You're going to see in the future little babies who have been diagnosed with ...
being treated to reverse the disorder. They're also looking at even prenatal.
“So Molly McLaughlin is a visionary mission-driven biotech leader in the CEO of Revolution”
Biomanufacturing Incorporated. Drawing from her background in military leadership, biotechnology, and advanced manufacturing, she is helping shape the future of personalized medicine through innovative MRNA solutions, focused on speed, precision, and patient impact. We are really focusing now into manufacturing personalized medicines for people who have
cancer, who, with chemotherapy, hasn't, hasn't or so they're at end of life, and this is their chance to, to possibly find a cure for their cancer. What will you learn about your hardcore science as an individual on this planet, as a woman in power? It is about a promise.
It's about a future where we can really solve most illnesses, not all, but even if we save one life, it's one life saved. It spans the globe, like a super-highest coal into their health, it's really high for it. Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone, it's not over, I'm telling how we're
doing, but the living your legacy podcast, for those who live to live a legacy.
Welcome to another amazing episode of the Living Your Legacy podcast, the Women in Power
Edition. For Insights Access, I am Raghett Harris, joining me today is Molly Megloclin, I've got amazing notes about you, I'm going to read this off, she is a woman in power because she is the leader of the next generation of American bio-manor-facturing, turning ground-breaking science into life-saving realities with purpose and global impact.
Gosh, Molly, what an intro. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. I feel you literally finished filming your episode for Women in Power.
How does it feel? It feels good. It feels good.
“I think it's just empowering to have gone through the story and understanding, I mean,”
just reinforces why I'm doing what I'm doing for sure. How often do you go back and tell your story? Are you on stage just talking about your story or is it your first time on camera? I think it's probably talking about this, it's probably the first time I've been on camera on it.
I mean, I've won some awards in challenging therapy, but I never had an opportunity to
really speak. I mean, I do present a scientific conferences or at industry conferences, but it's about a scientific topic or capability not about me and my story. So yeah, this is probably the first time. Right on, I have earth-shattering news.
I am not a scientist. It's okay. So what is it that you do? Someone say I'm not either.
“What is it that what you do and how do you do it so scientifically?”
And so we at Revolution Bio-manufacturing, it's really an on-choring of a capability of a company that I used to be the CEO of before the investors pulled out and closed it down. And we have a innovative technology platform for manufacturing drugs or biological drugs that are mRNA based. So this is mRNA.
Most people know mRNA from the pandemic COVID vaccine, so which is there's really only three on the market right now. One, two of them are COVID vaccines and one is an RSV vaccine. But the mRNA platform is what we have it from an intellectual property standpoint. And we are really focusing now into manufacturing personalized medicines.
So medicines not focused on infectious disease or not focused on what I would say upper respiratory infections, which the COVID vaccine addresses, but really more personalized medicines for people who have cancer, who came with therapy hasn't or so they're at end of life. And this is their chance to possibly find a cure for their cancer or for people that are born with genetic disorders, rare and ultra rare, to do genetic editing, to correct the mutation
of the genetic disorder. And then also for things such as HIV, we have proof of concept
in HIV to help improve how well the drug works by over 65 percent.
We have been working with people in the autoimmune area. And then also things like metabolic disease like diabetes. Wow. So this is all obviously very fascinating. Talk about the day-to-day lifestyle, back when I grew up in the 80s and 90s, AIDS was a deal breaker.
You've got HIV, you're done for now.
It's very much not. You're living with it.
But then again, it was 10, 20 pills.
Now it's just down on to two. Talk about the evolution of the science, you even said editing, bio-editing. Genetic. Genetic. Genetic.
It's like two to so casually like we're at that level now. We are. In some insight. Yes. You know, we're not doing drug development, where we have a manufacturing platform.
Be very clear about that. So what we're really looking for is helping innovative companies that are doing drug development to really make it a reality. They stopped to go through your clinical trials to stop to do that. So we have a proof of concept that you can increase how well the drug works, but it's
still not even in clinical trials yet.
So it'll be some time, but it'll be in my lifetime that we're able to basically
cure HIV. In addition to that, for the rare and ultra-are genetic disorders, it really is about taking mRNA to deliver, approaching, and a sequence that then changes, what's wrong in the genetic code, right? So, you know, mRNA, what's cool about is it's programmable.
You can come and go and fix it the way you want it. And so it really is in the future, you'll see, you know, it's going to take some time because people have to get through clinical trials. But you're going to see in the future little babies who have been diagnosed with genetic disorders being treated to reverse the disorder.
They're also looking at even prenatal, so, you know, going in to before. And it's not for change in baby's eyes to blue or any of that stuff. Like, I mean, that's an ethical issue, but it really is more for these children that are born with these conditions. And then for cancer, you know, it really is creating them mRNA to express a protein in
the human body that then attacks the tumor that the sequence came from. So, you know, rapidly doing it. I owe a lot of my career to the weight technologies advance. It's become simpler to complicated tasks, especially in production and video and film and photography and audio and so on and so forth.
“How has technology, essentially, advanced your line of work?”
As my question is, there's no possible way you could have been doing what you're doing today in the 80s because the technology wasn't. Well, I mean, mRNA was around in the 80s for sure, but it was still very, well, no, it was just an early infancy, and, you know, but biologics in general were starting to come around.
So, you had monoclonal antibodies, proteins, vaccines, vaccines, almost exclusively are biologics. And so you did have the technology there. It just wasn't where it is today. And there've been some pretty substantial breakthroughs, cast nine, CRISPR for gene editing, in particular, but also just like the modalities of viral vectors and mRNA, plasma DNA, things
like that. And it really figuring out how to deliver them to the tissue that they need to be delivered to. That was a big problem. But it actually get it to there, but now there's mechanisms with lipid nanoparticles
to be able to do that. And so we're advancing technology, you know, left and right on this.
“So I think a lot of people thought, like the COVID vaccine in particular, what they just”
made that up overnight, but they didn't, they've been working on that for 20 years. And, you know, it was just that they said, "Hey, let's pivot and do it." And they did. And Moderna and BioNTech and Amphaiser did it very successfully. That's the thing, behind the scenes, it was also successful, but it took a lot of time
for to remove that stigma. We grew up in movie culture. We've seen 12 monkeys. We've seen outbreak. We've seen what these mass pandemics are like, Hollywoodized.
So I feel like that brought up a lot of stigma and fear when it came to folks doing these mass vaccinations. How much of what you do day to day is educating folks or bringing them up to code and going, here's what we're at. What we need to fix, here's how we move forward.
I don't necessarily deal with the general population. Very often. So area 51. No. God.
It's good. So I cannot deny confirm, but I do deal with the companies that are developing the drug. There's about 230 products that are in development right now, most of them, over 60% are in preclinical.
“So it's still kind of early in the drug development line, but I think you're probably”
right. I think people still feel afraid of mRNA, our current secretary of Health and Human Services
is basically defunding some very critical research in this area, and based on it doesn't
work for upper respiratory infections. Which is great. We're not working on that. We're working on personalized medicines, totally different. And I think, you know, I think the general population need to stop listening to everything
They hear and read on the internet.
Oh, good luck with that. Yeah. Man, this is America. I know. I mean, go for it.
Go for it.
At least, at least you open to have the other part of the conversation.
And I think that that's where the rub is, right? They hear one, one conversation, one voice, and they don't hear all the voices. And really to get the big picture and just look at the data and the science, follow the
“science, you need to listen to all the voices.”
Speaking of listening to all the voices, folks that are watching this, I hope they're familiar with the subject, but folks that are also watching this are, they watch a lot of Netflix. I hope they're familiar with something like Theranos, where you have this very pragmatic eccentric blonde woman preaching things that only tech folks in Silicon Valley would understand. How much of that is guff and science, because it does take time to create what you're creating
versus what we see on television. Yeah, I mean, I think we can make it. I know we can make it. I mean, that's what I do. Sure.
We make it.
So it really is selling it.
Right. And I am raising money now to build this Agile Personalized Medicine facility here in the U.S., the company that I used to lead that we carved out of, had its facility in Shanghai. Wow.
So this is really the on-shoreing of that capability, but that was an infectious disease, pandemic facility, which was huge, it was a mega factory. And we're looking to really make it more flexible, more tailored to personalized medicine. But you know, I need to raise the money for it. And so that's my mission now.
How is that mission going for you? You mentioned already some of the investors pulled out. I was going to tell that. So yeah, so for the previous company, the one with the facility in Shanghai, they pulled out.
Just a strategic change. They just didn't want to be in contract manufacturing. They didn't want to be in manufacturing and they wanted to focus on therapeutics. So that is why they pulled out. Right now is probably one of the worst times to raise money, given the soft financial markets.
And you have private equity firms, not the point capital. You have venture capitalists that are very shy to deploy capital. So it's just an interesting time to raise money. How are you thriving in these interesting times? We always got to pivot.
We got to stay clever. We got to stay resilient.
“How are you staying resilient and using your power as a woman?”
I think a lot of it is is basing it on the innovation.
Like I know the data shows that what we have in our intellectual property portfolio is powerful.
It makes a difference. It is enables the ability to do some of these personalized medicines that you wouldn't have had before. And so I think that just staying behind and developing the science even further is going to be my short-term strategy.
And then long-term as I raise the money will build out the personalized medicine for clinical trial material and then commercialization eventually. But it's going to take some time for the drugs to actually get there. Just because clinical trials for a good reason take time. The regulatory path is very strict and for good reason.
And so you know it will take time but in the meantime just being able to apply the technology to improve how these drugs work is the short-term mission. I love how you use time time and time again. How does one stay excited and motivated every day waiting for results? Yeah.
Yeah. For trials to give you like how do you stay in the game when you're like, "All right, well you have to make sure that when you're really designing what indication you're going after or what illness you're going to go after, that the science works." So it is all based on hardcore science and if the science isn't there, if it doesn't
work, if it doesn't meet the target, then you can't take it for it. And too many companies take the stuff forward that probably shouldn't have been. And so they're trial data is not good. But I think that that's really key is making sure that the hardcore science is right. What will you learn about your hardcore science as an individual on this planet as a woman
in power? What will we learn about you in your episode? Well I think a lot of it is, is the challenges that I've had not only just as a person,
“as a leader, as a soldier, as a mom, but I think it's also really what is the science?”
The basis of the science, what is it that we have that's different from everybody else that's out there doing this and how the promise of it, because it is about a promise, it is about the future where we can really solve most illnesses. Not all, I'm not going to say we can, there's no blanket statement there at all. But even if we save one life, it's one life-saved.
If it's one child who doesn't have to who can actually live functionally vers...
significant.
“If we can say one cancer patient, it's significant.”
Well, I hope that the clinical trial would call the inside-success podcast, past your
examination, and that you've had a very amazing fruitful and an enjoys day.
“I was quite the way to end our day today.”
So thank you so much for your time and energy. Thank you. I appreciate it.
How can folks find and learn more about you on the interwebs?
Yeah.
“So I think going to my website again is probably the best way to find me in my LinkedIn”
profile as well and revolution by a manufacturing also has a LinkedIn profile. Right on.
Well Molly, thank you so much again for being such a powerful, amazing woman.
With that, that concludes the yet another amazing episode of the Living Your Legacy Podcast. I'm Reggetares. [BLANK_AUDIO]
