In part 2 of this series, we cover each company’s future plans, as well as their leaders’ observations of the platform-to-pipeline space they are effectively expanding, by joining a gathering crowd of companies now entering it.

What if, for certain ambitious but traditionally underfunded areas needing innovation, a startup could achieve its ends without the usual for-profit incentives?

Global Blood Therapeutics is intertwining science, business, and social missions to make progress against sickle cell disease.

To discover why companies go about transforming themselves from technology suppliers into biotherapeutics developers, we spoke with the heads of five companies built upon novel platforms for discovery or development of new biotherapeutics, though at various stages and differences in applied strategies.

As Shoreline’s chairman, CEO, and cofounder, Dr. Kleanthis Xanthopoulos draws on his experience of several decades, starting and running companies that aim to overturn prevailing practices in areas of medicine where practice makes imperfect, with treatments that disappoint patients or prove expensive and impractical for many.

Endevica Bio is developing a new treatment for cachexia, a severe wasting disease critical to patients’ survival in cancer and other conditions.

MiroBio is precisely targeting checkpoint receptors with agonist antibodies for better treatments in autoimmunity.

Can bioinformatics help biopharma companies manage their expectations and limit their risk in drug R&D? Ben Zeskind, a CEO who has built and bet his entire career on a positive answer to that question, discusses his reasons for optimism.

Qlaris Bio is striking at an unaddressed target in the intraocular pressure of glaucoma.

Five leading biopharma executives discuss the perils of political influence over the FDA and CDC and why every member of the industry should care.

For Ted Schroeder, CEO of Nabriva Therapeutics, the road of his biopharma career led him into the antibiotics space, a mighty steep climb in the biopharma industry.

Graphite Bio focuses on precise repair of genes that cause sickness, starting with Sickle Cell Disease.

Nancy Lurker, a veteran Big-Pharma marketer, now runs a small biopharma. And she admits, “the business models are very, very different.”

Atea Pharmaceuticals is creating new nucleotide antivirals, including one the company is jointly developing with Roche to fight COVID-19.