The Biotech Startups Podcast 🧬 Why Comfort Is the Enemy of Scientific Growth | Roy Maute (Part 2/4)
Feb 19, 2026
31:08
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"I think comfort with failure, or at least exposure to it, is really important and is just an everyday part of laboratory work. I think that serves you tremendously well outside of the lab."
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, we follow CEO and co-founder of Pheast Therapeutics, Roy Maute’s graduate school journey in Riccardo Dalla-Favera’s demanding Columbia lab, where he dives into genetic rearrangements in B-cell lymphoma and chooses intensity over comfort to accelerate his growth alongside clinician-scientists. He shares how brutal weekly Friday lab meetings, where imperfect work was publicly dissected, built his resilience and rigor, and what it was like to live through the shift from Sanger to high-throughput sequencing that reshaped cancer research. Roy also reflects on why he never wanted to become a professor and how a mentor’s advice led him to Irving Weissman’s famously hands-off Stanford lab—a stark contrast to his PhD environment, but equally formative for his scientific career.
Key topics covered:
- The Power of Mentorship: Choosing demanding training over comfortable environments for maximum growth
- Embracing Failure: Weekly presentations of imperfect work building resilience and faster iteration
- Technological Revolution: Living through the Sanger-to-NGS transition that transformed cancer research
- Stanford vs. Berkeley Culture: Industry-friendly attitudes and translation focus at Stanford's stem cell institute
- Early Company Formation: Co-founding Ab Initio Biotherapeutics as a junior postdoc with structural biology collaborators
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Subscribe to the Podcast:
Find our guest, Roy Maute at these links:
Website: https://www.pheast.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee
Learn more about Excedr:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/
Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin, Owned by Excedr:
Website: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:
B-cell Lymphoma Genetic Rearrangements: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41408-024-01146-z
MicroRNAs in Cancer Biology: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07657-1
CD47 Macrophage Immunotherapy for Cancer: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12573215/
Cancer Stem Cell Biology and Therapeutic Targeting: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9256444/
High-Throughput DNA Sequencing Technology:
Companies, Universities, & People mentioned:
Columbia University: https://www.columbia.edu
Stanford University: https://www.stanford.edu
University of California, Berkeley: https://berkeley.edu
Riccardo Dalla-Favera, MD: https://www.genetics.cuimc.columbia.edu/profile/riccardo-dalla-favera-md
Katia Basso, PhD: https://www.pathology.columbia.edu/profile/katia-basso-phd
Irving Weissman, MD: https://med.stanford.edu/profiles/irving-weissman
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:36 Choosing Cancer Research and Academic vs. Industry Paths
05:34 Finding the Right Lab Fit and Demanding Training Environments
06:18 Key Scientific Lessons: Genetics, DNA, and Cancer Biology
11:02 Comfort with Failure and Scientific Training Value
14:32 Storytelling and Communicating Science to Non-Scientists
16:07 Pursuing Postdoc Training and Working with Irv Weissman
22:09 Berkeley vs. Stanford: Academic Culture and Collaboration
24:23 Stanford's Translation-Focused Approach and Industry Engagement
26:58 Co-founding Ab Initio Biotherapeutics During Postdoc
29:14 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.