Naji Gehchan: Hello, leaders of the world. Welcome to “Spread Love in Organizations”, a podcast for purpose-driven healthcare leaders, striving to make life better around the world by leading their teams with genuine care, servant leadership, and love.
I am Naji, your host, joined today by Emilia McLaughlin, founder and CEO of kyron.bio, a startup based in Paris dedicated to pioneering tomorrow’s therapeutics. Originally from London, Emilia moved to Paris in 2017 to pursue a PhD in parasite molecular biology at the Institut Pasteur. Upon completing her PhD, she founded kyron.bio with the aim of enhancing the efficacy of protein therapeutics through innovative glycan modifications. Since its inception, Emilia has successfully recruited a world-class scientific team, established a state-of-the-art laboratory, secured core technology IP, and garnered over €1.2M in competitive grants from the French government and the EU. Additionally, she has raised €1.1M in equity funding. Currently, the company is testing its first therapeutic in human serum and has developed a robust pipeline of innovative products. In 2024, Emilia was recognized as a Woman in Leadership by the European Innovation Commission. She is passionate about empowering women to take on leadership roles and supports academics who aspire to transition into entrepreneurship.
Emilia, it is great to have you with me today!
Emilia McLaughlin: Thank you, Naji. Great to be here.
Naji Gehchan: I would love for us to hear more about your personal story.
What brought you to biology and now founding and leading a biotech?
Emilia McLaughlin: Yeah. Okay. Um, so I think I’ve always been very, very interested in people and, um, illnesses, medicine. I, I really strongly considered, um, being a doctor for a long time. Um, I don’t really enjoy being in hospitals and that was one of the things that put me off, but I, I really wanted to find a way to help kind of, um, deliver.
therapies to humans, whether that was me doing it personally or helping the kind of, um, the generation, generation of those medicines. And I, I thought a long time I went, I studied biochemistry and, um, I thought afterwards again about doing a grad scheme for, for medicine. Um, finally decided that it was not for me and that I wanted to pursue a more academic route.
Um, I fell into parasitology, um, while I was at UCL during my undergraduate and I ended up with a brilliant, um, professor, Professor Osborne, where I, I worked under him on the malaria parasite. And I absolutely loved that project because you never question why you go to work when you work on malaria, you know, half a million people die every year and it’s an incredibly, um, We need a lot of brains on this to work on this.
And I found it fascinating both from the biological side and also, um, from the human side as well. So that kind of led me into this world of parasitology. Um, I then wanted to continue in that field, um, and that led me to my PhD in, um, in parasite molecular biology at Institute Pasteur in Paris, where I looked at African sleeping sickness.
Um, I love my PhD, but I knew that I didn’t want to stay in the lab. I think at that point, I began to recognize there was a bit of a distance between the academic research and what was going on for people in the field. Um, and it felt that what I was doing, you know, spending hours on a microscope, looking, looking at tiny green dots, um, trying to count how many GFP there were or something.
I couldn’t see the translation and I’ve always been a people person and I love working with, with people. And I think that’s where. I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I finished my PhD. I’d never thought really about starting my own company. Um, and then entrepreneurship kind of crossed my path because, uh, actually due to a tech incubator that kind of had been contact in contact with me since the second year of my PhD.
And they were like, we think you should join. We think you’d be great. You know, they make it kind of no risk from the minute I joined them. The incubator is called entrepreneur first for people that know it. And they kind of put tech and business profiles together before they have an idea and before they have a team.
The minute I joined that incubator, I was like, this is the world I want to be in. This is absolutely fascinating. The pace, the impact, the, um, the possibilities, the excitement, being so people focused as well, you know, now my job all day, uh, day in, day out is talking to people, and I absolutely love that and what I, the work that we do is also for, for patient populations and for individuals.
And I think that’s always been really, really important for me. And whilst I loved the academic path. slightly lost that connection, especially where I was working on a rare parasitic disease that is basically in remission now. Um, the WHO doesn’t recognize it as a, as a public health concern anymore. So it’s like, well, yeah.
Well,
Naji Gehchan: thank you so much for sharing this. And I, what you’re framing at this really, I love how you said biology and humans. Uh, so, You know, as you were talking about what you do today as a, as a founder of, uh, of the biotech you’re leading, you said it’s mainly with people and human and discussing with them.
And obviously this is not, I would say what people would, the first thing would come to mind, uh, for startups and biotech, you know, like it’s more about the science, the discovery, what, what are you doing? So I love how you. framed it. I’m sure. And I know there’s a lot of science behind it, but I want to dig a little bit deeper on, on this aspect.
And how do you see the people aspect actually of the biotech as a leader?
Emilia McLaughlin: I think it’s absolutely central. I think it comes in a few axes. The first is in the people that you hire. Um, Um, and having a very, very strong team with you, um, and in being a leader to the people in the team that, that, that you’ve recruited, um, number one, so your job as the leader is to support them to, to be the best they can be.
Um, secondly, it comes in the external communications of the company and making sure that what you’re doing, um, is. There is a problem that you’re solving and someone needs what you’re working on because I think that it’s very easy as an academic biotech, you know, when people got academic backgrounds, just to solve scientific problems because they’re interesting and they’re challenging.
But that’s not what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to make an impact for people. So it’s really important that we’re constantly out there talking to patients, talking to physicians, talking to patient groups, talking to people in the pharma industry. Talking to people that have many more years than, than experience than anyone in our team does.
Um, because combined, that’s where we’re going to really be able to find where the pain points are and be able to make sure that any product that we develop is needed by the industry. And we’re not going to just develop something that someone else has gone and done anyway. You know, um, that’s the only way that you’re going to is by.
being people focused. And that’s what I believe.
Naji Gehchan: And really like focusing on this unmet need, as you said, and the people you hire. So if I, if I move to how, how did you build your team? How do you hire people? Uh, and how do you bring talent into your organization? I’d love to know your philosophy.
Emilia McLaughlin: Yeah. Um, I think hiring is one of the most important things for a startup success.
It’s, it’s incredibly challenging and it’s incredibly, um, It’s, it’s incredibly time consuming. The best advice I’ve ever been given was by another founder. And, um, am I allowed to swear on this podcast?
Naji Gehchan: Be yourself.
Emilia McLaughlin: Yeah. Well, basically he said, if it’s not a fuck, yes, it’s a no, um, that’s like, I’m constantly reminding my team when we’re going through the recruitment process and we’ve been recruiting for six months, nine months, whatever.
It’s taking forever to find the perfect profile. But I think hiring is somewhere you have to be a perfectionist in a startup. You’re going to get it wrong. Yeah. People change, people have different needs, people’s things, you know, their life changes as well. But I think that you need to really follow your gut in terms of who you think can cope and who can cope in an academic lab is very different to who can cope in a startup.
You really need to Cut out all sorts of perfectionism out of people because perfectionism kills speed in a startup. And so I’ve learned a lot in my personal journey about the traits that I’m looking for in someone. I want everyone in the team to be an entrepreneur. I want everyone in the team to be a hustler.
These are not necessarily easy things to find, especially when you’re trying to recruit directly out of PhD, but they, they definitely exist, but you’ve just got to hunt for them. And it takes time when you find the right people. It’s amazing. And it’s worth waiting.
Naji Gehchan: I love the, what you shared and I usually frame it and if there is a doubt, there is no doubt, like whenever you feel a doubt in it.
The more polite way to put it. Yeah, probably. So, you know, like probably the S side. Uh, well, you, you talked about some of the trade, entrepreneur, hustler, Obviously, like the background of science, et cetera. Um, so during the interview, like I’d love, since you’re passionate about this, like, how do you assess this?
Have you made wrong hires? What is the wrong hire? Is it the wrong casting? I’d love to understand how you think about these only have successes. Please let me know how you did this.
Emilia McLaughlin: Of course, I haven’t only had success. There’s another founder. Another piece of advice I had was it’s about a 60 percent success rate.
And I see, I find that as well. Um, and that if you’re hitting that, it’s pretty good. Um, I think I’m getting, we’re really learning as a team. Um, it’s not just me, it’s other members of the team as well. We’re learning to really assess. Um, what does someone truly and deeply want from their life? Um, and are they prepared to work out of their comfort zone and go the extra mile?
And I think there’s a lot of ways that you can assess that. You can assess it practically by putting them out of their comfort zone in a case study and saying, okay, come back to me with, with answers to these things in 48 hours and see how they cope with it. You can assess it by putting them on the spot with kind of more personal questions as well.
I like to like really ask people about, um, about more personal angles of how they cope with stress and things like that in interviews. So I think there’s, there’s a couple of ways that you can do that, but above anything, I think you have to listen to your gut as well, because while someone might on paper look perfect, if your gut feeling is that they’re really not just going to be able to handle it, then You know, you have to trust that and go with it.
And, and I need to also trust other people in my team when they’re recruiting that, that if their gut’s telling them, no, it’s not going to work, then that that’s, then that’s a no, you know, if it’s not, if it’s not 10s across the board, it’s, it’s a no.
Naji Gehchan: So you, you are also passionate about, uh, helping transitions from academic, specifically women into, uh, into entrepreneurship and, um, building startups.
Uh, what, what is your biggest advice for, uh, From your learning experience, you would give people who want to do this jump?
Emilia McLaughlin: I would just say be brave and take the leap. I think particularly with academics, we often feel that we need to get everything right. And we need to have everything, we have to have all the answers figured out. But you really don’t, nobody does, and you’ve just got to throw yourself in and do the absolute best that you can do in, in, in, in any moment.
Nobody knows the future. Nobody knows what’s going to happen. You know, we’ve got to just try our best, but it’s the opportunity cost of not trying, um, I think is, is where you, where you’re missing out. If you don’t put yourself out there, I think. I’m particularly passionate about supporting other women in this transition, because I think women have a tendency to be more risk averse.
And, you know, a lot of people, when I started my company, particularly female colleagues would say to me, you’re so brave. Wow. You’re so brave. Why are you doing that? And I’d look at them. I said, why, why am I so brave? What have I done? Like, you know, I haven’t jumped off a, you know, I’m not jumping off a. Um, a bungee jump or something.
I’m, I’m just trying, you know, it’s not, it’s not, I’m not, uh, it’s about your perception of risk for them. They, they were seeing all the risks, but none of the upside. And it’s like changing that mindset of like, yeah, but the possibilities are also incredible. So I don’t see it as, uh, as brave. I just see it as like, it’s, it’s an opportunity that you’ve got to grasp.
And I see
Naji Gehchan: that you would do it again and again. And I love this energy that is transmissible. Let me ask you something specifically about Women Founder. You know in the US, and I’d love to hear your thoughts about it globally and in France as you’re in France now. It’s, it’s unfortunately still hard, underrepresented and underfunded, even though I think like more and more data is showing that, uh, companies founded by women and led by women performs better.
So how is it in France? How do you see things in Europe? Are we getting better there? And how are you advocating for that?
Emilia McLaughlin: Yeah, I think it’s incredibly similar. It’s across the board. You know, it’s 1 percent of companies are founded by 100 percent female founded companies. And only a small proportion more are male and female co founded.
But, you know, it’s a very small proportion of companies that are just led by women. I think, um, that that there is challenges with the ecosystem, but I also think that there’s a lot to do with that risk taking mindset of female individuals and how we can support them to feel comfortable. You know, I’m part of a women in leadership program.
And when we get together as a group of women, you just notice how How much we were often afraid to make mistakes, I guess we want to have all the answers figured out and how to basically encourage women to just be more bullish on things, just to go for it. Even if they don’t have all of the answers and they’re not perfect, how can we just say, just give it a try?
You know, it’s worth, it’s, it’s worth the risk, take the leap. And I think we’re not taught as a society to take, to, to, to push ourselves in that way so much. Um, And that of course applies to many men as well. It’s not only women, but I think that that, that partly contributes. And then there’s other challenges around, you know, job instability of running a startup.
You know, there’s, there’s not much support for that. I do think as a, as a female founder, I get additional support actually. Um, I would say like, I’m very well supported by the European innovation commission. They’ve been incredibly supportive to me. I’ve got a I’ve got a, um, Women Tech EU grant from them that specifically, um, supports female deep tech founders in the EU.
Um, and through that, I’m mentored by some amazing women as well. Um, and that really helps me. So I think there’s things that I’ve been able to access and benefit because I’m a female founder. Um. That said, you know, the pharma industry, a lot of the leaders are, are led by, by most of the leaders in the pharma industry are men.
So I’m, I’m operating in a very heavily male dominated, um, industry when we look at the leadership side and that is challenging, but I’d say in the startup world, it’s beginning to become a more supportive ecosystem, but I think we need change at the level of empowering women to, to feel that they can take the risk and maybe some way of.
mitigating that it feels like such an extreme career risk, I think, for some women to take the leap to be a founder. So how can we support them in that?
Naji Gehchan: Certainly. And, uh, yeah, I’m, I’m obviously also passionate about this and what we can do, uh, not only from a startup, uh, I see those moves happening in a lot in Europe and the US to, uh, support for, uh, founders startups, but the, the it’s better, but as you said, there is a long road and certainly also for corporate where, uh, this is one of the biggest.
focus that we should be having as leaders, uh, empowering women. Um, how, how do you know when, if we move into the science part and just for people to know also about what you do, uh, within your company from a biotech standpoint, how would you define what you do in a simple, in a simple way? What are you working on?
Emilia McLaughlin: So we work on sugars. So sugars are carbohydrate molecules or glycans that added to the surface of, um, of protein drugs that are really important, um, for the efficacy and the longevity. So how well a drug performs and what we have at Chiron bio is a unique set of tools to control those sugars. So, um, physically how long they are, how many of them they are and how they behave in the human body.
And we’re applying this, uh, specifically to autoimmune diseases, whether it’s a, whether it’s a huge unmet need, um, less than 50 percent of patients are in remission from disease. And we’re using these innovative approaches to sugar engineering to design versions of drugs that have much, um, higher efficacy in, in, in patients.
Um, and so that, You know, we can target some of these major issues in the industry of, of patients being in chronic pain for, for life at some times. So developing much more, um, efficacious treatments for the patients.
Naji Gehchan: This is great and certainly impactful. What is currently your biggest challenge? Is it scientific?
Is it funding? What is your biggest challenge as an organization?
Emilia McLaughlin: That’s a great question. Um, I mean, there are so many challenges when you’re on the laptop. Um, they range from very, very small things to very, very big things. Um, I think the biggest challenge for us globally is getting the commercial development right, like making sure that we’re developing our, yeah, it’s our, it’s making sure that we’re really, um, yeah, it’s, it’s the commercial development side.
I can, I can dive into more of that if you want, but, um, it’s, it’s the making sure that we are developing a drug that rheumatologists will say, yes, this is going in my patient.
Naji Gehchan: Well, this is, this is, I love that you’re framing it that way. And can you remind us which stage you are, if it’s, Public, obviously, like, I don’t want you to go to things.
You don’t want to share, but
Emilia McLaughlin: yeah, you
Naji Gehchan: are. And why so early in your stage, you’re starting to think about that. That’s, that’s a great point. Uh, actually I talked with some biotechs. They, you know, they are focused on their pre clin and the innovation they have, and they don’t think about like, let’s make sure that it gets into patient’s hands at the end of the day, because this is what we should all be doing.
Great. So I love that you framed it that way. So can you help us understand where are you in the journey?
Emilia McLaughlin: Yeah, we’re preclinical, but I think we, you know, we, we have a set of tools that we can apply in a lot of different ways. And so my job as a CEO is to find the absolute best path where we can apply this.
And I think probably contrary to other biotechs where they’re spinning out one specific molecule and they’re fixed on their path, you know, they can’t do that. they can’t shift at all. We have a lot of potential with what we’re doing for the sugar engineering. There are so many ways we can apply this in the, you know, in, in the, in the pipeline for us, but for our first kind of commercial success, we need to get it right.
And that’s why it’s very, very important that. We are choosing the best application. That’s going to have the biggest impact in the clinic. Um, so, and for me, it’s really the clinicians, because those are the people that make the decision. Of course, in the U S there’s also the healthcare providers that we have to think about the pricing.
We have to think about this a lot, because if we can’t be competitive on pricing, no, one’s going to want our, our eventual drugs. So I think it, it’s very important for me that we’re building something that is for patients. And the person that will decide whether it goes to a patient will be the clinician.
So that’s where we’re very focused on, on that side of things, uh, in understanding, um, how can we make things better for the patients?
Naji Gehchan: So I mean, yeah, I would, uh, move now to a section where I’m going to give you a word and I would love your first reaction to it.
Emilia McLaughlin: Okay.
Naji Gehchan: The first one is leadership.
Emilia McLaughlin: I would say freedom.
Naji Gehchan: Oh, I want to, uh, it’s the first time I hear this reaction after 130 plus interviews, I’d love to learn more about it.
Emilia McLaughlin: You want me to expand?
Naji Gehchan: Yes.
Emilia McLaughlin: Yeah. Um, I think like being a leader is, there’s a lot of freedom in that. Like you, first of all, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re your own boss, but also you have your freedom to run your team and, and, and do things be dynamic, be agile in the way that, that.
That you want to do it. I think there’s a lot of freedom in being a leader. Um, and you, you get to, I mean, I’m, I’m really talking about being a CEO here, but where you get to, to choose your team, you, you get to, you know, design how the team runs and things like that. And there’s an awful lot of freedom there.
Like the, the kind of
Naji Gehchan: what about entrepreneurship,
Emilia McLaughlin: uh, excitement,
Naji Gehchan: biotech,
Emilia McLaughlin: um, patients.
Naji Gehchan: The last one is spread love and organizations.
Emilia McLaughlin: Um, leadership would come in.
Naji Gehchan: Can you expand on that?
Emilia McLaughlin: Well, I mean, it’s what I’m thinking, what comes to mind when I think about your podcast and kind of building up like leadership and, and, and hearing from different leaders.
Um, but I think leadership is also about spreading love in organizations and, and within teams as well, and making sure we’re working together in a collaborative
Naji Gehchan: way. Any final word of wisdom for healthcare leaders around the world?
Emilia McLaughlin: Um, I think it’s just keeping the patients, um, at the forefront of what we’re doing.
I think it’s really, really important. Um, we have some amazing innovations out there. How can we get these to patients as fast as, as fast as possible?
Naji Gehchan: Well, thank you so much, Emilia, for being with me today. And a huge congrats to what you’ve achieved already with, um, with your company. And wishing you all the best in the next steps.
Thank you again.
Emilia McLaughlin: Great to chat today.
Naji Gehchan: Thank you all for listening to SpreadLove in Organizations podcast. Drop us a review on your preferred podcast platform
Follow us on LinkedIn and connect with us on spreadloveio.com. We’re eager to hear your thoughts and feedback. Most importantly, spread love in your organizations and spread the word around you to inspire others and amplify this movement, our world so desperately needs