[0:00] what is ATCC? why is it important for research?Hello, The guest today is Ruth Chen, Class of 2001. She studied arts and science at Cornell and is now the CEO of ATC, a very important science organization. So hi Ruth, what is ATCC? Hi, Tony. Thanks so much for visiting us here today. So ATCC is American type culture collection. We are the world's leading institute, a private nonprofit that ensures biological research discoveries and development can be reproducible and shared globally. So we have a very large collection of biological materials, cell lines to study cancer, for example, or it could be all kinds of bacteria that have interesting jobs and functions around biology. So, so, so like if a scientist is doing a research and wants to publish a paper, like, like, how do they interact with your organization? Yeah, so. So traditionally they might if they've made a new discovery, if they and they want to be able to share that they might deposit a new cell line with ATCC. Traditionally, you know, we're able to take in materials, authenticate them, and then scale them up so that they can be distributed across the globe into the hands of other researchers who want to build on that initial discovery or replicate that initial discovery, right? That's a lot of the scientific process. But beyond just research, we really support the biotech ecosystem as well. You know, many, many companies and government research institutes, developers of diagnostic and therapeutics rely on our materials as well. So it could be part of their quality control process where they need control materials, right? They might need a control material for a new diagnostic. We did a lot of that actually when COVID hit and you know, folks are needing to develop a diagnostic, what, where do they get controls from? Where do you have the authenticated materials to understand the, you know, the strains and study them, but also develop therapeutics and diagnostics from them? You know, we're all relied upon institutions. Interesting. So so I could picture there's like 2 pathways though. There's the research papers or one papers gets written, another paper gets written on top of that, another paper gets written on top of that, and you have a corresponding like a cell line here where it keeps building as well. Yes. And so that, you know, there's a common resource, right, or a common biological material that might be foundational to all of that, that research. And we're the ones who kind of protect and ensure that's available to not just the researchers, but also as that research gets translated into the clinic, there's that chain of custody for the reference material. So we use that term here at ATCC quite a bit. You know, what's the reference material? What's the authenticated material that the knowledge is based off of? Gotcha, interesting that that way like if one paper finds one finding another paper finds another finding as like different then the reference material. You could use that as like. Yeah, the traceability right, of the materials are really important because the cell lines are living. Systems biology can change how you store them. Could change the expression profile of a cell line and so you know from one place to another. If you want to replicate it, you really need to use the same starting materials. That makes sense. So, so like, like for the COVID-19 example you gave, like, like how many cell lines did you store for that one? Like how did the workflows work for it? Yeah. So when it comes to infectious disease or pandemic response, we do a number of different things. There are materials that we have that enable the development of vaccines, for example. There are others to study how a new virus might infect different cell types or you know, so there's respiratory cell lines that we provide right, to be able for folks to understand what are the changes on the respiratory system. You can study that in a controlled way and understand the. Effect. So it's not just the COVID-19 virus you provide, but it's also like the respiratory cells as well. Yeah, to study that and and we don't, you know, we provide materials that are safe to the public, that materials that come in, we have great scientific expertise to inactivate that material so that it can be studied in a safe laboratory environment. Gotcha, that makes sense. This is so like, like I'm picturing like a researcher at Cornell with a white coat and a lab of glasses on, safety glasses on. Like how do they like get get your material and what do they do? Like they get it like in the FedEx package. Like what do they do after they get it? What's the?

[5:06] workflow around ATCC reference materialsWhat's the from? Their perspective biologists, folks working in a wet lab, are probably familiar with our white box with the ATCC logo on it. It's a, it's a cardboard box, usually with a Styrofoam interior pack with dry ice. And then there's, you know, the precious vial of cells in it. So you can go on our, you know, qualify researchers and developers or companies, right, can come on our website and order those materials. We have a very robust system to ensure that, you know, only qualified individuals receive our materials. Gotcha. And then after they received that precious vial, what do they do with? It well I was once a researcher in a lab as well and I remember receiving that box. So you take that vial out of the dry ice you you're planned experiment, right can start. You might you thaw that vial, right? You thaw it and then spin it down because usually it's in a preservative. Those cells are preserved in a media that ensures they can be survivable viable after this freeze thaw process. So you'll thaw it, you spin down the cells to collect a pellet, you'll take off the media that it was preserved in, and then you'll re suspend it right to culture it in a flat or in whatever system you want to study it. Gotcha and they would like grow it overtime like they would have. Absolutely, yeah. Like how long does it like live? Like what the what happens with over like the next year? Yeah. So lots of different things could happen. Oftentimes, you know, you grow it up for your experiment, you do your experiment or assay and that's kind of it. It could, it depends on the length of that particular experimental plan or assay that you're using the materials for, right? So it could be days, it could be weeks. You could also expand the material and you know, free some for future experiments, right? Because you want to use the same lot, the same kind of vial, starting vial that you've cultured from. So it really depends on the answers that the researcher is trying to and to get and the experimental plan what happens to those materials. And then like different labs all around the world would get the same white box with like ATCC on it and it would all get the same. Then they can reproduce. Yes, yeah. So they can replicate someone else's results, right? Using the same materials? Gotcha, Gotcha. Very, very, very cool. So the offer starts with that

[7:41] depositing reference materials to ATCCfirst scientist who gives you that material and then you would grow it here and then you would send it to everybody else. So it starts with that. 1st, so they'll deposit that with us, right? And we safeguard that so that and then make it available to others who want to study or make new discoveries off of that initial finding. OK makes sense. Like after you get it like how do you get let people know that you have it? Like is it like part of their scientific paper that Reach out to ATCC if you want to get this vial. So so in publications will often have the name of the ATCC cell line that they use. So in the material method section, right, where you're supposed to list everything that kind of you used, oftentimes you'll see that identifier in the paper. Gotcha. And then then like the feature papers built on top of that. Was and the name of the cell line and the materials that were used in the protocol? Yeah. Very cool. And then how do you decide, like if it's like a scientist somewhere invent something, how do you decide it's like important enough to like keep in the repository? Like how do you decide what goes into the? Repository. That's a great question, right? Because it's really impossible to take in everything. And our collection is already pretty vast. So we're constantly looking at at gaps in what we have, right? Maybe there are certain types of cells that we don't have. There are certain diseases that are not represented in our collection. So we look and see what's missing. What do we have a lot of already? We may not want another, you know, the 30th version of an E coli, right? So those are decisions made by our content and accessioning team. Gotcha. And and then like how long do you hold on to a cell line over time? Like after like 10 years there's no one requests it for like a couple of years you. That's also, you know, that's something that we wrestle with all the time, but really we are here to safeguard those resources. So if we decide to take that in, we will keep those seed vials and you actually never know when they might be useful. The famous story that we tend to kind of share at ATCC is we took in deposits representing Zika virus 40 years before they became a human health kind of epidemic. They became really important right to study and understand. So you never know, they may sit for a while right before there's a real need to use those materials. And then that's important because like you can track like how it changed over 40 years and then you got a reference. Exactly. Exactly. Interesting. So we'll keep it for a long. We could, yeah, there are. There are things. Last year, I believe we pulled something out of our collection from 1925 or 6. Wow. It's been in our collection for a long time and we were able to reconstitute it and grow that not, you know, every place has the scientific, I think depth and experience to be able to do that, right. That's like 100 years. It is, Yep. So this is so like you store it like in the freezer here, like is it degrade overtime? Well, like, like if you store something in the freezer for too long, 'cause that. Yes, that's right. So that's why kind of the storage conditions are highly controlled. We really know how to work with these materials. There's a lot of scientific expertise around every category or ology we say of materials that we have at ATCC. So some of those items might be lyophilized or freeze dried, OK, right. Some of those might be frozen and stored under liquid nitrogen or -80 it really depends on the materials and you know what they are. Well, these materials like how many are there in like the world? How much like coverage do you cover? Like how much of the? Materials you have, that's a really interesting, I think we're still discovering new type strains all the time, the new, new type strains in the world of microbiology, right. And when that's done, we get those deposits folks secure those with us. And so I think it's still unknown. In our collection alone, we have over 100,000 items in our

[12:09] over 100k items in catalogcatalog. In our collection, overall collection, we have more than that, you know, because not everything is requested. All the time. So catalog would have the things are requested and you have the overall collection. That's right. Gotcha. Are these like, are these like different combinations like DNA like HTC, like you just have all the different permutations of it over time built up? Like how? So we do isolate DNA from some of these lines as well and then we provide that the just the isolated DNA as a standard in certain cases as well. But these are living. These are organisms that are meant to be living. They are representation of biology, Right. Gotcha. And so we're not just, we don't just have fragments of DNA or pieces, we have the item that's isolated. Yes. Wow. Is each like living like different species as well? Yes, we have animal and human cell lines from the microbiology world. There's pretty much every taxonomy and that gotcha represented, yeah. Interesting picturing like the library where like people would come and ask request like a book for it and then like what happens if they come requesting for something that you don't have, like do you help them find it elsewhere? We have a very, we have a great technical services team who kind of supports customers when they have, you know, requests for things. And of course our website is is helpful, right. There are different ways of finding our materials, whether that's through our ATCC genome portal. So you might be interested in a particular gene, you can look that up and see which materials express that. No, so we're still working on sequencing everything in our collection. So there are very there are different ways of finding the material of interest in our catalog. Gotcha. And then the scientists when they were setting up experiment, they will look at look up the catalog. Gotcha interesting. So, so like everything from there's like basic science, like the early research and then there's also like the late stage like the pharma companies like do like do everybody use your material? Do everybody deposit stuff into your bank as well? Yeah. So we, our customers cover the entire spectrum, the uses of the materials and the needs of the materials. That might be different from a research lab all the way through, you know, a manufacturing, a biomanufacturer, right? But they may be more interested in materials for process controls, for example. Gotcha. So let's jump over to your journey to going to coming to here. Like what was the research process like? Cornell, what did you learn? From there, Yeah.

[14:49] research experience at CornellSo I am really appreciative of my experience at Cornell. I was part of the first class of Cornell Presidential Research Scholars. So CPRS, it's a wonderful program under that Cornell traditions umbrella, right, the MYNIC program as well. And I was really interested in doing research at the undergraduate level. And that program allowed me to really explore those research interests as essentially my work study right on campus. So that was my job to do undergraduate research. It's a wonderful program that comes with some funding to support those research interests as well. So I was able to pick a lab and I did work in both Mark Saltzman's lab, he's he was a professor at Cornell in chemical engineering and Professor Gianellis in material science and engineering. So actually in Professor Gianellis's lab, that's where I spent the most of my time as an undergraduate researcher. Did you come into Cornell thinking what to do research already? Like? What was your high school experience like what? What drew the interest into research? Sure. Yeah. So I did know that I wanted some type of research experience. I may have actually typed that literally on a typewriter, right? Like back in that day when I, when I applied for for university, I typed my application on it and a typewriter. And so I think in my essay, I talked about my kind of interest in exploring research. So within the Arts and Sciences College, I studied Biological Sciences, focused most of the coursework in biochemistry and genetics at the time, but I also had a really strong interest in engineering. It was just that bioengineering, biomedical engineering at the time, wasn't a formal program. Right. Since then, since I've graduated, it is. And it's a wonderful, wonderful department and degree that Cornell has strengthened. Yeah. So that's why I did my research on the engineering campus. Nice. So I'm a biologist by training by my undergraduate degree and coursework, but I took a lot of engineering classes and then I've really benefited from that engineering based research experience on campus. Gotcha. Yeah, a true picture. Like the work study, is it like you take your classes during the day and then in the evening you do your research? Like what was the day-to-day like? Yeah, the day-to-day was varied, you know, I had to fit in my research amongst my coursework and lab work and clubs and whatever other interests I had. So I would go to the lab usually in the afternoons. I remember sometimes in the evenings and weekends as well. And so you fit it in where you can and I had a wonderful, you know, graduate research advisor within Professor Gianalis lab I worked with very closely as well. So I think that's the beautiful. While the pro and con of research is sometimes you don't know what's going to happen. So you might have an experimental plan, you learn something and then you replan and you pivot from there. And so my my day-to-day really changed depending on what I was working. On gotcha is depending on like what you found out in the research. Yes. And the time I needed in the lab, right. Sometimes I might be culturing cells on a material that I made and I needed to take an endpoint, right, or time point and that would take hours. Sometimes it was just go in and feed the cells, right? Or you know, sit down and plan the experiment. So it really depended on what needed to be done. Well, what made something like scientifically interesting to you? Like at the time, like, well, it's like, oh, I want to look at this floor down this route.

[18:40] scientifically interesting research directionsWhat made something scientifically interesting? Yeah, I, I was really interested in that intersection between biology and engineering and material. So most of the undergraduate research I did, the initial official project, was growing neuronal cells on materials that had channels on them, very controlled channels and spacing where we could observe how those neurites from the neurons were being extended, how they were communicating with the walls of those channels. Could you actually direct the direction, right, Control the direction of how those neurons were stretching out right on this material? So that was one of the first projects I did. I also looked at composite materials, nano composite materials, and that was core to the research in Professor G analysis lab. So creating these new interesting materials with new properties and then understanding how do those properties impact biology? So those are the kinds of things I was, you know, I wanted to understand more. Developmental biology was a class I took at Cornell and that really fed my interest as well because I, you know, all these, I learned about all these gradients of signaling and then it became how does the body know? Right. One, how does it create these gradients? And then how does it know? Right, based on these gradients to form an organ, a tissue, a limb, whatever it may be, right. So I just found it really fascinating. I found the intricacies, the, the complexities of that, those biological processes really, really fascinating. And then I wanted to use engineering, right, to, to understand it, to, to not control, but to tap into the power of that natural biology. Gotcha. So that's why you do the engineering research biology. That's right. Like what? Like what motivated the drive was like to find a cure for something. I think the drive for most biologically based research is a clinical, you know, a desire to impact, have patient impact and clinical impact, right, whether it's addressing a disease or improving the course of life right for patients impacted by that disease. So for that neuronal kind of research, right, that understanding of how do new neurite, how do neurites grow on materials, It was really more for kind of brain based right diseases, whether it be could you grow and replace tissue engineer, right novel kind of brain tissue. Now it was that was just a very small facet of ultimately trying right? Research doesn't happen overnight. New therapeutic insights and impact don't happen overnight. So it was just a piece of understanding, right, and contributing to the wealth of knowledge around brain based diseases and. That makes sense. If you understand like the big base, then you're able to build on top of it. So could you understand a small portion of it in terms of how do neurons reach out, right? Can they be controlled with, you know, how do they respond to an implant or a material that they're coming across right now? We have really a lot more sophisticated brain implants, right? And so it's, it is important to know how your cells are going to respond to those materials and and that environment. That was a bit of the basis for my research. That makes sense. And then, then, then, did you do a PhD afterwards to do even more research? I did so from Cornell and the undergraduate research. I was very interested in continuing my path as a biomedical engineer, so I went on to University of Michigan for

[22:31] getting a PhDgraduate studies, ultimately earning my doctorate in biomedical. Engineering it. Was your PhD like the building on top of like the brain part of it or? No, so I ended up looking more at cardiovascular related problems. It's a heart thing. Yes, exactly. So my research was focused on tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, but the problem of angiogenesis, so growing new blood vessels and how to control that using gradients of growth factors. Yeah. So you can see, like my, my, the basis of, you know, my interest and knowledge and coursework and research at Cornell really helped shaped, you know, where I wanted to cut what I wanted to learn about next, right? What are like the careers of a scientist? Like is it like? Does it consider doing academia as well? Like what are the different career paths afterwards? How did you choose your career path? There are so many options for those interested in the scientists, scientific paths beyond, you know, research. Becoming a esteemed faculty member, that's always a wonderful, wonderful career path, right, For someone who is interested in the sciences. However, there's lots of other opportunities. Companies hire lots of biomedical engineers and folks with a scientific background. Depending on what they do, it could be in the clinical space, right, helping plan, execute, interpret results from a clinical study. It could be part of a research team, a corporate R&D team or a divisional R&D team at a company, right. So you can be contributing that way. Even outside of R&D, there are many cross functional ties to enable a successful therapy or diagnostic. So oftentimes you know, scientists and biomedical engineers especially end up in quality roles right within an organization as well. So lots of different opportunities and paths also on the business side, right. So that's, that's kind of ultimately the I took my science and then pivoted more towards, you know, the business side of science. Well, like how did you like, like learn the business side over time? Did you move from like the R&D like more and more into the business like gradually like what was the process like? Yeah. I started as a scientist at Boston Scientific, so a medical

[24:58] moving to the business side of sciencedevice company, and then had many different opportunities for new roles there. And through those experiences, I learned project management. I learned how to assess new technologies, invest in new technologies, manage a portfolio of, you know, projects, right, and how to budget, how to manage teams. All of those other pieces came with different roles and experience over time. Is like the science business like, like is it like very heavy on R&D and like do you present on like sales conferences and science conferences instead of like traditional industry conferences? What is it like to run the science business? I, I it's all of that. So you know, a science based business depending on the type of work that they do here at ATCC, we are scientists absolutely present at scientific conferences when we have new materials that we want to share with the world that are of interest, new models, right, like organoids. We also market, right, those material because if people don't know that they're available, right, they're not going to use the best available models or materials for their work. So we do need to communicate that and make sure that folks know that they're available. So it's a combination of scientific communications, business communications and through, you know, kind of marketing channels as well. But it is science based. Very, very much science based here. Like, we're like the different marketing channels for a science business. This is still like like LinkedIn, TikTok, social media. Yeah. So I am not the marketing expert. We have great marketing teams here. So I'll see that first and foremost always, you know, know what you know, know what you don't know, find folks who have the strengths right in the areas that that aren't needed in a company. And so we do use LinkedIn, you know, that's a great resource. I actually don't think ATC, we don't have a TikTok channel. We have a we. I don't think we use many of the other social media channels as much as LinkedIn. So we're more scientific professional. Communication and then you also have like the methodology section also includes you guys, so then they know to come to you. Well, yes. And then, you know, publications, absolutely right. We publish our own work and then others who use our materials reference materials in their work as. Well, like for a science organization, are there like competitors? Where is it Like you're pretty standardized, right? It's like the standard body. So don't have like competitors. Yeah. I mean, I think ultimately we do. It keeps us on our toes, right. You there are other organizations, both non private nonprofit as well As for profit entities that provide research tools, reagents, materials. I would say that, you know, ATCC is pretty unique in that we, you know, ultimately we're going to do the right thing, right? It's, it's not about because of our mission to acquire, to authenticate, to be able to distribute materials, right, the best materials and the best, you know, practices on how to use those materials to the research community and companies and other folks who who use it down the line. We I think stand out right. So when it came to cell culture and how to make sure that's done well, that's done, right, without contamination, we actually wrote the book with experts at the time, right? We convened all the experts, we wrote those best practices in and then started training everybody else. We shared those best practices. Now, that wasn't about profit. That was just the scientific community needed standardization around that, right? Needed someone to take on that role.

[28:53] importance of making the standardsAnd we, we filled that role and we're continuing to do that. So today we are, there's a strong need to validate some of these new advanced models, right, 3D models that folks are using. And so we're helping with ensuring that validation is done in a consistent way, coordinating that with other folks who develop these models. And so we're always right, ensuring reproducibility and standardization at the forefront of whatever's next in biological discovery. That makes sense because you provide like the standardized cell lines and now you also provide the standardized methods for the yes. Because that's how we, you know, get better, right? And it's also much, much more economically efficient to do that because it's and it's faster for innovation, right. You don't want everybody trying to figure out these things that are very hard to figure out. Yeah, right. Independently, you know, there's a reason why our cell phones, right, have USBC, That's a standard. It makes it much easier to plug and play when you have that consistency of how do you work with the materials, how do you use them right? And understanding that they can come from a very, very trusted and reputable source. That makes sense for the 3D model. What is the 3D model? And then how do you create standard? Do you have your open forum where like different people come and share? Yeah. So advanced model or three, there's many different ways of a nomenclature is actually standardizing nomenclature is something that we're working on in this area. So they think of it as a mini

[30:33] 3d model of organ on a chiporgan essentially. So it could be represented 3D structure of an organ on a chip, right? Or it could be just a self organizing set of cells that create that have some of the function, physiological representation and function of an organ. So an organoid, it could be just a 3D Co culture of multiple cell types as well. So there are many different types of three-dimensional or advanced models as well. And then you asked about kind of how do you standardize that, right? That's a, that's a really, really tough problem that many in the scientific community trying to figure out because it is not standardized today, right? It is hard to work with these models because and they're more complex. And so there's a lot of bespoke protocols, bespoke models and what's our role, You know, it asked a great question, what's Atcc's role in that? Well, so we actually take in organoids as an example of one of those types of advanced, but we took in many, many different cancer related organoids through a consortium. And then we took them in and said, OK, could you scale them right? Could you, could you actually scale them? And so we provide many organoids today in our collection over 300 actually that's representing all these different types of cancers and even rare disease. But we did the, we did a lot of work. Well, the team here has done a lot of work in understanding taking it from one deposit, right to say, OK, could you scale not and not all of them can seal what sometimes the deposit is also contaminated. You need to to figure out how to create, you know, a sterile, reproducible, scalable model. Is by scalable you mean like like 1000 of these small vials that they can ship to everybody actually. Create more than just one, right? It's not enough to reproduce in a single, you know, vial that that's not the type of reproducibility and scalability that we're talking about here. Yeah. But actually being able to create hundreds that can then be used in hundreds of lab replica replicably so. It's not just like you feed it and it grows and then you split up into four different vials. It's the. There's a, there's a complete, you know, science and art to that. What if it's not like a reproducible, but still very very important? Yeah. I think then the impact of that model, right, becomes less, you know, if you can't share your finding and have someone reproduce that finding, you know, then your folks are unlikely to be able to build on that initial knowledge, right? It becomes OK, well, maybe it works in your hands, but then what, right? How did that initial lab first get their hands on the sample then? Do they like create it in a certain way so. They may have isolated a new bacteria from an iceberg as an and. Not everybody has an iceberg. Right. So that's where kind of the research community kind of really kind of shapes, right, the discovery of new materials that we can learn from and use to further our scientific knowledge base. So there's many different ways. Or maybe there's like some monkey that they found in Asia, but then you can't grow it. So you have to like the next researcher has to go out to Asia to get that monkey again. Can you imagine if every time you wanted to start a new project, you had to go and find the cell line to do that research on, right? That that would take a lot of effort and wasted effort and time and delay that discovery instead of being able to say, OK, look, I can build on someone else's foundation, OK, right, and just increase the knowledge base. Gotcha. Very interesting. So for like what is like the governance structure for ATCC, what's the guiding factor for like what new projects to pursue, what to standardize? Like what motivates it?

[34:49] nonprofit governance structureI mean, ultimately we do care about sustaining financially sustaining the work that we do, right? So it is. So we look at that aspect. We are governed by a board of directors. And so like any other, you know, organization, we are governed by a we just don't have shareholders, right? Nonprofits do not have shareholders. They are for public good. Gotcha. So how does the board like formed? Is it like mostly academicism, a mixture of academics and pharma companies? Yeah. I think we form a board based on the needs of the organization in the context of that, the stage in which the organization is in. We are a scientific organization as well. So a lot of our board members are prominent scientists, right, in different fields. So they contribute based on their knowledge, but they are also wonderful, you know, leaders in their fields, leaders of, you know, companies as well. So we do need that balance, right, of folks who understand business, understand nonprofit structure, understand the science and care about preserving that as well. Gosh, is it like the? Is it the board that gives influence to ATCC? Like what gives influence? So we are constantly monitoring for kind of scientific trends and what people need, right. And so that influences kind of what materials we spent time developing and securing and distributing. It's really from a whole number of different stakeholders. Yes, our board members provide that input, customers provide that input as well, right. And then government kind of agencies and stakeholders, they have different priorities and and we see that too. So a lot of different, yeah. Lots of different stakeholders. Yeah, because it, it is a system, right. Ultimately how discoveries turn into therapies and ultimately, you know, have that patient impact as a it's, it takes an entire ecosystem to enable that. We are, we are pretty foundational to it, right. We're the start of a new project, the new start of a new discovery and then we enable the safety and security of that therapeutic or diagnostic through providing reference materials controls. Gotcha. And then like how has the like 100 years old now APCC? Like how has the mission changed over the years? Yeah, Our mission has been very steady. We're an organization that was formed by very, very prominent microbiologists, right? They were, they wanted to be able to share these materials and have a place that they could be secured, right for for scientists everywhere. And so that's our basis. And that's still very, very important that our mission has not changed, right? To be able to be that credible, trusted resource for whatever is needed related to biological, you know, discovery and development. And like what are like, like goals that you have like for the future of the organization? Yeah, there's so many things

[38:00] AI increases pace of biological datahappening around the pace in which biological discovery is be is happening. And a lot of it is enabled now by AI, right? Because biological data, there's such a wealth of it, it's, it can be complex to sift through. And so having new tools to do that is very, very impactful. So now we're providing data sets along with our materials, right, The authenticated materials along with highly authenticated and associated metadata, right, that can be traced to those physical materials. That connection is really important because at the end of the day, it's not enough to be able to model biology on a computer. You need to be able to replicate it in a cell in a, you know, patient ultimately, right? So you need to take that into the physical world. That makes sense. So there's like standardized like cells, there's standardized like data. As well data. Set. You have to do both of those. So you know, our future is that we are sequencing everything, we're adding additional data to our materials in a highly, you know, high quality way and so that they can for us it is that traceability to the reference, you know, physical materials. Got you. So after they make a finding on the digital world, they're able to reproduce it in the physical world too. And validate that, right? That's so important. Gotcha. That's part of our future. And then we've talked a lot about advanced models. And so that's certainly a part of our future, right? It's just the natural evolution of people working with 2D cell lines on a on a plate or a dish. And now we want Morris to understand biology in a more sophisticated way, right? Because we are 3D, our organs are 3D, right? So it's just the natural evolution to go from, you know, standardized 2 dimensional cell lines to, you know, more replicable, physiologically relevant complex models. Watch. Listen, so for the closing question I always ask the guest, what's the kindest thing anyones ever done for you?

[40:07] closing questionMy gosh, there are so many, so many kind things. I mean, Tony, you are an ultimate connector at Cornell. So you are very kind in making introductions and connecting people, right, with similar interests and needs throughout. So even making those connections I find is a very kind thing that you do. I've really benefited from extremely kind and caring mentors, advisors throughout my time at Cornell and then into my career. It's really hard to think of the kindest or the most, but so many instances stand out from, you know, my high school biology teachers who encourage my interests, who were kind enough to say, hey, look, Ruth, you know how get some research experience. You might like it, right? Allowed me to go to a conference to, you know, mentors and advisors in my first industry jobs who taught me so much and put me in roles of discomfort. Actually, that was a very kind thing to Get Me Out of my comfort zone so that I could keep learning and growing. But yeah, But the kindest thing is just, you know, giving me honest advice intended to help me learn and grow. I've always valued that. Incredible. Thanks for sharing.