Rachel is a co-founder of Caribou Biosciences and has been President and CEO since its inception in 2011. Rachel is an inventor on several patents and patent applications covering multiple CRISPR-based technologies, and has co-authored scientific papers in high impact journals characterizing CRISPR-Cas systems. In 2014, she was named by Forbes Magazine to the “30 Under 30” list in Science and Healthcare, and in 2016, Fortune Magazine named her to the “40 Under 40” list of the most influential yo...
Apr 14, 2021•22 min
Dr. Ragan has been X4’s President and Chief Executive Officer and a member of the X4 Board of Directors since July 2014. She has more than 18 years of experience building companies in the biotechnology industry. Prior to founding X4, Dr. Ragan consulted as Chief Business Officer at Lysosomal Therapeutics Inc., a private biopharmaceutical company, where she led the company’s business development activities. Prior to that, Dr. Ragan held leadership roles in corporate development and operations at ...
Apr 08, 2021•27 min
Joseph Hernandez is an established leader in biotech entrepreneurship and early-stage technology development. With a strong background in biology, epidemiology, molecular genetics, marketing, and finance, Mr. Hernandez has successfully founded or led six entrepreneurial companies, including Blue Water Vaccines. These companies focus on cutting-edge biotech arenas, and he has raised over $150M in investment capital and commercialized respective products. As founder and CEO of Blue Water Vaccines,...
Mar 31, 2021•22 min
Chief Medical Officer, Christopher Wright, MD, PhD, is a neurologist and neuroscientist who brings two decades of medical research and drug development experience in orphan and specialty diseases, including cystic fibrosis, dementia, hepatitis C, rheumatoid arthritis, and epilepsy. While at Vertex, Dr. Wright oversaw the development of ORKAMBI® through Phase 3, and the successful development and rapid approval of KALYDECO®, a lifechanging cystic fibrosis therapy, by the FDA, EMA and other health...
Mar 25, 2021•27 min
Caroline is a biopharmaceutical executive with over 20 years of experience successfully leading diverse, empowered, and integrated teams. She has broad experience integrating science, business, and the clinic to deliver differentiated value to patients. Most recently, she was Vice President, Head R&D Strategy, and Planning at Bristol-Myers Squibb where she led portfolio strategy and operations. This included shaping BMS’s strategy and portfolio to deliver strong competitive positioning in in...
Mar 17, 2021•28 min
Leen Kawas, Ph.D., has served as our chief executive officer and as a member of our board of directors since January 2014. Previously, Dr. Kawas served as our vice president. Dr. Kawas serves on multiple boards, including the Washington Governor’s Life Science Advisory Board, Scientific Review Board for the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, and Alzheimer’s Association – Washington Chapter Board. She also served as the co-chair of the International Alzheimer's Association Business Consortium...
Mar 10, 2021•19 min
Jim Woody has more than 25 years of pharmaceutical research and management expertise He currently serves as Chairman of Oncomed Pharmaceuticals, where he was previously a founder and CEO; he is also a General Partner at Latterell Venture Partners, a venture capital group focusing on early-stage healthcare companies He has served in a variety of health and management roles including as President of Roche Bioscience, and CSO and Senior Vice President of R&D for Centocor. At Centocor, Jim was p...
Mar 03, 2021•23 min
William J. Newell has served as our Chief Executive Officer and a member of our Board of Directors since January 2009. Previously, he served as the President of Aerovance, Inc., a biotechnology company focused on respiratory diseases, from 2006 to 2007. Mr. Newell has also served as the Chief Business Officer and Senior Vice President at QLT Inc., in several senior management positions at Axys Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and has experience as a corporate lawyer. He currently serves on the boards of d...
Feb 24, 2021•32 min
Adam Crystal, M.D., Ph.D. joined C4 Therapeutics in February 2019 as our Chief Medical Officer. Previously, Adam was at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, most recently as Senior Director, where he led several early clinical development programs. Before transitioning to industry, Adam was a medical oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital where he researched resistance mechanisms to targeted therapies. Adam was also a laboratory-based researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital wh...
Feb 17, 2021•34 min
Mr. Culley joined Lineage as Chief Executive Officer in September 2018. Prior to joining Lineage, Mr. Culley served from August 2017 to September 2018 as interim Chief Executive Officer at Artemis Therapeutics, Inc. (ATMS). Mr. Culley previously served as Chief Executive Officer of Mast Therapeutics, Inc. (MSTX), from 2010, and was also a member of its board of directors from 2011, until Mast’s merger with Savara, Inc. (SVRA) in April 2017. Mr. Culley served from 2007 to 2010 as Mast’s Chief Bus...
Feb 10, 2021•28 min
Kevin is a scientist-entrepreneur with 30 years of research experience in academia and pharma. He co-founded Scientist.com in 2007. In 2001, he co-founded Kalypsys, a small pharmaceutical company. He was Director of Lead Discovery at Tularik from 1997-2001. He carried out postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School after receiving a PhD degree from Marc Kirschner’s laboratory at UC-San Francisco and an A.B. degree, magna cum laude, from Cornell University.
Feb 03, 2021•24 min
Dr. Javitt has played leadership roles in seven successful healthcare IT and biopharma startups with public exits. He has additionally led drug-development engagements for Merck, Allergan, Pharmacia, Novartis, and Pfizer. He was appointed to healthcare leadership roles under Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush. In the latter role he was commissioned to lead the White House policy for universal adoption of Health IT and establishment of the Office of the National Coor...
Jan 27, 2021•34 min
Mei Mei Hu: Mei Mei is also CEO of United Neuroscience and a member of the executive committee of United Biomedical, Inc. She oversaw the launch of one of the first endobody vaccines in the world and the successful spin-out of three companies. Mei Mei was formerly a consultant at McKinsey & Company where she advised pharmaceutical companies on strategic, operational and organizational issues. Prior to that, Mei Mei was in the Securities group at Cravath, Swaine and Moore. Mei Mei is also co-...
Jan 20, 2021•25 min
Shawn Singh has served as our Chief Executive Officer since August 2009; he joined our Board of Directors in 2000. Mr. Singh has nearly 30 years of experience working with private and public biotechnology, medical device, and pharmaceutical companies, a venture capital firm, and a profitable contract research and development organization (CRO), serving in numerous senior management roles. Prior to joining us as Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Singh served as President of Artemis Neuroscience, prior...
Jan 13, 2021•19 min
Dr. Salter-Cid brings to Gossamer Bio over 20 years of drug discovery experience in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries and spent the last 13 years at Bristol Myers Squibb (“BMS”) in increasing positions of responsibility, including Vice President and Head of Immunology, small molecule Immuno-Oncology and Genomics Discovery. In this position, she oversaw several biology groups that focused on target validation and development of innovative biologic and small-molecule therapeutics to addres...
Jan 06, 2021•29 min
Thank you for your support for Season 1! We reflect and look forward to Season 2 on this episode! Learn more about our co-hosts below! Alok Tayi is the Vice President of Life Sciences at Egnyte where he is responsible for building and executing the company's strategy for the life sciences market segment. Alok works across the organization to verticalize our marketing, sales, product, compliance, and account management practices for this domain. Before joining Egnyte, Alok was a YCombinator-backe...
Dec 16, 2020•11 min
As Executive Vice President and General Manager of Ancestry.com, a 1.6 billion dollar technology company, Ken led the launch of AncestryDNA, a large-scale e-commerce genetic genealogy test with revenues of > $500M. In 2019, Ken led the launch AncestryHealth, an e-commerce LDT genetic health product on a next-generation sequencing (NGS) platform. Prior to Ancestry, he was the President and Chief Executive Officer at Avigen, a biopharmaceutical company that develops drugs for chronic neurologic...
Nov 11, 2020•22 min
Ibraheem Mahmood has an extensive life science and finance background that spans more than 20 years. His experience includes previous roles in Lifescience M&A and Fundraising at Nomura, Lifescience Equity Research at Investec and Business Development and Corporate Venture Capital at Shire Pharmaceuticals. He was co-founder, President and CEO of the clinical operations services company DrugDev, in which he raised over $50m in financing and he sold the business to IQVIA in 2017. Ibraheem studi...
Nov 04, 2020•24 min
Dr. Raymond J. Tesi has been President, Chief Executive Officer and acting Chief Medical Officer since the formation of INmune Bio in September 2015. From November 2011 to May 2015, Dr. Tesi was CEO, President and Acting Chief Medical Officer of FPRT Bio Inc., a development-stage biotech company formed to develop XPro1595 for the treatment of neurodegenerative disease and other inflammatory diseases. From November 2010 to October 2011, Dr. Tesi was Chief Medical Officer of Adienne SRL, an emergi...
Oct 28, 2020•24 min
Dr. Matthew Bio is President & CEO at Snapdragon Chemistry. Matthew began his career in chemistry more than 20 years ago developing continuous processes for the manufacture and purification of acrylates at the former Rohm & Haas company. Matthew then moved to Columbia University and earned a PhD in Chemistry. Upon graduating, Matthew returned to industry as a process development chemist at Merck Research Laboratories. In 2006 Matthew moved to Amgen where he worked on the development of b...
Oct 21, 2020•27 min
Alexander Titus is the Founder of Bioeconomy.XYZ and the Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) at the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute (ARMI), where his career focuses on the intersection of technology and public benefit, with experience spanning the private and public sectors, as well as non-profits and academia. In previous roles, Alexander was the inaugural Assistant Director (AD) for Biotechnology within the Office of the CTO at the Department of Defense (DoD). As the AD for Biotechnolog...
Oct 14, 2020•30 min
James Burns, PhD, Chief Executive Officer, Locanabio James (Jim) Burns, Ph.D., joined Locanabio in December 2019 as CEO and Board member. Prior to joining Locanabio, Dr. Burns served as the CEO of Casebia Therapeutics and led the team in discovering and developing new CRISPR/Cas9-based breakthrough therapeutics to treat blood disorders, blindness and auto-immune disease. Prior to Casebia, Dr. Burns spent the bulk of his career at Sanofi-Genzyme, where he held several leadership roles with increa...
Oct 07, 2020•27 min
Seth Lederman is a physician, scientist and founder and executive officer of innovative biopharmaceuticals companies. Prior to founding Tonix, among the companies Dr. Lederman founded was Targent Pharmaceuticals, which developed late-stage oncology drugs, including pure-isomer levofolinic acid (levoleucovorin). Targent’s assets were sold to Spectrum Pharmaceuticals, which marketed levoleucovorin as Fusilev® for advanced colorectal cancer, where it gained significant market acceptance. Dr. Lederm...
Sep 30, 2020•18 min
Victor Hanson-Smith is the Head of Computational Biology at Verge Genomics and is one of the world's leaders in mathematical modeling of eukaryotic genome evolution and function. He has co-authored 13 publications in peer-reviewed journals such as Nature and Science, and his work has been featured in the NYTimes and The Washington Post. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Oregon, and completed an NIH post-doctoral research fellowship in Evolutionary Genomics at UCSF....
Sep 23, 2020•21 min
Dr. Maria Soloveychik is the co-founder and CEO of SyntheX, a therapeutics company focused on accelerating drug discovery using synthetic biology. The company’s core technologies, ToRPPIDO and ToRNeDO, rely on genetic engineering and evolutionary selection to synthesize and identify compounds that disrupt protein-protein interactions or lead to selective target degradation. SyntheX was founded in 2016 and is located in San Francisco. Maria has obtained her PhD from the Department of Molecular Ge...
Sep 16, 2020•18 min
Bob has been President of Imagion Biosystems since February 2015 and has led the company through the recent restructuring and recapitalization efforts. Previous employment experience includes Pres/GM for Silicon Biosystems and a career in marketing and sales management with more than 25 years experience in the computer, life science and medical diagnostics industries, e.g. Vice President Marketing and Sales for Nanogen, Inc., Senior Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at Gene Lo...
Sep 09, 2020•25 min
Nick Damiano is a serial entrepreneur with broad experience in medical devices and digital health. He has 15 years of experience as a healthcare entrepreneur, engineer, and leader. He is currently Co-Founder & CEO of Zenflow, which is developing a novel office-based therapy to relieve symptoms of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), which affects over 500 million men globally. The company has raised over $40 million in funding and conducted successful clinical trials in four countries. Zenflo...
Sep 02, 2020•22 min
Colleen Cutcliffe is the CEO and Co-Founder of Pendulum. She has over 15 years of experience leading and managing biology teams in academia, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology. Prior to starting Pendulum, Colleen was the Senior Manager of Biology at Pacific Biosciences and a Scientist at Elan Pharmaceuticals. Colleen received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Johns Hopkins University and her B.A. in Biochemistry from Wellesley College.
Aug 26, 2020•19 min
Dr. Paul R. Billings is a board-certified internist and clinical geneticist, who also holds a PhD in Immunology, from Harvard University. He worked there with Dr. Baruj Benacerraf, who subsequently received the Nobel Prize in Medicine. In 2018, Dr. Billings became the Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President for Medical Affairs at Natera. Dr Billings recently has been a Partner in the diagnostic medicine consultancy the Bethesda Group, and the Managing Director of the Bethesda Group Fund....
Aug 19, 2020•36 min
Andy Protter, PhD. joined Auransa in January 2017 as Chief Scientific Officer with 35 years of pharmaceutical industry research and development experience. At Auransa, Dr. Protter has led preclinical R&D which uses AI technology to discover novel drug candidates. Auransa’s lead project for hepatocellular carcinoma has completed all IND-supporting preclinical safety studies. Prior to joining Auransa, Dr. Protter was a Vice President at Medivation where he was responsible for preclinical pharm...
Aug 05, 2020•21 min
