Arvind Gupta, founder of IndieBio and co-lead of the engineering biology practice at the venture capital firm Mayfield, and Po Bronson, author and managing director and partner at IndieBio, sit down with Neil to discuss their new book Decoding the World, IndieBio, and the future of biotech.

Decoding the World

Anthony DePasqua, CEO of EnClear Therapies, sits down with Neil to discuss the company’s technology in development to remove toxic proteins from cerebrospinal spinal fluid to treat patients with ALS and other neurodegenerative conditions.

Removing Toxins from Cerebrospinal Fluid to Treat Neurodegenerative Diseases

Rachel Kuperman, CEO of Eysz, sits down with Neil to discuss her company’s efforts to develop a digital health platform using passive eye-movements as input to measure, diagnose, and predict neurological disease starting with epilepsy.

Improving Epilepsy Outcomes with Digital Health Technology

Craig Laferrière head of vaccine development for Novateur Ventures, joins Neil to discuss the relative strengths and weaknesses of the different COVID-19 vaccines in use and in development.

Weighing the Strengths and Weakness of Various COVID-19 Vaccines

Brian Culley, CEO of Lineage Cell Therapeutics, sits down with Neil to discuss his company’s efforts to develop off-the-shelf cell therapies to treat degenerative retinal disease, spinal cord injury, and cancer.

Advancing a Pipeline of Off-The-Shelf Cell Therapies

Juan Scarlett, managing director of OneValley Ventures, sits down with Neil to discusses OneValley's efforts to democratize entrepreneurship and his approach investing in pre-seed and seed funding rounds.

Democratizing Entrepreneurship

James Valentine, an attorney with Hyman, Phelps & McNamara specializing in regulatory law, sits down with Neil to discuss the FDA’s accelerated approval of Biogen’s Aduhelm for Alzheimer’s disease and offers a contrarian take on the controversy.

Why the FDA Was Right to Approve Biogen's Aduhelm

Pete Schultz, CEO of Scripps Research, sits down with Neil to discuss his efforts to create a self-sustaining nonprofit drug discovery and development institute and it’s work to advance small molecule regenerative therapies from the lab to the clinic.

Bridging the Translational Science Divide

Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, sits down with Neil to discuss the COVID-19 delta variant, our failures to evolve with the virus, and what steps need to be taken to combat the ongoing pandemic.

Evolving Failures in an Evolving Pandemic and What Needs to Be Done

Lindy Fishburne, managing partner of Breakout Ventures, sits down with Neil to discuss investing in seed- and early-stage bioscience companies, and what she learned working with entrepreneurial scientists at Breakout Labs.

Investing in the Bio-Based Future

This week Viswa Colluru, founder and CEO of Enveda Bio sits down with Neil to discuss AI in drug development, and the challenges of managing and forging a TechBio culture.

Forging a TechBio Culture

On this episode, Arnaud Lacoste, chief scientific officer of Aurion Biotech, sits down with Neil Littman to discuss the company’s experimental cell therapy to restore vision in patients with corneal endothelial disease.

Curing Blindness with Cell Therapy

On this episode, Neil sits down with Samantha Dale Strasser, co-founder and chief scientific officer of Pepper Bio, to discuss the company’s computational drug discovery platform and how its transomics approach can lead to the discovery and development of safer and more effective drugs.

Changing Drug Discovery with Transomics

Tim Lu, co-founder and CEO of Senti Bio, sits down with Neil to discuss how his company is using synthetic biology to engineer cell and gene therapies with programmable gene circuits to make therapies that are safer, more effective, and precise.

Engineering Intelligence into Cell and Gene Therapies

Jack O’Meara, co-founder and CEO of Ochre Bio, sits down with Neil to discuss the large unmet health need created by chronic liver disease and the company’s efforts to develop RNA therapies address it.

Addressing the Challenges of Chronic Liver Disease

Joseph Antoun, CEO of L-Nutra, sits down with Neil to discuss how his company is using state-of-the art science and randomized, placebo-controlled clinical studies to use diet to extend healthy lifespans and treat a wide range of diseases.

Using Food as Medicine to Extend Health and Treat Disease

Khosla Ventures Partner Gwen Cheni sits down with Neil to talk her migration from Wall Street to early-stage TechBio companies, how that has shaped her investment approach in start-ups, and what emerging technologies excite her today.

Finding Purpose in Building Early-Stage Companies

Daniel Dornbusch, CEO of Excision BioTherapeutics, sits down with Neil to discuss his company’s efforts to develop CRISPR-based therapies to cure HIV and other viral infectious diseases.

Harnessing CRISPR to Cure Infectious Diseases

D.A. Wallach sits down with Neil to discuss his journey from recording artists to venture investors, his co-founding of Time BioVentures, and his vision from transforming biotechnology and healthcare with technology.

A Rockstar Investor Who Backs Transformational Technologies

Peter Kolchinsky, Founder and Managing Director of RA Capital Management and Founder of the nonprofit No Patient Left Behind, sits down with Neil to discuss his book “The Great American Drug Deal,” policy fights over pricing, and his organization’s efforts to make medicines affordable for all Americans.

Making Medcines Affordable for Everyone

David Kirn, Co-Founder and CEO of 4DMT, sits down with Neil to discuss the limits of existing AAV vectors and how his company is using its Therapeutic Vector Evolution platform to invent customized vectors that allows it to take a disease specific approach to unlock the potential of genetic medicines.

Unlocking the Potential of Genetic Medicines

Vineeta Agarwala, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz's Bio + Health Fund, sits down with Neil to discuss their investment process, how technology is transforming biotech and healthcare, and why she thinks drug development is becoming more and more like software development.

Reengineering Healthcare and Medicine with Technology

Amit Etkin, Founder and CEO of Alto Neuroscience, sits down with Neil to discuss the lack of innovation in psychiatric medicines, how the company has identified AI-derived brain biomarkers, and how that is fueling its pipeline of precision therapies to treat mental health disorders.

Bringing Precision Medicine to Psychiatry

Anat Burkovitz, CEO of TrojanBio, sits down with Neil to discuss its AI-drive antibodies platform, how it enlists the viral immune system in the fight against cancer, and why she thinks the technology will broaden the population of patients who will benefit from immunotherapies.

Enlisting the Viral Immune System in the Fight Against Cancer

David Li, Co-Founder and CEO of Meliora Therapeutics, sits down with Neil to discuss why the mechanism of action for cancer therapies in development is poorly understood, how this leads to a high and costly clinical failure rate, and how Meliora's platform technology uncovers the true mechanism of action of a drug and it enables it to identify promising drug scaffolds to accelerate the development process.

Speeding Drug Development by Unlocking the Mechanism of Action of Cancer Therapies

Drew Titmarsh, Co-Founder and CEO of Dynomics, sits down with Neil to discuss that lack of innovative therapies to treat heat disease, the company’s discovery platform that uses engineered cardiac organoids that function like adult human heart tissue, and how the company is using this to develop precision therapies to address the root causes of heart failure.

Developing Targeted Therapies to Address Heart Failure

Faizzan Ahmad, Co-Founder and CEO of Cure8bio, sits down with Neil to discuss its growing portfolio of regenerative medicines in development, its hub-and-spoke business model designed to leverage resources and reduce risk, and its push toward curative therapies.

Bringing A Hub-and-Spoke Business Model to Regenerative Medicine

Nathan Hunkapiller, Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder of Curve Biosciences, sits down with Neil to discuss liquid biopsies, the company’s efforts to expand the use of these blood-based tests to improve the treatment of chronic diseases, and how it is enabling earlier intervention.

Enlisting Liquid Biopsies in the Fight Against Chronic Diseases

Andrew Lo, Professor of Finance, and the Director of the Laboratory for Financial Engineering at the MIT Sloan School of Management, sits down with Neil to discuss his application of portfolio theory to address the challenges of funding drug development and how a Netflix subscription model can address the coming crisis in funding high-priced curative therapies approaching the market.

Financing Biotech: Portfolio Theory and Netflix-Inspired Models

Kiersten Stead, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of DCVC Bio sits down with Neil to discuss her firm’s approach to deep tech investing in biotech, her focus on platform technologies, and how to separate what’s real from what’s hype in AI

Decoding Biotech: A Deep Dive into AI and Platform Technologies

In November, voters approved a new $5.5 billion bond measure that extends the life of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. The measure passed with far less fanfare than the original proposition that established the institute in the midst of a national controversy over embryonic stem cell research. With the passage of the new measure, the institute is expanding its work in emerging areas of regenerative medicine including cell and gene therapies and increasing its focus on translational research and clinical development. We spoke to Jonathan Thomas, chairman of the Independent Citizens’ Oversight Committee, which oversees the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, about the progress CIRM has made to date, what the new funding will enable, and how the institute hopes to help shape the future of regenerative medicine.

Shaping the Future of Regenerative Medicine

Join Neil Littman on The Bioverge Podcast as he explores the intersection of bio x tech and features the entrepreneurs, investors, and industry leaders who are revolutionizing healthcare and bringing science fiction to life.

The Bioverge Podcast

Popular tracks