An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

Don’t worry about things you can’t control. It sounds simple but can be surprisingly difficult — especially when the world around you is going crazy. But having the discipline to block out the noise and concentrate on what is within your control is essential.

As a part of my series about “Big Ideas That Might Change the World in The Next Few Years” I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Joseph J. Sarret.

Dr. Joseph J. Sarret joined CohBar (NASDAQ: CWBR), a clinical stage biotechnology company focused on the research and development of mitochondria based therapeutics, an emerging class of drugs for the treatment of chronic and age-related diseases, as Chief Executive Officer and Director in May 2021.

From 2019 until 2021, Dr. Sarret worked as a consultant in the life science industry, focusing on business development and corporate development activities. From 2015 until 2019, he served as Chief Business Officer at Corium International, Inc. (formerly NASDAQ: CORI), a biopharmaceutical company developing and commercializing transdermal healthcare products.

Prior to Corium, Dr. Sarret served in senior leadership roles at Solazyme, Inc. (formerly NASDAQ: SZYM) and Sevident, Inc. From 2005 to 2012, he held several executive management roles, most recently serving as Chief Business Officer at Codexis, Inc. (NASDAQ: CDXS), a publicly traded life sciences company developing novel enzymes for a variety of applications. Earlier in his career, Dr. Sarret worked as a practicing clinician focused on patients with human immunodeficiency virus and an attorney specializing in IP transactional work in the life sciences industry.

He received a B.A. in human biology from Stanford University, an M.D. from the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you please tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

This wasn’t actually my first — or even second — planned career path. In fact, if you had spoken with me as I was graduating college and predicted I’d be running a biotech company, I would have said you were nuts! I started my career in medicine and when I completed medical school in the early ’90s, the HIV/AID epidemic was in full swing. After finishing my residency, I worked at a clinic devoted to treating HIV patients. At that time, HIV was the leading cause of death for all Americans aged 25 to 44, as there were no viable treatment options. By 1996, the FDA approved the first non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI) drug, nevirapine, and by 1997, the antiretroviral therapy (HAART) became the new standard of HIV care. Over the course of a few short years, I witnessed firsthand the extraordinary impact that these new medications had on transforming the lives of HIV patients, enabling them to lead long and productive lives.

As rewarding as that experience was, I personally found practicing medicine to be isolating. I missed the collegial interaction and sense of teamwork I had enjoyed during my training. This led to a lot of soul-searching and as I’d always been interested in intellectual property, I decided to go to law school. After graduating law school, I specialized in complex IP transactions at a leading law firm with an active life sciences practice. While the experience was very collegial and challenging, I realized I didn’t love being an outside consultant. The work was very engaging, but you are not in a decision-making role. That led me to pursue business roles within life sciences companies, which eventually led to my post at CohBar where my background as a physician and attorney provides me with unique insight on understanding biotech and the critical importance of intellectual property, as well as the science behind the innovations and the factors that lead to adoption of novel therapeutics by clinicians.

Can you please share with us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

After leaving the law firm, I joined Codexis, an enzyme engineering company that applies its technology platform to develop proteins for a variety of applications. While initially focused on the pharmaceutical industry, I led an effort to expand the use of our technology in the energy sector, culminating in a relationship with Shell. Big Oil had never worked with biotech and vice-versa so success required bridging two very disparate cultures, learning new terminologies and a lot of active listening. We put together a feasibility project that ultimately led to a huge collaboration and Shell’s major financial investment in Codexis, which literally transformed the company. I am new to my post at CohBar but am confident there will be many interesting stories to come as we continue to grow the company.

Which principles or philosophies have guided your life? Your career?

Don’t be afraid to make a change. Clearly, I have had a lot of different career changes and there was a lot of soul searching behind each one. Be true to yourself. If things are not working out, do something about it.

Don’t lose your humanity. Always be kind. You can be successful and still be a nice and caring person.

Ok thank you for that. Let’s now move to the main focus of our interview. Can you tell us about your company’s “Big Idea That Might Change the World”?

CohBar essentially created the category of mitochondria based therapeutics when CohBar’s founders, Dr. Pinchas Cohen and Dr. Nir Barzilai, discovered a class of peptides encoded within the mitochondria that affect metabolic regulation and protection. Drs. Cohen and Barzilai founded CohBar to build on their initial discovery.

The subsequent work by CohBar’s scientists to sequence and evaluate the mitochondrial genome has resulted in the discovery of over 100 peptides and over 1,000 peptide analogs. We then work to characterize the activity of these peptides, with the goal of developing them into therapeutic pharmaceutical products.

It turns out that many of these peptides are not acting directly on the mitochondria. Rather, they are secreted into the circulation, where they have important activities on diverse biological pathways, many of which are outside our initial focus on metabolic disease. This somewhat unexpected result is the real key to why this is such a powerful approach — CohBar is harnessing the power of the mitochondria and its billions of years of evolution to develop an emerging new class of potential drugs for the treatment of a wide range of chronic and age-related diseases.

By focusing on analogs of naturally occurring peptides, we expect our product candidates to have superior safety profiles, both substantially decreasing the development risk for our programs and providing patients and physicians with treatment options with fewer side effects.

Even though we’ve been at this for several years, we’re just scratching the surface of the full opportunity — the scope of potential applications is breathtaking.

How do you think this will change the world?

Through my experience working in an HIV clinic in the mid ’90s, I have seen firsthand how novel therapeutics with high efficacy and good safety profiles can impact the lives of patients in truly profound ways. I believe CohBar’s platform of mitochondria based therapeutics has the potential to do the same thing for patients suffering from a wide variety of chronic diseases.

For example, our lead compound, CB4211, is in the Phase 1b stage of a Phase 1a/1b clinical trial for nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), a leading cause of liver failure caused by a buildup of fat in the liver, and obesity. There are no currently approved drugs for NASH so there is a huge unmet need there. And more than one third of the US adult population is obese, so a positive outcome from our CB4211 program could provide significant help in reducing the obesity crisis.

Our second clinical candidate, CB5138–3, is initially targeting idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). This is a devastating interstitial lung disease that typically has an onset around retirement at age 65. These patients can rapidly lose lung function and the five-year survival rate is worse than many cancers. While there are two approved drugs that slow the progression of disease, both are poorly tolerated with significant gastrointestinal and/or skin issues. This is a good example where the expected favorable safety profile of our products could make a meaningful impact clinically. We plan to be in the clinic next year with this program.

We are also exploring whether our CB5138 Analogs could be used in other chronic fibrotic diseases such as systemic sclerosis. In addition to these programs, we have other preclinical programs targeting important conditions including acute respiratory distress syndrome and the more than 75% of cancers that overexpress the CXCR4 receptor.

As if that wasn’t enough, since mitochondrial dysfunction is one of the hallmarks of aging, we believe our mitochondria based therapeutics have the potential to impact an even wider range of chronic and age-related diseases, enabling people to live healthier longer.

Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this idea that people should think more deeply about?

It’s hard to identify a drawback from treating chronic disease and increasing healthy lifespan. The number of individuals over the age of 65 worldwide is projected to double to 1.5 billion by 2050. If our novel mitochondria based therapeutics can increase healthy lifespans for even some of those seniors, we believe that will result in profound positive effects on society.

Was there a “tipping point” that led CohBar to this idea? Can you tell us that story?

Dr. Nir Barzilai details the founding of CohBar in his book “Age Later.” In 2001, Dr. Hassy Cohen was studying the link of growth hormones in prostate cancer when he came across a protein, which he realized was consistent with a sequence in the mitochondria. Previously, it was not known that the mitochondria were producing peptides. This discovery led to an entirely new field of biology, with many academics around the world studying these peptides and their functions.

CohBar was founded to take advantage of this new field of biology to provide novel treatments for patients in need with the goal of treating chronic disease and increasing healthy life span. Interestingly, the company’s name CohBar is derived from combining the first three letters from the last names of Dr. Cohen and Dr. Barzilai.

What do you need to lead this idea to widespread adoption?

Given the enormous potential of our product candidates, we believe that widespread adoption will occur as we continue to develop our pipeline. Having said that, as a relatively small pre-revenue biotech company, additional resources would enable us to accelerate development and expand the scope of our pipeline.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)

  1. Don’t be afraid to ask what you think may be a ‘dumb’ question. It’s OK not to understand something — but if you don’t ask, you won’t learn.
  2. Focus is crucial. Focus is particularly important when you are working at a small company with limited resources. Don’t try to be everything for everyone, but prioritize and focus on the most important thing you have to accomplish that day, that week, that month, that year.
  3. Surround yourself with exceptional people. You will be challenged (in a good way) and learn more. At the end of the day, your team is one of the largest determinants of your ultimate success.
  4. Don’t worry about things you can’t control. It sounds simple but can be surprisingly difficult — especially when the world around you is going crazy. But having the discipline to block out the noise and concentrate on what is within your control is essential.
  5. Make sure to have fun! Life is precious. If you aren’t enjoying what you do, you’re probably doing the wrong thing.

Can you share with our readers what you think are the most important “success habits” or “success mindsets”?

It’s important not to be afraid of change. Many people get caught in a rut and they are reluctant to take a risk. Listen to that inner voice advising you to try something new — with change comes opportunity and the chance to learn, engage, and reinvent yourself.

Some very well-known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

Leveraging billions of years of evolution, CohBar is a clinical-stage biotech company with a unique technology platform targeting multiple disease areas with high unmet need. While all of our product candidates originate from the mitochondrial genome, each peptide family is structurally unique with distinct mechanisms of action, providing us with multiple truly independent opportunities for success. By treating a wide range of chronic and age-related diseases, we have the potential to enable people to live longer, healthier and more productive lives.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

We invite your readers to visit us on LinkedIn or Twitter and to sign up for alerts on our website.

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.


CohBar: Dr Joseph J. Sarret’s Big Idea That Might Change The World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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