The 3 Most Important Pillars of a Next-Generation CDMO, Explained!

J. D. Mowery: 0:00

One of the things we've been talking about a lot here is as a next generation CDMO, I feel like that the CDMO markets probably underserved the regulatory space. And it's never really made a lot of sense to me, right? Because we deal with dozens of different health authorities all over the world, hundreds and hundreds of customer audits and data points. And at the end of the day, right, the relationship as the manufacturer still falls back to us from a burden of proof perspective. So I want to see a step into that void and take more of a prominent role with taking care of our customers and helping them walk that CMC journey. So if you can take

Harsh Thakkar: 0:28

what's up everybody, this is harsh from qualtivate.com. And you're listening to the life sciences 360 podcast. On this show, I chat with industry experts and thought leaders to learn about their stories, ideas and insights, and how their role helps bring new therapies to patients. Thanks for joining us, let's dive in. Alright, so back in 2018, when I was working at a biotech startup in Seattle, my boss gave me a training deck for my early days of training. And I saw JD's name on one of the slides because he was leading the manufacturing site, he was helping that site, go from clinical to commercial. And we successfully did that in that company. And since then, he's moved on. He's been in a ton of leadership and management roles. He's worked at biotech startups, he's worked at CDMO's. And we've never talked when we were at Juno, we never interacted with each other. But today that changes, right. So let's dive into this one. And my guest today is JD Mowery, and he is the president and CEO of KBI biopharma. Welcome to the show. JD

J. D. Mowery: 1:36

Hello, harsh. Thanks for having me on. It's a pleasure to be here. And I love hearing that story that the Juno days I'm very proud of.

Harsh Thakkar: 1:42

Yes, yes. Yeah, I would. I was really excited about all the conversations leading up to this, because it's such a small world. But we're here today, we're going to have a conversation, I'm really looking forward to it.

J. D. Mowery: 1:52

Likewise.

Harsh Thakkar: 1:53

So I want to start off by asking you imagine this, you meet your younger self, let's not put an age on that. But let's say you meet your younger self. And he, he looks at you. And he says, Wow, JD, you've you've you are what I want to become 25 years from now. How did you get to this point? How did you start in life sciences? How did you get to where you are today? What do you have to say to him?

J. D. Mowery: 2:15

Yeah, that's a great question. I love the way you frame that. It when I think about kind of how I've gotten here. And the things that I've accomplished a lot of that has to do with the relationships that I've been able to nurture and really continued to keep as a key part of my life. But I think it has a lot to do with how I ended up there keeping up back on the CDMO side of things, I spent a lot of time teaching people how much they can accomplish through relationships. And I do believe that my career is a culmination of all of that. So back in 2007, I had an opportunity to make a transition from the chemical industry over into to the pharmaceutical biotech space. And this obviously just hugely rewarding to be able to help take care of patients, whether you're on a CDMO side of the table or the innovator side. But for me, my career has been benefited from the the relationships I've built, the people that have coached and mentored me, and also having a pretty high tolerance when it comes to risk and an appetite for learning. Right. So chasing new modalities, new technologies, new geographies, and then also leveraging this relationships that I've built throughout my career have really been key to my trajectory.

Harsh Thakkar: 3:17

Yeah, and that's interesting. Every time I look at, I've talked to a lot of other guests who sort of have this unique combination of two areas of expertise, or two domains or two industries, like in your case, it's clearly you worked with biotech companies or midsize pharma companies, you worked on the CDMO side. So how like, first thing I want to ask you is, Was it planned like that, that you wanted to work on both sides and learn that? So I want to put that as the first question. And then maybe I have some follow ups there.

J. D. Mowery: 3:49

Yeah, it's a great question I get that one often. It wasn't planned. For me, I was on the innovator side of things. The company I was working at was eventually acquired by Daiichi Sankyo back in Ohio, and you always hear that you need to go spend some time working in Big Pharma and that was what took me to Genentech. So always working on the innovator side, and then when I went to Lonza, was kind of my first taste of actually working at CDMO I interacted with them, during my days at Genentech, getting a chance to work on that side of things. Part of it, for me moving back to it was connectedness to patient, literally craving that that's one thing as a CDMO you got to pay close attention to because it's easy to fall into kind of more of a transactional relationship and being kind of the middle piece of the puzzle, you can lose your way when it comes to connect this to patient. So that was really kind of what drove the transition back to Juno. And then once I understood that I could have an opportunity to influence the way CDMO's handle the relationship with the patients of our partners. That was where I really took a step back into the CDMO realm, and I honestly think this is where I'll spend the rest of my career. I'm very drawn to the side of it. It suits who I am as a person. I love teaching and coaching teams, what they can accomplish together by taking care of each other. And then from a winning business perspective, it also suits my nature because I'm fairly competitive. So it's fun to make sure that our customers understand that they're in the best possible care when they're working with our teams.

Harsh Thakkar: 5:05

Yeah, and that's what I was I was going to ask you is you've obviously as you summarized, you learned different skill sets from both being on both sides. But when you took this role at KBI, what, like what was in your mind that, okay, I'm going into this role. And I'm going to take x, y, and z from my biotech days, and A, B, and C from my CDMO days and put it into this role. How did you? How did you go about that in the first maybe 90 days or? So?

J. D. Mowery: 5:36

That's a great question. So the chairman of our board, Tim Lowery, he and I have known each other for about two years now. And then when I started to look at what KBI kind of brings to the market of sort of the organization was really built upon the foundation of analytic services, and then eventually kind of evolved into clinical manufacturing. And now commercial manufacturing. And when I look at the way the organization has gotten grown up more of an inorganic style, me being able to take what I've learned sitting on both sides of the table, both from from some great CDMO's, but also on the biotech side, when understanding what a customer is looking for not just a fee for service type model, but a true partner, right, that helps them walk that clinical phase and that journey and make sure that these novel therapies, which is something we take great pride in being able to help bring the market actually see the light of day and treat as many patients as possible. So be able to bring that mindset forward was something that I was extremely excited about being able to come in and teach the organization.

Harsh Thakkar: 6:29

Yeah, and I work in in quality and compliance consulting roles. So I have had the opportunity for working with tons of CDMO's in the space just because my clients hired me and there was like a relationship where the client then said, Oh, we work with this cdmo. So you have to audit them or do whatever, right. But as when you are leading the team at KBI. And just looking at the industry and looking at the amount of CDMO's that have come up or sprung up in the last 10-15 years, there's obviously a need, which is why there's a lot of CDMO's. But from your point, like what are some of the challenges that biotech and pharmaceutical companies are facing, that is creating this boom of Rise of the CDMO companies in the marketplace?

J. D. Mowery: 7:17

Yeah, I mean, a lot of what's happening right now is simply the macroeconomic conditions, right. So capital is very constrained at the edge just about everywhere in the world. And it's expensive to run a brick and mortar facility and operate it yourself. If you can leverage a relationship with a strong CDMO that has the technical acumen, the right quality systems to help deliver on that to you. It's much simpler for me to take this the cost of operating and facility and disperse it across to customer base of 25 or 30 customers, as opposed to a single entity running that facility and bearing the full burden of cost here because it ends up having a direct impact on the cost of cost of goods for manufacturing or product. And then obviously has an impact on reimbursement models and such when you're trying to make sure that these therapies are something that patients can actually receive. So you take that and you use a CDMO One of the things we've been talking about a lot years has a next generation cdmo I feel like that the cdmo markets probably underserved the regulatory space. And it's never really made a lot of sense to me, because we deal with dozens of different health authorities all over the world, hundreds and hundreds of customer audits and data points. And at the end of the day, right the relationship as the manufacturer still falls back to us from a burden of proof perspective. So I want to see a step into that void and take more of a prominent role. We're taking care of our customers and helping them walk that CMC journey. So if you can take the cost of operating a facility and a good robust CMC package and partnership on the regulatory journey to make sure these products are commercialized? Well, that's where I think you can actually take instead of operating it yourself, allow for your partner at a CDMO to do those kinds of things. And I think that mindset has been shifting over the recent years. Yeah, and I've seen that a lot of companies from day one, they have this mindset, like even being a virtual, like, they put themselves as a virtual company, and they from day one know that they're not going to do any in house manufacturing, they've already established the relationships. And that's huge, right? Because if you look at the drug development pathway, it's not a three month or six month or a one year consulting project is you're talking decades and tides can turn any time companies go through economic ups and downs, leadership up and downs. And throughout all of that, you still the CDMO in the company still has to basically hit all those milestones to get to the finish line, which every biotech CEO dreams off in their career. So what are some of the things that fundamentally you explain how CDMO's work and many people know that, but what are some things that you you've kind of helped KBI specialize in to say, Hey, this is what we do that is different than other cdmo's acadant in a few weeks around our technical expertise, and I think a lot of that has to do with the way the organization grew up. I mean, there was a heavy influence of the post op team from Duke that came in and helped startup KBI in the early days. And a lot of people don't realize that the K Cep device was a disposable centrifuge is actually an invention by the original founders of KBI. So the technical acumen and the things that we bring to market are very different than a lot of other cdmo's. So when we face complex molecules, or molecules are having stability issues, from a cell line perspective, those are the types of things that that's really right in our wheelhouse to help customers advance and bring the market. We've got over the next three years, there'll be nine molecules, and then home grown by KBI, with our partners that will go commercial, right, which shows the length of our relationships we have, but also helping to walk that regulatory journey helped make sure they've got good robust CMC packages and go from honestly the selling development phase all the way through phase three, and commercialization, that that, I think, is something that it's hard to find a customer that's strong on analytical on the development side of things, and then also be able to carry the burden for clinical commercial manufacturing for partners.

Harsh Thakkar: 11:08

Yeah. And that's you kind of answered a bit of my second question that I had in my mind is, so that's the that's the specialty, providing that technical expertise. And you being the face of the company, or at the at that level, having your background, your resume, I'm sure that Network helps you in bringing those clients who are like, Hey, I know JD's track record. And thereby I know what KBI is going to deliver, because you're bringing that in. But if you were to give maybe a biotech or pharma company, a five point checklist of what to look for in a cdmo, what would you throw on there?

J. D. Mowery: 11:47

Yeah, and having done cdmo's selection on that side of the table, right? I mean, trust and transparency in the relationship is huge, right. And that that to me is, you've got to start there. And that comes from timeliness or responses, whether it's an active engagement that you're already in, or the proposal process, or you're doing the due diligence, how willing and forthcoming the organization is right, that's huge. Obviously, for me, quality and regulatory is kind of the ticket to the game, right? That's your right to operate and making sure there's a good strong track record, they're looking at the technical acumen and the tenure and the retention rate to the team to make sure you have good stability. And then obviously, it's COVID was an interesting time, right, because a lot of customers weren't able to go visit facilities, but but spending time there and not just seeing the facilities, but interacting with the people that are there and seeing the way that they work. And then I've always been a big fan of also reaching out to those customers who are already there and working with organizations that are willing to be a reference, having those conversations to understand what they're capable of. And one of the things as a cdmo that I was always a big fan of and I always look at is around platforms, technologies, and a lot of CDMO's fall into the trap of the almost being too flexible and willing to do too many different things for their customers. And then they don't allow themselves to be experts in certain things, right. And it makes it it actually dilutes your ability to help influence and drive the process in the right direction. So those are the kinds of things that I always looked at when I was trying to track down the right CDMO. Obviously, price and timelines are always a big one. Everybody wants to go faster and cheaper. But I think it's important to understand the quality of the work that you're getting. And for me understanding the balance of risk from a customer perspective on the things that you want to be included in the package versus the things you might want to wait on for a little while.

Harsh Thakkar: 13:31

Yeah. And that's that's the thing that I've also noticed, like I mentioned being in the quality role, I've seen companies take those steps when they're evaluating a CDMO or establishing that relationship. So yeah, I think you really summarized those key points that anybody should be looking for. And I know that you're, you're listening to what you've said so far, and researching when I was doing for this episode, that your, your you made this term next generation cdmo Right, or next generation innovative cdmo. So, in your mind, what does that look like? And and is KBI already there, or you think there's one or two more things that need to be tweaked to fill that picture in your mind?

J. D. Mowery: 14:18

That's a great question. Harsh. I appreciate you asking about because I'm really proud of what the team has come up with and the way we want to approach this. And I think it's needed in the sector by I think you're seeing this industry move to more of kind of an ecosystem mindset, right? So the the days of kind of cutthroat competition, and that still some of that there, that there's so much to be done. There are so many novel therapies or so many patients waiting on products to reach them. So this concept of a next generation CDMO we're just beginning that journey, one of the key pieces of that for us. So I touched on the regulatory piece, and we're going to step into the void and for me, that's one of the pillars and that's really something I think it served the industry better with and not just for helping our customers but also industry guidance and things like that when it comes to the FDA and EMEA and really making I'm sure we take a stronger position there. But we want to, we need to have to earn the right to be a thought leader on the regulatory side. So that's one of the key pillars right for the next gen cdmo. For us, the other one for me is around r&d and innovation. And that was key when we put Sigma Mostafa our chief scientific officer into that role, we knew we wanted to take that step and not just leverage the know how within KBI but also leverage the the know how across the wider JSR Life Sciences organization, and take those entities and actually focus on being able to bring to market materials and services and maybe in some cases, even equipment, the solve the problems of tomorrow, right and really be able to to run that piece of the business almost agnostic of our customer base, so that we can truly stay innovative. I think one of the things you run into on the cdmo side is a lot of people will claim r&d. But if it's based on their customers, it actually ends up being more process development or process improvement than truly innovative because you're kind of beholden to a customer coming to you with a no problem. So for so for us that that's one of the other key pillars of this concept. And then the third one for us is around this risk sharing from a business and entrepreneurial perspective, we want to make sure that for some of these novel therapies, especially startups, that are got good funding, good credit ratings, but they also have a therapy, that they can actually change medicine forever, right? That they need some support on how to get those things to market, we want to look at how we can lower the point of entry for those things. And then when possible, we would want to reap some of the rewards either through royalties or manufacturing exclusivity on the back side of things once we've helped them through that clinical journey. So to me, I think that type of a partnership across r&d, across regulatory and across the business side of this is really what customers in today's economy, but also just kind of where things are from a medicine perspective and the number of therapies that can be brought to market. That's the type of partner they're looking for, there's always going to be a need for high volume fee for service cdmo's as well. But that doesn't really fit with kind of where our DNA is, and the things we excel.

Harsh Thakkar: 16:58

Right. And I'm glad you pointed that because I won't name any names here. But just as an observer in this space, and learning, I've seen a lot of cdmo's that are basically beefing up their facilities worldwide. And they're scooping up all these companies that are no longer maybe producing or they're getting bought out. And it's that's their model. They just want scale and they want network. But, I'm glad that you pointed out there's there's multiple ways to grow a company, right? I'm sure every every cdmo CEO or president it has their own take on what they visualize and which is why I wanted to ask you what your vision was. And I think you hit you hit the three points really well, there.

J. D. Mowery: 17:40

Thank you. I appreciate that I It's we're very proud of who we are. And we want to make sure we continue to be very loud about that make sure everybody gets a chance to learn what KBI can do for them.

Harsh Thakkar: 17:48

Right, right. And I actually wanted to double click on the regulatory point, right that you made about how collaboration is the key now it's not about cutthroat competition. And that's industry wide. I'm seeing that trend more and more people, even consulting companies are collaborating and whatnot. Right? So from your point of view, how can KBI or in general a cdmo? How can they better collaborate with the agency? Do you have any examples of how it can be accomplished?

J. D. Mowery: 18:18

Yeah, for us, I mean, we're still working through kind of getting it off the ground here. So I would say probably going to be 25-30% of the way there in '24 and the rest of the way there in '25. But for my experience, I mean, one of the things I've done in my past is actually hosting some new FDA inspectors as part of their training regimen and building a relationship there with the agencies so that they actually get a chance to come in and be within a biotech facility. And we've always used it as an opportunity to train some of our bench strength as well within the organization. So they get a chance to help present in kind of a lower stress environment, if you will. It's not necessarily a normal biannual, or PAI, I want us to have that type of a relationship with the agency, I want us to seek opportunities to also, when there's a new industry guidance coming out, right, I think we owe it to the industry to take all of our collective data points from all of the different customers, we serve all of the different health authorities we've worked with, and apply that right, because it's such a broad data set, that gives us an opportunity to make sure we're robust in our thinking. Um, so it's things like that. And we've we've got a couple of technologies that we believe are game changers. And we're reaching out to the FDA to get guidance on to make sure that as we serve these two customers that they allow the customer actually continued on that CMC journey, and we don't miss something that the agency might expect of us. So I think it's just opening that door and being willing to have those conversations and talk with them. And understanding right that this is dealt with this on both the innovator side on the on the CDMO side. We have to teach our people, right that that the agency is there for a partnership, right. We're all here to make sure that patients receive safe and effective medicines, right and understanding that relationship and what they're seeking to do as well. To me is a paradigm shift or for many organizations but but We need to embrace that and step into that.

Harsh Thakkar: 20:01

Yeah. And that's that's the beauty of having these conversations with regulatory agencies or with like certified bodies like ISO, if somebody's trying to get an ISO certification or whatnot. It's just too, it's not that they're going to give you the step by step blueprint of how you should go about with your business. But it's more about setting the expectations, right, like what is the FDA expect from the cdmo from the company. And if you have those conversations early, A, you can make sure that you're checking off those expectations or doing more from your side, and also not avoiding any avoiding any surprises down the road, because you didn't really know what their expectation was, or you didn't ask them, right. So I think it's really important for a lot of companies to know that these conversations are not going to lead to them telling you exactly what you need to do. It's more of, hey, this is what we expect. Go figure out how you want to do it. Right?

J. D. Mowery: 21:00

Yeah, at the end of the day, they expect you to know your process, have great confidence in your process, right, the critical process parameters that are there, the critical quality attributes, but you should be able to know the process inside and out and be able to explain to that right, why it is safe. Why does in a state of control, why didn't patient is going to receive receive the expected benefit of the product, right? They want to have that collaborative relationship around making sure that all of those things are done, but they're not going to tell you exactly how to go about doing that, that the burden of that is on the sponsor, the CDMO.

Harsh Thakkar: 21:29

So yeah, yeah, definitely. I want to talk a bit about your team. Yeah, right, your leadership team and the individual departments, we've had a really amazing discussion for the past 15 minutes or so talking about how you how you've stepped into this role and what your vision is. So what are some of the strategies that you pass on to your leadership team? And how do they pass it on to each individual employee at KBI to say, Hey, this is our mission, this is our purpose. And I need you to do A, B, and C to sort of meet that end purpose,

J. D. Mowery: 22:05

Yeah, great question. And my team's probably the one thing that I'm the most proud of talking about, I get out of bed every morning with a mission to take care of them and enable them to be successful. I've been benefited from that throughout my career. I think accountability is something we take very serious here and holding each other accountable. But we do it in a way where we understand the impact of our work on the person on our left and the person on our right. When if we perform at a very high level, at the end of the day, it starts to make everyone's collective task much easier to accomplish. And we can do a lot more. So understanding and putting ourselves in each other's shoes. But honestly, just taking care of one another. I'm very, very proud of my team that we've assembled here. They all know my expectations as far as also taking care of their team, and that that permeates the organization, and leading with a level of transparency, right, that is something that our people need, they need to understand the why behind the mission, they deserve to know kind of how things are doing, are we winning or losing it breaks my heart when I have a conversation with an employee, and they don't know how well the business is doing. Right? They don't understand the impact you're having on patients. But I don't care what role you play in the organization at what level you deserve to know that right, we all give a lot we spend up spending more time at work with our colleagues than we do with our families in most regards. Right. And we need to understand the collective value of what we're doing for those sacrifices.

Harsh Thakkar: 23:25

Yeah, that's, that's a that's a great point. And it takes a lot of transparency, level of comfort, and other skills to be able to have those conversations, like you said, talking to employees or telling them, Hey, this is how well our company is doing. A lot of leaders are not comfortable having those conversations, right? It's more siloed, where, hey, this is just your role. And we have other people who will take care of the other challenges. So I think it's really great, like you who are basically from day one, saying, Hey, we have to have this level of accountability. And we have to have this level of transparency so that everybody knows how their role is impacting the bigger picture. Right? And you can set that tone, and that permeates through the rest of the organization.

J. D. Mowery: 24:14

Yeah, you're spot on, Harsh. And you have to be willing to to also have the hard conversations, right, when things aren't going quite as well, right? The transparency comes with both sides. But it's much easier to help people understand the rationale behind decisions, and the direction that we're heading if you're constantly giving context and that they understand kind of the role that they play within. So it's it makes things much easier to be able to have the conversations and do that more real time as opposed to allowing things to build on a quarterly basis or annual basis and having one hard conversation. I'd much rather just be transparent and lead the organization that way every day.

Harsh Thakkar: 24:47

So now I want to ask you another question. Again, I don't know if you are involved in this side of things or your team does the most of it. But when you are adding additional members to your team, I'm sure you You don't interview every single person that comes to KBI. But what is what is that? What have you told your your leadership team that, hey, these are the three checks on the culture side, if a person doesn't meet these three, they maybe don't belong in this, good fit, I shouldn't say don't belong, but I should say they're not a good fit for what we're trying to achieve. Right. So what are those things that you look for in a new team member?

J. D. Mowery: 25:30

is an important one as well. I mean, I would kind of couple character and work ethic together a lot of what we do, it's obviously you can bring in transferable skills. And you can have similar experience, depending on what role you're coming into. Those are great, but a lot of what we do, we can teach, right, so it's all about the person getting the type of character that they bring with them. So I think those things are all extremely important. I also think there, you have to come in with a sense of humility, right to understand that you're going to spend some time learning for some people have been doing some pretty profound things for a while now. So those are the kinds of just from a character and a cultural perspective. And as a talked about also caring about each other. Right? And how do I make sure that I kind of want to actually be part of a team working in the cdmo's space, right? We're not selling widgets, right, we don't have our own product, right? We're actually selling know how, and access to a team that can do some pretty impressive things, right? So you got to come in and embrace that mindset of being part of the team as well.

Harsh Thakkar: 26:28

Yeah, that's, that's a great distinction. And also, I've noticed this, that when somebody comes into a new role, the time they spent in their past role and that kind of organization. So if you have somebody coming from a big pharma with 50,000, employees, they are conditioned to operate a certain way, versus somebody who comes from a 25 person biotech startup in San Francisco, they are more willing to adapt, because they've already been conditioned that, hey, anything can happen when you come to work, and you just have to adapt and move on. Right? So. So that's one of the challenges I see a lot of people face is, how do you find like the MC? Or how do you find somebody who's willing to adapt? because not everybody's willing to change?

J. D. Mowery: 27:14

No, I agree. And it's interesting, there's,

Harsh Thakkar: 27:14

Yeah, that's interesting. And you also there's a phenotype that thrives in the cdmo space, right. And they tend to be people that are problem solvers that are very touched on this point where you mentioned like cdmo's, don't solutions oriented that like a bit more pace it for me, you're spent some time that some some big pharma players and working there and you own such a small piece of the pie, right? When there's 50,000, people that are part of the organization, it's have a product, they're basically building a versatile hard to have your fingerprints on the success of the business, set of skills that can benefit a wide variety of clients or because you are so involved in such a small piece. So you're looking for people that have more that entrepreneurial spirit, that are really drawn to doing multiple things at once that like to have a bit of variety in the work that they do. And it's very, very important to understand now, it's on us as well to make sure we build out the right structure and processes in place, right to help most people in the cdmo space of their fixers, right. So if you throw a problem that they have, they're gonna solve it. But we have to make sure we think about the perspective of normalizing that a bit, so we don't put them in a position where they don't know what to prioritize. But that phenotype is what tends to thrive in this space. customers who are looking for that type of cdmo. So that's where the team selection even becomes more important, because one Rockstar team member could change the trajectory of the company, or if you lose one, it can be really hard to replace, because the the team culture is so important.

J. D. Mowery: 28:47

And you have to approach it. I mean, whether you're a leader, or you're part of one of the project teams, at the end of the day, we're all serving a customer, right? So the concept of servant leadership or being a servant minded kind of a role player, it's really important to understand that, right? Because you have to be very focused on our customers and meeting their needs and taking care of them as well. And balancing that with the deliverables that you owe to be able to complete those projects. It's an interesting concept. And I think that is another key element that you have to look for when you're talking to individuals. So if somebody that could be the brightest person in the world, but if they don't have a desire to serve and take care of the customers are probably going to struggle in the space of it.

Harsh Thakkar: 29:25

Right, right. Yeah. It's it's very important having that customer service mindset is that even when people hear the word customer they always think of, oh, customer is somebody outside of the organization. Yeah, but there's internal customers and external customers, right? So you always have to have that mindset even if it's somebody next to you or in a different team, think of them also as a customer. As you do that you basically build those skills. So when you talk to external you, you don't have to change. You don't have to say who your next meeting. Exactly. This meeting is with a KBI colleague or somebody at a biotech, you just stay the same because you have the same approach to both.

J. D. Mowery: 30:05

Yeah, agree.

Harsh Thakkar: 30:07

Yeah, I. So I asked this question to a lot of people or I think I've asked pretty much to tons of people who work in life sciences, right? People who work in tech, they have this itch that they want to build a software or write a code that solves a problem, or you have this purpose. So what is like for you what is the most rewarding aspect of working in life sciences or working in this role that you are what makes you jump out of bed?

J. D. Mowery: 30:32

Yeah, getting to teach and mentor my team and see the fruits of their labor translate into taking care of a patient laying in a hospital bed. But it's I've been fortunate you some of the products that I've helped bring to market or been part of have touched my life with my own family and close friends and colleagues. And we work in a space where we get a chance to teach people how to do that. And I've helped people make pivots from other industries and teach them how to work in the biotech space, right, and you hear from them all the time around kind of the same pivot that I made from the chemical side of things. It's so much more rewarding. So getting to help people further their career and develop and accomplish their goals. And see that translate into a benefit for somebody laying in a hospital bed is that you couldn't ask for anything to be more rewarding as far as I'm concerned.

Harsh Thakkar: 31:16

Yeah, yeah, that's Yeah, I think we could end the podcast on that. But before we end, I have one more question for you. But yeah, that's the biggest reason why pretty much everybody works in life sciences, even if you can't see that. impacting the I know a lot of companies they share like patient stories, or they bring bring patients internal to their company meetings to share, like how their life was impacted. So sometimes me being in quality, I think, like, Okay, well, how is my role really affecting, but when you connect the dots, you see that it does matter. Every every role matters in some way.

J. D. Mowery: 31:54

Without a doubt.

Harsh Thakkar: 31:55

So before we wrap this up, this was first of all, thank you so much for your time, I know that you were playing and it was took some time to get this set up. But I'm glad that we've had such an amazing conversation, like for people for Yeah, for professionals, or customers, or anybody who's interested to learn more about KBI or learn more about what you are doing? What's the best way for them to get in touch?

J. D. Mowery: 32:21

Yeah, absolutely. So KBI biopharma.com is our website. It's got a ton of information and links and ways to reach us there. I'm also I'm very heavily present on LinkedIn, if somebody wants to reach out and have a conversation, I'm always happy whether you're looking for coaching in your career, or you're looking for services from KBI for for us, we provide analytical cell line development, all things that you need to do on the early stages of your programs, all the way through commercial manufacturing. We do that here in North America, as well as in Europe. So if you're looking for that from from a provider that you can trust and has the right technical expertise to help you make sure that patients are served throughout the world. We're here for you.

Harsh Thakkar: 32:57

Yeah and I'm so glad that we did this episode because I had been wanting to talk to somebody in the cdmo space. And you were the first one to with who I got to have this conversation. So I'm really happy about that. Yeah, Thank you. Any final thoughts before we wrap this up?

J. D. Mowery: 33:09

I appreciate it, Harsh. It's a fabulous No, it's just it's a pleasure to be here. It's a pleasure to get to talk about the great things that we're opportunity. And I love what you're doing for the space. doing here at KBI. And the people behind doing it, and how impactful they are and how much they care about the work that they provide to our partners and their patients.

Harsh Thakkar: 33:29

Yep, that's great. Thank you. JD I wish you a lot of success in 2024. I wish KBI a lot of success. And hopefully we'll we'll get to work on some projects together down the road.

J. D. Mowery: 33:40

That would be fabulous. Harsh. Thank you so much for having me.

Harsh Thakkar: 33:43

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Check out the show notes in the description for a full episode summary with all the important links. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast.