Harsh Thakkar (00:01.179)

All right, welcome to another episode of Life Sciences 360. My guest today is Howard McLeod. He is the Center Director Professor. He's an advisor to a bunch of companies and he's doing a lot of interesting stuff. He's one of the most recognized experts in precision medicine and pharmacogenomics. I'm really excited to have him on the show. Welcome to the show, Howard.

Howard McLeod (00:25.901)

Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here.

Harsh Thakkar (00:27.963)

Yeah, I know you are super busy. Where are you calling from? Because there is like a lot of picture frames in your background.

Howard McLeod (00:35.661)

Yeah, so I am in a room at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. The Personalized Medicine Coalition had a board meeting this morning here, and then there was a meeting with the NIH director. And then you'll be talking with yourself and then jumping on an airplane. So it's going to be a full day.

Harsh Thakkar (00:51.099)

Wow. Yep. So I like, like I said to you, as we were talking before, I have never felt so underprepared for this episode because I was looking at your resume and I just, I was like, I need like 10 podcast episodes to cover everything that I want to ask. So I want to ask you, first off, what, what inspired you to sort of build your career?

Howard McLeod (01:07.597)

Ha ha ha ha ha.

Harsh Thakkar (01:19.547)

and devote pretty much your entire life to personalized medicine, precision medicine, and this area, because it's evident that you've spent pretty much your entire life doing it.

Howard McLeod (01:31.372)

Yeah, I'd like to tell you that there was a career plan involved and that we knew exactly what was going to happen. In reality, when I was doing my training, there was a patient who nearly died from what was otherwise well tolerated therapy. And as they tried to figure out why things went so badly for her, we ended up discovering a gene that was the cause, the culprit.

because that gene was altered, the normal dose for everyone else was an overdose for her. So I thought that was interesting. And then as I did more training, came across a different clinical scenario where we ended up finding a gene for a different drug, different disease indication. But at that point, lightning struck twice. And so I was like, okay, I better pay attention to precision medicine. And it's led to a career where we've done some discovery work. We've done some...

Harsh Thakkar (02:20.411)

Hmm.

Howard McLeod (02:28.426)

replication in large clinical cohorts, some work at the FDA and NIH, et cetera, some work on helping health systems or large practices implement this. But really it's been chasing variation in drug effect. Why is the same dose, even if it's normalized to body weight or such, different in one person versus another? And how do we understand that? And so it could be genomics.

Harsh Thakkar (02:54.971)

Hmm.

Howard McLeod (02:57.994)

could be some other factor. Blood levels will tell you a lot. So it's, I guess, being a curious person by nature and wanting to know the answers, it just kind of led me into what ended up being a career.

Harsh Thakkar (03:13.531)

Yeah, I think that's how most of us who have such depth in any field, it's just a constant curiosity, it's the constant learning. And when you solve one answer, there another question pops up and you just can't help but solve that one, right? So I've heard the same thing from many other experts in different fields who've had decades of experience in a career. So that's really great.

I was looking at early on in your career, I know you worked at Moffitt Cancer Center, you worked at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. When you reflect on that time, whenever you get time to reflect on it, because I know you're busy, you probably don't think about it, it was a long time back. Are there any like key learnings or any key people that you met that taught you something from that time that you still carry with you today?

Howard McLeod (04:10.184)

Yeah, very much so. So at St. Jude's, it's a children's research hospital focused mainly on cancer in Memphis, Tennessee. My primary mentor was a man named Bill Evans. And then another chief scientist there, a faculty member there was Mary Relling. They happened to be married, but they had their own separate careers. And they both instilled a couple of really important things to me. One was not to focus on your degree.

but focus on your accomplishment and what you're trying to achieve. And that was really important. I didn't know it at the time, but by focusing on like, what are we actually doing and how important is the question, it allowed us to make advances far beyond what we anticipated. I never dreamed of creating data that would change a FDA package insert or something that would get into national or international guidelines. I mean, that just wasn't achievable to me. But by...

Harsh Thakkar (04:37.851)

Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (05:00.059)

Mmm.

Howard McLeod (05:06.631)

trying to ask the most burning question, it ended up answering some questions that had that kind of impact. And so they were very important to, and still are, they're really, their example has something that I can use going forward. There was also a guy named Joe Simone, who was the Cancer Center Director at St. Jude. He was also the director at Memorial Hospital in Kettering and the University of Utah and various places over his career.

But he had, there was a meeting that he called where all of us faculty, I was a clinical fellow, we all had to come to this meeting and he walked in and he said, I hear that a number of you would like to have a separate faculty and staff lunchroom separate from the patients. We are not going to do that. I want you to see these kids and know that you're not here to work on cells or mice. You're here to work on.

Harsh Thakkar (05:55.739)

Mm.

Harsh Thakkar (06:00.603)

Hmm.

Howard McLeod (06:04.517)

advances for these kids. And that was very powerful to me, caused me to be able to reflect back on a pretty frequent basis, like what are we doing and why are we doing it and keep that kind of kind of focus there. And that, that was very, has been very helpful throughout the years. And, you know, that was 30 years ago, but still has been useful as I try to, you know, try to carve the career.

Harsh Thakkar (06:31.675)

Right, and it reminds me of some of the positions that I've had. I work in quality assurance and compliance and technology for biotech companies as a consultant now, but prior to this, I worked as an employee in many roles. And I remember many times when we were working at companies, I think in 2012, I was at a company that was developing a drug for multiple myeloma. And then in 2020, it was for a different company. But...

Oftentimes we would have these town hall or like monthly or quarterly meetings and these companies would invite patients who were either in the trials or who've taken the drug to come to these events and basically just, you know, talk about their life before and after taking the drug or participating in the trial. And I felt like every time I left that room, there was like this renowned sense of energy.

you know, the next day, because it sort of re -aligns your focus to say, hey, you are not just like pressing buttons on a computer. What you're doing, like you may not see the end result, but patients would literally like cry on the stage and be like, thank you so much for their families would come. And, you know, it was, it was just really amazing to have that, you know, direct contact and learn how our work was, you know, impacting patients.

Howard McLeod (07:30.499)

Yeah.

Howard McLeod (07:58.627)

Yeah, it's also important, I've had the same experience as you and I think it's just so invigorating and really helps you keep focused. And it also is a good reminder that while perfection might be our goal, any advance is enough to be helpful. And so maybe we go to good or maybe to great or heaven forbid perfect, but just being better than we used to be as a field, makes a difference to individual people. And I used to think that,

Harsh Thakkar (08:24.091)

Yes.

Howard McLeod (08:28.482)

You know, kind of wonder whether it was really worth it for patients who have run out of options for treatment of cancer to do experimental therapies that might just buy them some time. And then as you get older, you realize that first of all, any time bought is valuable. But then also as new science comes out, there are patients who were kept alive long enough to benefit for something that could then be curative. You know, I've been able to live long enough to see

Harsh Thakkar (08:44.059)

Hmm.

Howard McLeod (08:58.497)

some patients who are literally in hospice, come out of hospice to start on a medicine and are now back to living a normal life, at least for as long as it will work. And that sort of thing where you start realizing, okay, we might have endpoints that are part of the FDA clinical trials to get the drug approved, but the patient's endpoints are not the same. The patient's endpoints are much more practical and much harder to measure, but.

much more about, can I have time with family or can I have some quality? And that's, it's just so helpful to know, hey, we're doing this on purpose. This isn't just about money. It's not just about publishing a paper or doing something. This is about trying to make the world a better place.

Harsh Thakkar (09:45.083)

Yeah, yeah, and talking about new science, I know you're currently, you know, in your current role, you are the center director for precision medicine and functional genomics at Utah Tech. You're also advisor to a couple of companies. So any interesting projects or any new advancements that you are chasing or you're trying to solve that you would like to share with us?

Howard McLeod (10:12.832)

Yeah, sure. So we really are going across the spectrum on the more basic side, if you will, or discovery side, looking at why is it that some patients have a tremendous response to some of these tyrosine kinase inhibitors for cancer, and then others who have the same mutations, at least from what we know they should respond well, they don't. And so trying to say, all right, what is it about this patient and their cancer?

Harsh Thakkar (10:38.107)

Hmm.

Howard McLeod (10:42.367)

that would allow us to be smarter next time and go for a different method, a different approach. Because when it comes down to it, for the treatment of most diseases, we currently have a buffet of options. And if you're going to a buffet, well, a buffet may be a bad example, because you can eat more than one entree. But if you go to a nice restaurant, you may not be in the mood for a steak. You might be in the mood more for fish or for pork or for a vegetarian option. And it's that.

Harsh Thakkar (11:04.059)

Hmm.

Howard McLeod (11:09.599)

And that's what you want, even though they have excellent options for that. And it's really a similar concept around which medicine, which dose of medicine, which frequency should a patient receive. And just because there's an average medicine that many people will benefit from, if we can learn something about a patient that will cause us to change to medicine B or medicine C, that's important. And so some of the work we're doing,

in terms of taking patients who did not respond to a set of medicines where they should have, according to our knowledge, we're really looking for either futility markers, so don't bother with this therapy for anybody who has this marker, because it's just, for reasons we don't know, it's not gonna work, or actual mechanism where we can say, because of this, this medicine won't work, and that may lead us to a different medicine, either in combination or otherwise.

and you'll make us smarter that way. So that's more on the discovery side. And then you fast forward all the way onto the clinical side. There's a couple of things we're doing that I find interesting anyway. Being at a large undergraduate university, I was faced with something that I already knew existed but didn't know the magnitude. And that is that about 10 to 12 % of the students will go to student health.

for a mental health challenge in any given year. And so these are now only a small fraction need to be admitted because of psychosis or such. Some of them just need some encouragement and help them past a particular event. But a number of them have depression, have anxiety, have things that are, and what became very clear is, and this is, so this is a neglected population. We don't, student health is not the hotbed of research.

Harsh Thakkar (12:38.971)

Hmm.

Howard McLeod (13:04.86)

even though it's our future that it's enhanced. But as I got to know more about it, I realized that if you had depression or anxiety in a given semester, often that would cause the student to have to drop out for that semester. And if you drop out for that semester, you're no longer on track with your peers. A lot of your friends are moving on, you're not. You're now not gonna graduate when you thought you would. You're not gonna...

Harsh Thakkar (13:22.235)

Hmm.

Howard McLeod (13:34.459)

It really alters life in ways well beyond just the disease. And so we have an initiative that we're starting at Utah Tech, and then we have plans to move it on out using pharmacogenomics and an app -based approach to try to better understand which medicines a student could get on, should get on based on their genetics. That's normal for the treatment of people at a primary care setting, but these students are not in that setting. They're in there. And so...

Where our hope is that we'll be able to demonstrate that more kids are able to not only get benefit, but stay in school, stay on track and really have that career trajectory that they had before. It's not going to cure everything, but if we, you know, even a feather is enough to tip the scale. And so that's an important piece. And then on the, and so we'll, we'll see how that's going, but it's so far, it's, there's been a lot of interest, both from the patient, from the students and from.

Harsh Thakkar (14:18.875)

Yeah.

Harsh Thakkar (14:24.731)

Right.

Howard McLeod (14:33.07)

the student health staff because they want these kids to get well as fast as possible. And they only have so many slots to see patients. And so they know there's a big problem. The last two things I'll mention, one is around the advisory role. And so working with companies like DOSME who are trying to optimize a number of different types of therapy. It might be using blood levels, might be using genetics, might be using some other technique.

Harsh Thakkar (14:46.459)

Hmm.

Howard McLeod (15:02.745)

But the principle is, can we take the dose and make it that person's dose? And some of it involves giving a dose and measuring blood levels and reacting to it. Others, you can know things ahead of time. But I think that that's been a long -term principle of clinical pharmacology that's been relatively neglected in practice. And so I enjoy advising groups like them because they're really trying to make this practical and they're not working.

Harsh Thakkar (15:10.331)

Mmm.

Howard McLeod (15:30.873)

only at the academic centers. They're working at any, you know, at a small hospital where my in -laws might go for their care or my mother might go for her care and really trying to help that. And so that's an exciting thing. And then lastly, I've always tried to pay attention to gaps. And so we had a situation where, you know, people realized that if you sequence a patient's tumor, especially in metastatic cancer,

Harsh Thakkar (15:38.587)

Yeah.

Howard McLeod (15:57.784)

You can understand what's driving the cancer in many, many of the cases. You can use that information to better select a therapy. So it might be a lung cancer, but it might need a therapy that was developed for melanoma or developed for breast cancer to really stop it from advancing. Well, what we found is that a lot of clinicians were not doing the testing. And as we dug into why it wasn't access to testing or ability to order testing, it wasn't even insurance.

the patient's insurance, it was that they didn't know exactly what to do with the results. And so, you know, initially we said, well, we're happy to train you. And they're like, you know what, we have all this new information coming at us every day, new diagnostics, new imaging, new this, new that, it's just so hard to keep up. Can you just do it for us? And so we set up something called Clarified Precision Medicine. Dr. Lakenadal, myself, a few others put this together.

And it's basically a therapeutic radiologist for the genome. So it's focusing not on what are the variants. The pathologists do a great job at saying this tumor had this gene and this variant, and might even say it's associated with this drug. But it's kind of like if you were to give me a refrigerator with a steak and some potatoes and some other foods and say, you know, make a meal.

Harsh Thakkar (17:02.555)

Hmm.

Howard McLeod (17:26.549)

I would have to Google a recipe or have to decide what am I going to make and do the best I could. But if you ask Gordon Ramsey or some expert chef to take those exact same ingredients very quickly, much more quickly than me, he would make a meal that was extraordinary and be able to just move and go forward. And so that's a lot of the effort there with Clarified and with other efforts. Can we make it so that someone practicing out in the community with no access to

Harsh Thakkar (17:29.915)

Right.

Harsh Thakkar (17:45.051)

Mmm.

Howard McLeod (17:56.245)

fancy academic stuff, can benefit from that so that they can make a quick decision in the context of their extraordinarily busy clinic. And it's that practicality that I think is really important. We have lots of fancy technologies, but if we can't make it practical. So what I've been told by many of these oncologists is that we take a 27 page report that they don't know what to do with, they don't understand, and turn it into a 30 second or less read. And...

Harsh Thakkar (18:06.939)

Hmm.

Howard McLeod (18:25.908)

they can afford 30 seconds before they see that patient. They can't afford to go spend an hour Googling what to do. And so I think that practicality, I think there's a need for more of that, not just in the scenario I just described, but in general, often we'll develop these great AI tools or this fancy new technology using this biomedical physics of some sort. But we need to make it so that people don't need to know how to understand.

Harsh Thakkar (18:32.411)

Yeah.

Howard McLeod (18:54.195)

When PET scans first came out, no one would order a PET scan because they didn't want to learn physics. They didn't know a nuclear medicine physician. And so they didn't do it. As radiologists learn how to read these things, now you say, all right, I want to understand the patient's tumor better. I'm going to order a PET scan. And then the radiologists would take care of it. They would decide what to do. And they would come back with a report that said, hey, this lit up here, this didn't light up there. Have a nice day. And you can say, all right, great. And then move on.

Harsh Thakkar (18:54.491)

Yeah.

Harsh Thakkar (19:15.163)

Yes.

Harsh Thakkar (19:22.083)

Yeah.

Howard McLeod (19:23.891)

And so that sort of thing, taking fancy technology and making it simple and quick in terms of practice, that's missing with a lot of companies these days and with a lot of new technology. It's, you know, they want to make it more difficult because they've spent a lot of energy on it and they have their hearts in it. And they've like, I've had to go through pain to develop this. So I want others to see how painful it was when in reality, if they can make it less painful for other people, it'll have better updates.

But anyway, those are some of the things that are exciting across the spectrum.

Harsh Thakkar (19:52.507)

Yeah.

Harsh Thakkar (19:56.603)

No, those are amazing examples of work that you're doing, especially with the one you were talking about, the student mental health. And I went to undergraduate school from 2003 to 2007, but I'm curious if, I don't know if you've come across any data of, you mentioned 10 to 12 % in the study that you were doing, but I'm curious to know, just in general, what is the percentage of...

undergraduate students who are having mental health issues today compared to 20 or 30 years ago. I haven't seen that data, but do you have, have you come across any of that?

Howard McLeod (20:36.337)

Yeah, so the percentage of patients, there's been some large national studies looking at about 100 universities. It's about that same percentage across the nation, across the United States anyway, in terms of current data from a year or two ago. That's that way. There's not a lot of data going backwards, but even the data that is available, so if you go back 20 years, it was a lower frequency and it started going up and...

Harsh Thakkar (20:44.603)

Mm -hmm.

Howard McLeod (21:04.08)

You know, some people have said, well, it's because we're on our phones too much because we're on our phones. We don't get out there and adventure. Therefore we don't have the same confidence in our life. We don't know how to talk to people. I don't know why, but there has been an increase that occurs. And, from, from a today's standpoint, that's what we need to deal with, but it would be useful. You know, it's probably too complex to figure out, but you know, why has it increased? It was never zero.

Harsh Thakkar (21:19.995)

Hmm.

Howard McLeod (21:33.904)

It was, it may not have been as visible. I mean, that's one thing, you know, my, I have a 25 year old and a 21 year old and there it's normal for them to talk about themselves or their friends in the context of anxiety and depression. That's it's, they are comfortable with it. So they're willing to go get help if they, if they needed it. Whereas when I went to undergrad, no one mentioned it. I wouldn't have known I had it probably. I wouldn't have gone for help unless.

someone else intervened. I'm not sure that student health could have even had the was equipped intervene. You know, it's just it was just a different world that way. So I think that there's always been some of it. But I think now the you know, the frequency is high enough that it's like, well, we as a society, even beside being good humans, as a society, we need these young people.

Harsh Thakkar (22:14.427)

Right.

Howard McLeod (22:32.495)

to live a productive life. We're structured in a pyramid scheme where we need productive young people to keep those of us who are older supported and that sort of thing. So there's an investment that goes beyond just, wouldn't it be nice? It really gets to the point of, hey, we're investing in these kids. Most of college is subsidized. Even if you're paying a lot, it's subsidized.

Let's get the most out of it and help these kids have a have the life that they want to have you know so I think there's both the We can do good and do well, you know out of this this scenario

Harsh Thakkar (23:12.539)

Yeah, and you were also, another interesting point that you made was when you were explaining how can we make the dose to the person's dose or the patient's dose and bring that specificity. So what I wanted to ask you is, do you think the students today who are in this field or once they graduate and become senior scientists or scientists and pursue like,

jobs in companies. Do you think they are more fortunate because of all the technology advancements that have happened compared to the time when you were a scientist? What's your take on that? How has the technology changed the game?

Howard McLeod (23:55.596)

So certainly the technology, you know, what is achievable in a practical way has dramatically changed over the last 30 years. When we were doing pharmacokinetics, we even were doing pharmacokinetically guided cancer therapy at St. Jude's. So it was something that one could do, but it was much more cumbersome. The assays, you know, we had to go and pack our own HPLC columns, you know, and you know, you had...

Harsh Thakkar (24:05.755)

Hmm.

Howard McLeod (24:25.419)

There was things you had to do that, you know, now you just buy one and you wouldn't even use HPLC today. You use mass spectrometry of some sort. and, and which is much faster and more accurate than that. So the, the speed is increased. The accuracy is increased. The amount of hands on, that you had to do has, has changed a lot. There are some things that haven't changed. So the having to get the sample and prepare it properly is still the same. You know, there, there aren't any, any shortcuts for that.

but the analysis is much, much better. And then once the result comes out, the tools to apply, the mathematical tools, the pharmacokinetic modeling, the association between a blood level and an effect is much more advanced than it was when I trained or even 10 years ago. And so it's one of those things where now, hopefully 10 years from now it'll be even better.

I don't think that we're done, but it comes back to this, what is it saying, great is the enemy of good? We can be good now, and good will help a lot of people. It will cure some people if they have a bad infection, for example. And then we can be great, and then we can go be perfect. But the idea that we can benefit from these technologies, when a new technique comes out, the path for turning that into a practical technique,

Harsh Thakkar (25:22.555)

Yes.

Howard McLeod (25:52.586)

developing it so it can be used in a regulatory environment, either for the FDA or for clinical use. There's a clear path for that now, and not every assay can be done that, but it means that a new technology can almost from the moment it's real, can now be shaped for routine use. And that there was no path back in the day. If you developed an assay that worked at your hospital,

Harsh Thakkar (26:13.659)

Yes.

Howard McLeod (26:20.297)

you developed an assay that worked at your hospital. No one else benefited. You can publish the assay, but then they had to go and basically do it themselves. We would have people that would come in and spend a month or two at the institution to try to better understand what is it about, what's the secret sauce for what is happening there at St. Jude's versus some other place. And that certainly still can happen.

Harsh Thakkar (26:42.651)

Mm.

Howard McLeod (26:47.369)

But now people can really use methods that can be set up and be working within a month and they can be applied. And they can take someone who has general clinical pharmacology training or pharmacy training and they'll have enough tools to be able to get up to speed. And so that's a real advance in the field.

Harsh Thakkar (27:13.627)

So yeah, and that's also, you know, that's the thing I've seen also in with technology is that, yes, at some point, every technology is taking some bit of manual work outside, taking it out from a person's role. It's automating some of it, it's doing it more at scale. Like if I'm doing a calculation for one patient, I can do it manually, but if I have to do it for 400 patients,

a computer is gonna beat me, right? Even if I'm great at math, right? So, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So what I wanted to ask you is how do you think the role of people who are in precision medicine or genomics, how is their role going to change in the coming 10 years? Because whether they like it or not, they're going to have to learn how to integrate technology.

Howard McLeod (27:42.887)

Either that or you'll be getting problems with your pipetting thumb or something.

Howard McLeod (28:08.167)

Yeah, I encourage anyone of any age that's in my area of work to start to get comfortable with some of the AI tools that are out there. And just as an example of the new technologies that are coming along in, it's not that I think the AI tools there are that you couldn't succeed without them. It's just that they're going to become mandatory. They're going to, we're going to start getting methods that only work with AI support or, and

Harsh Thakkar (28:37.147)

Mmm.

Howard McLeod (28:37.446)

The minute it becomes foreign to you, it becomes a black box, that's the minute you are your parents or your grandparents. So, you know, my grandmother, she's passed now, but she was old enough to see the invention of cars, the invention of the phone, all these things that we take for granted. She didn't have them and then did have them. And...

Harsh Thakkar (28:46.907)

Yeah.

Howard McLeod (29:05.925)

they were all a black box to her. She had to kind of get used, get comfortable with the idea of magic. Because as far as she knew, they were basically magic. Whereas in areas of expertise, you can't afford, you can't be at the top of your game if you don't understand most of the process. You don't have to understand all of it. And you certainly don't have to write code or know all the nuances of machine learning. But...

Harsh Thakkar (29:12.091)

Hmm.

Howard McLeod (29:32.516)

If the principles are there and you can start getting some utility out of it, then as change comes, it will be less threatening and it will be more useful. You know, when, when change is your enemy, it usually means you don't understand it well enough to make it your friend. and I haven't seen anyone lose their job because of AI. I've just seen them become more productive, including some time, you know, being able to leave on time at the end of the day, you know, so it's.

Harsh Thakkar (29:49.819)

Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (30:01.083)

Yeah.

Howard McLeod (30:01.988)

It has the principle of being able to be as productive or more productive and try to achieve this mythical work -life balance that everyone talks about. And especially the younger people who are being brought up with work -life balance being a goal. I've had to try to learn what it means and try to bring it in because I grew up in an era where it was work and that's life. Which has its benefits but also has big advantages.

Harsh Thakkar (30:12.507)

Hmm.

Howard McLeod (30:31.747)

whereas a lot of the young folks there, they want a life, they want to have a life. and they also want to be productive. And so I think, being prepared for new technology is it's so hard. I, my kids laugh at me for, for things, you know, that, you know, something new comes out and I want to ask them questions and understand it more. and they're like, you know, you're not going to ever be on tech talk or, you know, you don't, you don't really need to know what this is doing. I think. Yeah.

Harsh Thakkar (30:35.579)

Mm -hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (30:56.827)

Yeah.

Howard McLeod (31:00.386)

I need to understand it well enough to not be afraid of it. And I think that's the minimum that I would encourage people to have is achieving an ability to not be afraid of something. In some cases, you have to be a professional. You have to know it fully. But most of the time, you just have to know enough to be able to use it when it's useful.

Harsh Thakkar (31:03.707)

Correct.

Harsh Thakkar (31:23.131)

It reminds me of a quote that I read from, I'm blanking on the name of the person. I can't think of his name, but he is basically, this guy is an executive coach and he's coached some of the top executives in the world, like the CEO of tech companies and big politicians and whatnot. I can't think of his name. I've seen him.

a lot on social media, but he has this phrase about technology and he basically says, technology is like fire. You can either use it to create warmth or you can use it to burn something down, right? So I guess that's another, it's always going to be a double -edged sword and for each person, it's their job because even the same thing with AI, right?

Yes, there are risks about AI. And I had the same discussion with clients on my projects, where they've said, what is the percentage confidence of this AI tool? And I'm like, it's 97%. No, that's not good enough. We'll just use human. I'm like, what if the person hasn't had enough coffee and they miss something? It's never 100%. Like, it's not a good argument, but...

Howard McLeod (32:36.633)

Yeah.

Howard McLeod (32:46.337)

Yeah.

Harsh Thakkar (32:48.028)

And that's the thing with technology, AI or whatever it is, there's always going to be, it's never gonna be 100 % completely automated. And that's what we want when we think of technology as completely on autopilot. I don't have to touch anything, I don't have to learn it, and that's not a good way to approach it.

Howard McLeod (33:08.351)

Yeah. And even in countries, so I have, collaborate a lot internationally. And so taking, for example, the, the country of China, there are some areas where they don't use robotics because the, the salaries for people are low enough that it's cheaper to have a hundred people than to buy a robot, you know? And so, you know, that, that type of thing is, you know, and so they're like, well, we don't need that technology, but I encourage them to at least be comfortable with it.

Harsh Thakkar (33:13.339)

Yeah, yeah.

Howard McLeod (33:38.143)

because there may be a day when they do need it and are able to do that. And so, you know, everybody's comfortable with where they are until they're not. And so, you know, it's kind of forecasting. And, you know, I imagine there was a time when people who made buggy whips for driving, you know, horses around town were very comfortable with their position and they were the best buggy whip maker in town. And then...

Suddenly no one needed them anymore. And it was gone. And so if they had, you know, hopefully some of them got comfortable with the concepts of an automobile and thought about how their leather making skills could be useful for automobiles and they could make this and they could make a wheel cover and you know, whatever else. And you know, and they, and so they just pivoted and they're ready. But you know, we, you know, even in the, even,

Harsh Thakkar (34:09.147)

Mmm.

Howard McLeod (34:33.245)

in our lifetime, though there's been some big pivots in technology. I use Sanger sequencing and then the so -called next generation sequencing, we do shotgun sequencing, became practical. And at that time, it was about $2 a base more expensive than Sanger sequencing, but you could sequence a million bases. So yes, it was a lot of money, but...

Harsh Thakkar (34:56.571)

Hmm.

Howard McLeod (35:02.365)

It was a, you know, that'd be a $2 million study, but you could never get there with stinger sequencing, you know, cause it was just, you know, there, it just, it just couldn't, you couldn't, it couldn't happen. So, you know, there, even when you don't want to, there's times when you're kind of forced to, to take things on and whether it's a new type of measurement for mass spectrometry or a new, a new type of genomics or a new AI tool.

Harsh Thakkar (35:10.779)

Right.

Howard McLeod (35:30.94)

They're all, you want to be in a position where they're all just an incremental step, not a revolutionary step. Yeah, and in the revolution, people lose their head. And an incremental thing is just another step. It's just a different day.

Harsh Thakkar (35:43.675)

Yeah.

Yes, yes. I love how you explain like a lot of these complex topics because a lot of these things I personally don't have much knowledge about, but you know, it's not a surprise because you are, you know, teaching this to students and other people in the field. So it comes very naturally to you, but it's a very amazing skill you have of breaking down, you know, complex. Yeah. So.

Howard McLeod (36:10.236)

That's very nice of you. Thank you.

Harsh Thakkar (36:16.411)

One more last question I wanna ask you before we drop off is where, you know, you're doing a lot of things, so where can people connect with you? Where can people learn more about what you're doing, the different companies or, you know, studies that you're doing?

Howard McLeod (36:33.659)

Yes, certainly LinkedIn has most of them. We have one company in stealth that will be coming out of stealth soon, but most of the stuff will be on LinkedIn. And certainly you can message me. It's open to be messaged and my contact information is also on there, at least for the people I'm connected with. If you Google me, there's a website that my daughter set up that has a way to contact me, including an email account.

Harsh Thakkar (36:37.499)

Okay.

Howard McLeod (37:01.53)

there's stuff at the university, although they're usually behind in terms of, of what they put on for PR as well as the websites. but I, you know, I love interesting questions. I love, helping out, trying to help things advance faster. so whether it's just an informal discussion or whether it's a formal consulting thing of some sort, I'm, I'm excited about, you know, I'm excited about the field. You know, there's a point in time.

Harsh Thakkar (37:06.107)

Mm.

Harsh Thakkar (37:27.995)

Yes.

Howard McLeod (37:29.274)

when you just want the field to mature and do well. And there's a point in time where you may want your kid to be a professional basketball player, but you get to a point in time where it's like, you know what, I don't care what they do. I just want them to be happy and fulfilled. And that's kind of the period of the field. I just really enjoy the idea of using what I've learned over time.

Harsh Thakkar (37:44.891)

Right, right.

Howard McLeod (37:58.074)

to augment what someone already used and you know, usually they know a lot and I might just add a few little sprinkles but the You know, we need the field to be more efficient and we need technologies to happen faster and be more effective and so, you know, I love the idea of helping them that way.

Harsh Thakkar (38:19.195)

Yeah, and it's always good, like you said, the field, as you mentioned, you want the field to be better. What eventually then happens is it always creates new problems, new opportunities, and that keeps us continuously learning. Otherwise, we're just doing the same thing multiple times. And at least for me, I've observed that it gets...

you know, too monotonous for me and I don't enjoy it. I always like a new challenge. Even if I'm not able to solve it, I want to try until I fail five times and then maybe I solve it halfway. So.

Howard McLeod (38:54.775)

Right, right. Yeah, it's an exciting time. We all need to row together. There's plenty of pie. You don't have to steal someone else's.

Harsh Thakkar (38:56.955)

Yeah, thank you.

Harsh Thakkar (39:04.251)

Yeah, well, thank you so much, Howard. I really appreciate your time. I don't want to, I have more questions, but I don't want you to miss your flight. So.

Howard McLeod (39:13.591)

Well, no worries. Maybe you'll have me again sometime when we can do some more.

Harsh Thakkar (39:21.435)

Yes, so just again, you know, thank you so much for coming on to the show and sharing with us everything you're doing. Any final words before we wrap this up?

Howard McLeod (39:32.214)

It's an exciting time. I don't be, you know, those of you, especially those of you that are starting something new, whether you're young or old, starting in a new aspect, don't be daunted. It is, you know, there's lots of scary things, but it's a great time for trying to make innovation happen and trying to make it really affect people's lives. So I, you know, look beyond the, the, the, what the press says and, and the complainings of those around you. Cause.

There's a lot of really good opportunities, so go for it.

Harsh Thakkar (40:05.051)

Yeah, and again, you know, just I want to thank you for everything that you are doing, you know, with all the academic stuff, you know, in the science and, you know, advising other companies who are building technology. So thank you for everything you're doing. We need more leaders like you who are, you know, just genuinely interested in moving the industry forward. So thank you.

Howard McLeod (40:26.005)

Well, thank you. Thank you for having me.

Harsh Thakkar (40:28.443)

All right.