort of found most helpful to you? Or, you know, you talk about resilience that you might be encouraging others to try and develop. I suppose, you know, you have a position of perspective. Yeah. So so my thought is, first of all, find something that you really like because actually it's really easy to get out of bed each morning if, if you're doing something that you know is fundamentally going to make a difference and that you're happy to talk to your mates about at dinner or whatever, so that is that is one thing that I
00:51:47:04 - 00:52:09:15
Unknown
think is really important. And, you know, it's really hard when you're a young person to know what is it that's going to really excite you, in which case, try lots of things until you find something you really like. So that for me is first one. And second thing, and I think especially matters for this new generation is do something that you think is really going to make a difference.
00:52:09:18 - 00:52:34:07
Unknown
So we see lots of, of, new businesses, I've seen in biotech think about new drugs. But also I mean, with friends and colleagues and outside, you know, new climate initiatives and new energy, new ways of trying to address the challenges we face in the world. I mean, again, I think those are really important things to think about as you're building your career and where you want to go.
00:52:34:09 - 00:52:44:21
Unknown
And then my last one is work hard. You know, you're never going to get anywhere if you don't put the time in and be smart about, what you're trying to achieve and do whatever you can to achieve it.
00:52:48:21 - 00:53:03:23
Unknown
Hey, thanks so much, Kate. Thanks for going to talk to me today. I really enjoyed that conversation. I'm going to ask you a question related to this pink poster behind me. Which is what gets you up on a Monday morning. This is from my interview book. This is the interview round of this podcast.
00:53:04:00 - 00:53:21:18
Unknown
And the question is, what Kate gets you up on a Monday morning, my spin class at 730. So I find that if you have a massive hard workout, you get an endorphin kick at the beginning of the week. That takes you through the rest of the week. The whole week, I'm going to try that spin class. I'm 30 Monday.
00:53:21:20 - 00:53:51:07
Unknown
That's a good tip. And my last question from, from my interview book again is where do you see yourself in five years time? Exactly the same. Exactly. That said, yeah, I'm not going anywhere, is I don't I can't, get my head around the idea of retirement. I'm not sure what I do. So my plan is to make sure that my younger team take over and I'm not needed centrally in the business, but I think around the periphery, I will.
00:53:51:10 - 00:54:03:19
Unknown
I will always be able to go out and life and have a life like me. Kate. Yeah, good for you. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. It's been a great pleasure and lovely to see. Fantastic, James. Thank you, thank you.
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