Q&A: Resilience boss Rahul Singhvi talks $2B US biomanufacturing initiative and post Series D deals

2022-09-21

When the Biden administration announced last week, through an executive order, that it is investing $2 billion into domestic efforts to increase biotechnology and biomanufacturing efforts, a lot of ears perked up in the wider manufacturing world. Funding is going towards manufacturing infrastructure, training, R&D and security measures, among others, something that domestic manufacturers are bullish about.

Rahul Singhvi, the CEO of manufacturing company Resilience, was in the West Wing for a summit on biotech and biomanufacturing and how the funding will impact manufacturers and the wider industry.

This also comes at a time when Resilience itself, after netting a $625 million Series D in June, has been entering into partnerships with several major research groups and medical centers.

Endpoints News caught up with Singhvi about the impact of the funds as well as the developments at the company.

The transcript of the interview has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

Endpoints: What this executive order does to ensure that the US maintains its competitiveness in biotechnology?

Singhvi: This is a technology that was developed in this country… but we haven’t maintained that competitive lead and that’s not good from the standpoint of economic benefits to society as well as from a national security standpoint. So, this time around the government wants to make sure that this amazing technology also remains in this country from the standpoint of not just discovery and inventions, but also from the standpoint of scale and manufacturing so that the country can benefit from the jobs that this can create. And it can also benefit from the health security that it comes with.

Given what we’ve just recently seen with geopolitical tensions and pandemics, etc. can really screw up or disrupt the supply chains and that can have an impact on our security. So, I think that’s the message and that’s why in the summit that I attended, it was represented not only from the health side but also from the national security of the National Economic Council was also represented for those reasons.

Endpoints: What aspects of the executive order do you think will have the most impact on not only companies such as Resilience but other manufacturers in the pharma industry?

Singhvi: There are two parts to this. Biotechnology can help us with reducing carbon emissions and making greener processes for making noxious chemicals. There’s the application of biotechnology there is an application and food and crops. So, there are applications that are way beyond just health.

But on the manufacturing side, again, the idea was that we need to also scale, we need to create an ecosystem not only of startups and inventions and discoveries but an ecosystem scale and commercialization and manufacturing, so that is where we fit in. As you know, the company was formed, almost with a premonition of this executive order in a way. There was recognition that supply chain disruptions cannot be solved unless you bring some of this manufacturing home. And this idea was why did it ever leave this country and the idea was that it left the country because it was more efficient to make these products somewhere else because of cheaper labor or whatever. But people have understood that technology can transcend labor differences and so you can actually bring it here. Not at the cost of driving up the prices. But you can bring and apply the good technologies that are available to us, the manufacturing technologies, that can drive the cost down while we maintain the wages.

And the beauty of this is that we believe that this will address a number of issues. One is that it will address the competitiveness of this country in this area and maintain that leadership position. Second, it will deploy the technologies that we are inventing here to drive the cost down and make technologies the driver, as opposed to labor can and third drive the economic benefit that comes from them.

Because if you don’t just look at Resilience, I mean, we have 10-11 maybe more sites in different parts of the country. Now they’re not just located on the coasts, but they are getting spread in the middle of the country as well. And last but not least is resiliency which comes from having these types of manufacturing sites within your own borders so that when we have geopolitical tensions, you have these pandemics that disrupt the supply chains we’re not at the mercy of other countries.

Endpoints: Was there an aspect of the executive order that you felt did not go far enough or took issue with?

Singhvi: I think it’s a beginning. The executive order in itself requires, of course, a lot of funding. And as you saw, there was $2 billion that they announced alongside the executive order, but then $2 billion was just redirecting, already appropriated funds to the various agencies. So, the billion and a half coming from the DoD was already appropriated for all the things they just directed towards supporting the President’s executive order. The real work is going to be to take the executive order and set some specific goals and then go to Congress and get the money to drive those specific goals. And this summit, for example, was meant to really consolidate the industry and academic leaders and really have the discussion around how best should we implement this executive or what should we do in this country. So, it’s not like there was anything missing but it’s a very broad and high-level vision almost that the President has.

Endpoints: What should be the next step from Congress following the executive order?

Singhvi: I think you take inspiration from what has happened with the CHIPS and Science Act. A major in for this country where it started with an executive order and that led to very important legislation then it was passed earlier this year. Which leads to very specific things that will happen. Congress approved if I am not wrong $54 billion to support that. That will include indigenous manufacturing of chips for example to make ourselves sort of getting our country more independent of other nations from the supply chain of semiconductors. I would imagine a similar playbook would be applied here.

Endpoints: Switching gears to Resilience, the company has netted some major deals with the Mayo Clinic and MD Anderson in the past few months. Can you take us through the impetus behind those deals and how they are progressing?

Singhvi: The impetus is that a large amount of innovation is coming from these academic institutions. In one place I read that almost 50% of the new molecular entities are coming from these academic institutions and the innovations that are going on there. So, we want to work with these folks who are coming up with these innovations, these new modality medicines so that as they come up with these ideas, and as you know, these modalities are very different from capsules or tablets, they are cells or viruses or some complex type of medicines. We’re there hand in hand, to work with them to ensure that as they come up with these innovations, we’re there to support them on the scale-up and manufacturing aspects. So that very quickly, they can accelerate if it works in then they can accelerate the innovation into larger populations.

It’s early days, and we are starting to work with them, leading to the kind of results that we expect. We’re starting to work with the Mayo Clinic. I think they’re a couple of projects that we have started with and we’re also working with the MD Anderson folks in which case we actually have a joint venture with them on a manufacturing unit that they had already sort of built. So now we are helping them with that so that we can bring our network and connect it to this phase one unit that they have, that allows them to get the full line of sight to the entire supply chain of every innovation that they can put through that phase one unit. And that gives them a lot of confidence that once that drug sees positive results that it can be scaled up in other parts of our network where we have much more capacity.

Endpoints: When will these moves start to produce results?

Singhvi: We should be able to see some results from, for example, the Mayo Clinic where we are accessing some technology from them almost immediately, maybe within the next few months. And with MD Anderson, having some of their innovations come through their site that we have sort of created a joint venture with you’re taking some of those products into other parts of our network, can also happen within the next year or so. We will start to see some impact within I would say 12 months, one way or the other.