Biotech 2050 Podcast

Ibraheem Mahmood has an extensive life science and finance background that spans more than 20 years. His experience includes previous roles in Lifescience M&A and Fundraising at Nomura, Lifescience Equity Research at Investec and Business Development and Corporate Venture Capital at Shire Pharmaceuticals. He was co-founder, President and CEO of the clinical operations services company DrugDev, in which he raised over $50m in financing and he sold the business to IQVIA in 2017. Ibraheem studied medicine at the University of Oxford.

Dr. Raymond J. Tesi has been President, Chief Executive Officer and acting Chief Medical Officer since the formation of INmune Bio in September 2015. From November 2011 to May 2015, Dr. Tesi was CEO, President and Acting Chief Medical Officer of FPRT Bio Inc., a development-stage biotech company formed to develop XPro1595 for the treatment of neurodegenerative disease and other inflammatory diseases. From November 2010 to October 2011, Dr. Tesi was Chief Medical Officer of Adienne SRL, an emerging biotech company in Bergamo, Italy focused on products to treat patients with hematologic malignancy. From June 2007 to September 2010, Dr. Tesi was CEO and President of Coronado Biosciences, a company he founded. Dr. Tesi received his M.D. from Washington University School of Medicine in 1982. Dr. Tesi has been a licensed physician since 1982 and Fellow of the American College of Surgery since 1991.

Dr. Matthew Bio is President & CEO at Snapdragon Chemistry. Matthew began his career in chemistry more than 20 years ago developing continuous processes for the manufacture and purification of acrylates at the former Rohm & Haas company. Matthew then moved to Columbia University and earned a PhD in Chemistry. Upon graduating, Matthew returned to industry as a process development chemist at Merck Research Laboratories. In 2006 Matthew moved to Amgen where he worked on the development of both batch and continuous processes, and drove innovation in technologies for the manufacture of synthetic – biologic hybrid molecules. In 2015, Matthew joined Snapdragon Chemistry, Inc., a contract development firm specialized in the design of continuous manufacturing technology. Throughout his career, Matthew has been involved in the development of more than 50 clinical candidates and the launch of three new drugs to the market. He is author or inventor on more than 30 peer reviewed publications and patents and numerous regulatory filings. Matthew is driven by a passion for the development of new technologies in organic synthesis to enable safer, more efficient processes and providing access to new chemical architectures.

Alexander Titus is the Founder of Bioeconomy.XYZ and the Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) at the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute (ARMI), where his career focuses on the intersection of technology and public benefit, with experience spanning the private and public sectors, as well as non-profits and academia. In previous roles, Alexander was the inaugural Assistant Director (AD) for Biotechnology within the Office of the CTO at the Department of Defense (DoD). As the AD for Biotechnology, Alexander was the DASD-level senior executive in charge of the DoD’s enterprise strategy for biotechnology, where he led the team developing the biotechnology modernization roadmap for the DoD. Alexander joined the DoD from McKinsey & Company, where he was a management consultant and a member of the inaugural cohort of Defense & Security Specialists working with the national security community on high-priority issues related to organization effectiveness, leadership, and analytics. On the technical side, Alexander is a trained data scientist with an expertise at the intersection of AI and biology. Prior to consulting, Alexander was a data scientist at the venture capital firm In-Q-Tel, as a member of their B. Next group, as well as a data scientist at Amazon on the Alexa AI team and at Dartmouth in the Geisel School of Medicine. Alexander holds a PhD in Quantitative Biomedical Sciences from the Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies at Dartmouth, as well as a BS and BA in biochemistry and biology (respectively) from the University of Puget Sound.

James Burns, PhD, Chief Executive Officer, Locanabio James (Jim) Burns, Ph.D., joined Locanabio in December 2019 as CEO and Board member. Prior to joining Locanabio, Dr. Burns served as the CEO of Casebia Therapeutics and led the team in discovering and developing new CRISPR/Cas9-based breakthrough therapeutics to treat blood disorders, blindness and auto-immune disease. Prior to Casebia, Dr. Burns spent the bulk of his career at Sanofi-Genzyme, where he held several leadership roles with increasing responsibility, including North America Site Head for R&D where he coordinated R&D operations across key therapeutic areas, and head of Sanofi-Genzyme R&D. Dr. Burns is a former board member of MassBio, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and a member of the External Advisory Committee for the BioMedical Engineering Department at Boston University. He also served as the industry representative for the Food and Drug Administration General Plastic Surgery Panel. Dr. Burns earned a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from Purdue University and Master of Science and Doctorate degrees in bioengineering from the University of Illinois-Chicago, where his thesis work focused on drug delivery. Following his graduate studies, he was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Florida. Kathie Bishop, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer, Locanabio Kathie M. Bishop, Ph.D., joined Locanabio in August 2019 as CSO. Dr. Bishop has 20 years’ experience in leading translational research and drug development, with a focus on novel therapeutics in neurological and rare diseases. She was previously CSO at Otonomy, where she led preclinical and clinical development of a pipeline of neurotology programs. Before that, she was CSO of Tioga Pharmaceuticals. From 2009 to 2015, Dr. Bishop served in various product development management roles at Ionis Pharmaceuticals including Vice President, Clinical Development. At Ionis, she led translation and development of multiple programs in the neurology franchise including leading the development and clinical trials for SPINRAZA™ (nusinersen), the first approved treatment for patients with spinal muscular atrophy and winner of the 2017 Prix Galien Award. Dr. Bishop also served in research and development leadership roles from to 2001 to 2009 at Ceregene, a company focused on the development of AAV-based gene therapy products for the treatment of neurodegenerative and retinal disorders. She conducted post-doctoral work at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Alberta.

Seth Lederman is a physician, scientist and founder and executive officer of innovative biopharmaceuticals companies. Prior to founding Tonix, among the companies Dr. Lederman founded was Targent Pharmaceuticals, which developed late-stage oncology drugs, including pure-isomer levofolinic acid (levoleucovorin). Targent’s assets were sold to Spectrum Pharmaceuticals, which marketed levoleucovorin as Fusilev® for advanced colorectal cancer, where it gained significant market acceptance. Dr. Lederman served as an Associate Professor at Columbia University from 1996 until April 13, 2017. He joined the faculty of Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1985, became Assistant Professor of Medicine in 1988, and Associate Professor with tenure in 1996 and Director of the Laboratory of Molecular Immunology in 1997. From 1988 to 2002, Dr. Lederman directed basic science research at Columbia in molecular immunology, infectious diseases and the development of therapeutics for autoimmune diseases. Dr. Lederman is author of numerous scientific articles, and inventor of technologies recognized by a number of issued patents. His fundamental work on the CD40-Ligand (CD154) elucidated the molecular basis of T cell helper function and has led to the development of therapeutic candidates for autoimmune diseases and organ transplant rejection in collaboration with Biogen and UCB. The successful defense of his CD154 patents has led to important precedents in defining the relationship of therapeutics and molecular targets. In collaboration with Prof. David Baltimore (then at Rockefeller University and later MIT), Dr. Lederman identified and functionally characterized the CD40 signaling molecule, TRAF-3. His early work on HIV contributed to the understanding of how the V3 loop of HIV gp120 was involved in fusion with CD4 cell membranes, an early and essential event in viral entry and infection. In addition to his research, Dr. Lederman served as attending physician in the Edward Daniels Arthritis and Autoimmunity Clinic on the Medical Service at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital from 1988-1996. Dr. Lederman represented U.S. Biotechnology at a Beijing Summit in September 2015 with China’s President Xi Jinping. The Summit was organized by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and involved a delegation of U.S. CEOs, former U.S. Cabinet officials and leading academic experts. Dr. Lederman earned an AB from Princeton in Chemistry cum laude in 1979 and an MD from Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1983. Dr. Lederman trained in internal medicine and rheumatology at Columbia's Presbyterian Hospital. He was an NIH Physician-Scientist 1985-1990 at Columbia.

Victor Hanson-Smith is the Head of Computational Biology at Verge Genomics and is one of the world's leaders in mathematical modeling of eukaryotic genome evolution and function. He has co-authored 13 publications in peer-reviewed journals such as Nature and Science, and his work has been featured in the NYTimes and The Washington Post. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Oregon, and completed an NIH post-doctoral research fellowship in Evolutionary Genomics at UCSF. Additionally, he is a full-stack software engineer with 17 years experience building web applications, supercomputing simulations, and genomics pipelines.

Dr. Maria Soloveychik is the co-founder and CEO of SyntheX, a therapeutics company focused on accelerating drug discovery using synthetic biology. The company’s core technologies, ToRPPIDO and ToRNeDO, rely on genetic engineering and evolutionary selection to synthesize and identify compounds that disrupt protein-protein interactions or lead to selective target degradation. SyntheX was founded in 2016 and is located in San Francisco. Maria has obtained her PhD from the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto, where she discovered novel pathways linking metabolism and epigenetic signaling. Maria was previously a research scientist at a structural genomics consortium at the University Health Network in Toronto, where her work led to the determination of numerous structures and identification of several drug candidates.

Bob has been President of Imagion Biosystems since February 2015 and has led the company through the recent restructuring and recapitalization efforts. Previous employment experience includes Pres/GM for Silicon Biosystems and a career in marketing and sales management with more than 25 years experience in the computer, life science and medical diagnostics industries, e.g. Vice President Marketing and Sales for Nanogen, Inc., Senior Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at Gene Logic, and General Manager, Life Sciences at IGEN International, Inc. Mr. Proulx holds an M.A. and B.A. from The State University of New York at Albany and an Executive MBA from the Penn State Smeal College of Business.

Nick Damiano is a serial entrepreneur with broad experience in medical devices and digital health. He has 15 years of experience as a healthcare entrepreneur, engineer, and leader. He is currently Co-Founder & CEO of Zenflow, which is developing a novel office-based therapy to relieve symptoms of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), which affects over 500 million men globally. The company has raised over $40 million in funding and conducted successful clinical trials in four countries. Zenflow is backed by leading venture firms including Invus and F-Prime and was one of the first medical device companies funded by Y Combinator, the world’s leading startup accelerator. Prior to Zenflow, Nick was an Innovation Fellow at Stanford University. Before Biodesign, he co-founded Nurep (now called Avail MedSystems), a company developing telemedicine solutions for medical device procedures. In this role, Nick led the successful technical development effort to bring the company's product to market and also played key roles in strategy, sales, and fundraising. Prior to Nurep, he worked in engineering roles for several small medical device companies, including developing critical algorithms for the world’s first leadless cardiac pacing system at EBR Systems. Outside of Zenflow, Nick plays an active role in mentoring and advising medtech and healthcare entrepreneurs and startups. He has served as an advisor in various capacities at StartX, Y Combinator Startup School, Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign, and the Rosenman Institute. He is also a Venture Partner at Pioneer Fund, a venture fund led by Y Combinator alumni. Nick grew up on the east coast and earned his M.S. and B.S. with Distinction in Management Science & Engineering from Stanford University.