Discovery/R&D

1. High-Throughput Discovery With BIOPTIC's Andrey Dobry 1/19/2025

   Andrey "Dobry" Doronichev, the innovator who made YouTube mobile, is now revolutionizing biotech with his startup, BIOPTIC. In this episode of The Business of Biotech, Dobry explains how AI and advanced screening are reshaping drug discovery. Learn more about BIOPTIC’s bold vision, the challenges of data access, and overcoming skepticism in the biotech industry.

2. Bio & The Business Of Aging with Life Biosciences' Jerry McLaughlin 9/7/2023

   Core to the clinical-stage biopharma Life Biosciences belief set is that "contrary to popular belief, aging is not caused by random wear and tear, but instead is caused by a discrete set of biological mechanisms that can be targeted therapeutically.”

3. Tick-Derived Therapeutic Molecules With Akari Therapeutics' Rachelle Jacques 11/14/2022

   Ticks are a scourge. They're vectors of multiple serious and 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.

4. IDO Target Perseverence With IO Biotech's Mai-Britt Zocca, Ph.D. 9/13/2022

   Under the leadership of Mai-Britt Zocca, Ph.D., IO Biotech is advancing novel, immune-modulating cancer therapies targeting IDO (indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase). Though promising, the target fell out of favor after some high-profile misses – most notably Merck's Phase 3 failure with pembrolizumab in 2018. But Immunome's dual mechanism of action is renewing interest in the target, and Dr. Zocca is gaining confidence as the company's data grows. On this episode of the Business of Biotech, she shares the approach, how it differs from previous attempts, and how her company is working to advance its programs in the wake of IDO's fall from grace.

5. What's A Biologic Revolution? With Vaxxinity's Mei Mei Hu, J.D. 8/8/2022

   Vaxxinity CEO Mei Mei Hu, J.D. leads a company with some lofty ambitions. The democratization of healthcare, interplanetary colonization, and development of accessible therapeutic vaccines to serve and enable both. Those big-picture visions have helped the company establish itself as a pioneer of the "third biologics revolution." On this week's Business of Biotech podcast, Mei Mei joins me to share Vaxxinity's strategy, what "democratization" and "revolution" really_mean, why traditional vaccines and biologic therapies are converging to form the "third biologic revolution," and a whole lot more.

6. mRNA Upstarts With Radar Therapeutics' Sophia Lugo and Eerik Kaseniit, Ph.D. 8/25/2024

   Guest co-host Anna Rose Welch of Advancing RNA fame joins us on this week’s Business of Biotech podcast for a conversation with the leaders of RNA upstart Radar Therapeutics. The company’s co-founders, Eerik Kaseniit, Ph.D. (CSO & President) and Sophia Lugo (CEO), are making waves in the mRNA therapeutics space on the heels of the invention of a precision-expressed mRNA technology that laid bare the path to Radar’s inception.

7. Plant-Based Biologics With iBio's Randy Maddux 2/14/2022

   iBio COO Randy Maddux walks us through the Bryan, Texas-based biopharma's attempt to turn the CHO cell biologic development paradigm on its ear with hydroponically-grown N. benthamiana. His company's FastPharming approach to protein production, he says, could be modularized to speed cycle times and dramatically reduce upstream costs at scales large and small. For its part, iBio is proving out the approach on a host of therapeutic and vaccine candidates for oncological, infectious, and fibrotic diseases.

8. BoB@JPM: Self-Replicating RNA With Elixirgen's Akihiro Ko 3/5/2023

   Elixirgen Therapeutics CEO Akihiro Ko joins the Business of Biotech for the final episode in our special series recorded at JPM Week in San Francisco. Life Science Leader Chief Editor Ben Comer joined us for the conversation. We dive deep into Elixirgen's unique, temperature-controlled in-vivo gene expression technology designed to address common cell therapy administration challenges and unwanted, off-target immungenicity effects. Ko also shares progress on the company's ex-vivo candidate EXG-34217, an autologous cell therapy for telomere biology disorders, offers his take on the ever-crowded RNA therapeutics space and how the company is separating itself from the crowd, and much more!

9. Maximizing mRNA With Precision Nanosystems' James Taylor, Ph.D. 11/8/2021

   Dr. James Taylor believes that genomic medicine will prove the most revolutionary thing the life sciences industries have ever seen, and that it will ultimately become the largest therapeutic class. Dr. Taylor is president and CEO at Precision Nanosystems. He chalks up the genomic nature of biology, the fact that genomes are information-based, the breadth and validation of the genomic medicine toolbox, and the democratization of genomic medicine development as reasons to be bullish. Join Dr. Taylor and me for a conversation on why RNA and DNA delivery are game-changers, and what Precision Nanosystems is doing to push the ball downfield.

10. RNA Sandbox with Johns Hopkins RNA Innovation Center's Jeff Coller, Ph.D. and Michelle Kim, Ph.D. 1/12/2025

    In close partnership with Johns Hopkins and TriLink BioTechnologies, Jeff Coller, Ph.D. and Michelle Kim, Ph.D. have built a sandbox for RNA developers and aspirational RNA business builders to play in. On this week's episode of the Business of Biotech, we team up once again with Advancing RNA's Anna Rose Welch to learn about the venture, dubbed the Johns Hopkins University RNA Innovation Center.