How to Build a Biotech with Celine Halioua at Loyal

May 2, 2024

Celine Halioua, CEO of Loyal, discusses developing longevity drugs for dogs and potentially humans. Topics include FDA approval process, differences between biotech and software startups, mistakes as a founder, growth rate in hiring, and starting with dogs for drug development.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Dogs Compress Longevity Timelines

Lifespan trials in humans are slow and expensive, making them impractical for startups.
Dogs compress timelines: biological aging changes in months and lifespan signals in ~4 years, enabling feasible trials.

INSIGHT

Size, Breeding, And A Conserved Aging Pathway

Dog breed size correlates inversely with lifespan due to growth-hormone/IGF-1 pathways altered by selective breeding.
That conserved biology makes big dogs a model to test interventions that slow aging.

ADVICE

Dose After Growth, Aim For Natural Ranges

Administer growth-hormone–modulating drugs after puberty to avoid altering development.
Aim to reduce circulating levels to naturally observed lower ranges rather than creating abnormal suppression.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

This episode is brought to you by Warp. Don’t let payroll and compliance hold your startup back: visit https://joinwarp.com/peel to get started and receive a $1000 gift card when you first run payroll.

Celine Halioua is the founder and CEO of Loyal, a biotech company developing medicine to help dogs live longer and healthier lives. And dogs are just the start - Celine thinks Loyal could one day do the same for humans.

She takes us inside what it’s like to build a biotech company from scratch. We talk through how Loyal’s longevity drugs work, the process of getting FDA approval, her biggest mistakes as a founder, how to approach building in a new market, lessons learned failing to raise her Series B, why rate of growth is all that matters in hiring, and almost not starting the company in the first place.

Timestamps: (00:00) Preview (03:30) How a longevity drug works (06:08) Predictions around longevity (08:26) Why Celine cares so much about not failing (12:05) Differences between biotech and software startups (14:15) Sizing a new market (16:53) Why biotech startups are more dilutive early on (20:22) Getting FDA approval (22:57) Why its hard to prove longevity drugs actually work (24:48) The reason Loyal started with dogs (25:27) How Loyal’s drug slows aging (33:42) Working on longevity to increase free will (34:25) Culture shock at Oxford and dropping out of her PhD (37:22) What makes Josh Koppelman a good VC (39:44) Celine’s two biggest mistakes as a founder (42:39) Why rate of growth is the best indicator of success but the hardest to predict (45:33) Self awareness & how being a CEO is both fun and miserable (48:11) How Laura Deming convinced her to start Loyal (50:18) Finding the science behind Loyal (54:21) Deciding it was the right path to start a company (56:30) Lessons from failing to raise a Series B initially (1:02:18) Why Silicon Valley can build 10x more deep tech startups (1:04:05) Doing big things that improve the world (1:04:50) What Celine looks for in startups Where to find Celine:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/celinehalioua

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/celinehh/

Celine's Website: https://www.celinehh.com/

Where to find Turner:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak/

Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it/