Speaker 2: 0:12

And now from the Blue Ridge PBS studios in Roanoke, virginia. It's the Virginians of Interest podcast, with your hosts Brian Campbell and Karthan Curran.

Speaker 3: 0:22

Thank you for joining the Virginians of Interest podcast. It's a special treat for me today to introduce our next guest, dr Frank Gupton, who is the Gottwald Chair of Chemical and Life Sciences and Pharmaceutical Engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University and also has a lot of other things we're going to get in today. And full disclosure Frank is my boss's boss and sort of the leader of our team, and so Frank and I work together professionally, and Karth knows this. He's friends with Karth and we've been trying to get him on the podcast for probably over a year and, frank, you've either been too busy or you've been reluctant to do it, and finally I think we just wore you down and got you to agree to this. So welcome and thank you for joining us today.

Speaker 1: 1:02

Well, thank you, Brian, for the opportunity to talk to you. The reluctance on my part is that we just had our heads down working on a lot of different things and it just hasn't. I haven't had the time to do it and the little free time that I have, my wife has fussed at me about making sure that I have some downtime to decompress on all the stuff that's going on.

Speaker 3: 1:23

Well, we're certainly. We're glad you made it and we're glad you're here. One of the things we talked about as we agreed to do the podcast. You and I came to meet each other sort of by accident. I was working at VCU, you were working, your office was down the hall from mine. You walked into my office one day and saw my father was a Shriner and saw his fez and you said well, my dad was you know. Now I realized you're from Virginia Beach, I'm from Tidewater and you had a very interesting background for an academic, I think, and I've been in higher ed for 30 years. So tell us a little bit about growing up, because I think you grew up in Norfolk and then you moved to Virginia Beach and to be a world-class scientist. Now. Your grades in public schools in Virginia Beach didn't necessarily indicate you were on that path, correct?

Speaker 1: 2:07

Well, clearly that's true, brian. You know I have a PhD in organic chemistry, but my high school career was less than stellar. I'll just say that my family came from modest backgrounds and I knew that if I was a pretty good basketball player and I realized if I could get a basketball scholarship I could go to college. But if I didn't get a basketball scholarship then my grades probably weren't good enough to get into college and my parents couldn't afford it. So I was fortunate enough to be able to get a basketball scholarship to the University of Richmond. Once I got there I realized that a person of my stature probably couldn't make a career out of playing basketball. So I figured I needed to start studying and I was very fortunate because I had to take chemistry my sophomore year and I didn't do very well in chemistry in high school and I had a great professor and he not only was a great teacher but he was a great researcher and he invited me to do research. I did a pretty well in his class and he invited me to do research with him that summer in his lab and it changed my life Because all of a sudden the things that I were learning in the classroom had some relevance in the real world or how we could apply that knowledge to some significant technical problems. And then that got me interested in chemistry and the rest is kind of history. But it was that initial foray into doing research at an undergraduate level that really made the difference for me.

Speaker 1: 3:52

In college and in my position as chair of the chemical engineering department at VCU, I made a point to incentivize all our faculty to support undergraduate research programs, because in most PhD-granting institutions which is what we are a lot of academics don't really embrace the idea of having undergraduates in the lab. They see them sometimes as a distraction to productivity. I don't see that that way, obviously, and I feel like they can get into a lab and ask questions that maybe other people wouldn't ask, and I think what it does is it stimulates really important discussions about the objectives of the research that we're doing. So that was kind of a long-winded answer to your question, but you know, I feel very strongly that we need to be able to start changing the way we look at the undergraduate experience in STEM programs to make sure that we're not just teaching facts but we're having people understand how that information can be transferred into something that's a really meaningful output in a translational way All right, let me drag you back to your childhood a little bit.

Speaker 3: 5:04

So you grew up in Norfolk, you went to Frank Cox High School in Virginia Beach, in Virginia Beach yeah, yeah, correct. And then, when you talk about your collegiate experience, it was at Richmond. But isn't there a story in there, too, that you were being recruited more widely? But where you were being recruited, something happened which caused you to end up at Richmond. That's related to your now wife, is that correct?

Speaker 1: 5:28

Absolutely true. So I had previous discussions with the basketball coach at Wake Forest, who at the time was a gentleman named Bones McKinney, and I really thought a lot of Coach McKinney, he was a great guy and he told me. He said you know, frank, he said we'd really like for you to come to Wake Forest. And this was the end of my junior year, beginning of my freshman year, my senior year, and so anybody that asked me about you know other colleges that approached me. I said well, no, I'm planning on going to Wake Forest.

Speaker 1: 6:12

So I guess it was like in February my mother came into my bedroom and woke me up in the morning and she said look at the newspaper and it said Bones McKinney retires from Wake Forest. And so I, you know. My mother said you know, what are you going to do? And I said I don't know. And so obviously I didn't get an offer from Wake and so I was a little concerned.

Speaker 1: 6:31

But I, I just started dating this beautiful young woman who is now my wife and her dad pulled me aside. We just started dating maybe a few weeks, and he said, frank, he said I heard about the situation with White Forest from Sue, right for us, from Sue and he said are you aware of the fact that the young lady that you're now dating used to be the babysitter for the basketball coach at University of Richmond, who was my next door neighbor? And he said I would be happy to call him and let him know that you're available. So I accepted a basketball scholarship over the phone from the basketball coach at University of Richmond, without seeing the school, without knowing what they did, not knowing anything about the curriculum, but it all worked out. You know, and it's funny how you know problems turn into opportunities, and I think that that's kind of the mantra of my life, because you know things that look like problems turn out to be really great opportunities and things that we're doing right now in the laboratory.

Speaker 3: 7:36

Well, let me back up even a little bit more. So you have an older brother who also, I think, didn't necessarily have his basketball career was better than his academic career, although he ended up becoming the chair of chemistry at the University of Richmond, so both of you were best, which makes the story even more interesting. Two brothers who were better basketball players than both end up being big time academics. How much older is he than you and he ended up at VMI? John's about five years older, and tell us about his career and how he ended up at VMI?

Speaker 1: 8:05

Yeah, so that was really interesting because John was a much better basketball player than I was and he actually held a state rebounding record until Moses Malone broke it. He was a really good basketball player and so he got recruited to VMI and I'll never forget that. So I was I guess that was like he was 18. So I was about 13.

Speaker 1: 8:27

So I come into the house and my mother's sitting in the living room and she's crying and I said what's the matter? She said, well, vmi is going to revoke your brother's scholarship because he hasn't fulfilled the requirements for entry into VMI. I said what's the matter? He said, well, he hasn't taken chemistry. And so John took chemistry in summer school after he graduated from high school so he could keep his scholarship at VMI Fast forward. You know, many years later John has his PhD in chemistry. He's an outstanding faculty member at three major universities and he gets recruited to the University of Richmond and he becomes the department chair for the chemistry department at the University of Richmond and actually won the American Chemical Society Award for the Outstanding Undergraduate Research Program in the United States.

Speaker 3: 9:18

Wow.

Speaker 1: 9:19

So I think the interesting thing about this, brian, is it emphasizes the point. It's not about how you start, it's how you finish Amen. I think that that's a really important life lesson and it was funny. You were at the event yesterday. We were with the governor and the governor and I were talking after the after the event and we were talking about our basketball backgrounds and he's all.

Speaker 3: 9:47

he also played basketball at Virginia beach, Just like you did.

Speaker 4: 9:52

He played for Rice.

Speaker 1: 9:54

He went to Rice on a basketball scholarship. He went to Norfolk Academy in Virginia Beach. One of the members of his cabinet had mentioned that to me. He and I were talking yesterday. I said, governor Youngkin, was Dave Trickle your coach in high school? And he said he certainly was. And he said he changed my life. And I said really. And I said Dave tried to recruit me to Norfolk Academy while I was at Cox and I decided not to do that and stay in high school, but he was a great guy. He said yeah. He said the things that we learned playing basketball earlier in our careers helped us in life later on about how to build teams, how to set goals, how to work hard and achieve really difficult objectives. And he and I were both in agreement on that. So I felt like it was a really meaningful discussion about how we got to where we are today, because the impression I got from him was if he had made that decision to go to play for the Trek world, then he may not be our governor.

Speaker 3: 11:04

about your brother. I've only met your brother informally twice. Wasn't his nickname at VMI Sleepy? I think they were big into nicknames back then.

Speaker 1: 11:12

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 11:13

Did he sleep a lot or did he just look like he was asleep? He looked like he was asleep.

Speaker 1: 11:18

Which is probably hard to do, playing basketball right.

Speaker 4: 11:21

So, carth and you, I guess all roads lead to Richmond. That's one thing I learned today based on our conversation. I'll take a moment of personal privilege, especially with Dr Gupton with us, to congratulate our good friend, brian Campbell, who was sworn in this week. Dr Gupton and I were there when Brian was sworn in to be a member of the Board of Visitors for Old Dominion University.

Speaker 3: 11:44

Well, thanks because Frank and I both grew up in Tidewater. It's our hometown university and thank you both for being there. It was our honor, Frank.

Speaker 4: 11:52

It was a great day. It was a great day Well deserved, and well deserved Absolutely. Frank, can you tell us a little bit about Medicines for All? And then I think our audience would like to hear about that fateful call. I guess during COVID that you went up to the White House for a meeting.

Speaker 1: 12:10

I guess during COVID that you went up to the White House for a meeting. Oh well, you know, actually, at the event we had last week or yesterday, I actually kind of talked about kind of the pieces of the puzzle and how things fit together. And you know, this is more. You know, brian, I think you know about the way I look at life is how you take the pieces of the puzzle and fit them into place so that they all align and allow us to do some really amazing things. So at the speech I gave yesterday at the event with the governor, I tried to explain to people how we got to the point where we are today with this great new facility down in Petersburg to be able to onshore pharmaceutical manufacturing back in the United States. And it all started back in the 90s when we had HIV as the real primary health care threat to the general public and at the time there was only one drug to treat it. It was a drug called AZT and the problem was that the virus could build up a resistance to it very quickly and so once you went through your regimen of AZT you died and everybody saw a diagnosis for HIV as basically a, as basically a death threat, a commitment that you're going to die fairly quickly and not not, not a pleasant death. It's pretty devastating. So, anyway, I was fortunate because I I've been hired by this pharmaceutical company, berengar Engelheim, to head up their process development group in North America, and I was between Petersburg and our facility in Ridgefield, connecticut, working on this project and we had this drug called nevirapine. Nevirapine was an amazing drug. Drug called nevirapine Nevirapine was an amazing drug. It was another client if we're going to use. There was a strategy out there from this researcher at Harvard that if you could have a combination drug therapy to treat the disease, that the virus couldn't build up resistance to any one drug. And so the problem was that there was only one drug out there. And so the Barrager family Barrager in Ohio is a privately held company. It's one of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies in volume and stature in the world, and they had this drug, the verapine, that they wanted to commercialize. And so part of what my assignment was when I joined the organization was to launch the active ingredient portion of that activity, and we did it out of Petersburg. It was the fastest drug ever approved in the history of the FDA. It was approved in two weeks, and that just kind of underscored the importance and the health threat that we had in front of us. And so we launched that drug and it was a big success. And the other thing that was amazing about it was, even to this day, approximately 30% of the women of childbearing age in Africa have HIV, and so you can give the expectant mother this drug before she goes into labor and give two doses to the infant after it's born, and the infant won't have HIV. It really has changed the generational aspects of the culture in Africa. Anyway, I retired in 2007 from BI.

Speaker 1: 15:47

Through a series of coincidental conversations, the Gates Foundation found out I was at VCU and we had this discussion about what we could do to increase access to healthcare and essential medicines around the world by reinventing the processes to make them, and so they asked me if I would look at Nevarapine first, and I was a little worried because I felt like we had a really good process and, as it turned out, we were. So they gave me $5 million to work on it for a year, and if we reduce the cost of the drug by 10%, then the payback on the period on the five million dollars was less than a year, we not only reduced it by 10 percent, we reduced about 40 percent. So the Gates Foundation was duly impressed. But the other thing that was really important was the was the environmental impact of that and the typically in the pharmaceutical sector. One of the reasons why they outsource drugs to India and China was for two major reasons. One that everybody talks about is labor costs, because these are old processes that don't take advantage of automation and are heavily labor-intensive. So they can lower costs by working in portions of the world where labor costs are lower. But the other point was that these processes generate huge amounts of carbon waste. So to produce one kilogram of an active ingredient, you generate several hundred kilograms of organic waste. So to produce one kilogram of an active ingredient, you generate several hundred kilograms of organic waste. And so when we developed this new process for nevirapine, we actually it wasn't too bad of a process. It was generating about 80 kilograms of waste per kilogram of product.

Speaker 1: 17:44

The new process that we developed cut it to four, and that was just unheard of, and as a result of that work, we won the Presidential Award for Green Chemistry for the United States that year in 2018. And that led the Gates Foundation to look at us examining other HIV drugs. They gave us a second drug, gave us another $5 million. We reduced the cost on that one and then the third drug and they said we'd really like for you to start looking at other disease drugs to treat disease states, because we think you identified some low hanging fruit. And so they said can you work on tuberculosis drugs and malaria drugs? And so I said there's just one of me, I don't think I can do that. They said what if we gave you enough money to build an institute at VCU? And so they gave us $25 million to do that over a five-year period, in addition to the 15 that they'd already given us. So we're already up to $40 million and we've done I mean, the group has done an amazing job. I've got a great group of researchers who are totally dedicated to this work and we've reduced the cost of tuberculosis, these new tuberculosis drugs, about 60%.

Speaker 1: 19:00

For the audience that isn't aware of this, there's a new resistant strand of tuberculosis that's in Asia and in Africa and the existing drugs won't treat it. So the Gates Foundation has been working with the TB Alliance to develop some new drugs and we've been working with them and we have to be able to drive the cost down to be able to get uptake in the market for them, because people just can't afford them and they're very complicated molecules. We were able to drop the cost dramatically, which would then increase the access to those drugs. So we did that with tuberculosis, we've done it with malaria, and then COVID hit and so VCU came out with this edict. Basically, they said if you're not working on a COVID-related project, you have to close your lab. So I called the Gates Foundation. I said look, do you have any COVID-related projects we could work on? So during that same period we developed new processes for the Gilead drug, remdesivir, the Merck drug, molipiravir, and the Pfizer drug, nubracalavir, which is the active ingredient in Paxlovid, and we actually worked with Pfizer on the key building blocks for that too.

Speaker 1: 20:09

So that was a huge success and I think the word got out that we were doing this work and it spread to the folks in Congress and we had a great advocate for us who was speaking on our behalf. Her name was Rosemary Gibson. Rosemary had written this book called China Rx long before COVID hit and it was an expose on how we've our supply chain vulnerability with regards to healthcare. And then COVID hit and everybody could see it firsthand, and so Rosemary started giving testimony in Congress about that and mentioned what we were doing.

Speaker 1: 20:50

So we got a call from the White House asking the question what would it take to read onshore pharmaceutical manufacturing back in the United States? And I told him I said, look, it's a bigger problem than you think it is. It's not just about the finished dosage drug that everybody takes or even the active ingredients that go into the drug. It includes the starting materials, the simple building blocks that it takes to make these drugs. We're not making these things anymore over here in the United States, so it has to be an end-to-end solution if you're going to be able to reconstruct a robust supply chain. So they said thank you, we'll get back to you.

Speaker 1: 21:29

And then, when COVID started to build momentum, they called us back and they said we need to do something like right away what can we do? And this facility in Petersburg that BI had owned they had just sold to a company called Ampact and they're out in California. And I knew the CEO and I said I got an idea of what we could do. And so I called the folks at ANPAC and said how would you like to get your facilities filled up? And they got all excited and the folks from the government came down. We sat and talked. I showed them the facilities that we had to be able to do the process development work through the Gage Foundation. They were duly impressed with that. Then they went down to Petersburg, saw what the capabilities were there. This was on like a Friday afternoon and so then they said, look, we'll call you Monday morning and this looks like it's a viable option. So the long and the short of it, we ended up having to compete for the funds. But we got $400 million to build this new facility down, rebuild this new facility down in Petersburg called Flow Corporation, where Ampac made the starting materials for us. Flow made the active ingredient.

Speaker 1: 22:44

And then I had another colleague of mine from industry, martin Ventrias, who used to be part of the leadership at Amgen. He had just started a new company called Civica RX and it was a consortium of all the major hospital systems in the United States. And and they had all these hospitals like the Mayo Clinic, mass General, kaiser Permanente, intermountain Healthcare. All these big hospital systems had lost about 10 to 20 percent of their operating room capacity because they couldn't get the drugs to support the procedures felt like if they combine their efforts, they create enough critical mass to be able to import the active ingredients and formulate them over here and then directly distribute them into the hospitals to address the shortage. So they had been talking to me about how we might be able to work with them on the active ingredients portion of it, and so I called them and I said how would you guys like to get the government to help you build a facility here where you can do your own formulation work?

Speaker 1: 23:49

So if you can imagine, we now have a facility in Virginia, in Petersburg, that does the end-to-end manufacturing of essential drugs in the United States. The Ampact makes the starting materials, flo makes the active ingredient and Civica RX makes the formulated product. And as an aside, you may have heard recently that the price of insulin dropped dramatically in the marketplace. It was about $300 a vial. It's now $30 a vial. That's because of Civicus Presidents in Petersburg. That was the first drug that they came up with and they offered it for $30 a vial and immediately Lilly and Novo Nordisk dropped their price from $300 a vial to $35 a vial. So that was one of the really beneficial unintended consequences of the investment that the federal government made in that site. More to come on that.

Speaker 3: 24:47

Yeah, well, let me back you up a little bit, not only your childhood, but one of the other things that I liked when I first met you and maybe want to work with you was the only time you were ever out of Virginia was the couple of years you were down in Atlanta going to graduate school at Georgia Tech, correct, that's correct, yeah. But then you moved back home but people even told me this when you weren't around that not only had you had a pharmaceutical background, but before the pharmaceutical background, you worked in ag chemicals yeah, virginia Chemicals in Portsmouth, is that correct?

Speaker 1: 25:18

So I had worked in the summertime before I went to graduate school for Virginia Chemicals and while I was in graduate school they offered me a position to come back to my hometown and do research. And so Virginia Chemicals was a small company, maybe $100 million in annual sales, and they ended up getting acquired while I guess I'd been there maybe four or five years. They had acquired by Celanese, and Celanese is a huge chemical company. And so I worked for Virginia Chemicals and Celanese and then Celanese got acquired by this huge German chemical company which was at the time the largest chemical company in the world. It's called Herbst H-O-E-C-H-S-T and it was part of World War II. It was part of this chemical complex that the Germans had called Farben Industries and after the war they split it up into BASF, bayer and Hertz, and of the three Hertz was the largest and Hertz ended up evolving into a pharma company called Avantis, which then became Sanofi Avantis and now Sanofi. So it's funny how all of these things evolved. But I had the chance to work for a small company, a large company and a huge company and never left Virginia. I did travel a lot.

Speaker 1: 26:38

I had a project that you mentioned, a pharmaceutical or agricultural chemical it was. It was an amazing product. It was a northern soybean herbicide and if you know anything about the, the, the ag industry, the two biggest crops in the united states are soybean and corn. The crop rotation complements and um, and it's about 11 million acres and they were basically selling water for 250 a pound. The company was american cyanide. They don't exist anymore, but this was their single biggest product and they were making money hands over fists with it. But they didn't know how to make one of the key building blocks for the molecule and so they asked me to take a look at it. That was where I got a lot of my institutional knowledge about the chemical industry, because the challenge was to go from no technology to full scale production, making a million pounds a year in six months. And we did it. And the problem I had was I was working for Selenese actually Hurst at Selenese.

Speaker 1: 27:42

At the time I had a research group in Tidewater in Portsmouth. I had a research group in Rhode time. I had a research group in Tidewater in Portsmouth. I had a research group in Rhode Island. I had a research group in Corpus Christi, texas, and I had a manufacturing group in Pennsylvania and a business office in Charlotte and I made that loop every week for three years without taking a day of vacation and that killed me. That killed me.

Speaker 1: 28:04

The funny story about that was my wife's next door neighbor had a daughter that was the same age as my daughter and they were doing pre-kindergarten. So they would. They would take turns keeping the kids, so one mom would have a day off. And so my wife told me. She said I was working in the kitchen and the two girls were at the kitchen table coloring. And the little girl next door turned to my daughter and said when's your dad coming in from cruise? And my daughter, Paige, said what do you mean? She's coming in from. My dad isn't coming in from cruise. She said isn't he in the Navy? He's never here. And she said no, my dad's a chemist. And she said what do you mean? What is a chemist? And she said well, a chemist is like being in the Navy, except you don't ride in a boat and you come home on the weekend. I thought that was a great answer for someone, her age.

Speaker 3: 29:01

Well, a lot of your colleagues have told me too this idea, which has helped you in the pharmaceutical business of commodity chemicals, right? So, in other words, you're a guy who likes to know about the economy of things. So, instead of not paying any attention, if you're making money on something, the ability to pay attention to the economy is on the front end of the process. Is that correct?

Speaker 1: 29:20

That's correct. That's correct Basically. One of the reasons why we've been so successful working with the Gates Foundation is, first of all I'll digress for a second I had one of my graduate students doing his thesis defense and he was asking about why did he select the starting materials that he picked to do the work that he was doing? To do the work that he was doing, and everybody expected him to say because it's a unique starting material and a good place and it's commercially available. And he didn't say that. Basically, what he said was Dr Gupton's cheap. And so they learned a lot about me from that. But yeah, it's really important.

Speaker 1: 30:06

The strategy that we've used to try and reduce the cost of these drugs is counterintuitive to the way the pharmaceutical industry approaches making drugs, because they want to go to the most complex starting material with the most functionality in it and produce the active ingredient in a minimal number of steps. Well, the problem with that is that that starting material becomes very expensive. So what we do is we go back in the synthesis to very simple, cheap starting materials to make that starting material much more cost-effectively. I'd say about 30% of the time. That's the driver the other major drivers you'll have reactions that have low yields that we can actually improve them dramatically, and the other is that sometimes the syntheses are just too long and there are too many chemical transformations that have to take place and we figure out how to streamline those processes and reduce the number of reaction steps in the process. So that's kind of the basic approach to how we do that.

Speaker 1: 31:08

But all of it's driven by cost and this is kind of an unusual model for an academic. But when we start a project, the Gates Foundation will give us a target and then we'll do a techno-economic analysis on it, build a spreadsheet that shows where the cost drivers are in the current process as a benchmark against what we're current. What we want to do. That gives the scientist, the graduate student, the postdoc kind of basic information he needs to focus on where he needs to make improvements in the process. And then we give that student, that postdoc, the spreadsheet and as they make improvements they can actually see the cost benefits to the improvements that they're making, which is a motivation to them. And it gives them also some insights into when they get into the industry insights into, when they get into industry, how to actually carry out research in a meaningful way that results in positive financial impact.

Speaker 3: 32:11

Carthan. Oh well, frank, you know I know your stories as well as you know them because I've heard them so many times. I think you're just as good a storyteller as you are a scientist, which is an unusual combination. Tell our listeners the crazy story about how the Gates Foundation grant started. Your neighbor was on a plane. I'll let you know what I'm talking about. So I'll let you tell the story and how you ended up at the Gates Foundation, what you thought they were going to say and what they actually said. So walk us through how that all came to be.

Speaker 1: 32:46

This gets back to a more fundamental issue, brian that I talk with our students all the time about this ability to communicate. We spend so much time of our lives now particularly that generation on the phone, texting and not talking face-to-face, and we lose a lot of opportunities as a result of that. So the example you're talking about right now is absolutely a classic example of being able to take advantage of an opportunity as a result of a casual discussion. So my neighbor next door, who'd been a friend of mine for a long time, knew what I did and he knew about what we'd done with nevirapine when we launched that drug when I was at BI. So he owned a leather boot company in Jakarta and he was flying to Jakarta and he's sitting next to this guy and he's telling him about his leather boot company, and so he asked the guy. He said what do you do? He said, well, I'm kind of in global health care. And he said, oh, you mean like HIV drugs? And he said, oh, yeah, just like HIV drugs. He said, well, have you ever heard of this drug, niverapine? He said, yeah, it's the world's most widely prescribed HIV drug. He said, well, my neighbor developed the process to make it. He said you're kidding. He says is he still at BI? And he said no, he just retired, he's at VCU. He said do you have his contact information? And he gave it to him and it was Ira Magnuson, the head of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, and Ira sent his chief technology officer to see me like the next day and they gave me a small grant of about $50,000 to start working on a new process for Niverapine. So through the discussions that I had with the folks at the Clinton Health Access Initiative, they explained that they'd gotten their money from the Gates Foundation.

Speaker 1: 34:38

So I was a few months later, I was out at the University of Washington giving a talk and I was talking to my colleague there out at the University of Washington giving a talk. And I was talking to my colleague there and I said you know, I just got this money from CHI and it turns out they got their money from the Gates Foundation and you guys are right next door to the Gates Foundation. Do you think they might be interested in hearing what we're doing? And he said well, I don't know anybody over there, but I know people who do. So this was like a Wednesday. So Thursday I flew back Friday he calls me. He says hey, there's a guy from the Gates Foundation who reports to Bill Gates, who wants to talk to you. He says how quickly can you get back here? So I said, well, I'll come back Monday.

Speaker 1: 35:17

So I flew back Monday, met with Dan Hartman on Tuesday and Dan was all excited. He said we've been looking for somebody with your background and experience. He said do something to work on these drugs. He said I just hired this woman who used to be part of the leadership at Genentech and Amgen and she said she's going to be starting in a couple of weeks. Can you come back and talk to the both of us? So I said sure.

Speaker 1: 35:41

So I came back two weeks later and I brought my friend Brian Marquart with me from University of Washington and so I sat there and talked to Dan and Susan about what we were thinking about doing, and Susan was just non-responsive. It was like she wasn't impressed at all. And so after the hour of discussion we walked out and I turned to my friend Brian. I said I said what did you think of that? He said you just burned a round trip ticket to Seattle.

Speaker 1: 36:10

And so the next morning I'm on a flight back to Dallas and she's on the plane and she sits down next to me. Before we get on the plane she said Frank, I just want to tell you that was a great presentation, dan and I spent the whole afternoon figuring out how to fund you. She says I'll call you next week. So she calls me and she says we got a problem, but I have a potential solution. I said what's that? She said well, you entered in at the top of the organization, never filled out any paperwork, and so I went to the family and asked them what needed to be done, and they said to write up a concept brief on what they would like for me to do and get all the leadership of the foundation to sign off on it. Then they could request me to submit a proposal. She said are you okay with that? And I said well, what if I write a proposal that's different than your concept brief? She said not a problem, we'll redact it. It can become your proposal.

Speaker 1: 37:04

So they basically wrote my proposal for me. So then they asked me the question. They said well, how much is this going to cost? And I said well, you've been in the pharmaceutical industry. It can be anywhere between a million and a hundred million. And she said, well, she said we're only approved to authorize up to five million. And I said, well, I'll give you everything I can give you for 4.9 million.

Speaker 1: 37:29

And that was the Navarapine project. And we got, and they had a dramatic return on investment on that. So it shows as an example, brian, when you start thinking about the outcome of that, it was important. But what's really more important was the life lesson that you learn about how to talk to people and how to figure out what their needs are and how you can help them. And when you do that, I think one of the things that we've been really successful at is building strategic alliances with other partners. Building strategic alliances with other partners, and I think that they see me as a trusted collaborator, and that's something these days that's hard to come by. And the other thing I'll say is you know money is a great lubricant for collaboration. Amen to that, amen. And so I think that you know money is a great lubricant for collaboration. Amen to that Amen. And so I think that you know that was that all helped.

Speaker 1: 38:33

So I've got you know this story, but I had this project with the chair of the chemistry department at MIT and the chair of the chemical engineering department at MIT. And it gets back to why we've been, one of the reasons why we've been successful. And we had this project called Pharmacy on Demand and it was funded by the Department of Defense, their division DARPA, and it was a unit about the size of a big refrigerator and you put the chemicals in the front end, it synthesized the active ingredients, formulated the product and pills came out the back and you could make about 1,000 pills of Cipro a day with this stuff. And the reason why it was important was when soldiers went to places like Iraq and Afghanistan, they didn't know what drugs they were going to do, so they would over-order everything and then throw away most of it because it exceeded the shelf life. So by having this unit you could actually eliminate this issue about shelf life stability. And so my colleagues from MIT would come down to see us and they say, frank, we don't have anything like these labs you've got here at VCU. And I'd smile and say it's amazing what you can do with $60 million. And they laughed.

Speaker 1: 39:54

But the follow-up question was what was really important? It was a life lesson for me. They said well, how did you get all this money? And I said, well, how did you get all this money? And I said, well, first of all, I realized that if I compete with MIT and MIT space, I'll lose, but if I create my own space where nobody's in right now, where there's an unmet demand, I can win, and that's essentially what happened with the funding that we got from the Gates Foundation. The other thing I came to a realization on very early was, as you know, brian, I'm an old guy and our young faculty are encouraged to get NSF and NIH grants. They're federally funded and very prestigious. The problem is they're extremely competitive and the cycle time for getting one of those are years.

Speaker 1: 40:45

I don't have years and I'm, in addition to being cheap, I'm impatient I gotta attest to that because because I've got a short runway, so if I'm gonna make an impact, I gotta have the money and I gotta have uh uh partners that work with me, that understand that the the uh importance of being able to deliver results quickly, because not only do I have a short runway, these are life-saving drugs that people need, and the longer it takes, the more people are going to die that could use them. So there's a lot of reasons why we would do this, but I mean, these are all kind of part of the story about how we got here doing what we're doing today, so it's all important.

Speaker 4: 41:30

Carleton. Thank you, brian. Well, the question is really for both of you the nexus, this pharmaceutical nexus that has been developed in Petersburg, which really put the Commonwealth in that game for the first time, I think, put the Commonwealth in that game for the first time, I think, in this way, what do you both see as opportunities to build upon that on that campus or other parts of Virginia?

Speaker 3: 41:55

That actually ties into the question, frank. We haven't talked about the funding you just got from the legislature, so maybe that's a good segue into that. So you'd rely primarily, up to this point, on funding from the Gates Foundation, which was focused primarily on international health. So do you want to tell our listeners about how we were successful in securing state funding, and not only for us, but what a big deal it is to Virginia, virginia Tech and ODU, who will be part? Of this consortium and UVA part of this consortium.

Speaker 1: 42:25

So Brian is critical to the success of that. So I consult for a lot of the major pharma companies. They like my pragmatic approach to the research that I do. So I was consulting for this company, biogen, and Brian knows this story. I think I was up there. They had just come out with a new Alzheimer's drug and they wanted to figure out how they could lower the cost to manufacture in order to be able to provide it to low and middle income countries. And so I was sitting there with the leadership and we were going over options and my computer was up on the big screen and all of a sudden I get an email from Sue and I never get emails from her during the course of the day. So I figured it was something important. So I clicked on it and it showed up on the big screen and it was this announcement in the Richmond Times Dispatch about the UVA establishing the Manning Center for biopharma manufacturing, and it was like $300 million. Well, immediately the guys from Biogen said congratulations, you got $300 million.

Speaker 1: 43:26

And I said no, that's the University of Virginia, not Virginia Commonwealth University. So I spent the next hour feeling questions about why we didn't get it, since we'd already been in that space for several years. So when I got back to, when I got back to Richmond, I had a lot of heart-to-heart meetings with the leadership at VCU about why we weren't even on the radar screen about that funding. So Brian then shows up in my lab maybe three months later with a gentleman named Garrison Coward who's from the governor's office in Eason. So I understand, you're not real happy with the governor, and I said no, I'm not real. It's not that I'm not real happy with him. And I said no, I'm not real, it's not that I'm not real happy with him, I'm just disappointed that we weren't considered, and so we would like to change that. We'd like to figure out how we can work with you to advance the program that you have going here at VCU.

Speaker 1: 44:16

So, to make a long story short, we're now in the state budget for the next two years. It just got approved in July or June, no-transcript and I said, well, it's kind of like the research triangle park in North Carolina, except it's much more translational in nature. Everything we do gets commercialized fairly quickly, and so we would be a complimentary component to the work that's being done at UVA and Virginia Tech for that reason, so that when they discover something they don't have to leave the state. They can actually work with us to get these things commercialized. So the next thing I know the governor comes out with this initiative about the research triangle of Virginia between Virginia Tech, uva and VCU, and I guess the rest is history, but I think it's kind of interesting.

Speaker 1: 45:32

This is one more story about talking to people and getting them to figure out where there is common interest in being able to achieve some really major goals. Because when you think about it, where we are right now between the stuff that we're doing at UVA, virginia Tech and VCU, the stuff that's going on with Petersburg and using this advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing technology that we've been developing, and the work that we're doing internationally. One thing I didn't talk about was that the HIV processes that we've developed and the TB processes are actually going to get commercialized in Africa. This is the first time active ingredients will ever be produced on the African continent. They'll be using the process that we've developed here in Virginia.

Speaker 4: 46:21

That's in South Africa, right In.

Speaker 1: 46:23

South Africa. Yeah, Actually, it's in Pretoria, South Africa. So these are all big things that are happening, and I think one of the reasons too, Brian, why I acquiesced on having this discussion with you is the stories nobody knows about. Yeah, exactly, it's kind of crazy that this stuff is happening in the backyard of Virginians and they have no clue about the global impact of the work that we're doing.

Speaker 3: 46:53

Well, and you're on our boat Native Virginians and next week we will have a phone call with the new parties and, by the way, odu is part of this too. We saw how we worked together. You start thinking why is it that in 200 years had we not figured this out yet? Now I do know there are areas of collaboration before where we're in clinical trials and some other things, but this is really codified in state legislature. If we're not successful in this, they won't give us more money. So there's some real incentive for us to do this. Not only are we getting more money to do what we do, to domestically address some of the things that we've addressed internationally, but if the universities in Virginia start working together like they do in North Carolina, it'll be good for Virginians. So this is a really it's a really good story. So that's another reason I'm glad you came on the pod today to talk about it.

Speaker 4: 47:36

I mean this initiative from this governor is very important because, as you just said, higher education in Virginia is very siloed, has been historically, yeah, and our friends to the south have been more successful in economic development in some cases because they do collaborate, correct?

Speaker 3: 47:56

And a point of personal privilege to you, carthan, it's how we reconnected after all these years is to make the triangle work. We'd known each other years ago and then one day I go to an event in Petersburg. You were the economic development director that helped put all this together in its initial state. Right, correct, yes, correct, yeah. And that wasn't easy either, because we won't say which player, but there was one player that had drifted away from the others, that was thinking about going to North Carolina, and you had to work to help salvage that.

Speaker 1: 48:26

And you did a great job, carsten. But you know this gets back to this issue about how we're perceived by the rest of the nation. One of the partners down in Petersburg didn't feel like we had the workforce to be able to support the initiative that they had, and they felt like North Carolina did, and I think we tend to discount the fact that. You know, oh, virginia's great People will come here because Virginia's great. Well, you have to have that infrastructure and capability to be able to support businesses here and, quite frankly, it didn't exist. You know, uh, I won't say it didn't exist to the extent that it needed to be uh, uh, ramped up for for this type of opportunity.

Speaker 1: 49:12

But I think the other thing too is this I think this issue with uea, virginia tech and I I can say this because you know I'm an old guy and if the folks at VCU feel like firing me, they can fire me. But you know, everybody perceives the major universities in the state of Virginia as UVA and Virginia Tech and we're like a distant third I think that this opportunity helps to put us on a level playing field in a way it's never been seen before by our peers and and it's funny because, just like everybody else, nobody knew what we were doing, and so I sat down with the head of the health system at uva and had the health system at virginia tech and carillion, and they didn't have any idea what we were doing yeah and as soon as we started talking about they said, they said, oh geez, where have you been?

Speaker 1: 50:04

We've been looking for somebody that will help us do this stuff so that we don't have to leave the state, and I think that you know a lot of. It's about awareness and again it gets back to talking to people. You're right.

Speaker 4: 50:19

And also investing in talent. To your point, Frank, earlier about talent, Well, the two big issues are still access.

Speaker 3: 50:26

There's more drugs on the FDA shortage list now than there's ever been. In other words, drugs are in short supply. And there's also a quality issue, right, since so many of them are being made overseas. What's in them? Are they safe? So the idea that we now have the ability to address this thing in an end-to-end solution in the state it's kind of a big deal and I guess you're here to hear first right Right.

Speaker 1: 50:45

Well, that's the other thing that. I'm glad you brought that up, brian, because the quality issues is something, because we have the FDA we take for granted the drugs that we're taking meet FDA specifications. Well, the problem is they do that through audits. The FDA is reluctant to go to audits in India and China these days, initially because of COVID. There was about four years where they didn't do any audits and now they do them in a very limited way. So my friend, rosemary Gibson, who helped us get into this business with the federal government, who helped us get into this business with the federal government, Rosemary took the initiative to set up a testing program at the University of Kentucky and what they were finding out was something some number greater than 10% of all the drugs that come in to the United States from a representative group that they sample from don't meet FDA specifications, which is huge.

Speaker 1: 51:46

And you start thinking about the billions of pills that we take every year and the ones that we're on chronic medications on we take over and over again. You can get a buildup of impurities in your body. That not from acute treatments but from chronic treatments over years. Just look at aspirin. I mean, if aspirin has an impurity in it and you take it every day. It's going to build up over time.

Speaker 1: 52:09

So these are really important things, and the good thing about what we're doing is we're partnering with US Pharmacopeia, who sets the quality standards for all drugs internationally, and USP co-locates in our building internationally and USP co-locates in our building, and so they then become the arbitrator for whether the drugs that we're producing meet specification or not. So they're the gatekeeper and they make sure that the quality of the products that we produce out of Petersburg and the processes that we develop here at Medicines for All are of the highest quality, and to me it's not just about availability, it's about the quality of the drugs that are available. So we're covering both of those fronts with the work that we're doing.

Speaker 3: 52:55

Good, I've got one. We're going to have to wrap up. I knew this would go fast and it's gone fast. I've got one final question, but before I do, Carthan, do you have a final question?

Speaker 3: 53:03

No, I think we we covered the well you might when I hit. This is my ending question, and that is you know, working with you, frank, you're, you're a busy guy, you've you co-founded a major pharmaceutical company. You've got, you've got students, you're the. So we, we, we like to joke that he has a CEO of Gupton Inc, otherwise known as Sue Gupton. So tell us a little bit about your lovely wife, sue, and your children and grandchildren and all the stuff that keeps you on the straight and narrow when you're not fiddling around with molecules.

Speaker 1: 53:33

Well, I'm speaking to you from the beach house of Sandbridge. So I'm a Virginia Beach native, as you know, and this is how I keep my sanity, because I spend my weekends down here with Sue, and she's a Virginia Beach native too, but she's probably the most organized person I've ever met in my entire life. She's an extreme type A, and so obviously I'm not we're brothers. So the question is how do we survive? And I came up with one fundamental law of nature, and that is type A people will never assume the traits of type B people, but type B people living with type A people over time will start to migrate towards the principles of type A people.

Speaker 1: 54:26

So you know, I went to high school when there wasn't such a thing as ADHD, and so Sue claims I would have been the poster child for ADHD, because I was all over the place. She's the one that keeps me organized and focused. I think. The other thing, too, is I think the thing that is the binding force between us is our core values. Those are things that are common to both of us that we just don't violate, and I think that that's kind of the basis for a good marriage.

Speaker 3: 54:58

And how many years have you all been married? I've got to get you in trouble.

Speaker 1: 55:04

So we have an evergreen one-year contract. So we renew every year and we've been married 51 years this month.

Speaker 3: 55:16

Wow, that's great. Well, she's a special person. Tell us about your Carl and Paige, your children.

Speaker 1: 55:23

So my two kids take after their mother. They're very smart and my son, my daughter Paige, is chief of staff for Sentara's health care system their insurance program, right and she's a very gifted person. She was a double major in business and English from College of Charleston. She has a master's in healthcare administration. She's a brilliant young lady.

Speaker 1: 55:53

My son, carl, is an entrepreneur and he started a company called Greenswell Growers in Goochland, virginia, and they have this amazing business. They produce lettuce and it's an indoor lettuce farming operation that can process eight pounds of lettuce a minute and it's just incredible, it's all automated and it's just really cool. It's just incredible, it's all automated and it's just really cool. So I got overachieving kids and I've got three grandkids that are just wonderful. And you know, like I said, I'm very blessed to have the life that I've got and to be at this stage of my life and enjoy all these things. I think you know.

Speaker 1: 56:37

In closing, brian, I think the thing that I think about that's really important is and I think the thing that I think about that's really important is you know, we lose a lot of information when people retire because there's this institutional knowledge that doesn't get transferred to this next generation. The mantra in our lab and you've heard it before is make new mistakes, not my mistakes. My job is to tell them what doesn't work so that they can push the envelope and make new mistakes and discover new things. They do an amazing job at it. We've had all kinds of patents come out of the work that we're doing. We have new catalysts. I have a collaborator at Cal Berkeley and University of South Carolina that are doing some amazing things with us.

Speaker 1: 57:23

We've just been extremely fortunate and this is something you know when I retired I was happily retired.

Speaker 1: 57:30

I'd gotten my golf game down to single digits handicapped and I was, you know, visiting with friends and stuff. But I can tell you that the most rewarding thing is keeping coming back with these students. They're absolutely amazing and you know, the highlight of my day is when I walk into the lab and one of the students comes up to me and says look what I discovered. And to me, that allows me to put up with all the anguish of administrative issues, because it's really important that, first of all, that I take care of the students and, secondly, that I take care of my faculty, because my faculty are amazing and it's the most collaborative group of people I've ever worked with and a lot of them are young and they're starting their careers and I think it's really important that we make sure that we invest in the students and the faculty in ways that maybe not we don't do all the time, and I'm very fortunate to be in that position to be able to help with that.

Speaker 3: 58:31

Well, look, I love working with you. You're kind of a national treasure. You can be frustrating sometimes, you're not, sometimes you I think it's because of the ADHD or the fact that you've got so many hats you wear that can. It's hard to sometimes collaborate and coordinate all that, but you are a national treasure. Our friend George Allen calls you St Frank because I do feel that what you've done for our country and for our state and for the world in terms of saving lives, I mean you've made an impact. When you get to the pearly gates, I think you're not going to have to worry about your resume. Your resume, your basketball skills you may have to apologize for, but you will not have to apologize for the impact you've had on humanity and it's a real honor to work for you.

Speaker 1: 59:10

So I'm glad you finally agreed to do this the feeling is mutual.

Speaker 1: 59:14

I'll just say this First of all, I know I'm challenged to work with and there's a reason for that and everybody says the same things because I think differently and I'm hardheaded and when you think differently and you've got a path forward, you can. The one thing that I think people describe to me that I hadn't really thought about is that I can see around corners and I can see things that are going to happen before they happen. That I can see around corners and I can see things that are going to happen before they happen. And that's why it can be frustrating, because I can't share with you what I'm seeing in my mind. But lastly, you know I feel very fortunate to have worked with you. You're a great partner and you're an integral component to our success. And you know it's funny integral component to our success and it's funny. I don't want to become X-rated, but I had a colleague of mine from the largest university in the country. You know who I'm talking about.

Speaker 3: 1:00:15

I do yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:00:16

They asked me. They said what's your criteria for success there? And I said it's pretty simple. I said I don't work with buttheads and that you know people like you, brian, make it easy. I mean, you've seen my whole team. There isn't one of those in the whole group.

Speaker 3: 1:00:35

No, including my boss, mike Osberg, who's just terrific and one of the best bosses I've ever had. But you're right about the thing. I'll tell you too, and I'll say this publicly now. You've been nice and said that we butt heads occasionally, and I'll argue with you, respectfully, I might add, but about once a quarter I tell you I love you, which I'll tell you now that I love you on this show, that you are almost like family, that you remind me of a family member. There's nothing I wouldn't do for you other than occasionally wanting to strangle you, but I'm reminded by is just that idea that you have saved lives, you've made a difference. You know you're doing the Lord's work, as we like to say, and so if you, whatever that takes to accomplish that, sign me up.

Speaker 1: 1:01:17

So thank, you for being with us. In closing, I'll just tell you I'm a person of faith and my wife reminds me all the time. She said, frank, just remember this. She says men plan and God winks, and I think that there's a lot of truth to that, because we don't know what God has in store for us. But when you start looking at all the things that have happened to me in my life, somebody asked me this the governor's thing yesterday and he said how did you get here doing this? And I said everything had to happen exactly the way it did in order for me to be here doing what I'm doing today, and I wasn't smart enough to figure it out. Somebody else was guiding me. So with that, thank you, I don't I don't think we can cop that.

Speaker 3: 1:02:01

I mean, that's the cherry on top, so thanks for being with us.

Speaker 4: 1:02:04

Frank, it's been an honor to be with you. Thank you, carsten, always do and talk to you, yes, and give Sue our best too.

Speaker 1: 1:02:11

Thank you, I'll do it. I'll tell the CEO.

Speaker 3: 1:02:13

Yeah, CEO of Gupton Inc. Thank you for joining us today on the Virginians in Interest podcast. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2: 1:02:21

Thank you for listening to the Virginians of Interest podcast. To hear other episodes of this podcast, head to virginiansofinterestcom.