She figured out how misfolded proteins go rogue. Now she runs Nura Bio, the company betting that a single enzyme decides whether your nerves live or die.
// The biochemist who took the corner office without skipping a rung.
There is a switch buried inside every axon, the long fiber that carries a nerve's signal. When a neuron is stressed or injured, that switch flips, an enzyme called SARM1 burns through the cell's energy supply, and the axon dismantles itself. It is fast, it is deliberate, and for decades nobody could stop it. Shilpa Sambashivan runs the company trying to.
As CEO of Nura Bio, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company in South San Francisco, she leads roughly three dozen people on a single, stubborn bet: that blocking SARM1 can halt the slow unraveling behind a long list of neurological diseases. The company's lead drug, NB-4746, is a brain-penetrant small molecule designed to do exactly that. In plain terms, it crosses into the brain and tells the self-destruct enzyme to stand down.
She did not parachute in to run this. She built it. Sambashivan has been with Nura Bio since its inception in 2018, when it was spun out of academic neuroscience labs. She was the founding scientific leader, stood up the company's R&D engine, designed the small molecule pipeline, served as Chief Scientific Officer, and then, in September 2024, was handed the CEO title along with a $68 million check. Founding scientist, then CSO, then CEO. No rung skipped.
The promotion arrived bundled with money. That same month, Nura closed an extension to its Series A that pulled in $68 million in fresh funds and pushed the company's total Series A haul past $140 million. The round was led by The Column Group, with Sanofi Ventures, Samsara BioCapital, and Euclidean Capital alongside. For a biotech without a product on the market, that is a long runway, and a loud vote of confidence in the thesis she helped write.
"Once you're a clinical stage company, you're perpetually in fundraising mode." - Shilpa Sambashivan, CEO, Nura Bio
SARM1 is what scientists call an axon-intrinsic metabolic sensor. It sits there, watching the cell's energy balance. When the math goes wrong, it acts as an NAD hydrolase, chewing through the molecule axons need to survive. Knock it out, and the axon holds together. Nura's whole pipeline pivots on that one idea, applied across the central, peripheral, and ocular nervous systems.
Nura launched publicly in 2020 on a $73M Series A. The 2024 extension added $68M in fresh capital and brought the cumulative total past $140 million.
An undergraduate degree from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science.
Graduate research under David Eisenberg on the molecular basis of protein misfolding diseases - the first thread of a career spent chasing what goes wrong inside cells.
A postdoctoral fellowship bridging disciplines at Stanford's Bio-X.
Nearly a decade across neurodegeneration, neuroinflammation, and metabolism - leading programs from early target discovery through first-in-human testing.
The company spins out of research from Marc Freeman at OHSU's Vollum Institute and Steven McKnight at UT Southwestern. She is the founding scientific leader.
Promoted from CSO as the $68M Series A extension closes.
After a clean Phase 1 in healthy volunteers, the lead candidate advances toward Phase 1b/2 trials.
"We have been laser-focused on delivering novel neuroprotective therapies to patients." - Shilpa Sambashivan
Look at the arc and a pattern shows up. Her doctoral work was about proteins behaving badly - misfolding, clumping, breaking the cells around them. That is, at root, the same question that animates Nura Bio: what is the molecular machinery of decline, and can you reach in and stop it? The lab bench taught her the mechanism. The decade at Amgen and NGM taught her how to turn a mechanism into a drug, from the first hint of a target all the way to a human being swallowing a pill for the first time.
Running a clinical-stage biotech asks for a different muscle. The science has to be right, but so does the cash. Her line about being "perpetually in fundraising mode" is not a complaint - it is a job description. A company without revenue keeps its lights on by convincing investors the next data readout will be worth it. She has done that to the tune of more than $140 million.
The drug itself has so far behaved. NB-4746 completed its Phase 1 trial in healthy volunteers with good tolerability and no serious adverse events. It hit its targeted exposure levels in the blood and, crucially for a brain drug, showed up in the cerebrospinal fluid - evidence it actually reaches the place it needs to work. The next test is harder: real patients, real disease. Nura has not yet said publicly which neurological condition it will chase first.
What is unusual here is not the ambition. Plenty of biotechs promise to cure the brain. What is unusual is the continuity. The person now responsible for the company's survival is the same person who first sketched out how its science would work, back in 2018, before there was a pipeline or a clinical candidate or a nine-figure bank account. She is not catching up to the story. She wrote the opening chapter.
She studied misfolded proteins long before she studied dying axons. The questions rhyme.
Nura Bio came out of two academic labs - one at OHSU's Vollum Institute, one at UT Southwestern.
The entire company rests on one enzyme: SARM1, the axon's self-destruct switch.
She was a Genentech Foundation Bio-X Fellow at Stanford before going into industry.
"Brain-penetrant" is the whole game - a neuro drug that can't reach the brain is just a pill.