Business Of Biotech

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. In an industry that takes new business naming conventions to extremes, Abpro is a refreshingly clear exception. Brothers Ian Chan (CEO & Co-Founder) and Eugene Chan, M.D., (Chairman & Co-Founder) are antibody pros. The company's pipeline spans no fewer than 8 antibody candidates aimed at COVID-19, cancers including breast, gastric, and liver, and ophthalmologic indications DME and wet AMD. With a scientific advisory board led by Bob Langer, Ph.D. of Moderna fame and a new partnership with global powerhouse Celltrion worth a potential $1.75 billion, the company's on the move. On this episode of the Business of Biotech, the Chan brothers take us behind the scenes of Abpro's progress.Access this and hundreds of episodes of the Business of Biotech videocast under the Business of Biotech tab at lifescienceleader.com. Subscribe to our monthly Business of Biotech newsletter. Get in touch with guest and topic suggestions: ben.comer@lifescienceleader.comFind Ben Comer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bencomer/

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. 2023 is just around the corner, and it's shaping up to be a big year for Umoja Biopharma. The company is on the leading edge of the effort to break the solid tumor barrier with in vivo CAR T-cell therapies, with one such effort currently enrolling patients for a phase 1 trial. It's planning two more INDs in the coming year.  This episode of the Business of Biotech finds us getting the inside story from Umoja Chief Operating Officer David Fontana, whose storied career includes leadership positions at heavyweights including Sanofi, SeaGen, Pfizer, Juno, and BMS. Fontana shares on how he applies his experience playing a lead role in the success of Breyanzi, Adcetris, Bavencio, and  Relatlimab in his new role at Umoja, the outsourcing battle scars that motivated the company to build its own 146,000 square foot development and manufacturing facility, and much more. Access this and hundreds of episodes of the Business of Biotech videocast under the Business of Biotech tab at lifescienceleader.com. Subscribe to our monthly Business of Biotech newsletter. Get in touch with guest and topic suggestions: ben.comer@lifescienceleader.comFind Ben Comer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bencomer/

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. Nutcracker Therapeutics is a preclinical biopharma company developing  multimodal RNA-based therapeutics for HPV-driven tumors, T-cell lymphoma, and Genitourinary tumors. On this episode of the Business of Biotech, Chief Business Officer Geoff Nosrati, Ph.D. offers a comprehensive view of the RNA-based therapeutics landscape and sheds light on what he perceives as an advantageous position at Nutcracker— the capacity to manufacture RNA in-house.  If you're curious about the expanding science behind  RNA-based therapeutics and their application in biotech,  this conversation with a scientist-turned-chief business officer (Nosrati earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) is a can't-miss episode. Access this and hundreds of episodes of the Business of Biotech videocast under the Business of Biotech tab at lifescienceleader.com. Subscribe to our monthly Business of Biotech newsletter. Get in touch with guest and topic suggestions: ben.comer@lifescienceleader.comFind Ben Comer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bencomer/

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. Ticks are a scourge. They're vectors of multiple serious an debilitating diseases, and evolution has made them perfectly adept at attaching to their hosts—and potentially spreading those diseases virtually undetected— that ability owing to anti-inflammatory and anesthetic proteins in their saliva. But the emerging biotech Akari Therapeutics thinks there's a broad range of medicinal value in those proteins. They've painstakingly developed a recombinant version of one such tick saliva-derived protein, called nomacopan, and put it to work in phase 3 trials to treat rare but deadly severe hematopoietic stem cell transplant-related thrombotic microangiopathy (HSCT-TMA). On this week's episode of the Business of Biotech, Akari President & CEO Rachelle Jacques tells us about the redeeming qualities of tick saliva and how her company is putting it to work. Access this and hundreds of episodes of the Business of Biotech videocast under the Business of Biotech tab at lifescienceleader.com. Subscribe to our monthly Business of Biotech newsletter. Get in touch with guest and topic suggestions: ben.comer@lifescienceleader.comFind Ben Comer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bencomer/

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. Earlier this month, Surface Oncology shared that it will open a second stage of its monotherapy trial of SRF388, an antibody targeting IL-27, on the heels of a promising phase 2 data readout. Shortly before that release, the Business of Biotech caught up with Surface's CSO Vito Palombella, Ph.D. and CEO Rob Ross, M.D. in the company's Cambridge, MA HQ. We discussed the first-of-its-kind target, the company's "product versus platform" strategy and how it fits in the industry's current "platform" vibe, the finer points of building and maintaining a startup bio culture, the difference between that Bob Ross and the Rob Ross, M.D., and whole lot more. Access this and hundreds of episodes of the Business of Biotech videocast under the Business of Biotech tab at lifescienceleader.com. Subscribe to our monthly Business of Biotech newsletter. Get in touch with guest and topic suggestions: ben.comer@lifescienceleader.comFind Ben Comer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bencomer/

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. MIT-born startup Elicio Therapeutics' novel Amphiphile Technology Platform is designed to directly engage the lymphatic system in the deployment and delivery of therapeutic payloads. We caught up with Chief Scientific Officer Peter DeMuth, Ph.D.  at Elicio HQ in Boston to learn how the platform works, and how it's driving rapid clinical progress for the company's robust pipeline of therapeutic vaccines in oncology, as a cell therapy amplifier in liquid and solid tumor indications, and in prophylactic vaccines for infectious diseases like COVID-19. Dr. DeMuth also shares his journey as a young scientific founder, how he's managed the transition from academic scientist to the C-suite, and how he leans into his scientific training to make a killer home brew. Access this and hundreds of episodes of the Business of Biotech videocast under the Business of Biotech tab at lifescienceleader.com. Subscribe to our monthly Business of Biotech newsletter. Get in touch with guest and topic suggestions: ben.comer@lifescienceleader.comFind Ben Comer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bencomer/

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. Anat Binur, Ph.D. is CEO and Co-Founder at Ukko, where she's leading an effort to create new allergy therapeutics  by engineering the proteins that induce immune response in people who suffer from food allergies. The effort at Ukko is deeply rooted in computational biology. The company leverages artificial intelligence to analyze how the allergen proteins interact with patients' blood in an effort to determine the specific attributes of the proteins that trigger immune response. Then, it applies a unique combination of compute power and biology to identify and understand the changes it wants to engineer and predict the best possible designs. Learn how Ukko is fostering a culture of IT and biology collaboration and what lured this dynamic entrepreneur into biopharma on this episode of the Business of Biotech. Access this and hundreds of episodes of the Business of Biotech videocast under the Business of Biotech tab at lifescienceleader.com. Subscribe to our monthly Business of Biotech newsletter. Get in touch with guest and topic suggestions: ben.comer@lifescienceleader.comFind Ben Comer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bencomer/

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. 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. Access this and hundreds of episodes of the Business of Biotech videocast under the Business of Biotech tab at lifescienceleader.com. Subscribe to our monthly Business of Biotech newsletter. Get in touch with guest and topic suggestions: ben.comer@lifescienceleader.comFind Ben Comer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bencomer/

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. AbbVie  VP of Oncology Discovery Research Steve Davidsen, Ph.D.  is a living, breathing timeline of the company's cancer research and development efforts. He got his start with the company— Abbott at the time— way back in 1986. As such, he's charted the adoption of multiple advanced technologies that have contributed to the realization of dozens of molecular weapons in the fight against cancer.  On this episode of the Business of Biotech, Dr. Davidsen shares the latest on AbbVie's adoption of computational biology and how it's contributing to discovery and development efficiencies,  why he's an AbbVie "lifer," how he manages and motivates a large team of research scientists, and a whole lot more. Access this and hundreds of episodes of the Business of Biotech videocast under the Business of Biotech tab at lifescienceleader.com. Subscribe to our monthly Business of Biotech newsletter. Get in touch with guest and topic suggestions: ben.comer@lifescienceleader.comFind Ben Comer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bencomer/

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. On this episode of The Business of Biotech, Obsidian Therapeutics CEO Paul Wotton, Ph.D. takes us behind the scenes to reveal what precipitated the FDA's clearance of its IND application for a novel, engineered tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte therapy called OBX-115.  Learn how the company navigated the regulatory path for a first-of-its-kind biologic therapy developed in partnership with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center that Dr. Wotton says, should it succeed, will eliminate the patient risk associated with concomitant IL2 therapy and improve clinical outcomes for certain patients with metastatic melanoma. We also get an update on outcomes from Obsidian's unique approach to solving COVID-19 challenges covered on episode 9 of the Business of Biotech.Access this and hundreds of episodes of the Business of Biotech videocast under the Business of Biotech tab at lifescienceleader.com. Subscribe to our monthly Business of Biotech newsletter. Get in touch with guest and topic suggestions: ben.comer@lifescienceleader.comFind Ben Comer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bencomer/