Checking in with Dr. Koh Poh Koon, Adjunct Clinician Scientist, IBN; Senior Consultant and Director, Colorectal Surgical Oncology & Cancer Genetics Service, Fortis Colorectal Hospital

09 October 2012

By Rachel Leow

Edited by Ai San Yip

Photo courtesy of IBN and Fortis Colorectal Hospital

Photo credits (from left to right): Professor Jackie Y. Ying and Dr. Tan Min-Han of IBN, with Dr. Koh Poh Koon and Dr. Jeremy Lim of Fortis Colorectal Hospital, at the Fortis-IBN TissueBank.

We ran an interview article on Fortis Healthcare Group during March 2012. About six months later, Genewired.com checks-in with Dr. Koh who is recently appointed as the Adjunct Clinician Scientist of Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN), A*STAR and Director of the Fortis-IBN Tissue Bank (FIT)

1. Just a while ago, we have heard of the news establishment of IBN and Fortis Colorectal Hospital for Colorectal Cancer Research. How is the Fortis-IBN Tissue Bank resource used to accelerate translational research in colorectal cancer?

The Fortis-IBN Tissue Bank (FIT) resource is the result of a partnership between the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN), the world’s first bioengineering and nanotechnology research institute, and Fortis Colorectal Hospital (FCH), Southeast Asia’s first hospital dedicated to the full spectrum of colorectal disease management.

Conducting research with cell lines in a culture dish is not quite the same as working with a clinical tumor sample, and animal models do not always replicate the complex cellular environment in vivo. The true value of this tissue bank is in its potential to catapult the research outputs in a more clinically relevant direction.

The tissue bank will serve two important purposes. Firstly, tumor tissues collected with the corresponding clinical data over time allows us to gain better insights into the biology of tumors and discern the cellular mechanisms that may shed light into targets for improved diagnostics and therapeutics Secondly, well-annotated tissue samples of Asian tumors are precious  resources that can serve as magnet for pharmaceutical companies to further invest their R&D resources into advancing the care and treatment of Asian diseases. I do believe that there are potential ethnic differences in the disease biology that we do not yet fully understand and further research into ethnic differences in certain tumor genotypes can allow us to personalize the management of these diseases in Asians.

2. How is Fortis-IBN Tissue Bank (FIT) different from SingHealth Tissue Repository?

The Fortis-IBN Tissue Bank was set up with the aim of banking colorectal cancer tissue and blood samples from Fortis Colorectal Hospital. As a hospital dedicated to the management of Colorectal Disease, Colorectal cancer features very prominently on our radar as one of the key diseases that we want to focus on. Colorectal cancer is the most common cancer in Singapore and is among the top 3 causes of cancer-related deaths. In addition, up to 25% of all colorectal cancers have a familial clustering with at least 10% having a fairly strong genetic basis for their causation. Setting up a dedicated Tissue Bank to complement the work of Fortis Colorectal Hospital in the fight against this very challenging and common cancer is therefore a very unique arrangement that I believe will allow us to take the fight to the molecular level. The partnership with IBN will also allow us to leverage on the exciting developments in nanotechnology to find novel and innovative ways to diagnose and treat colorectal cancer. This close integration of a specialized surgical hospital in the private sector, dedicated colorectal tissue bank and premier research institute is what distinguishes us from the Singhealth Tissue Repository (STR) which caters to the diverse research needs of a health cluster.

3. What is the motivation and vision for starting the Tissue Bank?

Fortis-IBN Tissue Bank is the first and only tissue bio-repository in the private sector in Singapore. Our vision is to use the resources vested in Fortis-IBN Tissue Bank to improve our understanding of Asian genetics and bring forth novel technologies that will benefit our patients. I firmly believe that for science and technology to directly benefit the masses, we must be able to commercialize the product. In setting up Fortis-IBN Tissue Bank, we are open to all collaborators who can demonstrate the clinical potential of their technology platforms.

My interest is in hereditary colorectal cancers. Setting up this Tissue Bank allows me to use this precious resource to profile different groups of colon cancers, especially young people afflicted with colorectal cancers. This will allow us to build up the knowledge-base of Asian colorectal cancers to move towards clinical genetic testing. This is because the knowledge of Asian cancer genetics is still fairly incomplete. At this moment, clinical management of hereditary colorectal cancers in Asia is still based largely on studies that are conducted on Caucasian populations. However, we know that in genetic syndromes, there are often modifiers, genetic differences and ethnic differences across different population groups. So, the same syndrome may have slightly different phenotypic expressions compared to the patients in the west. While a deeper understanding of this inter-ethnic variation has no immediate commercialization benefit, this has far reaching implications in clinical disease management. Some of this knowledge can be practice changing, impacting millions of people in Asia by changing clinical practice, diagnostic and therapeutic algorithm.

For example, Lynch Syndrome, often called Hereditary Nonpolyposis Colorectal Cancer (HNPCC), is a type of inherited cancer of the digestive tract, affecting particularly the colon but which also increases one’s risk of endometrial, ovarian, gastric and pancreatic cancers. Studies of Caucasians with Lynch Syndrome suggests that the colon cancers in Lynch Syndrome tends to affect the right-colon and poses a high risk of second cancer developing in the remaining colon of up to 25%. As such, the clinical recommendation is to perform a Total Colectomy (removing the entire colon and leaving behind only the rectum) However, our observation in Asia suggests that the colorectal cancers affecting Asians with Lynch Syndrome seems to predominantly affect the left-colon, with a significant number of tumors in the sigmoid colon and rectum. This would suggest that a Total Colectomy sparing the rectum as practiced in the West as a risk-reduction strategy may potentially compromise the bowel function of our Asian patients while still leaving behind the organ that is most at-risk  (i.e. the rectum) in our Asian patients.  So, by understanding the genotypic and phenotypic differences between the West and Asia, we can immediately influence the way we practice by a change in clinical guidelines without even a commercialisable product!

Editor’s note: In a broader context, we can define this as knowledge transfer which somewhat encompasses a bigger role than just IP or technology transfer. It may not have patentable substance but as you said, it is socially impactful …

4. What other research areas besides genetics and profiling? Is there something more direct and straightforward?

The tissue bank with a comprehensive matching clinical database is a research ‘goldmine’. The point is, when you have the tissue bank, you can do many kinds of research. Be it genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics or metabonomics. In clinical medicine, we rely on randomized trials and observation studies of large numbers of patient over time to determine if an intervention is more likely to produce a desired response. However, such population statistics cannot allow us to personalize our treatment algorithm or risk assessment for the specific patient. Individual profiling can translate to more personalized medicine in which treatment and clinical management is tailored to an individual’s biological profile and genetic makeup. I would surmise that as the cost of whole genome sequencing comes down significantly and our ability to interpret these massive amounts of information improves, we may be able to produce a personalized tumor genome that will allow for personalized treatment based on one’s own tumor profile. This could enhance treatment efficacy while minimizing unwanted side-effects of treatment.

5. Do you not think that this concept [personalized treatment] would most likely take place in the private healthcare space because it will most likely be expensive?

You are quite right. The cost for any new technology/test tends to be a bit higher. And, until it finds clinical value, government bodies are unlikely to subsidize it to make it affordable and accessible to the general masses. I see my advantage doing it in the private sector where patients are more willing and able to afford cutting-edge medical treatment. However, for translational research to take-off, it has to be a national enterprise. We are still lacking in laws to protect the individual’s genetic information and its disclosure. Without a robust legal framework that safeguards the individual’s genetic information and his individual rights, it may become difficult to recruit patients or healthy volunteers for genetic research for fear of future implications. For example, I can imagine it would be difficult to move on with research on predictive gene profiling for Psychiatric conditions or hereditary traits if such information can discriminate the patients or the ‘healthy’ volunteers. Some of these things, I think we need to urgently catch-up. Now that we’ve built a world-class research infrastructure in Biopolis, we need to put in place the legal framework for some of these research works to go unhampered.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ai San Yip at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Dr. Chi-Wai Wong, Director, NeuMed Pharmaceuticals Limited

04 October 2012

By Rachel Leow

Edited by Ai San Yip

Photo courtesy of NeuMed Pharmaceuticals Limited

 
Dr. Wong Chi-Wai, Ms. Wenjuan Tan (NeuMed) and the waterfront of the 22 hectare Hong Kong Science and Technology Park (HKSTP).

NeuMed Pharmaceuticals Limited (NeuMed) aims to develop pharmaceuticals and health supplements based on natural products including those derived from Traditional Chinese Medicine. Many successful drugs currently on the market, such as Aspirin and Statins, were originally identified as bioactive ingredients from natural products. NeuMed has established a highly reliable screening technology platform to identify bioactive ingredients from natural products. This screening platform allows NeuMed to efficiently link bioactive ingredients to well established drug discovery targets so that stringent and comprehensive drug development strategies can be planned to capture the therapeutic values of these bioactive ingredients.

NeuMed has been accepted into the Incu-Bio Program (a four year financial aid package valued at HKD 851,000) offered by the Hong Kong Science and Technology Park (HKSTP). Currently, NeuMed enjoys free access to the Biotechology Support Laboratory in HKSTP.

1. Tell us about yourself.

I was born and educated in Hong Kong and  went to US when I was 16 years old to study PhD Biochemistry at University of California, Davis (UC Davis). In 1998, I was packing to leave California upon the completion of my PhD study. That was the first time I was aware of employment opportunities for Biologists in Singapore. That was when the Institute of Molecular Cell Biology (IMCB) was just formed in Singapore Biopolis. In fact, I was looking for post-doctorate (post-doc) position and full-time employment in IMCB. They (one of the scientists) were recruiting post-docs in the science career section. I applied for the job with IMCB concurrently with post-doc positions in the United States. Biology, in its early days, was a completely foreign subject which was also at its very early stages. So, I decided to go to a more established pharmaceutical company. I ended up in Wyeth U.S. (which was previously, American Home Products).

Looking back, it was the “in-thing” to do a post-doc in pharmaceutical MNCs. Several MNCs were running pretty good post-doc programs. Genentech is an example which has very strong post-doc programs and attractive packages. Similar companies like this were the training grounds for future scientists in the biotech industry.
I thought having working experience in a pharmaceutical MNC and having a name, such as Genentech, associated with it is good for my career. I saw it as a very good opportunity. Not only did I get to work as a post-doc, do basic science, carry out a little bit of exploratory research, but also, at the same time, I get exposure to a lot of scenes in a big pharmaceutical company. This includes how professionals run the engines of drug discovery and development more efficiently. This is something you cannot get with an academic post-doc career. This exposure helps to shape my career. Having this experience in the pharmaceutical sector allows me to get an idea of how people manage projects, how people make a decision, how people get resources (financial as well as technical). These are very important managerial skills that nowhere in academia can you get something equivalent to working in the pharmaceutical industry.

Subsequently, I completed my post-doc in Wyeth U.S. and returned to California because I loved living in California. I then joined a small company called Metabolex Inc. (located in San Francisco Bay Area). I was there for a little more than two years before making the next decision to go to Guangzhou. I made the decision back in 2004 to move but you are probably aware that, for the last 15 years of so, there was a lot of mergers and acquisitions among the native pharmaceuticals. Every time there is an announcement, another thousand jobs, sooner or later, will be gone for everybody. The primary reason why I move to Guangzhou was a “sixth sense” instinct that these Mergers and Acquisitions activities (M&A) were going to cut even more jobs in the States. I could be sitting there (United States), waiting for things to happen or I could be proactive and say, “Okay, here is what is going to come”. I might as well just find for myself a major career move. It was a risk but this approach was a proactive one – thus, I decided to leave U.S.

On the hindsight, considering most of the U.S. companies were going through mergers, there were high chances that these companies might lay people off. To give you an example, most of the Chemistry experiments were sub-contracted to CROs in China. You can see a snapshot of the out-sourcing and off-shoring trend coming … this applies for Molecular Biology, Pharmacology, ADME and Toxicology … Eventually, they are going to move, at least some of it, overseas, away from the U.S. At the same time, Chinese firms are investing in CROs and other opportunities; they are interested to acquire brands, technologies and products back to China. I feel it will be interesting in China. This would be kind of my chance. I recalled reading an article, probably in Nature or Nature medicine. They have a profile about a brand new research institute in Guangzhou. It is called Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences, GIBH (中国科学院广州生物医药与健康研究院). The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has a number of institutes under its control, including this new GIBH. I heard good things and bad things about research institutes based in China. And of course, there was a lot of buzz about the political implications involved (there are rarely clear-cut answers when it comes to Chinese politics) but at the same time, China was seen as a country with lots of money, resources and opportunities. The difference for GIBH was, first of all, it was a brand new institute and second, it was collaboration between the provincial and city governments and also the CAS. So, each party sponsored an equivalent amount to RMB 100 Million and more ... I would summarise that living and working in China gave me this ability to solve real-world problems with creative approaches in dynamic environment, thus I worked in GIBH as a Principal Investigator for five years.

2. How did NeuMed started? Was it something you wanted to do long ago in United States?

I think, at a time of your life, you would think about being an entrepreneur (define as if you truly want to find things that you can focus on, and deliver far better results if you work on it full-time). Sooner or later, you will realize that all things are stepping stones to the next. I took a step of faith doing a post-doc in a pharmaceutical company. That was the first step. It is more about seeing how people run the company. And then, I went to Metabolex Inc. in California, only about 50 people at that time. That was about learning about how to do research on a shoestring, tight budget. You need the paycheck, people the money. How to recruit and manage people? It was a learning experience as well as a stepping stone. There were too many M&As going on in the U.S. to find a good job.

Guangzhou gave me a totally new managerial experience; from getting a group of scientists who were not on the same page to somehow managing to get a group of people to work together and filing patents.

At the very end of 2009, I got to know what was going on in Hong Kong (the people here, the incubator program here, etc.). It is a valuable program to help seed innovative start-ups.

Neumed, the company, was registered in 2009. I made the move in 2010. My team project was evaluated by the science park official as one of the very few top projects. At the end, we licensed it out. GIBH signed the license right to another company, the new start-up. In the end, my experience at GIBH was not in an optimal condition, I managed to squeeze something out. I was looking for something new in 2009. A headhunter gave me a call on behalf of a pharmaceutical company which had set up a subsidiary, Singapore R&D Centre for Drug Discovery in 2009. Two people recruited at this pharmaceutical company were my former colleagues in Metabolex Inc. I wondered if that was the right environment (and thus, the right choice). Those two people I know, they have probably left the pharmaceutical company by now (this pharmaceutical company had closed its Singapore R&D Center for Drug Discovery in December 2010 and eventually moved back to U.S.) I would say that being just another employee in a pharmaceutical company was not what I am looking for.   

3. What is NeuMed business model?

We will focus on the value chain in drug discovery.

We will create a business and technological platform where NeuMed can build assets by a collaborative approach with other research labs in academia (institutes) or pharmaceutical industries.

Our technological platform is based on in vitro screening assays by putting compounds in cells and having read-outs. We have a set of favorite diseases, based on the major markets, e.g. cancer, metabolic diseases. So, we will be actively working on those. Among those, we will triage and select those promising ones. As a small company, we are not going for completely novel targets as this approach is just way too risky. We will go for relatively new, “me-better kind” of combination. It is our intuitive knowledge and experience that allows NeuMed to do better. Once we build up our assets, we work with others who can provide us their compounds / libraries. We intend to set-up collaborations with institutes in China, sharing the IPs etc…the important thing is to characterise the targets/ molecules then patent them and make these patents somewhat more valuable (with more drug-able potential).

At this junction, NeuMed is still in an exploratory stage. We build characterisation and cell-based platform, using what is readily available in HKSTP.

4. What are the next steps for NeuMed?

We will maintain relationships with active collaborators, especially those in the field of drug discovery e.g. cancer and diabetes. Once we have gained good access to a library of active compounds (those with good pharmacology data), we will move fast to validate these compounds in vitro.

We do not exclude the possibility of setting up a subsidiary somewhere else ... What we are thinking of is to work on promising collaborative projects that would give us a 50:50 share to jointly file patents in China and United States (patenting strategy to be developed …).

We hope to set up a network of good collaborators and affiliates to reduce costs and get multiple targets and disease model species at the same time. At the same time, push one of these to file a patent to be secured, in terms of IP position. Then, in time, use the patent; go to Suzhou Biobay to tap on more resources for drug development and/ or biosimilar development support in China.

In the business world, leverage is an important concept. In our context, we want to create as high leverage as possible in each stage of the drug development process.

5.  If there is one word of advice you can give to aspiring entrepreneurs who are looking to start their business in the industry, what would that be?

Biotech is very different (from Apps or Information and Communications industry).

I would advise him / her to start working for a real company / MNCs. Try to understand as much as possible, not just from a scientific point-of-view, but also the business management point-of-view. I cannot imagine starting a company without working for one first. It is most important. You will be lucky to find an investor and you will be extremely lucky to get some serious financing. I will just go with what I have and once I get to that stage (where an investor is required), I do not worry about finding an investor. They will find me (or entrepreneurs). That is when I will have additional leverage. It is tough to ask for money. When you show success, people will give you money, and this will be different!

To contact the reporter on this story: Ai San Yip at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  

Mr. Johnson Chen, Managing Partner, Clearbridge Accelerator Pte Ltd

17 April 2012

By Ai San Yip

Edited by Isabel Hui Hui

Photo creative by Jimmy Toh Kim Pern

 

Johnson has a quick wit, a unique view and a great sense of humor.

 

Clearbridge Accelerator (CBA) is the Singapore incubation arm of Clearbridge Partners, an Asian based venture capital firm. CBA was founded in January 2010 and supported by the Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF). CBA has actively invested in six portfolio companies, namely (i) Clearbridge BioMedics, (ii) Clearbridge BioLoc, (iii) Clearbridge NanoMedics, (iv) Clearbridge VitalSigns, (v) Clearbridge Technologies and (vi) Clearbridge BioPhotonics.

In March 2012, Clearbridge Accelerator was announced as one of the two successful recipients of SPRING Singapore’s Biomedical Sciences Accelerator (BSA) Programme. Clearbridge BSA was set up to provide potential entrepreneurs a wide variety of technical, administrative, marketing business, mentoring fund raising advisory and early-stage projects’ management and execution in the area of biomedical science, technology and devices.

 

1. Tell us about yourself and Clearbridge.

I came back to Singapore in 2008 from Hong Kong and London. I was the President of CyberWorks Ventures, the venture capital and direct investment arm of PCCW, Pacific Century CyberWorks, the incumbent telecommunications company in Hong Kong. My background was that I graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1997 (M.Eng and Engineering B.A.) and have always been interested in technology. Incidentally, I am one of the members of the Hong Kong Science and Technology Park (HKSTP) incubator selection panel, and I still make frequent business travel to Hong Kong. This has been interesting as it allows me to have a glimpse into the difference between Singapore and Hong Kong.

I do agree that on the argument of Singapore being “small” and therefore has a limited market size (home market). However, to serious skeptics, I usually cite Singapore as a common ground to look for existing and potential interdisciplinary research programs and translational projects from the strong research base established, as Singapore has been actively investing over the past several years. In 2008, I felt that the timing was quite right into looking at possible technologies that can be commercialised – in taking the research technologies that have been developed and commercialising them, and that there was a gap in the commercialisation space which we can potentially fill to “bridge” the gap between projects and early commercialisation. The biomedical ecosystem was not ready at the point in time, and it was still early days which afforded us a nice first mover advantage.

I took a step forward and founded Clearbridge Accelerator to look into the commercialisation of high-technology-based start-ups. Clearbridge Accelerator invests in three focused areas, namely biomedical devices, advance material sciences and computational algorithms. At that juncture, we saw the convergence of technologies in terms of data processing (bioinformatics), material sciences (fabrication methodology) and biologic understanding.

 

2. How does Clearbridge do things differently from other technology accelerators?

The difference between us and rest of the accelerators is that we are very hand-on, and have the notion to build and support the biomedical ecosystem. We realised that for Clearbridge to succeed, we needed a holistic ecosystem and set about to assemble a team that consisted of self-directed individual learners to form the basis for a small biomedical sciences ecosystem.

For instance, we have in-house regulatory affairs person who has led Clearbridge Biomedics on its ISO13485 approval. This colleague also advised us and has steered us away from regulatory or FDA challenges, which has led us to make better investment decisions. We also have our in-house legal counsel, who helps us in the legal documentations that we have had to deal with. To date, we have secured and negotiated licensing agreements with NUS, A*STAR, NTU, Caltech and MIT.

We are constantly evolving over the past two years, and have managed to build productive partnerships in precision engineering, injection moulding, rapid prototyping, engineering design and advanced (clean room) manufacturing systems, at very least; now, we have this small core that we can leverage on. This mini-ecosystem will only make sense if you can gather a number of incubatees (users of that platform), which was why we went on the incubator configuration to try to build critical mass. We recognise that commercialisation is a long process requiring money, talents and resources. We strive to recruit talents who specialised in operational execution, for example, our project directors who would give us better chance of project success through their execution discipline.

We have a very limited talent pool in Singapore … From time to time, I do see those aspiring entrepreneurs from China and Hong Kong relocating to Singapore. I personally find, in general, that Singaporeans are more comfortable in corporate-like well-paid jobs. I am not stereotyping, but that seems to be the case. However, having said that, this is changing, as the younger generation of Singaporeans now are more willing to take risks and try the entrepreneur route. These are all calculated risk and we are also trying to de-risk this by providing the ongoing support and infrastructure.

Editor’s note: ChannelNewsAsia article, dated 02 March 2012, revealed that SPRING has engaged Clearbridge Biomedical Sciences Accelerator to groom promising medical technology start-ups.

 

3. Where do you think the incubatee companies are going to come from? Do you invest in people, technologies or applications?

We approach it the other way round.

We ask: “What are the end use and applications? What is the clinical utility?” If you cannot get clinical utility … you cannot get adoption ... you cannot get people to pay for it … you cannot get revenues to raise further funds. Thus, we approach it the other way round. Clearbridge invests in end use.

I think technologies are the means, and not the ends, to solve a problem. There are 1,101 ways and permutations to solve a puzzle. Ventures succeed or fail due to the timing of investments and cost. Execution and cost are vital to the success of these ventures. Cost and timing are the critical factors. You can have a fancy technology now, yet it is just too expensive (you need to keep in mind that it is not all about the technology). Commercialisation is very different. You need to get all the pieces right; end use application, together with the distribution channel, pricing model, execution team and intellectual properties which are really not easy. 

We have incorporated four main criteria for our framework for assessment in our investment analysis and decision-making. For example, our assumption is that one will take the same amount of effort to commercialise a hundred million dollar market versus a billion dollar addressable market. For us, the global (addressable) market size must be in the billions. We also like technologies which have unique and defensible intellectual property.

Next is the management team. As an accelerator, we carry the means to bring in the right people to run it, or at least the possibility of attracting the right people to run it. The fourth criterion is commercial viability which again comes down to cost. This means the intended cost / eventual target cost / cost of goods sold. We must know that given x no. of years down the road, we can hit this cost criteria. Cost-effectiveness is important. For example, although the polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) chip made by Clearbridge Biomedics is fairly expensive now, we are still using this manufacturing process because we are confident to drive down the cost per chip upon mass volume production and automation.

 

4. Do you pick a winner from the incubatees?

No one will have the crystal ball. Some of these incubatees will address a bigger market size than others. For example, the cancer and cardio space are bigger, but these markets are tough. Therefore, it is hard to use the “picking-the-winners” approach.

In any venture capitalist investments, you would have homerun, okay-stuff, and zombie (what I use to call “the undead”). If we fail in any of our ventures, we want to fail fast, cut losses and move on. I like entrepreneurs who have made decisions to cut and move on. You can be much stronger thereafter.

 

5. If there is one word of advice you can give to aspiring entrepreneurs who are looking to start their business in the industry, what would that be?

I think in doing any business you must have integrity and fairness. I am fair and practical to staffs and employees, partners, investors. We are very fair. We will tell you straight and in black and white on whether it can be done or not. We do not want to waste people’s time. We like to think we have focus and make smart decisions. Staff can tell and appreciate this. For any follower, you would want to follow smart and decisive leaders. Sometimes you make bad decisions, but that is fine, you spend the money but you learn from it. If the approach does not work, we move on; we are not afraid to commit resources.

As entrepreneurs or fund managers, I would advise that one should get clarity on your business objectives. What is your intent? Once you have developed clarity, your execution path will flow from it. You would know the necessary things required to cross your river. You would know the various stepping pebbles that you need to step on in order to cross the river (what I call it as “bridge the situation / best path to bridge scenario”). These are our core values.

That is what Clearbridge is about – having clarity (being “clear”) and bridging the situations and issues.  

 

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