Leonardo M.R. Ferreira, Founder and CEO, Torpedo Bio

Leonardo M.R. Ferreira, Founder and CEO, Torpedo Bio

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
iHeartMedia presents CEOs You should Know. CEOs you should Know
Charleston is brought to you by SC two to fifty
Charleston Www dot SC two fifty Charleston dot org.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
It's Michael Blaze. Welcome to CEOs you should know. Joining
us today is Leo Ferreira. He's the founder and CEO
of Torpedobio. Welcome Leo, thank you for having me. So
tell our listeners what Torpedo Bio is.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
Torpedo Bio is our new biotech startup company developing a
new engineered immune cell therapy for solid tumors. So think
breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, melanoma, lung cancer, gleoblastoma. These are
the deadliest and most common types of cancer.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
How long was the journey to develop this?

Speaker 3 (00:47):
So the journey, it's almost start to put a starting point.
You know, I've been doing science since two thousand and eight,
studying immunology since twenty eleven, but this specific idea concept
was really born in twenty twenty one when I started
at the Medical University of South Carolina.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Now does this involve stem cells? This is not.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
This involves adult cells isolated from the patient's blood.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
So You take the patient's blood right from the patient
that you're treating.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
Correct, This is called autologous cell therapy from the own patient.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Now, is this covered by insurance or you know, I
know that a lot of people are concerned about you know,
insurance CONTs these days and what's covered and what's not.
It has it been approved by any insurance companies.

Speaker 3 (01:36):
Not yet, So it's still an experimental treatment, but it
really is on the shoulders of giants. So it's based
on the concept of you might have heard of CAR
T cell therapy. So you take the patient's blood, you
isolate TEA cells. These are immune cells that fight cells
that are unwanted in your body, such as cancerous cells,

(01:57):
virus infected cells, and modify them. And that's a trick,
is that we know so much about the human genome
that we didn't stop there. We met our own genes
as well. And so there's this lab made gene called
a chimeric antigen receptor or CAR for short, and so

(02:17):
when you put the CAR in the T cell, you
can really drive that T cell to go seek and
destroy cancer cells. Now, this works pretty well in liquid tumors,
in blood cancers, leukemia, lymphoma at MUSC and the Hollings
Cancer Center. There's been great success in these types of

(02:40):
cancers with car T cell therapy. So now Torpedo bios
mission is to take that success to the ninety percent
of cancer cases.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
How long does that take from the point that you
draw blood from the patient, how long does the process
take before you treat them again with what you've engineered?

Speaker 3 (02:58):
It takes two to three weeks. So a T cell
culture is like a yo yo. You know, the yoyo
you're dropping that you wait for it to come back up.
The T cell is very similar. You stimulate, you wake
up the T cell if you will. This will allow
it to proliferate, to make more of itself, and to
be receptive, if you will, to gene modification. Now, after

(03:18):
that the cell will be dividing for nine to twelve days,
so a bit under two weeks. And then from that
point on you able to simulate it again, and so
this time by the actual cancer cells.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
Now you said that this is still considered experimental therapy.
If somebody is interested in receiving the therapy, how do
they go about that?

Speaker 3 (03:39):
So right now we're gearing up to start clinical trials,
and so we'll have some tremendous help from the clean
Cell Therapy facility at the Haulings Cancer Center. There is
a facility where imagine people wearing astronaut suits. Everything has
to be super clean, right, there can be no germs,
no animal products, nothing. And so in this highly spe

(04:00):
specialized facilities, you can take cells from someone's body and
make them into a cure for cancer and put them
back into the patient's body.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
And so I would imagine that your oncologist or your
doctor would have to refer you to this experimental treatment.
And you're just ramping up right now. So is have
you treated anybody locally here yet?

Speaker 3 (04:21):
Not yet? So we're still at the pre clinical stage,
gearing up for the manufacturing right for the production of
these cells and the clean facility such that they can
be tested in patients.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
I mean, I think that's just awesome. And you know,
modern medicine has come so far, it's just getting exponentially
faster now, isn't it. I agree.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
I think medicine is now getting a third pillar, if
you will. You know, in the old days, you had
small molecules such as penicillin. Right, you can take a
shut of penicillin. You can make it in large batches,
but in a chemical factory. The second pillar where the
biological so molecules found in your body, but still kind
of small prote teens, antibodies that sort. And the third

(05:02):
pillar is using cells. And so you can think of
cells as tiny robots that go where you want, when
you want, and they do what you want. So I
sell as a software called the human genome that it
can program at will. And so you are right. The
feel has come a tremendous way in making decisions for

(05:24):
the cells. So now many disorders it actually goes beyond cancer,
can potentially be treated using cells as living drugs.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Now, how does all this work? How does it get funded?
Is you know, are there is it a mixture of
hospitals and government and private donors or is it all
private donors and entrepreneurs like yourself and your company, or
you know, how does all that come together?

Speaker 3 (05:48):
Yeah, it's truly a mixture, and it's really a long run.
I would say the initial idea, so to get from
my idea to have data to have scientific results, and
it's some initial pilot funding, right, It's some money to
buy reagents, to pay salaries, to the experiments and so
that in this case came from the Haulings Cancer Center itself,
also from foundations American Cancer Society, SWIM across America and others.

(06:14):
And then from there you get your initial data that's
exciting and say, if that's the case, you can apply
for government grants.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
So this is a.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
National Seat of Health NIH, most specifically the National Cancer
Institute NCI, but I also have the part of Defense
and other sources as well. And so from there you
keep accruing data that is exciting and relevant. And so
from there we know at a point where we have
those checks. Right, we found exciting data in the laboratory,

(06:44):
in the peach re dish, in animal models. So the
next step is to go into patients. And so that's
where now the next step is to have a company
and entity that can bring us to patients and commercialize it.
So we have intellectual property protection, we have processes is
being developed to really bring us to the patienc You know,
I always like to think that, you know, my laboratory

(07:06):
in my company is not just in Charleston, can be
the world. We kind of try this in patients.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
Now, Leo, you said you had a long history in research.
Why don't you give us your background and not only
in research, but in education.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
Yeah, where to start? I think I also want to
be a scientists as a little kid, and I'm from Portugal,
I should mention. And when I was deciding what to
do for college, I went to the library like one
does and opened all the college textbooks. And when I
caught my eye was the organic chemistry textbook because I
opened this random page and it was a structure atom

(07:40):
by atom of cellulos right, it's the stuff in plants.
And I was like, wow, you have this bark, this
structure and you can draw it atom by atom. So
if I understand this, this could get me on the
path of understanding nature, the natural world and the human body,
and one day not just understand, but also control it.

(08:00):
Stand fast forward to my college degree in biochemistry, and
that's somemle upon yet another book, and this one was
on gene engineering, genetic engineering, and I was like, wow,
you open this, Pati and I have I have all
these rectangles that are genes, and these genes make cells
do things, so you feel like this is the blueprint
of life, how the cells make decisions. So if I

(08:22):
control these genes, I can't change what cells do, and
so I thought, maybe that's the path throughly curing disease
because our cells are made of cells and cells operated
by genes. So if it can change genes in cells,
it can probably really help disease. And so from there

(08:42):
I learned about immunology. So immunology is this rather complex
field of study, whor soly the immune system. The name
indicates an immune system, it turns out is in everything,
Like every disease you can think of, there's an immune component.
Could be the macrophage that samples the environment and eats
dead cells with a T cell that starcus in your

(09:04):
blood and goes killed cancer cells and virus infected cells,
and the list goes on and so then ever since
twenty twelve, really twenty eleven, I started my PhD.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
This is back at Harvard.

Speaker 3 (09:16):
The you know, my college graduation gift was owned a
ticket to America. So back in twenty eleven I did
that trip. And so from my pH at Harvard, then
my post actual fellowship at the University of California, San
Francisco in California, and as a faculty member at the
Medical University of South Carolina and Charleston really been working

(09:37):
on developing cells as living drugs for disease, and so
since twenty twenty one has really been this kind of
Erika moment where we're working with this cell type. They're
called regulatory T cells. They regulate, they control immune responses.
These cells became slightly famous this year because the Noble

(10:00):
Rise in Medicine in twenty twenty five actually went to
the discoverer of T rings of the regatory T cells,
which happened back in the nineties. And so in any case,
these cells are loved by solid tumors. If you doestology,
if you look inside a melanoma, a breast cancer, a

(10:20):
pancreatic cancer called rectal cancer, you see a lot of
these cells. Now, this is usually bad news because these
cells inhibit they suppressed immune system. So what happens that
solid tumors are really good imminologists. They learn all the
tricks of our body's immune system works to deflect to escape.

(10:42):
So what we found in this Erica moment we found
a way to modify these cells to turn them from
cancer's best friend into its worst enemy. And so ever
since then we've been doing experiments in the peach tradition
and animals to really make the idea stronger and stronger,
not to the point that in twenty twenty four we

(11:05):
start a torpedo bio. Right, we've gotten support from the SCI,
which is a South Carolina research authority, from being more
capital from we invest SC and so now we're all
on our way to test these concepts in cancer patients.

Speaker 2 (11:20):
Now, I don't mean to put you on the spot,
but I find it fascinating that no matter what form
it is, whether it's you know, a human being or
a cancer cell, everything is competing for life, and that
includes the cancer cells and the things that afflict human beings.
And so I find it fascinating that that competition there.
How might you explain that to a layman.

Speaker 3 (11:42):
Well, I think whatever is alive wants to stay alive,
right to wance, to're produced, to make more of itself.
And no better example than cancer, the issued cancer is
that cancer does not have empathy.

Speaker 2 (11:54):
Right.

Speaker 3 (11:55):
The cancer is basically an organ that went ri and
just would not stop growing right to your body as
many organs, many organ systems, many cells. It even has
foreign cells such as bacteria in your guts, and all
of these live in harmony, such are your body macroscopically
works its best. Cancer cells forgot that, and so many mutations,

(12:18):
many errors in the genome of cancer cells make them
have unbridled greed. They want to grow, grow, grow at
the expense of the host. And so at some point
you might imagine it's really a short siled point of view,
because if the patient dies, the cancer dies, right, and
so there's some lesson there for life right where you

(12:39):
want to grow. But at the same time, also be
good to your neighbor and good to your connections, because
then you can grow more together.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
Now, when you said cancer, forgot that. Does cancer evolve?
Does it change form or become more aggressive or do
whatever it needs to do to survive over time and
over generations.

Speaker 3 (12:58):
Yes, absolutely, there's all the hallmarks of cancers, as some
call it, where you can imagine that the first step
could be you know, many cells in your body divide
every day, like in your gut, for example, You're constantly
replenishing those cells after damage. But there are problems in
place where if a cell is a defect, it will
get cleared out, eliminated without any detriment to the organism.

(13:21):
Cancer cells accumulate errors in their DNA in their genome
that prevent that from happening. So even the accumulating errors,
they keep dividing and dividing. And so that's the first
step for a transformed cell. It kind of becomes immortalized
in a way, there's no way to kill it. And
the second step is it actually becomes divide so much
it forms a tumor. And so this is a neoplasm

(13:44):
like neo means new and plasmans growth. And so now
you have a tumor. It might still be benign, meaning
it's not malignant, it's not terrible for you, but it
keeps growing and so at some point it actually runs
out of space. And so if you look at this
solid tumors, look at a pancreatic cancer for example, These
our environments are extremely deprived of oxygen, of nutrients, blood

(14:08):
vessels can go in. It's crazy stuff. And then it's
the point that these cancer cells now running out of
space and food. Basically they have to metestasize, they have
to colonize all parts of your body. And that's actually
what makes a lot of these solid tumors deadly is
that they're no longer in one place. They spread all
over your body. Right, you'll find cancer metastasis rights fo

(14:30):
style of growth in your liver, in your lungs, in
your brain. And so there isn't an evolutionary process where
you go from a single misbehaved cell all the way
to having several malignant tumors all over your body. And
the idea then is that the only way to fight this,
or one way to fight this is a the immune system,
because guess what, the immune system also evolves. Right, every

(14:53):
time the cancer slips and makes a mistake, and if
this mistake is presented to the immune system, he gets eliminated.
And so now I have an arms race where the
cancer has more and more changes that our bodies see
as dangerous, but at the same time they able to
keep these changes to themselves by finding ways to avoid

(15:15):
the immune system. And so that's why solid teamors have
been so hard to treat with conventional immune therapy, because
it feels like there always one step ahead. And so
our goal torpedo bio is for once we are the
ones that are one step ahead of the cancer.

Speaker 2 (15:32):
Well, that's fantastic work. And you mentioned the start of
your journey to your point of expertise now in that
one book about plant life. But was that the only
impetus to your career or is there any kind of
medical history in your family? Do you have any other doctors?
What did your parents do?

Speaker 3 (15:53):
My mom is a lawyer, a criminal attorney, and that
my dad's engineer. He selectively breeds cows to increase milk production.
So back in Portugal, we drink milk three times a day,
so it's very important of enough milk. And then from
my mom's side, she's a lawyer, so there's all sorts

(16:14):
of criminal law, of people having issues. And then my
grandparents are actually farmers, and so sometimes I see myself
from both sides. My mom's parents and my dad's parents
are all farmers, and I have lots of land back
in Portugal. Sometimes I see myself as being a farmer
of cells. You know, you get someone's blood, you get

(16:36):
let's say one million cells, you farm those cells and
make sometimes a billion cells, so that's a thousand times more.
And so yes, in terms of my family, that's their job.
So I'm no other scientists or medical doctors in the family.
I think it just truly came to me. I always
enjoyed science. I always had lots of questions, which was

(16:58):
not so popular. For example, I was in Sunday is cool,
but otherwise it was Yeah, that's been really my Joran.
Just ask lots of questions, and I want to find answers,
you know, for example, ASAI don't drink coffee this day
because the answers keep me up, you know, find those answers.

Speaker 2 (17:13):
It takes that kind of certain type of drive to
do what you do, don't you think I would like.

Speaker 3 (17:18):
To think so. I think in the end, it's really
driven by curiosity and also wanting to help people. And
I think, you know, we're all in this together, and
sometimes our bodies fail. Us can use our knowledge to
change that, right, And so I think medicine is really inspiring,
where the life expectancy has gone up so much over

(17:39):
the past few centuries, and also the quality of life.
And I think just the human experience in this planet
and maybe in other planets in the future, right, can
really be changed for the better if we keep improving
the way we look after ourselves.

Speaker 2 (17:53):
Well, you kind of touched on it right there. My
next question was what's the philosophy that drives you each day?

Speaker 3 (17:59):
Then the philosophy is really just wanting to get answers
to these questions and hoping that these are important questions.
Many questions we could ask, right Becauld ask how many
grains of center there on the beach? That's an interesting question,
but I don't know what up of that will be.
But how can we defeat these solid tumors? It seems

(18:19):
to be it's both a scientifically and intellectually interesting question,
and they has tremendous impact. And so I think choosing
a question a bit like in philosophy. And maybe it's
by no mistake that it's the PhD. Right, doctor of philosophy,
even though you know I'm playing with animals and with cells,
I'm still a doctor of philosophy. And I think it's
because that's what science is about, is really asking the

(18:41):
right question and try to find answers for it, and
sometimes the answer comes in the form of more questions.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
Absolutely, And you had mentioned that to this day, you
don't drink coffee because you didn't want to stay up
all night, you know, trying to because your mind's racing
trying to figure all these things out. What do you
do to calm your mind? What do you do when
you're not.

Speaker 3 (19:00):
I enjoy physical exercise. I enjoy biking. So for example,
the cancer Center of the Haulings has a great bike
risht for a cancer called Lovelo. I buke eighty miles
in one day. It takes me quite a while. I
need to definitely improve my speed, but I do that.
Also the bridge run, the Cooper River Bridge run ten k.

(19:21):
I also do swimming. So Swim Across America is the
Cancer Foundation, and every June they also have an event
in Kioa Island, and so I buy Cairn, I swim,
I go to the gymnasium to the MC on the
center as well, And so I like staying active, and
so I think in the end, I always grew up
playing sports. I used to karate, I used to swim,

(19:43):
I used to run, I used to play soccer. And
so that's kind of something I've always done and continue
to do to call my mind, because then you know,
if you're swimming in the ocean, you got to be present, right,
or if you're on your bike in Francis Marion Forest
to be present. And so physical activity has always managed
to make me very present in that moment and call

(20:07):
my mind.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
Sure, Now are you married? Do you have children or
are you single. I am married.

Speaker 3 (20:12):
I married April twenty twenty four to my wife Anna.
She's from Charles and her family has been South Carolina
before the United States or a country, so they're the Crawfords.
And so we got married last year. We lived together,
no children yet. We have one dog though, one rescue dog.

Speaker 2 (20:30):
She's really great.

Speaker 3 (20:31):
She never barks, she's very quiet. She's mostly a black
Labrador with some pitbull mix. And so the nuclear family
right now is me, my wife and one dog.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
That's great. Well, it's certainly been a pleasure talking to
you and very interesting. And you know, when we talk
about interesting subjects like this, time just flies and we're
out of time already. So Leo Ferrera, founder and CEO
of Torpedo Bio, thank you very much for your time
time today and good luck in your endeavor. Thanks for
having me. We'll keep on keeping absolutely. Thank you, Leo.

Speaker 3 (21:07):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (21:07):
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