Harsh Thakkar (00:01.074)
All right, welcome to another episode of Life Sciences 360. My guest today is John Finn. He is the Chief Scientific Officer at Tome Biosciences. And we're going to be diving into a conversation about Tome Bio. I think it came out of stealth last year with some big investments. They're into genomic integration and they have a very exciting pipeline and amazing company.

So we're gonna learn about Tom from John today. Welcome to the show, John.

John Finn (00:33.02)
Thank you very much, Harsh. It's a pleasure to be here. And just one thing, just...

John Finn (00:42.652)
to let your audience know. As you can probably tell, I do have a stutter. Essentially what that means is that it can take me a little bit longer to say what I want to say sometimes, but everything is fine. It's just the way that my talk or I talk. It actually runs in my...

John Finn (01:07.74)
my family. And so maybe one day we'll be doing editing for that. Not the first indication, but it does affect about 1 % of all of us. And so I could see that being an interesting future application. But anyway, everything is fine. It's just the way that I talk. Thank you.

Harsh Thakkar (01:10.354)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (01:32.306)
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, again, it's, I'm glad you brought that up. But yeah, every, everything's, all conversations are welcome and I'll be, you know, patient and I'm sure the audience will also be patient in helping you finish your thoughts and we'll go work through that. So, and yeah, someday if there is, you know, a cure, I guess your company is doing tons of exciting stuff. So I wouldn't be surprised if.

You found something to cure that 1%. But I guess I want to ask you how, so you introduced that right off the bat saying you stutter when you speak at some times. How has that influenced, like when did you first find out that you were stuttering? How did that influence your maybe educational career as a scientist and then coming into the industry?

John Finn (02:27.868)
Yeah, so that is a long question. We could spend a whole hour just talking about that journey, but really briefly, I've always stuttered. I can't remember a time when I didn't. And actually, as I mentioned, it does run in my family. So my two brothers also stutter, although I'm probably the most, or the best stutterer in the family. I don't think you would even really notice that they stutter nowadays, but.

Harsh Thakkar (02:38.61)
Hmm.

John Finn (02:55.548)
In terms of my journey with science, it's funny. I think I had this image of scientists, they're at the bench, there's not a lot of talking. And that's not the reason why I went into science. I went into science because I'm fascinated by biology and the wonders of how life works. And that's really been my motivation. I did not realize how much speaking.

Harsh Thakkar (03:18.13)
Hmm.

John Finn (03:24.124)
is involved in science because if you can't...

communicate your data in ways people understand, it doesn't matter. So I think I've had a very interesting journey with it. It's been a challenge for sure. It has absolutely made my path harder, I think, than some others. But I also think it's made me the person I am today. And so I'm very grateful for it and for the lessons I've learned, but it's definitely...

It's something I have to think about that I think most people don't. And of course, right now, I'm very fluent because I'm usually more fluent when I'm talking about stuttering, which is a little interesting thing. But anyway, yeah, thank you for asking.

Harsh Thakkar (04:03.186)
Yes.

Harsh Thakkar (04:08.338)
Okay.

Harsh Thakkar (04:14.482)
Yeah, yeah, and I'm sure there's a lot of other people in different industries or in life sciences or whatnot. They may be dealing with other challenges in their careers, maybe not stuttering, but something else. So I think what I'm getting from you is it's something that you accepted early on and you've basically embraced it and tried to still.

forge a path for you and your career and sooner or later, it's something you just know that it's part of the process, right? So some things are under our control that we can change, but most of the things we just have to accept and move on.

John Finn (05:00.06)
Yeah, everyone has their thing. And I think the most important thing is that you find your p -

Harsh Thakkar (05:01.874)
Yeah.

Harsh Thakkar (05:06.514)
Yep, absolutely. The reason I wanted to bring you on this show is because I work in life sciences consulting, mainly in quality, software validation, data integrity. So I'm constantly, and one of the big portfolio of clients that we work with are small to mid -size companies, especially in personalized medicine, cell and gene therapy, you know, mRNA, genetic editing, all sorts of stuff. So.

I am always on crunch base, looking at companies, researching people. And it's exciting to see how many types of innovative platforms and companies are emerging every day. It just makes life sciences industry fascinating as a whole. But that's how I first found out about Tome. And I know you secured or the company secured.

over 200 million series A and series B towards end of 2023. And came out of stealth, so nobody knew about Tome before that. But can you walk us through basically how Tome went from an idea in someone's brain to a company?

John Finn (06:25.98)
Absolutely, and it might actually help to put Tom in context. So.

I have been working in the field of gene and cell therapy. This year will be 25 years for me. And so I've seen a lot and I've been there for the high times, I've been there for the low times. I remember actually, I first started grad school and this was up in Canada and I was working on early days lipid nanoparticles, which some of your audience might recognize because this is basically what all the COVID vaccines are based on.

Harsh Thakkar (06:41.074)
Wow.

Harsh Thakkar (06:52.882)
Mm -hmm.

John Finn (07:03.772)
So I was working on that early, early day lipid nanoparticle technology 25 years ago. So anyway, but the field has evolved a lot over that time. But my mission the entire time has always been to cure people. A person is sick, they have a broken gene, they have something wrong. We give them a shot, a treatment, and we fix the problem at a source and they walk away.

Harsh Thakkar (07:03.89)
Mm.

Harsh Thakkar (07:21.97)
Mm -hmm.

John Finn (07:33.628)
and they're no longer sick. This has been the holy grail for gene therapy right from the start. So I've been working in this field the entire time. I'm not gonna give you my entire history, but I've really focused on two areas over that time. One is in gene delivery. How do you get things into size? Because if you can't get that healthy copy of the gene in, it doesn't matter. And so that's one area that I've spent a lot of time on.

Harsh Thakkar (07:53.138)
Hmm.

John Finn (08:02.78)
And then the other is editing CRISPR. So when the first papers came out on CRISPR, it took me a while to really understand what it was and why it was important. But when I got it, I couldn't think of something that was gonna have a bigger impact on the future of humanity. And that is a bold statement, but at its...

Harsh Thakkar (08:25.074)
Yep.

John Finn (08:28.668)
It's the ability to edit the genome of every other species, including ourselves. And so that was why I actually joined up very early days with one of the first editing companies in teleotherapeutics. Essentially, we started with a paper from the Doudna lab that said CRISPR works in cells. And then we had to figure out what we're going to do with it and how we're going to turn it into medicine. And that's exactly what we did. And that's an amazing journey.

Harsh Thakkar (08:41.394)
Hmm.

John Finn (08:55.676)
an amazing team of people and now there are people walking around cured. So that's remarkable. So why Tom, right? If, if other companies have already solved or are already using CRISPR, you know, why do we need a company like Tom? Essentially the first generation of editing drugs are all based on breaking something because it's a lot easier to break something than to fix something. I think everyone can understand this.

Harsh Thakkar (09:23.282)
Mmm.

John Finn (09:25.436)
And so if a patient has a gene that's gone bad, well, it's easy to break that gene. And that's essentially what the first approved drugs are all based on. And that's fine. But for most of the indications out there, you can't just break it because they're missing something. They have a broken gene. And so you really need to fix that gene. And there's a couple of ways you can do it. There's a...

So first generation CRISPR is breaking. Then we have the second generation, right? These are the base editors, the prime editors. I don't... You don't really have to understand exactly what the mechanism is, but essentially what they can do is make really small changes, right? They can fix one base or fix two bases. And so if you have a broken gene where you've got one mutation, these can go in and fix that one base.

Harsh Thakkar (10:16.882)
Okay.

Harsh Thakkar (10:24.53)
Hmm.

John Finn (10:24.86)
and that's essentially a cure. If most of the patients have the same mutation, these are great tools and these are going to make important medicine. Unfortunately, for most indications and most I'm talking 95%, 97.

percent of them, there isn't one gene. If you look at all the patients that have PKU, let's just say, which is one of the indications that we're going after, there are almost 400 separate mutations in that one disease. And so making individual drugs to fix each mutation, it's just, it's not feasible. So what we're doing here at Tome and how this started, it started actually with our founders.

Harsh Thakkar (10:49.33)
Yep.

Harsh Thakkar (11:00.626)
Hmm.

John Finn (11:21.18)
my god.

John Finn (11:25.66)
Abu Daya and.

John Finn (11:31.74)
and

Thorsten Gutenberg at MIT, where they wanted to solve, I would say, the heart problem in gene editing, which is essentially, it's a very simple problem. How do you put a large piece of DNA in a very specific location? And they essentially developed this amazing technology called PACE, which essentially,

Harsh Thakkar (11:51.986)
Hmm.

John Finn (12:02.716)
allows you to put a large piece of DNA in a very specific location. That was the founding of Tome. And so Tome was built to turn that foundational work into medicine. And so I came on early days, Tome, because this is what I've been trying to do my entire career. So now if a patient has a broken gene, well, now we can just put a healthy copy of the gene.

Harsh Thakkar (12:18.994)
Okay.

John Finn (12:32.572)
in the right location. So it's one product for all the patients, regardless of what their actual mutation is, and it puts the gene in the right location. And so it stays under its own regulation. Because if there's one thing I've learned over and over again, is that cells are these marvelous machines, and we really don't understand how they work. And so if you can keep that natural regulation there, it's the better solution.

Harsh Thakkar (12:34.226)
Hmm.

John Finn (13:02.268)
And so we put a healthy copy in the right location, stays under its own control. It's one product for all of the mutations and it grows with the patient as well because we are putting that gene in the right location. So that's essentially what we're doing at Tome, but it all started with our founders, Omar and Jonathan, asking the question, how do we put a large piece of DNA in a very specific location?

Harsh Thakkar (13:02.61)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (13:23.506)
Yep.

Harsh Thakkar (13:29.65)
And that's, yeah, that's a really great overview of the company. And I'm sure, you know, people will appreciate that. At least I do when I'm working with any client or employers in the past, I've always learned what they're doing, what their pipeline looks like, what kind of areas or technology they're targeting. So that was really interesting for me to learn, but it sounds like the paste that you mentioned.

that's the technology or research that was done to put the healthy copy in the right location? Is that correct?

John Finn (14:05.212)
So essentially, it's the ability to put any sequence of DNA of any size in any location. Now, that can be used for multiple things. One way that we're using it at home is to put healthy copies of genes in the right location. But we're also using it in another way, which is so same technology, completely different application, where we are using this for our cell therapy programs. And there, we're not.

Harsh Thakkar (14:10.834)
Okay, okay.

Harsh Thakkar (14:20.498)
Okay.

Harsh Thakkar (14:32.466)
Hmm.

John Finn (14:34.556)
putting healthy copies in the right location. There, we're using this ability to put large pieces of code wherever we want to make the most advanced cell engineered cell, sorry, the most advanced engineered cell therapies ever. Because now there's no restriction on what you can do. So now we can put in.

Harsh Thakkar (14:51.602)
I see.

John Finn (14:55.836)
logic gates and we can put in safety switches and we can put in all of these things that we would want to really make a best in class cell therapy. So same platform technology to completely separate applications.

Harsh Thakkar (15:05.266)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (15:11.698)
I see. And what does the paste acronym, what does that stand for?

John Finn (15:16.316)
Yeah, so paste at the original pace what? Sends for.

John Finn (15:29.532)
programmable.

John Finn (15:36.284)
addition.

Site site site site site site specific

John Finn (15:52.796)
targeting.

John Finn (16:01.564)
We've actually, over the past almost three years at Tome, we've actually taken that foundational technology that worked in cells in a dish. We've had to innovate on it a lot in order to turn it into medicine. And so now we've actually renamed this Integrase -i -mediated PGI programmable genomic integration. So IPGI. But

Harsh Thakkar (16:03.154)
Okay.

Harsh Thakkar (16:10.674)
Mm -hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (16:30.578)
Hmm.

John Finn (16:30.972)
It's the same idea. It's the ability. It's using an intergraze, which for people that might not know, intergrazes are, they're found in nature. They're found in E. coli. They're found in phages. They're found in a lot of different species where they, their one function is basically to move large pieces of DNA around in a site specific.

Harsh Thakkar (16:56.977)
Mm -hmm.

John Finn (16:58.908)
And so we're harnessing that ability that nature has already kind of invented and we're applying it in a way where we can now direct where those pieces of DNA go. It's really, it's a very elegant solution to a very hard problem.

Harsh Thakkar (17:04.914)
Yep.

Harsh Thakkar (17:18.258)
Okay, great. Yeah, actually you answered my next question that I had as you were talking. I was going to ask you about PGI because when I looked at Tom's website, I saw that, you know, the main line is that you are a, Tom is a programmable genomic integration company, but you already answered that question. So I want to go on a different angle there and ask you like,

John Finn (17:39.324)
Mm -hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (17:45.938)
when you look at Tome's technology platform and you know, PGI, how like, what is it that sets Tome apart from, sorry, excuse me, Tome apart from other genomic medicine companies that maybe have slightly different variation of providing cures?

John Finn (18:06.268)
Yeah. So, I mean, as I kind of mentioned earlier, almost all the other companies are based on either knocking out things or small edits. One base changes, two base changes, that kind of thing. There's almost no one who's actually doing large gene insertion. And the only other technologies that are out there that are really...

Harsh Thakkar (18:14.738)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (18:20.882)
Yep.

John Finn (18:36.316)
If you look at who's doing large gene insertion, there's one group of technology which is randomly integrating it. We're not doing that. We think where you put the gene matters. And so that's why the P in KGI really stands for programmability. We really think it matters where it goes. And then I think...

Harsh Thakkar (18:44.786)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (18:52.178)
Yep.

John Finn (19:05.788)
Some other features that our technology has that I don't think anyone else has right now is that we are, we have no restriction on size of DNA. But as long as you can deliver that piece of DNA to the cell, we can integrate it. So we have already shown in primary human hepatocytes, human liver cells in a dish, we can put over 30 ,000 bases worth of

Harsh Thakkar (19:15.826)
Hmm.

John Finn (19:33.82)
code in a very specific location. There's no one that's ever been able to show that. And every insertion is going in the right direction. And because when we're doing this, we're not dependent on making a break in the actual DNA, it means we can also multiplex. We can actually put multiple pieces or make multiple edits at the same time. So it's hard.

Harsh Thakkar (19:59.858)
Yep.

John Finn (20:01.052)
to compare with other companies because there is, there really aren't other companies that have a technology that's as versatile as what we have right now. And of course I am 100 % biased, but as I said, I've also worked in the field for a long time, so I have a pretty good handle on what's out there.

Harsh Thakkar (20:15.57)
Yes.

Harsh Thakkar (20:22.578)
Yeah, and again, this is probably because I'm not in this field or not as well -versed with all the scientific advancements, but there's another, like I read some article where there was a discussion between PACE, which is the technology that you mentioned earlier, and PASAGE, which is a different. So if you had to just high -level summarize what's the key difference between the two?

John Finn (20:52.508)
Yeah, so I actually wrote an op -ed recently because I was getting this...

question. So if you're interested, you can look online for it. I go into all glory detail, but essentially, pace and passage, there's no difference. They are the same technology. They were actually first published publicly one day apart. And so two different groups came up with the same idea at the same time. The difference, though, is that Tome is the only company that has spent

Harsh Thakkar (21:04.146)
Sure.

Harsh Thakkar (21:09.17)
Hmm.

John Finn (21:30.396)
years and a lot of money turning that foundational idea into medicine. And I'm just going to say it's been harder than I thought, Harsh. Honestly, I thought, I thought we ran into a lot of unexpected and unwelcome biology that we had to overcome. It definitely wasn't as simple as I had first thought, but this is something we showed in May, actually last month. We've reached the point now.

Harsh Thakkar (21:37.138)
I see. Yep.

Harsh Thakkar (21:47.794)
Yep.

John Finn (22:00.188)
where we have been able to achieve curative levels of PGI in non -human primates.

Harsh Thakkar (22:07.922)
Hmm.

John Finn (22:09.596)
I haven't seen any other group achieve curative levels in a relevant cell in a dish. Think of the gap between cells in a dish to a living monkey. That's what Tom has done. And so even though, yes, their pace and passage, that foundational work, you know, is the same.

Harsh Thakkar (22:22.61)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (22:31.89)
Hmm.

John Finn (22:38.972)
There's a lot of innovation that was required to go from that foundational work to where we are today. And actually, if your audience actually looks me up online, most of my online pictures, I've got a big gray beard. And I told my team, I said, listen, if you can show me a monkey where if that monkey was a human, we just cured them.

Harsh Thakkar (22:45.586)
Yep.

Harsh Thakkar (22:58.93)
Mm -hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (23:08.69)
Hmm.

John Finn (23:09.18)
shaved it about two months ago now. And you know, I like having it off. My wife likes it off as well. My kids don't really. But anyway, I did it because it was a major milestone, not only for Tom, but I think personally for the field.

Harsh Thakkar (23:17.606)
Yep.

Harsh Thakkar (23:26.642)
That's, yeah, I at least love this kind of backstory on, yeah, usually it's when you lose a bet or something related, but this was a very powerful reasoning behind, you know, shaving your beard. So yeah, that's interesting. I wanted to ask you, so obviously this milestone was huge for you personally and for, you know, the vision of the company.

John Finn (23:36.444)
You

Harsh Thakkar (23:54.514)
So what's next? I mean, you talked about going from DISH to testing it in monkeys. What's the next big milestone that you are running towards?

John Finn (24:05.276)
Absolutely. So actually we have a couple, a couple of milestones we're working on because that's just talking about the in vivo gene therapy side where a patient has a broken gene. We put the, put the right copy in the right location. So whole another side of Tome where we are making the most advanced cell therapy for the autoimmune population. And that's, we have not even talked about that yet. And I know we won't have time, but that, that has the opportunity to really,

Harsh Thakkar (24:12.754)
Right, right.

Harsh Thakkar (24:26.386)
Hmm.

John Finn (24:34.62)
address a huge

patient population where the whole point of this drug that we're making is to be able to safely reset a person's antibody responses. So if a patient has some indication where their antibodies have gone wrong, autoimmunity, I think most of us know someone that's affected by it in some way, either in a large way, lupus, MS, but there's other...

other, you know, less known, known.

John Finn (25:21.244)
diseases out there, right, but they all have the same causative factor. The immune response has gone wrong. It's recognizing something that it shouldn't. We have the ability now and our cell therapy drug is made to actually reset a person's immune system completely in a safe way. And so when you ask about what's next, our next milestones, our next milestones are moving

Harsh Thakkar (25:39.826)
Mm.

John Finn (25:49.756)
those two different sides of tone, the cell therapy and the in vivo gene therapy to DC nomination as fast as we can. Now,

Harsh Thakkar (26:00.882)
Yep.

John Finn (26:02.94)
What does that mean? It's essentially locking in exactly what the drug looks like. And that is the first or the next step on the road to actually the I and D enabling studies, which is basically all the work, work, safety studies, scale up in the manufacturing that we will need to show the FDA, you know, to say we think we have something here that is safe.

Harsh Thakkar (26:09.778)
Yep.

John Finn (26:33.596)
And effective. And so that's what we're doing. And we are moving as quickly as we possibly can on that. Because in my view, patients are waiting. And I just want to highlight, this is different than almost every other drug out there, because we're not talking about a chronic dose, even when we're talking about cures. And so I really, I can't wait actually to see what's next.

Harsh Thakkar (26:36.818)
Yep.

Harsh Thakkar (26:47.57)
Mm -hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (26:56.786)
Yes.

Harsh Thakkar (27:03.314)
Yeah, and you mentioned a lot of the things that are very critical and important milestones, like getting all that data ready and having the designation from the agency and also scale up and manufacturing. Maybe it's too early to ask or maybe it's not, but when you think about what's coming, do you anticipate any challenges maybe in manufacturing or in clinical trials?

just given the nature and nature of the platform and that your company is the only unique one. So you can't, you don't really have data from other companies. You know what I mean? Like to search and see, do you anticipate any challenges that potentially could come your way?

John Finn (27:52.444)
So there are always going to be challenges, but we've tried to minimize a lot of the risks we're taking. For instance, for our in vivo gene therapy program for PKU, that's our lead indication. We will be working with two different delivery systems that are not really new though. So one, a lipid nanoparticle.

Harsh Thakkar (27:53.874)
Yeah.

Harsh Thakkar (27:57.554)
Yeah.

Harsh Thakkar (28:01.714)
Mm.

Harsh Thakkar (28:15.57)
Mm -hmm.

John Finn (28:21.756)
that has message RNA and has guides and all of the machinery will all be delivered as a L &P. Ours will be slightly different than others, but it's something that the agency has already seen before. And we've already seen that part is safe in humans. And then for the actual healthy copy of the gene, we'll have to use a alternate delivery system, AAV, again.

This is something that the agency has seen. It's been dosing to thousands of patients right now, and it's safe. And so that part, actually, we're less concerned about. I think one of the major areas we've been focusing right now is we will be the first company that's bringing an integrase -based drug into humans. And so we have spent a lot of time focusing on the safety of the integrase.

off target methods, on target methods, specificity, et cetera. And so this is where we spend time. We have people at Tome that have already done this with other editing drugs like CRISPR. And so we know what the path is and really that's what we've been spending a lot of time in. So is it a challenge? Absolutely. But I really, I think we've been able to learn from...

experiences at a time, whether it's my own experience with Intellia, whether it's with others in the field. And so we're trying to minimize those unknowns and those risks.

Harsh Thakkar (29:57.81)
Yep, okay. And it's, you know, it's obviously you can't predict the future, but it just sounds like in your spot, because you're working with such a unique platform and unique technology, it is definitely difficult because you only have maybe, you don't have other companies who are doing it that you can lean upon. So yeah, I wish you all the best as you're heading towards that journey because...

Everything, you know, right now it's more like preclinical, but when you go towards clinical and commercial, I'm sure the complexity of what you're working on is going to, you know, take a level up, but I'm confident that your team has all the right tools and resources to, you know, cope up with that.

John Finn (30:46.236)
Great, thank you. Yeah, I mean, this really is a team effort and we've really made sure that we've hired the right people at the right time. And so even though I think it will be a lot of work, I'm very optimistic about it. And as I said, I can't wait to see what happens next because I really believe that this ability, again, it's a simple thing. If people ask me, what do you do at Tome? It's easy, we put a large piece of DNA.

Harsh Thakkar (30:47.058)
Yep.

John Finn (31:15.516)
in a very specific location. Then the question becomes, so what do you do with it? It's like, well, what don't you do with it? We can fix broken genes. We can engineer cells. And there's a lot of other applications that we're not even actually talking about just yet. So I think it's very exciting. I think this is what I've been trying to do, as I said, for over 25 years now. And so yeah, it's exciting time.

Harsh Thakkar (31:30.194)
Yes.

Yep.

Harsh Thakkar (31:44.274)
Yeah. No, I definitely appreciate, you know, when I have guests on the show who are maybe when you, when I read your bio, I'm like, okay, what is John doing? I have no idea what Tom's doing, but then people like you come on the show and simplify and basically explain it in like one sentence. Hey, this is what we do. And, you know, I, I personally just love that sort of explanation because it basically helps me like connect the dots and.

understand what you're doing. So thank you for doing that. And you mentioned having the right team, having the right resources and people. Tome is not only active in just getting the talent, but I've also seen from some of the research I did here with the news updates that Tome acquired another company shortly after the acquisition. Was it replace therapeutics? Do you want to talk a little bit about what went on?

before they made that decision.

John Finn (32:43.452)
I'd love to. Yeah. So the acquisition of replaced therapeutics was, I think it caught some people by surprise, but in turn I told them it totally made sense. And...

Harsh Thakkar (32:50.738)
Yep.

John Finn (32:55.676)
I don't want to get into too many details because it gets pretty nuanced pretty quickly. But one of the ways our technology works is we first have to write the integrase landing site. This is what we call the beacon. It's basically, it's a target site in the genome that says, this is where we want that big gene go. That is about 40 to 50 bases or so. So it's small.

Harsh Thakkar (32:58.034)
short.

Harsh Thakkar (33:18.45)
Hmm.

John Finn (33:27.804)
When we tried writing that beacon in cells, it was a lot harder than we thought. And as I said, up until now, anyone that's writing is small pieces, one base, two bases, three bases. No one's had to write 40 to 50 bases. And when we were using standard technology, it just didn't work for us. So we had to innovate around it and innovate. One of the...

Harsh Thakkar (33:35.442)
Hmm.

John Finn (33:56.124)
reasons why we acquired replace therapeutics is because they had invented a novel way of making small edits. Now what I mean by small, I mean a couple hundred bases and smaller. So of course we're not going to, we can't use this to replace entire genes. But essentially, if there is an application where we don't need thousands of bases, where we only need hundreds or even tens of bases, now we can use this technology.

Harsh Thakkar (34:04.946)
Mmm.

Harsh Thakkar (34:13.234)
Yep.

John Finn (34:26.012)
that is more efficient than anything I've ever seen. And it solves a key issue we were having with the other technology. So essentially, what this now means is that we can do anything from a single base change to hundreds of bases to thousands of bases. And so it means that Tome can now tailor the medicine for the patient. So maybe the patient doesn't need a whole new gene.

Harsh Thakkar (34:26.674)
I see.

Harsh Thakkar (34:43.602)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (34:48.818)
I see.

John Finn (34:53.308)
Maybe it's just one exon, and that exon is 200 bases. And maybe we just replaced that. Is this a simpler way? Is it an alternate way where we can more efficiently do those large insertions? It's still early days. We just acquired them about six months ago. So we're still optimizing that technology. But that was the rationale for it. It solved the key problem that we had identified. And it expands the range of edits we can make.

Harsh Thakkar (35:08.849)
Sure, sure.

Harsh Thakkar (35:21.586)
Yeah, thank you for that background. It makes a lot of sense now once you explained how that basically fits right into your platform and makes it more versatile for all types of use cases. So you mentioned at the top of the episode that you've spent 25 plus years in gene delivery, gene editing, you've done a lot of work at Intellia and before coming into Tome. So it's...

From talking to you in the past 30 minutes, I can sense the passion, I can sense how excited you are to be part of such a unique company like Tome. What is, like when you reflect upon it, what's like the most rewarding aspect of where you are today in your career?

John Finn (36:10.844)
most rewarding part has to be working with this team. And right from the start of Tome, I was talking with our CEO Rahul and we had not met yet. And so we actually had a blind date at the Burlington Mall. And I don't know if you know where that is, but we just, we walked around the mall, it was early and we talked about our lives, we talked about our vision for the company. And right at the end of that,

Harsh Thakkar (36:13.874)
Mm.

Harsh Thakkar (36:20.626)
Okay.

Harsh Thakkar (36:24.202)
Yes.

John Finn (36:39.356)
Rahul, our CEO, said, listen, this is going to take years. Even if we're incredibly successful and we don't hit any snags, it's going to take years. And he said, how we do this is as important as what we do. And it's important that we enjoy this journey. And that was exactly aligned with how I operate as well. And so we then.

Harsh Thakkar (36:57.106)
Hmm.

John Finn (37:08.828)
said basically, if you sign up, I'll sign up and I'll sign up and you sign up. And that was about three years ago now. And that mentality and that culture has totally shaped Tome. It shaped the way we work, who we've hired. And so that's the part I love the most.

Harsh Thakkar (37:16.53)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (37:22.546)
Yep.

John Finn (37:33.148)
And I think that's a part of the reason why we've made such remarkable progress in such a short time, in spite of the, as I mentioned, unwelcome issues with biology that we kind of walked into, we weren't expecting the fact that we've been able to keep things on track. It's a hundred percent due to the way we operate as a team. And that's, that's what I love most. It's the people and it's just, you know, it's the way that we operate.

Harsh Thakkar (37:59.762)
Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, that's, it's really great to, you know, have that relationship from day one with like the founding team. I can, it reminds me of a bunch of other examples where I've seen, I don't know exactly the name of tech companies, but I've seen at least some of, I don't know if it was Airbnb or I can't think of any, but I've read a bunch of articles where there's a Denny's, in Palo Alto or Redwood city.

And, you know, people have posted, like people who worked at Denny's have said, Hey, such and such tech CEO came with this other tech CEO at 3am and they were having pancakes discussing about a tech company, right? Like at Denny's at 3am. So like, and I know where Burlington mall is, cause I lived in Boston for four years. So, it's great to have that sort of relationship with people that are equally passionate about.

John Finn (38:43.868)
You think?

Harsh Thakkar (38:58.162)
like in this case, Rahul and all the other team that you have. So that's a great story there.

So I know we are up on time, almost up on time, but before I let you go, I want to ask you, what's a message maybe you want to give to either companies or executives or leaders who are on the verge of building a similar company like Tome or in this space, or maybe a professional who, like you've, we talked at the start of the episode, how did you deal with stutter?

Maybe another scientist who has not stuttered, but maybe some other challenge. What would be like your inspiring message to the listeners?

John Finn (39:45.756)
Well, one of the things I tell people who stutter is you don't have to wait until you're fluent to do the things you want to do. And I think that message should resonate with almost everyone. You're good enough today. And you have to find your own path.

Harsh Thakkar (39:55.922)
Mm.

John Finn (40:06.14)
And it's great to have mentors and to learn from people, but you need to do it your way. And you always need to speak and live your truth and your way will be different than anyone else's. And that's okay. That's something that took me time to learn is that I don't have to say things the same way other people do, or I don't have to do things the way other people do. I always have.

Harsh Thakkar (40:11.73)
Yes.

John Finn (40:34.94)
to stay true to myself. And so far that's worked. So I hope that's helpful.

Harsh Thakkar (40:42.994)
Yeah, and I know there's a phrase, I don't exactly know how it goes, but it's something like the best time to start was yesterday and the next best time is today, something along those lines. So yeah, if you really are, anybody who's listening, whether it's a career change or starting a business or any personal goals, whatever you have, once you start, you can always figure out.

just start slow and figure out, but waiting is really not good, because then you start second guessing and you don't end up starting and that's not really good. So, yeah, that's great advice. So we are up on time. I want to wrap this up. Before you drop off, can you share where people will add, obviously will add the articles that you mentioned in this show notes of the episode, but...

What other ways can people get in touch with you or learn more about Tome? Do you want to share any social media credentials?

John Finn (41:46.844)
I think you can look at our website, tom .bio. You can look me up on LinkedIn. I'm not super active on other things like X, et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, you can find a lot of the information on our website or on LinkedIn.

Harsh Thakkar (41:53.042)
sure.

Harsh Thakkar (42:15.762)
All right, we'll add that to the show notes and thank you again, John, for coming onto the show and love what you're doing at Tome and love the simplicity with which you explained such a complex and a unique topic that you're working on with your colleagues.

John Finn (42:32.796)
Well, thank you very much, Harsh. I love explaining what I'm doing. I really, I think, you know, I've got the best job in the world and, you know, I love talking about it. So thank you very much.

Harsh Thakkar (42:37.266)
Yeah.

Harsh Thakkar (42:43.346)
Yep, wish you and the entire team at home tons of success. Thank you.