00:32  What motivates you to get out of bed in the morning and do what you do?

01:34   But can you tell us a little bit about how Genetika+ came to be?

02:39 Could you tell us a little bit more of your academic background

05:14 What was your first step into an “industry” role?

05:35 Tell us about your “Aliyah” and what perpetuated the move from Minneapolis to Israel

07:00 What does Genetika+ do?

08:25 Did you say brain-in-a-dish?

08:41 Why did you decide to focus on precision medicine for a small group of patients instead of searching for a treatment that would be relevant to a larger group?

10:52 So, where do you see Genetika+ fitting in the patient's continuum of care?

12:31 What do you think are your major challenges now to be able to get to the patients who need your product?

14:19 What does it mean to you being an entrepreneur? Were you born that way? Or is it something that was sparked a little bit later on in your journey?

16:12 Do you have any advice for any child, woman or man who is interested in going the route that you've gone? What's your support network like?

18:26 What is the value you take from accelerator programs and competitions? Why would you recommend that to a startup?

23:56 Can you give us a little bit on your perspective on you know, why it is that they're less female CEOs in our space, in the health technology space?

28:19 What are your plans going forward and when will you begin Clinical Trials?

Talia Cohen Solal is CEO and co-founder of Genetika+ (Plus). What motivates you to get out of bed in the morning and do what you do?

Well, that's an easy question in my space, unfortunately. I think the first thing that motivates me is the 300 million people who suffer from major depression, both those who I know personally and those who I don't know. But I hope to be able to make their lives better. That makes it very easy to wake up in the morning.

And to help build a company that is here in the land of Israel and to help my employees have success and to do great things.

We know that there's a connection between the company and your 'Aliyah' to Israel. But can you tell us a little bit about how Genetika+ came to be?

Well, I'm a neuroscientist by training, I spent a decade in academic research, looking at the underlying causes of mental illness. And as I got more and more into understanding the mechanisms and the new technologies that allow us to understand the mechanisms of mental illness, I saw an opportunity to understand the mechanisms for every individual and I saw it. During my, kind of, postdoctoral studies and independent fellowship, I saw new technologies that were available and thought, you know, 'I think we could be pivoting these and bring them into the precision medicine space.' So, patients can have outcomes as well as academic papers. And so, I had this idea, I actually decided, who am I to start a startup at that time. So, I joined a precision medicine startup. So how exciting, challenging and possible it was. So, when I moved to Israel in 2017, I was in Start-up Nation with an idea. And I just took this as the opportunity to seize the moment and start Genetika+.

Could you perhaps tell us a little bit more of your academic background? You studied in the UK, then moved to the US, and then you're here to Israel. What is the personal journey that brought you to make these changes in your life?

So academic wise, I studied neuroscience and genetics as an undergraduate at Oxford. Before that, I've done an internship at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland and the American government Research Institutes (AIR). And already at that stage saw that, you know, learning and understanding and improving our understanding of the brain was an incredibly meaningful career. I was always passionate about the brain and how the brain works, because it's such a fascinating organ. And everything that we understand when we improve disease, understanding, we also understand how this magnificent organ works in its own sense. I then went on to study mental illness, which is a fascinating and then very upsetting area. But very interesting how all of these different wirings are happening in our brain to allow this subtle balance between healthy and less healthy. And so, I did neuroscience in genetics at Oxford, went straight to a PhD at University College London, looking at schizophrenia and bipolar, and major depression models.

Again, trying to tease out what's actually going on at the neuronal level in these individuals. And then I wanted to get closer to patients and closer to the bench side. So, for my postdoctoral fellowship, I went to Columbia University and worked in a translational lab. Translational projects, which were really looking at human models of mental illness and looking at cases where, really, were at the frontier of those patients. Because the professor who I was working for, was discovering new genes. That patients with major mental illness had slightly wrong, had the incorrect coding for and then we went straight to try and understand how that actually caused the illness in those individuals. So, I found it very interesting. But I was still too far from bringing meaningful change into people's lives on a day to day level. It was a bit too academic?

So, having joined that precision medicine company. It was based in Minneapolis and we were doing precision medicine for rare genetic diseases. For, you know, toddlers who had intractable epilepsy is etc. And there, we were actually going to the conferences, meeting the patients who we were trying to bring positive change into their lives. And I'd found that kind of 'border aware'. I felt like I was doing science that moves the field forward and actually bringing change into people's lives. So, when I decided Minneapolis was a bit too chilly for me, I met a significant other who is now my husband, who was living in Israel.  And so, after a bit of a long-distance commute of 13 or 15 hours or something, for that relationship. I took the plunge, across the ocean and a bit of land in between, and moved to Israel. And it was a very easy decision.

So, you came here out of love.

I followed my heart for an individual and I followed my heart for Zionism as well. My grandparents had made Aliyah in 1968, just after the Seven Day War. And lots of my family is here. So, I had an upbringing with a large part of it's been here in Israel. So, it wasn't such a scary decision to make to move across the ocean. And I'm very proud and pleased of everything that I do here. To help create jobs, to help create businesses, it's something that adds an extra layer of meaning to an already a very meaningful career.

What does Genetika+ do?

Genetika+ matches patients to the right drug for them in depression treatment. So, there are about 70 different medications that the physician has to choose from, when trying to decide how to treat a patient with depression. Each medication takes 4 to 6 weeks to test in the patient. And the patient often scrolls through one drug after another searching for the right treatment. That can take months, two years of their lives. And obviously, there's an increased risk of suicide during this period, and they lose their family lives, sometimes their jobs, it's a very difficult period. And the faster we get patients to the right drug for them, the better the outcomes for all of the key stakeholders in this area; the individuals, the insurers, the employers, everybody around, the caregivers.

What we do is we use our in vitro screening platform. So, we take a blood sample from patient just like any other traditional blood draw. And then, we create our brain-in-a-dish screening model, where we can screen each patient for all the different antidepressants in this in vitro model, and see which antidepressant has the most powerful effect on that patient.

And then we can recommend that from the beginning, or at least after the one medication, so the patient doesn't have to scroll through in their own bodies.

Our “brain-in-a-dish”, allows us to use the cutting-edge technology in the most forward-looking precision medicine technology that's available today.

Precision medicine and obviously is a game changer in healthcare. It's something new in the world of healthcare and pharma. What drove you to do that? What caused you, other than your experience with a personalized medicine company? Why did you decide to go that route and not try to get a new type of treatment that would be relevant for a larger group?

During my decades in the psychiatric academic space, I saw multiple drugs. Not just in depression, but across disease areas, lots in schizophrenia, with fantastic mechanistic reason why they should work as an anti-psychotic. For example, coming to the phase 3 clinical trials, like right at the cusp of being able to improve patients’ lives and then they would fail at the phase 3 clinical trials. About $1 billion dollars is spent on these drugs. I don't believe that all of these drugs weren't going to work to help certain patients. And I feel like a lot of drugs were being lost from the system, and not being allowed to treat the patients who would have benefited from them, even though some wouldn't.

And that idea of people having lost opportunities or that idea of drugs having lost markets, seemed to something that really needed fixing in the system. And so it's foolish to try and generate another blockbuster drug. It's time to start using the drugs we have better and creating new drugs that treat people better.

So, where does Genetika+ fit in the patient's continuum of care? Is it a blood sample that will be drawn and sent to a lab or to be analyzed by your systems, and then the right drug matched? Or can it be companion diagnostics or to be used by pharmaceutical companies to better select the patients in order to achieve the most favorable outcomes?

We don't have to use our technology for either/or of those, I think we can use it for both. So, our primary development is for the Rx mind test from Genetika+, which is this test that the blood draw is taken for the patient. The results come back through the physician to the patient, just like you described. And the patient is recommended the best drug for them.

That market can exist independently of a companion diagnostics market. So, we're also in conversations with different pharmaceutical companies to try and help them develop companion diagnostics. They can then, you know, distribute for free. And now using their distribution routes to offer our test as a companion to their test to help guarantee them a market sale. Obviously, if all of the tests, all of the companies start giving this out, then that's where our business would might become much stronger and weaken in the RX mind. But at least for the coming years, we have an opportunity to go through on both fronts.

You're definitely in the right place at the right time. What do you consider a major challenge for you to be able to get to the patients who need your capabilities?

I think changing physician behavior has been a challenge in other technologies that have tried to bring precision medicine into the mental health space. And they've been using these sales forces, trying to go doctor to doctor, to try and get them to start to use their test. They've had quite some success. They've been making over $100 million in annual revenues. But this is a $5 billion market. So, there's clearly a large opportunity still being missed. And I think what's going wrong is that distribution route. What we're looking to do is not just kind of look at this rise in depression, which is as much as threefold, according to the CDC. But also, we're looking at this rise in telemedicine and telehealth. And looking at this as an opportunity to get to large number of patients through a kind of fixed groups of doctors. And we're trying to start partnerships now with some of the biggest mental health, telehealth platforms. So, that patients can get easier access to our technology and the right physicians with the right mentality ready to give them that. Those drugs in response to that recommendation.

What does it mean to you being an entrepreneur? Do you think you were born an entrepreneur? Is it something that was sparked a little bit later on in your journey? Or maybe Israel helped?

I feel like my drive to bring Genetika+ forward and this company forward is my drive sparked by the idea and the innovation that I feel that I have in the mental health space, which as you said, has very little innovation in recent years. My drive to solve every problem that comes my way when trying to do that and I love tackling new problems. And finding the best routes and solutions to every problem that comes at me. But those are the reasons that I pushed Genetika+ forward. I don't think that I had a drive just to be an entrepreneur. And I think that I will only pursue companies if I believe that I've come up with an idea that's worth pursuing. And not just for the sake of me being the CEO, because it's quite fun.

Do you have any advice for any child, woman or man who is interested in going the route that you've gone? Who do you need to take along the way with you? Who supports you? What's your support network like? What sort of advice do you have for somebody who wants to be you?

of all, it's better not to do it alone. I think that when you're faced with challenges, you need to be able to discuss them through and think from different perspectives. And if you're just sitting there talking to yourself, you're going to have trouble. I have an amazing co-founder, Dr. Daphna Laifenfeld, who did her PhD in depression, was the head of precision medicine and established the precision medicine division at Teva Pharmaceuticals. So, she exactly aligns with my passion but has had very different experiences. So, we can put different hats on and heads into varied questions and dilemmas that we come across. I think that you have to surround yourself by 'Yes men', or people who believe you can do it or believe it's a possibility. And I think that that's something about Start-up Nation being in Israel. So many people support your decision to go on your own, not take a job for a while and start a startup. Meanwhile, I feel like in the risk-averse culture and environment that I came from in the UK, I might have had more people looking at me like I was mad. Six months in, 8 months in before  we've got the first investments into the company. And now they think it's incredible. So, I think being in the right environment and being with the right people.

Do an accelerator program and surround yourself by mentors who know what they're talking about. I definitely think accelerators are an incredible asset to early stage startups.

Cab you expand a little bit on accelerators and competitions? What is the value you take from them? Why would you recommend that to a startup?

There are so many, don't do too many, choose one or two carefully. And there are so many, there's so much value, especially very early on. Later on, I think you can still find value, especially with strategic ones, ones with partnerships, etc. But at the very early stage, being part of an accelerator allows you to see the questions that are going to come up to you in advance. So, you really start to kind of brainstorm everything that's needed for the basic foundations of a company. And you wouldn't even know what to Google or search if you were going to try and do it by yourself. And if you speak to enough people, they still won't cover it in that kind of methodological way. Second of all, it's the network. So, other founders who've already had this problem or had that, asked that question or experience the kind of hustle of it and that's amazing. And I'm constantly utilizing my network of peers from the different accelerators. And I think that, to me, was the most valuable was that I was starting. I've had that one experience in a precision medicine startup in one context and it was, you know, amazing. But it was also, you know, in America very advanced, they got funding from day one as a spin out of a big established pharmaceutical company. It's not the same as when like, 'two guys and a dog' or whatever the expression is. And so. when you're in an accelerator program, you can see what it takes. And it gives, especially as a female entrepreneur, it definitely gave me a lot more confidence. That what I had was significant and it wasn't so insignificant that who would invest in us. So, it kind of gave me the confidence by having a peer group who were kind of in a similar place and what I believed before I'd started the accelerator to be leagues and miles ahead.

Let’s say there's somebody listening who was considering joining an accelerator. How would you recommend going about finding the best program for a given company? Is it the connections? Is it the ecosystem? Is it the access to funding? Is it the legacy?

First of all, take an equity free accelerator, don't dilute yourself for no reason at the start when there were plenty of excellent equity free ones. I did two accelerators. One was MedTech Raanana, that Gali (Gali H. Wienerman) was running at the time and the second was MassChallenge. And I think both were really valuable and both were good decisions. I think it's nice to do one which is more specialized in your space, which MedTech Raanana was. Everybody's, you know, tackling similar problems and the same type of investors and some of the same issues. And that was a fantastic experience. So, I think that being a bit sector-relevant is helpful. And then the second one I did was MassChallenge, which was sector-agnostic, but very global and much larger. There is about 50 different companies. And so, I felt like that gave a bigger cohort, is hyped very competitive as well. So, the quality was also very good. So, it gave you an opportunity to mingle with many talented startups and many talented mentors as well. So, I think those are two good ways to go about it. Quality and direction.

It's many times an issue of not only what to do, but what not to do. How to avoid the pitfalls?

I think that when I started the accelerators, I had no idea what the business side was. So, it was more a total lack of knowledge. I mean, I came from academia, I was the principal scientist in a startup, not the BD or anything, or COO or anything else. I had no idea what I needed to know from the business side. And I think one thing that I struggled the most with and got the most help through accelerators was understanding how to build a financial model for 5 years out. You know, as a scientist, I need data points that are precise, reproducible, three repeats of everything and you can't do that for the future. And so, how to kind of hypothesize that and how to understand what the costs were in my space, etc.

Can you give us a little bit on your perspective on why it is that there are less female CEOs in the health technology space? Do you have any interest in helping to change that? And if so, what would you think would be the right thing to do?

So, this is my own personal theory. But I believe that there is a  different risk wiring for women and for men and there are plenty of psychology papers to support this decision-making. And whether there's a degree of risk women will take in certain financial decisions and other decisions.         And in academia, the risk reward path to being professor is ludicrous. The chances of not making Professor are very high and the chances of making money somewhere else are much better. So maybe we're just sensible, that is one hypothesis of the academic base. But I think we also need to go against our gut, if we really want to pursue that path and we should pursue that path. The more women are there, the less risky it will be. Because you're more likely to be hired into a position when there is at least one woman trying to make that decision for you; helping to make that decision on the judging committee or whichever it is. So, I think that trying to silence that voice in your head, which tells you that this is a terrible calculation.

I came to Israel, I could definitely try to have gotten a job. I don't know if anybody would have given me one. But it got a job in the biotech space here in Israel. Instead, I chose not to get a safe job and to risk over a year of no salary, who knows what it would look like for my CV and my future credentials. At least in Start-up Nation, they respect such insanity, but in other countries it's less. And it was very risky.

You have to tell yourself that I need to make the decision that I would make if I had a higher-risk tolerance. If I had more confidence, less imposter syndrome. You have to keep reminding yourself of all the things that are holding you back from pushing yourself forward in that domain. And just keep going. And so, what I would say to women and young women of the next generation, is to just constantly be aware of which voices are that are coming from outside telling you can't do it and which voices are coming from inside. And you can control the ones that are coming from inside. And so, control them and push forward.

Where is Genetika+ today? And what are your plans moving forward?

So as Gali said, 'Now is the time, the rise in depression, the rise in telemedicine, the other technology is failing to solve precision medicine, it's time for Genetika+ to run and push forward as fast as we can to get into the market and bring our tests to patients. So, towards that end, we're starting clinical trials next year, we want to start our pilots in the real-world setting. And I'm getting all the regulatory reimbursements and all of those approvals. We need to be able to bring this technology to patients. So, we're actually starting some fundraising to try and help propel us forward. And hopefully, we will be able to see us on the market not too far away.

Click for:

Genetika+ website

Talia Cohen-Solal's profile on Linkedin.