October 22, 2025 • 27 mins
Therapies and drugs have evolved enormously in the last 30 years. For example, in cancer, where previously our options were limited to surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, we’re now hearing terms like cancer immunotherapy, targeted therapies and even cancer vaccines. Many of these are biologics.
In this episode you’ll hear from Dr Rachel Galimidi who is at the forefront of biologics drug development and is working to make new and better treatments for a range of diseases.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dr Viviane Richter (00:01):
Medicine has evolved enormously in the past 30 years. Take cancer:
where treatment once relied on surgery, chemo and radiation, now
we're seeing a new wave of medical innovation. Cancer immunotherapies,
cancer vaccines and targeted biologics. But what exactly are biologics,
(00:23):
and why are they reshaping modern medicine? Today, we meet
a leader at the forefront of biologics drug development, who
brings a decade of international biotech expertise. Her aim is
to develop world-leading medicines right here at Garvan. You're listening
to Medical Minds, the podcast that takes you inside the
(00:45):
labs at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. I'm your host,
Dr Viviane Richter, and with us today is Dr Rachel Galimidi,
head of the Biologics and Development platforms at Garvan. Welcome, Rachel.
Dr Rachel Galimidi (01:00):
Hi, Viv. It's great to be here.
Dr Viviane Richter (01:02):
Rachel, thanks for joining us on the podcast. We're really
looking forward to hearing about biologics and some of the
work you're doing at Garvan. But you have an amazing
story to tell. Can you take us back to where
it all started for you?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (01:16):
I grew up in a family that, we're all immigrants
to the United States, and, as an immigrant child, you
learn two things. You need to make money when you
get older, and you need a good job that your
parents can brag about. And so, when I was growing up,
my mum told me I was going to be a doctor.
I lived my whole life thinking that was what I
(01:36):
was going to do, but my first real job was
working in a lab in high school, and so I
got this opportunity to work at Columbia very early on,
and I started doing HIV research, and HIV research was
really impactful to me at that time. It was right
in the end of the 90s and the beginning of
the 2000s. I felt like I was doing something really important.
(01:59):
And then, when I was finishing up school, I wanted
to take a gap year before going to medical school,
and I moved to Los Angeles, and so I got
a job in a lab at Caltech.
Dr Viviane Richter (02:09):
What were you working on?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (02:11):
Yeah so, we were trying to cure HIV, plain and simple. So, we had this idea about using antibodies from people to develop better, stronger drugs, and we tried and failed miserably. But in the whole scheme of things, I learned a lot about virology and immunology, and then I was ready to go to medical school. I applied to medical school and asked my boss, Pamela Bjorkman from Caltech – she’s a really distinguished professor – for a letter of recommendation because I was like, 'if I get a letter from her then I’m bound to go to school.' And she told me that she would write it, but she didn’t really want to.
Dr Viviane Richter (02:49):
Interesting.
Dr Rachel Galimidi (02:49):
So I got nervous and I was like, "oh, I’m a failure," and she was like, "no, I think you were really destined to be a scientist, and so I want you to rethink going to medical school. I don’t think that’s your calling; I think you should go and get a PhD, stay at Caltech, and I think that’s where you’re really going to be successful." And so, I’m here, and haven’t turned back.
Dr Viviane Richter (03:15):
What was it like hearing those words? Did that feel
like it was quite a natural progression for you, actually,
just pivoting to science?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (03:23):
Well, it's the only thing I knew how to do, right?
So I never really worked in a hospital before. The
idea of, you know, people's feet and skin problems and
all those things that like, that really grosses me out.
And so, you know, being at a bench and working
on something that I felt was really important, it made
sense to me. And it felt almost like the natural
(03:44):
thing to do. And probably, you know, me being a
little bit lazy, I was like, 'oh, well, I can
go to graduate school and not have to apply to
medical school and not have to worry about the seven
years of school'. So I did it and I had
a great time.
Dr Viviane Richter (03:59):
What was it that drove you in those early days,
to want to spend your working life at the bench
and in the lab?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (04:06):
I've thought about trying to cure HIV for a really
long time. I had a lot of people in my
life growing up, living in New York City, where friends,
family members, childhood friends had succumbed to the disease. And
so I'd always had this really strong connection to trying
to make a difference in that space in particular. So
then when I worked in high school on trying to
(04:28):
solve the structure of HIV, which I didn't do, but
I made a lot of gels and took a lot
of pictures for the real scientists, I felt like I
was doing real work that was going to be impactful.
And then I got this opportunity to do that and
to do it at a much grander scale at Caltech.
So every day I felt like I was actually getting
my hands dirty and thinking about trying to solve it,
(04:50):
and not necessarily in a way where, you know, you're
just memorising biology terms or organic chemistry, which I was
terrible at. I was actually doing things and testing it
and being an engineer, uh, which is not something that
I had ever thought about being when I was younger.
Dr Viviane Richter (05:06):
After working at Caltech, you then made the jump into biotech.
Can you tell us about that time in your career
and how your research evolved?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (05:16):
Yeah. So, I was pretty successful at Caltech. My graduate
work was surrounded by learning really cool things about the
dynamics of HIV and trying to develop something, but ultimately
what I developed could never have been used in people
as a drug. And so, I had this idea that
I wanted to make a difference, but it was so
(05:38):
hard for me to make an impactful difference with what
I was currently doing. Instead of thinking about the therapeutic realm,
I started thinking about how do you find the right
targets for the therapies that you're working with, because that
was one of the crucial issues with HIV – is that
you just don't have enough sites for the antibodies or
(05:58):
for the drugs to bind well to actually cause it
to clear from an immune system.
Dr Viviane Richter (06:04):
So how does that work? Can you tell us more
about antibodies and how they actually work as a therapeutic?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (06:11):
Yeah. So, antibodies are kind of your front line of
your immune system. So, when you've gotten an infection, whether
it's a virus or a bacteria, it will be recognised
by different cells in your body, and then that gets
processed in a way that your body starts to learn
from it. And there are these cells called B cells in
(06:33):
your body that are the producers of antibodies. And antibodies
essentially are the things that can be targeted against the
antigen and then trigger cascades of other cells to come
over and either eat up the bacteria or the virus
or take it away and make it no longer useful.
(06:54):
And so, an antibody is really the major line of defense,
I would say, for your body. And so, if you
know the structure of an antibody and you know what
your target is against, you can engineer them to make
them stronger, bigger, faster versions of themselves. And that's kind
of what I do.
Dr Viviane Richter (07:12):
Can you tell us a bit more about what you
were doing in California?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (07:16):
So, after grad school, I wanted to completely pivot, and
I wanted to do something really different from the therapeutic
world that I was living in. And I had this
opportunity to join a startup company as employee number two
with a professor from Stanford who was starting something brand new.
(07:36):
And he was taking a different spin on, on the
therapeutic world, and instead of trying to develop therapeutics, he
was actually trying to find targets for different potential therapies
or biomarkers. So, I jumped into this new space that
I had never really heard of called proteomics, which is
a study of proteins in samples. And I completely switched
(07:58):
gears and tried to develop a, an instrument that could
determine all of the different proteins in your body. Um,
in that way, uh, with the end goal of finding
new biomarkers or new targets for drug therapies.
Dr Viviane Richter (08:14):
What was it like working for a startup?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (08:16):
Yeah, so startup life is super cool and different from
what I'd ever done before. It's a very high-energy, really
fast-paced environment. So, we had this really cool idea to
make a new instrument, a new tool that would be revolutionary.
Then we actually had to figure out a way to
do it, and you're doing it with a tiny team. So,
(08:37):
at first, we were just a group of two or
three people, and then we had to do all of
the work that was needed in order to prove our
value and whether or not this is actually going to work.
We would spend nights, weekends, all-nighters trying to do the
proper experiments to demonstrate that the idea was sound. Living
(08:58):
in the Bay Area and being in that kind of
environment was really exciting because you really felt like you
were doing something different and making change. And so, we
actually worked on a proof of concept experiment that took
us around 36 hours. We spent all night, all day
doing these experiments where our founder would come in and
(09:20):
give us soda and food and, you know, the occasional coffee.
And then we completed it, and then we submitted it
to be reviewed by our potential VC firms. And within
about a week or so, we had gotten our first
Series A, which was $34 million. And then it felt like, 'wow,
this is real, we can actually make this work'. And
(09:41):
it just went from there, and then our team expanded
orders of magnitude, and I started, you know, running a
team to develop this end-to-end workflow for this proteomic instrument.
And we ended up getting more proof of concepts and
more traction on our science, and got a Series B round,
which was, I think it was $75 million or something
(10:04):
like that. And then soon after that we were on
our way to getting an IPO, and so we went public.
It felt like I had made my full run. So,
you know, we had started with a concept and it
became really real and palpable. And at that point, I
kind of was interested in doing something else, um, and
I was being recruited to go down to San Diego,
(10:26):
and to kind of do something similar with a genomics company.
And so I packed my bags, took my cat, and
we drove eight hours down from the Bay Area to
San Diego and started my life there.
Dr Viviane Richter (10:40):
What do you think your time working in startups taught
you about research and how to get new therapies on
the market?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (10:48):
I kind of go by a motto that my dad
told me a long time ago, which was, 'it doesn't
have to be perfect to work', right? And so, you know,
you spend your whole life in science trying to build
the perfect experiment, trying to make sure that your data
is super sound and your lab notebook is beautiful, and
you're cultivating this idea of what science is. And in reality,
(11:11):
it's nothing like that, right? Every experiment is dirty, you
have to do it a million times to validate it.
And so, I really got this mentality that, you know, like,
'your first round doesn't have to be perfect'. You can
try it, test it, see if it sort of works,
and if it sort of works, then maybe it has legs,
and maybe you can keep moving. I think I've become
more scrappy as a scientist, because I think you can
(11:33):
always figure out a way to get something to work.
Dr Viviane Richter (11:36):
What brought you to Australia and to Garvan?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (11:40):
So, I'd previously been working at a nonprofit offshoot of
the Scripps Research Institute called Calibr. And it's a really
amazing place, where I was working as Head of Biologics
in the protein science realm, and I had this really
cool opportunity to work with different researchers around the Scripps
(12:00):
Research Institute, which is kind of similar to Garvan. It's
a very high-profile, very science-driven research institute that is not
a university, but we had grad students and postdocs and
really prestigious scientists there, and I got to see what
everyone was working on. And half of my job at
(12:20):
Calibr was people from from Scripps would come in and
pitch us ideas that they thought was really exciting and
therapeutically relevant, and then we'd try to figure out ways
to make it work. Those were the most exciting parts
of my job; you know, I had other elements of
my job where we were developing drugs ourselves and coming
up with cool ideas within my own team. But it
(12:42):
was those crazy ideas that were coming from left field
or things that I had to learn on the fly
that I found the most interesting on my day to day. So,
we had this opportunity to move to Sydney because my
husband was being recruited here, and I was thinking about
all the different types of jobs that I could have.
I also was thinking, you know, maybe I'll, you know,
(13:05):
take some time off. I was planning on taking a
year off of work, which I had never done before.
I've never taken a vacation in my life. And I
was looking around, like, let's just see where I could go,
and I saw Garvan. And Garvan is to me a
very special place. It has so many really amazing researchers.
There's so much scientific excellence. But one thing that I
(13:28):
saw that was might be missing was therapeutics, especially drug discovery, therapeutics, biologics.
And so, I sent an email to everyone on the
executive team at Garvan, which is kind of embarrassing now
that I think about it, because I sent the same
email to the CSO and to Benjamin Kyle, the executive director,
(13:49):
and to the COO. And I was like, "Hey, I
think you could use me, you know, what about me?" And,
you know, after about a week, I got a response
from Ben, followed by Sarah, and they were like, "Yeah,
let's figure out how to make this work." It was
really an exciting time for me. So now I had
to forgo my idea of taking a year off of work,
(14:11):
but I felt like I was actually able to jump
from this place that I really loved at Scripps, where
I was making a real impact. We were selling and
licencing therapies that I had made myself. We were working
on projects that I could intervene on clinical trials that
were going wrong and fix them, and I felt like
I could probably do that here at Garvan as well.
Dr Viviane Richter (14:33):
Amazing. We are thrilled that you came to Garvan. Can
you tell us about some of the things you're working on?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (14:40):
Yeah, so I feel like I wear many hats at Garvan
at this point, but the largest one, I would say,
is I am running our biologics team. And so, I've
just recruited pretty much everyone for the team, but we
are a, you know, multifaceted team that's really based in therapeutics. So,
everyone on the team has an industry background, everyone has
(15:02):
worked in drug development, and our goal is really to
enable the research that's being done at Garvan. So, whether
it is a lab that's interested in developing or discovering
a new antibody to help facilitate their research, or if
it's an idea that someone has that they think could
cure arthritis, you know, we're at the forefront of all
(15:24):
of that, and we get to help distil the idea
into something that is real and could be marketed and
put into a bottle.
Dr Viviane Richter (15:32):
What goes into creating these biologics? Are they like a superdrug?
How would you describe them?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (15:40):
Yeah, so, depending on what kind of biologic, there could be,
you know, the normal antibody that we develop, and that
could be coming from a mouse that we then make
so that it is safe to be used in humans.
Or we use these funky things called bacteriophage that can
(16:00):
then help us evolve antibodies. And then my favourite part
of biologics is to develop these Frankenstein-like monsters that do good,
that are, you know, these multi-specific, bi-specific, or antibodies that,
have the power to do more. So, a lot of
what goes into biologics development is kind of understanding the
(16:22):
mechanism of action that you want to try to harness,
understanding the indications. So, you have to become kind of
an expert in cancer or the autoimmune disease that you're
working on, cause you need to understand all of the
kinks behind what could go wrong, and then trying to
piece together all the things that will make the drug
(16:42):
work really well.
Dr Viviane Richter (16:44):
How are the antibodies that we naturally have different to
the antibodies you develop in the lab?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (16:52):
So, in some cases, they're not different at all. The
only thing that would make them a little bit different is,
in some cases for indications like in autoimmunity or in cancer,
oftentimes you need to develop a drug that's going to
target yourself, and that is pretty much an impossible task
for the human body. So, the human body and the
immune system is enforced with all these really amazing tools
(17:17):
that stop yourself from building antibodies against self proteins. And
so you never can really make one, or it's really
difficult to make one that would, that would be able
to attack yourself. So, one part of what we do
is we utilise bacteriophage and other tools to engineer antibodies
that can be against themselves. Once we have those really
(17:39):
great antibodies that can target the protein of interest, then
we try to make them bigger and stronger. And so,
that's either by making them bind better to their target,
and that's an engineering effort, or, we stick on something
that will make it blow up the cell, for instance,
or bring two cells together so that your immune system
(18:01):
can work stronger or better against the, the cancer at,
at hand. So we're, you know, we're doing a whole
bunch of things, but a lot of it is pairing
things together to pull them in to enforce the immune system.
Dr Viviane Richter (18:16):
Can you tell us more about some of the special
projects at Garvan that you and your team are working on?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (18:22):
Oh, there's so many. This is really the energy that
makes me go to work every day, and it keeps
me excited. So, we're working on lots of things and
lots of different spaces, from the autoimmune space and trying
to develop a better drug that will cure all autoimmune diseases,
in some cases. We're working on some biologics that are
targeting pain, trying to cure arthritis. One project in particular
(18:47):
that I'm pretty passionate about at the moment is some
work that we're doing with Peter Croucher's group. And so
Peter is an expert in bone. And one of the
things that you don't really think about much in the
world of cancer is how your bone is affected. Cancer
has this really tricky way of making your bones less strong.
(19:10):
And so, if you can figure out ways to treat
your bone or to make sure that your bone stays healthy,
then you have a better quality of life and you, potentially,
could be protecting yourself from getting these secondary cancers. So,
Peter came to us. Peter is part of a clinical
trial here at Garvan and St Vincent's, where they're focusing
(19:32):
on the use of Romosozumab for patients with multiple myeloma.
And it's mainly to increase their quality of life. So,
Romo is this cool antibody that helps recruit osteoclasts, which
help build bone, and it's a way to treat osteoporosis
first and foremost, but it could be a way to
improve the quality of life of patients who would potentially
(19:54):
have bone disease due to their cancers. So, Romo is great.
It's currently on the market, people are using it. But
there's a lot of side effects that happen when you
take various therapies, and there's a lot of off-target effects
that can arise from various therapies, even ones that are
made from antibodies. And one of the off-target effects of
(20:15):
Romo is that it causes a few things
to grow in places that you probably don't want them to,
as in like getting a thicker skull or thicker densities
in places that you might not intend. And then the
other thing is that there's some cardiovascular effects, side effects
to Romo, that can be really problematic. And so, he
(20:36):
told us about this clinical trial and was like, "yeah,
we're really excited. They've recruited six or seven people, and
everything is looking pretty promising." The coolest thing I've heard
since I've gotten to Garvan is the patients who are
taking this therapy have said that they're excited to be
on this clinical trial because it makes them feel better
every day, which is so dope. Um, for me, it was, now,
(21:01):
what can we do to make this better? So, we've
been thinking about this a lot. And, you know, my team
and I got together and we're brainstorming with Peter. And
one of the things that we wanted to really do
is try to figure out a way to reduce those
off-target effects. So, we've looked at the structure of sclerostin,
which is the protein that Romo binds to, and we've
(21:22):
looked at some literature that have suggested that if we
target the antibody to maybe a different place than where
Romo actually binds, we could potentially get the same effects
of Romo in terms of growing the bone in places
and making the bones stronger in the sites where they're weakening,
but we could get rid of all of the off-target effects.
(21:45):
And so, we're in the process of doing our antibody
discovery on that right now. And so, I'm pretty excited
about it, and I think that we can then develop
a lot of drugs from just that one piece.
Dr Viviane Richter (21:57):
I love how enthusiastic and passionate you are about your work.
Dr Rachel Galimidi (22:02):
The coolest thing I think that we're doing here at Garvan,
and in Sydney right now, is we're building this new
appetite for antibody discovery and for biologics development. And there
aren't other MRIs or other universities here that have that
same ability to do this. And so, we're really going
from the idea and the conception of something, from a
(22:25):
basic research lab, and we can translate it all the
way to first-in-human clinical trials, all in one space. And
I've never been a part of something like this before,
and I think it's a real unique aspect of being
at Garvan, and it's super exciting.
Dr Viviane Richter (22:41):
What can our listeners expect from your work over the
next few years? How will this change the way Garvan
does research?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (22:48):
It's a great question. I mean, if I'm going to
be lofty, I would say my end goal is to
make Garvan a leader in translational research, developing biologic therapies
that are being used by patients throughout the world. I mean,
I think we have this unique spot in the scientific
ecosystem that we can do all of the things
(23:10):
can design, we can do the basic research, we can
develop the drugs and test them in real time. And
it is unlike any other place, I would say, maybe
on Earth. That's what I, that's what I think.
Dr Viviane Richter (23:24):
Rachel, thank you so much for sharing your story with
us today. We are so grateful for the work that
you and your team do at Garvan.
Dr Rachel Galimidi (23:31):
Thank you.
Dr Viviane Richter (23:33):
Before we let you go, we have a few random
questions for you. This is called the Fast 5. What
was your first job?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (23:41):
My first job was I worked for my dad. He
had a store in the summers in Maine, and I
was a cashier-slash-clerk, and I sometimes was left on my
own at the early age of five. My parents would
leave and they'd go run some errands, and I would
be in charge of this, you know, beach store.
Dr Viviane Richter (24:03):
Who is the most famous person you've ever met?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (24:06):
I'm from New York. I lived in LA for a
long time, so I've met a lot of people. I
think that the proper question would be like, what is
the most famous person that I've almost killed or something.
Dr Viviane Richter (24:17):
Oh my god.
Dr Rachel Galimidi (24:17):
And that would probably be Stephen Hawking. And so, I
was in a car and he was driving across Caltech's campus,
and we didn't see the stop sign and were inches
from killing a legend. Uh, so, that was probably the
biggest thing. I've also been tackled by a bodyguard when
(24:39):
trying to take a selfie with Mick Jagger. So, there's
lots of stories like that.
Dr Viviane Richter (24:44):
Wow, Mick Jagger!
Dr Rachel Galimidi (24:46):
Yeah.
Dr Viviane Richter (24:46):
Did you talk to him?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (24:47):
I tried. But I really just tried to pretend to
take a selfie of myself and have him in the background,
and then the bodyguards came and swooped in and made
me erase the photo.
Dr Viviane Richter (24:57):
Can you tell us about something that's on your bucket list?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (25:01):
I think I'm doing it right now, actually. So, I
always wanted to live outside of the US and I'm
kind of making that happen.
Dr Viviane Richter (25:10):
What's the current book you're reading?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (25:12):
So, I have a four-year-old, and so right now we're
reading The Wizard of Oz. I don't have time to
read for myself anymore, but lots of picture books, and
this is our first real chapter book, so I'm excited.
Dr Viviane Richter (25:26):
Who inspires you the most?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (25:29):
I would say my family, most of all. So, I
grew up in a really big family. Everyone's pretty scrappy
and really successful in their own right. I have a
lot of really powerful women in my family. My mum
is a beast. I aspire to be her every day.
And I'd say my siblings
them very differently. You know, the compassion for my brother,
(25:51):
who's an occupational therapist; the hustle from my sister who
is trying to, who will be the next CEO of
a major company; and the scrappiness from my older sister,
who just always gets ahead. I think those are the
people that really inspire me, and my husband for being
a super family-oriented person. And I guess my daughter and
(26:17):
my kids, really, because, you know, they are super powerful already,
and I'm afraid of what I'm building with my four-year-old,
to be quite honest. She is going to take over
the world. I'm fully certain of that.
Dr Viviane Richter (26:34):
Dr Rachel Galimidi, thank you so much for joining us
on Medical Minds.
Dr Rachel Galimidi (26:40):
Thanks, Viv. It's been a lot of fun.
Dr Viviane Richter (26:42):
If you'd like to know more about Rachel's research or
donate to the work we do at Garvan, head to garvan.org.au. And if you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review and share with other podcast lovers. I'm Dr Viviane Richter, thanks for listening. This podcast was recorded on the traditional Country of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and community. We pay our respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and Elders past, present and emerging.
Medicine has evolved enormously in the past 30 years. Take cancer:
where treatment once relied on surgery, chemo and radiation, now
we're seeing a new wave of medical innovation. Cancer immunotherapies,
cancer vaccines and targeted biologics. But what exactly are biologics,
(00:23):
and why are they reshaping modern medicine? Today, we meet
a leader at the forefront of biologics drug development, who
brings a decade of international biotech expertise. Her aim is
to develop world-leading medicines right here at Garvan. You're listening
to Medical Minds, the podcast that takes you inside the
(00:45):
labs at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. I'm your host,
Dr Viviane Richter, and with us today is Dr Rachel Galimidi,
head of the Biologics and Development platforms at Garvan. Welcome, Rachel.
Dr Rachel Galimidi (01:00):
Hi, Viv. It's great to be here.
Dr Viviane Richter (01:02):
Rachel, thanks for joining us on the podcast. We're really
looking forward to hearing about biologics and some of the
work you're doing at Garvan. But you have an amazing
story to tell. Can you take us back to where
it all started for you?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (01:16):
I grew up in a family that, we're all immigrants
to the United States, and, as an immigrant child, you
learn two things. You need to make money when you
get older, and you need a good job that your
parents can brag about. And so, when I was growing up,
my mum told me I was going to be a doctor.
I lived my whole life thinking that was what I
(01:36):
was going to do, but my first real job was
working in a lab in high school, and so I
got this opportunity to work at Columbia very early on,
and I started doing HIV research, and HIV research was
really impactful to me at that time. It was right
in the end of the 90s and the beginning of
the 2000s. I felt like I was doing something really important.
(01:59):
And then, when I was finishing up school, I wanted
to take a gap year before going to medical school,
and I moved to Los Angeles, and so I got
a job in a lab at Caltech.
Dr Viviane Richter (02:09):
What were you working on?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (02:11):
Yeah so, we were trying to cure HIV, plain and simple. So, we had this idea about using antibodies from people to develop better, stronger drugs, and we tried and failed miserably. But in the whole scheme of things, I learned a lot about virology and immunology, and then I was ready to go to medical school. I applied to medical school and asked my boss, Pamela Bjorkman from Caltech – she’s a really distinguished professor – for a letter of recommendation because I was like, 'if I get a letter from her then I’m bound to go to school.' And she told me that she would write it, but she didn’t really want to.
Dr Viviane Richter (02:49):
Interesting.
Dr Rachel Galimidi (02:49):
So I got nervous and I was like, "oh, I’m a failure," and she was like, "no, I think you were really destined to be a scientist, and so I want you to rethink going to medical school. I don’t think that’s your calling; I think you should go and get a PhD, stay at Caltech, and I think that’s where you’re really going to be successful." And so, I’m here, and haven’t turned back.
Dr Viviane Richter (03:15):
What was it like hearing those words? Did that feel
like it was quite a natural progression for you, actually,
just pivoting to science?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (03:23):
Well, it's the only thing I knew how to do, right?
So I never really worked in a hospital before. The
idea of, you know, people's feet and skin problems and
all those things that like, that really grosses me out.
And so, you know, being at a bench and working
on something that I felt was really important, it made
sense to me. And it felt almost like the natural
(03:44):
thing to do. And probably, you know, me being a
little bit lazy, I was like, 'oh, well, I can
go to graduate school and not have to apply to
medical school and not have to worry about the seven
years of school'. So I did it and I had
a great time.
Dr Viviane Richter (03:59):
What was it that drove you in those early days,
to want to spend your working life at the bench
and in the lab?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (04:06):
I've thought about trying to cure HIV for a really
long time. I had a lot of people in my
life growing up, living in New York City, where friends,
family members, childhood friends had succumbed to the disease. And
so I'd always had this really strong connection to trying
to make a difference in that space in particular. So
then when I worked in high school on trying to
(04:28):
solve the structure of HIV, which I didn't do, but
I made a lot of gels and took a lot
of pictures for the real scientists, I felt like I
was doing real work that was going to be impactful.
And then I got this opportunity to do that and
to do it at a much grander scale at Caltech.
So every day I felt like I was actually getting
my hands dirty and thinking about trying to solve it,
(04:50):
and not necessarily in a way where, you know, you're
just memorising biology terms or organic chemistry, which I was
terrible at. I was actually doing things and testing it
and being an engineer, uh, which is not something that
I had ever thought about being when I was younger.
Dr Viviane Richter (05:06):
After working at Caltech, you then made the jump into biotech.
Can you tell us about that time in your career
and how your research evolved?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (05:16):
Yeah. So, I was pretty successful at Caltech. My graduate
work was surrounded by learning really cool things about the
dynamics of HIV and trying to develop something, but ultimately
what I developed could never have been used in people
as a drug. And so, I had this idea that
I wanted to make a difference, but it was so
(05:38):
hard for me to make an impactful difference with what
I was currently doing. Instead of thinking about the therapeutic realm,
I started thinking about how do you find the right
targets for the therapies that you're working with, because that
was one of the crucial issues with HIV – is that
you just don't have enough sites for the antibodies or
(05:58):
for the drugs to bind well to actually cause it
to clear from an immune system.
Dr Viviane Richter (06:04):
So how does that work? Can you tell us more
about antibodies and how they actually work as a therapeutic?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (06:11):
Yeah. So, antibodies are kind of your front line of
your immune system. So, when you've gotten an infection, whether
it's a virus or a bacteria, it will be recognised
by different cells in your body, and then that gets
processed in a way that your body starts to learn
from it. And there are these cells called B cells in
(06:33):
your body that are the producers of antibodies. And antibodies
essentially are the things that can be targeted against the
antigen and then trigger cascades of other cells to come
over and either eat up the bacteria or the virus
or take it away and make it no longer useful.
(06:54):
And so, an antibody is really the major line of defense,
I would say, for your body. And so, if you
know the structure of an antibody and you know what
your target is against, you can engineer them to make
them stronger, bigger, faster versions of themselves. And that's kind
of what I do.
Dr Viviane Richter (07:12):
Can you tell us a bit more about what you
were doing in California?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (07:16):
So, after grad school, I wanted to completely pivot, and
I wanted to do something really different from the therapeutic
world that I was living in. And I had this
opportunity to join a startup company as employee number two
with a professor from Stanford who was starting something brand new.
(07:36):
And he was taking a different spin on, on the
therapeutic world, and instead of trying to develop therapeutics, he
was actually trying to find targets for different potential therapies
or biomarkers. So, I jumped into this new space that
I had never really heard of called proteomics, which is
a study of proteins in samples. And I completely switched
(07:58):
gears and tried to develop a, an instrument that could
determine all of the different proteins in your body. Um,
in that way, uh, with the end goal of finding
new biomarkers or new targets for drug therapies.
Dr Viviane Richter (08:14):
What was it like working for a startup?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (08:16):
Yeah, so startup life is super cool and different from
what I'd ever done before. It's a very high-energy, really
fast-paced environment. So, we had this really cool idea to
make a new instrument, a new tool that would be revolutionary.
Then we actually had to figure out a way to
do it, and you're doing it with a tiny team. So,
(08:37):
at first, we were just a group of two or
three people, and then we had to do all of
the work that was needed in order to prove our
value and whether or not this is actually going to work.
We would spend nights, weekends, all-nighters trying to do the
proper experiments to demonstrate that the idea was sound. Living
(08:58):
in the Bay Area and being in that kind of
environment was really exciting because you really felt like you
were doing something different and making change. And so, we
actually worked on a proof of concept experiment that took
us around 36 hours. We spent all night, all day
doing these experiments where our founder would come in and
(09:20):
give us soda and food and, you know, the occasional coffee.
And then we completed it, and then we submitted it
to be reviewed by our potential VC firms. And within
about a week or so, we had gotten our first
Series A, which was $34 million. And then it felt like, 'wow,
this is real, we can actually make this work'. And
(09:41):
it just went from there, and then our team expanded
orders of magnitude, and I started, you know, running a
team to develop this end-to-end workflow for this proteomic instrument.
And we ended up getting more proof of concepts and
more traction on our science, and got a Series B round,
which was, I think it was $75 million or something
(10:04):
like that. And then soon after that we were on
our way to getting an IPO, and so we went public.
It felt like I had made my full run. So,
you know, we had started with a concept and it
became really real and palpable. And at that point, I
kind of was interested in doing something else, um, and
I was being recruited to go down to San Diego,
(10:26):
and to kind of do something similar with a genomics company.
And so I packed my bags, took my cat, and
we drove eight hours down from the Bay Area to
San Diego and started my life there.
Dr Viviane Richter (10:40):
What do you think your time working in startups taught
you about research and how to get new therapies on
the market?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (10:48):
I kind of go by a motto that my dad
told me a long time ago, which was, 'it doesn't
have to be perfect to work', right? And so, you know,
you spend your whole life in science trying to build
the perfect experiment, trying to make sure that your data
is super sound and your lab notebook is beautiful, and
you're cultivating this idea of what science is. And in reality,
(11:11):
it's nothing like that, right? Every experiment is dirty, you
have to do it a million times to validate it.
And so, I really got this mentality that, you know, like,
'your first round doesn't have to be perfect'. You can
try it, test it, see if it sort of works,
and if it sort of works, then maybe it has legs,
and maybe you can keep moving. I think I've become
more scrappy as a scientist, because I think you can
(11:33):
always figure out a way to get something to work.
Dr Viviane Richter (11:36):
What brought you to Australia and to Garvan?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (11:40):
So, I'd previously been working at a nonprofit offshoot of
the Scripps Research Institute called Calibr. And it's a really
amazing place, where I was working as Head of Biologics
in the protein science realm, and I had this really
cool opportunity to work with different researchers around the Scripps
(12:00):
Research Institute, which is kind of similar to Garvan. It's
a very high-profile, very science-driven research institute that is not
a university, but we had grad students and postdocs and
really prestigious scientists there, and I got to see what
everyone was working on. And half of my job at
(12:20):
Calibr was people from from Scripps would come in and
pitch us ideas that they thought was really exciting and
therapeutically relevant, and then we'd try to figure out ways
to make it work. Those were the most exciting parts
of my job; you know, I had other elements of
my job where we were developing drugs ourselves and coming
up with cool ideas within my own team. But it
(12:42):
was those crazy ideas that were coming from left field
or things that I had to learn on the fly
that I found the most interesting on my day to day. So,
we had this opportunity to move to Sydney because my
husband was being recruited here, and I was thinking about
all the different types of jobs that I could have.
I also was thinking, you know, maybe I'll, you know,
(13:05):
take some time off. I was planning on taking a
year off of work, which I had never done before.
I've never taken a vacation in my life. And I
was looking around, like, let's just see where I could go,
and I saw Garvan. And Garvan is to me a
very special place. It has so many really amazing researchers.
There's so much scientific excellence. But one thing that I
(13:28):
saw that was might be missing was therapeutics, especially drug discovery, therapeutics, biologics.
And so, I sent an email to everyone on the
executive team at Garvan, which is kind of embarrassing now
that I think about it, because I sent the same
email to the CSO and to Benjamin Kyle, the executive director,
(13:49):
and to the COO. And I was like, "Hey, I
think you could use me, you know, what about me?" And,
you know, after about a week, I got a response
from Ben, followed by Sarah, and they were like, "Yeah,
let's figure out how to make this work." It was
really an exciting time for me. So now I had
to forgo my idea of taking a year off of work,
(14:11):
but I felt like I was actually able to jump
from this place that I really loved at Scripps, where
I was making a real impact. We were selling and
licencing therapies that I had made myself. We were working
on projects that I could intervene on clinical trials that
were going wrong and fix them, and I felt like
I could probably do that here at Garvan as well.
Dr Viviane Richter (14:33):
Amazing. We are thrilled that you came to Garvan. Can
you tell us about some of the things you're working on?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (14:40):
Yeah, so I feel like I wear many hats at Garvan
at this point, but the largest one, I would say,
is I am running our biologics team. And so, I've
just recruited pretty much everyone for the team, but we
are a, you know, multifaceted team that's really based in therapeutics. So,
everyone on the team has an industry background, everyone has
(15:02):
worked in drug development, and our goal is really to
enable the research that's being done at Garvan. So, whether
it is a lab that's interested in developing or discovering
a new antibody to help facilitate their research, or if
it's an idea that someone has that they think could
cure arthritis, you know, we're at the forefront of all
(15:24):
of that, and we get to help distil the idea
into something that is real and could be marketed and
put into a bottle.
Dr Viviane Richter (15:32):
What goes into creating these biologics? Are they like a superdrug?
How would you describe them?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (15:40):
Yeah, so, depending on what kind of biologic, there could be,
you know, the normal antibody that we develop, and that
could be coming from a mouse that we then make
so that it is safe to be used in humans.
Or we use these funky things called bacteriophage that can
(16:00):
then help us evolve antibodies. And then my favourite part
of biologics is to develop these Frankenstein-like monsters that do good,
that are, you know, these multi-specific, bi-specific, or antibodies that,
have the power to do more. So, a lot of
what goes into biologics development is kind of understanding the
(16:22):
mechanism of action that you want to try to harness,
understanding the indications. So, you have to become kind of
an expert in cancer or the autoimmune disease that you're
working on, cause you need to understand all of the
kinks behind what could go wrong, and then trying to
piece together all the things that will make the drug
(16:42):
work really well.
Dr Viviane Richter (16:44):
How are the antibodies that we naturally have different to
the antibodies you develop in the lab?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (16:52):
So, in some cases, they're not different at all. The
only thing that would make them a little bit different is,
in some cases for indications like in autoimmunity or in cancer,
oftentimes you need to develop a drug that's going to
target yourself, and that is pretty much an impossible task
for the human body. So, the human body and the
immune system is enforced with all these really amazing tools
(17:17):
that stop yourself from building antibodies against self proteins. And
so you never can really make one, or it's really
difficult to make one that would, that would be able
to attack yourself. So, one part of what we do
is we utilise bacteriophage and other tools to engineer antibodies
that can be against themselves. Once we have those really
(17:39):
great antibodies that can target the protein of interest, then
we try to make them bigger and stronger. And so,
that's either by making them bind better to their target,
and that's an engineering effort, or, we stick on something
that will make it blow up the cell, for instance,
or bring two cells together so that your immune system
(18:01):
can work stronger or better against the, the cancer at,
at hand. So we're, you know, we're doing a whole
bunch of things, but a lot of it is pairing
things together to pull them in to enforce the immune system.
Dr Viviane Richter (18:16):
Can you tell us more about some of the special
projects at Garvan that you and your team are working on?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (18:22):
Oh, there's so many. This is really the energy that
makes me go to work every day, and it keeps
me excited. So, we're working on lots of things and
lots of different spaces, from the autoimmune space and trying
to develop a better drug that will cure all autoimmune diseases,
in some cases. We're working on some biologics that are
targeting pain, trying to cure arthritis. One project in particular
(18:47):
that I'm pretty passionate about at the moment is some
work that we're doing with Peter Croucher's group. And so
Peter is an expert in bone. And one of the
things that you don't really think about much in the
world of cancer is how your bone is affected. Cancer
has this really tricky way of making your bones less strong.
(19:10):
And so, if you can figure out ways to treat
your bone or to make sure that your bone stays healthy,
then you have a better quality of life and you, potentially,
could be protecting yourself from getting these secondary cancers. So,
Peter came to us. Peter is part of a clinical
trial here at Garvan and St Vincent's, where they're focusing
(19:32):
on the use of Romosozumab for patients with multiple myeloma.
And it's mainly to increase their quality of life. So,
Romo is this cool antibody that helps recruit osteoclasts, which
help build bone, and it's a way to treat osteoporosis
first and foremost, but it could be a way to
improve the quality of life of patients who would potentially
(19:54):
have bone disease due to their cancers. So, Romo is great.
It's currently on the market, people are using it. But
there's a lot of side effects that happen when you
take various therapies, and there's a lot of off-target effects
that can arise from various therapies, even ones that are
made from antibodies. And one of the off-target effects of
(20:15):
Romo is that it causes a few things
to grow in places that you probably don't want them to,
as in like getting a thicker skull or thicker densities
in places that you might not intend. And then the
other thing is that there's some cardiovascular effects, side effects
to Romo, that can be really problematic. And so, he
(20:36):
told us about this clinical trial and was like, "yeah,
we're really excited. They've recruited six or seven people, and
everything is looking pretty promising." The coolest thing I've heard
since I've gotten to Garvan is the patients who are
taking this therapy have said that they're excited to be
on this clinical trial because it makes them feel better
every day, which is so dope. Um, for me, it was, now,
(21:01):
what can we do to make this better? So, we've
been thinking about this a lot. And, you know, my team
and I got together and we're brainstorming with Peter. And
one of the things that we wanted to really do
is try to figure out a way to reduce those
off-target effects. So, we've looked at the structure of sclerostin,
which is the protein that Romo binds to, and we've
(21:22):
looked at some literature that have suggested that if we
target the antibody to maybe a different place than where
Romo actually binds, we could potentially get the same effects
of Romo in terms of growing the bone in places
and making the bones stronger in the sites where they're weakening,
but we could get rid of all of the off-target effects.
(21:45):
And so, we're in the process of doing our antibody
discovery on that right now. And so, I'm pretty excited
about it, and I think that we can then develop
a lot of drugs from just that one piece.
Dr Viviane Richter (21:57):
I love how enthusiastic and passionate you are about your work.
Dr Rachel Galimidi (22:02):
The coolest thing I think that we're doing here at Garvan,
and in Sydney right now, is we're building this new
appetite for antibody discovery and for biologics development. And there
aren't other MRIs or other universities here that have that
same ability to do this. And so, we're really going
from the idea and the conception of something, from a
(22:25):
basic research lab, and we can translate it all the
way to first-in-human clinical trials, all in one space. And
I've never been a part of something like this before,
and I think it's a real unique aspect of being
at Garvan, and it's super exciting.
Dr Viviane Richter (22:41):
What can our listeners expect from your work over the
next few years? How will this change the way Garvan
does research?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (22:48):
It's a great question. I mean, if I'm going to
be lofty, I would say my end goal is to
make Garvan a leader in translational research, developing biologic therapies
that are being used by patients throughout the world. I mean,
I think we have this unique spot in the scientific
ecosystem that we can do all of the things
(23:10):
can design, we can do the basic research, we can
develop the drugs and test them in real time. And
it is unlike any other place, I would say, maybe
on Earth. That's what I, that's what I think.
Dr Viviane Richter (23:24):
Rachel, thank you so much for sharing your story with
us today. We are so grateful for the work that
you and your team do at Garvan.
Dr Rachel Galimidi (23:31):
Thank you.
Dr Viviane Richter (23:33):
Before we let you go, we have a few random
questions for you. This is called the Fast 5. What
was your first job?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (23:41):
My first job was I worked for my dad. He
had a store in the summers in Maine, and I
was a cashier-slash-clerk, and I sometimes was left on my
own at the early age of five. My parents would
leave and they'd go run some errands, and I would
be in charge of this, you know, beach store.
Dr Viviane Richter (24:03):
Who is the most famous person you've ever met?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (24:06):
I'm from New York. I lived in LA for a
long time, so I've met a lot of people. I
think that the proper question would be like, what is
the most famous person that I've almost killed or something.
Dr Viviane Richter (24:17):
Oh my god.
Dr Rachel Galimidi (24:17):
And that would probably be Stephen Hawking. And so, I
was in a car and he was driving across Caltech's campus,
and we didn't see the stop sign and were inches
from killing a legend. Uh, so, that was probably the
biggest thing. I've also been tackled by a bodyguard when
(24:39):
trying to take a selfie with Mick Jagger. So, there's
lots of stories like that.
Dr Viviane Richter (24:44):
Wow, Mick Jagger!
Dr Rachel Galimidi (24:46):
Yeah.
Dr Viviane Richter (24:46):
Did you talk to him?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (24:47):
I tried. But I really just tried to pretend to
take a selfie of myself and have him in the background,
and then the bodyguards came and swooped in and made
me erase the photo.
Dr Viviane Richter (24:57):
Can you tell us about something that's on your bucket list?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (25:01):
I think I'm doing it right now, actually. So, I
always wanted to live outside of the US and I'm
kind of making that happen.
Dr Viviane Richter (25:10):
What's the current book you're reading?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (25:12):
So, I have a four-year-old, and so right now we're
reading The Wizard of Oz. I don't have time to
read for myself anymore, but lots of picture books, and
this is our first real chapter book, so I'm excited.
Dr Viviane Richter (25:26):
Who inspires you the most?
Dr Rachel Galimidi (25:29):
I would say my family, most of all. So, I
grew up in a really big family. Everyone's pretty scrappy
and really successful in their own right. I have a
lot of really powerful women in my family. My mum
is a beast. I aspire to be her every day.
And I'd say my siblings
them very differently. You know, the compassion for my brother,
(25:51):
who's an occupational therapist; the hustle from my sister who
is trying to, who will be the next CEO of
a major company; and the scrappiness from my older sister,
who just always gets ahead. I think those are the
people that really inspire me, and my husband for being
a super family-oriented person. And I guess my daughter and
(26:17):
my kids, really, because, you know, they are super powerful already,
and I'm afraid of what I'm building with my four-year-old,
to be quite honest. She is going to take over
the world. I'm fully certain of that.
Dr Viviane Richter (26:34):
Dr Rachel Galimidi, thank you so much for joining us
on Medical Minds.
Dr Rachel Galimidi (26:40):
Thanks, Viv. It's been a lot of fun.
Dr Viviane Richter (26:42):
If you'd like to know more about Rachel's research or
donate to the work we do at Garvan, head to garvan.org.au. And if you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review and share with other podcast lovers. I'm Dr Viviane Richter, thanks for listening. This podcast was recorded on the traditional Country of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and community. We pay our respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and Elders past, present and emerging.
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