adc
(9)
The Chemist Who Wants to Build a Kinder Cancer Drug
He spent 25 years learning how cancer drugs fail. Now he is running a company built on the idea that the next generation can be safer, steadier, and easier to live with.
Server Ertem
Server Ertem is the founder and CEO of Sanavia Oncology, a New York biotech developing antibody drug conjugates, T-cell engagers, and CAR-T therapies aimed at the roughly 80% of cancer patients whose tumors escape today's treatments. He built the company after a PhD in cancer cell biology at Weill Cornell, a postdoc at Memorial Sloan Kettering, and a Runway Startup Postdoc fellowship at Cornell Tech - stitching high-throughput cell biology, super-resolution microscopy, and machine learning into a platform designed to find cancer-specific epitopes on validated targets with atomic-level precision.
Jesse Chen
Jesse Chen is the founder, president and CEO of Fortitude Biomedicines, a Waltham, Massachusetts biopharmaceutical company that launched in January 2026 with $13 million in seed financing. A serial biotech entrepreneur with an MIT PhD in biological chemistry, Chen previously co-founded TRIANA Biomedicines and Avilar Therapeutics, was the founding scientific hire at Kymera Therapeutics where he built its targeted protein degradation platform, and held discovery roles at Moderna and Millennium Pharmaceuticals. At Fortitude he is betting that molecular glue payloads, packaged into a platform he calls GLUE-DAC, can overcome the drug resistance that limits today's antibody-drug conjugates and extend them into autoimmune disease.
Laura E. Benjamin
Laura E. Benjamin is the CEO and President of Myris Therapeutics, a Pittsburgh-based biotech building ultra-high DAR antibody-drug conjugates that fuse polymer chemistry with cancer biologics. A molecular biologist by training, she has moved from Harvard pathology labs to Eli Lilly oncology leadership to two CEO chairs - most recently steering OncXerna through more than $100 million in clinical-stage financing before taking the helm at Myris in 2024.
Dave Licata
Dave Licata is a Stanford-trained mechanical engineer turned biotech operator who co-founded TORL BioTherapeutics with legendary UCLA oncologist Dennis Slamon. As President and CFO (and founding CEO), he built TORL into a clinical-stage oncology company developing antibody-drug conjugates against targets like Claudin 6 and Claudin 18.2, raising more than $450 million while keeping a reputation for capital efficiency. He is also Executive Chairman of 1200 Pharma and previously founded Holoclara and served as an Entrepreneur in Residence at Caltech.
Mohit Rawat
Mohit Rawat is the Boston-based CEO of Myricx Bio, a UK-US biotech building a first-in-class antibody-drug conjugate platform based on NMT inhibition to treat cancer. He arrived in September 2025 fresh off Fusion Pharmaceuticals' $2.4 billion sale to AstraZeneca, where he was President and Chief Business Officer. With a Harvard MBA, an MIT chemical engineering master's, and stints at Novartis, AbbVie and McKinsey, he is steering Myricx toward its first human clinical trials in 2026.
Sean McCarthy
Sean McCarthy is the chairman, president and CEO of CytomX Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biopharma in South San Francisco building 'Probody' conditionally activated antibodies that switch on inside the tumor and stay quiet everywhere else. An Oxford-trained cancer biologist turned operator, he has run CytomX since 2011, taking it from a venture-backed startup to a Nasdaq-listed company with partnerships across Bristol Myers Squibb, AbbVie, Amgen, Astellas, Moderna and Regeneron.
Kush Gulati
Kush Gulati is the Co-founder, President, and CEO of Omni Design Technologies, a Milpitas-based semiconductor IP company he founded in 2015. A serial entrepreneur on his fifth venture, he holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT and has spent over two decades pioneering ultra-low power analog circuit design. His proprietary SWIFT technology powers data conversion IP used in 5G, autonomous vehicles, AI infrastructure, satellite communications, and LiDAR applications by tier-one customers worldwide. Omni Design raised a $35M+ Series A in September 2025.
Bryan Faust
Bryan Faust, PhD is an Investment Partner on the Bio + Health team at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he backs seed and Series A companies at the intersection of biology and technology. A trained biophysicist with a PhD from UCSF, he published research in Nature, Science, and Cell before pivoting to venture—studying antibody-protein interactions, GPCR signaling, and COVID-19 nanobodies along the way. At a16z he has co-led investments in Stipple Bio, Tessera Labs, Gate Bioscience, and Formation Bio, and writes widely on AI in life sciences, biotech financing, and the coming era of programmable medicine. When he's not reading pitch decks, he's surfing, roasting coffee, or hunting down the perfect tacos al pastor.