Finance & Capital Markets

1. Clinical Leadership with Cue Biopharma's Anish Suri, Ph.D. & Dan Passeri, J.D. 10/20/2023

   On a road trip to Boston, the Business of Biotech caught up with podcast alum Dan Passeri, J.D., CEO at Cue Biopharma, and enjoyed a two-for-one with CSO and President Anish Suri, Ph.D. at Cue's headquarters just feet below the Auerbach Center. Among other things, we discussed the duo's complementary leadership approach as the company takes multiple candidates into the clinic, why Passeri leans into his biotech legal background almost every day he's at work, why Cue's discretely targeted IL-2 approach eliminates the absurdity of early IL-2 failures, and a whole lot more.

2. BoB@JPM: Owen Hughes & Brad Sitko, XOMA Royalty 2/26/2025

   On this episode of the Business of Biotech, recorded on-site at the 2025 JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, we explore a new approach to biotech financing with XOMA Royalty's Owen Hughes and Brad Sitko. The CEO and CIO, respectively, share an innovative royalty aggregation model that mitigates risk while enabling immediate capital access to biotech firms.

3. Biotech Funding And IPO Temperature Check With CREATE Medicine's Allan Shaw 11/13/2025

   Allan Shaw, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Business Officer at CREATE Medicines, is back on the Business of Biotech this week, with a temperature check on biotech funding and the IPO market.

4. Anatomy Of A VC Deal With 4BIO's Dima Kuzmin & Ray Therapeutics' Paul Bresge 10/25/2022

   In a particularly candid conversation, 4BIO Managing Partner Dmitry ‘Dima’ Kuzmin and Ray Therapeutics Co-Founder & CEO Paul Bresge share the recipe for a successful relationship between biotech VC firm and startup. Bresge offers insight into VC engagement strategy and pitch, Kuzmin dishes on what investors look for in terms of "fundability" and what throws red flags, such as— perhaps ironically— a CEO like Bresge who has a deep and incredibly personal connection to the indication he's pursuing. The pair also discuss, in real and tangible terms, what constitutes a material, cultural match.

5. iNK T-Cell Immuno-oncology For Solid Tumors With Dr. Ian Walters 8/30/2021

   Dr. Ian Walters' company, Portage Biotech, is focused on addressing the 75% of cancer patients who show no, or limited, response to existing therapies such as checkpoint inhibitors. Leading that charge are the company's invariant natural killer T cell agonists, designed to activate the innate and adaptive immune system, as well as a growing portfolio of proteins, antibodies, and small molecules. On this episode of the Business of Biotech, Dr. Walters shares what's fueling the company's progress, including its unique financing strategy and its approach to de-risking platform development for novel immuno-oncology therapies.

6. Venture Philanthropy For Type 1 Diabetes With T1D Fund's Katie Ellias 1/19/2022

   The JDRF's T1D Fund is exemplary of an indication-specific advocacy group's aggressive pursuit of a cure through venture philanthropy. Put simply, unlike traditional VC firms who entertain myriad and often diverse pitches from biotech startups, the T1D fund creates financial and advisory incentives for the biotechs in its portfolio to pursue candidates and formalize programs around Type 1 Diabetes therapies.

7. Origins Of A Biopharma VC Deal With Bernat Olle, Ph.D. And Parag Shah 6/21/2023

   Here's a behind-the-scenes breakdown of how Vedanta Biosciences secured the support of K2 Health Ventures in its recent $100 million+ financing to fund a pivotal Phase 3 study.

8. Funding Alzheimer's Tx Dev with ADDF's Karen Harris 3/31/2024

   We've really been looking forward to dropping this episode with Karen Harris, Chief Financial Officer and Head of Mission-Related Investing at the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation. While the markets have warmed a bit since we recorded this episode, Karen's thoughtful perspective on the sometimes tumultuous Alzheimer's therapeutics space is valuable to any drug developer working in the cognitive medicines arena.

9. Backpacks And Biotech With Luke Timmerman 11/15/2023

   From his vantage point as an independent biotech journalist, Luke Timmerman has been watching the expansions and retractions of the industry for a couple of decades now. His unique perspective is hard to equal, and that perspective is, despite tough markets and tepid public sentiment, decidedly bullish. Luke's optimism is fed by sound logic gained from a career spent in observation mode, watching the development of purpose-built tools matched to address the fragility of human biology.

10. Athersys' Ivor Macleod On Bringing Big-League Financial Experience To An Emerging Biotech 8/13/2020

    The Business Of Biotech "Summer Executive Sessions" kick off with a candid conversation with Athersys CFO Ivor Macleod, who brings years of finance leadership at Roche, Merck, and other big pharmas to Athersys as the company readies its lead candidate for life beyond clinical trials. Join us for a discussion on how Macleod is applying big-league finance principles to an emerging biopharma company, and what he's learned about managing funds in a pre-commercial biotech environment.