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.

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

Please subscribe and tell your friends why it’s worthwhile. Quality journalism costs money. When you subscribe to Timmerman Report at $169 per year, you reward quality independent biotech reporting, and encourage more.

Please subscribe and tell your friends why it’s worthwhile. Quality journalism costs money. When you subscribe to Timmerman Report at $169 per year, you reward quality independent biotech reporting, and encourage more.

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.

Please subscribe and tell your friends why it’s worthwhile. Quality journalism costs money. When you subscribe to Timmerman Report at $169 per year, you reward quality independent biotech reporting, and encourage more.