Meet the Maker: EPM talks to Mogrify's Rodrigo Santos

In the latest instalment of 'Meet the Maker' EPM talks to Rodrigo Santos, director of Cell Technologies at Mogrify. Rodrigo talks personal achievements, the potential of cell therapy and the future opportunities for pharma.

Could you give us a brief description of yourself and what you do at Mogrify? 

I am a biochemist with a PhD in stem cells and developmental biology from the University of Cambridge. During my PhD, I studied the molecular mechanisms underlying the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells, a recent technology at that time, with huge potential for regenerative medicine. 

At Mogrify, I lead the Cell Technologies team, which is responsible for validating and optimising the protocols predicted using our proprietary direct cellular conversion technology, which makes it possible to transform (transmogrify) any mature human cell type into any other. 

Please describe your average day in five words.

Think quick and act quicker.

At what point did you decide to be involved in the pharma market?

Half-way through my PhD, I started attending bio-entrepreneurship events around Cambridge, UK.  There were two talks in particular that had great impact on my thinking about biotech and pharma, one from Dr Jonathan Milner (founder and CEO of Abcam) and another from Dr Darrin M. Disley, OBE (previously CEO of Horizon Discovery and now, Mogrify). Their vision of how biotech could create a better world opened my eyes, and there and then, I decided to devote my career to this.

What has been your biggest achievement?

Setting up the scientific team at Mogrify is one of my proudest achievements. Mogrify is a cell therapy development company, aiming to transform the development and manufacture of cell therapies by the systematic discovery of novel cell conversions. To realise this vision, we need highly-skilled and ambitious scientists, and I think we have a passionate and innovative team on board who will enable us to drive the revolution of cell therapies.

What would you say is your worst trait?

Sometimes I am very impatient.

What do you love about your job?

I love a good challenge, and converting cells into one another is certainly a big one!

If anything, what would you change about your job?

I wouldn’t change a thing.

If you weren’t in the pharma industry what job would you like to do?

I would like to be a running coach—I am a marathon runner and I find that endurance sports teach me a lot about dedication, resilience and hard work. 

What challenges do you foresee being important over the next 10 years?

There is no doubt that the curative potential of cell therapy is tremendous, enabling the total replacement of diseased tissue. However, less than a dozen cell therapies have gained regulatory approval, none of which have demonstrated large-scale commercial success due to scientific shortcomings that result in a lack of at least one of the key therapeutic performance indicators: efficacy, safety and scalability. One of the biggest near-term challenges will be reducing the manufacturing costs of cell therapies to make these accessible.

In your opinion, what will offer the biggest opportunities in the future?

I believe the combination of complete genotyping by next-generation sequencing, in vitro personalised disease phenotyping, and drug screening using patient-derived cells, will revolutionise medicine. 

Advances in big-data science now offer researchers the ability to combine genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic data to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the regulatory networks that govern cellular reprogramming and differentiation. Using a systematic bioinformatic approach to analyse this information and identify the conversion factors and culture conditions necessary to manufacture mature (functional) cells at scale, we will be able to create safe and efficacious cell therapies and drug screening platforms, opening up many opportunities for personalised medicines.