EPISODE 38: OSCAR SEGURADO, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER AT ASC THERAPEUTICS

Oscar Segurado is an executive veteran of the biopharmaceutical industry with extensive global leadership experience in translational science, clinical development, and medical affairs. Oscar is Chief Medical Officer for ASC Therapeutics, former CMO for Symvivo, Myriad Genetics, and CellMax Life, Vice President for Becton Dickinson, and Global Medical Head for Abbott/AbbVie.

Segurado is a senior medical leader experienced in matrixed, line management, and consulting for biotechs, midsize, and large pharma companies. Extensive expertise in gene therapy, immuno-oncology, immunotherapy, genomics, and protein/cell diagnostics, predominantly focused on oncology, hematology, and autoimmunity, including personalized medicine, molecular and cellular biomarkers. He holds a tenured Professorship of Immunology at the University of Leon, Spain, and received Ph.D. from the University of Wuerzburg, Germany, and MD from the University of Salamanca, Spain.

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Episode’s transcript

Julio Martinez: 0:00

Welcome to the Latin MedTech Leaders podcast, a conversation with MedTech leaders who have succeeded or plan to succeed in Latin America. Please subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform. Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast. Amazon Music is teacher. Tune in iHeart Radio, Pandora or Deser . Welcome back to the La MedTech Leaders Podcast. Today our guest is Oscar sdo . Hey, Oscar, how are you doing today? It's great to have you on the show.

Oscar Segurado: 0:29

I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me today.

Julio Martinez: 0:32

Fantastic, Oscar, it's really an honor to have you here today. And well listeners, Oscar is an executive veteran of the biopharmaceutical industry with extensive global leadership experience in translational science, clinical development, and medical affairs. Oscar is now the chief medical officer for a SC therapeutics. Before that, he was the chief medical officer for sim vivo or Bible . I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing this. Myriad Genetics and Cmax Alive , vice President for Beum Dickinson and Global Medical Head for Abbot Abba , right? <laugh>, yes. How do you pronounce it,

Oscar Segurado: 1:12

Avi ? Yes.

Julio Martinez: 1:13

Abbo . Avi Oscar is a senior medical leader experiencing metrics line management and consulting for biotechs, midsize, and large pharma companies. He has extensive expertise in gene therapy, immuno oncology, immunotherapy, genomics and protein cell diagnostics, predominantly focused on oncology, hematology and autoimmunity, including personalized medicine, molecular and cellular biomarkers. Oscar holds a tenure professorship of immunology at the University of Leon, Spain. He received his PhD from the University of Warburg . I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing this in Germany, <laugh> and his medical degree from the University of Salamanca is Spain. So Oscar, that's quite a bio that you have. I also understand you wrote a book, is that correct,

Oscar Segurado: 2:05

<laugh>? Yes. I wrote a book it's , uh, in , in Amazon. Just put my name and , uh, write a very nice review about it. That's what I tell everyone I need it.

Julio Martinez: 2:15

<laugh> , what's the book about?

Oscar Segurado: 2:16

The book is about something very relevant today, and this is , uh, how to deal with anxiety. People may have heard about something called mindfulness, which is being as I am right now in the present moment, and I tried different techniques and or practices and I decided to develop my own. And , uh, that's what it's all about. It's called Mindful Framing, transformed your anxiety into vital Energy.

Julio Martinez: 2:43

Fantastic, fantastic. Oscar, thank

Oscar Segurado: 2:46

You for bringing that up. Sure.

Julio Martinez: 2:48

Let's get started with , uh, your journey to Latin America. You are originally from Spain. How do you get involved with Latin America in your professional and personal life?

Oscar Segurado: 2:56

Yeah, so when you read my bio, I was thinking, okay, I should have written something about my experience with Latin American and what I was doing in the medical devices space. I almost forgot that. So , uh, I've been a couple of, more than a couple of decades around, and my history on Latin America is, I would say part of, of my development as a person and also as a business person. And , uh, everything started obviously in Spain. So I am was born and raised in Spain. I went to medical school there and I started noticing that I wanted to be something more than a physician and I transformed into something I would call physician scientist. So I started working in immunology and uh, when you work in immunology, you do molecular biology, cellular biology, protein biology, working without immune diseases, cancer, immunology. I did that for about 10 years and I started focusing on biomarkers because I thought that was important. What is today we call personalized medicine. So I, after my 10 years and , uh, obtaining a tenure in immunology at the University of Leon , I, because of my interest in in languages , uh, I moved to Germany where I met my wife , uh, and I started working with Abbott Laboratories. That was in 1993. So I spent seven years working as a physician scientist in what slowly I realized was medical affairs. And medical affairs is something that is a kind of mix between medical or r and d type of work in companies, plus getting very close to the salespeople. So in my seven years in vba , very close to Frankfurt in Germany at the European headquarters for Abbott, I started getting closer and closer to sales and I ended up in the last years there working for the diagnostics division in a position that at that time was called business development, but was going very close to to the sales and the marketing organizations. And I got a headhunter from the Chicago organization , uh, the headquarters of Abbott in , uh, worldwide. And they invited me to , um, apply for a position as the marketing director for Latin America and Canada at that time. And it was the year 2000. So this is about 20 years ago. So I said, okay, I asked my wife and I took my kids and we, we moved to Chicago. So I was in the headquarters of Chicago, but running Latin America as marketing director for the diagnostics division. That's how everything started. And from there I moved , uh, after about one year to be general manager with , uh, p and l responsibility for the diabetes division of Inside Ababa Diagnostics. And that's when I started my Latin American career. So I had responsibility for all Latin America and Canada.

Julio Martinez: 6:04

Wow, fantastic. Oscar , that's quite a journey, huh ? <laugh> . Interesting. All right , moving along here, what major trends, epidemiological, political, social , socioeconomical trends do you see in Latin America that are relevant to our discussion?

Oscar Segurado: 6:19

So , um, I want to emphasize that I was , uh, working a hundred percent with Latin America 20 years ago. But I must say that when I continue looking into that and when I see how Latin America is evolving, there are still , uh, many, many key parameters that haven't changed. I would say that first of all is an a region of the world that is usually considered third world . Uh , although there are countries and , and especially , um, hotspots , uh, like big cities in Mexico, Mexico City or Rio or or or Buenos Aires, which are really first world when you are there. And I traveled all around Latin America in that position and I was very impressed about, again, the level of and the quality of the people in universities, in the industry with my organization because I have general managers across the region. So I had the opportunity to deal with very, very smart people. And uh, I think that in everywhere in the world you have uh , again, high quality , very talented people. In Latin America, what happens is definitely that the entire countries are again, underdeveloped. There , there is poverty, that there is a number of things that are very important there that you don't see in developed countries. And this also drives the way a company has to , uh, work in these uh , countries. Uh , definitely you need to take into account that although we talk about Latin America in general, this is a collection of countries that are very different. I think that's obvious, but I've been also been working with Asia Pacific countries and really in Asia Pacific countries, you see the diversity is even larger. So there is nothing that unifies them. But in Latin America, and I'm sorry to say that because I'm originally from Spain, there is this culture that came originally from Spain and Portugal, there's the language, the Spanish and Portuguese. So this brings these countries together and brings their certain type of homogeneity. So it's something that for me makes sense to have a Latin America strategy, which also is embedded in the culture of the actual people, which impacts economics, epidemiology, politics, sociology. So that would be my first kind of high level view about Latin America.

Julio Martinez: 8:57

Great, Oscar. Interesting. Alright , so let's um, discuss , um, topics related to human research , uh, commercialization of medical technologies. What do you see in Latin America that makes it attractive for companies to either do research or to sell their innovations?

Oscar Segurado: 9:20

So first of all, I think Latin America is a marketplace like everywhere where healthcare is becoming a larger piece of the entire economic , uh, movement, all countries are now realizing that healthcare is going to drive the way economies are going to be successful or not, especially in this coronavirus environment. People think that having a healthcare infrastructure, public health also ready for the next one or just tackling with where we are is extraordinarily important. So I think that we need to understand that because of the economic and political situation, especially the way the societies are dealing today with these uh , pandemic, they are going to need more and more support from companies and it has to be really cost effective . So companies have to be careful to try to bring to these markets innovative products that are not going to make it because there are maybe sometimes there are pockets of society that will be able to for them. And I was very aware during my time there about these private organizations that again, it happens especially in big cities, but the majority of the population are not going to be able to access that these countries are driven by tender business means that there is lots of competition and it's a lot about price and sometimes quality of the product is secondary to having a price. Now working with each country individually means that we cannot, I mean as a company or a big pharma or big me metech company is not easy to just arrive there and start to use their their go-to market strategies that they're used to do. Uh , anyway. So this is a very price sensitive market and uh , you need a very concrete marketing strategies and tactics that really also help demand , uh, generation.

Julio Martinez: 11:28

Oscar, what about clinical research? Have you ever been involved with clinical trials in Latin America?

Oscar Segurado: 11:33

I have. So I told you what I was doing between 2000 and 2002 and maybe I have to continue going a little bit what has happened over the past 18 years <laugh> , and this is that the reason I always say Abbott AbbVie because I spent altogether uh , 15 years with the same organization is that uh, AbbVie decided to buy , uh, one of the first biologics at that time, which is Humira is a TNF inhibitor used for rheumatoid arthritis and many other diseases. And I moved from being general manager for Latin America to start working worldwide as a medical affairs director, one of the first for the Humira team, which is a worldwide franchise obviously. And uh, I was also working again with the Latin American organizations, but now in a different position. Now I move from diabetes to uh , biologics and I was again traveling around, I was uh, working with uh , many clinical uh , organizations there and this time from the pharmaceutical perspective you're Colombian and I remember being in Bogota, I don't remember the exactly the name of the top university there. Which one is it in Bogota?

Julio Martinez: 12:47

Could be Harana or Los Angeles

Oscar Segurado: 12:51

Harana . Exactly. Okay . Harana was that. And I remember spending one day visiting , uh, physicians and opinion leaders there and I was really impressed. So this is one example of one place where I felt like I was in Berlin or I was in Washington anywhere because the level of uh , knowhow of the people at the University of Ariana was really, really good and we could conduct trials there like anywhere in the world. So that was for me a kind of a wake up call telling me that indeed is an opportunity to conduct clinical trials, which at the end of the day, obviously because you can access patients that are the same, have the same type of conditions that they can have anywhere, you can have the , your inclusion exclusion criteria and practically conduct the clinical trial like everywhere where I felt really comfortable like doing that. So that was for me a discovery and because of my expertise , uh, Latin America, I continued all these years working, understanding the market in Latin America. I, I remember also going to Buenos Aires and speaking there with experts in rheumatologists. In that case that was the area where I was focusing on and seeing that they were people very keen understanding perfectly how these uh , immune therapy was working in these patients. And I'm talking about the beginnings that maybe 2005, 2006. So that was also for me a way to tell me that Latin America and specifically different key places there can be tremendously helpful to conduct clinical trials.

Julio Martinez: 14:36

Yeah, Oscar, you're absolutely right with that. And I think you were referring to hospital and Ignacio, which is part of the univers Ariana , we are working on two , well we're working one clinical trial years ago and now we're working with that hospital in another trial is a top institution in Latin America and also in Columbia of course. Yeah. Alright , moving along here, Oscar , in what specific countries in Latin America have you been involved with?

Oscar Segurado: 15:02

So I've been involved with all countries because my responsibility was in those two positions that I mentioned as uh , or three, I would say marketing director for the diagnostics, general manager for diabetes medical affairs, head for the rheumatology space in in Avie now or Abbott. And also I had another responsibility later on when I moved from Abbott to Becton Dickinson and I was responsible for the leukemia and lymphoma biomarkers, which is flow cytometry or cellular markers. And I spent four years as vice president for medical affairs worldwide and I always had this kind of tendency to try to help and to bring value in Latin America. So in all these four positions I was working across the board on all all countries. So the way I've divided in my mind Latin America is in four major regions. One is Mexico with some satellite countries like Honduras or Nicaragua or South Salvador. Another one definitely on its own is Brazil. Another one is Argentina, UY Paraguay , Chile. And uh , finally Colombia , what they call great Columbia , which would include potentially Peru and Ecuador. So I was seeing these four regions within Latin America as um , one way for someone working very far away like me in Chicago or in the Bay area where I'm right now with worldwide responsibility with Latin American . That's the way I was seeing that. And I think that each of these regions have , uh, certain peculiarities that need you to take them differently and sometimes some organizations have even headquarters that basically lead the organizations. I remember , uh, for instance that for Columbia itself and would include I for forgot Venezuela obviously, which is around you would have a kind of , uh, hub there and then you sometimes had distributors in these other countries. I would say Columbia and Venezuela, at least at that time were very strong and uh , in both we had actual organizations, not distributors. And but the same would happen with Mexico. You would have in Mexico City, your big hub and then distributors in in the other countries the same for sometimes even Argentina and then having a distributor for Chile or Yuba para away . So I dunno if that's helpful, but again, I'm trying to tell you the way I simplify things in my mind so I can be more, more effective in my job.

Julio Martinez: 17:48

Yeah, yeah , it's very helpful Oscar. Alright , so let's talk a little bit about regulatory affairs in Latin America. Oscar, what's been your experience obtaining regulatory approvals for either clinical research or to commercialize medical products?

Oscar Segurado: 18:02

So , um, this is not an area where I was directly involved. So especially when you work with large organizations, you have , uh, regulatory people that deal with that. I can give you a very high level understanding that I have about the regulatory environment in Latin America. And this is that it follows really the US FDA , uh, guidance. So that's my understanding and I don't think I can tell you much more than that. My impression, my recollection of those years is that regulatory was not a real barrier. So basically the regulatory requirements, especially once you had an FDA approved product, were relatively easy. That's when the problem started <laugh> and this was market access reimbursement and so on. So it was the easy one to get over the regulatory humps. But from there that's when I remember that we needed a real very strong strategy experts that really knew how to move inside all these very complicated network of , of relationships and things that are very important in these countries.

Julio Martinez: 19:15

Excellent. Kar . All right , makes sense. So what about distributors? How were you guys able to find and conduct due diligence on distributors in Latin America?

Oscar Segurado: 19:27

Yeah, this is critical in Latin America. I will come back to what I just said a moment ago. So you have big countries where in general you don't need distributors in general, I'm saying, or sometimes you have a mix and I recall for instance in Mexico you would say, okay, Mexico, you can have your organization. We had our organization, but we were told clearly, and I'm thinking now about the time when I was working with the diabetes , um, division that you needed distributors for certain regions within Mexico. So that's something that you sometimes do not realize. But they also have certain tenders where in certain, and I don't recall exactly how was it called, but this the army, they have a , a separate kind of healthcare organization. Unless you are an insider in there, it's going to be very difficult to even be able to understand, to be aware when the tenders are coming and so on. So you may need a distributor just addressing the army or the military healthcare system. That's one example that I recall right now. And I think that that was something similar in some other big countries, but the one that really called my attention was Mexico for that. And when you talk about distributors, I would say one thing, and it may sound a little bit kind of is that so, and this is ethics, so we need to realize that in these countries there is a , a relatively low bar. And again, I don't think that's has changed a lot based on , on everything that I'm aware of in the past two decades. But integrity, ethics, considering that there is some level of corruption in these countries means that you have to do a very thorough due diligence when you start hiring a , a distributor. So it's very important to ensure that you have someone that is not going to get you in trouble. And I've been working with big corporations , uh, American corporations and I can tell you we had troubles. I was general manager and I had problems with that. And uh, there are different countries, there are different situations. I would say maybe Argentina is a little bit less prone to that and this area, maybe Brazil a little bit less, but especially the Mexico area and that would include other countries around there. Even Venezuela, I remember, I don't recall Colombia if that was a big problem, but this is something that you need to take into account because that may mean even that your entire business in jeopardy if you don't do that. So, but yes, you need to understand when you need a distributor and when you go direct in a country.

Julio Martinez: 22:34

Okay, yeah, well said. Uh , Oscar, that's certainly a , an issue. I mean, searching and finding distributors is really an art. It's like a chess game and I see a lot of companies that take it very lightly. They just find a distributor at a trade show or they just made a distributor on LinkedIn and they sign an exclusive agreement for three years, five years without the shooter. I mean, and they , having even visited the country, I mean that happens a lot. That happens a lot. And I also think that a lot of companies in the US and Europe, they have a , a more opportunistic approach to Latin America. In other words, they're not actively pursuing business in the region, you're just waiting for somebody to contact them from Colombia , from Peru, from Chile saying, I , Andy Shooter , I'd like to sell you products, can we do business? And then they react and ship products, sign a contract, ship products get paid and that's it. And wait for the shooter to do some magic and for something to happen. I don't think that's the best way to manage such a large region with 30 something countries as over 600 million people with big markets as Brazil, Mexico, Columbia . I will say that as a company, and that's okay if you don't have your focus in Latin America, but it's becoming a, a region that it should be seriously considered as an opportunity. That's how I see things in the region, especially now that you have for example, these trends, political trends and economic trends like the Pacific Alliance, you have all these countries joining the OECD in Latin America. So it's becoming a more sophisticated area specifically with this trade block that I just mentioned, the Pacific Alliance, Mexico, Columbia , Peru and Chile. They all members of the OECD, they fall international guidelines. They have treaties with uh , the us Europe, et cetera . So I think it's an area that is worth paying attention to now. Alright , so let's move along here. Let's talk about demand generation. You were talking about distributors and working with them. Let's continue a little more on that topic. Oscar, how was your involvement with demand generation with distributors, any marketing strategies that you remember? What were you guys doing to help the distributor sell and to have patients , uh, demand your products?

Oscar Segurado: 24:52

So , um, this is key to for any business to have demand generation, but um , we are talking about healthcare. So in some way you are going to be more dependent on uh, whatever needs are in the healthcare system and whatever is available through tender, the tender business. But I work for a couple of years as I mentioned with the diabetes , uh, monitoring business, which they're sold in pharmacies and they're bought directly sometimes out of pocket by patients at least at that time. So you need to buy the diabetes monitors and also the strips. And uh , we, by the way, that's interesting. I hired one guy while I was general manager in Brazil. His name is Robert Ford and he was my marketing manager for Latin America. Guess what? He was named on the 1st of June of this year, CEO of Abbott Laboratories or he runs the entire thing, 80,000 people <laugh> and he is a good friend. So we worked together on marketing strategies for diabetes in Latin America. And what we did was something very simple. We prepare one marketing strategy for the entire Latin America, we prepared all the basic elements and then we send them to the countries so that they could adapt that to their individual needs. And guess what? It worked. So we both were very successful with that strategy and some people use that more than others, but we prepared the entire marketing materials, everything from the visuals to the text, it was translated, we provide them already translated into Portuguese and the countries were able to really use those materials and adapt them . They told us, clearly you guys are in Chicago, you have no idea how it works here in Latin America, although I had a Brazilian working with me. But they wanted these kind of basic elements and then reworked with them and used them in different ways. So we went with those materials that were directed really to over the counter in pharmacies more than anything else. And we were able to deploy that as a Latin America wide type of strategy. So that's one example how you can use some strategies, and again, I'm giving you that example probably other people have other type of examples and how it can work. And that's also the advantage again of some cultural similarities or homogeneity that you can see in Latin America.

Julio Martinez: 27:50

Excellent, Oscar . Alright , so let's talk about , um, price sensitivity in the region. You mentioned something at the beginning of the conversation, but uh , do you wanna expand a little bit more on that?

Oscar Segurado: 28:02

Yeah, it's obvious. So these are countries that are really struggling and I don't think that things have changed a lot in the past , uh, years because if anything, my impression having been now in the United States for 20 years is that the gap between developed countries, especially the US and other countries is becoming larger and larger. So the cost that we have here on developing a product makes it sometimes not really profitable for a large company to bring it to the market. So that was one of the key decisions that I continuously had when I was working in the headquarters also with my boss and others. Uh , at that time, by the way, my boss when I was general manager was uh , Gonzales and he's now the CEO of AbbVie . So , uh, I I had a chance to know very interesting people at that time and we had internal conversations just related to that, which products should we bring to Latin America and which not. And even within our glucose monitors, we had one product for instance that was relatively expensive, it was point of care for hospitals and I remember back and forth discussion, should we bring it to the market or not? And at the end we decided not to. So it was a very innovative product that the decision was made, the effort to bring it to a relatively atomized market because you need, as I said, is not just one marketing study you need, you can have an overarching strategy but you need to adapt . It is very expensive and the product has also , uh, cost of goods. You need to do all these calculations. So I think that some companies in India or in China probably are going to have , um, better potential to bring products in Latin America that are going to still be profitable for them because they have a lower cost of goods. But many companies in the med tech and and pharmaceutical companies are probably either not bringing some products to those markets or they, they're obviously practically making no money with those , uh, because I mean no profits, but they still bring products that they think that are relevant for the healthcare and

Julio Martinez: 30:28

Excellent. Alright , Oscar, let's talk a little bit about reimbursement. What's been your experience with reimbursement in in all these countries in Latin America?

Oscar Segurado: 30:36

Centralized, very centralized and um, is uh , at least in the areas where I was working, tender driven . So reimbursement is just making sure that you make it, that you get whatever price they tell you, but you cannot really do much in terms of being able to get the price that you're expecting. And sometimes you, again, as I mentioned it is exactly when you come into that point of market access and reimbursement when you even decide to stop running out a product because it's not worthwhile. And sometimes you even have a distributor in between which obviously has also their markup. So when you put all together, sometimes you decide even in , in the last minute that you are not going to bring uh , a product to the market. So reimbursement is a key element on this decision making and on what products you are bringing to the market, the way you price them and so on. Because the tendency here, because it's a very price sensitive market, is that everyone is going to try to drop the prices and to put pressure and sometimes the advantage of the tender business is that you have a defined period of time where price is set. That's the advantage. And this is okay, this is the price, I'm going to keep it for two years. But the problem in this reimbursement process is that after two years, usually in healthcare, unfortunately what happens is that prices are going up, especially this is happening in the United States. The prices Sally drug prices are going up, creeping up all the time is usually the contrary. So the next tender opportunity, the government or whatever institution is looking into that is going to put an even lower ceiling despite inflation and everything. So that's what happens in this cycle of tenders. So it's a very, very difficult business and that's also why coming back to the distributor aspect that we were talking a moment ago, it's so important to be on top of certain aspects like for instance the price. So because the distributor is going to sometimes try to get a business no matter what and you have, there is also lots of discussion with them, okay, what is my ceiling ? What is my price I can afford so I can pay you the MR distributor and also make some profit. And sometimes this is something that makes all these discussions about price extraordinarily important and you're going to spend, I remember I spent a lot of time just on that.

Julio Martinez: 33:15

Okay, well set . Uh , Oscar, it looks like uh , you've gone through a lot in Latin America, <laugh>.

Oscar Segurado: 33:21

I did, I did. It was very, very packed. It was two years and then the continuation with other reasons , but yes, I really treasure all these years because that was something different for me. Think that I'm a physician scientist and that's what I'm coming back now I'm doing gene therapy and stem cell therapy with a company with just 20 people and we, before I was with another company with 80 people and then so is working in different aspects. But um , those years in sales with a p and l responsibility were extraordinarily helpful for me because now that I'm in developing these therapies for hemophilia for instance, the one we are developing with this practically bringing a gene for factor VIII and patients that uh , have this coagulation disorder, I am already thinking on how we are going to price this product in four years. That's when we plan to have our product in the market. And I'm talking about a product for instance, and I'm sorry to diverge a little bit, but I'm telling you what is in my mind that is probably going to cost for one single infusion between one and $2 million. That's where we are right now in gene therapy. So this is something that is going to change the entire way medicine is is run , I call it Medicine 2.0 but still we may in our case with this product, we may have a chance in Latin America if we may be reduce the price a little bit, but think that what this product is doing is that someone that needs to receive infusions every week, three times going to the hospital is going to receive this one infusion and it's going to be cured. So nothing else, they will not need anything else. Why? Because we have inserted a gene that is going to produce factor VIII regularly and it's something that is not only us, there are others already working in this space. So you see it's very important to ensure that you understand the science and also where is it going to bring you and how is at the end of the day going to help a patient. And I think that's what I call for me being ambidextrous. So I have my capabilities on the science as a physician scientist, but also thank to everything that I just mentioned. I understand also at the end of the day, everything that we do needs to help a patient and you also need to think about very simple stuff about reimbursement, pricing, demand generation, things like that which help me make decisions now being in a very small company and deciding that all the expenses or the millions of dollars that we are spending in development are going to really translate into something that is going to help patients at an affordable or at the right cost. Sorry for this going around in

Julio Martinez: 36:31

No, no, this is fantastic. This is absolutely fascinating and I thank you for expanding a little bit more. I think uh , it adds value to the discussion and to listeners, so it's all good. <laugh>. Alright , so we are about to enter into the closing remarks. Uh, Oscar, a question I usually ask my guest here, is Latin America a fun place to do business? Uh, what do you think about the culture and the way people do business in Latin America? I mean, do you like doing business traveling in the region?

Oscar Segurado: 37:02

<laugh>? Oh my god, that was probably a blessing. The best thing about my job because although I was in Chicago, Chicago by the way is very well connected with Latin America or sometimes we need to do that through Miami or something. But my trips to uh , Latin America were unforgettable, all of them. Not just because you were going to great restaurants and you could be eating crickets in a Mexican restaurant or , or going to uh , Mr. Tango in Buenos Aires or enjoying the beaches in Rio, the Haro always trying to find some time off. But the people there, I really would make the difference. I remember when I was going to visit , um, company places all over the place. They had a kind of reception for me. They gave me a gift. It was like being the Pope <laugh> and being really treated like , uh, VIP or something I was not used to . So I think that is fun. Unfortunately it's going to be a few years until we all can come back to those countries. But people there are also very careful with you in , in terms of safety, which sometimes is not easy in some countries. Yeah, so it's a fun place and , and especially for me, one of the most important things , uh, that has driven my entire career has been learning. And when I talk about learning, it's not just learning about business or medicine or science, it is learning about the culture and learning about people and understanding that these diversity is very important and especially for me as a , as a Spaniard uh , speaking the same language, this was , uh, a blessing for me. It was fun.

Julio Martinez: 38:49

Awesome. Awesome. Oscar , I'm really, I'm glad to hear that. Okay. I also understand that you do private consulting engagements to companies that are looking into the areas that you specialize in, Latin American affairs, medical affairs , uh, product development and all that. So the question I'm gonna ask you is you putting your hat of consultant, what would you say to the CEO of a medical device or biotechnology company that is looking at Latin America as a place to either conduct clinical research or to sell , uh, medical innovations?

Oscar Segurado: 39:28

Yeah, those, your due diligence. Speak with people and ensure that you have someone that is on the ground, someone that really has the know-how and the experience. My experience with Latin America is limited. I do have a consulting firm, it's called medic affairs.com. I'm still doing some advisor work, although I have a full-time job right now as being one of the leaders of this , uh, biotech focus on gene and stem cell therapy. Uh, but it's important to spend time with those consultants. I've been doing consulting for the past five years and I got this opportunity. I knew that something new is coming very quickly and I needed to really dive into it and that's why I decided to take this full-time job. But still, I have some time for support as an advisor, not as an actual consultant right now. And speaking with people like you, your organization, your expertise is absolutely essential to understand what are the specifics about Latin America and ensuring that you really see how it fits with your needs. Because organizations usually see , uh, the very simplistic approach of I have here my product, I want to bring my product to Latin America. And they, they may even think that that's a cii that can be, and I use always Southeast Asia is not. So, especially companies that are used and and and are coming from that region have the tendency to think that things are more well structured and rigorous. But Latin America is very, very special and this needs to be understood and you need to spend time especially bringing people that know that region.

Julio Martinez: 41:27

Okay, Oscar. Excellent. Alright , just before we sign off for today, Oscar , uh, how can people get in contact with you email address website?

Oscar Segurado: 41:37

The best place is this website called medic affairs.com . There you have a , a way to get in touch with me or just Oscar dot rado@medicaffairs.com . That's the the easiest way to do that.

Julio Martinez: 41:52

Okay. LinkedIn as well. You are active on LinkedIn.

Oscar Segurado: 41:54

And in LinkedIn. Anyone that wants also to be in my , my network, I , I'm happy to.

Julio Martinez: 42:00

Excellent. Oscar, thank you so much for being a guest in our show today. It was an enjoyable conversation. You have so much experience in the region that you are really.