Discovery/R&D

  1. Engineering Proteins For Food Allergies With Ukko's Dr. Anat Binur 10/25/2022

    Anat Binur, Ph.D. is CEO and Co-Founder at Ukko, where she's leading an effort to create new allergy therapeutics by engineering the proteins that induce immune response in people who suffer from food allergies. The effort at Ukko is deeply rooted in computational biology. The company leverages artificial intelligence to analyze how the allergen proteins interact with patients' blood in an effort to determine the specific attributes of the proteins that trigger immune response. Then, it applies a unique combination of compute power and biology to identify and understand the changes it wants to engineer and predict the best possible designs. Learn how Ukko is fostering a culture of IT and biology collaboration and what lured this dynamic entrepreneur into biopharma on this episode of the Business of Biotech.

  2. Antibodies For Severe Allergies With IgGenix's Jessica Grossman, M.D. 4/4/2022

    In this wide-ranging discussion, IgGenix CEO Jessica Grossman, M.D. discusses the application of and market opportunity for antibody therapy for severe allergies, the gender gap in the biopharma c-suite, why women work harder than men, what it means to be a female biopharma leader, and IgGenix's approach at isolating and re-engineering allergen-specific IgE antibodies into IgG antibodies designed to alleviate — and possibly prevent — allergic cascade.

  3. Live Biologics & The Microbiome With 4D pharma's Duncan Peyton 5/9/2022

    4D pharma's flagship early-stage clinical candidates are live biotherapeutics, a relatively new class of biologics that seek to impact disease state by modulating the microbiome. CEO Duncan Peyton is leading the effort to understand how the health of the microbiome relates to a wide range of diseases, including immuno-oncology, central nervous system disorders, respiratory disease, auto immune indications, and gastro intestinal disease. 4D pharma is even working on a live biotherapeutic vaccine platform. Join Duncan on this episode of the Business of Biotech as we discuss this new frontier of therapeutic exploration.

  4. Dr. Gaurav Shah: Rocket's Chief Gene Therapist & Virtuoso 8/30/2020

    Rocket Pharmaceuticals CEO Dr. Gaurav Shah shares the parallels between his leadership in the gene therapy space and his successes as a Grammy®-nominated recording artist with the Business of Biotech podcast. This episode is full of actionable insight on the inspiration behind how Dr. Shah manages the science and process side of the business, his employees, financing, and stakeholder expectations by drawing from his passion for—and understanding of—music.

  5. RNA Delivery Business with Liberate's Shawn Davis, Ph.D. & Walter Strapps, Ph.D. 11/8/2023

    Earlier this year, Shawn Davis, Ph.D. left a pretty comfortable position at AstraZeneca (and Amgen before that, and Milliken – and others – before that) to lead Liberate Bio. He brought along another industry notable in Merck/Intellia alumnus Walter Strapps, Ph.D., who serves as CSO at Liberate. Why'd they do it? Because RNA delivery is such a crucial step toward revolutionary genetic medicine, but it's tough science. They think they can change that.

  6. An AI Awakening With Profluent Bio's Hilary Eaton, Ph.D. 9/22/2024

    Hilary Eaton, Ph.D. was a self-described AI skeptic, particularly regarding using the tool in drug discovery. Then, a series of professional and deeply personal life events and medical discoveries put her in a position to confront that skepticism head-on. On Business of Biotech, the Chief Business Officer at ProFluent Bio shares her story and makes a pragmatic case for the transformative value of AI to biotech builders.

  7. How To Hire And Build A Winning Executive Team With Occam Global's Bill Holodnak 8/6/2025

    On this week's Business of Biotech episode, Bill Holodnak, Cofounder and CEO of Occam Global, a life sciences executive recruitment firm (and occasional investor), shares insights from his decades of experience pairing executives with drug development companies, and talks about the psychology of successful biotech leadership.

  8. BoB@JPM: Self-Replicating RNA With Elixirgen's Akihiro Ko 3/5/2023

    Elixirgen Therapeutics CEO Akihiro Ko joins the Business of Biotech for the final episode in our special series recorded at JPM Week in San Francisco. Life Science Leader Chief Editor Ben Comer joined us for the conversation. We dive deep into Elixirgen's unique, temperature-controlled in-vivo gene expression technology designed to address common cell therapy administration challenges and unwanted, off-target immungenicity effects. Ko also shares progress on the company's ex-vivo candidate EXG-34217, an autologous cell therapy for telomere biology disorders, offers his take on the ever-crowded RNA therapeutics space and how the company is separating itself from the crowd, and much more!

  9. First AI Antibody In Humans with Aulos' Aron Knickerbocker 7/14/2024

    Data drives decision-making at Aulos Bioscience. It's also driven the career trajectory of its CEO. On this week's episode of the Business of Biotech podcast, we get an introspective walk through Aron Knickerbocker's strategically-orchestrated career path, from his early days in the labs at Bristol-Myers Squibb and Genentech to his leadership of Aulos Bioscience, a company that boasts the first AI-generated antibody in human clinical trials.

  10. Biotech Product Partnership with Coya Therapeutics' Arun Swaminathan, Ph.D. and Dr. Reddy's Milan Kalawadia 8/13/2025

    On this week's Business Of Biotech episode, Milan Kalawadia, CEO, North America, Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, and Arun Swaminathan, Ph.D., CEO, Coya Therapeutics discuss their unique partnership to develop COYA 302, a novel dual-mechanism immunotherapy for the treatment of ALS.