And now for something completely different
A RApport Q&A
Eef Schimmelpennink is the CEO of LENZ Therapeutics.
September 9, 2021
LENZ Therapeutics CEO Eef Schimmelpennink has gained a reputation as an executive who can turn around a struggling business. He spoke with RApport about how last year’s acquisition of Pfenex by Ligand gave him a chance to seek out a new challenge, the benefits of breaking the mold, and helping 120 million Americans ditch their reading glasses.
RApport: You sold Pfenex last October. How soon were you pounding the pavement for a new role? How did you know what you were looking for?
I wasn't looking to sell the company, but when the right offer comes in, you sell the company. There were plenty of opportunities to do something similar, or on a larger scale. And that would have been the logical thing, to go and find the next biotech company, maybe a little bit bigger, and drive its next phase of growth. But I forced myself, helped by people close to me because it's not in my nature, to take some time to reflect and avoid a hasty decision.
When we closed our deal we were some seven months into Covid which I think actually helped me to speak to more people quicker. Everybody was working from home, but it had normalized. We were all used to Zoom calls by then. Reaching out to my network created a kind of snowballing effect. It started with my previous board and people that I knew from my biotech networks, then the banks, and within three months or so I did over 150, 160 individual meetings. People were very generous with both their time and sharing their thoughts and experiences.
I realized that I’ve shown that I can do turnarounds. I'd be confident going into that, and I would have fun building the right team and executing. But I also realized that I like change, too. That this was my opportunity to truly do something different. I've never built a company from the ground up. This is my chance to do that.
RApport: Did you have any preconceived notions of what that company would look like? Were you looking in ophthalmology specifically?
Once I knew what kind of challenge I wanted, I had to think through what kind of company it should be. The therapeutic area wasn’t a starting point but I did have very clear thoughts on three key characteristics that helped me to systematically judge every opportunity.
I wanted to build a company around an asset that was relatively late-stage, something that's three to five years from the market with the potential to IPO along the way. It had to be backed by strong VCs, so that I didn’t have to spend my first three or six months scrambling to get funding. And something that needed strong execution; that's where I like to play and that's where I can add quite a bit of value.
So as that started to crystallize, I spoke to quite a few VCs. I've got my Excel sheets and I can compare different opportunities. It’s not just a gut feeling that this one or another is better. It's all very methodical, and I sought the advice of a handful of trusted people. Ultimately LENZ came out as the right opportunity that met all the criteria.
RApport: Moving into an almost virtual-company environment must have been a cultural shift for you.
It's very different. It's one of the biggest changes for me. We’re literally a handful of people inside the company. The nice thing is that those people are so vested, from early in the morning to way too late at night you’re on the phone, thinking things through. You're all so close to it that things can go a million miles an hour.
In a big company you’re never this close to people seeing patients half of their time or with their feet in the market, that have done this for decades. At the same time, it can be challenging to manage CDMOs and CROs, make sure you’ve got their attention, and get them bought in. We're blessed with a very good set of people and companies around us, and I feel that we're getting what we need from them. It definitely requires a different style of leadership. If it's your own team, you can be a little bit more direct.
RApport: Your drug candidate, aceclidine, is for nearsightedness. How does it work and what’s the opportunity?
Presbyopia is the inevitable loss of near vision due to age and it impacts more than 120 million people in the U.S. and almost two billion people globally. Everybody gets it because as you age, the lens in your eye hardens and is no longer able to change its shape to focus on near objects. Currently the only available choices are reading glasses, which many patients find undesirable, or irreversible invasive surgical procedures that have inherent risks. As a result, there is high interest from patients in an effective and safe pharmaceutical option. Wouldn't it be great if you could put a simple eye drop in your eye in the morning to give you near vision throughout your workday?
The mode of action is well understood. Since the lens in the eye has hardened we have to create near vision focus through a surrogate mechanism without impacting distance vision. The way to do that is to shrink your pupil down, this blocks light rays that otherwise form a blurry image and creates a large depth of field; it’s an optical mechanism called a pinhole effect. There are a few molecules out there that do that, but the difficult part is to create a pinhole effect without creating other refractive errors and negative side effects in the eye.
RApport: How did the company come across aceclidine?
Aceclidine is used in Europe for glaucoma but wasn’t ever developed in the US. Six years ago a couple of really smart ophthalmologists realized that it had potential in presbyopia, if formulated in the right way.
Drugs to treat presbyopia can trigger two effects. One is the effect that you want, shrinking down your pupil by contracting the iris sphincter muscle. The other is the effect that you want to avoid, which is triggering what's called the ciliary muscle, the muscle that tries to accommodate your lens. If you trigger that, it does two things: it gives you a headache, and it worsens your distance vision. So now you've got people that can read up close, but have a pounding headache and can no longer drive home because they can't see the street signs. So that's what you want to avoid.
Independent data has shown that aceclidine very clearly separates those two, much better than the other class of drugs out there. And that's what's been shown in our clinical studies, that's why everybody's so excited and why our product could be best-in-class.
RApport: When does your pivotal trial start and how does the competitive landscape look?
Besides the 120 million current presbyopes in the US the market grows by 1.4 million people each year. Outside the US this is obviously a multiple. This could be a $5-6 billion market, which is why all the big players are looking at how they can be part of this. Currently there are about 6-7 products in development with the majority around the same generic active moiety, unlike LENZ that has its own unique new chemical entity. We feel that our product is uniquely positioned to work for longer, with fewer side effects, and for every presbyope, young or old.
We've not disclosed timelines yet but are confident that we can be a leader in this category. Our $47 million Series A from Versant and RA enables us to complete a significant part of our development work.
And I think it will be straightforward to convince people to try it. Once this is approved in the doctor's office, from a commercial point of view, physicians can give out samples. Take three or four single use containers to go home and try, and if you like them, you can switch from your readers, or from another product that might already be on the market. We believe that it works within 15 minutes.
The commercial play was a decisive factor for me; it’s very different and so much more fun than some other opportunities. As a leader this is going to be fun to think through how to bring to the market.
RApport: You mentioned it’s a small team. How are you growing the company?
Like any company at this stage we are growing quickly but also are making sure that we bring in the right people at the right time. Which includes building out our clinical and financial function and after that our commercial team. We've got the manufacturing piece filled. Commercially, we feel like this is a product that we want to be able to sell ourselves in the US, so we will plan to build a commercial infrastructure in the US, but that’s a bit further out. We see it as a licensing play ex-US, and that's how I've done it with many products over the years, so we have internal experience on the business development side.
RApport: There aren’t a lot of biotech products that are in this self-pay space.
We spend money on our glasses and our contact lenses. Botox is another obvious comp, where people on an average income use the product. They’re willing to pay $300 a quarter. From a channel perspective, we are seeing strong consumer interest in easy-to-access lifestyle drugs and a willingness for self-pay. You can look at a web site like Roman [which markets ED therapy] as a potential model, where you click six buttons and you answer five questions and you can receive a script for sildenafil. That’s a model we need to understand better.
It’s going to be a scripted drug that you need to get to people. Today, I notice I need reading glasses so I buy a box of 10 on Amazon. How do you get me into an office to get a script? Maybe it's this Roman model, a website with healthcare professionals behind it. It’s super easy to figure out if somebody has presbyopia. You can go even further with a HelloFresh model or the razor model where every month, we'll drop your package on your doorstep. Then there’s the mix of a traditional DTC push, influencers, and endorsements.
RApport: Do you see LENZ as a single-asset company?
I look at aceclidine as a foundational asset, and our growth along three axes. One, what is it that we can do besides presbyopia with aceclidine in different therapeutic areas? Second, we're looking at what are our natural adjacencies, from a channel or from a knowledge perspective, that we can get into with a different product that we license or develop ourselves. Third is acquiring other companies, and this is how we would really build on our strengths as a team, bringing in assets out there that are struggling. Maybe Big Pharma can’t get them across the finish line. There are plenty of companies that cannot get the execution together.
RApport: Thanks for your time, Eef.