antibody-discovery
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Debra Weidanz
Debra Wawro Weidanz is the co-founder, CEO and chief scientist of Resonant Sensors Incorporated, an Arlington, Texas biotech that builds label-free, high-throughput biosensor systems used to speed antibody discovery, drug screening and diagnostics. An electrical engineer turned inventor, she developed the company's guided-mode resonance sensor technology out of research at the University of Texas at Arlington, and later co-founded the cancer-immunotherapy startup Abexxa Biologics, which Boehringer Ingelheim acquired in 2021. With her husband Jon, she has become a notable UTA benefactor, funding a named tissue-engineering lab and research fellowships.
Katherine Bowdish
Katherine (Kathy) Bowdish is a molecular geneticist and biopharmaceutical leader who serves as President and CEO of PIC Therapeutics, a Natick, Massachusetts biotech developing cancer drugs that work by modulating RNA translation - targeting the eIF4E 'master switch' that tumors use to overproduce oncogene proteins. Over more than two decades she has founded and led a string of early-stage life science companies including Prolifaron (acquired by Alexion), Anaphore and Permeon Biologics, and she built and ran Sanofi Sunrise, the pharma giant's early-stage venture and partnering arm. She holds a PhD in molecular genetics from Columbia and led PIC through a $35 million Series A to push its lead program toward the clinic in drug-resistant breast cancer.
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.
Errik Anderson
Errik Anderson is the founder and CEO of Alloy Therapeutics, a Lexington, Massachusetts biotech he built around a single idea: stop selling drugs and start selling access to the tools that make them. A bioengineer and serial entrepreneur, he has founded or co-founded seven venture-backed biotech companies - Adimab, Alloy, Compass Therapeutics, Alector, Arsanis, and Avitide among them - whose technologies have helped discover more than 90 therapeutic antibodies now approved or in FDA review. Alloy reinvests 100% of its revenue into science and, by design, can never be sold. Outside the lab, Anderson co-owns the New England Free Jacks pro rugby team and has chaired Major League Rugby's Board of Governors.
Mike Nohaile
Mike Nohaile is the CEO of Prellis Biologics, a Berkeley biotech using two-photon holographic 3D bioprinting to grow lymph node organoids and pull antibody candidates straight from the human immune repertoire. A molecular biologist by training (PhD from UC Berkeley, postdoc at MIT), he spent decades operating at the top of the pharma industry - partner at McKinsey, Global Head of Molecular Diagnostics at Novartis, Senior VP of Strategy, Commercialization & Innovation at Amgen, and Chief Scientific Officer at Generate Biomedicines - before taking the helm at Prellis in 2022 alongside a $35M Series C. He is a vocal skeptic of AI drug-discovery hype, insisting AI optimizes proteins but does not yet invent medicines.
Cheng Liu
Cheng Liu is the founder, President, and CEO of Eureka Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company based in Emeryville, California. A molecular cell biologist trained at UC Berkeley and Peking University, Liu invented a novel class of TCR mimic antibodies that allow engineered T cells to recognize intracellular tumor antigens - a major challenge in treating solid tumors. Since founding Eureka in 2006 after a decade at Chiron/Novartis, he has built a pipeline of ARTEMIS T-cell therapies targeting liver cancer, multiple myeloma, and neuroblastoma, with the company's ECT204 program earning FDA RMAT Designation in January 2026 - one of the highest-priority designations the FDA gives to regenerative medicine therapies. Eureka has raised over $168 million in total funding and holds more than 500 patents worldwide.