🧬eMalick Njie, Ph.D - Ecotone - Part 2 | What is Memory? | Playing “Stump the Professor” | Lab Coat Labs vs Sandals Labs | Wanting to Help People at Scale

The Biotech Startups Podcast

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Part 2 of 4: Jon Chee hosts our latest guest, eMalick Njie, CEO of Ecotone AI, a healthcare company that is using AI to find cures for inherited diseases. eMalick is an experienced scientist and entrepreneur who has focused on blending his expertise in neuroscience with his knowledge of AI.

In addition to founding two AI companies, Ecotone and Genetic Intelligence, eMalick received his PhD in Neurobiology and Neuroscience from the University of Florida. His extensive and diverse experience from being a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia university to being the CEO of the AI thinktank NeuroStorm makes our conversation with him one you won’t want to miss.

Join us this week to hear about:

• Answering the question “What is memory?”
• How playing “Stump the Professor” led eMalick to Columbia
• Studying C Eligans in a sandals-wearing lab
• The wide applicable uses for AI and ML in research
• Wanting to help people at scale

Please enjoy Jon’s conversation with Dr. eMalick Njie!

Subscribe to the podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994

Find Our Guest, Barbara Alcaraz Silva, at these links:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/emalick-njie-ph-d-ab82348/

https://ecotone.ai/

Find Our Host, Jon Chee, at these links:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee

https://www.excedr.com

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Enriched Notes:

Topics Mentioned:

Alzheimer’s Disease: https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/what-is-alzheimers

Neprilysin: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2329843/

Amyloid Plaques: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyloid_plaques

CAR T Therapy: https://www.cancer.org/cancer/managing-cancer/treatment-types/immunotherapy/car-t-cell1.html

C Elegans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caenorhabditis_elegans

Amyloid Hypothesis for Alzheimer’s https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/alzheimers-new-study-supports-amyloid-hypothesis-suggests-alternate-treatment

AlexNet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlexNet

Biotech Startup Support: https://www.excedr.com/resources-category/biotech-startup-support

People Mentioned:

Dr. Wolfgang Streit: https://neuroscience.ufl.edu/profile/streit-wolfgang/

Dr. David Borchelt https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-borchelt-42474623/

Martin Chalfie https://chalfielab.biology.columbia.edu/people/martin-chalfie

Timestamps:

00:28 Intro

01:52 Moving to Florida and dealing with massive shifts in weather and culture

04:48 Experience working to answer the questions, “What is memory,”

06:21 Studying the other extreme edge of memory, Alzheimer’s disease

10:43 Investigating possible plaque busting proteins

13:43 Benefits of having more freedom and other differences between MIT and Borchelt's Lab

16:25 Playing “Stump The Professor” with Martin Chalfie

20:06 Getting both invited and challenged to write a proposal to study at Columbia

25:47 Learning to love the constant surprises and level of people in New York

29:46 Going from a lab coat lab to a sandals lab to study C Eligans at Columbia

34:25 Researching neurons responsible for touch sensitivity in C Eligans

38:30 Martin Chalfie’s mentorship brilliant mentorship style allowing his students to grow

43:43 How a data deluge stemming from one of his experiments started his AI/ML journey

49:53 Choosing the entrepreneurship path and wanting to help people at scale

54:27 Outro

The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.