Discovery/R&D

1. Gene Tx For Renal Disease With Purespring CEO Richard Francis 5/2/2022

   Purespring Therapeutics launched in 2020 on the back of IP developed by renowned kidney researcher Prof. Moin Saleem, who spent decades working on podocytes when podocytes weren’t cool. Just two years later, the company boasts three gene therapy assets and a platform developed expressly to identify new therapeutic targets to address kidney disease. 

2. Real-Time Clinical Analysis With Glympse Bio's Dr. Caroline Loew 6/1/2021

   On this episode of the Business of Biotech, we're going deep with Glympse Bio President & CEO Dr. Caroline Loew to explore the possibilities and implications of the in-vivo, bioengineered, tunable sensors the company is developing for diagnostic and prognostic purposes in protease-mediates diseases. Currently in the clinic with applications for Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis and other fibrotic diseases as well as Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer and other solid tumors, Glympse is unlocking an unprecedented view of near-real-time therapeutic response and therapeutic efficacy that could have big implications on the way biologics are developed, refined, and studied in the clinic.

3. Academia + Industry with BridgeBio's Dr. Michael Henderson 6/21/2021

   BridgeBio has a whopping 30+ pre-clinical to clinical-stage candidates in its pipeline representing an impressive array of modalities and targets. It boasts a couple of commercial wins under its belt. The company is no stranger to developing business strategies for success. Central to that success are partnerships with scientists and researchers to fuel pipeline expansion. On this episode of The Business of Biotech, BridgeBio Chief Business Officer Michael Henderson, M.D. walks us through the formula behind the company's academia-led growth strategy.

4. Oncology Discovery Advances With AbbVie's Steve Davidsen, Ph.D. 10/25/2022

   AbbVie VP of Oncology Discovery Research Steve Davidsen, Ph.D. is a living, breathing timeline of the company's cancer research and development efforts. He got his start with the company— Abbott at the time— way back in 1986. As such, he's charted the adoption of multiple advanced technologies that have contributed to the realization of dozens of molecular weapons in the fight against cancer. On this episode of the Business of Biotech, Dr. Davidsen shares the latest on AbbVie's adoption of computational biology and how it's contributing to discovery and development efficiencies, why he's an AbbVie "lifer," how he manages and motivates a large team of research scientists, and a whole lot more.

5. Gynecological Cancer Therapies With Context Therapeutics' Martin Lehr 4/18/2022

   Context Therapeutics Co-Founder & CEO Martin Lehr shares stories from his self-described "recovery from venture capital," the work his company is doing in gynecological cancers, and how his small company manages a modality-agnostic approach and investigator-sponsored trials across multiple clinical candidates, four of which are in phase 2 clinical trials. We also discuss his "extracurricular" work with BioBreak, Life Science Leader, and Life Science Cares, and why those organizations are important to him personally and professionally.

6. The Face Of African Biotech with Adrienne Leussa, Ph.D. 6/7/2023

   Dr. Adrienne Leussa is one of our favorite follows. If the booming biotech scene on an incredibly diverse continent of 1.2 billion people interests you, she should be one of your faves, too.

7. Tick-Derived Therapeutic Molecules With Akari Therapeutics' Rachelle Jacques 11/14/2022

   Ticks are a scourge. They're vectors of multiple serious and debilitating diseases, and evolution has made them perfectly adept at attaching to their hosts—and potentially spreading those diseases virtually undetected— that ability owing to anti-inflammatory and anesthetic proteins in their saliva. But the emerging biotech Akari Therapeutics thinks there's a broad range of medicinal value in those proteins. They've painstakingly developed a recombinant version of one such tick saliva-derived protein, called nomacopan, and put it to work in phase 3 trials to treat rare but deadly severe hematopoietic stem cell transplant-related thrombotic microangiopathy (HSCT-TMA). On this week's episode of the Business of Biotech, Akari President & CEO Rachelle Jacques tells us about the redeeming qualities of tick saliva and how her company is putting it to work.

8. A Biopharma Pivot Story With Compugen's Dr. Anat Cohen-Dayag 3/15/2021

   Dr. Anat Cohen-Dayag transformed her company from a computational biology service provider to a clinical-stage biopharma with multiple cancer immunotherapy candidates, and she did it in a remarkably short period of time. Listen in as she discusses the human resources, financial, and capital strategies she deployed to build a biotech on the back of computational science, and shares her vision for the future of drug discovery.

9. Establishing Research With Horizon Therapeutics' Robert Stoffel, Ph.D. 7/26/2023

   Horizon Therapeutics has made plenty of waves in the biotech news cycle of late. Its formal establishment of a research team – comparatively pragmatic as that may be – could have impactful, long-term consequences.

10. CAR T-cells For Ovarian Cancers with Anixa Biosciences' Amit Kumar, Ph.D. 3/8/2022

    While success has been seen in animal models, solid tumors have proved a vexing challenge for CAR T-cell therapies. On this week's episode of the Business of Biotech, we're joined by Anixa Biosciences Chairman, President, & CEO Amit Kumar, Ph.D. Dr. Kumar shares on the company's progress with a CAR T-cell therapy that aims to attack both tumor cells and the tumor vasculature, in hopes that it might be the first to destroy solid breast and ovarian cancers.