The Business Of Biotech Podcast

1. The Peptide Promise With NervGen's Mike Kelly 10/6/2024

   Mike Kelly faced a self-reckoning before he took the job as CEO at NervGen Pharma, a company developing peptide therapeutics targeted specifically at central nervous system repair. The veteran of life sciences business development knew the ropes of the biotech C-suite. He’d been a CEO twice before. He knew how to launch drugs. He even knew how to sell them. On this episode of the Business of Biotech, we learn how Kelly reconciled that truth, and how NervGen is now leading the way for peptide therapeutics in spinal cord injury and beyond. 

2. Biotech Course Correction With Treehill Partners' Ali Pashazadeh 9/29/2024

   It wouldn't be accurate to say that surgeon-turned-healthcare investment banker and consultant Dr. Ali Pashazadeh traded his scalpels for spreadsheets. In fact, he still wields a scalpel quite frequently, and on this episode of the Business of Biotech podcast, he offers a fantastic reason why.

3. 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.

4. Picking Biotech Jockeys With SR One's Simeon George, M.D. 9/15/2024

   SR One Capital Management CEO Simeon George, M.D. has a seemingly innate ability to pick winning biotech builders. On the Business of Biotech, Dr. George shares insight into the decision-making processes that have contributed to his success at picking winners as an investment banker and biotech venture capitalist. Listen now!

5. Embracing Biotech Chaos With Memo's Erik van den Berg 9/8/2024

   Erik van den Berg is CEO and board member at Memo Therapeutics, and he's a student of biotech chaos. In fact, he's been embracing it with intention for the past 30 years. On this episode of the Business of Biotech, he walks us through the management of that chaos in specific detail.

6. Pivoting To RNA With Circio's Dr. Erik Digman Wiklund 9/1/2024

   This week, it’s another “Business of Biotech-meets-Business-of-RNA” takeover with Circio CEO Erik Digman Wiklund, Ph.D. and guest co-host Anna Rose Welch of Advancing RNA. While Circio’s legacy is in cancer immunology (it still boasts a cancer vaccine candidate targeting KRAS driver mutations), the company made a bold pivot, of sorts, when it committed headlong to the circular RNA future. Now, it’s in the throes of fine-tuning a platform for the development of novel circRNA medicines for rare disease, vaccines, and cancer.

7. mRNA Upstarts With Radar Therapeutics' Sophia Lugo and Eerik Kaseniit, Ph.D. 8/25/2024

   Guest co-host Anna Rose Welch of Advancing RNA fame joins us on this week’s Business of Biotech podcast for a conversation with the leaders of RNA upstart Radar Therapeutics. The company’s co-founders, Eerik Kaseniit, Ph.D. (CSO & President) and Sophia Lugo (CEO), are making waves in the mRNA therapeutics space on the heels of the invention of a precision-expressed mRNA technology that laid bare the path to Radar’s inception.

8. Steering Through Setbacks with AVEO Oncology's Michael Bailey 8/18/2024

   For all the drug commercialization successes he's played a leading hand in during his tenures at GSK, Genentech, and ImClone — Androderm, Augmentin, necitumumab, and Erbitux among them — Michael Bailey concedes that he's likely better known for his failures. After hearing his stories on this episode of the Business of Biotech, I tend to disagree.

9. Leading From Within with ISCT & Kiji's Miguel Forte, M.D. 8/11/2024

   He's been a big pharma executive. He's a multi-time biotech founder and current biotech CEO. He was once a regulator. He's a physician. He serves on multiple boards. And as of this summer, he's president of one of the most influential global organizations dedicated to the advance of cell and gene therapies (ISCT), and an executive member of another (ARM). Miguel Forte, M.D. simply can't stop finding places to apply his talents and energy to influence the advanced therapies landscape.

10. The Allogeneic Future with Poseida's Kristin Yarema, Ph.D. 8/4/2024

    Kristin Yarema, Ph.D. thinks the progress of CAR T therapeutics is allogeneic. In fact, she says CAR T-cell therapies have to become a one-to-many proposition, if their early autologous success can possibly live up to the promise of offering widespread accessibility to life-saving treatments. On this episode of the Business of Biotech, we'll learn about how the newly-appointed CEO of Poseida Therapeutics earned the company's reins, how Poseida is positioning itself to crack the allogeneic CAR T code, and how strategic collaborations with the likes of Astellas and Roche are fueling the effort.