Inside The Race To Reboot Human Cells - EP 60 Nabiha Saklayen

**Nabiha Saklayen** (0:00)
Once you're at, you've locked into this IPSC state, you have the potential to become any cell type in the body, like hundreds of different cell types. And over the past like 10, 15 years, these amazing scientists, you know, I have a Google alert, so I get all the IPSC papers that come out in real time. It's like exploding. People are making cartilage, people are making cornea, people are making every type of neurons.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:24)
Spinal stuff.

**Nabiha Saklayen** (0:25)
Spinal stuff, retina, heart.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:44)
Welcome to the Core Memory Podcast. This is Ashlee Vance. Thank you, as always, for listening. We're gonna be talking about one of my favorite subjects today. It's a biotech subject.
It's one of the most fascinating, interesting fields of science and tech and biology, to me, which is kinda like taking ourselves back to their stem cell-ish state, rejuvenating them, and then rejuvenating us, hopefully. And our guest is Nabiha Saklayen. She is the co-founder and CEO of Cellino, which is based in Massachusetts, I assume, Cambridge?

**Nabiha Saklayen** (1:21)
Yes, Cambridge. Kendall Square.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:23)
Kendall Square. That was a good bet. Good bet. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

**Nabiha Saklayen** (1:29)
Thank you for having me. I just loved hearing that you love this topic as much as I do.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:36)
We're going to be talking about things called IPSCs, and we do this probably more than any podcast, I think, but I'm just convinced this is one of my favorite things to cover.
So people need to learn about this stuff, and I try to keep the acronyms low, but you will need to know IPSCs, which is induced pluripotent stem cells, and we got all kinds of videos and stories about this stuff, if you need to catch up. But yes, like a couple of my guests, I don't know in which order these podcasts will air, but people will be hearing that the JP Morgan conference was taking place in San Francisco this week, and we were bombarded by biotech people, and so that's what brings you to town.

**Nabiha Saklayen** (2:20)
That's right. Yes, I've been coming to JP Morgan for many years, and it was an exciting JPM conference this time.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:28)
What was the busiest stuff?

**Nabiha Saklayen** (2:30)
I think a lot of optimism. Last year was pretty dark and not very optimistic.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:36)
Because of biotech funding drying up and science being crushed.

**Nabiha Saklayen** (2:39)
Yes, biotech funding. You know, it's an interesting moment in time. What's happening on the AI front is undeniable. So a lot of venture capital, all venture capital went towards it, and now we're going to start to see some of those outcomes. I'm reading all about all the potential IPOs this year, that's going to be very exciting.
But biotech was severely hurt by the withdrawal of capital because the timelines are longer, clinical trials are longer, and I think all the VCs sort of looked at their portfolios, the ones that invest both in tech and bio and said, well, my returns on bio aren't looking so hot. So maybe we should pause on that. But January, I think coming in, Lili and NVIDIA announced this big collaboration. There's just a lot more enthusiasm about human health. Because the way I see it, now that we're on our path towards AGI, and we can talk about when that's exactly to happen.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:35)
Do you know? If you know, you tell them.

**Nabiha Saklayen** (3:36)
I really don't. But I'm excited for it, and I'm sort of preparing for what's next. And that's going to be how do we have agency over our own health in a very personalized way. So it was very positive. People were happy. People were optimistic. So it's a good way to start the year.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:54)
Okay. Well, that's good. Yeah. These things always go in waves. It's kind of funny. I mean, not for me as an outsider to watch the ups and downs. And I always get a totally skewed perspective because I spend my entire life talking to startups.
And from my frame of view, it's like, oh, there's all, you know, it seems like things are going well. I keep running into more and more interesting biotech companies. But then I hear from everyone that it's hard out there. So yeah. What do you think, what is the best place? Like should we describe IPSCs to people first, or should we start with Cellino and what you guys do? I just want to get people a little bit of a grounding of where we're coming from.