Sam Fazeli

Welcome to another episode of Bloomberg Intelligence Vanguards of Healthcare podcast, where we speak with the leaders at the forefront of change in the healthcare industry.

My name is Sam Fazelli, and I'm a healthcare analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, the in-house research arm of Bloomberg.

I am thrilled, I think I say this every time, but I'm really thrilled to welcome Mark Tessier-Levine, the CEO of Xera, to the program today.

Mark has put me right in how to pronounce that.

The spelling is X-A-I-R-A, so Xera.

Mark has more than, well, he has decades of experience as a scientist in the world of drug development, running companies, founding companies, and here we find him leading this AI drug development, drug discovery company.

Welcome to the podcast, Mark.

Thank you.

I've been in the audience where Mark has been presenting in the scientific days, so I'm really pleased with that.

Now, before we get going, I always like to get a little history of the folks that we talk to.

And no less, I think, Mark, you did say your PhD was actually in my hometown, which is London.

And we obviously crossed paths at Guy's Hospital.

But do you want to give us a little few minutes of background as to what the process that got you to here is today?

So that's fascinating to a mark, and I think it gives you the insight and background to the history of the drug development world that should be able to help me, certainly, and our listeners to understand the way that AI is.

is today changing things and potentially can change things forward for drug discovery and drug development.

But before we do that, I think a natural question is David Baker won the Nobel, shared the Nobel Prize with Demis Hassabis for the protein AI use in protein folding prediction.

Would you want to give us some idea of how perhaps Xero differs in terms of approach to what you know and publicly is known about isomorphic approach there?

Because I guess the background knowledge that fed both companies is relatively similar.

That would be perfect, Mark.

And also in the process, could you also touch on, because there are some other companies, I mean, one of them, Generate Biomedicine, is pitching for an IPO at the minute.