Discovery/R&D

81. Gene Tx For Hearing Loss With Sensorion's Nawal Ouzren 4/12/2023

    We often talk about biotechs taking "big swings." This week's guest is swinging for the fences with a lineup of gene therapies designed to address multiple forms of hearing loss, which affect multiple millions (if not, billions) of people worldwide. Adding to the challenge she's accepted, Sensorion CEO Nawal Ouzren is architecting an approach that seeks to restore hearing that's been lost due to genetic factors, treat sudden hearing disorders, and proactively prevent hearing loss due to common causes such as cisplatin induced ototoxicity or cochlear implantation. Listen in as Ouzren shares her holistic and aggressive plans with the Business of Biotech.

82. Changing The Diabetes Care Paradigm With Arecor's Dr. Sarah Howell 7/21/2022

    While renal disease treatment technologies have seen moderate incremental improvements, there hasn't been a step-change advance in diabetes care since the discovery of insulin more than 100 years ago. Working with manufacturers of existing diabetes therapeutics in addition to advancing its own pipeline, Arecor is developing enhanced reformulations of tried-and-true therapeutics like insulin to improve a long-static standard of care. Arecor CEO Sarah Howell, Ph.D. joins the Business of Biotech for a discussion on the company's approach to improving the quality of life for some 200 million insulin-dependent patients worldwide.

83. 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.

84. Pioneering Antiviral Conjugates With Cidara's Dr. Jeff Stein 3/1/2021

    Cidara Therapeutics President and CEO Dr. Jeff Stein joins the Business of Biotech to discuss his career mission to battle microbial organisms and his company's development of a novel approach to producing immunotherapeutic antivirals that couple potent antivirals to a human antibody fragment. We discuss the company's manufacturing approach, which Dr. Stein anticipates yielding a low-cost alternative to standards of care in multiple antiviral indications.

85. Supercharging An ADC Program With SOTIO CEO Dr. Radek Špíšek 4/12/2021

    SOTIO isn't your typical single-molecule, single-platform biopharma. Since its inception, the company has supported 14 clinical trials of oncology therapeutics developed leveraging multiple platform technologies. On this episode of The Business of Biotech, SOTIO Global CEO Radek Špíšek takes a deep dive into the development, HR, and funding strategies the company has deployed to build its IL-15, immune cell therapy, and antibody-drug conjugate candidates.

86. 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.

87. RNA Sandbox with Johns Hopkins RNA Innovation Center's Jeff Coller, Ph.D. and Michelle Kim, Ph.D. 1/12/2025

    In close partnership with Johns Hopkins and TriLink BioTechnologies, Jeff Coller, Ph.D. and Michelle Kim, Ph.D. have built a sandbox for RNA developers and aspirational RNA business builders to play in. On this week's episode of the Business of Biotech, we team up once again with Advancing RNA's Anna Rose Welch to learn about the venture, dubbed the Johns Hopkins University RNA Innovation Center.

88. 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.

89. Expanding The Proteome with ProFound's John Lepore, M.D. 7/28/2024

    Flagship Pioneering’s ProFound Therapeutics is on to something, and it could be something big. It began with a simple question:  What if more RNAs were being translated into proteins? Answering that question took ProFound deep into the translatome.

90. Med Device Meets Biopharma With OncoSec's Dan O'Connor, J.D. 5/17/2021

    OncoSec CEO & Director Dan O'Connor, J.D. joins the Business of Biotech to discuss his company's development of proprietary application and injection technologies for direct delivery of its pipeline of immunotherapeutic candidates and combination therapies into the tumor environment. O'Connor shares leadership lessons gleaned from his service as a Captain in the United States Marine Corps during Operation Desert Shield, and how he's applied those lessons as his company charts the manufacturing and regulatory challenges along its unique development timeline.