FYI - For Your Innovation

Joining us on For Your Innovation today, are Chris Quilty and Caleb Henry. Chris is the Founder and Partner of Quilty Analytics, a privately held, integrated financial research, investment banking and strategic advisory boutique exclusively serving the satellite and space industry. Caleb is Quilty Analytics Senior Analyst. In this episode, we discuss the developments of the space industry from its shift towards commercial revenue to its efforts towards reusability. We delve into the hybrid architecture that is proving to be the most successful, in terms of satellites, and speculate the causes for launch delays and budget overshoots. Our guests fill us in on the various contributors to the verticalization of the industry and summarize and contextualize the current constellation projects that are in motion. Tune in to find out what the SPAC boom means for the space industry and what exciting developments we have to look forward to!

• What Quilty Analytics is and what led Chris Quilty to found the company.

On this episode, we bring you an excerpt from our Big Ideas Summit 2022, which was presented live on January 25, 2022. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes interviews our CEO and CIO, Cathie Wood on a wide range of topics spanning all of our big ideas. Cathie shares insights into the world’s current climate of innovation and technology, as well as her predictions for the future. We learn about the move from fossil fuel extraction to new emerging technologies, and what is predicted to contribute towards the shift to renewable energy. Cathie fills us in on how Bitcoin mining could accelerate this shift and how Tesla’s solar roofs can change the solar energy game. We discover how AI is converging with blockchain technology to help solve the world’s problems, and with the genomic space to help cure disease. This is an episode you won’t want to miss. Tune in to learn more about the five major innovation platforms that are simultaneously evolving today, not to mention the three significant revolutions we believe are taking place right now! For the full big ideas presentation click here.

• Cathie’s predictions of the future in terms of innovation and technology.

Please note: as of 12/31/21, ARK’s clients own greater than 1% of the shares outstanding of Beam Therapeutics.

Base editing, and gene editing as a broader industry, are a major focus of our research at ARK, and a major piece of DNA Sequencing, one of our 5 technology platforms. To dive deeper into the world of base editing, Analyst Ali Urman sits down with industry expert, Beam Therapeutics CEO John Evans. Evans was previously a Venture Partner with ARCH Venture Partners and an early employee and member of the leadership team at Agios Pharmaceuticals. At Agios, he helped develop IDHIFA and TIBSOVO, two IDH inhibitors for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML), helped initiate and lead Agios’ landmark alliance with Celgene, and co-led Agios’s expansion into rare genetic diseases. On this episode, Ali and John discuss the falling costs of medicine, the convergence of 3D Printing and Base Editing, Base Editing’s applications for chronic illness, the total opportunity of the gene editing space and much more!

• John’s favorite poet, Wallace Stevens

The fields of genetics and genomics have been a cornerstone of our interest at ARK, and subjects we have explored in the past on the For You Innovation podcast. Today, analyst Simon Barnett dives a little deeper into this world, as we host Ivan Liachko, the CEO and Co-Founder of Phase Genomics, to talk about the company and the amazing technological strides that are being made. Phase Genomics is a private company with a portfolio of laboratory and computational services and products. Ivan explains a little about ultra-long-range sequencing technology, and how this is enabling Phase to assemble chromosomes in ways that were previously impossible. He also unpacks the idea of looking at the field through the lens of capturing information, and how each advancement allows us to more accurately capture useful information for certain applications. We discuss the tools that the company has been focused on developing, how these can shine a light on the mysteries of the human microbiome, and the practical applications of these innovations for healthcare and beyond. Ivan talks about how his work relates to cancer and the broader study of viruses, and the hope this is instilling for future cures and prevention!

• Looking back at Phase Genomics in 2018 and the work they did on the Puerto Rican genome.

Today’s guest is Dr. Christyl Johnson, the Deputy Director for Technology and Research Investments at the Goddard Space Flight Center. Dr. Johnson joins us to share a behind-the-scenes view of the innovations coming out of the Goddard Flight Center and the role that she plays in the process. Analyst’s Sam Korus and Tasha Keeney speak with Dr. Johnson about her experiences as an intern at the Langley Research Center and what she loves most about working for NASA, an environment built on the foundations of out-of-the-box thinking and creativity. We hear more about Dr. Johnson’s role at the Goddard Flight Center in forming strategic partnerships between government and private sectors to develop technology for future missions in Earth science, astrophysics, heliophysics, and planetary science. Our conversation also covers some of the research currently being done at Goddard on solar storms, algorithms for processing satellite imaging system information, space telescopes, and much more. Tuning in, listeners will also hear about the skillsets that are most in-demand at Goddard, the importance of diversity for creative problem solving, and the immense process of guiding project invitation from ideation to solution.

• Dr. Johnson’s experiences as an intern at the Langley Research Center.

Dr.Feng Zhang, the award-winning biochemist best known for his central role in developing optogenetics and CRISPR technology, joins ARK analyst Ali Urman on this week’s episode. Listeners will learn about the role of optogenetics in dissecting circuitries in the brain and Feng’s experience of CRISPR. Feng shares some of the biggest hurdles optogenetics has to overcome and tells us where RNA editing could be even more effective than DNA editing. He gives us his predictions on the cost of this kind of technology and medicine, and how it is developing to cover even more genes. We touch on the repertoire of different enzymes, explore diagnostics, and talk about the role of prime editing. You will hear why Feng considers the present to be a golden age for biological research, come to understand his long-term vision for CRISPR’s impact on the world, and much more!

• Feng’s definition of optogenetics: a way to be able to dissect circuitries in the brain.

Bitcoin is unique relative to traditional asset classes, meaning that it is unable to fit within the framework associated with them, and this has prevented investors from understanding it as well as adopting it. In an attempt to address this, ARK analyst Yassine Elmandjra recently co-authored a white paper with prominent crypto on-chain analyst, and ARK consultant David Puell that provides a simple approach on how to analyze public blockchains entitled ‘On-Chain Data: A Framework to Evaluate Bitcoin’. David and Yassine use the framework to discuss on-chain data, its importance, how we get to our metrics using it, and to give some context around the work we have done to develop it. We begin with a definition of on-chain data, then dive into the three-tiered framework, and along the way, point to some of the insights it is possible to gain from cryptographically verified access to such data on the blockchain. Tune in for all this and more, today!

• What on-chain data is and how it analyzes the inner economics of Bitcoin.

Please note: as of 12/31/21, ARK’s clients own greater than 1% of the shares outstanding of Verve Therapeutics.

On this episode of FYI, ARK Analyst Ali Urman is joined by Verve Therapeutics CEO Sek Kathiresan and Chief Scientific Officer Andrew Bellinger. Verve, a biotechnology company, was created with the sole focus of protecting the world from heart disease. For many years, institutions have approached cardiovascular disease with a chronic care model, prescribing medications to help reduce symptoms and complications, such as heart attack and high blood pressure. Verve Therapeutics wants to change that model. Founded in 2018, Verve was created with the idea that we can develop a one-and-done gene-editing medicine to permanently lower LDL cholesterol to treat heart attack, the world’s leading cause of death.

In today’s episode, Dr. Kathiresan and Dr. Bellinger weigh in on the development of gene-editing and its impacts on cardiovascular disease. They discuss gene-editing costs, the importance of lowering LDL cholesterol levels, importance of liver delivery, their PCSK9 program, and why it could be revolutionary for the future of cardiovascular health. For the past four years, Verve has worked to develop proof of concept in monkeys specifically. Gene-editing therapies, such as Verves, could help create longer term health for patients. Listen in to learn more!

• An introduction to Verve Therapeutics

Here at ARK, innovation is the name of the game when it comes to our investment strategies, but this is not a very common approach when you look at the larger swathes of investors. On today’s show, ARK Client Portfolio Specialist Dan White sits down with Ren Leggi, ARK Client Portfolio Manager to talk about his recent blog post, titled ‘The Equity Market Cap Associated with Technologically Enabled Innovation Is Likely to Grow Exponentially.‘ Ren provides insight into what the research shows about the potential of innovation-based stocks, and why the growth we have seen in the innovation sector during the last year is likely to keep scaling at an increasing rate. We also talk about what this means for a post-pandemic world, discuss the areas of focus for ARK when it comes to innovative technologies, and how these investments can influence the volatility of a portfolio. Ren makes a strong argument for why backing innovation is not only a good idea but dangerous to ignore, so to hear it all from Ren and Dan, listen in today!

• A little of Ren’s background and work before joining the team at ARK.

Kevin Davies is a renowned British science journalist and the executive editor of The CRISPR Journal, based in New York. His literary career began with Breakthrough: The Race to Find the Breast Cancer Gene in the early 1990s, followed by Cracking the Genome, which details the dramatic story of one of the greatest scientific feats ever accomplished: the mapping of the human genome. His other titles include the $1,000 Genome, DNA: The Story of the Genetic Revolution, and his most recent release, Editing Humanity: The CRISPR Revolution and the New Era of Genome Editing, for which he won a Guggenheim Fellowship for science writing in 2017. Kevin studied at Oxford University and moved to the US in 1987 after earning his Ph.D. in genetics. He is the founding editor of the Nature Genetics journal and Bio-IT World magazine, former editor-in-chief of Cell Press, and the first publisher of C&EN, the weekly magazine of the American Chemical Society. In today’s episode, Kevin elaborates on his career trajectory and explains why he believes that hanging up his lab coat was the best decision he ever made. We also touch on the common themes that run through his books, some of the challenges scientific publishers and editors face, and the importance of promoting the work of women scientists. We also cover vectors, CRISPR babies, the cost of gene therapy, and so much more! Make sure not to miss this fascinating discussion with the remarkable Kevin Davies.

• Kevin’s career trajectory and his so-called “desperate” shift to science journalism.