122. The Scientist Who Transformed Texas Biomed—and San Antonio’s Scientific Standing

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Welcome to Big City, Small Town, the weekly podcast all about San Antonio and the people who make it go and grow. I'm your host, Bob Brevard. My guest today is Doctor. Larry Schlesinger, president and CEO and a practicing professor at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute here in San Antonio. I could spend a lot of time on an introduction that covers Doctor. Schlessinger's illustrious research and publishing career, much of it focused on the study of infectious diseases. Let me just say our guest today is an internationally recognized scientist leading and transforming an internationally recognized institution, what we call Texas Biomed, right here in San Antonio.

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San Antonio is fortunate to have him and the team he leads here. Larry Schlesinger, welcome to Big City Small Town. Thank you so much, Bob. It's great to be here with you. And I hope I can call you Larry. You can call me Larry. We've known each other for a number of years.

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Instead of doctor. I'm tempted, Larry, to jump right in and ask you about the state of scientific and medical research in this time of political chaos and what I would describe as the dangerous spread of anti science, much of it promoted by members of the Trump administration. But first, please share your story with our audience, where you're from, your formative years, how you were drawn to become a medical doctor and a researcher, and how you came to San Antonio Eight Years ago. Well, there's a lot there, Bob.

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Just give us the five minute overview. The five minute overview is that I'm the child of Holocaust survivors and grew up in New Jersey, And, I was a competitive athlete growing up and I always mention that in interviews because when I think about my time in competitive sports, it's really helped shape my leadership style today. Team is everything and I always look at the power of team when I think about building great enterprises.

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I went to Cornell University and lived in a fraternity house. About 50% of the men at Cornell at the time went to medical school, so I guess that was common for me to consider that, although I will tell you that I also got into the hotel school there. That could have been a fork in the road, my first fork in the road.

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And I knew early on and then had opportunities to become a physician scientist, not as a passing fancy, but something that was very important to me. And I had the opportunity to build a lot within university structures at university medical schools. But to fast forward, I would tell you that as I grew up my career doing my own research and working with other people, I grew concerned that the discoveries, the great discoveries that we make in the laboratories in infectious diseases, which is my domain, they were lagging behind, those discoveries that made it to the clinic in cancer, heart disease, autoimmune disease, lung disease, and that we had a lot of patents in infectious disease, but they were collecting dust at universities mostly.

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And that, I was beginning to think about a change in my career that would enable me to develop, innovate, structures that would help us better facilitate those laboratory discoveries to get to the clinic. And it was around that time that I was being inducted into an honorific society in Chicago and met one of my lifelong mentors who happens to be from San Antonio, Doctor. Robert Clark, who recruited me as an assistant professor to the University of Iowa many years ago.

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And Bob was the one who told me about this place in San Antonio, Texas called Texas Biomed, and he said, I think you're perfect. They need a new leader. They need kind of a shakeup, a change in direction, And, you know, I know what you wanna do. I know you well, Larry. I think it's a good fit.

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Do you mind if I put your name forward? And I said, Bob, and this is true, I don't usually put my name into places I haven't heard of before. But, Bob, because you're so important to me, put it put my name in. And, and that translated into meeting J. M. Ruben, who is chair of the board. I know you know him, and, the rest is history in what we've been able to accomplish here. I thought you came, Larry, from Ohio State. I did. So you weren't at Iowa anymore? No. I had moved from oh, so my background is coast to coast. My formal training was at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. And then I went as a, rose the ranks as a faculty member at the University of Iowa, but even then I started thinking about developing a center which now at Ohio State is an institute and it was a new dean at the medical school at Ohio State who had just come from Johns Hopkins, Fred Cemphilippo, who recruited me to Ohio State. And I was there for fifteen years building a lot of things there. I mean, I built an institute, recruited over 50 faculty and we did great in academia, but as I said, I was longing for a different structure, and biomed is unparalleled in what it can do. And I want everyone to know just how special it is that it's in San Antonio, and that we have a community that supports it. It it makes it really a unique enterprise. Well, I wanted to ask about Ohio State as an aside just so it'd give me the opportunity to mention that I'm from Michigan, and I know that's a sensitive subject for all of you in Columbus, Ohio, but, I just thought I'd put it on the table there at the beginning of our conversation. Well, these days I'll tell you that Ohio State has a football team. I'm not so sure about Michigan. Alright. Back to science. I think, even among the people, and I know a lot of your board members, former and present, who were there when you arrived, there was a lot of excitement. But I think even by their measure, you've exceeded all expectations. And I I just wonder if you would summarize for people what what you've, what you've done in the last eight years with Texas Biomed to put them in, the direction they're going and how fortuitous that was, with the advent of the COVID-nineteen pandemic. Yeah, it's a great story.

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Let me say that CEO is successful when the board is supportive, and it's an incredible board we have at Texas Biomed.

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And I remember the very first presentation to the board back in late sixteen, maybe early seventeen before I took the job. When I looked at the Institute, I immediately saw resources there in terms of our ability to do safe biocontainment research, the fact that we had a national Primate Center, one of seven in the country, and the history. The history in which Texas Biomed played instrumental role in bringing the cures for hepatitis C forward. We're involved in the preclinical space, for hep B vaccine development. Our work on Ebola virus.

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There had already been an entrepreneurial flavor, which of course started with our founder, Tom Slick Jr, who himself was such an entrepreneur. So about 80% of our institute was doing infectious disease related research, and I define that not only as bugs, but, susceptible host to infection. So aging, you know, diabetes, cancer relates to infectious diseases.

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But it didn't really have a mission, vision and values, and I'm a student of leadership. This is very important to me, and I knew that we needed to really start at the beginning and rediscover Texas Biomed and give it a face, make it easier for the world to know who it is. So it starts with that, a very rigorous strategic planning process, which resulted in a approval by the board in 2018. But even back when I started, even back when I started and I reviewed the landscape of independent research institutes in America, and there are 80 to 90 of them, and how they survive or don't survive. And one of the formulas for not surviving is being totally reliant on the National Institutes of Health. For funding. For funding. And we were 80 to 90% dependent on the NIH.

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So long before the Trump administration, part of my vision for the Institute was to diversify funding.

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And based on my long term passion of converting discoveries to the clinic, we stood up what is now called applied science and innovation.

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And this was really formalizing a business unit within the institute that could focus on highly regulated science that pharma and different arms of the government, like the Department of Defense pay attention to. This is what allows a drug or a vaccine to make it to the clinic through the FDA. And so I was able to recruit a talented individual who is considering leaving the institute to leave this unit, and now it's 40 strong and working with 40 to 50 pharma companies, developing strong alliances. That's very important because my view, the traditional view of an academic institution creating a patent is they go and shop the patent to try to get a licensing deal. No, I'm interested in partnerships because then you build trust. Once companies know who you are, and many do now, it's a little easier to communicate on your next discovery for them to take it up, take the risk of licensing it. So now as we speak, we're about 46% dependent on the NIH and 54% relied on others. This has been a very successful formula, and when I speak around the country, many are trying to think about creating a similar type structure. That was very important in our success. You also, undertook a really ambitious, I thought at the time, plan to expand the campus physically, and and not just physically, but everything that was gonna be on that campus and what was gonna be done in the buildings, and it required a real push philanthropically Yeah.

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Which you were successful in doing. And so Well, I am in the process of being successful.

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All CEOs these days are engaged in perpetual capital campaigns, it seems to me. Maybe even more so now with, you know, discussions about the importance of the private sector. Well, what about the NIH? I just read, for example, the news that, the NIH has announced it's going to stop funding US Physicians that are involved in projects with international collaborators. You guys are internationally known for your work. And my first thought when I read that was what would have happened if, president Bush and others hadn't invested in fighting AIDS in Africa with our international collaborators?

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I think there's fundamentally a misunderstanding, about the process of science and how it works. I mean, a lot of the decisions today, to me appear transactional.

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You get a grant, you don't get a grant, you include this in a grant, you don't. No, science is a process and it's global by definition. And so to answer your question, we obviously would be in much worse shape if we didn't work internationally in trying to solve some of the big problems of the day.

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Clearly today in the world, infectious disease is still a major killer of humans and those diseases are increasing.

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There's a very important program that President Bush that we just, you mentioned.

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George W. Bush. Right, who started PETFAR, is one of the most powerful global programs in the world. One of his greatest accomplishments was understanding that we needed to more effectively get drugs, to children in Africa to fight AIDS. Bill Clinton came in on that as well, later in trying to reduce the cost, through the Clinton Global Institute. And so that to me is one of the most, you know, astonishing examples of success in working globally.

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So, And it was bipartisan, started by Republican, continued by a Democrat, Gates Foundation. Well, and in science, it's still bipartisan by and large.

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And, you know, I think the word today is chaos. I'm a problem solver. I see the challenges ahead, and the challenge we have is that every day we see another executive order. We already know that some of those are reversed, some of those get modified. I tend to not overreact as a CEO to all of this, but rather to try to monitor what's going on. And the cuts are real.

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They're having a detrimental effect on science. And the thing that really is the most worrisome to me is that the minute you start cutting science, you reduce morale instantaneously.

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Science is a process mostly in failure, not in success. Interesting. So why you do it? Why do you do it?

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You do it because you have a passion for it and you feel like this is your life cause. But if the funding isn't there, then people can rapidly lose the desire. And I train a lot of people in my lab and I influence a lot of young people around the country. And I see it in a recent study a year ago came out that seventy five percent of trainees in America are now considering moving to other countries. This is a sea change from what America was in the twentieth century when it really became the envy of the world and all the training young people wanted to come to America for science. So I think there's a lot of challenges we face right now, and I think it will have some long lasting effects. Well, specifically, Larry, do you face, layoffs, staff layoffs and or, you know, just the closure of certain important projects that were either on the drawing board or were underway as a result of specific funding cuts that are coming, to roost in San Antonio? As I speak to you today, very fortunately, no.

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One of the great advantages we have right now is being in the private sector as a nimble organization. So we have a lot of opportunity to pivot, but we have not suffered severe consequences of the grant decisions that are being made.

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We have diversified our resources. On the Department of Defense side and pharma side, that's not going away. So we're able to maintain, with challenges, our financial structure at the current time.

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Can we do this over the long term? I would say it becomes more challenging, but layoffs to me are a final strategy, not an initial strategy. I walk the campus daily, and I'm interested in maintaining morale. As I mentioned, this is critical.

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Absolutely. Well, you were talking to me earlier about the positive impact of the advent of vaccines in the twentieth century on on, human lifespan. I'd like you to talk about that a little bit, particularly as we continue to see daily headlines about the measles outbreak here in Texas and and beyond. It just seems like there's so much disinformation and false information out there that, a lot of otherwise, intelligent parents, family members out there, have bought into the fact that vaccines cause autism or pose other kinds of threats, and they're not getting their children vaccinated. And there's, in my opinion, some very long term implications for that. The autism link to vaccines, by the way, which is now back in the news, as far as I'm concerned as a physician scientist, was solved through 15 to 20 studies disproving that But, now you see that we're going to start doing some additional studies to try to prove or disprove that link. But I do wanna step back for a moment because it's really important for me to talk about the impact of infectious diseases to therapies and vaccines because America's pretty young in the science game.

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Back before the late 1800s, really the science came out of East And West Europe, Nobel Prize winners coming out of Germany, Great Britain, and other countries in Europe. And we weren't doing science really until the turn of the twentieth century where notable events started occurring. And at the time and the turn of the twentieth century, we had death rates primarily in children under age five that were thirty to forty percent of the population.

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People have to remember that. During the twentieth century, that's when programs that established the Salk vaccine against polio, the measles, mumps, rubella vaccines. It was really exodus from Germany during Hitler's era, where a lot of very bright people either perished or they moved when were welcomed in The US. It was World War II, which decimated Europe, but The United States made a concerted effort to put major dollars into biomedical research. And this led to an explosion of discoveries in the 1930s and 40s and 50s, penicillin, 1940s, streptomycin, 1940s.

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The number one killer around the 20, between the twentieth century, number one killers was pneumonia, tuberculosis, GI disorders for which we had no therapy. So the fact that we discovered penicillin, and started curing people, that we had streptomycin to treat tuberculosis, hygiene improved in this country. So death rates dropped precipitously under age five from thirty and forty percent of the population, dying to one percent. Life expectancy increasing, thirty years, all twentieth century.

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Nobel Prizes started being awarded in The US, high impact journals, US, incredible century of discovery became a world leader, the envy of the world. And now we're in the twenty first century. Maybe we've forgotten some of this, and the idea that vaccines have saved in several estimates are over two hundred million lives historically, that during COVID-nineteen, we can argue about the length of lockdowns and other thing, masks and other things, but the data are compelling. When the vaccines came on the market, those states that highly vaccinated the population lived longer than those states that did not. Vaccines, again, made a compelling difference. The history there is extraordinary in improving human lives through vaccination, and I think some of this history and present needs to be told because I think we're forgetting. We don't know what comes from measles. You know, we don't know how serious a childhood illness it is with people with pneumonia.

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You know, seizures can die of a variety of things we've already had to deaths.

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I just think we need to continue to educate. Well, in Texas Biomed, I I I should say, had a role in some of the early research on COVID nineteen vaccinations. Talk about that just a little bit to bring back some time that we don't wanna think about very much, but it's important that we do remember the lessons we learned.

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It's a good story. Because we had established ourselves as an infectious disease research institute, something else I did, and I don't like seeing walls in science, so I removed some of the departments in siloism. We got in a room together in February of twenty.

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I want everyone to remember where we were then. And we just said, where do we make a difference? We're in Infectious Research Institute. We have incredible, resources, particularly our primate center. And we decided right then and there that we wanted to validate an animal model for COVID nineteen, which had not been done. Because we're in the private sector, we're nimble, and we have a lot of good support. We raised$5,000,000 in a week, and we're able to really, advance, animal models much more quickly than our competitors. And because of that, I think it was March 30, we had validated those models. The chief scientific officer at Pfizer called us and said, Look, you guys have the model. We have this incredible vaccine. This is the mRNA BioNTech vaccine. But, FDA won't let us quickly give it to humans without some preclinical, that is, you know, animal or tissue culture studies before it gets approved by the FDA. Can you do the studies? We signed them. We did six studies. I knew how powerful the vaccine was even before the country did based on the results we had at Biomed, and that really helped launch it. Did you give it to yourselves there in the lab? No. We didn't do it. We didn't we didn't quite go that far where we gave it to ourselves at the time. We wanted it regulated and safe and effective and proven to be safe and effective. Those are important words here. But I will tell you that once it was approved, it's a really heartwarming story that, as I mentioned, Doctor. J. Mo Rubin, who was chair of the board, he volunteered to administer the vaccine, the Pfizer vaccine, which is the one we're talking about here. I should have mentioned that. And tears to his eyes that he knew that Biomed plays such an important role in bringing that vaccine to the public, and here he was administering it. Protecting all the people on the team. Protecting the public. He was in the clinics in San Antonio. Oh, wow. Vaccinating people, and this is why the work we do is so important locally, in terms of San Antonians knowing, the kind of work we do can protect them. Well, I also think that, you know, we're a city obviously that has a lamentably high poverty rate, but we don't focus enough attention on our many centers of excellence.

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And one of them is Texas Biomed. It's an internationally recognized, and it's something we should be promoting because of the brain gain that we've realized with people like you and everybody out there that's that's come here to work and there the teams that come with them, and, it's it's critically important that, that we protect those resources and not see them, suffer in whatever is happening in Washington right now. Changing the subject just a little bit, Larry, how is artificial intelligence going to change or maybe already is changing the work you guys do?

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And as I read somewhere, will artificial intelligence, eliminate the need for animal testing? So let me say that, when you're a research institute, you're truly at the cutting edge of innovation, and therefore, we are involved in studies that utilize AI. You'll hear about organs on a chip and other technologies that can be used to bring, let's say, drugs forward. I think AI is incredibly powerful in so many different sectors. In the research sector, I think it's been incredible in terms of determining, for example, which potential compounds or molecules could be a therapy against some virus or bacteria more quickly. The key to AI is can you get to discoveries more quickly as a result of using these platforms? And so I think it's incredible. And we recently had a global health symposium, and I was talking with Scott Gottlieb. And in my comments, I talked about the two edged sword because the power of AI depends on the accuracy of the data and the completeness of the data. And so if they're bad data, you're not going to get the right result. So I think we're still in the formative years, sharing data, making sure the data are accurate, making sure the inputs get better and better and more refined to enable us to make discoveries more quickly. But I think it's gonna help us down select for a new therapy or a vaccine more quickly. That's the ultimate promise. I'm talking about the research arena, not the healthcare arena specifically.

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So I think that all of that can help us reduce the number of animals needed in the pipeline.

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And, it's a matter of thinking creatively and innovatively about the best way to utilize the animal models to ensure safety and efficacy to the FDA. And, you know, for example, I'm investing heavily in imaging technology at Texas Biomed in containment with animals.

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This enables us to utilize live animals, not have to euthanize them, when we're studying a vaccine or a therapy. We can use less animals. We can treat them as we always do humanely, and still be able to get accurate data to help support a portfolio to the FDA. So the National Academy of Sciences came out with a report a year or so ago, really saying the same thing, that animals still remain critical in the pipeline, but we can't not innovate and use them more wisely.

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And so part of the modernization of the campus that you alluded to earlier was improving the facilities to ensure that we have safe and effective treatments utilizing the animals, and that the animals are in the most humane possible environment, something that animal activists do not like to advocate or talk about, but it's true that our animals are treated very well with 150 people highly committed to them. So I think it's a matter of how they're used, and I don't see them not going away anytime soon. Okay. I wanna go back if we can to the subject of international collaboration. Our main adversary in the world these days is China, and, in the world these days is China, and, people some people think that all of their technology advances are based on theft of data from The United States and other democracies, but, in fact, they, you know, they have an enormous population and and, they're making real technology advances on their own. Are we still gonna be the world leader? Not that there has to be just a singular world leader in in this, area. We obviously there's a lot of political resentment toward China over the spread of the COVID nineteen vaccine and how it did or didn't get out into the public. What what are your thoughts about, as tensions continue to rise between the two superpowers, the impact in your world? Well, I think we're rapidly getting to a critical juncture where we're losing that position in the world. Let's just go with facts. I mean, China is increasing its movement towards drugs to the clinic. Their regulatory processes are streamlined. Yes, in many cases, it's not necessarily their discovery, but they're certainly moving the discoveries from The US and other places forward very quickly. The number of high impact journals coming out of China is increasing. They have a bigger share of the market now, and they're taking advantage of it, and they're watching very closely. I just mentioned about, our loss of talent in this country.

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The pipeline had already been decreasing to some degree, but now with our young people thinking about going elsewhere for science, this is threatened, and I think that we need to really focus on that aspect. The twentieth century was so powerful. Why would we ever want to jeopardize our stature in the world in the science we do?

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The advent of science has improved human lives dramatically. I think if people understood, you know, I was a practicing physician for twenty six years. It gets down to an individual patient, their family, and how you can impact them leading a healthier life becomes something I'm very passionate about, and we can't lose that. And so I think we have to be very careful. I'm watching carefully. When I'm asked, I make comments, to try to help, support science, but it's challenging right now, and the chaos is not helpful. In in that regard, domestically, will it be harder for institutes that are located in red states to recruit and retain talent than those in blue states, or is that not do you do you enjoy a bubble and not have to worry about that? Well, I try not to worry about anything. I try to focus on health, but I think I focus more on is there a problem and how can we develop a strategy to improve that? When I talk about red state, blue state, particularly Texas, I talk about San Antonio as opposed to Houston and Dallas. So with recruits that we bring in from around the country, I want to talk to them about living in San Antonio and, you know, it is one of the most livable cities in The United States and we have a lot of great material to talk about, you know, affordability, you know, schools, etcetera. And so I think it's a little bit more subtle than red and blue. I've even heard some of my colleagues say, well, maybe it's better if I move to a red state, to do my science.

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But, it's just a complex formula. Recruitment's tough. Some of the policies regarding abortion affect my recruits out of the Northeast. Women's reproductive rights in general. Women reproductive rights in general becomes a topic. I tend to I brought a lot of people from outside the state into Texas by men and tend to have them speak with recruits about living here. And so, we're just gonna have to wait and see. We're right in the middle of it right now, and we have a brand new director of the NIH just settling in, a new, you know, acting director of National Institutes of Algae and Infectious Diseases. There's talk of restructuring institutes at the NIH. So you're you're gonna have me have to have me back in a year, and I'll tell you more about what's going on. I wanna ask you about your relationship with local government, which I think intensified during the pandemic. And the truth of the matter is both the city of San Antonio, they were over relying on federal grants for their metro health operation.

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It was not the line item in the city budget that it should have been, and the county was deeply underfunded in mental health and and, and public health initiatives, and and and to this day, I would argue needs to do much more than it is. But it's not an infectious disease per se, but you're you're acutely aware of our, both adult and adolescent obesity I am. Epidemics, type two diabetes, which is, almost entirely driven by lifestyle choices, cultural diet, etcetera. What are your thoughts about what we're doing or not doing on that front?

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I know that we've we've certainly engaged in more messaging, but I I I don't know whether or not we're making any progress in those areas. I think we're making progress, but it's slow. San Antonio has many other issues that I know you're well aware of that are a focus of local government and should be. And the only active mayor I know is Ron Nuremberg. I've been here now just about eight years, and it was Ron Nuremberg, and, and Nelson Wolf, and now Peter Sakai. The secret sauce, in terms of leadership is their supportive science, unequivocal supportive science, and that's important, that leadership recognizes science.

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I recently was speaking with Henry Cisneros, who's on our executive committee at Texas Biomed, about really needing to think about diversifying our assets in the city beyond the entertainment South Court, Southern Corridor there. And I think, I want to, I came to San Antonio really with two major goals in mind.

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I've been in this career a long time. One was to transform biomed, and we've been talking about that. But then the other is to be a leader in the city. Anytime I'm asked to speak about what we're doing in San Antonio at the medical school, at UTSA, now we have the integration going on, and Taylor, Amy and I have a very strong relationship, we talk often President of UTSA.

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President of UTSA. Now we'll be president of the combined institutions. That's correct, and Francisco Sigueroa, who's the senior vice president for health sciences at the medical enterprise, medical center enterprise. We talk a lot about needing to continue to push forward and bring talent. You know, I think at the end of the day, Bob, we really need to continue to recruit talent into the city. I really support what we're doing locally to bring our children along and help them get exposure to science and other domains, but we also need to become known nationally as a hub in science with talent. And so, you know, anything I can do to lend my voice or or, you know, my leadership, to the city to continue to focus on that is gonna be really important going forward. And I I think that's a challenge, but I think it's one we need to take on. You know, several years ago, Larry, I had the honor and privilege of moderating a panel that included you, doc president Taylor Amie, at the time, President, and Doctor. Bill Henrich from UT Health. Yeah. And, I think we had Adam Hamilton as well. That's right, from Southwest Research Institute. And we called it the billion dollar collaborative, and we really saw these institutions in my view for the in my time in San Antonio working together in a way they hadn't ever done previously. And the amount of research dollars coming into the city and activity, coming out of the city was was sort of increasing exponentially. And I I I wonder where are we now three, four years after that in terms of seeing the UT Health and UTSA merger, new leadership at UT Health, although Doctor. Sigaro has been such a state leader for for so long. What's the state of affairs there?

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Well, I mean, the San Antonio Partnership for Precision Therapeutics, which you led it and moderated that panel, you know, it was young and very successful. A few things have happened since then, something called a pandemic, and we very unfortunately lost Doctor. Henrich, a good friend. So, and now the integration. So the actual formalization of the partnership or as we've been talking about a kind of a new vision for that partnership is still in progress. But here's what I'd like to say. I'm very supportive of the integration, and I'm also supportive of organizations that are trying to elevate their stature in the city. The bottom line is gonna be, where do we stand nationally? If we recruit the right talent, the integration goes well, Biomay continues to grow, did that integration result in an organization that becomes higher level in terms of national renownedness? And I think we have a shot at that. And I tend to be a glass half full person, so I'm interested in all those opportunities.

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Doctor. Henrich and now the leadership, Doctor.

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Romas, have brought in some great individuals into that medical school.

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UTSA is now an R1 university. So we're on the way up, and I want to come back to say we talk to each other. Part of the secret sauce is, I'm known to say this, ego titers are tolerable. We like each other. Say again, please? We like each other.

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If I'm in Boston, it's really hard to get CEOs in a room together or presidents. And I think our success, and I mean this and I've said it, I'm very active in BioMed SA, our nonprofit in the Healthcare Biosciences Network. Our ability to grow will be our ability to continue to communicate effectively with each other and work with each other to exploit our strengths rather than become enamored with ourselves and work against each other, which some of the other more developed cities, can do. And I think that's gonna be very important going forward, and I'm very supportive that we continue to get around the table and, talk through, you know, continue to get around the table and, talk through, you know, what makes this enterprise, Greater SATX, San Antonio Medical Foundation. These are great organizations and right now, anyway, there's a good spirit among us to succeed, so, we just have to keep at it. Well, I'm a UTSA alum, but I'm telling myself to change, what I say out loud to UT San Antonio, which I think needs to be the new name of the combined organization, and I think it will that's a acronym and and putting the the word San Antonio into the name, I think, is really important for projecting our our improvement and our excellence abroad, abroad from San Antonio. And I and and I'm I'm heartened to hear you talk about how important the tier one research status is because we really should be modeling ourselves after the UCLA's and others of the worlds that have these combined undergraduate, graduate, and medical school programs all under one roof. My before coming to San Antonio, the university is, you know, was at or had I was at UCLA. So I I I, have been on campuses with medical schools, and it does change the campus to have a medical school be part of that university. And, and I think there's a real opportunity there I'm excited about for them. Following up on chronic disease in San Antonio, what is the connection between infectious disease and chronic illness? A leading official in government not too long ago made a statement and said, I think we need to focus on chronic disease and put infectious disease research on hold. And I listened to that very carefully, because, it's really important to talk about the very strong links between infection and chronic disease. You know, I think these days about infection, not only is getting a cold and fever, but a trigger. And that trigger is that there's a battlefield when we get infected and that is our immune systems get engaged and there's something called inflammation. And science today is stronger and stronger on how infection is a major trigger of inflammation, which itself leads to cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, and there are so many examples.

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An Australian investigator in 1990s and ultimately the discovery in the early 2000s, Barry Marshall out of Australia, discovered that Helicobacter pylori, which is a bacteria, is found in our stomachs. We're gonna take your word on that later. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Helicobacter. It's it's the way it looks. But, yeah, it found it in stomachs, and and it was a major cause of cancer. Rheumatic fever, leading to heart valvular disease.

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Hepatitis b leading to liver cancer. Type one diabetes triggered by viruses.

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Today, Alzheimer's has been linked to a number of viruses, particularly herpes viruses. And yours truly, cured as a result of having human papillomavirus induced, head and neck cancer. That's amazing. Let's just stop there a minute because you were diagnosed, I don't know, five years ago, Larry. About four years ago. And went to MD Anderson in Houston for treatment, and now you're in full remission. Absolutely.

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It's great. You know, I can talk about it and smile because it's a real another advantage of science because I was on a phase two trial and received immunotherapy, which is breakthrough for cancer.

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And I wanna state that the reason I went to MD Anderson because we have great institutions in San Antonio is that my colleague and friend treated me. We both were at Ohio State and she moved to MD Anderson when I moved to Texas Biomed and is a leader in this form of cancer. But I received immunotherapy, which already had major impact and then received radiation. This HPV, head and neck cancer in people my age is because we didn't have a vaccine. Since we have the HPV vaccine, cervical cancer rates in women have dropped dramatically. And if I had the vaccine, I probably wouldn't have had my cancer. So I just think that, and I I made a statement in Nature Magazine not not too long ago that an investment in chronic disease by its very nature is an investment in infectious disease. Those links are strong enough that we need to be thinking more and more about finding those links, and we have in investigators at Texas Biomed right now finding parts of viruses in a number of different cancers. So, you know, I think ultimately, we're gonna develop drugs that probably treat cancer and infection. And I just think that's a very important but under not spoken about enough, not highlighted enough, and it's an area that I'm particularly passionate about. I don't think we emphasize often enough that you're here because of immunotherapy, and immunotherapy is an option because of scientific research and advancements. And you mentioned our our, transplants that he received from his son as a result and went on to continue in his leadership role to my amazement that he came back from near death. And again, it's because of the advances that we've realized in research and science, that these were these were therapies that simply weren't available, twenty, thirty years ago. No question.

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The most exciting part about being here with you today is that we can talk about science from the standpoint of individuals. Demystify, determine science, and really have people understand how discoveries over the twentieth century and the twenty first century, the technology, has improved lives in families, has given them a future, and there's so many countless stories about this, that I think ultimately, I'm optimistic that the public will get more engaged. I think one of the current changes where maybe less governmental money, but private sector to step up, well, so can the philanthropic community step up and begin to reevaluate its investments philanthropically. From my standpoint, we have such strong support, but I need to commit to be accountable for that support from very generous individuals. But a message I'd make today is that those who have thought about certain domains that they've made their contributions in, rethink. Science is under siege right now. There's a challenge with government funding for science. And, you know, the organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation put a lot of money into science, but there are many others out there.

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There's a real opportunity. And, I'm happy to have those conversations so that people understand the connectivity between a discovery and the next pill or bone marrow transplant you receive to improve your health. This is critical. Well, that's a good point to make because we're nearing the end of our time. I could talk to you for hours. But let's finish, with me asking you about, is it important that we continue to get, for example, booster vaccines?

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Most of us now don't see anybody dying from COVID nineteen.

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We're it's still around, but it's certainly not the threat it was.

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So it's easy for people to go, oh, that's been taken care of. But, how what what what is your message to people about continuing with vaccines, not only for the adult population, but people with children, young children, and not just for COVID, but for for everything? I just can't speak with more passion about how a vaccine has changed humanity in terms of human health, the impact, particularly MMR, the childhood vaccines. The vaccination rates are down now, and we're seeing a measles outbreak. It continues to grow. People need to know how serious measles is.

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There's now examples of mumps and rubella as part of that vaccine. When those vaccines came on to the market in The United States, and there was a dedicated US vaccine strategy, Childhood deaths plummeted, plummeted so that children could grow up to have adult lives for the first time because infection has more, has shaped humanity more than the other disease process. I think we just talked about the human papillomavirus vaccine for children.

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These vaccines go through a highly vetted process, arguably, relative to China, other places, too much of a process to prove safety and efficacy.

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But maybe what we haven't done is do enough of what we're doing today, which is to, you know, dial it down, And what does it mean to be safe and effective? You know? What what is a vaccine? You know, what is it made of? What isn't it that you hear about, like microchips and vaccines? So I think, there's a lot we need to do at the ground level to reassure people and to let them know about safe and effective vaccines. What we can't say is that any vaccine is 100% safe. We can't say that. But if anything, driving in a car in San Antonio, nothing is a % safe. But they go through rigorous clinical trials, and, you know, from my perspective, are game changers. And I hope, I hope we get a handle on the measles outbreak. We're embarking now on a collaboration maybe to provide a new therapy for measles, which doesn't exist today. We have another big challenge in bird flu that continues to grow in animal populations and, you know, there's concern about it mutating to be human to human transmissible hasn't occurred yet, you know, and that's good news. But these challenges will continue to increase while funding is going down. You know, where does that end? What's, you know, I may ask, what's the end game? I think we're gonna rediscover some diseases, that we don't necessarily need to rediscover if we were more effective with vaccines and therapies. Well, that's why we're gonna have to have you back someday, but we're out of time today. Doctor. Larry Schlesinger, the CEO and president of the Texas Biomedical Research Institute. Thanks for coming on to Big City, Small Town, and thanks for all the great work you do in our community and beyond. My pleasure. Thank you very much for having me, Bob.

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