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.
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.
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 show is Rob Perez.
He grew up in a lower-middle class household in Los Angeles. Had some hoop dreams that never quite materialized. No big deal.
Perez found he had a knack for sales, and paid his way through college by working at fitness centers.
Rob Perez
Chance brought him into the pharmaceutical sales business. He liked meeting doctors, learning about medicine and how it could help people. He rose through the ranks, and ended up succeeding beyond his wildest dreams at Cubist Pharmaceuticals, the antibiotic developer acquired by Merck in 2015. Now he’s recruiting fellow biotech executives to put some of their money and talents to work on big, broad-based societal causes, like poverty and homelessness.
When you hear this personal story, I think you’ll see how this industry draws talented people from many walks of life, and how it can make an even bigger impact by simply remembering that fact. How can biotech do some more effective things to bridge some of the gaps in our society, to help some of the have-nots? He has some creative ideas to share on this score, and a model to study called Life Science Cares.
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.
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 is Chip Clark.
Chip Clark, CEO, Genocea
He’s the CEO of Cambridge, Mass.-based Genocea Biosciences. This vaccine platform company got into a jam last summer. It completed a Phase II trial with its lead therapeutic vaccine for genital herpes. Clark tried to insist the trial was a success and the product had a future. The market disagreed. The stock tanked. Cash ran low. Morale ebbed.
Something had to be done.
How did Clark think about re-starting the company – pivoting, as he says – toward a new future as a personalized neoantigen cancer vaccine developer? Clark was pretty candid about this difficult stretch at Genocea, and I think many entrepreneurs will be able to relate to the experience and learn from it.
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.
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 Alice Zhang.
Alice Zhang, co-founder and CEO, Verge Genomics
Let’s start with some basic background. Zhang studied systems biology at Princeton, graduated with honors, enrolled in an MD/PHD program at UCLA/Caltech, stayed there five years, quit, moved to Silicon Valley, and co-founded a company dedicated to using her knowledge for neurodegenerative drug discovery. She has been named among the Forbes 30-under-30.
You get the idea. She’s smart. And young.
That’s nice, but what makes her more interesting to me as a guest for this show is her thoughtful approach to combining genomic data with artificial intelligence to improve drug discovery for complex multifactorial diseases. Specifically, the neurodegenerative kind. There are people out there thumping the tub, and drinking the AI Kool Aid, but I think Zhang has a pretty wise sense for what the AI can and can’t do. I learned a few things listening to her, and I think you will too.
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.
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 Vicki Sato. She’s one of the biotech industry’s pioneers.
Sato started out as a classic academic scientist on the Harvard faculty. Beginning in the mid-1980s, and for about 20 years, the next phase of her career was as an executive at Biogen and Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Her fingerprints are all over a number of drugs that are linchpins for those companies today.
Vicki Sato
The last decade or so she’s been a teacher and mentor — on the Harvard Business School faculty and as a board member. As a director of Bristol-Myers Squibb, Denali Therapeutics and Vir Biotechnology, she oversees strategic direction of companies working on treatments for cancer, neurodegenerative disease, and infectious disease. Having been around for this many years, she’s wise. And tough. But she’s also a warm person who cares a lot about the next generation of biotech leaders. She splits her time now between Boston and New York. Fun fact: She says she’s enjoying the culture of the Big City and dances the tango – competitively.
It was a treat to sit down with her and discuss her career arc.
Before diving in, a word of thanks to the sponsors of the show: Presage Biosciences and Harvard Medical School executive education.
Next on The Long Run: Chad and Harlan Robins, the co-founders and brothers who run Seattle-based Adaptive Biotechnologies. This company has raised about $400 million over the years, and carved out a niche in immune sequencing, or immune profiling — a novel application of next-gen sequencing technology. We talked some about the science, the business strategy, and what it’s like to manage a company as brothers.
Now, join me and Vicki Sato for The Long Run.
