BIOS – Details, episodes & analysis

Professor Dane Wittrup attended the University of New Mexico as an undergraduate, graduating Summa Cum Laude with a Bachelors in Chemical Engineering in June, 1984. Wittrup went on to attend the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, where he worked with Prof. James Bailey on flow cytometry and segregated modeling of recombinant populations of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. After obtaining his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering with a minor in Biology in 1988, he spent a brief time working at Amgen before becoming an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1989. He moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in September of 1999, where he is now the C.P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biological Engineering, in addition to working with the Koch Institute as the Associate Director for Engineering.

w/ Special Guest Host: Jacob Becraft - Co-Founder & CEO @ Strand Therapeutics

Jake Becraft is a synthetic biologist and entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CEO of Strand Therapeutics, and serves on its Board of Directors. Together with colleagues at MIT’s renowned Synthetic Biology Center, he led the development of the world’s first synthetic biology programming language for mRNA. Jake has been featured in Fierce Biotech, Bloomberg, the Boston Business Journal, and BioCentury, among others, for his vision and mission at Strand of applying this unique platform for real world disease applications. He has also been the recipient of prestigious national and international awards for his scientific and entrepreneurial achievements, including the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Award, the Andrew Viterbi Fellowship of MIT, Amgen Fellowship, and the Bristol-Myers Squibb 2018 Golden Ticket for recognition of Strand as an innovative startup. Beyond his work at Strand, Jake’s broader interests span synthetic biology, biologically engineered organism-machine interfaces, and the intersection of tech and biotech methodologies. He is an advocate among the life science entrepreneurial ecosystem for supporting young founders in biotech entrepreneurship. Currently, he serves on the advisory board of Starlight Ventures, an early stage venture firm, and also serves on the Executive Board of Public Health United, a non-profit focused on helping scientists better communicate their research for maximum impact. Previously, he served as a Science and Technology advisor to legislators in the Massachusetts State Legislature. Jake received his Ph.D. in Biological Engineering and Synthetic Biology from MIT and his B.S. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, graduating Magna cum Laude with distinction. He is an author or inventor on numerous high profile publications, patents and white papers, including in top tier journals such as Nature Chemical Biology and PNAS.

Alix Ventures, by way of BIOS Community, is providing this content for general information purposes only. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement nor recommendation by Alix Ventures, BIOS Community, or its affiliates. The views & opinions expressed by guests are their own & their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them nor any entity they represent. Views & opinions expressed by Alix Ventures employees are those of the employees & do not necessarily reflect the view of Alix Ventures, BIOS Community, affiliates, nor its content sponsors.

Thank you for listening!

BIOS (@BIOS_Community) unites a community of Life Science innovators dedicated to driving patient impact. Alix Ventures (@AlixVentures) is a San Francisco based venture capital firm supporting early stage Life Science startups engineering biology to create radical advances in human health.

Music: Danger Storm by Kevin MacLeod (link & license) 

Holden Thorp became Editor-in-Chief of the Science family of journals on 28 October 2019. He came to Science from Washington University, where he was provost from 2013 to 2019 and professor from 2013 to 2023.  He is currently a professor at George Washington University and on leave to serve as the Editor-in-Chief at Science.

Thorp joined Washington University after spending three decades at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), where he served as the 10th chancellor from 2008 through 2013.

Thorp earned a bachelor of science degree in chemistry from UNC in 1986. He earned a doctorate in chemistry in 1989 at the California Institute of Technology, working with Harry B. Gray on inorganic photochemistry. He completed postdoctoral work at Yale University with Gary W. Brudvig, working on model compounds and reactions for the manganese cluster in the photosynthetic reaction center. He holds an honorary doctor of laws degree from North Carolina Wesleyan College and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Inventors, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  

Thorp cofounded Viamet Pharmaceuticals, which developed VIVJOA (oteseconazole), now approved by the FDA and marketed by Mycovia Pharmaceuticals. Thorp is a venture partner at Hatteras Venture Partners, a consultant to Ancora and Urban Impact Advisors, and is on the board of directors of PBS, the College Advising Corps, and Saint Louis University.  He serves on the scientific advisory boards of the Yale School of Medicine and the Underwriters’ Laboratories Research Institutes.

Thorp is the coauthor, with Buck Goldstein, of two books on higher education: Engines of Innovation: The Entrepreneurial University in the Twenty-First Century and Our Higher Calling: Rebuilding the Partnership Between America and its Colleges and Universities, both from UNC Press.

Alix Ventures, by way of BIOS Community, is providing this content for general information purposes only. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement nor recommendation by Alix Ventures, BIOS Community, or its affiliates. The views & opinions expressed by guests are their own & their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them nor any entity they represent. Views & opinions expressed by Alix Ventures employees are those of the employees & do not necessarily reflect the view of Alix Ventures, BIOS Community, affiliates, nor its content sponsors.

Thank you for listening!

BIOS (@BIOS_Community) unites a community of Life Science innovators dedicated to driving patient impact. Alix Ventures (@AlixVentures) is a San Francisco based venture capital firm supporting early stage Life Science startups engineering biology to create radical advances in human health.

Music: Danger Storm by Kevin MacLeod (link & license) 

Jeff Bluestone is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Sonoma Biotherapeutics and the A.W. and Mary Margaret Clausen Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the Diabetes Center of The University of California, San Francisco.

Bluestone is a highly accomplished scientific researcher and international leader in the field of immunotherapy and has published more than 500 papers over nearly four decades focused on understanding the basic processes that control T-cell activation and immune tolerance in autoimmunity, organ transplantation and cancer. His research has led to the development and commercialization of multiple immunotherapies, including the first FDA-approved drug targeting T-cell costimulation to treat autoimmune disease and organ transplantation and the first FDA-approved CTLA-4 antagonist drugs for the treatment of metastatic melanoma. He was part of the team of early developers of a novel anti-CD3 monoclonal antibody, now called teplizumab, a pro-tolerogenic drug that has shown clinical activity in type 1 diabetes, psoriatic arthritis, and the reversal of kidney transplant rejection.

In addition to his research, Bluestone was the founding director of the Immune Tolerance Network, the largest NIH-funded multicenter clinical immunology research program, testing novel immunotherapies in transplantation, autoimmunity, and asthma/allergy. He recently led the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy as president and CEO. He served as a member of the Blue Ribbon Panel, a board of scientific experts appointed by then Vice President Joe Biden to guide the NCI Cancer Moonshot Research Initiative.

He was also the Ludwig Professor and director of the Ben May Institute at The University of Chicago and served as a senior investigator at the NCI. Bluestone holds a BS and an MS from Rutgers University and a PhD in immunology from the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences.

Alix Ventures, by way of BIOS Community, is providing this content for general information purposes only. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement nor recommendation by Alix Ventures, BIOS Community, or its affiliates. The views & opinions expressed by guests are their own & their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them nor any entity they represent. Views & opinions expressed by Alix Ventures employees are those of the employees & do not necessarily reflect the view of Alix Ventures, BIOS Community, affiliates, nor its content sponsors.

Thank you for listening!

BIOS (@BIOS_Community) unites a community of Life Science innovators dedicated to driving patient impact. Alix Ventures (@AlixVentures) is a San Francisco based venture capital firm supporting early stage Life Science startups engineering biology to create radical advances in human health.

Music: Danger Storm by Kevin MacLeod (link & license) 

Frank Nestle is global head of research and chief scientific officer at Sanofi, with responsibility for its main therapeutic research areas of immunology and inflammation, oncology, neurology, rare diseases, hematology, and genomic medicine. Before joining Sanofi in 2016, Nestle was a professor and chair of cutaneous medicine and immunotherapy at King’s College London and practiced medicine at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Hospital. At King’s College, he led research, translational clinical trials, and teams in dermatology, allergology, and immunology. He also held several executive roles, in particular at the Guy’s and St Thomas’ Biomedical Research Center.

Nestle is a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, a senior investigator emeritus at the National Institute for Health Research, and past president of the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies. He has published over 220 scientific articles and has received several awards and honors, including the Alfred Marchionini Research Award at the 20th World Congress of Dermatology.

Alix Ventures, by way of BIOS Community, is providing this content for general information purposes only. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement nor recommendation by Alix Ventures, BIOS Community, or its affiliates. The views & opinions expressed by guests are their own & their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them nor any entity they represent. Views & opinions expressed by Alix Ventures employees are those of the employees & do not necessarily reflect the view of Alix Ventures, BIOS Community, affiliates, nor its content sponsors.

Thank you for listening!

BIOS (@BIOS_Community) unites a community of Life Science innovators dedicated to driving patient impact. Alix Ventures (@AlixVentures) is a San Francisco based venture capital firm supporting early stage Life Science startups engineering biology to create radical advances in human health.

Music: Danger Storm by Kevin MacLeod (link & license) 

Jay Keasling is the Philomathia Professor of Alternative Energy at the University of California, Berkeley in the Departments of Bioengineering and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, senior faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Chief Executive Officer of the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI). Dr. Keasling’s research focuses on the metabolic engineering of microorganisms for degradation of environmental contaminants or for environmentally friendly synthesis of drugs, chemicals, and fuels. Keasling received a B.S. in Chemistry and Biology from the University of Nebraska and M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan, and did post-doctoral research in biochemistry at Stanford University. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Inventors.

Alix Ventures, by way of BIOS Community, is providing this content for general information purposes only. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement nor recommendation by Alix Ventures, BIOS Community, or its affiliates. The views & opinions expressed by guests are their own & their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them nor any entity they represent. Views & opinions expressed by Alix Ventures employees are those of the employees & do not necessarily reflect the view of Alix Ventures, BIOS Community, affiliates, nor its content sponsors.

Thank you for listening!

BIOS (@BIOS_Community) unites a community of Life Science innovators dedicated to driving patient impact. Alix Ventures (@AlixVentures) is a San Francisco based venture capital firm supporting early stage Life Science startups engineering biology to create radical advances in human health.

Music: Danger Storm by Kevin MacLeod (link & license) 

Carolyn Bertozzi is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Chemical & Systems Biology (by courtesy) at Stanford University, the Baker Family Director at Sarafan ChEM-H, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She completed her undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Harvard University in 1988 and her Ph.D. in Chemistry from UC Berkeley in 1993. After completing postdoctoral work at UCSF in the field of cellular immunology, she joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1996. In June 2015, she joined the faculty at Stanford University as an Institute Scholar at Sarafan ChEM-H.

Bertozzi's research interests span the disciplines of chemistry and biology. She invented the concept of “bioorthogonal chemistry” and has widely applied such reactions to study biological processes and build new types of molecular therapeutics.  As well, her lab studies the roles of cell surface glycosylation in human health and disease. Her lab focuses on profiling changes in cell surface glycosylation associated with cancer, inflammation and bacterial infection, and exploiting this information for development of diagnostic and therapeutic approaches, most recently in the area of immuno-oncology. 

Bertozzi has been recognized with many honors and awards for both her research and teaching accomplishments. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and she is a Foriegn Fellow of the Royal Society, UK. Her efforts in undergraduate education have earned her the UC Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award and the Donald Sterling Noyce Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. Some awards of note include the Lemelson-MIT award for inventors, Ernst Schering Prize, MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the ACS Award in Pure Chemistry, and just last week, the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Alix Ventures, by way of BIOS Community, is providing this content for general information purposes only. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement nor recommendation by Alix Ventures, BIOS Community, or its affiliates. The views & opinions expressed by guests are their own & their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them nor any entity they represent. Views & opinions expressed by Alix Ventures employees are those of the employees & do not necessarily reflect the view of Alix Ventures, BIOS Community, affiliates, nor its content sponsors.

Thank you for listening!

BIOS (@BIOS_Community) unites a community of Life Science innovators dedicated to driving patient impact. Alix Ventures (@AlixVentures) is a San Francisco based venture capital firm supporting early stage Life Science startups engineering biology to create radical advances in human health.

Music: Danger Storm by Kevin MacLeod (link & license) 

Joel Dudley is a Partner @ Innovation Endeavors and an experienced leader, medical professional, researcher, and entrepreneur. 

Joel previously served as the Chief Scientific Officer at Tempus, a company focused on bringing the power of data and artificial intelligence to healthcare. Before joining Tempus, Joel was an Associate Professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences and founding Director of the Institute for Next Generation Healthcare at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He also served as Executive Vice President for Precision Health for the Mount Sinai Health System. Prior to joining Innovation Endeavors, Joel co-founded Onegevity Health (acquired by Thorne), a company developing health intelligence platforms for preventative health, and NuMedii, a company developing machine learning and A.I. approaches for drug discovery. Joel has published 200+ peer-reviewed research papers that have been referenced and featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, MIT Technology Review, CNBC, and other popular media outlets. 

Joel earned a BS in Microbiology from Arizona State University and an MS and Ph.D. in Biomedical Informatics from Stanford University School of Medicine.

Thank you for listening!

BIOS (@BIOS_Community) unites a community of Life Science innovators dedicated to driving patient impact. Alix Ventures (@AlixVentures) is a San Francisco based venture capital firm supporting early stage Life Science startups engineering biology to create radical advances in human health.

Music: Danger Storm by Kevin MacLeod (link & license) 

Carlos Bustamante, over the past 15 years, has led a multidisciplinary team working on problems at the interface of computational and biological sciences. Much of his research has focused on genomics technology and its application in medicine, agriculture, and evolutionary biology. His first academic appointment was at Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. There, much of his work focused on population genetics and agricultural genomics motivated by a desire to improve the foods we eat and the lives of the animals upon which we depend. He moved to Stanford in 2010, to focus on enabling clinical and medical genomics on a global scale. He has been particularly focused on reducing health disparities in genomics by: (1) calling attention to the problem raised by >95% of participants in large-scale studies being of European descent; and (2) broadening representation of understudied groups, particularly U.S. minority populations and those from Latin America. Taken together, this work has empowered decision-makers to utilize genomics and data science in the service of improving human health and wellbeing. As Inaugural Chair of Stanford's new Department of Biomedical Data Science, his future goal is to scale these operations from focusing on researchers to consumers and patients, where we ultimately want our work to have the greatest impact.

In 2017, Bustamante was appointed a Chan-Zuckerberg Investigator and, from 2011–2016, he was a MacArthur Fellow. He also received a Stanford Prize in Population Genetics and Society in 2016, a Sloan Research-Fellowship in Molecular Biology from 2007–2009, and a Marshall-Sherfield Fellowship from 2001–2002. Bustamante also has a strong interest in building new academic units, non-profits, and companies. He is Founding Director (with Marcus Feldman) of the Stanford Center for Computational, Evolutionary, and Human Genomics (CEHG), and former Founding Associate Director of the Cornell Center for Comparative and Population Genomics (3CPG).

He serves as an advisor to the US federal government, private companies, startups, and non-profits in the areas of computational genomics, population and medical genetics, and veterinary and plant genomics. He is currently Director of EdenRoc Sciences, Founder @ Arc Bio, & an SAB member of: Embark Veterinary, the Mars/IBM Food Safety Board, & Digitalis Ventures.

Alix Ventures, by way of BIOS Community, is providing this content for general information purposes only. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement nor recommendation by Alix Ventures, BIOS Community, or its affiliates. The views & opinions expressed by guests are their own & their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them nor any entity they represent. Views & opinions expressed by Alix Ventures employees are those of the employees & do not necessarily reflect the view of Alix Ventures, BIOS Community, affiliates, nor its content sponsors.

Thank you for listening!

BIOS (@BIOS_Community) unites a community of Life Science innovators dedicated to driving patient impact. Alix Ventures (@AlixVentures) is a San Francisco based venture capital firm supporting early stage Life Science startups engineering biology to create radical advances in human health.

Music: Danger Storm by Kevin MacLeod (link & license) 

Lee Cooper is Senior Director of Venture Investments @ Leaps by Bayer, where he aims to contribute to new biotechnologies that enable patients and communities to live healthier lives. Lee is on the faculty of Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering and teaches “The Ecosystem for Bio-Innovation.” Prior to joining Leaps, Lee was Entrepreneur-in-Residence with RA Capital and founder of Enlight Bio, a biotech focused on genetic disease. Previously, Lee worked in corporate development for Moderna Therapeutics, leading and supporting transactions, financings, and partnerships to develop novel therapeutics and vaccines.

Lee serves on the Boards of multiple therapeutic platform-focused biotech companies. He is the founder of the Institute for Genetic Disease Prevention and has written on innovation and ethics for Wired, Slate, Neo.Life, and STAT News. 

Lee earned his J.D. and M.B.A. from Columbia University, and graduated from Dartmouth College with an A.B. in Religion and Public Policy.

Thank you for listening!

BIOS (@BIOS_Community) unites a community of Life Science innovators dedicated to driving patient impact. Alix Ventures (@AlixVentures) is a San Francisco based venture capital firm supporting early stage Life Science startups engineering biology to create radical advances in human health.

Music: Danger Storm by Kevin MacLeod (link & license) 

Patrick Hsu is an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and is a co-founder and core investigator at the Arc Institute. He is a pioneer of CRISPR technology. In his Lab at Berkeley, Patrick seeks to improve our understanding and ability to control genetic circuits for the advancement of human health. His academic work has been featured in multiple prestigious awards, including Forbes’ 30 Under 30, the NIH Early Independence Award, and the MIT Technology Review’s Innovators Under 35 to name a few.

Patrick co-founded Arc to advance our understanding of the root causes of complex diseases. Arc seeks to accelerate discovery by enabling the impactful, potentially risky, long-term, moonshot projects through financial and operational enablement. Without the systemic pressure to constantly write grants, Arc aims to unlock the full potential of the brilliant minds of our country’s top scientists.

Patrick holds a PhD in Biochemistry and Biological Engineering from Harvard, an A.M. in Biology from Harvard, and a B.S. in Molecular & Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Thank you for listening!

BIOS (@BIOS_Community) unites a community of Life Science innovators dedicated to driving patient impact. Alix Ventures (@AlixVentures) is a San Francisco based venture capital firm supporting early stage Life Science startups engineering biology to create radical advances in human health.

Music: Danger Storm by Kevin MacLeod (link & license)