Despite the market success of GLP-1 agonists to treat obesity, many patients suffer side effects such as nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting. These medicines also cause significant loss of muscle mass. And when someone discontinues use, they often regain the weight they lost. Skye Bioscience is developing nimacimab, an experimental therapy that has the potential to induce weight loss by inhibiting the CB1 receptor. Because of its different target, it may be able to be used in conjunction with GLP-1 a...
Jul 02, 2025•38 min•Ep. 128
Many companies are seeking to develop non-opioid treatments for pain, but Persica Pharmaceuticals may be taking a surprising approach for chronic low-back pain. The company’s lead experimental therapy for the condition is an antibiotic. That may sound odd, but it turns out that about half of chronic low back pain cases are due to bacterial infections that occur after herniation of the spinal disc or injury. We spoke to Steve Ruston, CEO of Persica Pharmaceuticals, about the need for new approach...
Jun 25, 2025•34 min•Ep. 127
Though there are plenty of therapeutic alternatives for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, there are no approved biologics for treating acute exacerbations of these conditions. Connect Biopharma believes that’s an opportunity. It's experimental therapy rademikibart has shown promise treating exacerbations and providing sustained improvements. We spoke to Barry Quart, CEO of Connect Biopharma, about the unmet need the company is seeking to address, how rademikibart works, ...
Jun 18, 2025•26 min•Ep. 126
When Vanderbilt University Medical Center began to consider how big data and precision medicine were going to impact both research and development and clinical care, it struck on the idea of building a large-scale biobank and tying it to its store of millions of electronic health records. That ultimately led to the founding of Nashville Bioscience, a for-profit subsidiary of the medical center. We spoke to Leeland Ekstrom, co-founder and CEO of NashBio, about the company’s data collection method...
Jun 11, 2025•45 min•Ep. 125
Spirulina, also known as blue-green algae, is edible. It can be engineered to cost-effectively produce biologics that can be taken orally. Though people have long sought to do this, Lumen Bioscience has developed platform technology that solved the various challenges is engineering spirulina to produce medicines. We spoke to Brian Finrow, co-founder and CEO of Lumen, about the company’s platform technology, why it makes possible the pursuit of biologics for indications that were previously not p...
Jun 04, 2025•38 min•Ep. 124
Cancer is a global disease, and BeOne Medicines believes it should develop its cancer therapies for global markets. To do so, it’s taking innovative approaches to clinical trials, pricing, and manufacturing to enable it to support patients not only in high-income countries but also in low- and middle-income countries. We spoke to Matt Shaulis, general manager of North America for BeOne Medicines, about the significant global disparities in cancer care, the mission of BeOne Medicines to improve a...
May 28, 2025•43 min•Ep. 123
The advent of immunotherapies is transforming cancer care. While early efforts have focused on enabling T cells to attack cancers, Myeloid Therapeutics is developing next-generation immunotherapies that use mRNA to train myeloid cells to attack cancer. We spoke to Daniel Getts, founder and CEO of Myeloid Therapeutics, about the limitations of existing immunotherapies, the role myeloid cells play in the immune system, and the benefits of the company’s therapeutic approach.
May 21, 2025•37 min•Ep. 122
Despite having taken steps to prepare for a possible pandemic, the United States fared poorly during the COVID outbreak relative to other developed nations. It also sharpened political divides as conspiracy theories and misinformation spread on social media. In “COVID Wars: America’s Struggle Over Public Health and Personal Freedom,” tech entrepreneur-turned-historian Ronald Gruner takes a deep dive into the public data surrounding the pandemic. We spoke to Gruner about putting the pandemic in h...
May 14, 2025•32 min•Ep. 121
GLP-1 agonists have been a breakthrough for the treatment of obesity, a global problem with serious health risks. While the benefits of these therapies are seen as outweighing the risks, there have been some concerns about the loss of muscle mass, particularly in older people using these drugs. iBio is developing next-generation obesity therapies that may be able to be used in combination with GLP-1 agonists or by themselves. Its lead experimental therapy is a myostatin inhibitor, part of a clas...
May 07, 2025•30 min•Ep. 120
At the end of 2024, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health awarded a team led by the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, and including the Foundation Fighting Blindness and six other research groups, up to $46 million to advance research to enable human eye transplants to restore vision in people who are blind. The goal of the project is to make whole eye transplantation a reality by 2030. We spoke to Kia Washington, the project’s principal investigator and professor of sur...
Apr 30, 2025•25 min•Ep. 119
Synthetic biology companies have faced a difficult few years as share prices have been battered and investment in the sector has waned. As investors and companies are readying to gather for the annual SynBioBeta conference in San Jose May 5 through 8, a new report from the bipartisan National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology warns that the United States is at risk of losing its leadership to China and is calling for a $15 billion investment into biotech over the next five years to s...
Apr 23, 2025•35 min•Ep. 118
Until recently, treatments for both chronic and acute pain had been an area that went for decades without the development of innovative new treatments. South Rampart Pharma is seeking to develop safer and more effective pain management therapies that avoid the liver toxicity of acetaminophen, the kidney toxicity of NSAIDs, and the abuse potential of opioids. We spoke to Hernan Bazan, co-founder and CEO of South Rampart Pharma, about the need for new pain medicines, the company’s first-in-class e...
Apr 16, 2025•39 min•Ep. 117
The Zimin Institute for AI Solutions in Healthcare, a joint initiative between the Zimin Foundation and the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, is seeking to accelerate the integration of AI into the life sciences. Although it is pursuing a wide range of opportunities from precision medicine to therapeutic discovery, its primary focus is on addressing real-world problems and conducting translational research. We spoke to Shai Shen-Orr, director of the Zimin Institute for AI Solutions, abo...
Apr 09, 2025•28 min•Ep. 116
The search for non-opioid pain relievers opioids has focused on pharmaceutical alternatives including non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, antidepressants, and anticonvulsants. Brixton Biosciences is developing Neural Ice, an injectable frozen slurry that can degenerate nerves in targeted areas and provide pain relief for extended periods. The discovery capitalizes on unexpected findings about the effects of a fat-reducing cosmetic procedure. We spoke to Sameer Sabir, co-founder and CEO of Brixton...
Apr 02, 2025•29 min•Ep. 115
Antibodies have been powerful tools for inhibiting a targeted protein. Abalone Bio is pursuing a new class of antibody therapies called activating antibodies that can regulate cellular processes and restore their balance. One aspect that makes these rare antibodies attractive is that they can target previously undruggable G protein-coupled receptors, allowing them to treat diseases that have been hard to address. We spoke to Richard Yu, co-founder and CEO of Abalone Bio, about activating antibod...
Mar 26, 2025•40 min•Ep. 114
Jorge Goldstein trained for a career in molecular biology and biochemistry before becoming a patent attorney, a background that positioned him to help shape patent law for the biotech industry throughout his 40-year career. In his new book Patenting Life: Tales from the Front Lines of Intellectual Property and the New Biology, Goldstein offers a history of the biotech industry through the lens of the critical patent battles that shaped the landscape. We spoke to Goldstein, founder of the law fir...
Mar 19, 2025•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 113
Eosinophilic esophagitis is a progressive allergic disease characterized by difficulty swallowing and gastric reflux. It results from an elevated number of inflammatory immune cells in the walls of the esophagus. If left untreated, it can cause long-term complications, including scarring and difficulty swallowing. Revolo Biotherapeutics is developing a synthetic peptide therapy that can potentially restore immune system homeostasis in EOE and other allergic diseases. We spoke to Woody Bryan, pre...
Mar 12, 2025•29 min•Ep. 112
NK cells, part of the innate immune system, serve as the body’s first line of defense. These cells can recognize and kill abnormal or infected cells. As therapies, they have the advantage over CAR-T and other cell therapies because they can be used off-the-shelf without undergoing gene editing or other genetic modifications. They also don’t trigger cytokine storms, a common reaction to CAR-T therapies that can cause a systemic inflammatory response that can range from flu-like symptoms to life-t...
Mar 05, 2025•32 min•Ep. 111
More than a decade after the approval of a curative therapy for hepatitis C, hepatitis B has proven more challenging to tackle. Vir Biotechnology, in collaboration with Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, is developing a promising combination approach that marries Vir’s monoclonal antibody tobivibart with Alnylam’s siRNA elebsiran. We spoke to Mark Eisner, chief medical officer of Vir, about hepatitis B, the company’s combination therapy in development with Alnylam, and its platform technologies for develo...
Feb 26, 2025•29 min•Ep. 110
While GLP-1 agonists have been all the rage in treating obesity, Coya Therapeutics sees potential for these therapies to address inflammatory diseases. In fact, Coya is developing its low-dose interleukin 2 in combination with several different agents. The belief is that its approach will address inflammation by targeting dysfunctional regulatory T cells. The company is pursuing multiple neurodegenerative conditions, as well as autoimmune and metabolic diseases. We spoke to Arun Swaminathan, CEO...
Feb 19, 2025•22 min•Ep. 109
Though cancer vaccines have been an area of great promise, in practice they have faced several challenges because of the heterogeneity of tumors, the ability of the tumor microenvironment to suppress the immune system, and the challenges of producing a strong and sustained T-cell response. OSE Immunotherapeutics’ off-the-shelf cancer vaccine Tedopi has shown promising results in a phase 3 study in patients with non-small cell lung cancer and the company is now conducting a confirmatory phase 3 s...
Feb 12, 2025•31 min•Ep. 108
One of the challenges in treating brain cancer and other diseases of the central nervous system is delivering therapeutics beyond the blood-brain barrier. NeOnc Technologies using a natural compound derived from essential oils in plants that not only can kill cancer cells, but can cross the blood-brain barrier. What’s more, it can transport other therapies as well. We spoke to Thomas Chen, founder and CEO of NeOnc, about brain cancer, how the blood-brain barrier complicates the delivery of thera...
Feb 05, 2025•9 min•Ep. 107
Some 70 percent of potential therapeutic targets are believed to be beyond the reach of conventional small molecule therapies or biologics. Macrocyclic peptides offer a way to get at elusive targets while providing desirable characteristics of both small molecule drugs and biologics. They offer oral bioavailability, can permeate cells, and engage complex targets with specificity. Unnatural Products is harnessing AI to create synthetic macrocyclic peptides to pursue previously undruggable targets...
Jan 29, 2025•25 min•Ep. 106
Through the creation of a chemical programming language, Chemify said it has been able to expand the chemical space it can explore. Chemify is combining this unique programming language with robotics and AI to digitize chemistry. The company, though, has much grander ambitions than being a drug developer. It wants to be the infrastructure for the industry. We spoke to Lee Cronin, founder and CEO of Chemify, about the company’s platform technology for digitizing chemistry, how its chemical progra...
Jan 22, 2025•34 min•Ep. 105
Prescription digital therapies, the use of software to treat disease, are growing in number. Already there have been 140 prescription digital therapies that have been granted market access through national regulatory and reimbursement pathways. That represents a five-fold increase in the since 2021, according to the IQVIA Digital Health Trends 2024 report. We spoke to Murray Aitken, executive director of the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science, about the report, why digital health companies f...
Jan 15, 2025•29 min•Ep. 104
There has been growing interest in the potential of psychedelics to treat a variety of mental health conditions. While some focus has been put on synthesizing compounds that can target the receptors psychedelics bind to without inducing their hallucinatory effects, Filament Health is taking a notably different approach. The company, co-founded by Ben Lightburn who previously ran a firm specializing in natural extraction technologies, is focusing on developing pharmaceutical grade botanical drugs...
Jan 08, 2025•34 min•Ep. 103
Gain Therapeutics' platform technology Magellan leverages AI, structural biology, and physics-based models to identify novel binding sites on otherwise undruggable proteins implicated in diseases. The company’s experimental Parkinson’s disease therapy has the potential to slow or stop progression of the neurodegenerative condition by stabilizing a lysosomal enzyme implicated in the disease. We spoke to Gene Mack, interim CEO of Gain, about the company’s platform technology, how its experimental ...
Jan 01, 2025•38 min•Ep. 102
We continue our holiday tradition by welcoming STAT News Senior Biotech Writer Adam Feuerstein for our annual look back at the year that was in biotech and what’s ahead for the industry with the JPMorgan Healthcare conference and beyond in 2025. Feuerstein offers his view on finance and dealmaking in 2024, new drug approvals, and his annual take on the best and worst CEOs of the year. We also discuss what Trump 2.0 may look like for the industry, changes coming to the FDA and other agencies, and...
Dec 25, 2024•40 min•Ep. 101
Prolific Machines uses light to precisely control virtually any function in any cell to transform what is possible with biomanufacturing. In combination with optogenetics and AI, the technology has the potential to impact a wide range of industries, from food production to pharmaceuticals, by enabling new capabilities, reducing costs, and improving sustainability. We spoke to Deniz Kent, co-founder and CEO of Prolific Machines, about the company’s photomolecular platform technology, the benefits...
Dec 18, 2024•34 min•Ep. 100
ImpriMed is working to deliver on the promise of precision medicine by using a patient’s live cancer cells to see how they respond to different treatment options and artificial intelligence to predict which medicines will work best. The company has had impressive results with its customers to date, but the catch is that it has initially targeted its service to the veterinary market, and its dogs and cats have benefited from it. The company is now working to bring its offering to two-legged patie...
Dec 11, 2024•35 min•Ep. 99
