06.07.24 -- New Episodes: Accelerating ADCs, Applying AI in mRNA, Cell Therapy for HIV Suppression, and more!

Check out the latest episodes from Cell & Gene: The Podcast and Business of Biotech. As a member of the Life Science Connect community, you have access to content beyond our weekly newsletters, including our podcast series.

There’s nothing pretentious here. Just real, honest, transparent interactions with the leaders of emerging biotechs. Conversations about who they are, what they do, and why they do it. About what they’re building, what they’re tackling, and where they’re going from here. It only comes around once a month, but its contents are evergreen.

Orna Therapeutics' CEO, Thomas Barnes, and Advancing RNA's Anna Rose Welch discuss Barnes' transition from academia to biotech, the therapeutic proposition of circular, or "O", RNA and why it holds great potential to best linear RNA constructs, the novel, platform- and partnership-based approaches Orna is taking to address B-cell lymphomas and Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, viral vector and lipid nanoparticle complexity, and a whole lot more.

From San Francisco’s Silicon Valley to Tel Aviv’s Silicon Wadi, software business entrepreneur Yochi Slonim made a name for himself in tech hubs around the globe. Notably, he was co-founder of billion-dollar Mercury Interactive, which HP acquired for $4.5 billion, and previous to that a leader at Tecnomatix, which sold to UGS and was acquired by Siemens. Those big deals that came on the heels of several other Yochi Slonim software startups. But Slonim's not in software development anymore.

Back by popular demand, biopharma industry opinionator extraordinaire Allan Shaw rejoins the Business of Biotech to expose the murky role Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) play in the last, costly mile of the drug distribution supply chain. Allan pulls no punches in his criticism of the current rebate structure and shares why the model leaves patients and manufacturers stuck with the spiraling tab.

This isn't your typical drug sponsor + CDMO story. In fact, CTMC's Jason Bock, Ph.D. says you shouldn't even classify his company as a CDMO. He's not wrong.

Mythic Therapeutics Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder Brian Fiske, Ph.D. broke some unwritten protocol with his rapid and multifaceted transition from academia to industry. He calls his many, and sometimes concurrent, early experiences as an MIT Ph.D. student, a Flagship Ventures Fellow, a Bain consultant, a hospital researcher, and a biopharma consultant indicative of a young man who didn't want to make decisions.

On this episode of Cell & Gene: The Podcast, Addimmune CMO, Dr. Marcus Conant, shares the why behind cell and gene therapy to treat HIV, and explains the company's lead asset, AGT103-T, which is designed to provide broad protection using silencing RNA to inhibit binding/entry of the virus, halt replication, and prevent escape.

In anticipation of ISCT 2024 in Vancouver, Canada, Dr. Bruce Levine is back on Cell & Gene: The Podcast to share information about the event as well as his expertise on the future of CAR-T therapy for solid tumors, autoimmune disease, and more.

Dr. Bambi Grilley is Professor of Pediatrics and the Director of Clinical Research and Early Product Development for the Center of Cell and Gene Therapy (CAGT) at Baylor College of Medicine AND she is Chief Regulatory Officer at ISCT. Dr. Grilley talks to us about her role as CRO at ISCT and the global regulatory landscape for cell and gene therapies.