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Pfizer says it will proceed with the once daily version of its weight loss pill. The company among the many drug makers racing to grab a portion of the weight loss market potential, this year alone, the US weight loss market is expected to grow another 4.3%. That's according to market data as interest in this space continues to rise. More eyes are set on how to get in on the action here to discuss ways to navigate the shifting biopharma sector. We have John Flavin, Portal Innovations founder and CEO, along, of course, with Julie, Yahoo Finance's Julie Hyman. John, it is good to see you. So this, this GLP1 fight, it only continues to seemingly heat up, John. Of course, we've been focused on Big Big Pharma. I'm curious though, John, as a venture investor, are you seeing this trend, this theme that investors are so interested in? Is it also playing out, John, in the startup space?

Absolutely. You know, if you look at what's happened in the GLP1 space, which, by the way, has taken several decades to play out, you know, dating way back to when GLP1 was first cloned by Svetlana Mashov, you know, way back when, it's finally coming to fruition. And when we think about the stats in the market, 40% of Americans today are obese. The expected global market for obesity drugs by 2030 is expected to grow to $100 billion. And so the stats are showing that there's a major market need. The science is moving in a direction that's opening up opportunities that actually make a market impact for these patients that, by the way, have comorbidities like diabetes and other heart issues. So we're seeing a pipeline of about 240 companies that are either developing or are moving toward the market with obesity or cardio metabolic drugs. We've got a partnership with Novo in place and we've identified companies that we'd like to co-invest in that are all in that cardio metabolic arena. So one company we like a lot that we've invested in directly is Cyntis. They're developing a next generation pill. That's coming at a different pathway than GLP1, but huge opportunity and a lot of capital going into that space.

A lot of capital going into that space, John. Is it coming at the expense of other areas, right? Certainly in the public markets, we've been talking a lot about GLP1s. There's been huge investment in those publicly traded stocks. Is that happening in the private markets as well, and are other areas, other treatment areas getting starved a little bit because of that?

No, I think, you know, you've got to look at the dry powder that's been accumulating here in the past couple of years, both at the Big Pharma level and at the VC level. So record levels of LP money going into biotech directed venture funds, over 25 billion just last year into fresh powder. Just last week, Flagship announced fund 8, $3.6 billion going into 25 startups. That'll be an array of companies that go well beyond obesity. Things that we see really getting a lot of focus and attention with dynamic science happening outside of the cardio metabolic space are neuro. We're seeing a lot of good companies in that space. And I think on the heels of the Eli Lilly news with regards to their Alzheimer's drug that got FDA approval showing 30% reduction in cognitive failures for that class will be a gateway to many other companies that will focus in the neuro space. So companies like Vanquat working on Parkinson's venture back company here in Chicago, Nemura, Gate in Indianapolis with the halo effect of what's happening coming out of Eli Lilly. And then lastly, a lot going on in autoimmune disease, especially in areas like lupus, and also tech bio. You're seeing a lot of AI focused and enabled science that I think will accelerate some of the work in these neuro drug programs.

John, you know, another trend we're talking about here on the show, you won't be surprised to hear is the mega trend of AI. I am curious, John, how that technology is impacting and transforming your world, life sciences investing.

Yeah. Well, first, you know, from the aperture of the venture capitalist, we have developed our own tool called Stargaze, which is an AI enabled platform that can predict innovation and start to rank innovative inventors coming out of universities. Remember the lifeblood of a new drug starts on the bench at a university, several years prior to it becoming a drug. And so we're using this tool to mine the universe to identify who's working on what hot area of technology. How do we get there first to make those investments? And using the machine learning algorithm, we can use predictive biomarkers to who might be a promising up and coming scientist working on the latest cutting edge science anywhere in the world, but certainly here in the United States. Now, if you look at the applications in science, we've got a company here in Chicago, Tempus AI, that went public a few weeks back. Precision medicine. So using AI for accelerating, figuring out what drugs are going to work with which patients in any kind of disease ranging from cancer to cardio metabolic diseases. You've got other companies like Recursion Pharma out in Salt Lake City that's applying tech bio and AI to identifying drugs in both neuro and oncology. That space is heating up very quickly, and I think you're going to see strong benefits to what's happening in that regard. Lastly, really way out there in the future is quantum. So believe it or not, quantum is really starting to get applied to life sciences as well. So the ability to simulate the drug discovery process and take shortcuts and accelerate going from a petri dish all the way to a patient, I'm really excited about what will happen the next decade in that area as well.

A lot going on in a fast moving industry, John. Thank you so much for joining the show today and walking us through it.

My pleasure, Josh and Julie. Good to see you.