9
Aug
2021
Better Cancer Drugs for Kids: Julie Grant and Sam Blackman on The Long Run
Today we have a pair of guests on The Long Run — Julie Grant and Sam Blackman. Julie is a venture capitalist – a general partner at Canaan Partners. Sam is a pediatric oncologist and drug developer. After a routine business meeting, they realized they had something in common. They both believed that the pharmaceutical industry can — and should... Read More
26
Jul
2021
Career Arc of a Biotech Leader: Sue Desmond-Hellmann on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Sue Desmond-Hellmann. Sue — and I don’t say this about many people — is a biotech industry legend. Sue is an oncologist and a public health professional by training. She made her name in biopharmaceuticals at Genentech from 1995-2009 — the glory days when it became the world’s most important developer of new... Read More
19
Jul
2021
Investing at the Nexus of Biology & Technology: Jenny Rooke on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Jenny Rooke. Jenny is the founder and managing partner of San Francisco-based Genoa Ventures. I’ve been wanting to invite Jenny on the podcast for a while. Back in 2018, I profiled her as one of “Nine VCs Who Matter, But You Never Read About.” As I wrote then: “VCs take on lots of... Read More
15
Jun
2021
Mentoring Young Scientists: Jay Bradner and Andy Plump on The Long Run
This episode of The Long Run is a little different. I invited a couple previous guests on The Long Run to discuss a specific issue: How the industry can do a better job of mentoring young scientists, and creating on-ramps to careers in the biopharma industry for people from underrepresented groups. Jay Bradner, the president of the Novartis Institutes for... Read More
2
Jun
2021
Spatial Biology Coming Into Focus: Brad Gray on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Brad Gray. Brad is the CEO of Seattle-based NanoString Technologies. NanoString started out in the early 2000s by making digital “bar codes” that allowed it to do multi-plex gene expression – the analysis of multiple genes at once, and the extent to which they were dialled on or off in a given sample.... Read More
4
May
2021
Spotting Trends and Starting Edgy Companies: Daphne Zohar on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Daphne Zohar. Daphne is the founder and CEO of Boston-based Puretech Health. Puretech has been around since 2005, seeking to capitalize on some of the big trends in biotech. It started out seeking to test concepts from academic labs that could be the basis for new biotech companies – what’s now commonly called... Read More
19
Apr
2021
Partnering in a World of Scientific Abundance: James Sabry on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is James Sabry. James is the Global Head of Pharma Partnering for Roche. He’s based in Basel, Switzerland. He did his PhD in neuroscience at UCSF, and spent the bulk of his career in biotech in California. After leading a couple of startups, he joined Genentech in 2010 as vice president of partnering. It... Read More
29
Mar
2021
Writing with DNA at Scale: Emily Leproust on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Emily Leproust. Emily is the co-founder and CEO of South San Francisco-based Twist Bioscience. It’s a DNA synthesis company. It uses a silicon-based system to “write” in the language of DNA – that is, make synthetic genes to test ideas in a lab, or to perform some basic biomedical or industrial workhorse function.... Read More
15
Mar
2021
Software for the Cell & Gene Therapy Wave: Vineti’s Amy DuRoss on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Amy DuRoss. Amy is the co-founder and CEO of San Francisco-based Vineti. The company provides software to manage the delicate logistical dance for cell and gene therapies. Vineti has raised about $115 million in three venture rounds of financing. Its backers include Cardinal Health, the big medical distributor, as well as traditional venture... Read More
1
Mar
2021
Investing in Manufacturing, Mental Health & More: Bob Nelsen on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Bob Nelsen. Bob is the co-founder and managing director of ARCH Venture Partners. He’s one of the most prolific, and successful, venture capitalists in biotech history. Bob likes to get involved in startups in the earliest days. He is willing to stick his neck out, and generally do things that might seem weird... Read More
8
Feb
2021
A Single Shot for Heart Disease: Sekar Kathiresan on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Sek Kathiresan. Sek is the co-founder and CEO of Cambridge, Mass.-based Verve Therapeutics. Verve is using genome editing technology in a bold fashion. Its idea is to develop a one-and-done shot that essentially would prevent cardiovascular disease in adults. Its plan is to start out with a group of patients at very high... Read More
19
Jan
2021
Gene Editing for Transplants and Cell Therapy: Luhan Yang on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Luhan Yang. Luhan is the founder and CEO of Hangzhou, China-based Qihan Biotech. Qihan is using genome editing technology to engineer pigs with organs that can be safely transplanted into humans. This is what scientists call xenotransplantation. The concept has been around a long time, but new CRISPR-based gene editing technologies make it... Read More
22
Dec
2020
Creative New Treatments for Mental Health: Steve Paul on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Steve Paul. Steve is the chairman, president and CEO of Boston-based Karuna Therapeutics. Karuna is developing new treatments for neuropsychiatric disorders. By the time you listen to this conversation, Karuna will either be very close to starting a Phase III clinical trial of its lead drug candidate, or it will already have begun.... Read More
14
Dec
2020
Seeking Impact: Servier’s David Lee on The Long Run Podcast
Today’s guest on The Long Run is David Lee. David is the CEO of Boston-based Servier Pharmaceuticals. It’s the US subsidiary of France-based Servier Group. Servier, for those unfamiliar, is a rare bird in the pharmaceutical world. It markets both branded drugs and generic drugs. It is a truly global company with 21,000 employees in 148 countries, but it has... Read More
23
Nov
2020
Medicines Based on Unusual Genetic Traits: Andrew Farnum on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Andrew Farnum. Andrew is the CEO of Seattle-based Variant Bio. Variant Bio is a startup seeking to discover new drugs, by finding gene variants in rare ethnic groups. It’s especially interested in what can be learned by sequencing exceptional groups of people in countries where there hasn’t been much sequencing. This is a... Read More
11
Nov
2020
Creating the Future of Microbiome-Based Therapies: Simba Gill on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Simba Gill. Simba is the CEO of Cambridge, Mass.-based Evelo Biosciences. Evelo is part of a new generation of biotech companies seeking to make medicines based on new understanding of the microbiome. The science here is fascinating. Evelo’s drug candidates are biologics designed to be taken orally, to act directly in the gut,... Read More
28
Oct
2020
The Battle for the Soul of Biopharma: Peter Kolchinsky on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Peter Kolchinsky. Peter is the managing partner at RA Capital Management. The Boston-based firm invests in public and private life sciences companies with a total of $6.8 billion under management. Peter is a virologist by training at Harvard University. It’s obviously a valuable set of skills to have in a year like this.... Read More
26
Oct
2020
Machine Learning for Drug Discovery: Daphne Koller on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Daphne Koller. Daphne is the CEO of South San Francisco-based insitro. The company is seeking to develop a new platform for drug discovery that leans on a combination of wet labs and machine learning algorithms to spot new biological targets for drug discovery. Artificial intelligence and machine learning have been stirring imaginations in... Read More
12
Oct
2020
Looking at Cancer From a Different Angle: Pearl Huang on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Pearl Huang. Pearl is the CEO of Cambridge, Mass.-based Cygnal Therapeutics. Cygnal is a startup dedicated to developing cancer drugs based on some fairly new understanding of the Peripheral Nervous System. For years, scientists assumed that the PNS was merely a conduit of the central nervous system. But what if the PNS is... Read More
28
Sep
2020
Small Molecules Against RNA Targets: Jennifer Petter on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Jennifer Petter. She is the founder and chief scientific officer of Waltham, Massachusetts-based Arrakis Therapeutics. Jennifer is a medicinal chemist who has spent her career thinking about how to make small molecules with all the classic Lipinski “Rule of 5” characteristics against protein targets. Five years ago, when she was looking for a... Read More