Biotech 2050 Podcast

Chip has served as Genocea's President and Chief Executive Officer since February 2011 after serving as Chief Business Officer from August 2010 to February 2011. Chip has also served on Genocea's board of directors since February 2011. Prior to joining Genocea, he served as Chief Business Officer at Vanda Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical company he co-founded in 2004. Prior to Vanda, Chip was a principal at Care Capital, a venture capital firm investing in biopharmaceutical companies, after serving in a variety of commercial and strategic roles at SmithKline Beecham (now GlaxoSmithKline). Chip holds a B.A. from Harvard University and an M.B.A. from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Srini Ramanathan, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Research and Development Sciences Srini Ramanathan, Ph.D., joined Horizon Therapeutics in 2018. He leads Horizon’s research and development sciences, with portfolio oversight of discovery, preclinical research and development functions; he also oversees scientific due diligence for business development evaluations. He has worked in the biotechnology industry over 20 years and has been involved in drug approvals across ophthalmology, oncology and virology. Before joining Horizon, Ramanathan served as senior project leader at AbbVie, overseeing the development of multiple immunology programs for rheumatology and gastrointestinal indications. Prior to AbbVie, he served as global head of clinical pharmacology at Gilead Sciences with responsibilities for portfolio programs across all therapeutic areas. Ramanathan earned his Master of Science in pharmaceutics from Duquesne University and his doctorate in pharmaceutics from Rutgers University.

Dr. Keilhack is an accomplished cancer biologist with rich experience in cell biology, animal models of cancer, pharmacology and translational medicine with over 15 years of experience in oncology drug discovery in both small biotechnology companies and large pharmaceutical companies. Prior to joining Ribon, Dr. Keilhack was Senior Director of Biology at Epizyme where, among other responsibilities, she was the project leader for the company’s EZH2 inhibitor program, tazemetostat, which was FDA-approved in 2020 as Tazverik®. Before that, she was a research fellow at Merck and the biology project lead for the company’s clinical stage AKT inhibitor, MK-2206. Dr. Keilhack received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry at Friedrich Schiller University of Jena (Germany) and completed postdoctoral training at the Harvard Medical School. She earned a B.S. in Biochemistry at Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg (Germany).

Dr. Ethan Perlstein is the founder and CEO of Perlara PBC, the first biotech public benefit company established in 2014 that partners with highly motivated and entrepreneurial families and foundations to develop treatments and cures for genetic diseases. Ethan is also cofounder and CEO of Maggie's Pearl LLC, a joint venture co-owned by Perlara, a family based in Michigan and the Mayo Clinic that is commercializing a repurposed drug for a congenital disorder of glycosylation. Ethan relaunched Perlara in 2021 as the first fully decentralized, distributed and web3 biotech company.

Michel Detheux is the co-founder, President, and CEO of iTeos Therapeutics, and has held the role of CEO since the company’s inception in 2012. He previously served as a director at Ludwig Cancer Research from December 2010 to March 2012. Prior to that, Michel worked in various scientific and business development roles at Ogeda (f/k/a Euroscreen). He has also held roles concurrent to his time at iTeos, including Founder and Managing Director of MG6A Bioconsulting SPRL, Director of the Board at BioWin, and Board Member at Immune Health. He studied at Université Catholique de Louvain, receiving his undergraduate degree and his PhD in biochemistry there, before doing his post-doc in parasitology at University of Glasgow and receiving a business certificate from Solvay Brussels School. Michel holds a degree in biochemistry and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Université Catholique de Louvain and a business certificate from Solvay Business School.

Armon Sharei, PhD, is the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of SQZ Biotechnologies, a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on unlocking the full potential of cell therapies for patients around the world and has active programs in Oncology, Autoimmune and Infectious Diseases, and other serious conditions. SQZ Biotech was founded on Dr. Sharei’s doctoral research at MIT and leverages the broad capabilities of the CellSqueeze® technology to enable a diverse pipeline of antigen-specific cell therapies. SQZ Biotech and the CellSqueeze® platform have been named as one of Scientific American’s Top 10 World Changing Ideas (2014), Fierce Biotech’s Fierce 15 (2015), and a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer (2017). The technology has also been highlighted in numerous scientific publications, such as Nature and PNAS. Dr. Sharei received his BS in Chemical Engineering with Honors and Distinction from Stanford University. He earned his PhD in Chemical Engineering from MIT in the laboratories of Professors Klavs Jensen and Robert Langer where he created and implemented the CellSqueeze® technology as a novel method for rapid and flexible cell engineering. Prior to joining SQZ Biotech as CEO, Dr. Sharei completed a Ragon Institute postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School in the laboratory of Ulrich von Andrian. Dr. Sharei has published 19 peer-reviewed publications and is the inventor on 20 patent families. He has been recognized in INC. Magazine’s 30 under 30, Endpoints 40 under 40, and Forbes Magazine’s 30 under 30 in Healthcare.

Thomas is a veteran entrepreneur who has turned creative scientific visions into successful businesses for both startups and established organizations for over 20 years and has co-founded or helped launch several companies, including Intellia Therapeutics and Eleven Biotherapeutics. While at Intellia Therapeutics, a CRISPR/Cas9 company which Tom joined as Chief Scientific Officer, he helped build the research team, raise funds (including an IPO), and provide a vision for technology extension. He played a significant role as the corporate spokesperson to lay and industry press, and to governmental and non-governmental organizations on the rapidly evolving and intensely followed CRISPR landscape. Tom has wide-ranging knowledge of biological systems through his work across diverse platforms including gene editing, genomics and gene discovery, small molecule drug repositioning, and protein engineering. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge and completed research fellowships at Harvard Medical School and McGill University. He is currently also an Executive Partner at MPM.

Andrew Bellinger is chief scientific officer of Verve Therapeutics. He is a general cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and is board-certified in cardiovascular medicine and internal medicine. His scientific expertise includes biomedical engineering and drug delivery, computational modeling, pharmacology, clinical strategy and translational medicine. Prior to joining Verve, Dr. Bellinger co-founded and served as chief scientific officer of Lyndra Therapeutics, where he helped to build the company’s research team and was involved in the company’s key partnerships with Gilead and Allergan. During Dr. Bellinger’s tenure, Lyndra advanced several programs into the clinic. Prior to Lyndra, Dr. Bellinger served as chief scientific officer of Cocoon Biotech, leading the development of the company’s drug delivery platform based on silk fibroin. Dr. Bellinger completed his clinical training in internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and his clinical training in cardiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He completed his postdoctoral research training in drug delivery with Dr. Robert Langer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Bellinger holds an M.D. and Ph.D. from Columbia University, an M.S. in mathematics from New York University, and an A.B. in physics from Princeton University.

Brian Finrow brings the skills and experience of a lawyer to a position that, in the biotech world, is more typically occupied by a scientist. This is essential to an enterprise like Lumen, which is rethinking drug development from the ground up to emphasize speed, efficiency and ease of delivery, and whose approach is so innovative that traditional ways of thinking about IP and regulatory pathways oftentimes do not apply. Prior to co-founding Lumen, Brian oversaw complex negotiations with various major biopharma companies and managed IP strategy for Adaptive Biotechnologies, where he was Senior Vice President and General Counsel. As Senior Attorney at the law firm Cooley LLC, his practice focused on equity financing and M&A transactions, and negotiating complex biotech licensing and collaboration deals. With over 15 years of legal and commercial experience at these market-leading, innovative firms, he is well positioned to develop creative, win-win deal structures with other organizations. Harvard Law School, JD Harding University, BS, Public Administration Harding University, BA, Political Science

Jeffrey Goldberg is the president and CEO of Immunitas. Jeff is an experienced biotech program and brand leader with over 20 years of industry experience. He has driven programs from discovery and pre-clinical through IND, clinical trials, NDA, and commercialization in multiple therapeutic areas, including oncology, neurology, renal, and other rare and orphan diseases. Prior to joining Immunitas, Jeff was at Akcea Therapeutics, where he was chief operating officer from the time of its formation in January 2015. Previously, Jeff was vice president of business operations, leading both program management and business development at Proteostasis Therapeutics, Inc., a biotech company focusing on neurology and rare diseases. He also spent more than 11 years in positions of increasing responsibility with Genzyme and Sanofi, providing brand management for two marketed products within Sanofi Oncology. Prior to joining Sanofi Oncology, Jeff served as Global Program Lead for Genzyme's stem cell mobilization agent Mozobil, leading the global launch team and overseeing the program management and marketing functions for the product. He began his career at Genzyme as Director, Program Management overseeing the development and launch of Renvela in patients undergoing dialysis. Jeff has both an MBA and a Master's degree in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University.