Jun 17, 2026 · 53 min · 13 segments
A chronic shortage of high‑quality targets remains one of the biggest constraints in drug discovery, even as therapeutic tools become more powerful and diverse. Regeneron is tackling that problem with…
Aris BarasGuestDaniel LevineHostHow has the original vision of linking genetics to therapeutics evolved now that you've sequenced millions of exomes and built a biobank scale platform?
We're some of the best in the business, um, who've been doing this for over a decade, as you mentioned.
And it's an interesting question, how have things evolved? Because in one sense, the core concept, the whole core mission that we started this around is still central today.
When I mentioned the core mission here, we set out to address a big problem and a simple one.
We felt at the time that we had all these amazing modalities, certainly an antibody therapeutics company and all these amazing technologies around us.
But one thing we were struggling with, and so many people were struggling with, is what are the great targets? And you've seen this.
Anytime there's a great target, there's a race of dozens of companies and therapeutics going after that same target, right? And the, a stat that I like to throw out there, this is going way back, you know, about ten plus years ago, but we actually added up all the genes and targets for every medicine that had been approved or for any experimental medicine that had been tried, and it was only about ten percent of the genome, right? Meaning there was so much space, targetable space that we hadn't explored.
We were inspired by just a few amazing genetics stories, some human experiments that led the way to amazing therapeutics.
And those were of a couple varieties, but one I really want to talk about are protective genetic factors.
Many are aware of the PCSK nine story, people who had genetic mutations that break the gene basically, and they have ninety percent lower rates of heart attacks.
How has the original vision of linking genetics to therapeutics evolved now that you've sequenced millions of exomes and built a biobank scale platform?
We're some of the best in the business, um, who've been doing this for over a decade, as you mentioned.
And it's an interesting question, how have things evolved? Because in one sense, the core concept, the whole core mission that we started this around is still central today.
When I mentioned the core mission here, we set out to address a big problem and a simple one.
We felt at the time that we had all these amazing modalities, certainly an antibody therapeutics company and all these amazing technologies around us.
But one thing we were struggling with, and so many people were struggling with, is what are the great targets? And you've seen this.
Anytime there's a great target, there's a race of dozens of companies and therapeutics going after that same target, right? And the, a stat that I like to throw out there, this is going way back, you know, about ten plus years ago, but we actually added up all the genes and targets for every medicine that had been approved or for any experimental medicine that had been tried, and it was only about ten percent of the genome, right? Meaning there was so much space, targetable space that we hadn't explored.
We were inspired by just a few amazing genetics stories, some human experiments that led the way to amazing therapeutics.
And those were of a couple varieties, but one I really want to talk about are protective genetic factors.
Many are aware of the PCSK nine story, people who had genetic mutations that break the gene basically, and they have ninety percent lower rates of heart attacks.
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