Discovery/R&D

1. COO Liftoff With Rocket Pharmaceuticals' Kinnari Patel, PharmD 7/12/2023

   Chief Operating Officer is arguably the toughest job in the emerging biopharma C-suite. HR, CMC, regulatory affairs, legal, PR, you name it, the COO touches it, and practically everything rolls up to her. This week's episode of the Business of Biotech brings us to a president and COO who's also a mom, a volunteer, and an advocate for diversity and equality in biopharma. That advocacy isn't just lip service, by the way. Here, Rocket Pharmaceuticals' Kinnari Patel, PharmD, shares on the real, practical, replicable steps Rocket takes to build a diverse and equitable work environment, how the fruits of that effort have proven important to the company's success, and where Rocket is taking its high-flying gene therapy act next.

   Subscribe to the NEW #BusinessofBiotech newsletter at bioprocessonline.com/bob for more real, honest, transparent interactions with the leaders of emerging biotech. It's a once-per-month dose of insight and intel that you'll actually look forward to receiving! Check it out at bioprocessonline.com/bob!

2. 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.

3. Bacterial Therapy: Modulation Of The Microbiome 11/24/2020

   Dr. Bernat Olle, CEO joins The Business of Biotech to talk about the pioneering work that his company, Vedanta Biosciences, is doing to modulate the immune system and provide colonization resistance against infectious pathogens -- particularly those contracted during hospital stays. Learn about Dr. Olle's leadership of a company that's pioneering the exploration of immune-regulating and immune-potentiating bacteria that live in association with humans.

4. BoB@JPM: Support Of A Blossoming Pipeline With Sangamo's Sandy Macrae, Ph.D. 2/5/2023

   The Business of Biotech podcast took to the streets of San Francisco during the 41st Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. This week's episode features a conversation with Sangamo Therapeutics CEO Sandy Macrae, Ph.D., who rationalizes the company's aggressive pipeline development and its decision to invest in multinational AAV and cell therapy manufacturing facilities in France and California. Dr. Macrae zeroes in on the relationship between people and processes that's enabled the company to grow to more than 500 associates working on nearly 20 cell therapy, gene therapy, and genome engineering programs. 

5. Building Cell Therapy Companies With Kenai Therapeutics' Nick Manusos 12/22/2025

   On this week's episode of the Business of Biotech, Nick Manusos, CEO at Kenai Therapeutics, talks about his experiences building cell therapy spinouts from FujiFilm Cellular Dynamics, learning from big pharma decision-making processes, and dosing the first patient with Kenai's allogeneic neuron replacement cell therapy for Parkinson's disease.

6. mRNA Upstarts With Radar Therapeutics' Sophia Lugo and Eerik Kaseniit, Ph.D. 8/25/2024

   Guest co-host Anna Rose Welch of Advancing RNA fame joins us on this week’s Business of Biotech podcast for a conversation with the leaders of RNA upstart Radar Therapeutics. The company’s co-founders, Eerik Kaseniit, Ph.D. (CSO & President) and Sophia Lugo (CEO), are making waves in the mRNA therapeutics space on the heels of the invention of a precision-expressed mRNA technology that laid bare the path to Radar’s inception.

7. Fibroblasts In Regenerative Medicine With FibroBiologics' Pete O'Heeron & Dr. Hamid Khoja 6/21/2022

   FibroBiologics Chairman, CEO, & Founder Pete O'Heeron shares the journey that led him from clinical care to biopharma entrepreneurship, and he's joined by Chief Scientific Officer Hamid Khoja, Ph.D., who explains the manufacturing technology that's driving the company's exploitation of fibroblasts to develop regenerative therapies for indications ranging from degenerative disk disease and multiple sclerosis to cancer immunotherapies and therapeutics.

8. Plant-Based Biologics With iBio's Randy Maddux 2/14/2022

   iBio COO Randy Maddux walks us through the Bryan, Texas-based biopharma's attempt to turn the CHO cell biologic development paradigm on its ear with hydroponically-grown N. benthamiana. His company's FastPharming approach to protein production, he says, could be modularized to speed cycle times and dramatically reduce upstream costs at scales large and small. For its part, iBio is proving out the approach on a host of therapeutic and vaccine candidates for oncological, infectious, and fibrotic diseases.

9. AI-Driven Biologics With Fountain Therapeutics' William Greene, M.D 2/28/2022

   With its hypothesis-free, target-free, AI-driven drug discovery platform, Fountain Therapeutics is turning the traditional drug discovery pathway on its ear to address a variety of age-related disease. On this week's episode of the Business of Biotech, Fountain CEO William Greene, M.D. joins us to discuss the approach, its rationale, and how the company is applying substantial support from the likes of Eli Lilly, Alexandria Venture Investments, R42 Group, Khosla Ventures, and Nan Fung Life Sciences.

10. Epigenomic Programming With Omega Therapeutics' Mahesh Karande 9/21/2022

    Using computational biology to hasten the effort, Omega Therapeutics' plan is to "coopt nature's universal biological operating system for gene control and cell differentiation." On this episode of the Business of Biotech, we dig into exactly what that means. We also explore the company's preclinical ambitions, which are diverse, targeting regenerative, multigenic/immunologic, oncologic, and monogenic indications. Omega is leaning heavily into computational biology along the way, having mapped what CEO Mahesh Karande characterizes as 95% of the IGD landscape. Learn how Karande intends to maintain momentum on this episode of the Business of Biotech.