Discovery/R&D

  1. Antibody Cocktails With Immunome's Dr. Purnanand Sarma 7/6/2022

    Immunome CEO Purnanand Sarma, Ph.D. joins the Business of Biotech for a discussion on precision antibodies and his company's discovery platform, which identifies novel therapeutic antibodies and their antigen targets by leveraging highly educated memory B cells from patients who have learned to fight off their disease. It’s kind of like picking an all-star team of players who have been in the game, and who are well-trained to win. On today's episode we'll learn how they’re discovered, how they’re developed, and how they’re applied in cancer and coronavirus.

  2. Gene Therapy For Chronic Inflammation With Xalud's Howard Rutman, M.D. 12/12/2022

    While many gene therapy development efforts focus on rare disease, Xalud Therapeutics is taking a swing that, measured in addressable patient market terms, is considerably bigger. Osteoarthritis, or OA, is a chronic, progressive joint disease that affects over 30 million people in the United States. On this episode of the Business of Biotech, we catch up with Xalud Chief Medical Officer Howard Rutman, M.D., MBA for a discussion on the company's late-stage plasmid DNA gene therapy that's showing promise in OA and other chronic inflammatory conditions. 

  3. 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. 

  4. Modernizing Clinical Trial Operations With Merck's Jennifer Sheller 12/18/2025

    On this episode of the Business of Biotech, Jennifer Sheller, SVP and Head of Global Clinical Trial Operations at Merck talks about simplifying trial protocols and what she likes about Merck's hybrid functional service provider model for conducting trials in over 60 countries. 

  5. Business of Biotech 2.0 with Ben Comer 3/27/2025

    After nearly five years as host of the Business of Biotech podcast, Matt Pillar is handing the mic over to the voice of the Business of Biotech 2.0, veteran life sciences journalist Ben Comer.

  6. The Discovery Of Microbes And Implications For Public Health Today, With Science Writer Thomas Levenson 6/4/2025

    On this week's Business of Biotech, Thomas Levenson, MIT professor and author of So Very Small: How Humans Discovered The Microcosmos, Defeated Germs — And May Still Lose The War Against Infectious Disease talks about what he learned in the writing of So Very Small, how cultural and political forces shape scientific progress, and what it means for drug developers, public health officials, and patients everywhere.

  7. Running Interference: RNAi With Silence Therapeutics' Craig Tooman 5/18/2022

    Fresh on the heels of his appointment as President & CEO at Silence Therapeutics, Craig Tooman joins the Business of Biotech to share how he applies his finance-minded leadership to steward the advance of the company's deepening pipeline of RNAi gene silencing candidates. Tooman also shares insight into the IP and the people responsible for managing that deep pipeline, which spans indications from hematology to cardiovascular disease to rare diseases.

  8. Celyad CEO Filippo Petti On In-House Allogeneic Cell Therapy Manufacturing 2/8/2021

    Join Matt Pillar and Erin Harris as we catch up with Celyad Oncology chief Filippo Petti on his company's differentiated approach to the discovery and development of allogeneic CAR-T cell therapy candidates for the treatment of cancer. Petti shares the technology and how the company intends to scale in-house manufacturing in its Belgium-based manufacturing facility.

  9. Executing A Product Pivot With Vir's Mark Eisner, MD 5/7/2025

    On this week's episode of the Business of Biotech, Dr. Mark Eisner, EVP and Chief Medical Officer at Vir Biotechnology, talks about the company's post-COVID pivot into infectious diseases (Hepatitis Delta and Hepatitis B) and oncology (solid tumors), how he reprioritized the company's development candidates and assimilated Sanofi's acquired T cell engager platform, and his own transition from healthcare provider to clinical research.

  10. Off-The-Shelf CAR T-Cell Therapy? 10/26/2020

    Find out what drove John McKearn, Ph.D. & CEO at Wugen, out of the lab at Pfizer and on to his quest to develop off-the-shelf cell therapies for T-Cell leukemias and lymphomas, Acute Myeloid Leukemia, and Multiple Myeloma.