Discovery/R&D

  1. The Business And Science Of Obesity With Roger Cone, Ph.D., Founder Of Courage Therapeutics 7/9/2025

    On this week's episode, Roger Cone, Ph.D., Founder and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board at Courage Therapeutics, talks about discovering obesity-related protein receptors in the brain, how he spun his academic discoveries out into a biotech company developing new obesity drugs, the need for obesity treatments with fewer side effects than currently available GLP-1 therapies, and the value of pairing scientific leadership with a strong business partner as CEO.

  2. 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.

  3. Next-Gen Nanobodies With MoonLake's Jorge Santos Da Silva, Ph.D. 3/27/2023

    The more we learn about inflammation and the complex cause/contributor/symptom roles it plays in various disease states, the more business activity we see in the inflammation therapeutics space. But to date, commercial pharmaceutical and biologic efforts have fallen short for patients, says Moonlake Immunotherapeutics CEO Jorge Santos Da Silva, Ph.D. What's the problem, and why does he think his camelid-derived nanobody candidates are poised to outperform big-pharma standards from the likes of UCB and Novartis? Find out on this week's episode of the Business of Biotech.

  4. RNA-Based Therapeutics With Nutcracker Therapeutics' Dr. Geoff Nosrati 11/21/2022

    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.

  5. Gene Tx For Hearing Loss With Sensorion's Nawal Ouzren 4/12/2023

    We often talk about biotechs taking "big swings." This week's guest is swinging for the fences with a lineup of gene therapies designed to address multiple forms of hearing loss, which affect multiple millions (if not, billions) of people worldwide. Adding to the challenge she's accepted, Sensorion CEO Nawal Ouzren is architecting an approach that seeks to restore hearing that's been lost due to genetic factors, treat sudden hearing disorders, and proactively prevent hearing loss due to common causes such as cisplatin induced ototoxicity or cochlear implantation. Listen in as Ouzren shares her holistic and aggressive plans with the Business of Biotech.

  6. Commensal Viral Vectors With Ring Therapeutics' Tuyen Ong, M.D. 4/12/2022

    When Tuyen Ong was a child, he and his family escaped Vietnam by boat in the dead of the night, bound for an Indonesian refugee camp. They spent a year in that camp before emigrating to the U.K., where Ong’s underprivileged adolescence found him growing up in the projects of London. Against the odds, Ong worked his way to UCL for an education that culminated with an M.D. Today, he’s CEO of Ring Therapeutics, a promising emerging biotech backed by Flagship Pioneering, the kingmaker behind the rise of Moderna. On this episode of the Business of Biotech, Ong shares on his challenging formative years, the unspoken love between a father and son, facing down racism as a poor Chinese kid in Vietnam and London, and how those experiences shape his leadership at Ring. Oh, and we talk about some pretty cool science, too.

  7. Building A Cancer Pipeline In A Molecule With Actuate Therapeutics' Dan Schmitt 11/26/2025

    On this week's episode of the Business of Biotech, Dan Schmitt, President and CEO at Actuate Therapeutics, talks about building a company around elraglusib, a GSK-3β inhibitor for cancer.

  8. Building A DNA Delivery System With Poseida Tx CEO Eric Ostertag, M.D., Ph.D. 9/27/2021

    Eric Ostertag, M.D., Ph.D., wanted to launch a biotech. When University of Pennsylvania department heads said no to a licensing deal for lack of a CEO, Dr. Ostertag convinced them he could run the company. Many bold moves later, Dr. Ostertag is founder and CEO at Poseida Therapeutics, a company that's doing things never seen before in the field of CAR T-cell and gene therapies for multiple myeloma and prostate cancer. On this week's episode of The Business of Biotech, Dr. Ostertag gives us a tour of the architecture supporting Poseida's unique 3-tiered development and manufacturing platform.

  9. Oncology Discovery Advances With AbbVie's Steve Davidsen, Ph.D. 10/25/2022

    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.

  10. 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.”