Discovery/R&D

51. Circular RNA with Orna Therapeutics' Tom Barnes, Ph.D. and Advancing RNA's Anna Rose Welch 4/28/2024

    As if Orna Therapeutics' CEO, Thomas Barnes, isn't enough to draw you in to the Business of Biotech, we teamed up with Advancing RNA Editorial & Community Director Anna Rose Welch to co-host this week's episode. Together, Anna Rose and I press Dr. Barnes on his transition from academia to biotech, the therapeutic proposition of circular, or "O", RNA and why it holds great potential to best linear RNA constructs, the novel, platform- and partnership-based approaches Orna is taking to address B-cell lymphomas and Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, viral vector and lipid nanoparticle complexity, and a whole lot more.

52. BoB@JPM: Academia To Industry With Oncolytics' Matt Coffey, Ph.D. 2/12/2023

    The JP Morgan Healthcare Conference is a target-rich environment for conversations with the leaders of up-and-coming biopharma companies, so we took the Business of Biotech on the road. On today's episode, we sat down with Matt Coffey, Ph.D., who earned his Ph.D. in 1998 and turned his doctoral thesis into a biopharma company called Oncolytics in 1999. Dr. Coffey shares on his abrupt transition from academia to industry, tells tales of the company's backstory, and updates us on its aggressive clinical activity spanning 7 wide-ranging oncology programs.

53. 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.

54. BoB Live At BIO: Amber Salzman, Ph.D., Epicrispr Biotechnologies 7/2/2025

    This week's episode is one from the road, recorded in front of a live audience in Boston's Seaport neighborhood during the BIO conference (special thanks to MasterControl for making it happen). Amber Salzman, Ph.D., CEO of Epicrispr Biotechnologies (aka 'Epic Bio') explains how epigenetic editing is revolutionizing genetic medicine by controlling gene expression, without cutting DNA like traditional CRISPR technologies.

55. 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.

56. RNA-Based Therapeutics With Nutcracker Therapeutics' Dr. Geoff Nosrati 11/21/2022

    Nutcracker Therapeutics is a preclinical biopharma company developing multimodal RNA-based therapeutics for HPV-driven tumors, T-cell lymphoma, and Genitourinary tumors. On this episode of the Business of Biotech, Chief Business Officer Geoff Nosrati, Ph.D. offers a comprehensive view of the RNA-based therapeutics landscape and sheds light on what he perceives as an advantageous position at Nutcracker — the capacity to manufacture RNA in-house. If you're curious about the expanding science behind RNA-based therapeutics and their application in biotech, this conversation with a scientist-turned-chief business officer (Nosrati earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) is a can't-miss episode.

57. 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.

58. Dye Drug Conjugates For Cancer With Lahjavida's Lyle Small 9/11/2025

    On this week's Business Of Biotech episode, Lyle Small, Founder and CEO at Lahjavida, a dye drug conjugate start-up, talks about creating the famous color-changing technology that turned the mountains blue on cold Coors Light beer cans, to launching a dye-drug conjugate startup developing targeted cancer therapies.

59. Emerging From Stealth With Vima Therapeutics' Bernard Ravina, M.D. 10/31/2025

    On this week's episode of the Business of Biotech, we're speaking with Bernard Ravina, M.D., CEO at Vima Therapeutics, a company that emerged from stealth in May with $60 million Series A financing to develop an oral candidate for dystonia, a movement disorder.

60. 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.