Defying Darwin Night: What We Learned at the Frontier of Biotech and National Security

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  Sam:
  Did you happen to miss Defying Darwin night? Don’t worry. Mike Collins and Drew Wandzilak are here to break down the most compelling insights from this bold gathering on biotech, human potential, and national resilience. Let’s take a listen.

  Mike Collins:
  Drew, good to see you.

  Drew Wandzilak:
  Great to see you, Mike.

  Mike Collins:
  Alright, so we’re doing a little post-game here of an event we held called, a little unusually, Defying Darwin. Do you want to explain the name and the event—why it’s interesting?

  Drew Wandzilak:
  Absolutely. Yeah. So we’re calling this new thematic area that we’re spending time in Defying Darwin. What does that really mean? We’re seeing biology used in an entirely new way—not just as a form of “can we get new medicines to market?” but actually being harnessed and reprogrammed for national security purposes. So there’s the weaponization of biology, but then also the enhancement of human performance from biology.

  And so, what are ways that we’re actually no longer following the Darwinian rules, but actually going against Darwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection and enhancing humans in an entirely new way? This is an area we’ve been spending some time in. It’s been a little bit the talk of the town in DC as well. There was recently a Senate commission, NSCEB, on emerging biotechnology really focused on the national security imperative here and why we should take our biosecurity, our biodefenses, and biotechnology more seriously—because the rest of the world is. And so we felt this was a really natural fit for our efforts at the Strategic Technology Fund, where we believe in strengthening America’s future. This is a playbook we’ve run before.

  So when we identify a new area that we see both pull from the market and some really strong tailwinds—whether that be capital, or whether that be new companies that we really want to get a grasp on and learn about—we get people together in a room and we have really candid conversations about: What are the challenges we face? What are some of the innovations that are happening out there? And really, the most important piece we get from these events is: What are the roadblocks in front of us? And is there anything that we as venture investors are uniquely positioned to do and support to break down some of those barriers and roadblocks?

  Mike Collins:
  Alright, so for the people who couldn’t make it, Drew, tell me—what was on people’s minds? What were they talking about? What was the buzz in the room?

  Drew Wandzilak:
  Yeah, the buzz was good, right? I mean, it’s a collection of people that are all trying to make a positive difference. And it was a somewhat eclectic group because I think intentionally, when we think about this theme of biotechnology and national security, there are people there that are very focused on: How do we sell solutions and applications directly to the Department of Defense and get better biologics or biotech solutions into the hands of warfighters?

  And then there’s people that are focused a little bit more—if you’re looking from the outside in—really abstracted away from what you would think of as national security, but it’s truly a part of our strategic advantage. So things like monitoring wastewater, streams of livestock, democratizing gene editing and genetics. How can we get gene sequencing costs down and get it into the hands of more people so they can know more about their personal health? All the way to measuring and managing embryos and IVF—like these super designer babies. And then just things like personal health.

  They might seem like this really broad range—and in a way, they are—of applications. But a healthier population is a stronger population, and a stronger population is a stronger nation. And so we really try to find some connectivity between what seem like maybe very different approaches and groups but are all connected around this theme of: How do we build a stronger country?

  Mike Collins:
  Yeah. And just because they’re a neighbor of ours in our southern New Hampshire mill building, there’s a whole effort just down the road from us on regenerative medicine. That obviously has both military and non-military applications, but the ability to grow a kidney to replace one is the frontier. It’s very exciting, and a lot of really interesting work. I bump into the people in the hallway, so it’s very interesting.

  Tell me—is the sense we’re ahead and we want to stay ahead? Are we behind? Do we need more coordination? Or are we just at the point where this is a new issue and we’ve got to get together and just start talking about it?

  Drew Wandzilak:
  I think the alarm bells are starting to ring. I wouldn’t go as far as to say we are currently behind, but if you mapped out where we’re at and where other nations are at—especially China—and you looked at the rates of…

  Mike Collins:
  Funding, the curves aren’t promising.

  Drew Wandzilak:
  The curves aren’t promising. And so there’s a very near horizon. Obviously, with anything national security–related, you want to catch these things early. I don’t want to say the race is over—the race will continue—but we are definitely slipping behind.

  For the last two decades, China has really prioritized biotechnology at a national level. These are things like biosecurity, disease defense, but also just promoting broadly the field of biotechnology. If you can create even things that aren’t defined R1 of just medicines, those can be created domestically—that’s a huge advantage. DNA hardware exports? They dominate us in that. We’re lagging in our spending on biodefense. And so there’s a real concern and a real risk of slipping behind.

  Part of this is coordination—you said it. One of the quotes and commentary from the event was: “We need a Manhattan Project level of coordination” to kind of meet the need here. And that’s not overreacting. This is how other countries are facing this—seeing opportunity and seeing the importance. And so we need that on our end as Americans.

  Mike Collins:
  I mean, if COVID was not a wake-up call that a biological event can totally disrupt the world and bring it to a standstill—and expose fragility in supply chains, the ability to equip people with masks and PPE and all those kinds of things, having enough respirators—I mean, we just saw this. Let’s not forget that it could be worse if it were a malicious actor looking to do it. So just a reminder to folks about the exposure, how it completely shut society down, and how ill-prepared we really were. That should just be a wake-up call. 

  Drew Wandzilak:
  I’m really glad you brought that up. This came up, obviously, in conversation. I’m not a medical professional, but I think looking back, COVID was really a large failure and a large success wrapped up in this few-year period.

  By “failure,” I think we saw firsthand how unprepared we were for something of this nature. We have BioWatch, which is like a system of defenses to detect new diseases. Two problems: they’re plugged into normal outlets around the U.S., and people are just unplugging them to put their Keurig in.

  Mike Collins:
  That’s…

  Drew Wandzilak:
  One. And two, we’re not rapidly advancing what they can identify. So we can identify known diseases and maybe when they become present, but if there are entirely new pathogens that enter the country, we’ve shown it’s very difficult to actually identify them.

  And I say “success” really in two different ways. Operation Warp Speed—politics aside—was a great example of almost this Manhattan-level intensity of coordination, of capital, of private and public sector support to deal with the problem at hand. Now of course, we need to be more prepared because the next one might act a little bit differently.

  And I also say “success” because I think it reinvigorated the talent pool that is coming into these themes.

  Mike Collins:
  This…

  Drew Wandzilak:
  …is something that came up, jokingly, in a way. We did not filter by age who could come to this event. I’m on the younger side of things, and I was probably close to the median of attendee ages. Someone brought up the point that COVID was really a transformative time for a lot of people. They saw, to your point, how unprepared we were and how important biotechnology and biology can be.

  So I think it inspired this new wave of young people to enter the field and also to have a different perspective on it: “We need to do this because it’s our national imperative. It is almost my American duty to respond and make sure we are prepared for these threats,” as opposed to “I’m going to develop X new medicine that treats X disease.”

  So yeah, it’s in small parts a failure and in small parts a success as well.

  Mike Collins:
  It’s an old venture hack: Go invest in the areas that smart young people are going to events about, frankly. Because talent produces innovation and disruption. And so I think it’s really a tell that at this event, there was amazing young talent—that bodes very well for the future of it.

  When you go to an industry event and it’s a bunch of old people checking their tee times, it’s an industry in decline that probably needs a PE roll-up. And when you’re having young people that you have to kick out of the event because they’re talking and networking—that’s where the future is.

  So put on your VC hat for a second, Drew, and talk about the Strategic Tech Fund and how you guys are thinking about investing in this space. Any types of companies, specific companies, sub-sectors you guys are interested in? Give me your playbook for the next year in this area.

   

  Drew Wandzilak:
  Absolutely. A brief primer on this U.S. Strategic Technology Fund. So we are a venture fund within the Alumni Ventures umbrella, really focused on backing founders and technologies that are kind of a part of this common cause and common mission to strengthen America. And this came from two places. One, we believe there are really strong market tailwinds for this opportunity and to build a really strong venture portfolio, but perhaps most importantly to me and the team, we believe in America and we believe that these challenges that we face we are going to solve and it is our responsibility to be a part of that. And of course, there’s some economic upside to doing so, but really a mission-driven collection of companies diversified across a number of different sectors, because strengthening America is not just investing in defense applications, but it’s also food, agriculture, supply chains, logistics, manufacturing.

  Mike Collins:
  And even beyond nationalism. I think America being good at these technologies is good for the world. I mean, you can just leave it at that, right?

  Drew Wandzilak:
  Absolutely.

  Mike Collins:
  It’s been—we’ve led and pushed in these areas over the last 50 years and the world will be a better place if we lead in these areas over the next 50 for sure. I think you’re going to have a hard time having anybody argue with that no matter where they’re from.

  Drew Wandzilak:
  Absolutely. And so I want to touch on your second point of how are we thinking about this space? Well, we walk the talk where we can. And in Fund One, we already have two companies that we kind of put squarely in this thematic area for us. One is called Osmo and they are literally digitizing scent. And so perhaps our most descriptive and our most powerful sense is the sense of smell. And we have not mapped that. We’ve mapped visual or audio. So you have RGB that has led to our ability to be on this conversation today and look at each other, and we have frequency mapping for sound. So I can talk into this microphone and you can hear it on your end. We haven’t done that for scent, and this is what the company is doing.

  And there’s near-term things in kind of the fragrance world of course, but long-term—I mean, I see you shaking your head—you can already start to think about some of the national security implications of this. There’s things surface-level: you’re replacing the bomb-sniffing dog or the gun-sniffing dog, better detection of pathogens now that we can actually map essentially the particles and molecules in the air around us, all the way to things like tracking people, adversaries, where it’s like you could have almost a nearly odorless, colorless patch of some sort, and we can actually track those odor molecules as they move through a space.

  Mike Collins:
  No, I am grinning because I was in doing a stress test and they actually had a diabetic dog in training in the office, and everybody was loving it yesterday. But it’s like, I think this is a dog that’s meant to be a companion to a young person who can sense blood sugar. Again, just the power of a dog’s smell—the hundred-time multiple of humans—but once you digitize things, we get our clues from nature. But if you can digitize smell, there’s enormous applications in lots of sectors of society.

  Drew Wandzilak:
  There’s dogs that have shown cases of smelling cancer. There was a nurse recently in the UK that actually smelled Parkinson’s before tests would be able to pick it up. And so you’re exactly right. It’s entirely new that it’s kind of like—we know this possibility exists. We know we can understand the world in a more complex way from odor. We just can’t do it as humans, but that’s never stopped us before. And so really kind of innovative there.

  The second one, as I mentioned, too, is a little bit different. A company called Acorn Genetics, and they’re building what they’re calling the smartphone of gene sequencers. So think of what traditionally you would send away to 23andMe or Ancestry.com through Illumina. They want to put this basically in the size of your MacBook, where you could do a full solid-state nanopore gene sequence, which has really never been done before at that level.

  They’ve got it into the hands of some people, and they’ve said it’s easier to use than a COVID test. I’m not trying to pitch this as another Theranos, but talking towards this pathway of: can we make gene sequencing more accessible? And so there’s a human component to that, but some of their earliest customers are on the food and agriculture side, where if you’re a brewery or you’re a food producer and you need to send away certain batches to test for different pathogens, you’ve got to send that away to a lab. They’ve got to test it and send you back the results. A week or two later, your batch might be dated. And so the ability to do that in a really simple way, on-premises, again opens up this whole new world.

  And so I hope people understand that the connectivity between the two is really—we’re thinking about this in terms of infrastructure. And so as people are moving into this space, what are those base-level things that they’re going to want to use? And so it’s applied AI in the form of—we’re going to create an entirely new LLM to digitize scent, or we’re going to be the infrastructure layer for gene sequencing.

  Mike Collins:
  And?

  Drew Wandzilak:
  I do have to add, because I think it’s a benefit of these events—Ana Cornell, who’s the founder and CEO of Acorn, had six people come up to her after her panel and go, “When can I buy this?”

  Drew Wandzilak:
  “I need this. I’m paying $400 per test right now and I’m working on moving against Alzheimer’s. I’m working at a company that’s trying to stop degenerative disease and I’m paying $500 per test. You can sell this to me for $5,000 and then offer it at $10 a test.” I mean

  —a mission-driven collection of companies diversified across a number of different sectors. Because strengthening America is not just investing in defense applications, but it’s also food, agriculture, supply chains, logistics, manufacturing.

  Mike Collins:
  And even beyond nationalism. I think America being good at these technologies is good for the world. I mean, you can just leave it at that, right?

  Drew Wandzilak:
  Absolutely.

  Mike Collins:
  It’s been—we’ve led and pushed in these areas over the last 50 years, and the world will be a better place if we lead in these areas over the next 50 for sure. I think you’re going to have a hard time having anybody argue with that no matter where they’re from.

  Drew Wandzilak:
  Absolutely. And so I want to touch on your second point of how are we thinking about this space? Well, we walk the talk where we can. And in Fund One, we already have two companies that we kind of put squarely in this thematic area for us.

  One is called Osmo, and they are literally digitizing scent. And so perhaps our most descriptive and our most powerful sense is the sense of smell, and we have not mapped that. We’ve mapped visual or audio—so you have RGB that has led to our ability to be on this conversation today and look at each other—and we have frequency mapping for sound, so I can talk into this microphone and you can hear it on your end. We haven’t done that for scent. And this is what the company is doing.

  And there’s near-term things in the fragrance world, of course, but long-term—I mean I see you shaking your head—you can already start to think about some of the national security implications of this. There are things surface level, like replacing the bomb-sniffing dog or the gun-sniffing dog, better detection of pathogens now that we can actually map essentially the particles and molecules in the air around us, all the way to things like tracking people—adversaries—where it’s like you could have almost a nearly odorless, colorless patch of some sort, and we can actually track those odor molecules as they move through a space.

  Mike Collins:
  No, I am grinning because I was doing a stress test and they actually had a diabetic dog in training in the office, and everybody was loving it yesterday. But it’s like—I think this is a dog that’s meant to be a companion to a young person who can sense blood sugar. Again, just the power of a dog’s smell, the hundred-time multiple of humans, but once you digitize things—we get our clues from nature—but if you can digitize smell, there’s enormous applications in lots of sectors of society.

  Drew Wandzilak:
  There’s dogs that have shown cases of smelling cancer. There was a nurse recently in the UK that actually smelled Parkinson’s before tests would be able to pick it up. And so you’re exactly right. It’s entirely new things that—it’s kind of like, we know this possibility exists, we know we can understand the world in a more complex way from odor. We just can’t do it as humans, but that’s never stopped us before. And so really kind of innovative there.

  The second one, as I mentioned, too, is a little bit different. A company called Acorn Genetics, and they’re building what they’re calling the smartphone of gene sequencers. So think of what traditionally you would send away to 23andMe or Ancestry.com through Illumina. They want to put this basically in the size of your MacBook, where you could do a full solid-state nanopore gene sequence, which has really never been done before at that level.

  They’ve got it into the hands of some people, and they’ve said it’s easier to use than a COVID test. I’m not trying to pitch this as another Theranos, but talking towards this pathway of—can we make gene sequencing more accessible?

  And so there’s a human component to that, but some of their earliest customers are on the food and agriculture side. Where if you’re a brewery or you’re a food producer and you need to send away certain batches to test for different pathogens, you’ve got to send that away to a lab. They’ve got to test it and send you back the results. A week or two later, your batch might be dated. And so the ability to do that in a really simple way, on-premises, again opens up this whole new world.

  And so I hope people understand that the connectivity between the two is really—we’re thinking about this in terms of infrastructure. And so as people are moving into this space, what are those base-level things that they’re going to want to use? And so it’s applied AI in the form of—we’re going to create an entirely new LLM to digitize scent—or we’re going to be the infrastructure layer for gene sequencing.

  Drew Wandzilak:
  I do have to add—because I think it’s a benefit of these events—Ana Cornell, who’s the founder and CEO of Acorn, had six people come up to her after her panel and go, “When can I buy this? I need this. I’m paying $400 per test right now and I’m working on moving against Alzheimer’s. I’m working at a company that’s trying to stop degenerative disease, and I’m paying $500 per test. You can sell this to me for $5,000 and then offer it at $10 a test.” I mean, that radically changes what I’m able to do.

  And so that’s just one small case study of the power of just bringing together people in a room, having some structured conversation, but then also just a forum for conversations like this.

  Mike Collins:
  And I know your pipeline is robust in this space as well.

  Drew Wandzilak:
  Yes.

  Mike Collins:
  So it sounds like this is an area that has legs too, right? And I think we’re just at the beginning. This combination, this intersection of hardware, AI, sensors, life sciences, insights into biology—these things are flywheels and they compound. And so again, I think we’re in this golden age of innovation and technology.

  Thanks for hosting the event, and thanks for giving—

  Drew Wandzilak:
  The venture. I was going to say, the venture markets are definitely taking notice. Again, just because I think show-don’t-tell examples are great—one of our co-hosts for the event, a pretty prolific defense dual-use investor at Harpoon, wanted to do something with us. And I said, “Let’s do something in this kind of Defying Darwin theme. We’re spending a lot of time here.” And he’s like, “We don’t really do a lot in biotech. I don’t know if I’m the right person for this.” And I said, “Well, you bring the national security piece, and we’ll bring someone in that really knows biotech.” And so we did.

  That was a few months before we hosted the event. I was talking to him just before we started letting people in the doors. He said, “We just closed our second biodefense deal.”

  So I’m not saying that as we’re setting any of these trends, but that the venture markets are taking notice pretty rapidly. And so of course, I think just very timely that we’re starting to be a little bit more focused here.

  Mike Collins:
  Great. Any closing thoughts, Drew?

  Drew Wandzilak:
  No—join the cause. If you’re interested in some of these themes or more broadly our Strategic Technology Funds, we’d love to talk to you about it. I think this is, like I mentioned, a really strong belief in the future of America. We believe in her, and we believe we’re going to solve a lot of these problems that we’re facing—because we need to, but I think we will.

  So if you want to learn more, there are plenty of avenues for you to get in touch.