Discovery/R&D

31. Population-Level Health Impact With Vaxxinity's John Krayacich 6/14/2023

    Vaxxinity’s John Krayacich likes taking big swings and big indications. He’s played key roles on the teams that launched Lipitor, Lyrica, and Neurontin, which have had measurable impacts on global populations of people suffering from cardiovascular disease, CNS disorders, and pain. He found those opportunities at companies like LEO, Novartis, Parke Davis, and Pfizer. Now, Krayacich is taking big swings at a new set of incredibly challenging candidates—immunotherapeutic vaccines for neurodegenerative and chronic diseases like Alzheimer’s, Dementia with Lewy Bodies, Multiple System Atrophy, Parkinson’s, Migraine, and Hypercholesterolemia. On this episode of the Business of Biotech, the Chief Business Officer shares his inspiration and strategy for seeing therapeutics for big, global patient populations through the commercial finish line.

32. A Vaccine For Type 1 Diabetes With Diamyd Medical's Dr. Ulf Hannelius 7/19/2021

    As leaders at Diamyd Medical made plans to manufacture clinical supply of therapies aimed at preserving and restoring insulin production in Type 1 diabetes patients, outsourced production was on the table. Then, the company doubled down on its intentions and built out its own manufacturing facility. On this week's episode of The Business of Biotech, Diamyd Medical President & CEO Dr. Ulf Hannelius tells us all about the therapies his company is developing, plus the why and the how behind the company's choice to manufacture them in-house.

33. Bioengineering Human Tissue With Humacyte's Dr. Heather Prichard 1/5/2022

    Humacyte COO Dr. Heather Prichard joins the Business of Biotech for a discussion on the company's pipeline of candidates for the repair, replacement, and reconstruction of human vascular vessels. The company recently scaled the production of its implantable bioengineered human tissues from 10 to 200 per day to meet Phase 3 vascular trauma and arteriovenous access trials. On today's episode, Dr. Prichard shares the company's scale-up story and the science and engineering behind a unique approach to regenerative medicine using human tissue.

34. 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.

35. Off-The-Shelf CAR T-Cell Therapy? 10/26/2020

    Find out what drove John McKearn, Ph.D. & CEO at Wugen, out of the lab at Pfizer and on to his quest to develop off-the-shelf cell therapies for T-Cell leukemias and lymphomas, Acute Myeloid Leukemia, and Multiple Myeloma.

36. Circular RNA with Orna Therapeutics' Tom Barnes, Ph.D. and Advancing RNA's Anna Rose Welch 4/28/2024

    As if Orna Therapeutics' CEO, Thomas Barnes, isn't enough to draw you in to the Business of Biotech, we teamed up with Advancing RNA Editorial & Community Director Anna Rose Welch to co-host this week's episode. Together, Anna Rose and I press Dr. Barnes on his transition from academia to biotech, the therapeutic proposition of circular, or "O", RNA and why it holds great potential to best linear RNA constructs, the novel, platform- and partnership-based approaches Orna is taking to address B-cell lymphomas and Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, viral vector and lipid nanoparticle complexity, and a whole lot more.

37. BoB@JPM: Academia To Industry With Oncolytics' Matt Coffey, Ph.D. 2/12/2023

    The JP Morgan Healthcare Conference is a target-rich environment for conversations with the leaders of up-and-coming biopharma companies, so we took the Business of Biotech on the road. On today's episode, we sat down with Matt Coffey, Ph.D., who earned his Ph.D. in 1998 and turned his doctoral thesis into a biopharma company called Oncolytics in 1999. Dr. Coffey shares on his abrupt transition from academia to industry, tells tales of the company's backstory, and updates us on its aggressive clinical activity spanning 7 wide-ranging oncology programs.

38. Biotech Collaboration Strategy With IGI's Cyril Konto, M.D. 11/20/2025

    On this week's Business Of Biotech episode, Cyril Konto, M.D., president, executive director, and CEO at Ichnos Glenmark Innovation (IGI) talks about the promise of multi-specific antibodies, funding the company during the 'biotech winter,' closing a $700 million upfront licensing deal with AbbVie, the impact of China's rising biotech sector, and the keys to successful collaboration.

39. Genomically-Guided Medicine with Elevation Oncology's Shawn Leland, PharmD, RPh 12/13/2021

    Elevation Oncology is taking a new approach to leveraging the genome to guide development of its precision therapeutic development efforts. Its first step is improving both the accuracy of and accessibility to genomic testing for cancer patients. In tandem, the company is in the clinic with its lead candidate seribantumab for cancer patients with a solid tumor of any origin that expresses a genomic change called an NRG1 fusion. On this episode of the Business of Biotech, Founder & CEO Shawn Leland, PharmD, RPh takes us inside the company's unique approach. 

40. Pyxis Oncology's Lara Sullivan, M.D. On Site-Specific ADCs And Change Management 6/20/2022

    To fully appreciate the work Pyxis Oncology is doing in its development of site-specific ADCs for a number of oncological indications under the leadership of Lara Sullivan, M.D., you need to understand the work that shaped her leadership style. On this episode of the Business of Biotech, Dr. Sullivan shares the science and technology driving progress at Pyxis, but she also serves up a master class on change management, honed during her tenure managing high-stakes product portfolios at Pfizer. If you want to be a better leader, don't miss this one.