Biotech 2050 Podcast

Paul is the CEO & Co-founder of Locus Biosciences. With a career that spans manufacturing, research & development, information technology and corporate transformations, Paul brings a broad range of experience and capability to deliver on the Locus vision. Prior to Locus, Paul was Chief Technology Officer at Patheon Pharmaceuticals and also held the role of Global Head of Operations for Patheon’s Pharmaceuticals Development Services business unit. Paul previously served as Global Head of Manufacturing and Chief Information Officer at Valeant Pharmaceuticals, amount other roles. Paul was a Visiting Professor at North Carolina State University’s Poole College of Management and volunteered as an executive-in-residence for the HiTEC Graduate Program, NCSU’s Entrepreneurship Collaborative, where he identified the technology that would form the basis for Locus. Paul earned a BSBA in Management Information Systems from the University of Arizona and completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School.

Dr. Trevor Martin founded Mammoth Biosciences with the mission to enable the next generation of CRISPR-based synthetic biology products across therapeutics and diagnostics, including a novel class of affordable, effective, and rapid CRISPR-enabled molecular diagnostics that allow individuals worldwide to better understand their health and a novel family of CRISPR Cas14 proteins that can enable in vivo editing. Trevor earned his BA from Princeton University and his Ph.D. in Biology from Stanford. His work has been featured in outlets including FiveThirtyEight and The Atlantic. He is the featured healthcare honoree on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, is on Fortune’s 40 Under 40 list, and is a Malaria No More “10 to END” innovator.

Laurence joined Decibel in January 2020. He previously served as an entrepreneur in residence at Third Rock Ventures, where he focused on novel drug discovery and development opportunities. Before that, Laurence was CEO of Warp Drive Bio, a small molecule company focused on novel oncology and antibiotic drug discovery based on natural products, until its merger with Revolution Medicines in 2018. Prior to that, he was the senior vice president and chief business officer of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, where he was responsible for the company’s business development, finance and legal functions. Before coming to Alnylam, Laurence was the chief business officer at Ensemble Discovery, where he led the company’s strategic planning and corporate development efforts. Laurence previously spent ten years at Millennium Pharmaceuticals in a range of general management and business development positions. In addition to his professional interests, Laurence is a board member of the Possible Project and board advisor to Life Science Cares. He earned his Ph.D. from King’s College London and his B.A. from Cambridge University.

Ms. Zaderej has served as Axogen’s President, Chief Executive Officer, and a member of our Board of Directors since September 2011 and the Chairman of our Board of Directors since May 2018. Since May 2010, she has served as the Chief Executive Officer of Axogen’s wholly owned subsidiary, Axogen Corporation, and a member of the Board of Directors of Axogen Corporation. Ms. Zaderej joined Axogen Corporation in May 2006 and served as Vice President of Marketing and Sales from May 2006 to October 2007 and as Chief Operating Officer from October 2007 to May 2010. From October 2004 to May 2006, Ms. Zaderej worked for Zaderej Medical Consulting, a consulting firm she founded to assist medical device companies build and execute successful commercialization plans. From 1987 to 2004, Ms. Zaderej worked at Ethicon, Inc., a Johnson & Johnson company, where she held senior positions in marketing, business development, research & development, and manufacturing. Ms. Zaderej is a member of the University of Tampa Board of Trustees and the MedExec Women Board of Advisors. Ms. Zaderej has an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Business and a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University.

John Glasspool is CEO and member of the Board of Directors of Anthos Therapeutics. Mr. Glasspool is also a member of the Board of Directors of Dalcor Corporation. He was formerly the Executive Vice President, Head of Corporate Strategy and Customer Operations at Baxalta Incorporated (NYSE: BXLT), formerly Baxter BioScience (NYSE: BAX). Prior to joining Baxter in August 2012, Mr. Glasspool was Head of Region Europe and Novartis Vaccines & Diagnostics (NYSE: NVS), a member of the V&D Executive Committee. Mr. Glasspool served as a board member, Vice President and President of the European Vaccine manufacturers (EVM), from 2010 until December 2012. Previously, Mr. Glasspool was Head of Global Pricing & Market Access and Head of Global Commercial Operations in Novartis Pharma, where he led the functions in embedding the needs of customers and consumers for brands at all stages of their lifecycle development, launch, and in market. Mr. Glasspool joined Novartis as Head of Marketing for Neuroscience. He was promoted to Global Head Cardiovascular & Metabolism Business Franchise in 2006, during which time he grew the franchise sales over a three-year period.

Dr. Sullivan is co-founder and CEO of Vanqua. In addition, he has been a Venture Partner with Orbimed since January 2019. Previously, he was the Vice President of Research at Abbvie where he was responsible for the company’s research efforts in a variety of therapeutic/disease areas including oncology, immunology, neurology, hepatitis C and cystic fibrosis. Jim has advanced more than 100 compounds into clinical development across a number of disease states and technology platforms. These include products on the market for HCV (Mavyret and Viekira), the first-in-class Bcl2 selective inhibitor, Venclexta, for hematological cancers, a new oral agent for patients with rheumatoid arthritis, RINVOQ, and multiple compounds currently in Phase II or III clinical trials. He has authored/co-authored more than 130 scientific publications and is an inventor on 11 patents. Jim is an adjunct faculty member at Northwestern University and serves on the board of several companies and foundations including Regis Technologies, Genomics Medicine Ireland, Genuity Science, MATTER Healthcare Incubator, Chicago Biotechnology Accelerator and the Pistoia Alliance. He earned his bachelor’s degree and Ph.D. in biochemistry from Trinity College Dublin and conducted post-doctoral research in neurobiology at Northwestern University.

Paula Soteropoulos brings to Ensoma more than 30 years of experience in the biopharma industry in areas of drug development, manufacturing, business development, global commercialization with P&L accountability, company building and organizational development. Her leadership throughout her career spans a broad range of therapeutic areas, including rare disease, cardiovascular and metabolism, infectious disease, renal, and transplant and oncology. In addition to Ensoma, Paula is a strategic advisor to 5AM Ventures and a member of the Board of Directors of uniQure and Rallybio. Previously, Paula served as the founding CEO and board member of rare disease therapeutic developer Akcea Therapeutics. There, she led the company through its IPO, as well as significant growth — employing over 270 staff in 13 countries and overseeing six drugs in its portfolio with two rare disease drug approvals and commercial launches. Prior, Paula served as senior vice president and general manager, cardiometabolic and rare disease businesses and strategic alliances at Moderna Therapeutics. She also spent more than 20 years at Genzyme Corporation, most recently as vice president and general manager, cardiovascular, rare diseases. Paula holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in chemical and biochemical engineering from Tufts University and an executive management certificate from the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia. Paula serves on the advisory board for the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department of Tufts University.

Jake Becraft is co-founder and CEO of Strand Therapeutics, an emerging biotechnology company at the forefront of mRNA therapeutics. With colleagues at MIT’s Synthetic Biology Center, he led the development of the world’s first synthetic biology programming language for mRNA. Jake has been featured in Fierce Biotech, Bloomberg, and the Boston Business Journal, among others, for his vision and mission at Strand of applying this unique platform for real-world disease applications. Jake was recently named a Termeer Fellow and listed on MIT Technology Review's 35 Innovators Under 35 and Boston Business Journal’s 40 Under 40. Outside of science, Jake is an active backcountry snowboarder and trains Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Lex Rovner is the CEO and cofounder of 64x Bio, a spinout of Harvard Medical School and the Wyss Institute at Harvard University. Using novel high throughput genome engineering and screening technologies in a design loop with computational tools, 64x Bio is developing new ways of generating highly optimized cell lines for the manufacturing of viral vectors. These fundamental advances enable pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to bring more lifesaving cell and gene therapies to patients by reducing the cost and complexity of manufacturing, a critical bottleneck in this multibillion dollar market. Lex was a postdoc in George Church’s lab and cofounded the company along with George, Pam Silver, Jeff Way, and David Thompson. She received her Ph.D in molecular, cellular and developmental biology at Yale University. Josh Mandel-Brehm is President & Chief Executive Officer of CAMP4 Therapeutics and holds a dual appointment as entrepreneur partner with Polaris Partners. Mr. Mandel-Brehm previously held key business development and operations leadership roles at leading biotech companies. Most recently he served as part of the Business Development group at Biogen, where he led multiple strategic activities and corresponding transactions, which included expanding Biogen’s non-malignant hematology franchise and overseeing seminal investments to enter the ophthalmology field. Mr. Mandel-Brehm also played an integral role advancing Biogen’s gene therapy strategy, executing a series of external collaborations. Prior to Biogen, Mr. Mandel-Brehm held several roles of increasing responsibility at Genzyme as part of the business development group for the company’s rare disease business unit. Mr. Mandel-Brehm earned a BA in Biology from Washington University in St. Louis and holds an MBA from the University of Michigan. Nabiha Saklayen is CEO & co-founder of Cellino. Cellino’s proprietary technology makes personalized stem cell-derived therapies scalable for the first time. Nabiha was selected as a Pioneer in MIT Tech Review's 35 Innovators under 35 list for her patented inventions in cellular laser editing. She received her Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard University as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) International Fellow. She is also the inaugural Tory Burch Foundation Fellow in Genomics at the Innovative Genomics Institute led by Nobel Laureate Dr. Jennifer Doudna. Nabiha is also a TED speaker and co-creator of I Am A Scientist, an educational program running in 50 states that inspires children to explore science.

Tim Sweeney, MD, PhD, is co-founder and CEO of Inflammatix. Tim has extensive experience in medical practice (general & trauma surgery), bench research, and bioinformatics / machine learning. While training at Stanford he helped invent the core technology on which Inflammatix is based, is named on over a dozen patents related to medical diagnostics, and has published >100 manuscripts & abstracts. He is PI (through Inflammatix) on multiple development contracts from DARPA, BARDA, and NIH, and brought Inflammatix to recognition as the ‘Most Disruptive Technology’ at AACC in 2019, and the “Fierce 15” list in 2020.

Al leads teams in early-stage discovery up through non-clinical development, identifying new drug candidates for advancement into clinical research. Al joined Sage as CSO in 2011, with more than 20 years of drug discovery experience focused primarily in the neuroscience arena. Most recently, he was Vice President of Chemistry and Pharmacokinetic Sciences at Lundbeck USA, where he was responsible for the drug discovery, analytical, computational and pharmacokinetics departments focused on synaptic transmission and neuroinflammation. Earlier, as Senior Director and Head of the Neuroscience Discovery Chemistry Department of Wyeth Research, Al led a group that successfully delivered more than 15 drug candidates into clinical development in a broad range of neuroscience indications. He has co-authored more than 125 manuscripts and abstracts, and is a co-inventor on 50 patents and patent applications. Al holds a B.S. in chemistry from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of California, Irvine and was an American Chemical Society postdoctoral fellow at Colorado State University.