David Donabedian and the art of handing over the keys

Six days separated the accolade from the handoff. On October 15, 2025, Newleos announced that Goldman Sachs had selected its founding CEO, David Donabedian, for recognition at the firm’s Builders and Innovators Summit. On October 21, the company announced a new president and chief executive, Timothy Noyes. Donabedian would stay on as an advisor. The sequence gives his career an unusually neat opening scene: applause, followed by a change of name on the office door.

A founder’s story usually gathers around possession. The company is his creation; the title becomes part of his name; every subsequent chapter must explain whether he kept it. Donabedian’s record invites a different reading. He has been a co-founder and early chief executive at several companies associated with Longwood Fund, with documented transitions into advisory work. The beginning itself has become a recurring assignment.

At Newleos, that assignment included negotiating a license with Roche, assembling a team, and helping secure an oversubscribed $93.5 million Series A. Those are concrete pieces of work. They turn an opportunity into an organization with money, rights, and people. A business plan can describe all three with admirable brevity. Obtaining them tends to take longer.

Noyes arrived with more than 30 years of industry experience and previous CEO roles at Aerovate and Proteon, where he had led public offerings. The appointment put a different operating history at the company’s disposal. Donabedian’s continuing advisory role kept a connection to its formation. In this reading of his career, handing over the keys belongs inside the company-building story.

Three degrees, several kinds of questions

Donabedian’s education runs from chemistry to management: a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Saint Anselm College, a doctorate in polymer chemistry from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and an MBA from the University of North Carolina. The combination places scientific training and commercial training on the same résumé, without requiring either to serve as decoration.

There is a small, tangible trace of the chemist behind the executive titles. In 1998, the journal Macromolecules published “Acylation of Pullulan by Ring-Opening of Lactones,” listing David H. Donabedian and Stephen P. McCarthy as authors affiliated with UMass Lowell. It is the sort of title that will never fit comfortably on a conference badge. It also reminds us that his relationship with science includes the patient, specific work of a research paper.

His later positions brought him into consulting, business development, corporate strategy, and venture investing. At Accenture, he was a senior manager in the Strategic Services Consulting Group. At Surface Logix, he served as vice president of business development. At GlaxoSmithKline, his remit was global new-deal strategy and development. These jobs put the question of what a company should do next near the center of his working life.

At AbbVie, he became vice president and global head of ventures and early-stage collaborations, leading a global team. The vocabulary had shifted from polymers to partnerships. Across these roles, the career connects scientific organizations with decisions about external opportunities. The later founding assignments draw on that same intersection: understanding an opportunity, arranging a relationship around it, and finding people to carry it forward.

A phone call before a company

One of the more revealing episodes begins with an existing acquaintance. Donabedian and Caltech professor Sarkis Mazmanian had met while Donabedian was at AbbVie. Later, working with Longwood, Donabedian called Mazmanian while looking for early-stage programs to fund. A familiar contact became the start of a new conversation about whether academic work was ready for a company.

He was initially skeptical, then persuaded by the evidence. “There actually was real data,” he said. It is a compact line, and a useful one. The enthusiasm comes after the examination. The anecdote gives a glimpse of professional judgment without dressing an ordinary call in the costume of destiny.

Axial Biotherapeutics launched in November 2016 with a $19.15 million Series A and Donabedian as co-founder and CEO. Longwood Fund and Domain Associates co-led the financing. The company licensed intellectual property from Caltech. The transaction connected a university, a scientist, investors, and an operating company, with Donabedian working at the junction.

The important detail here is the order. A relationship already existed. A conversation reopened it. Evidence changed his assessment. Financing and a license followed. Read together, those events offer a more useful account of founding than the solitary lightning bolt. A company can begin with somebody calling somebody he already knows, then doing the work required to make the conversation consequential.

“There actually was real data.”David Donabedian, on the work behind Axial

The lab space matters, too

By 2022, Donabedian was helping start DEM BioPharma. Its June launch came with $70 million in financing. Longwood and Alta Partners led the round, with participants including Insight Partners, Pfizer Ventures, Astellas Venture Management, Emerson Collective, UTokyo Innovation Platform, and Alexandria Venture Investments. Scientific co-founders included Jonathan Weissman, Michael Bassik, and Kipp Weiskopf.

In September, Nenad Grmusa succeeded Donabedian as CEO, while Donabedian continued in an advisory capacity. When Christoph Westphal thanked him, the inventory of his work included capital raised, investors attracted, incubator lab space identified, and scientific and leadership teams built. Lab space is the wonderfully practical item in that list. An ambitious company still needs somewhere for people to turn up on Monday.

The reference to premises makes the founding role easier to picture. Capital and scientific expertise matter, but neither signs a lease by itself. A startup CEO’s contribution can sit in the connections between such tasks: the financing that supports recruitment, the location that accommodates the team, the leadership that organizes the work. DEM’s account of his contribution put these pieces together.

Westphal ended with a forward-looking sentence: “I look forward to working with David on our next Longwood new company.” The next assignment was already part of the farewell. That remark makes the transition legible as a continuing partnership, and gives the career a rhythm that a list of past CEO titles would otherwise conceal.

Forty-one days in the public eye

Solu Therapeutics debuted on August 1, 2023, with an oversubscribed $31 million seed financing. Donabedian was its co-founder and startup CEO. The round was co-led by Longwood and Santé Ventures, with DCVC Bio, Astellas Venture Management, and Alexandria Venture Investments participating. The company had licensed a platform and associated candidates from GSK.

The license also gave GSK equity in Solu, alongside provisions for milestones and royalties. That detail shows how a new company can be assembled from an agreement with an established one. The scientific work, financial backing, and ownership relationship enter the startup together. Donabedian’s earlier career at GSK adds another connection to the story, although the transaction stands on its own terms.

On September 11, Solu appointed Philip Vickers president and CEO. Forty-one days had passed since the public debut. This is a measure of the interval between announcements, rather than of Donabedian’s total time building the company. Much of the formation work necessarily belongs before a launch becomes news.

Vickers brought more than 30 years of industry experience, including leadership of research and development at Shire. Donabedian remained an advisor. Once again, the board’s thanks covered fundraising, lab space, and team-building. DEM and Solu had different people and different arrangements, yet the descriptions of Donabedian’s founding work share an unmistakably practical family resemblance.

Advice that makes room for other people

In his 2024 conversation with Windsor Bux, Donabedian emphasized passion, persistence, and trusting one’s judgment. He also encouraged emerging entrepreneurs to build strong teams and seek help from mentors and advisors. These are his stated priorities, and they offer a view of how he discusses the work beyond a list of transactions.

The advice is social. Innovation and collaboration figure in his account of company culture; attracting investment calls for perseverance; mentors provide guidance when difficulties arise. There is room for individual conviction, but also for other people’s experience. That combination fits the recurring cast of scientific founders, investment partners, and successor CEOs in his professional history.

His own titles have placed him on several sides of those relationships. He has been an investor, an executive, a co-founder, and an advisor. Each role carries a different responsibility toward the same organization. The record is interesting because he has moved between them, sometimes within one company, rather than treating the CEO title as the only useful seat at the table.

A career with more than one beginning

Newleos brought several of those strands together in 2025: a license from an established company, a founding team, an investor syndicate, and Donabedian in the early CEO role. Its February debut preceded the October leadership transition. His work there joined a history that also includes Axial, DEM, Solu, and early leadership at ImmuneID.

The Goldman Sachs recognition arrived in Healdsburg, California, at a gathering of entrepreneurs from multiple industries. It acknowledged a record of founding and operating companies. Six days later came the Newleos handoff. Seen together, the two announcements make a better portrait than either does alone: public recognition of a builder, followed by another change in how he would serve the business.

There is a modest pleasure in a career that resists the conventional ending. The founder does not have to remain forever in the first chair for the founding work to count. In Donabedian’s case, the visible achievements include organizations assembled, agreements completed, capital secured, and teams recruited. The successor’s arrival adds another person to that account.

David Donabedian’s story keeps returning to the early questions. Who should be involved? What belongs inside this company? How will it be financed? Who will lead it next? Across the documented handoffs, the answers change with the company. The recurring role is helping bring those answers into existence, then finding a useful place in the chapter that follows.