Never Stop Learning – Michael McKeown

This episode is in collaboration with MIT Sloan Healthcare and BioInnovations Conference, an event that brings the healthcare ecosystem together. In this episode, I sat with Michael McKeown Head of Research at Bullseye Biosciences. We discussed his journey from academia to entrepreneurship and his leadership experience in biotech. Michael highlights the importance of mentorship, learning from others, and the need for humility in leadership. He emphasizes the significance of reducing mistakes in scientific endeavors and adapting to new technologies and methodologies. We also discuss the future of clinical trials, focusing on the importance of biomarkers, decentralization, and innovation. Michael advocates for leveraging biomarkers to match the right patients with the right drugs, as well as embracing decentralized trials to increase diversity and accessibility.

"Science is hard. We've got to reduce our incidents of mistakes that we could have prevented."

MEET OUR GUEST Michael McKeown Head of Research at Bullseye Biosciences.

Michael McKeown is CSO/head of research for a stealth start-up at the Pagliuca Harvard Life Labs. Michael started out in California getting his BS in Chemistry at UCSD and working in the Nobel Prize winning Tsien lab on fluorescent proteins. He then moved to Boston, earning a PhD in Chemical Biology from Harvard while working on novel cancer therapeutics at the DFCI. During this time, Michael contributed to several start-ups spun out the the lab, ultimately joining Syros Pharmaceuticals.

As part of this work, he developed novel patient biomarker and pharmacodynamic markers to enable selection of the right patients and kinetic monitoring of response. With 10 years of industry drug discovery and development experience in the Boston area, Michael has contributed and led multiple successful programs.

Most recently, he led pharmacology at Kronos Bio supporting combinations, biomarkers, and PD assays for the clinical programs as well as leading biology for their most advanced pre-clinical program generating an asset currently in IND enabling studies.