Miscellaneous
On today’s episode of Legal Drugs Podcast, our host, Angela Stoyanovitch, is joined by Sarah Ives, Director of Contract Research at Distributed Bio based in San Francisco, CA. Sarah starred on the Netflix docuseries, Pandemic, produced by Zero Point Zero Productions, premiered on January 22, 2020. In this episode, Angela gets to know Sarah’s life in what Sarah describes as two phases; pre and post the Netflix show. After watching the show, Angela felt Sarah’s persona was relatable in that she, too, studied biology and decided to learn more about the legal drugs business in her career. In an effort to uncover more common ground, Angela asks Sarah to introduce herself and her humble beginnings as an undergraduate studying genetics with fruit flies. In this interview, Sarah and Angela relate in ways such as their non-science related studies in college, social life and networking, multiple hobbies, side jobs and the incredibly humble beginnings of scientific contribution for the greater good of society. While Netflix has 182.8 million subscribers, Pandemic, became No. 7 on the most-watched TV shows on the Netflix service in the U.S. according to this article on Adweek.com by Kelsey Sutton on March 17, 2020: https://www.adweek.com/tv-video/pandemic-related-programming-surges-on-netflix-amid-coronavirus-spread/. Thanks to Sarah’s Netflix debut and success, she and her colleagues have appeared on several media outlets in the last couple of months. While Pandemic focused on the flu virus, Sarah explains that after Dr. Jacob Glanville (CEO of Distributed Bio) attended an annual biothreats meeting in Washington D.C. in January, he realized the novel coronavirus outbreak was not going to be confined lending way to highlight Distributed Bio’s therapeutic antibody discovery technologies for rapid pathogen response. In this interview, Sarah announces Distributed Bio’s new press release that three independent laboratories have confirmed that multiple Centivax antibody therapeutic drug candidates are very potent neutralizers of the new coronavirus. Learn more at www.centivax.com/covid19. As Director of Contract Research, Sarah tells the story of Distributed Bio’s success as a self-funded biotechnology business, a rare business model for biotech companies which are usually funded by venture capital. She also discusses the Centivax universal influenza vaccine program, for, which she is the lead scientist. We are honored to highlight Sarah’s story and the efforts of this innovative biotechnology company on the Legal Drugs Podcast. To learn more about Sarah, https://www.distributedbio.com/sarah. Please consider becoming a patron on www.patreon.com/legaldrugspodcast. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok at @legaldrugspodcast or on LinkedIn at "Legal Drugs Agency." You can follow our host, Angela, on Twitter @stoyoy. This episode edited and produced by Margaret Beveridge.