Biotech 2050 Podcast

Yizhen is passionate about investing in and working with persevering entrepreneurs who want to change the world, especially in healthcare and biotech. Yizhen focuses on early stage investments in frontier technologies applied to healthcare and life sciences, with interests across artificial intelligence, engineering, robotics/automation, and new biology. BIOS Community brings together innovation m...

Dr. Bexon brings to Vyriad more than 20 years of management experience in clinical development of biopharmaceuticals, including management of multi-site clinical trials and FDA approval of lead assets. Prior to joining Vyriad, Dr. Bexon founded Bexon Clinical Consulting, which provides clinical development support to the pharma and biotech industries. Previously, Dr. Bexon was Vice President of Cl...

Martin (Marty) is a cofounder and chief executive officer of Meissa Vaccines. Prior to cofounding Meissa, Marty was an Associate Professor at Emory University and director of the Emory Children’s Center for Childhood Infections and Vaccines (CCIV). He developed an RSV reverse genetics platform technology and novel strategies and methods for making vaccine candidates by synthetic biology. As applie...

Dr. Miller is a Founder and the Chief Operating Officer of Karuna Therapeutics. Dr. Miller is the lead inventor of Karuna’s KarXT platform and served as CEO of Karuna from 2016-2018. He served as a member of our board of directors from April 2012 to March 2019. From August 2008 to July 2016, Dr. Miller held several positions at PureTech Health plc, last serving as a Vice President, Venture Partner...

Samuel Mazin, Ph. D. Founder and Chief Technology Officer Member, Board of Directors Sam Mazin, Ph. D., co-founded RefleXion Medical in 2009, where he is the inventor of the company’s core technology. While a postdoctoral researcher in Radiology at Stanford University, Dr. Mazin was selected by the Kauffman Foundation as one of 13 postdocs in the nation to commercialize promising innovations. His...

Heather Wolff joined Decibel in February 2018 as the head of clinical development operations for Decibel Therapeutics. Heather is responsible for Decibel’s clinical operations, regulatory operations, medical writing and data management functions, providing leadership around the company’s development programs. She has a long track record in clinical development, with a focus on building and leading...

Rachel is a co-founder of Caribou Biosciences and has been President and CEO since its inception in 2011. Rachel is an inventor on several patents and patent applications covering multiple CRISPR-based technologies, and has co-authored scientific papers in high impact journals characterizing CRISPR-Cas systems. In 2014, she was named by Forbes Magazine to the “30 Under 30” list in Science and Heal...

Dr. Ragan has been X4’s President and Chief Executive Officer and a member of the X4 Board of Directors since July 2014. She has more than 18 years of experience building companies in the biotechnology industry. Prior to founding X4, Dr. Ragan consulted as Chief Business Officer at Lysosomal Therapeutics Inc., a private biopharmaceutical company, where she led the company’s business development ac...

Joseph Hernandez is an established leader in biotech entrepreneurship and early-stage technology development. With a strong background in biology, epidemiology, molecular genetics, marketing, and finance, Mr. Hernandez has successfully founded or led six entrepreneurial companies, including Blue Water Vaccines. These companies focus on cutting-edge biotech arenas, and he has raised over $150M in i...

Chief Medical Officer, Christopher Wright, MD, PhD, is a neurologist and neuroscientist who brings two decades of medical research and drug development experience in orphan and specialty diseases, including cystic fibrosis, dementia, hepatitis C, rheumatoid arthritis, and epilepsy. While at Vertex, Dr. Wright oversaw the development of ORKAMBI® through Phase 3, and the successful development and r...

Caroline is a biopharmaceutical executive with over 20 years of experience successfully leading diverse, empowered, and integrated teams. She has broad experience integrating science, business, and the clinic to deliver differentiated value to patients. Most recently, she was Vice President, Head R&D Strategy, and Planning at Bristol-Myers Squibb where she led portfolio strategy and operations. Th...

Leen Kawas, Ph. D., has served as our chief executive officer and as a member of our board of directors since January 2014. Previously, Dr. Kawas served as our vice president. Dr. Kawas serves on multiple boards, including the Washington Governor’s Life Science Advisory Board, Scientific Review Board for the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, and Alzheimer’s Association – Washington Chapter Bo...

Jim Woody has more than 25 years of pharmaceutical research and management expertise He currently serves as Chairman of Oncomed Pharmaceuticals, where he was previously a founder and CEO; he is also a General Partner at Latterell Venture Partners, a venture capital group focusing on early-stage healthcare companies He has served in a variety of health and management roles including as President of...

William J. Newell has served as our Chief Executive Officer and a member of our Board of Directors since January 2009. Previously, he served as the President of Aerovance, Inc., a biotechnology company focused on respiratory diseases, from 2006 to 2007. Mr. Newell has also served as the Chief Business Officer and Senior Vice President at QLT Inc., in several senior management positions at Axys Pha...

Adam Crystal, M.D., Ph. D. joined C4 Therapeutics in February 2019 as our Chief Medical Officer. Previously, Adam was at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, most recently as Senior Director, where he led several early clinical development programs. Before transitioning to industry, Adam was a medical oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital where he researched resistance mechanisms to...

Mr. Culley joined Lineage as Chief Executive Officer in September 2018. Prior to joining Lineage, Mr. Culley served from August 2017 to September 2018 as interim Chief Executive Officer at Artemis Therapeutics, Inc. (ATMS). Mr. Culley previously served as Chief Executive Officer of Mast Therapeutics, Inc. (MSTX), from 2010, and was also a member of its board of directors from 2011, until Mast’s me...

Kevin is a scientist-entrepreneur with 30 years of research experience in academia and pharma. He co-founded Scientist.com in 2007. In 2001, he co-founded Kalypsys, a small pharmaceutical company. He was Director of Lead Discovery at Tularik from 1997-2001. He carried out postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School after receiving a PhD degree from Marc Kirschner’s laboratory at UC-San Francisco a...

Dr. Javitt has played leadership roles in seven successful healthcare IT and biopharma startups with public exits. He has additionally led drug-development engagements for Merck, Allergan, Pharmacia, Novartis, and Pfizer. He was appointed to healthcare leadership roles under Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush. In the latter role he was commissioned to lead the White H...

Mei Mei Hu: Mei Mei is also CEO of United Neuroscience and a member of the executive committee of United Biomedical, Inc. She oversaw the launch of one of the first endobody vaccines in the world and the successful spin-out of three companies. Mei Mei was formerly a consultant at McKinsey & Company where she advised pharmaceutical companies on strategic, operational and organizational issues. Prio...

Shawn Singh has served as our Chief Executive Officer since August 2009; he joined our Board of Directors in 2000. Mr. Singh has nearly 30 years of experience working with private and public biotechnology, medical device, and pharmaceutical companies, a venture capital firm, and a profitable contract research and development organization (CRO), serving in numerous senior management roles. Prior to...

Dr. Salter-Cid brings to Gossamer Bio over 20 years of drug discovery experience in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries and spent the last 13 years at Bristol Myers Squibb (“BMS”) in increasing positions of responsibility, including Vice President and Head of Immunology, small molecule Immuno-Oncology and Genomics Discovery. In this position, she oversaw several biology groups that focused o...

Thank you for your support for Season 1! We reflect and look forward to Season 2 on this episode! Learn more about our co-hosts below! Alok Tayi is the Vice President of Life Sciences at Egnyte where he is responsible for building and executing the company's strategy for the life sciences market segment. Alok works across the organization to verticalize our marketing, sales, product, compliance, a...

As Executive Vice President and General Manager of Ancestry.com, a 1.6 billion dollar technology company, Ken led the launch of AncestryDNA, a large-scale e-commerce genetic genealogy test with revenues of > $500M. In 2019, Ken led the launch AncestryHealth, an e-commerce LDT genetic health product on a next-generation sequencing (NGS) platform. Prior to Ancestry, he was the President and Chief Ex...

Ibraheem Mahmood has an extensive life science and finance background that spans more than 20 years. His experience includes previous roles in Lifescience M&A and Fundraising at Nomura, Lifescience Equity Research at Investec and Business Development and Corporate Venture Capital at Shire Pharmaceuticals. He was co-founder, President and CEO of the clinical operations services company DrugDev, in...

Dr. Raymond J. Tesi has been President, Chief Executive Officer and acting Chief Medical Officer since the formation of INmune Bio in September 2015. From November 2011 to May 2015, Dr. Tesi was CEO, President and Acting Chief Medical Officer of FPRT Bio Inc., a development-stage biotech company formed to develop XPro1595 for the treatment of neurodegenerative disease and other inflammatory diseas...