That’s the voice of Lanny Sun, co-founder of Silicon Therapeutics, which was recently acquired by Roivant Sciences. Listen in now to hear Lanny’s thoughts about leadership and how Silicon Therapeutics, now part of Roivant Drug Discovery, is advancing its chip-to-clinic, computational quantum physics-based approach to pioneer a new path for drug design of medicines to improve the lives of patients
I’m John Simboli.
You’re listening to BioBoss.
John Simboli
Today I'm speaking with Lanny Sun, co-founder of Silicon Therapeutics, headquartered in Boston. Welcome to BioBoss, Lanny.
Lanny Sun
Thanks, John, really honored to be here; longtime listener, first-time caller.
John Simboli
Lanny, what led to your role as co-founder of Silicon Therapeutics?
Lanny Sun
I've always been working in the healthcare industry. I started my career at Deutsche Bank Securities, focused primarily on healthcare and investment banking, but I've always approached healthcare, always approached biotech, as not a scientist or a clinician, or from a technical aspect, but more from a finance and investment perspective. What really got me excited about starting Silicon, that was really when, as a venture capitalist in China at the time with a fund called Chengwei Capital, but we were kind of running all over the world looking for different types of assets that we might be able to in-license. And I went to this lab at Harvard, Dr. Lijun Sun and Elliot Chaikof's lab, and they had shown me a number of really interesting targets where they had early chemistry but very difficult targets. And when I saw what they had done with those difficult targets, I go, wow, how do you do this? You're an academic lab, not that academic labs are bad, but your academic lab is going up against very difficult targets? And their reply was, Oh, we've got this new computational physics-based, new kind of streaming technology in the back here called incyte. And so, that really led to me looking and exploring what computational physics was, and kind of all of the recent advancements and, frankly, I would say disruptions that have been going on in the field of computational physics. Because as many people know, it hasn't been something that's always worked traditionally, in the past, but we're really starting to see that change. And so that's really what got me excited about Silicon was those initial conversations with the lab and the co-founders, as well as talking to many of those who've dedicated their lives to computational physics-based drug discovery, such as Woody and Huafeng, who are both at Silicon now. But you know, those conversations already stirred me to go, this is something that I want to dedicate quite a meaningful part of my career towards advancing.
John Simboli
I wonder about how you go about saying to yourself, how does a leader figure out, I want to be the leader of that? As opposed to, I want to work in the background, I want to raise the funds, I want to . . .
Lanny Sun
For me at the time, and I think it's definitely changed, but at the time, there were very few people that were, I would say, interested in, or at least pursuing the type of company that we wanted to build, which was a fully integrated company that could deliver value to the patient—from the underlying chip, through the software through the methods-based or the physics-based methods through, wet lab through clinical development through, one day, commercial. So there are very few others kind of going after that similar vision. So it was kind of, I would imagine, like many others, a calling. If you shall, a right place, right time type thing and a calling to pursue this. So you know, at the time I kind of dived in, and I think it was both exciting, but more importantly, I was stupid enough to really go for it.
John Simboli
What were you hoping to achieve that could be done at Silicon Therapeutics, and not another company?
Lanny Sun
Many companies are doing great things. So of course, what's special about Silicon, this is by no means a ding against, any other opportunities out there, I think we're all as entrepreneurs searching for the same thing, which is a real opportunity and opening to make an enormous impact about something we're passionate about. And for me, I've always been passionate about healthcare, drug discovery. I've always spent my career in this field. And you know, Silicon had all of the kind of momentum as well as the kind of right place, right time, or fate, if you shall, being able to provide me that opportunity to create that impact. And the ability that was used both computationally based as well as something I'm passionate about, which is drug discovery and the melding of the two and the fact that the technology was mature at the time. I spent a long time kind of searching for a similar opportunity. And when it presented itself as Silicon, I mean, it was really no second-guessing or any . . . dive right in. But you know, as I mentioned, all of the kind of scientific aspects of why it was exciting have already answered; our kind of focus more on that faith-based aspect.
John Simboli
Let's say you're talking to someone who's knowledgeable, thoughtful, doesn't happen to know the biopharma industry. And they say, Well, what do you do for a living, Lanny? What's your way of answering that?
Lanny Sun
In the beginning, I would try to explain. When I started my career, I tried to explain what drug discovery was and that I approached it from a finance perspective. But for those that are in the industry, it's really easy, I work at a drug discovery firm that then leverages computational physics to go after therapeutics that were previously, we felt, previously are intractable. So that's really simple for those who are in the field. For those outside the field, I actually tried to make it super, super simple and just try to end the question, as opposed to going down the kind of the rabbit hole of explaining anything. Nowadays, I say, working as an administrator in the healthcare field,
John Simboli
I'm wondering about doing one's job in the era of Covid. And I know that you move between offices and that you're in different environments. So the answer might depend on where you are at a given moment. But in the age of Covid, when one's work is often just in your home office.
Lanny Sun
A lot of my time is split between my home office as well as a rent office in China, as well as our job sites in China. So we, as Silicon, have two sites, one in the U.S., one in China. I'm lucky enough that the flexibility where I can be in the China site where I actually don't spend most of my time in the home office, I'm either on the road, traveling, pre- Covid style, or working out of some office. But there were about three months where I was trapped in the U.S. This is like March of last year, 2020. And I was working from home every day, and I can tell you, that was both the most productive, and the most depressing three months, professionally, for quite some time,
John Simboli
What have you learned over the years about which management approach works best for you?
Lanny Sun
I've always come in eyes wide open about my own strengths and about my own weaknesses. I think one of the key things that I've done in my career is understand exactly where that line cuts. And it's probably a little bit easier for me, because, again, I'm approaching it as a non-scientist and a non-clinician. So when I think about a management approach, I really like what Steve Jobs used to say about this, which is, one, you really want to make sure that everyone who you hire, everyone that's in the room is smarter than you. The number one thing that we're really laser-focused on is bringing in the best, the brightest people in each of their respective fields and making sure that they were really top-notch. And then number two, is making sure that you hire a bunch of smart people and not tell them what to do? You've tried to hire smart people so that they can tell you what to do. It always seemed ridiculous to me that you would have all these individuals who hired really top-notch folks, and then would tell them what to do. I was like, Well, why do you need to? You know, what's the point here? So that's how I would summarize how I approached it, which is, you know, again, bringing in the top experts, and then and then, you know, really, you know, kind of giving them the room as well as making it part of our culture to have these individuals tell us what to do.
John Simboli
Lanny, do you remember what it was you wanted to do when you were a kid, like maybe eight or nine or 10? I think for most of us, we were trying to figure out what our parents wanted us to do, or trying to be good kids. Other ones set off on strange fantasies of what we wanted to be when we grew up. Do you have any memory of that? Does it have anything to do, any through-line, to what you're doing?
Lanny Sun
Oh, yeah. Oh, 100%. %. It actually relates completely to your last question, which is, what's your management style? The thing I wanted to be when I was a kid was a comedian. And so that is 100% part of my management style, make the most ridiculous jokes, again, all appropriate and PC in today's age. But the most ridiculous, poorly timed jokes as often as I can, in every single setting here. And extremely loudly. So at least when we were in the office, I would just scream these jokes at people. We have this big open floor and scream it and that was always so much fun. Anyone in Silicon who would be listening to this would be laughing because they know I would do this. It's really a lot of fun. And I think when you interviewed my management team about a word to describe me, I think it was energetic, and fun are two of the more positive ones that were brought up, I won't bring up the negative ones. So yeah, absolutely. I wanted to be a comedian. And, you know, still, very much so to this day incorporate as much comedy. But I think it's funny, not sure anyone else does, at least into, you know, management of company meetings that are just general events.
John Simboli
I would think being a comedian, the improvisational nature, the ability to think on one's feet, it's probably something you'd learn over and over and over again, how to do that well, but there's got to be some connection between that and fielding tough questions and knowing how to take things forward.
Lanny Sun
I don't think about it too much as tying into a serious component of management. I mean, I think humor is a really great tool. It's a really great tool for anyone in the professional workplace to have whether you're managing, leading, following, a manager, a project manager, it doesn't really matter, all very important roles. I do think humor is a great thing to have. The corollary I tied to my job is honestly, it's really the tough times where a joke can really break the ice and kind of de-paralyze the situation, where people are like, wow, this is really bad, right? And anyone who's in drug discovery should know that. I mean, bad times, data is not what you want it to be, your project's not moving where you want it to be. And I think a joke can, when those bad data come in, really break the paralysis and the negativity around that and just get people moving again and realizing it's not a big deal. So I mean, that's the only time where I think it's, I've, in my mind, drawn that corollary. Other times, I think it's just about being a fun person at work and just making things enjoyable for others,
John Simboli
When I've known CEOs and founders, like you, who can do that, who can take a difficult moment and make it light and get going again, to me that says, There's someone who's confident, who's going to figure out a way and that makes everybody able to just take a breath.
John Simbolli
What do you say when people ask, who is Silicon Therapeutics?
Lanny Sun
We consider ourselves a fully integrated computational physics company focused on drug discovery, being able to provide value to patients from the underlying chips that we run all of our physics-based methods on, that we write all our software on, all the way through a tightly integrated wet lab, all the way through clinical development. And, of course, one-day commercial development.
John Simboli
What makes Silicon Therapeutics different from other biopharma companies?
Lanny Sun
We have a hyper-accurate way to simulate, at the atomistic level, protein motion and protein behavior as it would be in nature. So that's kind of from the bottom up how we think about ourselves, we're a computational physics-based drug discovery company. So that's kind of bottoms-up if we're comparing across the industry, anyone who's working in drug discovery and drug development, how we really think about ourselves. Top-down, if we're looking at not just our core technologies, but really drug discovery field and targets and the market, I think we're really focused on very difficult to drug proteins that have a design problem. They exhibit some kind of edge-case behavior that requires you to understand their behavior, or their protein motions, and kind of how their atoms wiggle and jiggle, to design a drug for them. So that's kind of both from the top down or from their kind of biology of the human perspective, as well as from the technology perspective, how we differentiate.
John Simboli
And then when you give that description, I'm sure you give variations that over and over and over again, as you're saying, through the Zoom meetings and in person, so when you offer that explanation, that description of who Silicon Therapeutics is, and sometimes afterward, people come up and will talk with you when you realize okay, they heard it as I intended it. And then some people, you realize they just didn't really follow it or maybe didn't have the background. And then others will kind of jump to a conclusion based on previous understanding, which may not actually be a good fit. So that third category, when that happens, when people kind of get it wrong, is there a kind of a pattern there to say, Oh, yeah, I know this, let me help you get back on track. You might think this is the kind of company we are. But we're actually this kind of company.
Lanny Sun
It's funny you ask that question because we get confused all the time on two points. One point is from bottoms up, so you're like an AI drug discovery company, right? And, you know, that's a very hot sector right now. And I'm always glad to see more investment coming to drug discovery, no matter what they're putting it into. So I mean, it's great that people are doing AI, but we really view ourselves more as a physics-based company. So, not to get into the kind of rabbit hole of computational physics versus AI. But that's one of the biggest confusions about who we are. Many individuals who are like, Oh, yes, you bet. You're like an AI company because you have computers, right? Because, once you start doing computers, many people just don't care about the differences. So, you know, a lot of people confuse us with artificial intelligence-based methods, when we're really more of a physics-based approach, even though both of us heavily use the same computational, especially hardware-wise, right, like these, GPUs and these parallel computing methods to run their processes.
From the top-down from those that are looking, you know, from the biology and drug discovery, focus, not so much our core technology, we always get confused as, like a service company. So they go, Oh, you've got all these methods, developers, you're writing code, you've got these methods to simulate, I mean, you must be selling this as a service, right? I mean, you must be. OK if I buy your software? Can I hire you guys to look at proteins? Well, actually, we don't really do any of that, from a business perspective, we really focus purely on taking these methods, integrating them very tightly with our wet lab, and with our clinical development team. And kind of breaking these tough targets and pushing our own drugs forward, just like any other drug discovery company, people always get, you know, they're like, well, you guys have the computers and the code, you must be selling software, you must be a software business model, with wet lab, like, Did you say you have a wet lab? What are you doing with that? You have computers, you can't be doing for discovery. So it's very funny. We were shocked, but I'm sure in like five to 10 years, every single person will be using computational physics and these physics-based tools to drive their drug discovery program. So, you know, it's just something we deal with. And I imagine any kind of cutting-edge company will get confused all the time. So not that frustrating to cross.
John Simboli
And I would think that being a cutting-edge company, to be doing something that is unfamiliar to some people, that when you do that course correction you just described to me, "We're not this, we're actually this," I'm guessing there must be a certain number of people whose eyes really light up and say, Now, that's interesting. You're in a whole new area. Let's talk more about that. I'm sure you must find when people do follow the story, they must follow it pretty intently,
Lanny Sun
I think those that have been following computational physics, those—and of course, you know, we've got two of the leaders there with Woody and Huafeng, at our company, our CSO and our CTO, those who have been following our publications and are interested in just the problems that we're approaching, they really light up. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when they hear that we're kind of, in parallel, developing our methods, not just code-based, and writing code and writing methods, computationally but really developing that side by side with, and coupling tightly with tons of experimental methods like HTX, MMRs, SAX, etc. You know, people really think that that has the potential to be game-changing,
John Simboli
What kinds of partners are a good fit to Silicon Therapeutics?
Lanny Sun
It's really about people that are aligned with our vision. And you know, Roivant, obviously, this is our most public partnership because we merged with them and through the merger created what we believe to be one of if not the largest, fully integrated, computationally focused drug discovery development and commercial companies in the world. It's a great example of a partner that really thought like us because I was telling Vivek, the Chairman, and Matt Gline, the CEO, I said to them, we've been building the same company, but just from different angles of the problem. I mean, us coming from the very upstream, chips and molecules and drug design and discovery and actually development and biophysics and moving closer and closer to the patient, and then them, you know, coming from patient-focused clinical data focus and the downstream and moving closer to drug discovery. So by joining at the hip, we've created what we think is really a 21st century, we're probably more of a medium-size than big pharma, but a medium-sized pharmaceutical company, by joining at the hip. So we're really, really excited about that. Those people who really want to tackle the very difficult undruggable targets, that have eluded drug hunters, historically, I think, if they share that vision, there's almost always some way to work together.
John Simboli
What kinds of people thrive as employees of Silicon Therapeutics?
Lanny Sun
I think we have a very diverse set of people here who are all thriving and I think that a key part of our culture is welcoming diversity. And diversity from multiple angles; obviously, traditional diversity in terms of cultural and in terms of ethnicity, and gender, and any other of that traditional diversity that we discussed so much as a culture these days and need to continue to discuss. But also diversity of thought; people can approach that problem from a very different angle and can bring something. So all of these different people from very different backgrounds, and have this diversity of thought, is what we're about here. You had obviously helped us a lot with the marketing, but we call it "the space in between." This would be qualifying who's really coming at that from a different angle,
I'll give you some other examples. There are people in this company right now who are working at an intersection of molecular dynamics, simulation, and chip design. So literally designing and pushing the boundaries of linking up FPGA, which are between ASICs and GPU, but linking up FPGA so that we can simulate very large systems, biological systems, at speeds that we really couldn't access before, and at cost levels that would make it accessible to companies like Silicon. It's things like that, that really get me excited. We've got these individuals that have a biophysics background but have then transitioned from doing traditional biophysics methods to enhanced sampling methods. Or you're looking at how different conformations of these proteins were computationally and through biophysics. So those people in between these different realms are really what gets me excited about Silicon in many ways, just to kind of highlight a few areas of where we get excited, and what makes us unique as well.
John Simbolli
Lanny, what's new at Silicon Therapeutics?
Lanny Sun
The number one thing that's new at Silicon is our merger with Roivant, which we're super excited about that integration. And most importantly, acceleration of our vision that has been the key kind of thing that's been keeping us all busy is kind of going from a smaller company where you're roughly 100 people and the resources that you have kind of been a smaller company with roughly 100 people. It's kind of three and a half, four years old to, after merging with Roivant, something of significantly larger scale with access to billions of dollars in resources, and to be able to take a step back and go, Well, we can do things that we might not have been able to do for another two or three years. So this is getting our team very excited in terms of possibility. We are on the verge of making a really major breakthrough with our computational infrastructure that would allow us to simulate very large systems, I think this is something that would be solely unique to Silicon and a real breakthrough that we're very proud of scientifically led by our wonderful kind of high-performance computing team, head of high-performance computing, Vipin, and everything he's doing there. We've also always had important scientific and clinical milestones that we're looking at. We're really lucky to be scrambling for our phones to check the email in the morning.
John Simboli
In what way will the merger with Roivant change Silicon Therapeutics?
Lanny Sun
The merger and why we did it was to accelerate our vision. That's the biggest thing about how it's going to change Silicon. It's kind of allowing us to do all the things that we wanted to do much faster than we could do them independently. And that's kind of like the key reason that you should want to be doing a merger at our stage. So that I would say is the biggest thing is how do we accelerate our vision, kind of like 10x, within like two years, as opposed to four or five or six? So, you know, in a nutshell, that that's really what we're focused on.
John Simboli
How does the Silicon Therapeutics pipeline express your vision for the company?
Lanny Sun
The consistent theme is that we are looking at a pipeline where we are going after some of the most difficult targets, in our mind, at least, that are out there. And many of these targets would be considered intractable by traditional methods. So that's really what gets us excited, things like STING where many of the compounds that have ever been in a clinic, have been cyclic dinucleotide-based; they've been forced to go through a route of administration that is intratumoral as opposed to intravenous. And there's a whole kind of background and drama about, you know, why people think that is, but you know, certainly if you look at those compounds, one wouldn't have all the drug-like characteristics that we want, and vice versa, with our pipeline with ADAR and WRN and some of the things that we're not disclosing. You know, I see a consistent theme where I think we really got a pipeline where we feel like, if Silicon wasn't working on these targets, there's a real chance that drugs might not be put forth for that.
John Simboli
And how does that vision you just described for the pipeline, how does that evolve now that you're in this relationship with Roivant?
Lanny Sun
The beautiful thing is, you know, they share that vision and they share that desire to go after these types of meaningful targets. So again, as I mentioned, with acceleration is, this will allow us to go after more of these undruggable. And I think what we always forget is that if you look at the druggable space if you look at the trillion-dollar pharmaceutical industry, that's really focused on a class of targets that represent less than 2% of the proteins in one's body. So that means 98% of the proteins in your body remained undrugged. And even if you narrow that down to those proteins that we know, are implicated in diseases, it's something like 10 to 20%, that we've managed to drug, and this is where we know that they're implicated. So it's even within the known universe of disease-related proteins, we're in the sub 20% range. So the amount of undruggable targets is not only enormous, but it encapsulates some of the best targets that are out there? So obviously, KRAS, G12D, or multiple of the KRAS mutations that are not G12Cl, PTP1B; beta-catenin, the list can really just go on in terms of great targets that remain undrugged. And then it's just kind of sitting there and waiting for someone to go after it for that set, not go after it, but successfully crack it.
John Simboli
At this point, do you still find yourself able, on those rare off moments, to sit back and think, you know, if this thing develops the way I hope it will, we could actually really do some good in the world, we could actually change the lives of people who are sick? Or does that come later, after all these things are proven?
Lanny Sun
I mean, in my view, it's really what drives us. I mean, it's what really drives everyone in this industry is the fact that we might be, and we have now actually, we will be putting these drugs into the clinic to really try to, I think cure is probably the wrong scientific word but impact patients in a positive way. The dream is to cure them, but the reality is to impact them in a very positive way. So I think that's the dream. We talk about that all the time as a company and I think we all do take the time to sit back and reflect on that. Not too much time, one can't spend too much time daydreaming, you know, got to get back to work and then produce the results. And if we really can cure a disease then we'll have plenty of time after we cure that disease to reflect on all the good we've done and read all the articles about ourselves.
John Simboli
Why did you choose to establish Silicon Therapeutics in Boston?
Lanny Sun
I'm from Harvard, Mass. I consider myself a townie; I want to retire there. I love it there. But as I'm from the area, my parents are there. My grandparents are there. And so it's just great to be home. Two is, of course, I mean, this doesn't need to be said on this podcast. It's the enormous amount of talent that's there. We're looking for very unique individuals, I mean, these are people who are quantum physicists, who understand how to write very scalable computer code, and have spent time modeling disease-relevant proteins. So it kind of narrows down to very few places where you can access these folks and in scale, and then couple them with drug discovery and the same process to have those people as they have come to computational hardware, obviously, and has that drug discovery. So once you start adding in some of these filters, you get to a very small list. And I think, honestly, Boston's at the top of that list. So it's also by necessity that we must do this.
John Simboli
Is there anything about working in Boston, that's similar to or different from other biopharma centers where you've been?
Lanny Sun
The only other biopharma center that I've been is really Shanghai. Or it's really more like greater Shanghai. I don't know, the English translation for it, but it's like the Suzhou/ Shanghai kind of triangle area. I feel like Shanghai in that area has a lot outside of biotech. And this is, again, not a dis for those that are not Boston, but you know, what I love about Boston is that it really breathes biotech. People will say, well, you also have the academic community or there's a lot of great colleges and stuff like that, that are focused on biotech, and science and technology. And so, anyway, maybe that's the circle that I've had, the kind of limited view of Boston that I get to see. But at least from my perspective, I've never been in a place that's just so biotechnology and clinical focused, as I happen with Boston,
John Simboli
Which biopharma organizations do you find you can plug into to get information, to share information? Which ones work best for Silicon Therapeutics?
Lanny Sun
Obviously, I want to touch on the traditional ones like the ASCOs and the MASSBIOs, meeting people like you and those communities. So I think there's a lot of really great ones, that are really strong in terms of getting information to our people. And I think there are going to be many other scientists that are going to repeat a lot of those names and talk a lot about those names on your show. I do want to get a shout-out because I was previously an investment banker, you all have the great coverage that the Wall Street folks and the bankers from New York do for Boston-based biotech. So what a lot of people don't realize is there's a tremendous amount of top-class research, top-class coverage, information community, that these investment bankers can allow CEOs, especially science, or non-finance based-CEOs to tap into. That's been a huge resource, to me, is the biotechnology banking industry, and just kind of being able to leverage all my old contacts, and also new ones on Wall Street to, in my time there to kind of be a part of that community be a part of, and get access to a lot of the premium research coverage that's being put out, by the likes of the Jeffries, of the Leerinks, Morgan Stanley's and the JPMorgans. So a lot of unnamed banks as well that are putting out great—but these guys are putting out really top-notch coverage and research. And that's just, I think, a fantastic resource. To get the other perspective, the one that I've kind of grown up with, which is how do businessmen, how do businesswomen, how do business folks really view biotechnology and understand that? Because for any successful biotech, you're never going to be able to avoid it. So you might as well embrace it.
John Simboli
Could you see all along that this rather unusual mixture of ideas was going to come together in this way?
Lanny Sun
The answer is absolutely no. And I think that's what really makes entrepreneurship so special; what makes it why I have so much respect for entrepreneurs is because you're not really, or at least in my view, you're not really persisting or doing this opportunity because you know it's going to be successful. In fact, it is always statistically very unlikely. So I think that in the face of all of that, in the face of the overwhelming chance of failure, the fact that we still choose to pursue these opportunities is what makes, I think, our passion for these opportunities. so special to us. We would rather die by this opportunity than live by some other thing that we're not passionate about. So I absolutely could not foresee it.
John Simboli
Many thanks for speaking with me today.
Lanny Sun
Thank you so much for having me and hearing my perspective, John. It's been a real honor. You've got a great following.
John Simboli
For some of my BioBoss conversations with founders and CEOs, I need to mention—I may be biased by my experience of working with them on their company’s storytelling and branding. Lanny is in this category of people I’ve enjoyed working with.
I remember my first conversation at Lanny’s office in Boston when he walked to the whiteboard and outlined an intricate path of intersecting disciplines designed to create a new computational physics-based approach to drug discovery. I knew, then, I’d met someone with an intense curiosity about diverse ways of thinking. It was near the end of our conversation when we talked about how biopharma has the potential to transform lives, that I also understood how deeply Lanny feels about his role in helping to restore the health of patients.
Once we began working together, I could see Lanny’s resolve (though his determination was often leavened by his sense of humor). As Lanny said to me at the end of our BioBoss conversation, “We entrepreneurs would rather die by the opportunity than live by some other thing we’re not passionate about.”
And that’s one more thing about biopharma that attracts me: the way people jump in, with both feet, on their journey from fascination to discovery.
I’m John Simboli.
You’re listening to BioBoss.
