advent-life-sciences
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Alan Walts Has Spent Four Decades Turning Chemistry Into Companies
The Aleta Biotherapeutics CEO built his career in the quiet machinery of biotech: translating science, assembling teams, making deals, and turning one mentor’s habit of connecting people into an institution.
PIC Therapeutics
PIC Therapeutics is a Natick, Massachusetts biotechnology company developing small-molecule precision medicines that target cancer at the level of protein translation. Rather than chasing individual oncogenes one at a time, PIC modulates the Pre-Initiation Complex (PIC) and the translation factor eIF4E - a convergence point for many oncogenic signaling pathways - to selectively shut down the production of cancer-driving proteins while sparing healthy cells. Founded on the research of Harvard structural biologist Gerhard Wagner and led by CEO Katherine Bowdish, the company is advancing an allosteric eIF4E modulator toward first-in-human studies in drug-resistant metastatic breast cancer, backed by a $35M Series A led by OrbiMed.