Kiersten Stead, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of DCVC Bio sits down with Neil to discuss her firm’s approach to deep tech investing in biotech, her focus on platform technologies, and how to separate what’s real from what’s hype in AI
Andrew Lo, Professor of Finance, and the Director of the Laboratory for Financial Engineering at the MIT Sloan School of Management, sits down with Neil to discuss his application of portfolio theory to address the challenges of funding drug development and how a Netflix subscription model can address the coming crisis in funding high-priced curative therapies approaching the market.
Faizzan Ahmad, Co-Founder and CEO of Cure8bio, sits down with Neil to discuss its growing portfolio of regenerative medicines in development, its hub-and-spoke business model designed to leverage resources and reduce risk, and its push toward curative therapies.
Nathan Hunkapiller, Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder of Curve Biosciences, sits down with Neil to discuss liquid biopsies, the company’s efforts to expand the use of these blood-based tests to improve the treatment of chronic diseases, and how it is enabling earlier intervention.
Drew Titmarsh, Co-Founder and CEO of Dynomics, sits down with Neil to discuss that lack of innovative therapies to treat heat disease, the company’s discovery platform that uses engineered cardiac organoids that function like adult human heart tissue, and how the company is using this to develop precision therapies to address the root causes of heart failure.
David Li, Co-Founder and CEO of Meliora Therapeutics, sits down with Neil to discuss why the mechanism of action for cancer therapies in development is poorly understood, how this leads to a high and costly clinical failure rate, and how Meliora's platform technology uncovers the true mechanism of action of a drug and it enables it to identify promising drug scaffolds to accelerate the development process.
Anat Burkovitz, CEO of TrojanBio, sits down with Neil to discuss its AI-drive antibodies platform, how it enlists the viral immune system in the fight against cancer, and why she thinks the technology will broaden the population of patients who will benefit from immunotherapies.
Amit Etkin, Founder and CEO of Alto Neuroscience, sits down with Neil to discuss the lack of innovation in psychiatric medicines, how the company has identified AI-derived brain biomarkers, and how that is fueling its pipeline of precision therapies to treat mental health disorders.
Vineeta Agarwala, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz's Bio + Health Fund, sits down with Neil to discuss their investment process, how technology is transforming biotech and healthcare, and why she thinks drug development is becoming more and more like software development.
David Kirn, Co-Founder and CEO of 4DMT, sits down with Neil to discuss the limits of existing AAV vectors and how his company is using its Therapeutic Vector Evolution platform to invent customized vectors that allows it to take a disease specific approach to unlock the potential of genetic medicines.
Peter Kolchinsky, Founder and Managing Director of RA Capital Management and Founder of the nonprofit No Patient Left Behind, sits down with Neil to discuss his book “The Great American Drug Deal,” policy fights over pricing, and his organization’s efforts to make medicines affordable for all Americans.
Kriya Therapeutics Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO Shankar Ramaswamy sits down with Neil. He discusses how the company is changing the way gene therapies are designed, developed, and manufactured in an effort to cut costs, accelerate the time to market, and expand the reach of gene therapies to a broad universe of disease.
Francisco Gimenez, a member of the 8VC investment team, sits down with Neil to discuss how his background in data science and bioinformatics shapes his investment approach and the potential to transform drug development with technology.
D.A. Wallach sits down with Neil to discuss his journey from recording artists to venture investors, his co-founding of Time BioVentures, and his vision from transforming biotechnology and healthcare with technology.
Daniel Dornbusch, CEO of Excision BioTherapeutics, sits down with Neil to discuss his company’s efforts to develop CRISPR-based therapies to cure HIV and other viral infectious diseases.
Khosla Ventures Partner Gwen Cheni sits down with Neil to talk her migration from Wall Street to early-stage TechBio companies, how that has shaped her investment approach in start-ups, and what emerging technologies excite her today.
Ramsey Homsany, co-founder and president of Octant Bio, sits down with Neil to discuss the company’s efforts to tackle complex diseases with next-generation small molecule drugs by harnessing synthetic biology to better understand the biochemical mechanisms of its targets, his unusual path to leadership of a biotechnology company, and Octant’s collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb to apply its platform technologies to a set of inflammation-related pathways.
On this episode, David Fajgenbaum, co-founder of Every Cure, sits down with Neil to discuss his new nonprofit, which is seeking to unlock the potential of already approved drugs to treat diseases for which they have not been approved. Fajgenbuam, co-founder and executive director of the Castleman Disease Collaborative Network and assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, recounts the story in his book Chasing My Cure and how he saved his own life by finding a drug to repurpose to treat his rare disease.
Joseph Antoun, CEO of L-Nutra, sits down with Neil to discuss how his company is using state-of-the art science and randomized, placebo-controlled clinical studies to use diet to extend healthy lifespans and treat a wide range of diseases.
Trevor Martin, co-founder of CEO of Mammoth Biosciences, sits down with Neil to discuss the power of CRISPR as a diagnostic and therapeutic tool, his company's efforts to discover new CRISPR enzymes, and how the company is building a therapeutic pipeline through partnerships and on its own.