1. What do you do at Evergen?
I'm the Senior Director of R&D and currently oversee all the R&D work at two out of three of our facilities.My role in R&D is to start all the way at the beginning, working with the business development team and customers to understand their needs and help determine the requirements for what they're looking for. Afterwards, we form cross-functional teams, which develop the solution, taking it to launch, where we hand it off to operations. We see it through from start to finish.
2. Are there any emerging trends that you’ve observed in Evergen’s focus clinical segments?
For sports, orthopedics, and neuro, I think the regulatory world is changing. Things are becoming more complex. What we’re able to do now is offer more options, which is changing the nature of the conversations we’re having with customers.
We are seeing companies become more hyper-focused which presents interesting opportunities for us. Even for large companies that spin off divisions, it’s challenging to bring everything together because it's expensive, requires a lot of expertise, and the regulatory landscape is complex. These factors create unique opportunities for us to form new partnerships.
3. What inspired you to join the regenerative medicine/CDMO industry, and what keeps you motivated?
Even though I have a PhD, rather than an MD, I like that I can help people by developing solutions that physicians and patients can use. I've always really enjoyed that. I think the technical pieces, problem solving, and trying to create new things have always been an interest of mine. I've had various phases in my career connected to different tissue and technology platforms, but biomaterials are what got me most interested and what led me to Evergen a year and a half ago.
4. How do you work with customers to drive innovation in regenerative medicine?
R&D is there to help with the technical discussion to help our customers and partners better understand what their needs are and actively help shape their ideas. Oftentimes, companies think they know what they need, but they often don’t have the whole picture. As a trusted partner CDMO, we can help shape that discussion and really get them to where they need to go.
We have really strong partnerships with our business development team to understand the unmet needs of customers and have conversations about what problem they’re trying to solve. We’ll ask if they have any thoughts about how they would develop a solution, and then lay out the various nuances of different approaches and their implications.
Sometimes a project will face challenges, but we ensure customers are informed throughout the process, so there are never any surprises. This really builds trust and helps us to be agile where we need to be, for example, if there is a scope change or additional support is required. We hyperfocus on planning which helps us to better anticipate and mitigate challenges and keep projects on time and on budget.
At Evergen we have various platforms and allograft and xenograft biomaterials, and through a personalized approach we can find the right answer for our customers. We have options to deliver the best solution for our partners and customers.
5. What do you do in R&D that customers couldn’t do themselves?
There are a range of ways we support customers. For example, we engage in animal studies for various clients, which includes building relationships with the vendors and getting an understanding of how to design those studies. Some companies, especially smaller ones, don't have the expertise to design and execute such studies.
Elsewhere, we can get things at a cost or a scale that maybe other companies might not be able to. The regulatory aspect is also quite important, and we also have an intellectual property team that we can leverage, as often smaller companies don’t have this resource in-house.
On the operations side – there is a clear advantage to having the scale of a business like Evergen to provide specialist support. For example, on the human allograft side – it's a challenging business to get into. There is a very high hurdle to get the knowledge, build the trust, and build all those pieces that you need to be able to even operate in that space and most companies won't try. We do that well and already had that foundation through Evergen. We've now expanded into various platforms, providing a service that many companies simply can't do for themselves. Other CDMOs might specialize in one, maybe two platforms, but we've got three – therefore we offer a true breadth of biomaterial expertise that many companies aren't able to match.
6. How do you work with different teams across the business?
While R&D is our key player in the new product development process, we collaborate with business development, operations, packaging, regulatory, and all these other groups around us. We have a truly collaborative culture, which is one of the reasons I came to Evergen and am excited to stay. Evergen is just really a lot of good, talented people who like working together.
We have found that having the team together, building that camaraderie, and ensuring everyone is in the know pays off in bigger dividends because you're preventing project slowdown. We don’t have any silos within the company, I can reach out to anyone at any time about anything and everyone is very happy to participate in an agile and lean environment.
7. How big of a role does AI play in your R&D process?
We create ‘lessons learned’ documents for every project and let AI mine those documents for us to pull out insights. Having that automated helps us to continually improve our services, which is a big focus for us. We are also looking for other ways to use generative AI help to multiply the force of our group.
8. We always say everything at Evergen starts with the patient. What does that mean in your role?
It's easy to see this connection when we're talking to customers, as patient safety and outcomes are important to both our partners and physicians – who are both users in different ways. These conversations determine the requirements that we’re going to build that solution around.
As a CDMO, we don't see patients directly, but the patient connection is clear as their needs are central to what we do. Once solutions are launched, we look at the evidence of efficacy in published studies or clinical trials that are running. It is very gratifying to know that you were a part of helping patients get back to living their best lives.
At Evergen we have various platforms and allograft and xenograft biomaterials, and through a personalized approach we can find the right answer for our customers. We have options to deliver the best solution for our partners and customers.
As a CDMO, we don't see patients directly, but the patient connection is clear as their needs are central to what we do. Because we have various platforms and allograft and xenograft biomaterials, we have options to deliver the best solution for our partners and customers. Using our personalized approach, we can find the right answer for our customers. It is very gratifying to know that you were a part of helping patients get back to living their best lives.
