Todd Nelson, President and CEO, Codex DNA, Inc. (NASDAQ:DNAY)
Todd R. Nelson, Ph.D., has served as the President, Chief Executive Officer and a member of the board of directors of Codex DNA (NASDAQ:DNAY) since July 2018.
Prior to joining the company, Dr. Nelson served as the Chief Executive Officer of several life science companies through expansive phases of financial and commercial growth.
From December 2014 to October 2017, Dr. Nelson served as Chief Executive Officer of DiscoverX Corporation, a leading developer and manufacturer of reagents intended for drug discovery.
From September 2011 to October 2014, Dr. Nelson served as Chief Executive Officer of MP Biomedicals, LLC, a global manufacturer and distributor of products and services for the life science, fine chemicals, diagnostics and dosimetry markets.
From June 2007 to January 2011, Dr. Nelson served as Chief Executive Officer of eBioscience, Inc., a manufacturer and distributor of immunology reagents used in pharmaceutical research.
Dr. Nelson also previously served as Vice President of Global Corporate Development and Strategy at Life Technologies (now Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE: TMO), as First Vice President Global Securities and Economics at Merrill Lynch & Co., and as Global Head of Life Sciences at RBC Capital Markets (TSE: RY)
Dr. Nelson currently serves on the board of directors of Tonbo Biosciences Corporation and TCRx Corporation.
Dr. Nelson received a B.A. in Psychology, a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Minnesota and an MBA in Finance from the Carlson School of Business at the University of Minnesota.
Dr. Nelson also completed clinical fellowship training at Mayo Clinic in human genetics and laboratory medicine from 1996 to 1998.
In this 1,921 word interview, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript, Todd Nelson, CEO, details the investment thesis for Codex DNA (NASDAQ:DNAY).
“We did recently announce that we signed a strategic multi-year, early-access collaboration licensing agreement with Pfizer.
And as part of that agreement, Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) gains early access to our novel enzymatic DNA synthesis technology, referred to as EDS. And we’ve branded this technology as SOLA, and this is a novel way to create DNA.
Pfizer wanted access to this, because they wanted to maintain their leadership position in the mRNA market.
Our system makes the DNA templates for Pfizer’s RNA-based vaccine. The ability to use our system to identify variants allows Pfizer to build more effective COVID or flu viruses faster than before.
By partnering with us, they are able to decrease the amount of time it takes to get their mRNA-based vaccines or therapeutics to market.”
The remarkable acheivement of Codex DNA is a new type of mRNA synthesis:
“The DNA or RNA that we make using these systems can be thought of in the same way that you would use a desktop printer in your office.
We’ve put the technology together that allows the scientists to essentially print DNA or mRNA.
It’s identical to and no different from the DNA that’s in your body today, or the mRNA that’s in your cells today. It’s a platform for development that allows scientists to make products faster.
DNA is the very starting point for most drugs and vaccines today and it has broad-reaching implications beyond COVID. And now with mRNA-based vaccines for COVID shown to be safe and efficacious, it makes sense that we would use it for flu and other vaccines.
That means we have an opportunity to get these critical vaccines for flu into patients and into the population faster than before. Its use extends to a broad range of new therapeutics that are going to be developed on an mRNA platform.
And lastly, one of the most interesting things we’re doing is using our SOLA technology to store digital information.
This expands beyond health care applications and has implications globally for our planet.
It’s a very ESG positive technology.
Current approaches use lots of very toxic organic chemicals to make DNA. Ours is a water- and protein-based solution that uses biology to make the DNA in much the same way your cells do.
We’ve developed a way to actually store digital information — like a song or a video or a photograph or a picture — in DNA.
As told in “Jurassic Park,” DNA lasts for millions of years and is very stable and capable of storing an incredible amount of information.
The rate at which we’re generating data is outpacing our global ability to store data. DNA is the future storage solution. You could store every single photograph ever taken, every song ever sung, in a tube of DNA about the size of your finger.
We can dramatically decrease the footprint globally for the carbon footprint of data storage facilities, as we come up with sustainable data storage solutions that are friendly to our ecosystem going forward…”
This innovation is detailed further in the complete 1,921 word interview with Todd Nelson, CEO of Codex DNA (DNAY) exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript.
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