Hopkins Biotech Podcast

Sickle cell disease was once considered an incurable disease, until recently. A wide variety of gene therapies have now become available, allowing patients with sickle cell disease to now have futures once thought unimaginable. In this podcast episode, we talk through these treatments and get expert advice on what these treatments mean for our future. 

Roivant Pharma is reinventing the discovery, development, and commercialization of new medicines. Mayukh Sukhatme, M.D. was recently appointed to Roivant's board of directors and has served as Roivant’s President and Chief Investment Officer since January 2021. He is responsible for identifying, performing diligence on, devising development strategies for, and transacting on new therapeutic p...

Dr. Ignacio Guerrero-Ros is an immunologist turned scientific communicator and biotech media innovator. Currently, he is an Assistant Vice President at Russo Partners , providing public and investor relations services to clients in the healthcare and technology industries. Originally from Spain, Ignacio earned his PhD in Immunology from Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Ignacio embraces the Hop...

Carina Clingman, Ph. D., is the Founder and CEO of Recruitomics Consulting , a niche talent acquisition and talent strategy firm specializing in biotech startups. She recently founded The Collaboratory Career Hub to help biotech job seekers find confidence and success in their job search. If you're exploring careers in biotech, join the free Collaboratory Slack Community to work directly with...

About this episode: David Dornan is the Chief Scientific Officer of Elevation Oncology , a clinical-stage biotech company developing targeted cancer therapeutics, with a focus on antibody drug conjugates. David brings to Elevation over two decades of industry and academic oncology drug discovery and development experience. His research spans multiple therapeutic modalities targeting cancer suscept...

Emily Gransky is the Vice President of Recruiting at RA Ventures (RAVen). RAVen is the early-stage venture arm of the multi-stage investment firm RA Capital . In this role, Emily works closely with senior leaders, venture partners, and managing directors within the Venture Team at RA Capital and within RAVen. Her primary responsibility is leading and executing full-cycle recruiting across all newc...

Dr. Isaac Klein is the Chief Scientific Officer at Dewpoint Therapeutics . Dewpoint Therapeutics is leveraging condensate biology to impact a wide range of therapeutic targets across diverse disease areas. Armed with significant funding from venture capital and several big pharma partnerships, Dewpoint is poised to lead the generation of medicines targeting biomolecular condensates. Prior to joini...

Dr. Adam Jenkins is the Regional Site Director for the Massachusetts sites of Biolabs . BioLabs is an international, membership-based network of shared lab and office facilities located in key biotech innovation clusters. Since 2009, over 230 companies have launched from Biolabs facilities, and those member companies have collectively raised more than 1 billion dollars in private financing. With a...

In this episode, we talk with our panel about updates their company gave at the recent JP Morgan Healthcare Conference that took place earlier this year. This once-yearly conference is the epicenter for biotech deal-making and groundbreaking data releases.  Dr. Robert Ross is the Chief Executive Officer of Surface Oncology . Surface Oncology’s mission is to deliver transformative outcomes for peop...

Brian Culley is the CEO of Lineage Cell Therapeutics , a clinical-stage biotech company whose mission is to pioneer a new branch of medicine based on transplanting specific cell types to patients with serious medical conditions. Lineage currently has several programs undergoing clinical and preclinical investigation for indications in ophthalmology, neurology, and oncology. Prior to joining Lineag...

In this episode, we talk with our panel about updates their company gave at the recent JP Morgan Healthcare Conference that took place earlier this year. This once-yearly conference is the epicenter for biotech deal-making and groundbreaking data releases.  Alejandro Dorenbaum is the Chief Medical Officer of Reneo Pharmaceuticals , a clinical-stage company developing drugs for rare mitochondrial d...

Adrian is an advisor for several biotech companies in Argentina. Before joining CITES , a venture builder from Argentina, he worked as an advisor for RedCrow VC in San Francisco, and has more than 10 years working in the pharmaceutical industry in companies like Novartis and Merck KGaA.  In this episode, we discuss his path from academia to big pharma companies and how he made it to the world of V...

Cyclacel Pharmaceuticals is a clinical-stage, biopharmaceutical company, developing innovative cancer medicines based on cell cycle, transcriptional regulation, and mitosis biology with a focus on oncology and hematology indications. Their lead drug candidate, fadraciclib is a dual CDK2/9 inhibitor currently undergoing investigation of dose escalation in a Phase 1/2 trial. Spiro Rombotis is the fo...

Radamés Cordero is the CEO of Melatech and an associate scientist and junior faculty in the department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health where he studies the biology of fungal melanin. As a spin-off of his research, Melatech is a biotech company dedicated to the production of melanin at industrial scales and the research and development of...

 Ratio Therapeutics is a Boston-based pharmaceutical company with the mission to accelerate the development of best-in-class targeted radiotherapeutics for the treatment of cancers. By employing a suite of innovative technologies the company is developing innovative and proprietary Pharmacokinetics (PK) Modulation technology for the construction of improved therapeutic agents and transforming onco...

Dr. Anupam Chakravarty is a researcher whose research interests have straddled the disciplines of biochemistry and genomics with a keen focus on the biology of cancer. Currently, he is a senior scientist developing liquid biopsy assays and products in the precision oncology space at Guardant Health . Prior to joining Guardant Health, he ran his own lab as an Assistant Professor at the University o...

Dr. Tony Russo Ph. D. is the Chairman, CEO, and founder of Russo Partners , a leading public and investor relations firm. He has been a member of the healthcare and technology PR and IR community for more than three decades. As a founder of Noonan/Russo in 1988, he and his colleagues have helped build signature healthcare brands worldwide. A frequent speaker at industry conferences, Tony has publi...

Dr. Robert Hollingsworth is the current Chief Scientific Officer of Shoreline Biosciences , a biopharmaceutical company developing next-generation cellular immunotherapies based on induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs)- utilizing its proprietary platforms. Dr. Hollingsworth joins Shoreline from Pfizer, where he served as Chief Scientific Officer and Vice President of Cancer Vaccines and Immunothe...

Dr. Shelley Ackerman is an Associate Director & Program Team Lead at Bolt Biotherapeutics . Bolt is a clinical-stage biotechnology company pioneering a new class of immuno-oncology agents that combine the targeting precision of antibodies with the power of both the innate and adaptive immune systems. Bolt Biotherapeutics’ proprietary Boltbody™ Immune-stimulating Antibody Conjugates (ISACs) are...

 Dr. James Coates is currently the Principal for Health & Human Performance at Decisive Point , an East coast venture capital firm that invests in and supports startups with deep tech and government use cases. James holds a Ph. D. in Cancer Drug Discovery and MSc in Radiation Biology and Oncology, both from the University of Oxford, and he conducted technical diligence for Bain Capital Life Sc...

Dr. Phil Kantoff is the CEO and Co-Founder of Convergent Therapeutics , a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company focused on developing next-generation radiopharmaceutical therapies for prostate and other cancers. The company's proprietary technology involves dual-targeted radionuclide therapy developed by Dr. Neil Bander, Professor of Urologic Oncology at Weill Cornell Medicine.  Prior to foun...

Dr. Steve Doberstein has had a long career leading Research groups at a number of biotech companies, like “XOMA”- a monoclonal antibody discovery and development company, “Five Prime Therapeutics”- a protein and antibody discovery and development company, “Xencor”- a leader in protein engineering and “Exelixis”-a genomics-based drug discovery company. Today is the founder and CEO of Kahiliholo Con...

 Dr. Daniel Elgort currently serves as the Chief Data and Analytics Officer for M2GEN , a bioinformatics company focused on the acceleration of oncology research discoveries through superior data and analytics services. The company was formed as a spin-off of the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, serving as the technological hub for an alliance of 18 NCI-designated cancer centers across the...

Hong Tang is the co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of OnQuality Pharmaceuticals , a targeted cancer supportive care (TCSC) pharmaceutical company dedicated to the development of treatments to address specific side effects of cancer therapies- to improve the quality of life and outcomes for patients fighting cancer. Prior to founding OnQuality, she worked as a Physician-Scientist in numerous med...

Laura Jacoby is currently an Application Specialist at Apprentice.io, an innovative tech company that offers cloud-based solutions that impact pharmaceutical production at every stage of development. Their goal is to introduce digitization of records in an industry that until recently has operated mainly in a paper and pen world. Laura has a career trajectory deeply rooted in pharmaceutical proces...