Business Of Biotech Matt Pillar

Novel technologies aren’t interesting to Rahul Kakkar, M.D. unless they help patients. Sounds rational, but it’s actually a unique perspective in a platform-crazed biotech industry. Dr. Kakkar’s worldview is shaped by his work as a physician—work he continues at Brigham and Women’s Hospital even as he builds Tome Biosciences, where he serves as President & CEO. Tome, which is developing programmable genomic integration technology, is the latest of Dr. Kakkar’s entrepreneurial efforts—he previously led Pandion Therapeutics to a $1.85B acquisition by Merck and Cordivia to a $2.1B acquisition by Novo Nordisk. On this episode of the Business of Biotech, Dr. Kakkar shares why he took on the brainchild of two MIT scientists under his wing, the nascent inflection point for gene editing therapy, how his work as a physician informs his biotech leadership, biopharma’s bad rap, and a whole lot more. 
You've listened along for years -- now you can watch along, too! Go to bioprocessonline.com/solution/the-business-of-biotech-podcast, where you can put faces to voices as you watch hundreds of interviews with the world's best biotech builders. While you're there, subscribe to the #BusinessofBiotech newsletter at bioprocessonline.com/bob for more real, honest, transparent interactions with the leaders of emerging biotech. It's a once-per-month dose of insight and intel that you'll actually look forward to receiving! Check it out at bioprocessonline.com/bob!

This episode of the Business of Biotech begins with a personal story about my dad and the standard of care in bladder cancer, before shifting to the work that Dr. Bobby Reddy and his team at ImmunityBio are doing to change that standard of care. They're painfully close. Dr. Reddy, Chief Medical Officer at ImmunityBio, gives us a long look behind the curtain at the commercial preparations the company is making as its lead Phase 3 candidate, Anktiva, nears the goal line in non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC). From grassroots engagement with physicians and urologists to making a global press to share clinical results, Dr. Reddy offers plenty of insight into biopharma commercial readiness, and good reason to hope for nearly a million NMIBC patients in the U.S. alone. 
You've listened along for years -- now you can watch along, too! Go to bioprocessonline.com/solution/the-business-of-biotech-podcast, where you can put faces to voices as you watch hundreds of interviews with the world's best biotech builders. While you're there, subscribe to the #BusinessofBiotech newsletter at bioprocessonline.com/bob for more real, honest, transparent interactions with the leaders of emerging biotech. It's a once-per-month dose of insight and intel that you'll actually look forward to receiving! Check it out at bioprocessonline.com/bob!

Ampersand Biomedicines CEO Jason Gardner, D.Phil. first took the leap from a global pharmaceutical giant to a startup at the forefront of transplant medicine innovation. Since that time, he's seen most of the ups and the downs that come with biotech leadership, and in his latest venture with the Flagship Pioneering-backed Ampersand, he's putting all those hard-fought lessons to good use. On this episode of the Business of Biotech -- the final (finally!) of several recorded at the JPM Healthcare Conference in January -- Gardner shares how and why he's applying his experience to the buildout of a precision medicine platform company, his thoughts on how big data and AI are influencing the precision medicine space and putting the "tech" in "techbio," his company's acquisition strategy, most recently demonstrated by Ampersand's acquisition of AbCheck, why "paranoid optimism" is central to his company's culture, and much, much more. 



You've listened along for years -- now you can watch along, too! Go to bioprocessonline.com/solution/the-business-of-biotech-podcast, where you can put faces to voices as you watch hundreds of interviews with the world's best biotech builders. While you're there, subscribe to the #BusinessofBiotech newsletter at bioprocessonline.com/bob for more real, honest, transparent interactions with the leaders of emerging biotech. It's a once-per-month dose of insight and intel that you'll actually look forward to receiving! Check it out at bioprocessonline.com/bob!

We've really been looking forward to dropping this episode with Karen Harris, Chief Financial Officer and Head of Mission-Related Investing at the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation. While the markets have warmed a bit since we recorded this episode, Karen's thoughtful perspective on the sometimes tumultuous Alzheimer's therapeutics space is valuable to any drug developer working in the cognitive medicines arena. In this episode of the Business of Biotech podcast, we follow Karen's journey from institutional investment banking to the incredibly gratifying work she does now, helping to fund the novel biopharma companies that are working in earnest to solve an emotionally burdensome and expensive problem. Karen shares ADDF's strategy and offers plenty of insight into the value proposition that venture philathropy offers the biotech community. Tune in!
You've listened along for years -- now you can watch along, too! Go to bioprocessonline.com/solution/the-business-of-biotech-podcast, where you can put faces to voices as you watch hundreds of interviews with the world's best biotech builders. While you're there, subscribe to the #BusinessofBiotech newsletter at bioprocessonline.com/bob for more real, honest, transparent interactions with the leaders of emerging biotech. It's a once-per-month dose of insight and intel that you'll actually look forward to receiving! Check it out at bioprocessonline.com/bob!

Few drug discovery and development concepts are as hyped, and as such, draw as much polarity from drug developers, as machine learning and artifical intelligence. One company on the bullish end of the spectrum is Flagship Pioneering's Generate Biomedicines, which bills itself at the "intersection of machine learning, biological engineering, and medicine." To get a grip on the "generative biology" work it's doing and the AI/ML impact it anticipates in the discovery and development of therapeutics, as well as clinical trials, we sat down with veteran biotech builder Mike Nally, CEO at Generate and CEO-Partner at Flagship Pioneering. 



You've listened along for years -- now you can watch along, too! Go to bioprocessonline.com/solution/the-business-of-biotech-podcast, where you can put faces to voices as you watch hundreds of interviews with the world's best biotech builders. While you're there, subscribe to the #BusinessofBiotech newsletter at bioprocessonline.com/bob for more real, honest, transparent interactions with the leaders of emerging biotech. It's a once-per-month dose of insight and intel that you'll actually look forward to receiving! Check it out at bioprocessonline.com/bob!

Gavin Samuels, M.D. found his work as an intensive care physician boring. After earning his M.D., he did that for a few years before moving into intensive care management roles. It wasn't until he left the hospital and entered biopharma that he found his footing, cutting his teeth in business development at places like Merck, Pfizer, Quark Pharma, and Teva. He even headed growth strategy at Lonza for a while. Now, he's Chief Business Officer and General Partner at CinRx Pharma, where a deep pipeline of early- to late-stage candidates keeps him on his dealmaking toes. Within minutes of our conversation, Dr. Sameuls' introspective reflections on biotech dealmaking and negotiations planted this episode firmly on the Business of Biotech podcast highlight reel. 
You've listened along for years -- now you can watch along, too! Go to bioprocessonline.com/solution/the-business-of-biotech-podcast, where you can put faces to voices as you watch hundreds of interviews with the world's best biotech builders. While you're there, subscribe to the #BusinessofBiotech newsletter at bioprocessonline.com/bob for more real, honest, transparent interactions with the leaders of emerging biotech. It's a once-per-month dose of insight and intel that you'll actually look forward to receiving! Check it out at bioprocessonline.com/bob!