The Peptide Promise With NervGen's Mike Kelly

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. Allan Shaw is back with us this week to dig into the complexities of strategic hiring in biotech. We cover strategies for the step-wise assembly of effective executive teams, the importance of aligning key hires with clinical and regulatory milestones, managing salaries in line with cash runways, the pros and cons of fractional/consultative leadership, when it's time to turn fractional into full-time, and a whole-lot more. If you're growing a biotech in these volatile times, this episode of the Business of Biotech offers veteran insight you won't want to miss. Access this and hundreds of episodes of the Business of Biotech videocast under the Listen & Watch tab at bioprocessonline.com. Subscribe to our monthly Business of Biotech newsletter. Get in touch with guest and topic suggestions: [email protected] Matt Pillar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewpillar/

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. Mike Kelly faced a self-reckoning before he took the job as CEO at NervGen, a company developing peptide therapeutics targeted specifically at central nervous system repair. The veteran of life sciences business development knew the ropes of the biotech C-suite. He’d been a CEO twice before. He knew how to launch drugs, having seen commercial success several times before. He even knew how to sell them—he’d started his career carrying the bag for TAP Pharmaceuticals. But all he knew about peptides was that they were challenging to manufacture consistently and purify. And he knew that manufacturing is where a lot of biopharma companies fall down. On this episode of the Business of Biotech, we learn how Kelly reconciled that truth, and how NervGen is now leading the way for peptide therapeutics in spinal cord injury and beyond. Access this and hundreds of episodes of the Business of Biotech videocast under the Listen & Watch tab at bioprocessonline.com. Subscribe to our monthly Business of Biotech newsletter. Get in touch with guest and topic suggestions: [email protected] Matt Pillar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewpillar/

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. It wouldn't be accurate to say that surgeon-turned-healthcare investment banker and consultant Dr. Ali Pashazadeh traded his scalpels for spreadsheets. In fact, he still wields a scalpel quite frequently, and on this episode of the Business of Biotech podcast, he offers a fantastic reason why. Yes, it's a bit of a departure from our normal routine of biotech founders occupying the guest chair. But, Pashazadeh's no-holds-barred reflections on and analysis of biotech breaking points, drawn from more than 2 decades of troubleshooting broken bipharmaceutical businesses and correcting courses, makes for some great programming. Whether you're a biotech builder in the throes of disruption, or feeling lucky that you've been threading scientific, clinical, capital, and regulatory needles all along, this episode offers a ton of insight from the unwritten textbooks on the business of biotech.Access this and hundreds of episodes of the Business of Biotech videocast under the Listen & Watch tab at bioprocessonline.com. Subscribe to our monthly Business of Biotech newsletter. Get in touch with guest and topic suggestions: [email protected] Matt Pillar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewpillar/

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. Hilary Eaton, Ph.D. was a self-described AI skeptic, particularly as it relates to using the tool in drug discovery. Then, a series of professional and deeply personal life events and medical discoveries put her in a position to confront that skepticism head-on. Today, she's Chief Business Officer at ProFluent Bio, a company that's committed to democratizing access to open-source AI gene editing tools that are custom-built for pharmaceutical development. On this episode of the Business of Biotech, Dr. Eaton shares her story and makes a pragmatic case for the transformative value of AI to biotech builders. Whether your bullish or bearish about the intersction of advanced therapeutic development and artificial intelligence, this one's a must-listen. Access this and hundreds of episodes of the Business of Biotech videocast under the Listen & Watch tab at bioprocessonline.com. Subscribe to our monthly Business of Biotech newsletter. Get in touch with guest and topic suggestions: [email protected] Matt Pillar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewpillar/

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. SR One Capital Management CEO Simeon George, M.D. has a seemingly innate ability to pick winning biotech builders. Early on, he and his firm got behind CRISPR's Samarth Kulkarni, Ph.D., Arcellx' Rami Elghandour, and Nkarta's Paul Hastings, for example. With nearly 50 biotech leaders in SR One's portfolio, there are plenty more where those three came from. On this episode of the Business of Biotech, Dr. George, admits that despite his gifted brain he more readily follows his heart. Still, over the course of our conversation, he shares insight into the decision making processes that have contributed to his success at picking winners as an investment banker and biotech venture capitalist. Access this and hundreds of episodes of the Business of Biotech videocast under the Listen & Watch tab at bioprocessonline.com. Subscribe to our monthly Business of Biotech newsletter. Get in touch with guest and topic suggestions: [email protected] Matt Pillar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewpillar/

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. Erik van den Berg is CEO and board member at Memo Therapeutics, and he's a student of biotech chaos. In fact, he's been embracing it with intention for the past 30 years. On this episode of the Business of Biotech, he walks us through the management of that chaos in specific detail. Navigating gluttonous Covid-fueled financial markets. Achieving clinical outcomes during the pandemic. Keeping development on the rails in a protracted financial drought. Creating differentiation in crowded and noisy renal and oncology antibody therapeutic spaces. We cover it all, with van den Berg offering detailed insight into the guiding principles of navigating constant change in biotech.Access this and hundreds of episodes of the Business of Biotech videocast under the Listen & Watch tab at bioprocessonline.com. Subscribe to our monthly Business of Biotech newsletter. Get in touch with guest and topic suggestions: [email protected] Matt Pillar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewpillar/

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. This week, it’s another “Business of Biotech-meets-Business-of-RNA” takeover with Circio CEO Erik Digman Wiklund, Ph.D. and guest co-host Anna Rose Welch of Advancing RNA.  While Circio’s legacy is in cancer immunology (it still boasts a cancer vaccine candidate targeting KRAS driver mutations), the company made a bold pivot, of sorts, when it committed headlong to the circular RNA future. Now, it’s in the throes of fine-tuning a platform for the development of novel circRNA medicines for rare disease, vaccines, and cancer. On this episode of the Business of Biotech, we go deep inside the story behind the pivot, we explore the RNA therapeutic platform-versus-product appetite among biotech investors, and Dr. Digman Wiklund shares insights into the challenges his company overcame to enable such a dramatic shift in focus. Access this and hundreds of episodes of the Business of Biotech videocast under the Listen & Watch tab at bioprocessonline.com. Subscribe to our monthly Business of Biotech newsletter. Get in touch with guest and topic suggestions: [email protected] Matt Pillar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewpillar/

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. Guest co-host Anna Rose Welch of Advancing RNA fame joins us on this week’s Business of Biotech podcast for a conversation with the leaders of RNA upstart Radar Therapeutics. The company’s co-founders, Eerik Kaseniit, Ph.D. (CSO & President) and Sophia Lugo (CEO), are making waves in the mRNA therapeutics space on the heels of the invention of a precision-expressed mRNA technology that laid bare the path to Radar’s inception. On this episode, we dig into that science, why it’s timely, and how it fits into today’s mRNA therapeutics landscape. We also go deep on how Kaseniit and Lugo went about navigating the complexities of biotech formation, leaning into their networks andbuilding up a team—and each other—along the way. Their work is paying off, as the fast-growing company is attracting gobs of investor and big bio attention. For more on the technology Radar is bringing to bear, read Kaseniit and Lugo’s recent byline at Cell & Gene. Access this and hundreds of episodes of the Business of Biotech videocast under the Listen & Watch tab at bioprocessonline.com. Subscribe to our monthly Business of Biotech newsletter. Get in touch with guest and topic suggestions: [email protected] Matt Pillar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewpillar/

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. For all the drug commercialization successes he's played a leading hand in during his tenures at GSK, Genentech, and ImClone—Androderm, Augmentin, necitumumab, and Erbitux among them—Michael Bailey concedes that he's likely better known for his failures. After hearing his stories on this episode of the Business of Biotech, I tend to disagree. While he offers a transparent and instructive look at the failures themselves, I'd contend it's what he's done with those setbacks that defines his biopharma and biotech leadership legacy. Today, Bailey is CEO at Aveo Oncology, a company that saw its own set of challenges during the clinical development of now-commercial FOTIVDA (tivozanib) and ficlatuzumab. Tune in for Bailey's straight-shooting insight on how to turn biotech setbacks on their ear. Access this and hundreds of episodes of the Business of Biotech videocast under the Listen & Watch tab at bioprocessonline.com. Subscribe to our monthly Business of Biotech newsletter. Get in touch with guest and topic suggestions: [email protected] Matt Pillar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewpillar/

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. He's been a big pharma executive. He's a multi-time biotech founder and current biotech CEO. He was once a regulator. He's a physician. He serves on multiple boards. And as of this summer, he's president of one of the most influential global organizations dedicated to the advance of cell and gene therapies (ISCT), and an executive member of another (ARM). Miguel Forte, M.D. simply can't stop finding places to apply his talents and energy to influence the advanced therapies landscape. The experiences he's amassed give him a unique perspective on the industry's path forward, how to navigate the regulatory gauntlet, the role of industry associations and alliances in a biotech's succes, balancing the demands of multi-point leadership, changing the ATMP accesibility paradigm, and more. On this episode of the Business of Biotech, Dr. Forte shares generously on all of it. Access this and hundreds of episodes of the Business of Biotech videocast under the Listen & Watch tab at bioprocessonline.com. Subscribe to our monthly Business of Biotech newsletter. Get in touch with guest and topic suggestions: [email protected] Matt Pillar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewpillar/