Moriah
Nachbaur.

The Science Gets Done. The Company Gets Built.

There is a protein on the surface of cancer cells that whispers to the immune system: don't eat me. It is called CD24. And until very recently, the world of immuno-oncology was too busy celebrating T-cell therapies to notice that the immune system has another set of heavy hitters - macrophages - being quietly manipulated by this molecular password.

Moriah Katherine Nachbaur noticed. Or rather, she joined the team that did and decided that what the science needed, badly, was someone who could build a company around it.

As Chief Business Officer at Pheast Therapeutics, Nachbaur sits at the intersection where promising biology meets the unforgiving economics of drug development. Pheast - spun out of Irving Weissman's legendary lab at Stanford - is pursuing one of oncology's most consequential ideas: that macrophages, the immune system's original "big eaters," can be unlocked to consume cancer cells if you simply block the molecular signals telling them not to. PHST001, the company's lead anti-CD24 antibody, received FDA Fast Track Designation in June 2025 for ovarian cancer and has completed its Phase 1a cohort with early clinical activity reported at AACR 2026.

Behind every milestone like that is a business operator making sure the science doesn't die in a PowerPoint. Nachbaur has spent the better part of two decades becoming exactly the person that kind of moment requires.

Every Hard Job in Biotech, Done Once

Nachbaur began in the lab - a summer intern at Mendel Biotechnology before she was old enough to vote, then a research assistant in Dr. Raymond Erikson's lab at Harvard. She graduated with an A.B. in Biochemical Sciences and made what seemed like an obvious move: she went to Genentech.

Seven years at Genentech, from 2006 to 2013, is not one job. At a company of that complexity, it's more like eight. She worked in R&D, then Early Development, then Supply Chain and Manufacturing, then Pricing and Contracting, then Commercial Launch. She learned how the machine worked at every stage of the drug development pipeline - the kind of education you cannot buy at any graduate school.

Then Coherus BioSciences. From 2013 to 2018, she climbed from Strategic Alliances to VP Product Development to Senior Vice President - a member of the Executive Committee, leading Program Management and Regulatory Affairs. Coherus was building a biosimilars business, which is unromantic, difficult, and intensely instructive. You learn regulatory strategy by living it.

In 2019, she did something unusual: instead of taking the next promotion at a bigger company, she founded MKN Biotech, Inc. - her own biopharma consulting firm specializing in integrated product development and corporate strategy. It is the kind of move that looks like a detour but is actually reconnaissance. Two years as a consultant to the industry gave her a cross-section view that few executives ever get.

By 2022 she had joined Elixirgen Therapeutics as Chief Business Officer. And then came Pheast - one of the most scientifically compelling bets in the oncology startup landscape.

The Path

Pheast Therapeutics: Training the Immune System to Eat Cancer

The name is not subtle. Pheast Therapeutics - with the silent "Ph" - is building drugs designed to let macrophages feast on tumor cells. The company emerged from Irving Weissman's Stanford lab, the same scientific lineage that gave the world the CD47 "don't eat me" signal, a discovery so valuable that Gilead acquired the company built around it, Forty Seven Inc., for $4.9 billion.

CD24 is Pheast's bet - a different "don't eat me" signal that ovarian and breast cancer cells exploit to hide from macrophages. Block CD24, and the immune system can see the tumor. See it, and macrophages can start doing what they were built to do.

The company raised $76 million in a Series A round led by Catalio Capital Management and ARCH Venture Partners - with participation from Alexandria Venture Equities and R-Squared Ventures. It was recognized by Nature Biotechnology as one of the top academic spinouts of 2023. In 2025, the FDA granted Fast Track Designation to PHST001 for platinum-resistant advanced ovarian cancer.

Phase 1a data presented at AACR 2026 showed early clinical activity and target engagement for PHST001. By March 2026, the company had advanced into Phase 1b combination cohorts. The science is no longer just preclinical.

The Generalist Who Is Actually a Specialist

Nachbaur's career defies the single-track logic most executives follow. She is not a pure scientist who learned to do deals, nor a pure dealmaker who learned the science. She is something more useful: someone who learned every link in the chain from the inside.

From supply chain at Genentech to regulatory affairs at Coherus to her own consulting firm, she has operated in the spaces most executives quietly admit they don't fully understand. Supply chain breakdowns kill clinical programs. Regulatory missteps erase years of work. Alliance management determines whether partnerships actually deliver. Nachbaur has lived in all of those rooms.

There is also a quieter dimension. Nachbaur is a certified Integral Coach through New Ventures West, a San Francisco-based coach training institute known for its rigorous, philosophy-grounded approach to professional development. The coaching credential is not a footnote. It reflects a deliberate attention to the human side of building organizations - rare in an industry that often treats people as execution units.

Her education adds another layer: she supplemented her Harvard science degree with graduate coursework in Immunology and Cancer Biology at UC Berkeley and a Graduate Certificate in Product Creation and Innovative Manufacturing at Stanford. The intellectual threads - biology, manufacturing, product strategy, human development - are all load-bearing in the job she now holds.

What She Has Built

• Helped guide Pheast Therapeutics through FDA Fast Track Designation for PHST001 for ovarian cancer (June 2025)
• Part of the leadership team as Pheast advanced PHST001 into Phase 1 clinical trials - first patient treated April 2025
• Rose to SVP Product Development and Executive Committee member at Coherus BioSciences
• Founded and ran MKN Biotech, Inc. as CEO and Principal - strategic consulting across the biopharma industry
• Seven-year cross-functional career at Genentech spanning R&D, supply chain, commercial, and regulatory
• Integral Coach certification through New Ventures West
• A.B. in Biochemical Sciences from Harvard; additional graduate work at UC Berkeley and Stanford

Details That Don't Fit Anywhere Else

Where Things Stand