Watch: Translation & Commercialization as a collaborative, creative process

TRANSCRIPT

On screen text reads: “technology licensing manager Dr. Dennis Thomas checks in with his longtime collaborator pathologist Dr. Soman Abraham”

Dennis Thomas: Hey, Soman.

Soman Abraham: Oh, okay!

DT: How are you?

SA: Good.

DT: I think the first time I started interacting with Soman was with his sort of breakthrough discovery around the recurrence of UTIs. He had a really big paper and I thought that the science was really fascinating.

On screen text reads: “Cyclic AMP-regulated exocytosis of Escherichia coli from infected bladder epithelial cells”

SA: I would predict that almost 50% of all women will have at least one UTI in their lifetime. And about 25% of those women would have this recurrent urinary tract infections. The current approach is to give a low dose antibiotic for six months. And I’ve been getting so many emails over the years from women pleading to be on a clinical study for a vaccine. And I always have to tell them just hanging in there hanging in there – we’re hoping to reach that point.

DT: This mechanism, it suggested ways that we could actually break this cycle. And so that was the sort of the beginning of where we started really working heavily together, to try to push a solution out.

SA: We want to switch our protein vaccine into an mRNA vaccine, which we want to deliver into the bladders of infected individuals. So, it’s a new approach of vaccination.

DT: I think the skill set that I offer to our researchers is this, you know, new way of looking at their research. We had a couple of different projects where I felt like I helped move things along or gave him some direction.

SA: Dennis always asks really critical questions, which maybe based on my basic science training I don’t really ask. He asks very practical questions that are very translational, and that’s where the drugs come from.

DT: One of the things that Soman is really good about is talking to me about projects early. With his science being so interesting intellectually to me that it’s easy to sort of dive in and, hey, what do you think about this?

SA: Over the years, we’ve also become very good friends. I know a lot about his family and he knows a lot about my family.

DT: You know, I’ve been doing this for 20 years and Soman is one of my favorite people to work with. That kind of relationship, you know, you want to do more.

On screen text reads: “Dr. Abraham is part of Duke Pathology Duke University School of Medicine. Learn about him and his colleagues at pathology.duke.edu”

On screen text reads: “Learn more about how Duke Translation & Commercialization can help your innovation journey otc.duke.edu”

Produced, shot, and edited by Fedor Kossakovski.