Reed Jobs' New Venture Company May Change the Lives of Approximately 18,1 million patients diagnosed with cancer around the world. Yosemite, Jobs' fund for cancer-fighting biotech, launched in August with $200 million in funding from investors including MIT, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and John Doerr. Jobs first became interested in oncology as a teenager after his father, Steve Jobs, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died while his son was studying at Stanford.
"The only thing that really matters to me in this world is making a big difference for cancer patients and what we do in Yosemite, and what I have wanted to do my whole life, is make cancer non-lethal in our lives," Jobs said.
Yosemite is notable not only for its focus on cancer, but also for its unique structure, which Jobs says he "hopes other people will eventually copy." He manages a traditional venture fund, but dedicates 2,5% of it to a donor-advised fund that operates as a nonprofit entity. That capital is earmarked for grants, which Yosemite gives out without taking any intellectual property. The model was first tested at Emerson Collective, the business and philanthropic organization founded by Jobs' mother, Laurene Powell Jobs.
“The reason we're doing this is because we've really put it to the test at Emerson, and by partnering with the best researchers in the world on their best projects, we can not only de-risk the science that we then turn into companies, but “We also get a network of the best KOLs (key opinion leaders) in the world,” Jobs said. "We've done this for so long that we've been lucky enough to support about 500 labs so far and have a really big footprint across the entire academic ecosystem."
Jobs is optimistic about the development of next-generation therapies, including immunotherapies and gene-editing therapies, and how quickly they can come to fruition. He recalls that when he started working at Stanford University's cancer research labs at the age of 15 (Jobs is now 31), genomic sequencing was still relatively new. Jobs' lab used it to research a type of hereditary colorectal cancer that was normally fatal.
“We found the mutational signatures there and basically it had an incredible load of mutations, like millions of mutations. These cells were so out of control. But since the beginning of immunotherapy, when it began to be tested on it, the difference between those cancer cells and the rest of the body is so marked that even current immunotherapy works wonderfully on that type of colon cancer,” says Jobs. "In my lifetime, I've already seen one area go from an absolutely poor prognosis to something that is now widely treatable and has a really excellent long-term survival rate."
One technology Jobs sees promise is liquid biopsies for early detection. Currently, screening tests include procedures such as prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests, mammograms, and colonoscopies. "These work pretty well, but for the rest of the cancers, it's really a game of chance and most of the time, things are caught when they're late and they're metastatic and much more dangerous." Things like liquid biopsies and AI in MRIs and physical therapies have become very accurate at detecting early markers of cancer. “We're still in the early days of the liquid biopsy space, but that's an area that will be increasingly important to detect things early. “Once you do that, you have a lot more options.”
Job is especially animated when talking about epigenetic engineering. "Basically, you have your DINA along with these various proteins and you can chemically, without changing the DNA, turn various areas of the genome on or off," he explains. “Then your skin cells will just turn off all the genes in the liver, it doesn't need them, right? But now we can alter how this works and we can change it a little bit. It turns out that many diseases are not caused by mutations or the wrong gene. "They are due to genetic expression decreasing."
La epigenetics is the study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way genes work. Unlike genetic changes, epigenetic changes are reversible and do not change the DNA sequence, but they can change the way your body reads a DNA sequence.
These include many autoimmune and neurodegenerative diseases, which occur when the immune system slows down. What epigenetic engineering can do is restore gene expression by creating a “dial.” "That dial is really interesting and with it you can touch a whole new class of diseases that are much more interesting than just going in and changing things," Jobs says.
While Yosemite launched last month, Jobs has been making investments through Emerson Collective for eight years. When asked what investments he is most proud of, Jobs mentioned two things. The first was a grant to Yale, which is working with its major hospital system to gain representation in clinical trials throughout the state. “It's a small state with one of the big academic medical centers, and they actually got the representation to be demographically proportional, which is something I'm very, very proud of. That is the first thing for that entire institution.” And when it comes to the company's investment, Jobs cites Tune Therapeutics within the framework of epigenetic editing, which is an example of the type of business incubation that Yosemite does.
“We brought together the best experts in this type of editing as well as the delivery mechanisms necessary to intervene in cells,” says Jobs. “They didn't even know each other. We presented them in my living room and outlined a business plan. I am proud to say that he has truly become a leader in this space over the last three years.”
When asked if he had ever thought about starting his own company, Jobs said, “I think I can have a lot more impact doing what I'm doing at this stage. Given market trends, and really science trends, it's really surpassing what any company is probably capable of doing. “I’m also, you know, very competitive by nature and in my family, if you’re going to start a business, it has to be a success.”
Developing new treatments for cancer is difficult, but Jobs is optimistic. “I'm all for being ambitious. Biotechnology is never as linear as technology, it always abounds in mystery and difficulty, which can be very exciting. What I believe is that the most important cancers that claim the most lives are the ones that are now experiencing the most progress and that really motivates me. Those are the lungs, the breasts, the prostate, the colon, these are the big killers. I think that in the next 20 years we will see a very significant decrease in mortality in them.”
