Today’s guest on The Long Run is Krishna Yeshwant.

Krishna is a general partner with GV, the corporate venture firm formerly known as Google Ventures. He is a rare bird – a Stanford computer scientist and a Harvard physician. With this combination of professional interests, and with the resources of Google to invest in fledgling companies, Krishna has acquired an unusual vantage point on where things are going, and where they could go, in biotech and healthcare.

Krishna Yeshwant, partner, GV

GV, like most corporate venture firms, doesn’t promote itself as much as traditional venture firms that need to hit up Limited Partners for new cash every 3-5 years. Krishna doesn’t talk to the media much. I enjoy talking with him on a semi-regular basis, and appreciate this extended look into his thinking on the podcast. He has his hands in a huge number of pies in biopharma, in genomic diagnostics, and in biology-and-healthcare software.

Krishna recently turned 40, a traditional time to take stock on one’s work.

Here’s one safe bet: He will be around a long time, keeping his finger on the pulse of biology and computing.

Before we dive in, a word from our sponsor.

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Now, join me and Krishna Yeshwant for another episode of The Long Run.

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Today’s guest on The Long Run is Nathaniel David.

He goes by Ned for short.

Ned is the co-founder and president of Unity Biotechnology. The company, founded in 2011 and based in Brisbane, Calif., comes from an emerging school of thought around clearing out senescent cells.

Ned David, co-founder and president, Unity Biotechnology

The wager at Unity is that by clearing out these senescent cells that accumulate in old folks, it should be able to treat certain diseases of aging. Starting with osteoarthritis.

Unity’s ambitions actually go far beyond osteoarthritis. It bills itself as a company that’s “extending human healthspan.” That’s not the same as simply extending human lifespan — helping humans live longer. The marketing makeover at Unity, and some of its rivals, is partly in an effort to distance itself from the hucksterism and wishful thinking that has long dogged the science and commerce of “anti-aging.” He’s trying to walk a line other entrepreneurs have been down, where they want to captivate people’s imaginations about what’s possible around vitality in older age, but without indulging in Ponce de Leon “fountain of youth” fantasies.

Immortality is really an alluring and enduring myth. Remember telomeres, sirtuins, and the Singularity? Yikes!

At age 51, Ned David is an interesting character to enter this arena of biotech. He’s a serial scientific entrepreneur with a string of successes (Kythera Biopharmaceuticals, Syrrx, Achaogen) and a few battle scars (Sapphire Energy, Kilimanjaro Energy). He gets exposed to a lot of far-out scientific concepts through his longstanding role as a venture partner with Arch Venture Partners.

Ned has a myriad of interests that span science, business and policy. I always enjoy talking with him, and I think you’ll enjoy this wide-ranging conversation across more than a couple domains.

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Julie Sunderland is the guest on the latest episode of The Long Run podcast.

She is a managing director at Biomatics Capital, a Seattle-based venture firm that invests in what it calls “data-enabled healthcare.”

Before diving into that, as always, I want listeners to get to know the person making things happen, and how she got here.

Julie Sunderland, managing director, Biomatics Capital

Sunderland her fellow investing partner Boris Nikolic worked together at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation before starting their own firm in 2016. Sunderland, with a finance background and a deep understand of science-based business, was the architect of the Gates Foundation’s Program Related Investments structure and strategy. She figured out how the world’s largest philanthropy could make equity investments in biotech companies whose interests align with the foundation’s global health mission.

Nikolic, a scientist by training, was the personal science advisor for Bill Gates, and he handled some of Bill’s investments in biology plays like Foundation Medicine, Editas Medicine, Nimbus Therapeutics and Schrodinger. Essentially, these were extracurriculars that venture beyond the global health philanthropic mission of the foundation, but have far-reaching potential for all of biology.

Biomatics raised an initial fund of $200 million in 2016 and put it to work in an eclectic mix of therapeutics, diagnostic, and digital health or tool plays. The portfolio includes Denali Therapeutics (a neuroscience drug developer), Grail (early cancer detection), Twist Bioscience (DNA synthesis) and Verana Health (mining of electronic health records to assist drug developers).  

Last week, Biomatics announced it has closed on its second fund, this one with $300 million, to keep doing what it does.

Sunderland is also a down-to-earth person, raw and real. She grew up in a home in Nova Scotia that lacked electricity until she was 12. Now she interacts with some of the smartest entrepreneurs and investors in the world of biotech. It’s quite a life journey.

Now, sit back, relax, and join me and Julie Sunderland for The Long Run.

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Today’s guest on The Long Run podcast is Barbara Weber.

She is the CEO of Cambridge, Mass.-based Tango Therapeutics.

Ever hear the saying ‘it takes two to tango?’ That’s where this startup draws its inspiration. It’s seeking to discover and develop synthetic lethal cancer drugs. These are intended to target two molecular vulnerabilities of a cancer cell, not just one, like the first wave of targeted therapies did 20 years ago. The concept of ‘synthetic lethal’ is a hot area of cancer biology. Venture capital has been flowing for a couple years now to companies like Tango, Repare Therapeutics, Ideaya Biosciences and Cyteir Therapeutics.

Barbara Weber, CEO, Tango Therapeutics

Tango, founded in 2014, is still at quite an early stage. It has no drug candidates in the clinic. It will be years before it gets there, if ever.

Yet the science is interesting. I’ve written about Tango before, and invited Weber to speak about Tango last spring at my Boston Cancer Summit. That was a charity fundraiser for my Everest Climb to Fight Cancer campaign for research at the Fred Hutch.

Turns out she’s been busy since then.

Today, Tango is announcing its first big partnership. Gilead Sciences is paying $50 million upfront to get the option to license five new targets that come from Tango’s discovery platform. Tango retains 100 percent ownership of its lead programs. Not too shabby.

Weber has the kind of resume you’d expect of someone serving as Dean of Genetics at some distinguished university. She’s an MD by training, did a residency at Yale, fellowship at Dana-Farber, became a professor of genetics at Michigan and Penn. She left academia for industry, taking R&D leadership roles at Big Pharma stalwarts GSK and Novartis.

She ended up at Third Rock Ventures, the Boston and San Francisco-based venture firm that starts companies focused on emerging areas of biology. Hearing her describe her career arc, she seems to have gotten into the right kind of situation where she and her team can execute on something she’s long wanted to do.

Now, join me and Barbara Weber for The Long Run.

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John Wilbanks is today’s guest on The Long Run podcast.

He’s the chief commons officer of Sage Bionetworks. He’s also a senior fellow with FasterCures.

Sage, for those unfamiliar, is a nonprofit biomedical research organization, founded in Seattle in 2009 by a couple of veterans of Merck. Co-founders Stephen Friend and Eric Schadt recognized that no single company’s R&D labs, no matter how smart and well-funded, have the same kind of capability as the crowd. Sage seeks to promote innovations in personalized medicine by enabling what it calls “a community-based approach to scientific inquiries and discoveries.”

As Wilbanks says, he “likes making it easy to share things.”

This is easier said than done.

The questions that Wilbanks wrestles with every day are of crucial importance to anyone who cares about how science gets done, how people get rewarded for advancing a field, and how quickly we can convert data into medically beneficial information and knowledge. This conversation is a look at some big picture ideas that are relevant to everyone in both the biopharmaceutical industry, and academic science.

Now, join me and John Wilbanks for The Long Run.

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