[00:00:17.050] - Chris O'Brien
Hello and welcome back to the few.
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And far between podcast conversations on the.
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Cutting edge of clinical research.
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I'm your host, Chris O'Brien. Today we're continuing our two part conversation with our guest physician, clinical research pioneer, and entrepreneur Dr. Francisco Harrison. In part one, we discuss the start of his career and the origin of the clinical trials industry, some of which took place in his home, of all places. In part two, we dive deeper, moving into new opportunities, new responsibilities, and new locales. We talk about listening closely to the.
[00:00:48.770] - Chris O'Brien
Voice of the patient.
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And we also find time for contemplation as Francisco walks the 500 miles Camino Trail from France to Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain, following in the footsteps of pilgrims for the last thousand years. I hope you enjoy these stories and Dr. Harrison's insights and, dare I say, wisdom into the past and the future of clinical research and perhaps something about a life well lived. Okay, let's start the podcast.
[00:01:25.930] - Chris O'Brien
So you said earlier when you started you did not know how to read a balance sheet. You did not have financial literacy, I guess, and you acquired that through the program, but you also acquired friends and advisors and clumpy dots you could speak to, I guess. And that sounds very powerful. The lessons that I want to point to here at this stage, how old were you when you started that program? Approximately?
[00:01:49.690] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
It was 2003, so I was 40 something.
[00:01:56.600] - Chris O'Brien
So one of the things I think that can happen to all of us is that as we get older, we get confident or we get confident about our core expertise and we get uncomfortable being an amateur at something, learning a new thing. It can be scary to step out of your expertise. So to do in your 40s with a medical degree and a PhD, you were an expert in your domains, and it was, I'm sure, a little risky the first time you showed up at Harvard who don't know anything about medicine and our business, people with very different experiences. Was it kind of scary when you first it wasn't scary.
[00:02:35.660] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
It wasn't scary when I was sitting with someone that has a bank or someone that has exactly in India today, over 50,000 employees. I was so little.
[00:02:49.190] - Chris O'Brien
Yeah.
[00:02:49.580] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
I felt so small. I felt so insignificant. And with the time, I have to say that I discover such a huge personalities in those individuals and I have learned so much from them that I can never pay that back.
[00:03:03.600] - Chris O'Brien
I bet if they were on, they would say the same about you. And so this is a really powerful lesson. If you are ambitious to do interesting things with your life, I think you can't stop learning and you have to step out of your areas of comfort, step out of your swim lane and step into a new ones. Or swim into a new one.
[00:03:22.750] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
Sometimes I think that it's not the numbers. The numbers. I think that at the end you can learn the numbers. The easier is to understand, really the combination that I found attractive in my area and how to apply it to my case of science, medicine and business. This combination is what I didn't understand it at that time. I discovered it while I was studying with them. That this is really what make me really wake up on Monday morning and that's it.
[00:03:48.380] - Chris O'Brien
I love that. And I guess also I think that business is something that's hard to learn only from a textbook. It's helpful to have actual practical experience that you can apply when you're learning new concepts. So you had lots of practical experience and you could think about how all these ideas and techniques, how they would apply in your business. I'm sure that was part of it. And then this wonderful peer group.
[00:04:10.670] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
You put it very well. You put it very well because I read the book backwards. I mean, normally the book I made the experience. I made experience and then I read the book. I never thought it like this, but it's true. That's what happened.
[00:04:24.740] - Chris O'Brien
That's great. Lots of different ways to continue to improve. I like that a lot. I did not expect that this conversation was going to be a commercial for Harvard and mid career MBAs, but I'm very supportive of it. We don't charge extra for that. Okay. So the business then really starts to grow. It becomes a much, much larger business. And I want to move forward to the point where you decided to sell the business. So tell us a little bit about how you made that decision. This is a fascinating story.
[00:04:54.300] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
It is indeed. And I think that one of the things that I did and helped to grow the company. I acquired many CROs. Five CROs. In the course of the game. I integrate them into Harris clinical research by, I think, 2008, 2009. The company was really at a size that it was too big for me. We had like 160. I remember the least 160 clinical trials running simultaneously in different parts of the world. That's a lot. That's a lot. And I person that like to go to the nitty gritty and love to analyze what try. And so I was only busy with contracts, lawyers, problems and things that don't work. So if something don't work, I was the one that had to repair it. But I had very good people with me. I mean, without the tremendous team that we had at Harrison, we never have been able to do it. And we had a good reputation. The clients were happy because we will never stop at the things we are absolutely right and satisfactory to the client. If we lose money, we lose money. I don't care. Important is that the client and those patients have been participated in the trial for a reason that is worth doing and so this is not always positive for the business.
[00:06:06.740] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
Sometimes you pay, sometimes you don't earn enough, sometimes you have really to lose a lot. But at the end you don't need to spend so much money in BD because the clients keep on going. It's a long term view of marketing, but the people come back. So but it came a moment in which I also affect my relations in the family. I was never at home. I was traveling around the world, going to Japan every quarter, to the States every six weeks for the visiting Princeton 14 countries around the world I enjoyed. But this is a devotion that is difficult to share with a normal family routine. So of course this affected relation and for a while we were, let's say living life separated. And this is when I did two things. One, I started joining, running. That is something that I was, I don't know in tones, but I was like 30 kilos heavier than I am today.
[00:07:07.770] - Chris O'Brien
Wow, okay.
[00:07:08.830] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
And I am running now. In fact I will fly in a couple of days to Boston to run the marathon in Boston.
[00:07:16.340] - Chris O'Brien
Oh, fantastic. I didn't know that.
[00:07:19.530] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
On the 17 April I will be there. Let's see if I can finish it. Every year I run one and this is something that also changed my life totally. This decision to really take care a little bit of my body and stop going to the restaurants every day and wonderful life here and there. But it doesn't bring you any happiness because you are not ready to receive that happiness. And so I think that this was a big change.
[00:07:43.250] - Chris O'Brien
So at a certain point you looked around and thought I'm traveling too much, I'm not doing the things that I actually love, which is the detail of clinical research. I'm solving problems and I'm not living a healthy life. And so you started this process of getting fit, becoming a marathon runner and ultimately leaving the business or selling the business. So where in there did you decide to walk the Camino in Spain. When did that all happen?
[00:08:10.760] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
It was 2009, 2009, the sale was in 2012. And during that Camino, for those that don't know, is a path that has been going on for the last 700 years or more. And it goes from France to Spain to Santiago de Compostela. And you can start somewhere. I mean, people that really start 100 km from Santiago already count as camino. But really for me it was important to do it properly. From France, from the middle of France, I started in PO, it was precisely 1080 km from Santiago. And I think one of the nicest things I have done in my life, I hope I will do it again. But the experience of being at that time with the company, I was able I had a very good second man on board that was able to take the weight of the company. He did very well so I could leave and I isolate myself. For two months he was but for.
[00:09:06.670] - Chris O'Brien
Two months you walked this 700 year old trail from France down to this beautiful cathedral in the west of Spain. For people who don't know, this is in northwestern Spain. Santa de Compostela is this beautiful cathedral and there are pilgrims, not all of them religious people, for sure, right. People from all different religions or none who are walking this path. But I guess not so many walk the entire length. Is that right? My sense is that it gets a lot. Many more pilgrims walk the last 100 km or something.
[00:09:39.240] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
It's true. This is where the bleak agglomerations, they put it this way, the distance is the same as you have from New York to Atlanta. This is the distance. Okay.
[00:09:48.600] - Chris O'Brien
That's a great way to frame it. Yeah. An incredible thing to do. So for two months. And it's a walk of contemplation as well, like of time to think as well.
[00:09:58.430] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
Right.
[00:09:58.740] - Chris O'Brien
Was that important to you or no.
[00:10:00.400] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
I don't know if you go into contemplation or ecstasies or what. You come, you just walk.
[00:10:06.210] - Chris O'Brien
You just walk.
[00:10:07.570] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
We've said before the next step, I mean, important, is to do the next step. And after that one, the next one.
[00:10:13.750] - Chris O'Brien
I love it.
[00:10:16.470] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
Every day. And I felt it's a cataris to find someone in that path. I'm very lucky to speak many languages, so I was able to speak at least in five languages that I use. And Italians with French, with Germans, with English and with Spaniards many and able to tell things that you will not tell to anybody in your life, not to your best friend, to someone that you will never meet again. Perhaps a couple of days later, in another place you may but this is a kind of mystery that happened of open your heart to totally unknown people that also give you their mind. They don't know you, they have nothing to win, they have nothing to lose. And then you do with them not always need to be so dramatic and so deep, but in many occasions it becomes after five k walking together, others just say who you are or nothing, or you are a couple of kilometers with someone doesn't even say good morning. It's something that another type of communication, I think the radar that we all have, we have a radar that identifies who is around us is you leave it absolutely free because you have nothing to lose and you have nothing to win.
[00:11:37.070] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
You only have to do the next step and as long as you want. Some people it's typical here in Germany. People plan this carefully. I'm going to be that night and that place and then the next one and so on. I just start walking and I say, look, I don't care if many places were full, others were dirty. I didn't like them, others were just too short and I was willing to walk longer than that day. Although the weather is terrible, it's raining, you don't feel like doing nothing that day. You do nothing that day.
[00:12:12.460] - Chris O'Brien
Fantastic. I will tell you that this past weekend I went for a walk here in Florida with the son of one of my old friends and he did one month walk on the Camino and he had a very similar experience that it was people sometimes sharing important stories of their lives that they don't share even with their close friends. That sounds quite powerful. Okay, then something crazy happened on the walk. Tell us about that.
[00:12:36.070] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
Yes, something happened on the walk which for me it was an accident that in my life, just for seconds of 1 meter and a half, that really was the distance between the car and myself walking down this Camino and really not expecting any trouble. One car at that moment, the path had to walk in the road because the path was closed for repairs and precisely in a curve. A car was surprised to see me in that spot and she lost control of the car. The car went to the end of the road against the rail band, which cut a pulled. I never saw a car on the air.
[00:13:19.950] - Chris O'Brien
I hope I never see this, I tell you.
[00:13:22.690] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
It's interesting because I never felt the danger. I never felt the danger. I was like if I was just seeing some things that I couldn't explain but if they had nothing to do with me it was like looking to our windows shop from the outside. I was not in the shop, I was outside. But this lady lost control of the car, crashed the car against the red one. The red one catapult the car backwards toward the other side of the road. We had a big wall. The car comes back again and hits behind me.
[00:13:58.650] - Chris O'Brien
And you showed me this in a diagram. It hit in front of you, it catapulted in the air and then landed behind you.
[00:14:05.340] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
Yes.
[00:14:05.760] - Chris O'Brien
So really, if you were not in that exact spot, you would have been.
[00:14:09.920] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
We will not have this discussion today, for sure. And the interesting thing is that if I would have been 1 meter or 2 meters in front, probably I will not be here. But the reason why I was not at that moment is that suddenly I felt the need to take a picture of the road, of the asphalt of the road. And it was because some months before I was here in Munich in an exhibition from a very nice, very important American painter called Rocco and he has these color stones, like colors in one after another with this tension of the distance between the blocks of colors. And I compare the white line of the road with the asphalt and the green of the border at the moment we roll because we're to take a picture. 2 seconds later the guy is coming and if I didn't have taken that picture, I would love it here.
[00:15:01.900] - Chris O'Brien
I too like you. I am a fan of the paintings of Mark Rothko. I think he's a great painter. You showed me the picture you took. It's a nice picture. I'm not sure that it's. Again, this is the entrepreneur who is able to see an opportunity that nobody else sees because you saw it, took the picture and it saved your life.
[00:15:27.190] - Chris O'Brien
Hi, this is Chris O'Brien, host of Few and Far between. We'll be right back with this episode in a moment. I personally want to thank you for listening to our podcast. Now in our third season, it continues to be an amazing opportunity to speak with some of the top thought leaders in the clinical trials industry. If you're enjoying this episode, please leave us a review on Apple podcasts. It really helps people discover the podcast. And don't forget to subscribe to Few and Far Between so that you never miss an episode. One last request. Know someone with a great story you'd like to hear me interview. Reach out to us at few and far
[email protected]. Thank you. And now back to the podcast.
[00:16:09.650] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
I just continue walking close to Pamprona. There's a little village called WarTech and in the first hotel I saw, I went I remember start crying, never stop. It was really you keep it with you. And then when you have this piece then comes out and I felt the need to write this down. And from that day I start writing a diary about the camino, another dimension here. I start to appreciate that even if the only thing you have to do is to do the step and then the next step and concentrate in that step, to be able to do that step is a wonder. This is something that we get for free and it's something that we take it as normal. It's not normal. Every step is a miracle that we are here, that we can I'm a religious person anyway, but apart from that, if you believe or not, it doesn't matter. It's a matter really of being appreciative to the things that we have in life and the chance to make this step that is really what is already something that we have to wonder.
[00:17:20.090] - Chris O'Brien
That's really beautiful. I agree. I think you said it really well. Every step is a miracle. Every day we have a new opportunity. It is so easy to lose sight of that and instead to see all of the challenges and problems in the world and in our lives. And I think that's very motivating and very moving, the story you just shared. So, okay, so you come out of that and then what happened when I.
[00:17:41.970] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
Returned to Munich and I remember that when I saw the office from the outside say is this me? From that moment on, it was clear for me that I was not the right man to continue managing that company, that great company and the team, such a wonderful team deceived a better one, someone that has the big company in the head. Not the kind of miniature approach that I always had. And I was not happy because it was a matter of satisfaction of getting the things well done and statistically seen. It's impossible the more things you do to do all right, it's a matter of time until something goes wrong and then you start seeing not how full the bottle is, but how empty the bottle is. And so all this creates a kind of negative dynamic that the company was too beautiful, too good and the team was too precious to really having a manager like me. So start searching for an opportunity. It was a long process. And then became synthra act and afterwards two days I fixed scenarios.
[00:18:48.010] - Chris O'Brien
So you made this decision that you were no longer the right person to lead the company. Were you sad when you made that decision or did it feel like a release? How did it feel?
[00:18:57.580] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
I was very sad. Very sad. I knew that to be honest to myself, I couldn't continue doing what I was doing and that 25 years of doing that was enough and I should leave more competent persons really doing what I was doing in the sense of letting the company continue to grow. And the energy was also missing. The drive, the wish to make the next step was not there. And to be honest with myself think the best thing is really to put this in someone else's hand. I made the mistake of believing that you could do this and they asked me to stay. But this was a bad decision. You cannot stay in your apartment if you rent it to someone else. For me it was a terrible time and so of course didn't help the company to perform the best. And so I offered to leave. And so I did. I didn't complete the two years. It was only I think 14 months or less than that. And I leave them, continue the path. And we still have until today a group of WhatsApp? Of many ex employees from the company that we exchanged because we had so much fun working together that we became really very close friends.
[00:20:12.040] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
And it's nice to have it. But it was the right decision to sell. It was not the right decision to stay, it was the right decision to finish with glory and not being the reason why the things are not working anymore was for me an important decision.
[00:20:29.250] - Chris O'Brien
So I'm going to suggest just one edit for you. I think you said a more competent person to take over. I think you mean a differently competent person because the skills that are required to start and build a company the way that you did are extraordinary. You were obviously the right person for much of that journey and then maybe it was right for someone else to take the next stage. But I think one of the things that you learn in business and in life is that there's not one perfect type for running all different kinds of organizations. Small ones, large ones, growing ones, flat ones, international ones, local ones, they all have some different skill sets that they require from their leaders. So I think worth noting that okay, so when did that happen? When did the transaction happen?
[00:21:15.030] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
It happened in 2012, the 19 December I will never forget and on the 1 January 2013, the company was in other hands. I still kept ownership in the company, but minority then the next life starts.
[00:21:32.610] - Chris O'Brien
So how did the next life start? Now, I know you have several other companies, you have other things you're doing, but did you take some time and just not do anything? Or did you no start right away?
[00:21:43.320] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
No. First of all, perhaps this phase is also each phase in life is important, has a reason. I think that the vacuum in life doesn't exist. There's always something, there a reason why something happened if it finally doesn't bring anything to the table. And I think I became more honest with myself that I was not prepared to accept compromises that I don't 100% support and this decision of saying that no is a big chance to say yes to something else. But this is important and I think that this is why I left and this is why I don't regret to have left and I advise everybody that sells a company to sell it, finish the chapter and do something else. And that phrase was important for me taking the decision because of course, economically it was for me, chunk that went off and also many, many legal issues happened at the end, everything went fine, but I suffer a lot, I suffer a lot.
[00:22:46.900] - Chris O'Brien
So not everyone may understand that, but so when you say that it was economically, it had an impact that's typically when you sell a company, part of the value comes from staying with the company for a period of time. And I guess you're saying you had a two year earn out where you would have stayed with the business and instead you decided to leave some of that money behind and leave early.
[00:23:14.910] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
And the shares too, I give them for free.
[00:23:16.830] - Chris O'Brien
I know.
[00:23:17.360] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
Okay, we want to combine with a lot of legal issues in which I learned also a lot about myself. But it took around two years or three years to accomplish. I won in every aspect, but nevertheless, it was a lesson in life.
[00:23:32.050] - Chris O'Brien
Yeah, I think this is another important as you said, it's a lesson in life is deciding what matters to me and what matters should change at different points in your life depending on your circumstances. So when you were just turning the business into a business, every penny was important, and then maybe not so much. Not the most important thing in the end.
[00:23:54.890] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
Correct. And I had a problem that I had a non. Compete of five years. Long period of time. So I couldn't work back into clinical research for a while. So I started a number of other ventures and finally the non compete went off. And then there are no limitations. Today. But I have to say that it was, for me, especially important that I kept one company that I started in 2002 in the UK, which was a company dealing with regulatory issues and EU representation and orphan drugs. And things like this that is in London and this company was for me a little bit the baby that I could come back and really use my know how, my knowledge, try to grow it at a different size, not only not to, but help me a lot to maintain the morale. So this company was not in the package of the companies that I sold. I sold three companies in the package of Harrison, but one I kept. And this company up to today is regulatory, is working beautifully and we have now offices in London, in Dublin and in Munich and it's a great joy to work with them and it's big fun.
[00:25:05.970] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
But I had such a wonderful CEO, Mrs that is no need to do the day to day. She does the day to day and the month to month and the year to year. I just accompany her in the trip. I try to help her if I can. And then this was I would say something from the past that I took from that I had the idea of working in other areas like human resources. So that's also another venture in Sweden in the area of human resources. It was big fun. But I realized that I am not perhaps an entrepreneur for something like this. People are not something that you can measure very precisely and have to do with other type of feelings that perhaps I not so good at and I give it to the person that I started with and then later I start a very nice operation with the same person that sold my company and Mr. Contradict Hinkins he's I think the best M and a man that I know. He did my deal and it wasn't easy, he did a great job and I think that after being so many years in a large one of the four big ones he was not so happy of being in such organization.
[00:26:16.990] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
I was willing to start his own company and so he asked me to join him. I was very honored by the question and so we started Mura mura M and A and in healthcare I think we are doing extremely well this is area that we are at home. My mission is really to identify the potential target and helping in initiating the negotiations and heat up the deal making and this is working beautifully. So it's one area that I never thought I was going to be active but again my background from Harvard helped me a lot to understand the numbers and to see which companies may be more attractive or less attractive.
[00:26:54.710] - Chris O'Brien
This makes a lot of sense. I think this is perfect for the transition to the very last part of our conversation which is about where clinical research is going and you just indicated some of the places in particular you talked a little bit about regulatory and about that as a passion for you. Where do you think I don't want to tell you you have to talk about regulatory more but what are the areas where you think you see a need or you see an opportunity and where you see the industry for clinical research going over the next few years?
[00:27:24.780] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
Well I think the industry of clinical research is a consequence of the situation of the pharmaceutical industry and we are just working for them having the patient objective, the most important objective for the whole thing. I read an article in the American Scientific a couple of the end of last year that the return on investment these years is about two cent on every investor dollar and 15 years ago was $0.10. That means we are becoming ineffective and I think this is unethical. We are not allowing the patients to benefit from the drugs. It's taking too long, too cumbersome. The investment is huge. And I think that we need a kind of I will call it disruptive clinical trial policies. And I think that we have to I don't say come back to the roots when I was doing the hydromethodoxy, but we have to come back to the main topic, which is that this patient, this consumer, has the right to have the benefits of that potential treatment as soon as possible. Not ten years from now as soon as possible. If we can do it in eight years better than intending we can do it in five better than intending we can do it in three better than intent it may imply that we will have to take care of that consumer.
[00:28:40.800] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
I call it consumer for not calling it patient. That seems to be the patient has to do what the doctor says. But no, they have the choice. They have the choice to buy a orib participate. Or not participate. Considering the benefit and the risk and considering that there may be unknown risks that may happen. Okay?
[00:28:59.120] - Chris O'Brien
I mean, also give the patient more control over those.
[00:29:03.850] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
And that is where I think that the patients organizations this is where I think that the future of clinical research is going to be not only someone having allow an industry industry creating a molecule and give it to the co to bring it to the market and suddenly sell it this. Is okay, certainly has been working for a number of years. But as long as aspirin will not be able to raise to today, we must have something wrong in the system. And the problem is that we are complicating the system so much to a level. And the other dimension, which is that the whole amount of new therapies, cell therapies, Katie, all the new gene therapy, medical devices and competitive other dimensions, things that really were impossible to even to believe that could happen 1015 years ago, are reality today. So today a patient has the possibility to benefit for a specific treatment. In my eyes, has a lot to say and under the present regulation has nothing to say.
[00:30:11.010] - Chris O'Brien
I want to make sure that I'm tracking what you're saying, where you're going. In the old days, patients did not have much of a voice and maybe it didn't matter so much. But you're saying today, with these emerging therapies, therapies for rare disease cell and gene therapies, it's critically important, ethically quired maybe, to give the patient a voice. And that's the point you're making, is that right?
[00:30:36.220] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
Correct. Because they will be the beneficiaries we are deciding for them.
[00:30:39.930] - Chris O'Brien
Yes.
[00:30:40.360] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
And they have the right to take a risk if they want to. And what I see is that they are taking the risk three or four years or ten years later when there's no help anymore. I don't say that you have to just to bring the drugs to the market without clinical research. No. But we have to rethink the sense of clinical research from the point of view that if we have there in early trials enough science to sustain a speedy process, if we have the possibility to have markers and other parameters that may indicate that there may be a big hope for that patient. We should do something to hear the voice of that patient and learn presetocytone oncology if that patient will be prepared to take a risk more than today. Today we are asking for a voluntary participation. But I think that we have to conceive that now those patients, they have more than a voluntary participation. If they are lucky to be in the city, close to the hospital and they know the physician, this is the luck. But what about those patients that have this terrible diagnosis and don't have this luck?
[00:31:53.630] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
Why are we not trying to bring them to the table and together with the regulators make something that may use the yes or no decision quicker?
[00:32:04.190] - Chris O'Brien
So are you saying we talk a lot right now in the industry about innovation? We talk about digital tools, we talk a lot about artificial intelligence right now, advanced data and analytics. But are you saying there's as much opportunity for regulatory innovation as there is for technology innovation? Yes, that's a profound point. I think it makes a lot of sense and I think it's one that will resonate a lot with our listeners many of whom are either working on cures for rare diseases or have rare.
[00:32:35.900] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
Diseases in our this is a must, especially in that corner. Very, very much. That's what I call the disruptive clinical research. We have to rethink. I'm sure that now factories that were building cars, petrol cars, are different ones, the ones that are building the electric ones, okay. And the service okay, the things have changed, but we continue with the same approach. And we have not learned that all the media that we have now, the fact that I can from here, and I did that during COVID perform a trial in sites that are 6000 km away from my table and know every day, every night how the data is, what are results, how the markets are increasing or decreasing, what are we doing? I can do this today, but still the regulation is the same. This doesn't make any sense.
[00:33:28.610] - Chris O'Brien
It's a profound point, one that's worth a lot more discussion across the industry and internationally to see the, as you say, in in a way that that of course, is ethical and that safeguards patient safety, but that enables people to get access to these critical therapies faster. Okay. Dr. Harrison Francisco Paco. I think I call you Paco now after this deep dive into your life story and your history. Thank you so much for spending time with us today. I think a mix of life lessons, career and business lessons, and provocative thoughts about the future of clinical research. So thank you very much for spending time with us on Few and Far Between.
[00:34:08.060] - Dr. Francisco Harrison
Thank you very much.
[00:34:17.890] - Chris O'Brien
Thank you for listening to the latest episode of Few and Far Between. Our podcast is now available on Apple podcasts and other major streaming services. Please take a moment and leave us a user review and rating today. It really helps people discover the podcast and we read all the comments. Those comments help us to make Few and Far Between better and better. Also, be sure to subscribe to Few and Far Between so that you don't miss a single episode. Got an idea for a future episode? Email us at Few and Far
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[email protected]. I'm your host, Chris O'Brien. See you next time.
