 Boom, what's up, everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host, Alan Sakyan. Very exciting to be talking about revolutionizing molecular diagnostics. We have Franco Goizio joining us on the show. Hello, Franco. Hello. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for inviting me. We're very excited for this. And we also have Dr. Lewis Metzger joining us on the show as well. Hello, Lewis. Thank you. Thank you for coming on again. We just crushed it at our event, identifying and correcting perverse incentives. That was a super fun event. I'm happy you were in attendance. That's actually where we met. Yeah. And because we had interviewed the IndieBio batch 8 class, but we didn't get to you. And so now it's getting to happen. We're very excited to talk about this. So those are Dono Franco's background. He's co-founder and CEO of Casper Biotech, which is a CRISPR based company powering the next generation of diagnostics. And you can find the link in the bio that's caspr.bio, as well as all of his LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram profiles, as well as a profile to bio captivate your biosciences and Lewis's Twitter as well. So Franco, let's start things off with one of our favorite questions to ask our guests. What are your thoughts on the direction of our world? Well, that's a good question. I think, I mean, I'm excited for the direction of our world. I'm young. I'm 24 years old. So I try to measure like every 10 years to try to go back 10 years to see where I was when I was 14 and when I was four years old. I think that I changed a lot, obviously, because I grew up. I went through adolescence, a lot of things. But also how I saw the world change in those 20, 24 years. I'm super, super excited for the next 10, 20 and 50 years. So I think there's a lot of things happening. Everything is becoming exponential in terms of biology, technology, biotech. And in that sense, I'm very excited for what is to come for this world. And what do you think is a core principle or ethic that we need to all embody to make sure we prosper really well moving forward? I mean, I always, myself, I always try to be like, I'm really into things like very curious about stuff and curiosity has its good aspect. And also its negative aspect is always important to embrace like healthy curiosity and to try to remain vigilant about things that are going on. But obviously, taking into account the other and the people that surround us in those decisions that we make at a daily basis. And then what about your journey? You're born in Buenos Aires in Argentina. And then you as a kid growing up, how did you get interested in biotech? Who were you growing up? Tell us about that. The truth is, as a kid, I was never interested about biotech. I mean, that's I wasn't good, particularly good at science or biology or chemistry, whatever, in school. I kind of got into biotech at a relatively later stage. So I studied economics with a specialization in healthcare. So that was when I started to get the feel about healthcare and diagnostics and therapeutics. And in that sense, that was my first step into what today is my biotech profile. And what was it like growing up in Buenos Aires in Argentina? What is that like compared to, you know, the Silicon Valley culture now? I mean, I love my country, I love Argentina. I love Buenos Aires, obviously. As being a developing country, we have our economic risks and our terminals in socioeconomic terms. But in terms of the quality of life and the opportunities which I had given what my parents gave to me, I was very lucky in that sense. And I was able to enjoy a lot of the country and take risks at a very young age, that being a luxury and something that I am very, very grateful. But to which a lot of people within the country and within the world don't have that luxury of being capable of taking risks. And in that sense, I feel lucky and I want to give back to the world in terms of what we develop in Casper as technology and in other possibilities. And before we get there, I also want to show the case how cool it is that when you were studying economics at the University of San Andreas in Argentina, that you founded Ando, which is a B2B last mile logistic solution. And that was acquired. And you founded that when you were 21? Yeah, that's right. Very bad. I was in first second year of college. And there was a startup which saw the last mile logistics for e-commerce within the city and the country. I grew up from a team of just myself and doing the first deliveries in my own bike to a team of 10, 12 people. And in that sense, it was a very good experience for me showing what it was like to execute on a startup from leveraging the right team, the right investors, the right advisors towards fulfilling on that vision and executing. And then also that you participated in two really cool immersion programs. One of them, the US Department State Young Leaders Initiative, which brought 250 entrepreneurs from Latin America and the Caribbean for a one month immersion program in the US. And then also the Westerwell Foundation, which brought 25 entrepreneurs from emerging countries to come to Germany to connect with the European startup. I thought when you're teaching Lewis and I about this before the show started, I was like, this is very cool. It's a great way to bring people together from around the planet. But it's also like, we want to make sure that sometimes that you guys are also bringing your brilliance to home as well to help. Yeah. Yeah, I think they were two very different, but great experiences. Connecting with other 249 entrepreneurs from Latin America and the Caribbean here in the US in a fully immersive program and connecting with relevant players within the industry for each of those startups or each of those entrepreneurs was was a great personal experience. And in that sense, it was a program which was fully funded by the US Department of State. And it was an important decision to make from that side. And in my case, it played really nicely in terms of the opportunities which arise from that experience. The Westerwell was a similar program focusing on developing countries from all over the world. So bringing 25 entrepreneurs from all over the world to Germany for a one week program. And there we also got to to to connect with a lot of relevant people within the startup ecosystem of Europe. And those are connections which I I still have at a personal level one or two years after I love that. That's the slow but sure we're coming together as a planet through programs like that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a fan of those programs. I love that. Yeah. And then all right now for also for those that that are wondering, you know, okay, this is interesting, you know, Louis is on the show. And this is because a Louis is going to get into some of the deeper biotech stuff. And I'm going to act as the child here. So okay, now let's let's jump into a Casper biotech. So what is this? How did this come up? What was the story behind it? Teach us about it. Of course. So I started Casper biotech with my my co funding team of of three scientists that that belong to to the equivalent of the NIH in Argentina, which which would be cognizant. And they were kind of the pioneer group for CRISPR within Argentina and Latin America, leading in seminars and presentations. So they were very present within within the region. And they were using CRISPR for all kinds of of interesting things, such as radio cellular reprogramming, epigenetics, mostly working with with Cas9. And I came upon them and CRISPR and that first instance was fascinated about the technology and also about this this great group of people that were really open to sharing their insights and their experience with CRISPR that they had been working on for more than five or six years together, two of them being PhDs in CRISPR as a group. And and from from not only their their willingness to to share their experience, but also their their willingness to to to work together and to do something which in Argentina is kind of considered crazy, which is jumping from the academia, from basic research to having or executing a startup and making the technology that they've been researching about something with a concrete application. So that was kind of the head start of wanting to do something together. I had no idea, no background on CRISPR, on biotech. I had some minor background on healthcare. And in that sense, for me it was a learning from from the ground up of everything CRISPR related. And it was a great experience because I love to to be challenged and to face new information every day. But it was difficult, obviously. And in that sense, we we got together, we we saw about the possibilities that of what arise from from this technology and the potential of executing that from Argentina to the the world in general. And within the CRISPR diagnostic space, which was kind of just getting published with with with some recent papers from from both the UC Berkeley group and Broad Institute, was that we found a very interesting solution that was much needed within the region and within the world, obviously, for having better, more accessible, faster diagnostics. And in that sense, we focused and we said, okay, there's something here that we can do, we can execute and we can do well. And decided to to co-found CRISPR biotech. And we're lucky enough to to to be invested by by one of like an investment group, which comes from from the main pharma companies from from Argentina. Cool. So there we raised our first pre-seed round and that was about December of last year. And when we were just about to get started in Argentina, we got connected to IndieBio, which told us, hey, don't start in Argentina. Come here to the US, to San Francisco, and start here directly. So in January, February, we moved here. We ordered our first reagents here to IndieBio. And the promise or the premise of IndieBio was you move 10 times faster. And looking back to it, we really moved at least 10 times faster. I mean, we really felt that. Each week we were moving at a pace in which we couldn't previously imagine. And then, maybe I can get back to why was it that we were able to to move so fast with compared with a comparison to what we might have been able to achieve in these six months in Buenos Aires. But for us, it was the best decision we were possibly capable of doing. And yeah, being here in San Francisco, being in IndieBio was a game changer decision. And now walk us through, yeah, walk us through what's the problem in healthcare that you saw and then what does CASPER do to address it? Yeah, so the basic problem that we saw within healthcare is diagnostics. And diagnostics has a lot of variables which account to that problem. And those are, I mean, there's some components at a general level and some components which are region specific. So they're based on which part of the world you see it from. Oh, and that's actually the next. I think the next slide shows the one of the, this is a climate specifically that you can get a lot of insights from because things live in these extreme environments. That's the CRISPR side to what we see. But in terms of the diagnostics problem, the variables, the important variables are speed for result, the accessibility component in terms of both the costs. Speed for diagnostics. Yeah. Okay. Accessibility in terms of cost and most importantly in terms of where can we diagnose today, which is highly limited to in hospital or in lab diagnosis and the possibilities which arise from a technology such as CRISPR. Cost speed and location. Yeah. What are we diagnosing? I mean, today what I mean, today we're diagnosing for a lot of things. In CASPR, we're diagnosing using CRISPR, which obviously when people here and know about CRISPR, they mostly associated it to gene editing. And that was kind of the first described utility of CRISPR. And in that sense, it's a technology that within that field is said to change the world for all of us. The diagnostics activity of CRISPR or its utility comes from not CAS9 as the key enzyme, but rather another enzyme within the CRISPR world that was discovered some some years ago by the scientific community, which are CAS enzymes which have collateral activity. So, collateral activity. Yeah. CAS enzymes with collateral activity. With collateral activity. So they're very similar in some traits with CAS9. In the sense that they have this very specific, I mean, you configure them through a guide RNA, you have the same configuration towards a specific DNA sequence or RNA sequence, I mean acid sequence, that you want to detect or to identify. And in the case of CAS9 for gene editing, the CAS enzyme will find it, cut it, edit. And that's like the gene editing capability for diagnostics. The CAS enzyme will also, CAS12 will also find its target sequence, if it's present, cut it and after doing that first cut, it will kind of go crazy. And then we can show an animation. Yeah, let's do it. Okay. So let's show the next slide around. So this is the CAS12 enzyme. Yeah. Most people are familiar with the CAS9 enzyme. Yeah. Okay. And so this class of CAS enzymes have different applications. The CAS9 makes, identifies the sequence, makes an edit and then inserts. Yeah, that's right. New DNA. But CAS12 identifies cuts and then goes crazy, goes crazy. Basically, okay. And we have that video. But quickly, what teaches about this cat? What is this CAS family? What are we even so? So the premises CAS enzymes are present within nature itself in a defense system for bacteria and archaea against viruses. So that's how CRISPR was, is the original functionality of CRISPR in nature. Bacteria, bacteria defense system. Yeah. And we don't have that. We don't naturally have it. I mean, we kind of have, but there's, I mean, you could argue that there's CRISPR there. But that's how, I mean, that's where CRISPR was, it's originally from. What the scientific community recently discovered was that we could re-engineer CRISPR with our own configuration of an input of what we want to identify. So we would re-engineer CRISPR. And in that sense, what we found or an idea we had from a very early stage was that there have been some CAS enzymes described and found. So CAS 9, CAS 12, CAS 13, CAS 14. But there are many more CAS enzymes within nature to be discovered. So the focus of identifying those has been mostly around metagenomic data that has been published. So in NCBI or other databases. So we focused on finding or processing metagenomic data which was unpublished. And within unpublished data, we focused on data from extreme environments. So in that sense, it's not that we personally went, but rather we did partnership agreements of exclusivity with research groups in Argentina, in other countries of Latin America, from very precise locations. So Antarctica, Lanin Volcano, Hot Springs, very cool places, obviously. And we just processed their data from those research groups that found no value within that data. It was like, I have that data but I'm not using it for anything. I'm just maybe publishing some papers. And we processed it. And from there applying our own criteria, we found novel or candidate novel CRISPR CAS 9, CAS 12 enzymes. And that is an example of what we found, a novel CAS 12 enzyme, which as you see is novel in the sense that it has a very low percentage identity when compared to any other CRISPR CAS enzyme, but has the key catalytic amino acids which make it functional and make it belong to the CAS 12 family, for example. That is something that we found for now. And also we found the CAS 9. But there's still much more to be discovered in terms of other variants of CAS 12, CAS 9, as well as different systems which are there in nature and which we haven't found for now. So Franco, this really excites me because one of the theses that my colleagues and I have had for some time now is that one reason to preserve species diversity is also to preserve the genomic and genetic diversity of life that's evolved, because this very useful CAS enzyme evolved in conditions that are probably difficult or impossible to replicate. And so would you imagine that there are many other valuable enzymes of this class out there to be discovered? Yeah, definitely. I mean, there's much more to be discovered. And in that sense, when we were talking with these first groups that wanted to join our initiative, they were like, I mean, they were begging us, please find something here, because if you find something, I will be able to convince local authorities that there's value in this place and preserving its nature, rather than just making it site open to tourism or building or mining or having diverse commercial activities from that region. If you're able to show that there's value in preserving this nature and that we can help towards a better world, in our case, through better diagnostics, then I will be able to make a statement. And in that sense, one of the enzymes that we found was from one of these places in Argentina. And we're presenting this information to local authorities saying, hey, here you have this is a big deal. This will help the world. Whoa. So this is this is a positive example of bioprospecting in action. And that's really great that you're you're reconnecting with the local governments and showing them how there's this value that many people don't think about. In fact, most people don't know about. And as synthetic biology or biological engineering or whatever you want to call it grows as a field, we're going to discover more and more of this value so that we don't want to lose it before we we can find it and make use of it. Do you foresee Casper looking for more Cas9 or well, more Cas analogs in general? Yeah, I mean, that's that's an ongoing initiative in terms of striking more more deals with this kind of of institutions and even financing our own searches within within the region. So cool. And and and yeah, and also improving our criteria of what things to to consider as candidate CRISPR systems and they might not even be CRISPR systems, but just defend systems from from bacteria and archaea. I mean, there's there's a lot more to be discovered when once you open the scope of what you consider something interesting. And in that sense, that's something that we will be ramping up in in the next months. This is this is a great way to put it is that when you look at the timeline of like deep time of existence, there's so many things that we can still identify that have occurred in the last billions of years of evolution that can give us unique insights into how to best augment our health or how to best build more sustainable futures just in general for ourselves. It's so cool that you can go to these extreme environments and find it and you just wonder how many unique things are buried in our archaeology of evolution that have been undiscovered? And how hard where do we go to look for them? How hard do we like these search missions that you're putting on for biopreservation? And yeah, there's that was yeah, it was bioprospecting. That's a cool as cool word. Yeah. Well, and, you know, one important element of that, I think is that there is a feedback to local communities. So in your case, you are, you know, providing, you know, reason for the local governments to care about environmental preservation, and now are thinking about the potential value of these these enzyme variants that you're finding. Yeah. Also, building upon that. Tell me a bit about what types of diagnostics you're really excited about your beach head, and especially how that ties into Latin America. And should we show the video? Yeah, I mean, that will be great. Let's do that quick. And then we'll let's see. Okay. That's the next slide. The next video. And so this is what you're talking about with cast 12. It does it. Yeah, that's that's a cast enzyme, a cast enzyme configure a guide RNA, which is complementary to the DNA sequence of the target you want to identify. So the cast enzyme will search for the DNA sequence that was configured for. And if it finds it, it will cut it. And after doing this, this is very specific to cast 12. It will go crazy. Start cutting indiscriminately. So that collateral activity, we use by attaching the reporter system, which is a flora comana quencher, which are those QFs. And as the cast enzyme is cutting and was cutting like crazy, that system, I mean, those will generate fluorescence will generate an indication that the target pathogen infectious disease or genetic mutation was present in the sample. And this week configure it's kind of a platform in the sense that you can configure for any type of those targets. The input or the sample can be blood, saliva, urine, the possibilities are very vast. And most excitingly, this technology can be configured or can be established in diverse formats. So it's it's it's it's it can be applied within labs. So as a lab developed test in its most elementary form, just on a reagent basis of these three components, the cast, the guide and the reporter system, basically, in what what is a really disruptive format, which is in in a disposable point of care, like, diagnostics format. So so doing diagnostics, high precision diagnostics in places which it wasn't possible before increase per is enabling that kind of solution. So so those are the the the main formats in which this technology can can be integrated and can solve precise problems for diverse targets in each of those fields. And I mean, our focus as as as Casper is to to I mean, what we see as as the the main value proposition or the distinctive value proposition of this technology is it's accessibility component. So at the cost basis, compared to PCR, that has a strong advantage, which also takes longer. Yeah, I mean, within the it kind of takes longer because it's limited to to in lab diagnostics in lab diagnostics. Okay, but comparing for in lab diagnostics, the cost side, which is even more, more pronounced in developing countries, as everything has to be imported. And wow, the accessibility of doing diagnostics in places in which it wasn't possible before. So doing point of care diagnostics within hospital rooms or directly in pharmacies or direct to consumers for specific targets in what would be a lateral flow solution or a disposable card solution. And that is brought as a possibility solely from from the properties and the simplicity that CRISPR has. And what what was happening at the very end there, there's a reporting system. Yeah. So so this is this is with cast 12 specifically that enzyme. No, the reporting system is is like, generally known from from the scientific community of you bring the reporting system with the yeah, I mean, you you you you you input into the reaction or you preconfigure this reporting system that has fluorescence inhibited as a default. And once the cast enzyme is cutting, yeah, fluorescence is ignited. And that fluorescence that you get is for a positive detection of the target that you configured. If the fluorescence occurs if there's a positive detection, that's right in the diagnostic. Yeah. And so you can you're adding you but you add a reporting system into the cast enzyme as it goes to identify the certain segment of DNA. That's right. And then it makes the cut. And then the reporting system will fluoresce. That's right. If it's a positive detection for if there's no positive detection, there will be no cut and there will be hence no fluorescence. And also the amount of fluorescence that you get highly is highly correlated the amount of with the amount of target pathogen that you had interest within the sample. So in that sense, it's not only the text, but it also quantifies. Whoa. So yeah, so barely any brightness, not too much of the disease, a lot of brightness, you need to be treated fast. Yeah. And yeah, and sheep also for being able to ship into developing countries, all this type of stuff around the world, affordable, faster. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. And so how many other cool discoveries like this are there? Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, what's exciting about this is it's it's a really nice platform technology. And I think that that platform technologies in general are sometimes not are sometimes undervalued early in their life cycle until everyone realizes that they're useful. Give us some give us some examples of what most excites you about this platform going forward where there's some proof of concepts that really stood out in your mind when you did these initial experiments and you said to yourself, the team said to itself, Hey, this is something we really need to run with. This is going to work. Yeah. So what were some of those moments or applications? Yeah, I mean, there are various cases in which we see that on a regular basis, but a very interesting example that at the personal level that I really enjoyed or said, Hey, there's something here, we really have to make this happen. Was in a pilot we did with a hospital in the north of Argentina in Misiones, which is right next to Brazil, which is like a tropical area. So they suffered from tropical viruses and then get particularly. And this is a lab that has PCR equipment, but given the depreciation of the currency and the costing dollars of importing PCR reagents, they discontinued the use of PCR. So all of their diagnostics was based in the lab using Eliza. And in that sense, when we came with our pilot and show them the lab developed test format that of what they could do within the lab and the cost that that would have in the market, they were like very excited. And when we showed them the possibility which arise of a validation that we did with a lateral flow strip. So no equipment, no need for a centralized lab, just detect that diagnostics at point of care in just 30 minutes. They were thrilled. They almost started crying because this would change a lot the diagnostics and the following of detections of tropical viruses within the region to another level. And in that sense, they put all their effort and their samples and said, we want to help you guys doing this. This is something that can change the landscape for the region. And how does this work? So if you bring Casper to this tropical region and you want to help them detect dengue to the diagnostic, they take a blood or a saliva sample. And then what do they do with that? And then what is your array that came very quickly? We're developing two formats. And we already have results to show from that in the format that we already developed. One is the LDT format, which I spoke about. LDT. Yeah, lab developed test. Lab developed test. So this is just using the equipment that they already have, which is standard within laboratories to measure for fluorescence and instead of using PCR mix. So reagents for PCR, which have to be imported and which are already costly. They instead use the Casper CRISPR mix. So they would use our CRISPR mix within those equipment. And the work that would be proprietary CRISPR mix is when you deliver for these lab developed tests. Yeah. And that is the first solution in which I go to market. I mean, given the low regulation for lab developed tests and that you don't have to do approval from FDA or equivalent within those countries. That's something that in less than 12 months will enable us to generate traction and to already start setting a solution for them. And then the second format, which is kind of the one that really changes the workflow, not only at a cost side, but rather at an industry wide perspective is the point of care. So the lateral flow strip, which is not okay, I have to extract that from this patient and take it to the central laboratory where it will be running a batch format. And delays may happen and train people are required and electricity and all these variables which account for a higher cost, but rather is a direct from saliva or blood input into this lateral flow, so lateral flow kit and from there in less than 30 minutes, you get one indication. It's positive. I mean, based on the indication on the mark which appears, it's either positive or negative. And there's a semi quantitative component to that where you can kind of more or less see the load of that. And yeah, I mean, that is more, our time to market for that is a little bit further or a bit longer because you have to get that approved. And for now what we have of technology is capable of detecting for a single flex and that provides value for certain contexts, but the best solution if we're able to push the limit of the technology is a multiplex within this kind of point of care diagnostics. And that is what we want to bring to market when taking into account that lateral flow solution. Now, this really excites me because I spent some time thinking about multi drug resistant bacteria and all the different resistance markers that one might measure in those bacteria could be easily measured, I think by Casper's technology because you're probing for differences in the DNA and you can be very specific. So I can see applications of your multiplexed cutting technology as it were in antimicrobial resistance mapping and stewardship. But there's so many other possibilities. I know that you're interested in some functional genomics applications of your platform and I was wondering if you were going to maybe tell us about a few of those. Yeah, I mean, going back to the first point of what you mentioned with regards to antimicrobial resistance, we know of the relevance of this phenomena and that is really worrying for the world in what are the projections of estimated deaths or the burden that this will have over the world in the next 30 years by 2050. It's estimated that 10 million people could die about antimicrobial resistant related issues. And in that sense, we've already done validations for the main antimicrobial resistances such as KPC, NBM, OXA. And we want to bring that kind of solution to market. It's a complicated target as a whole in a complicated area, but it's definitely something that we will be pursuing in the next years. And in terms of applications in more broadly, just in functional genomics discovery for Casper's platform, do you have sort of thoughts around that enzyme discovery? Yeah, I mean, that is what we were talking previously that in the sense that we will be ramping up on our input or our processing of data from these precise environments that we look for. And can we bring up the fifth slide as well as the last slide we'll help too? And thanks, Mark. Also, it's a matter of us improving our criteria. And that is what enables us to, I mean, it's not that we just find Cas enzymes because it's fun for us or it's cool to have new Cas enzymes, but rather because those Cas enzymes can have key improvements on specific variables of stability, of performance, specificity in the diagnostic application that we want to take to market. And also in other fields in which maybe we preconfigure our search towards those enzymes that have this collateral activity or which are of specific interest for us. But the truth is you never know what will be the end functionality of something new that you discover. And in that sense, the options of it being applicable for other industries and other purposes beyond including gene editing but beyond just gene editing are also very high and it's a possibility of what we see in what we process. And we're not the only company that's looking for this kind of or has seen the value within finding or trying to find this kind of knowledge systems. And I think that it's great that a lot of people go out there and try to process with different criteria and to find their own novel systems to use within specific industries. You know, changing gears a little bit. You have a really, you've had a special experience in that you were not initially trained as a scientist, but you're becoming one, have become one. And you've had a foot in both the scientific startup world and community in Latin America and now in the U.S. And I was curious, you know, what do you, how would you compare and contrast those two environments? And, you know, what does Latin America do better than us? And what's easier here? I'm just curious what your experiences have taught you. Yeah, I mean, I'm really new within science as the category, but most of what I got to know about Argentina and Latin America as a scientific community comes from the experience of microfounders, one of them, Federico, that has a trajectory of more than 15 years within science in Argentina and Latin America. And in that sense, there's like very interesting and positive side of the community. And there's obviously some disadvantages or the downside of the region. For example, with regards to the downside, there's the need for importing most of the reagents and the time that it takes in terms of waiting. One can wait two or three months for a reagent to arrive when you compare with the timing here in the U.S., which is about two days in less than two days you can receive your reagents. That is crazy. And for a startup, that's even more crazy and even more difficult. That as an example and also the changing currency and depreciation of the local currency when buying things from abroad. On the positive side, you have this... I mean, the funding for science, at least in Argentina from CONSET, is really limited. So scientists within the country they have to find their way around those limitations. They don't have the luxury of being capable of ordering everything and having those arrive in two days or in a week. But rather have to be very strategic about their pipeline of what they want to do within the next six months, the next 12 months. And in that sense, I feel and I see that there's this spirit of making things happen beyond just the limitation of resources. And in that sense, I mean, it's a real limitation of resources in the sense that my co-founders could do research. Their budget for research for one year could be less than $10,000. So that's really difficult. And I mean, that even more like then going from those conditions and all the expertise that they have from there and transferring that to being, I mean, like playing in the Camp Nou, which would be like playing in the best pitch in the world and having to execute here against maybe people that have graduated from top universities or have had PhDs in top universities. We really work hard and are able to execute and to prove that there's very good resources and knowledge within Latin America, within Argentina, on the science side and that being in the correct conditions enables us to achieve great things. And that's what I've seen from my co-founders and what also the IndieBio team and a lot of people which followed us in the six months mentioned about us that we really perform fast and that's not like a coincidence in the sense that I would see my co-founders leave the lab at three or four in the morning with some frustrated results about things that went wrong and then waking up the next day at seven in the morning and doing it all over again. So in that sense, we're a good team. There's a lot of potentially from Argentina, from Latin America in the science side and also, I mean, it's knowledge and resources that are capable of coping with this limitation. So our product and our science headquarters will all be in Argentina and we try to leverage and to improve within the local scientific community and we find that it's very strategic because there are great resources and the average wage for those kinds of resources that we need within our team can be up to five X cheaper than when you compare with an average salary here in the US for that kind of position. So when, during the program, being here at week two, when we said, okay, we have to hire a bioinformatic which was like our first external hire, we searched for people here within the US and I mean, not to be rude but the average salary which we saw was kind of surprised and we kind of got scared. Oh, this is very expensive. Like this pays for all of our four salaries just by hiring this new person and there were interesting profiles but no one that stood up and in that sense, we decided to contact people from Argentina. We got a reference from someone that we didn't even know but was just the kind of person that we needed in terms of commitment, in terms of his previous experience and we offered him to come live with us for the next three, four months, be a part of our team during the IndieBio phase and that was like the key hire of our team, our only hire but the key hire and he proved to be a great person within the team which really adapt and also for our future, he's now a full-time person within the team and we lived in this house, like the five of us for the four months so we almost killed each other but then came along and became very close friends and team members so in that sense, there's this two-sided part of science within limited resources countries and science within the US or other reference countries in the world. It speaks to the network effect too that the powers that gain the most at the very beginning are likely to play their own hand, deal to themselves more later on and figure out how exactly to build moats around themselves to protect others or to protect their own resources but how can that's such an important aspect of what we care about talking about and what we did our panel on is how to figure out how to help bring the world closer together with all of these opportunities and providing people an abundance of options for them to figure out what is the child's North Star, how can they go and pursue it themselves is something that we care about so deeply and that we want to help spread that meme and spread those opportunities around the world, make it easier for people to actualize and bring their unique gifts to the world. Yeah, that's a big picture stuff that we care about a lot. Yeah, yeah. Louis, do you have another question that you wanna ask? I have one other thing I wanna ask. Okay, just on the data side of things, it just seems like the future of where we're going is me just having a constant stream of my biometrics just input it into a computer that's just processing the stream of data and then just being like, hey, your stool sample or your heart rate variability or X, Y, Z, whatever, you're at risk for this type of brain malfunction, like you should consider doing this exercise or eating this way, you're sleeping a little bit more, blah, blah, blah. It's just like endless, right? So is that what you see as like this future of biotech? I mean, data will just keep on flooding us and it will be a lot around healthcare and personal healthcare oriented metrics. For now it's something good for us. It might reach a level in which so much data at a constant pace or at a constant feed for us becomes too much data and kind of becomes unproductive or unhealthy for one's mental health of seeing at a minute by minute basis how each one's decision in terms of what you eat or whatever you do in terms of your body. Instantly knowing that you've got one of your fires. Yeah, might affect your projected lifespan and seeing how that increases or decreases like in a minute basis. Obviously that's very scary and that would be totally, I mean, I wouldn't like that. Maybe some people would like to see that and would like to see how that increases or decreases over time. I think that's something that we'll see how the industry evolves and how is it that that information is incorporated into the decision-making process and obviously one self has to have the capability of deciding over its own health and knowing that information but also at some instances, it's always good to have the intermediate position of a professional or a doctor that can incorporate that information and deliver to the patient on dedicated subjects most importantly. So in that sense, that articulation or that mid-step will also have to continue being there and it won't be just all my information for myself but there always has to be an informed or a professional within for some indications or for some diseases. And yeah, it just seems like this is going to be part of this discovery process. So how are we going to be discovering the right aspects of this biotech archeology and applying it for diagnostics, applying it for all different aspects of our healthcare, for agriculture, for all different types of things. It's just a very interesting part of this biotech explosion that's happening. So yeah, I mean, at least in the precision molecular detection field, this is something that goes way beyond just healthcare diagnostics and extends to an industrial level to food safety, to farming, to agriculture and those are all industries in which there's already a detection or diagnostics component within them but it's highly limited to labs. And in that sense, taking the detection to the field can really improve on those industries in terms of their response or their detection to pathogens, to fungi, to different kinds of things that might pose a risk to a population in general. And obviously responses in terms of biosecurity to bioterrorism or other kinds of initiatives that there's already some really important people within the industry that are scared of how that might play at a worldwide basis over the next 10 or 20 years and having access to rapid adjustable, adaptable detection systems is something that we really have to push and develop as there will be a timing in which that will be a problem and we have to have some kind of response prepared to that. I mean that's- A rapid adjustable detection systems, yeah, whoa. And I mean, one thing that excites me too is that these are semi-quantitative and so that's really exciting too. So if you're thinking of looking at a microbiota of something, you could even do a semi-quantitative census with say a future multiplex product that you might make. So that's really exciting because right now we often say, well, species X is here, it's not here but it would be nice to know that you can begin to look at relative abundance. Really exciting. Yeah, yeah. So it's not just yes or no and the diagnostic is also a quantitative amount of how much that's in the future type thing. Okay. Okay, just a couple of quick questions on the way out. Are we in a simulation? That's kind of, I mean, I don't know. Just do it in a question mark. Question mark. I don't want to condition my simulation. In any direction, I should leave it open for all the future possibilities. And then what's the most beautiful thing in the world? The most beautiful, I mean, I would take it to a very biased, for me the most beautiful thing in the world because I was born in Argentina and I'm a huge fan of football, which you call soccer, but football. I heard you reference Camp Nou, the pitch. Yeah, I mean, for me the most beautiful thing in the world is La Boneta Stadium in Argentina, which is the soccer stadium of Boca Juniors. Yeah. The stadium of which team? Of Boca Juniors. Boca Juniors, interesting. That's, I mean, I kind of being here in the U.S. one of the things that I miss the most was going to the Boca Juniors stadium. So that's why you might find me in a melancholy moment. That's why I tended towards a physical construction as the most beautiful thing in the world. But it's a marvelous, it's called the temple for the people that know it. Oh, it's called the temple, cool. Because it's a mystical component. Yeah, you play soccer. Yeah, me too, I love football so much, so much. Cool. Wow, good stuff guys. This has been awesome. I've had a lot of fun talking about this with you. Thank you for coming on front, but thank you very much. We really appreciate it. Sure, it was great to have the chance to speak, to be part of simulation and look forward to catching up with you guys in some time with the updates of how Casper has evolving and what we're doing. Yeah, solving some of the most pressing things around the planet. Good job, good job, but thank you very much. Thank you, very interesting. Louis, it's always nice to have you on as well. Thanks everyone for tuning in. We greatly appreciate it. Love to hear your thoughts in the comments below on the episode. Revolutionizing molecular diagnosis, talk more about this with your friends, families, coworkers, people around the world on social media. Get talking more about this next generation of diagnostics. And also check out the links in the bio to Casper Bio as well as check out Franco's other profile links, check out Bio Captivate and Louis's other links as well. And also support the artist entrepreneurs, the spiritual leaders, the organizations around the world that you believe in. Support them, help them grow. Simulations links are in the bio below or at Patreon, Cryptocurrency, PayPal. Our design code where it should get paid link. Go and support us. Thank you to Ron Vargas for producing and directing and greatly appreciate it. And go and build the future everyone. Manifest your dreams into the world. We love you very much. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you soon. Peace.