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- Well, happy new year, and not just the highly anticipated events of a transition from 2020 to 2021.

But, now we have events that transpired in Congress and on Capitol Hill, and what to expect this year, and will it be a sea change that we all hope for?

I'm Chris William, and welcome to the most widely watched and longest running program on Carolina business policy and public affairs.

In a moment, we start this week's kickoff of a new year with our expert panel.

And later on, the president and chief executive officer of biosciences company, based in RTP, Jim Datin from BioAgilytix.

We hope you stay with us.

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On this edition of "Carolina Business Review," Carl Blackstone from the Columbia Chamber of Commerce, Brian Etheridge of Leadership North Carolina, and special guest Jim Datin, president and CEO of BioAgilytix.

(light uptempo music) - Don't think it's too late to say, "Happy new year."

So happy new year, Brian.

Happy new year, Carl.

Welcome again to the dialogue.

You look both healthy and happy.

I'm assuming you are staying safe.

- We are.

Thank you for asking.

- Absolutely.

- Thanks for having us.

- Okay.

Brian, let's start with you.

So, probably most surprising were the events, recent events on Capitol Hill, on the steps of Capitol Hill.

It's surprising violence, but in some ways, not surprising.

So how did, how did that wash over you and some of your constituents?

- Great question, and I would say, Chris, I was not surprised, but still shocked and saddened to see what unfolded on Capitol Hill, and really feel like this is a pivotal moment in our society as Americans, and a real chance to come together to, you know, work in collaboration with one another, and make a really clear signal that, you know, this type of violence and upheaval is not something we're willing to stand for.

- Carl you're, I think this is fair to say, Carl.

You're fairly close to a lotta the political leadership in South Carolina, Lindsey Graham being one.

And Lindsey, and Senator Graham was, was a, what many called, say, surprising voice that not just condemned the violence and the action on Capitol Hill, but also condemned the president when he had stood beside President Trump, at the time.

Did any of that surprise you?

How did it play in the Palmetto State?

- Well, I think it played very well.

I mean, let's, let's be honest.

I mean, his actions were deplorable and you can't condone that behavior, and Lindsey, obviously, was shaken by the fact that he was in the chambers when the riots happened.

I think anybody that serves as a member of Congress, they're up there doing a public service.

They don't expect their lives to be in danger, nor does anybody in their right mind expect that.

So I think his comments were very fair, direct.

But I think they represent many of the opinions here in South Carolina.

- Brian and Carl, let's take a different tack.

You know, so we all couldn't wait to get past 2020, and here we are on the cusp of a new year.

What is gonna be different this year?

Is it going to be markedly different?

- I think, Chris, to your question, I think there is a, there is an absolute essential need for some real action on a number of topics.

And I think Carl can probably speak to this as well.

What a lot of what we've seen over the course of 2020 are issues that we knew were under the surface, that now scream for our attention, things like access- - Like what?

- Like access to broadband, issues around hunger and food insecurity for a lot of our kids.

Those types of things demand our attention, and demand our attention now.

And I think, provide a tremendous opportunity for bipartisan collaboration, because those impact the lives of citizens, both in North and South Carolina, kind of all across the board, and an opportunity to really come together and work towards solutions.

And I think that's what so many folks want.

And it speaks to a lot of the inequities that we've been faced with for decades.

- So Carl- - I agree with Brian, yeah.

- Go ahead, I'm sorry.

Finish your thought.

- Well, I think, politically, if you, in those terms, in South Carolina we were stymied for three quarters of the year.

You started off through March.

And then all of a sudden we went into lockdown, if you will.

And the, and COVID, and then the election.

And so, there are a lot of pent-up needs that need to be addressed in South Carolina as well.

The broadband, I think, is getting a ton of attention through Jim Clyburn, and now Governor McMaster has asked for additional revenue to go to, to broadband.

That'll be huge, a great thing- - Do you think that'll be fully funded?

Do you get the sense that they'll fully fund that to get that to the last mile?

No pun intended.

- They will get a, well on their way to getting there.

I don't, there is some questions of how much it really will cost to get fully implemented across the state.

Just like North Carolina, South Carolina's a very rural state.

And to be 100% implemented is going to be very expensive and time consuming.

So I think we'll have, between what the feds have been able to send out to the states, as well as what our general assembly's going to be doing, we'll have a good spider web, if you will, of, across the state.

- Brian, when we talk about what we hope will happen and what translates into some kind of policy work or legislative priority, you know in your organization, Leadership North Carolina, have been interested, obviously, in education for a long time.

And in North Carolina, there's huge initiatives, as there are in both states, around education, but specifically in North Carolina there is, there's BEST NC.

There's myFutureNC, there's EdNC.

There's the state superintendent of education, who is now Catherine Truitt.

There is the state board of education.

There is a, to use your term, Carl, there's a spider web of all of these supportive of around educational, K through 12, that is, aspects around education.

So do you think that 2021 is gonna be the year that sees some type of fruition when it comes to education funding?

- I think, yeah, I think you absolutely will, Chris.

And I think part of what's going on now is there's so much, between all these organizations that you've mentioned, myFutureNC, where the CEO, Cecilia Holden's an alum of ours, BEST NC with Brenda Berg, who's also one of our alumna, EdNC, which is doing tremendous work, state board of education, state superintendent, general assembly.

A lot of what we talked about in your last question, that the gaps in education, the challenges between different communities in North Carolina, the gaps in education that exist and how that's been exacerbated by by COVID-19.

I think you'll see a lot of leaders really step up to the plate and look to address some of those challenges.

I think it's a tremendous opportunity to come together, maybe not just as a state, but even as a region, of making access to education and understanding that foundational role in our region, our state, and our states, to provide opportunity, not just in education, but the ripple effect that that certainly has in economic development.

- In the general assembly in South Carolina, Carl, I know they're back in session as both general assemblies restart.

Legislative priority in South Carolina seems like it's going to include the sale of the asset called Santee Cooper.

The governor is for it.

There was a lot of contentious debate back and forth around selling what this, is a public asset.

Will this end up being sold?

First question, Carl.

And second thing is, is that a good long-term decision for the people of South Carolina?

- Well, I think so, and the unfortunate side of Santee Cooper is there's a significant state-owned debt that, attributed with Santee.

And so I think some of the members of the general assembly want to relieve themselves of that overhead of debt.

I think the question is, if you get rid of an asset what can you invest in that could have equal amount of benefit to the state?

And I think that we could look to the Port of South Carolina to see if there's additional capacity there that we could invest in.

I know they want to look at some rail lines, et cetera, that I think this would be a great opportunity to invest there, and getting out of the mountain of debt that we have, and invest in something that's productive.

I do think it will be sold.

I mean, there is a, they're lining up against, it's not necessarily for an individual company to take its place.

It's more of their frustration with the current administration at Santee Cooper.

But I do think it'll get sold.

Yeah, and I'm sorry.

One more quick follow-up on that, Carl.

I've gotten a sense from some members of the general assembly that this is, this is my term, pitting brother against brother, sister against sister when it comes to loyalties, because it depends where you live.

If you're in Fairfield County versus Clarendon County, you're gonna feel differently about the sale of that asset.

Do you get the sense it's that contentious?

- Absolutely, and I'll tell you what.

Around Berkeley County and Horry County, Georgetown, the direct service district for Santee Cooper, there is a strong loyalty there, and you'll see a protracted fight at the general assembly based, because of that, quite frankly.

But at the end of the day, leadership, I think, will prevail, and it will be sold.

- Brian, in about a minute, probably not fair, but that's what we have left before we bring our guest in.

In about a minute, the distracting nature of COVID.

And I'm not, I'm not minimalizing the risk of that, but now that we're in 2021, what do you think we're gonna have oxygen to give more attention to?

What one thing would be important for us to take out?

- I think for 2021, I think focusing really hard on education is gonna be really essential.

That certainly touches almost everything that our states do, whether that's Health and Human Services, obviously that is incredibly related to COVID.

It's planting the seed corn for future economic development and opportunity.

But I think focusing in on education is, is gonna be a huge one.

And I think there's a tremendous opportunity there.

And I think there is a real imperative to address some of the challenges and inequities.

But also, that ties back to broadband access too.

So there's, there's a lot of synergies there around work that can be done around education.

- Not long ago on this program, once again, we hosted the secretary of health and human services in North Carolina, Dr. Mandy Cohen, who has been a poster gal in many ways, for COVID and the pandemic.

Anyway, Dr. Cohen on this program talked about more importantly the mental health aspect and the stress, personal stress.

Joining us now is the president and chief executive officer of BioAgilytix, Jim Datin.

And Jim, I wanna ask you that point, not anything about biosciences yet, or money raised, or deployment of a CRO, but this idea that you've got a team of almost 600 people.

How do you manage through the mental health aspect?

And was that a surprise for you?

- Hey, Chris, that's a great question.

And from our perspective, employees are everything we do.

We don't own IPs, so at the end of the day, our employees are our IP.

And so when all this happened our safety was our first priority, than for our employees, to make sure the facility was safe, that it was sterilized, that the employees felt comfortable to come in.

We surveyed them to see what they wanted and what their concerns were.

And we put a couple programs in place.

The first was an employee assistance program, an EAP, where if they had any concerns, they wanted to talk to professionals, whether it be family related or work, that it could be covered 100% by the company.

We also found a creative working from home environment, where we said you can design your own work times when you want to come into work, to avoid people or to minimize any contact with others.

So from our perspective, we want to make BioAgilytix an employment destination, and to do that we had to put them first and find an area that they felt safe.

- We're gonna open this up.

Brian, Carl, please.

- Jim, I wanna thank you for joining us this morning.

The question I've got is so many, so many leaders, both business, government, education, nonprofit, are really focusing in on those leadership lessons that have been really honed, cultivated through this pandemic.

From your perspective, what have been the key kind of leadership drivers that have really helped you and your firm, and specifically your team and your employees, kinda navigate this?

What would you share with other business leaders that they may want to emulate?

- That's a great question.

So from our perspective, it was, none of us have gone through a pandemic like this before.

And so we wanted to listen to our employees, what their concerns were.

How could we assure them?

We wanted to be very transparent.

So the early days of the pandemic, we met daily.

Our senior management team got together at 7:30 in the morning, every day, to do a check of the business.

Did we have any positive cases?

Anything we should worry about, any concerns out there?

What else can we do to be a more mindful employer?

And then we communicated that on a daily basis to all of our employees.

If there was ever a positive case, within hours, they got an email.

"Here's a positive case.

We can't cite that person's name, but they were in this department."

We also offer testing to our employees, which helped, and to alleviate or hopefully reduce any concerns that they might have.

And we did contact tracing, as you know, if somebody tested positive, you've got to go back through channels.

And we tried to overly communicate by having our team meet every day and communicate to the organization almost daily updates as to what was going on, and not only with BioAgilytix, but we're a science company.

We wanted to share important scientific updates in the world.

We're working on several vaccines and therapeutics.

And so our almost 600 brave employees didn't miss a day at work.

We never shut down.

They came in every day to try to get these drugs out to the marketplace as quickly as possible.

- Carl.

- Hey, Jim, good to see you.

I have a question about your company, and I was, really enjoyed reading up on the analytics and what you're doing and, and looking at trends, looking at outsourcing analytics was not a thing 20 years ago.

What does the next 10 to 20 years look like for you as a company, but also other fields that may look to outsource analytics as well?

- That's a great question.

So, you know, I have been in healthcare over 30 years, and when I left GSK 20 years ago, biologics, or large molecule was about 1% of the pipeline at the time.

And today it's about 50%.

And biologics are living cells.

They're really complex drugs that can treat and cure cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, genetic diseases, a number of really nasty illnesses out there.

And so from our perspective, we couldn't have seen this coming 20 years ago.

And so when we look out to the future, I'm really encouraged.

I'll just pick a, an, recent example.

Operation Warp Speed, to be able to get a vaccine out in less than a year from when the pandemic hit, not just one, but in the U.S. as you know, we have Pfizer and Moderna approved.

I believe Johnson and Johnson will be seeking approval for theirs this spring.

AstraZeneca just had theirs approved in the UK.

So I think you're gonna see a number of vaccines on the market here very soon.

When this hit, we were expecting vaccines to be available in several years.

So this really was a landmark case, to see collaboration between biotechnology companies, pharmaceutical, academic, to see them not in a competitive environment, but rather in a collaborative environment, sharing information with partnerships.

I believe you're gonna see a lot more critical therapeutics come out over the next decade or two.

And they're gonna point back to this time in history as a real key momentum, a key catalyst of which new drugs will start coming out in the future as well.

- You know, I want to expand on that just a little bit, Jim, you know, as a therapeutic and biology insider, which you are, and knowing what you know now, and as you just described, what are the further unintended consequences of this rapid deployment of vaccines?

And then the second question is, do you trust the safety of those that were developed so quickly?

- Yes, Chris, great question.

So there's been some concerns by the public about, how could something coming out so quickly or potential political pressure to get something pushed out.

And I can tell you, we've seen the data.

We've worked on the tests, and we are highly convinced that the safety is there.

The efficacy at over 90%, the incidences of adverse reactions occurring at very few, less than 1% of 1%.

All of us are gonna be first in line to get a dose when it's our turn to get a vaccination when that comes out.

So we have no concerns about the vaccines.

Today we're vaccinating about 500,000 Americans.

We need to be doing several million a day, and that will ramp up.

The issue will not be the supply of the vaccines.

It's gonna be administering or getting those vaccinated, which I'm hopeful in the next month or two that we'll get better at that.

It is a state by state basis, and some states are doing a great job of it.

North Carolina, I think, is doing a reasonably good job.

And I believe we'll be doing a better job of this in a month or two.

- Brian, please.

- You know, one of the things, Jim, that you kind of talked about is, you know, understanding this Project Warp Speed, And just how quickly this vaccine came online, understanding that in the work of biology and science, years and years of groundwork are usually done to get to, you know, those quick results.

Looking kind of at the shorter term, what has you the most excited about the next 12 months, you know, next 12 to 18 months, from your perspective, with your business, that you're maybe the most pumped about?

- You know, when COVID hit almost a year ago there was a concern about, is this gonna be like the flu, or is it gonna be like polio, when you're vaccinating somebody?

Is it going to be 100% like polio, where we can eliminate, eradicate this?

Or is it gonna be the flu, where you're gonna need to get boosters every year?

And we're not convinced of what that will be, but we think it's leaning more towards polio where we can eradicate it.

We can have a herd mentality where we can, hopefully, 12 to 18 months from now, look back and this can be a thing of the past.

And I truly believe that will be the case.

There may be occasional boosters, but I do believe it's gonna change the way we live and operate.

You may see people wearing masks or maintaining social distancing, not doing handshakes as often, not getting on an airplane as often.

But that being said, I do believe it's gonna make a substantial difference in the world.

And hopefully 12 to 18 months from now, this is behind us, and we're back to some bit of normality.

- [Chris] Carl.

- Jim, there's lots of big pharma up in North Carolina, little bit here in South Carolina.

Your work, obviously, in the Triangle.

What role has, I mean, they're, most healthcare companies, you got a bunch of Nashville or a bunch around, research around, in Boston.

How has life been in South, in the Carolinas for you?

And what do you see as the future of pharma and research around pharma in the Carolinas in the years to come?

- I'm very encouraged.

And I'll just back up for a moment.

We recently announced that we're gonna be adding over 800 jobs here in the Carolinas over the next six-plus years.

And these are high-paying jobs, not only in the scientific area, but it takes a lot to make a company go.

Whether it's IT, marketing, finance, management, the facilities, there's a number of different ecosystems that all come together with that.

When you look at the biotechnology or pharma industry, it's really got a couple of hot spots, California, the Bay Area, Southern California, San Diego, and Boston.

Boston and Cambridge is probably the epicenter in the world.

And so when we were debating where we should expand, we received a lot of attention from the state of Massachusetts, who had some very aggressive incentives for us, and who wouldn't want to be based here, in one sense.

There's over 700 different biotechnology companies in the Cambridge area.

The ecosystem is fully built out there.

You've got great universities.

You've got a system there.

We felt compelled to run a process.

And Mark Bethers, our head of facilities and HR, was working with numerous different states and places around the world, deciding where we should locate.

Ultimately for us, we picked the Carolinas.

We think there's for a great talent pool here, between the universities that we have.

You've got a great labor pool.

It's a melting pot.

When I think of BioAgilytix, last year we hired over 200 new employees.

And today we have employees from over 45 different countries working here.

We tend to hire the best and brightest scientists that we can from around the world and bring 'em here.

When I think of the last couple years, we've brought people in from 22 different states to work in the Carolinas.

We brought people in from 30 different countries to work at our company.

So I'm really encouraged.

And I'll share a quick, funny side story.

When we were talking to the state of Massachusetts, they were trying to share their virtues of why we should be based in the Boston area.

And they started out the conversation by, "Hey, I know the weather's not great here.

Traffic's bad, cost of living is high, but," and that was enough to sell us on the Carolinas, (men laughing) why it's a great place to be.

- Well, we do worry that that's gonna happen in the Triangle to some degree with, with the critical mass flowing that way.

Jim, we have about a minute left.

Would you expect that 20, and I know this is a broad question and is a little unfair.

But would you expect that, you know, at the cusp of the beginning of the new year, that we find ourselves, everyone was saying and hopeful that, you know, good riddance 2020, thankfully 2021.

Do you think 2021 is going to be markedly better?

And you have less than a minute.

- I do, I'm very encouraged, Chris, by 2021.

I think hopefully by this fall, we've got herd immunity.

Most of Americans have been vaccinated, if we can get to the 80% level.

And I think that the economics are gonna be picking up.

The economy will be strong.

I'm highly encouraged, not only for the broader economy, particularly healthcare.

You're going to have many different therapeutics and critical life-saving drugs come out as a result of what we've just gone through in 2020.

- Jim, I think, I trust, I think, I suspect, that Durham is lucky to have you and BioAgilytix.

So thanks for being a guest on our program and we wish you the best, and stay safe until next time.

We'd love to have you back.

Please come back.

- Thanks, Chris.

Brian, Carl, see ya.

- Brian, Carl, always nice to see you.

Happy new year.

Best of luck to you both.

I'm Chris William.

If you have any comments or questions, go to carolinabusinessreview.org, and watch a show or comment.

Until next week, I'm Chris William.

Happy new year.

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