Paul Biondi, Executive Partner, Flagship Pioneering and President, Pioneering Medicines Paul joined Flagship Pioneering in 2019 as Executive Partner, Flagship Pioneering and President, Pioneering Medicines. In his role at Flagship, Paul works with growth company CEOs and their teams to achieve the best attainable value for each company and serves on the boards of selected Flagship companies including Seres Therapeutics, Valo Health. As a member of Flagship’s senior leadership team, Paul is invol...
Jan 05, 2022•41 min
Thank you for your support for Season 2! We reflect and look forward to Season 3 on this episode! Learn more about our co-hosts below! Alok Tayi, PhD is the Co-founder and CEO of Vibe Bio. Vibe is a therapeutics company that partners with patient communities to develop new medicines. Previously, Alok spent 10 years as an entrepreneur and life sciences software executive. He started and built the Life Sciences business unit at Egnyte, was a YCombinator-backed founder and started two SaaaS compani...
Dec 15, 2021•7 min
As Chief Medical Officer Dr. Ticho is responsible for Stoke’s efforts to develop first-in-class RNA based disease-modifying medicines to treat severe genetic diseases. He is also co-founder and former CEO of Verve Therapeutics which is developing therapies to edit the genome and confer protection from cardiovascular disease. Prior to joining Stoke Barry was Head of R&D for Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases at Moderna Therapeutics. He was previously Head of External R&D Innovation for...
Dec 08, 2021•27 min
Gregory J. Divis serves as Avadel’s Chief Executive Officer and a member of Avadel’s Board of Directors. Greg was appointed CEO in June of 2019, after previously serving in several leadership roles within the company, including Chief Operating Officer, Executive Vice President, and Chief Commercial Officer. Greg brings over 30 years of experience in building and leading business and financial operations within the pharmaceutical industry. Prior to joining Avadel, Greg served as an Executive in R...
Dec 01, 2021•24 min
Chip has served as Genocea's President and Chief Executive Officer since February 2011 after serving as Chief Business Officer from August 2010 to February 2011. Chip has also served on Genocea's board of directors since February 2011. Prior to joining Genocea, he served as Chief Business Officer at Vanda Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical company he co-founded in 2004. Prior to Vanda, Chip was a principal at Care Capital, a venture capital firm investing in biopharmaceutical companies, after ...
Nov 17, 2021•29 min
Srini Ramanathan, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Research and Development Sciences Srini Ramanathan, Ph.D., joined Horizon Therapeutics in 2018. He leads Horizon’s research and development sciences, with portfolio oversight of discovery, preclinical research and development functions; he also oversees scientific due diligence for business development evaluations. He has worked in the biotechnology industry over 20 years and has been involved in drug approvals across ophthalmology, oncology and vi...
Nov 10, 2021•27 min
Dr. Keilhack is an accomplished cancer biologist with rich experience in cell biology, animal models of cancer, pharmacology and translational medicine with over 15 years of experience in oncology drug discovery in both small biotechnology companies and large pharmaceutical companies. Prior to joining Ribon, Dr. Keilhack was Senior Director of Biology at Epizyme where, among other responsibilities, she was the project leader for the company’s EZH2 inhibitor program, tazemetostat, which was FDA-a...
Nov 03, 2021•30 min
Dr. Ethan Perlstein is the founder and CEO of Perlara PBC, the first biotech public benefit company established in 2014 that partners with highly motivated and entrepreneurial families and foundations to develop treatments and cures for genetic diseases. Ethan is also cofounder and CEO of Maggie's Pearl LLC, a joint venture co-owned by Perlara, a family based in Michigan and the Mayo Clinic that is commercializing a repurposed drug for a congenital disorder of glycosylation. Ethan relaunched Per...
Oct 27, 2021•27 min
Michel Detheux is the co-founder, President, and CEO of iTeos Therapeutics, and has held the role of CEO since the company’s inception in 2012. He previously served as a director at Ludwig Cancer Research from December 2010 to March 2012. Prior to that, Michel worked in various scientific and business development roles at Ogeda (f/k/a Euroscreen). He has also held roles concurrent to his time at iTeos, including Founder and Managing Director of MG6A Bioconsulting SPRL, Director of the Board at B...
Oct 20, 2021•22 min
Armon Sharei, PhD, is the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of SQZ Biotechnologies, a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on unlocking the full potential of cell therapies for patients around the world and has active programs in Oncology, Autoimmune and Infectious Diseases, and other serious conditions. SQZ Biotech was founded on Dr. Sharei’s doctoral research at MIT and leverages the broad capabilities of the CellSqueeze® technology to enable a diverse pipeline of antigen-specific ce...
Oct 13, 2021•30 min
Thomas is a veteran entrepreneur who has turned creative scientific visions into successful businesses for both startups and established organizations for over 20 years and has co-founded or helped launch several companies, including Intellia Therapeutics and Eleven Biotherapeutics. While at Intellia Therapeutics, a CRISPR/Cas9 company which Tom joined as Chief Scientific Officer, he helped build the research team, raise funds (including an IPO), and provide a vision for technology extension. He...
Oct 06, 2021•24 min
Andrew Bellinger is chief scientific officer of Verve Therapeutics. He is a general cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and is board-certified in cardiovascular medicine and internal medicine. His scientific expertise includes biomedical engineering and drug delivery, computational modeling, pharmacology, clinical strategy and translational medicine. Prior to joining Verve, Dr. Bellinger co-founded and served as chief scientific officer of Lyndra Therapeutics, where he helped to build t...
Sep 29, 2021•22 min
Brian Finrow brings the skills and experience of a lawyer to a position that, in the biotech world, is more typically occupied by a scientist. This is essential to an enterprise like Lumen, which is rethinking drug development from the ground up to emphasize speed, efficiency and ease of delivery, and whose approach is so innovative that traditional ways of thinking about IP and regulatory pathways oftentimes do not apply. Prior to co-founding Lumen, Brian oversaw complex negotiations with vario...
Sep 22, 2021•21 min
Jeffrey Goldberg is the president and CEO of Immunitas. Jeff is an experienced biotech program and brand leader with over 20 years of industry experience. He has driven programs from discovery and pre-clinical through IND, clinical trials, NDA, and commercialization in multiple therapeutic areas, including oncology, neurology, renal, and other rare and orphan diseases. Prior to joining Immunitas, Jeff was at Akcea Therapeutics, where he was chief operating officer from the time of its formation ...
Sep 15, 2021•22 min
Todd Zavodnick has over 20 years of leadership experience in the biopharmaceutical industry. Prior to joining Dermavant in November 2018, Mr. Zavodnick served as Chief Commercial Officer and President of Aesthetics and Therapeutics at Revance. He served in global leadership roles at ZELTIQ Aesthetics prior to the company’s acquisition by Allergan; at Galderma Laboratories, where he was President and General Manager of North America; and at Alcon Laboratories. He is a member of the board of direc...
Aug 25, 2021•29 min
Alison serves as the chief medical officer at Surface Oncology. She has over 20 years of experience in clinical research, oncology drug development and clinical neuro-oncology. Prior to joining Surface, Alison held several leadership roles in clinical research and development at Radius Health, Synta Pharmaceuticals and at Sanofi in the global oncology division. Prior to entering the biotech industry, she served on faculty at Massachusetts General Hospital where she focused on early phase clinica...
Aug 18, 2021•20 min
Nancy Lurker: President & Chief Executive Officer Our President, CEO, and a director since September 2016, Ms Lurker has broad-ranging experience in the pharmaceutical industry and a track record of maximizing the potential of new therapies and successfully implementing innovative US and global drug launches. Said Saim, PhD: Chief Technology Officer Dr Saim has more than 25 years of product development experience. Dr Saim has published 22 papers in engineering and science journals, holds 18 ...
Aug 11, 2021•28 min
Mike Nally is the Chief Executive Officer of Generate Biomedicines and a CEO-Partner at Flagship Pioneering. Mike brings significant experience leading global organizations and is passionate about working with teams and partners to bring innovations to patients. Mike previously served as Chief Marketing Officer at Merck & Co. In this role, Mike was responsible for Global Marketing and Brand Strategy across a vast portfolio, exceeding $40B in revenue, of innovative medicines and vaccines. Pri...
Aug 04, 2021•36 min
Ron Cohen, M.D. is President, CEO and founder of Acorda Therapeutics, Inc., a public biotechnology company developing therapies for disorders of the nervous system, including multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease and migraine. Dr. Cohen previously was a principal in the startup and an officer of Advanced Tissue Sciences, Inc., a biotechnology company engaged in the growth of human organ tissues for transplantation uses. He serves as a Director on the Board of Directors of VBL Therapeutics. He ...
Jul 28, 2021•40 min
Avanish Vellanki is passionate about offering cancer patients better treatment options, and he firmly believes that precision oncology strategies are the best manner in which to achieve that goal. He has 20 years of experience across the healthcare and investment banking sectors and began his career on Wall Street at Bear, Stearns & Co. in 2004 in equity research, covering small/mid-cap biotechnology companies. Following his time at Bear, Stearns, Avanish transitioned to Global Healthcare In...
Jul 21, 2021•29 min
Benjamine Liu is the co-founder and CEO of TrialSpark, a technology company that is reimagining drug development. Benjamine received his DPhil at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, conducting his work with Sir Simon Lovestone. His doctoral thesis leveraged machine-learning, AI, and healthcare big-data -- genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, imaging -- to develop diagnostics and therapeutics for Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease. During his graduate work, he observed the way clinical t...
Jul 14, 2021•27 min
Ankit Mahadevia is the CEO of Spero Therapeutics and a member of the Board of Directors. He was formerly a Venture Partner in the life sciences group at Atlas Venture, located in Cambridge, MA. In that capacity he supported the formation of eight companies focused on novel drug discovery platforms and therapeutic products including Nimbus Therapeutics, Arteaus Therapeutics (acquired by Lilly), and Translate Bio (Nasdaq: TBIO). He led three of these as Acting CEO, including Synlogic (Nasdaq: SYBX...
Jul 07, 2021•39 min
Jonathan Rigby is an experienced CEO with three decades of experience creating value and opportunities for companies in the pharmaceutical, biotech and drug delivery technology industry. He currently serves as the CEO of Revolo Biotherapeutics, a biotechnology company setting out to revolutionize the treatment for autoimmune and allergic diseases, through the development of therapies that reset the immune system to achieve superior long-term disease remission. Prior to leading the charge at Revo...
Jun 23, 2021•25 min
Balkrishan (Simba) Gill, Ph.D. has served as our President, Chief Executive Officer and a member of our Board of Directors since September 2015. Dr. Gill also has served on the board of directors of Realm Therapeutics PLC since 2016, and as a Venture Partner at Flagship Pioneering, a life sciences innovation enterprise, since 2015. From 2006 to 2015, Dr. Gill served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of moksha8 Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a pharmaceutical company. From 2016 to 2019, Dr. Gil...
Jun 16, 2021•41 min
Yizhen is passionate about investing in and working with persevering entrepreneurs who want to change the world, especially in healthcare and biotech. Yizhen focuses on early stage investments in frontier technologies applied to healthcare and life sciences, with interests across artificial intelligence, engineering, robotics/automation, and new biology. BIOS Community brings together innovation minded life science professionals, uniting founders, VCs, professors, pharma, PhDs, & all those i...
Jun 09, 2021•28 min
Dr. Bexon brings to Vyriad more than 20 years of management experience in clinical development of biopharmaceuticals, including management of multi-site clinical trials and FDA approval of lead assets. Prior to joining Vyriad, Dr. Bexon founded Bexon Clinical Consulting, which provides clinical development support to the pharma and biotech industries. Previously, Dr. Bexon was Vice President of Clinical Development of Idera Pharmaceuticals, from 2007-2009. From 2001-2006, she held a number of po...
May 19, 2021•19 min
Martin (Marty) is a cofounder and chief executive officer of Meissa Vaccines. Prior to cofounding Meissa, Marty was an Associate Professor at Emory University and director of the Emory Children’s Center for Childhood Infections and Vaccines (CCIV). He developed an RSV reverse genetics platform technology and novel strategies and methods for making vaccine candidates by synthetic biology. As applied to RSV vaccines, this technology was recognized as Emory University’s innovation of the year in 20...
May 12, 2021•24 min
Dr. Miller is a Founder and the Chief Operating Officer of Karuna Therapeutics. Dr. Miller is the lead inventor of Karuna’s KarXT platform and served as CEO of Karuna from 2016-2018. He served as a member of our board of directors from April 2012 to March 2019. From August 2008 to July 2016, Dr. Miller held several positions at PureTech Health plc, last serving as a Vice President, Venture Partner, in such capacity served as Chief Operating Officer of Tal Medical and the acting Chief Operating O...
May 05, 2021•27 min
Samuel Mazin, Ph.D. Founder and Chief Technology Officer Member, Board of Directors Sam Mazin, Ph.D., co-founded RefleXion Medical in 2009, where he is the inventor of the company’s core technology. While a postdoctoral researcher in Radiology at Stanford University, Dr. Mazin was selected by the Kauffman Foundation as one of 13 postdocs in the nation to commercialize promising innovations. His prior research at Stanford was focused on the design of a novel X-ray computed tomography (CT) system,...
Apr 28, 2021•28 min
Heather Wolff joined Decibel in February 2018 as the head of clinical development operations for Decibel Therapeutics. Heather is responsible for Decibel’s clinical operations, regulatory operations, medical writing and data management functions, providing leadership around the company’s development programs. She has a long track record in clinical development, with a focus on building and leading data management groups. Widely recognized as a leader in the space, she has been a key member of bo...
Apr 21, 2021•22 min
