cancer-research
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Andreas Bader Has Spent 25 Years Turning Biology Into Biotech
From microRNA to engineered T cells to mitochondrial targets, the Austrian biochemist keeps returning to the same hard problem: how to carry a promising mechanism across the unruly distance between a lab result and a real company.
Axel Hoos Keeps Choosing the Empty Blueprint
He helped give immuno-oncology a working language, rebuilt an oncology operation after its cupboard was cleared, and turned a young biotech into a clinical-stage company. Now Axel Hoos is starting again.
Nobu Ueki Is Looking for Cancer's Off Switch
The Chicago scientist built a career around a stubborn question: can a drug wait until a cancer cell gives it permission to act? His answer spans two molecular locks, one active US patent, and a startup betting on the peculiar weakness of cells in transit.
Aron Knickerbocker Built a Career by Following the Data
The Aulos Bioscience CEO has spent three decades moving closer to the work - from the lab, to the deal table, to the small teams where one clear decision can redirect an entire company.
Steven Everett
Steven Everett is a biotechnology executive and cancer scientist who founded MaveriX Oncology in Palo Alto, California, where he serves as President and CEO. With a background rooted in more than two decades of cancer research at the University of Oxford, University of Dundee and UCSF, he has built his career around a single idea: making cancer drugs that switch on only inside tumors. At MaveriX he is developing conditionally activated small-molecule therapeutics that exploit hydroxylase biology in the tumor immune microenvironment, aiming to hit cancer hard while sparing healthy tissue.
Jessicca Rege
Jessicca M. Rege, Ph.D. is the Chief Executive Officer of Sus Clinicals, Inc., a biotech accelerating cancer drug development through the Oncopig Cancer Model, an FDA-cleared, genetically engineered pig platform for preclinical testing. A pharmaceutical scientist with more than 15 years in oncology R&D and global medical affairs, she previously served as Chief Development Officer at Mural Oncology, where she helped lead the company's public offering, and as VP, Head of Clinical Development, Oncology at Alkermes. She holds a Ph.D. in pharmaceutical sciences with a focus on pharmacogenomics from Virginia Commonwealth University.
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.
Anin Sayana
Anin Sayana is the co-founder and CEO of Quadrant Health, a Y Combinator-backed startup building clinical AI that reads electronic health records and patient messages in real time to flag patient harm before it happens. A Stanford computer science graduate, he first made headlines at 13 as a finalist in the 3M Young Scientist Challenge for a carbon-nanotube system aimed at chemo-resistant cancer stem cells. Today his company partners with health systems like Stanford Health Care and software vendors like medent, and claims an AI that scored 93.23% on the US Medical Licensing Exam.
Josh Bilenker
Josh Bilenker is the CEO and co-founder of Treeline Biosciences, a Watertown, Massachusetts biotech building precision oncology medicines. A physician by training who once reviewed cancer drugs at the FDA, he founded Loxo Oncology in 2013 and took a tumor-agnostic, genomics-first approach he likened to 'moneyball' target selection. Loxo produced three FDA-approved medicines and was bought by Eli Lilly for roughly $8 billion in 2019. In 2021 he started Treeline with former Novartis research head Jeff Engelman, and in 2026 the company agreed to merge with Standard BioTools to go public as 'Treeline Biosciences' (Nasdaq: TRLN).
Markus Renschler
Markus Renschler is a medical oncologist turned biotech operator who runs Light Horse Therapeutics, a San Diego small-molecule drug discovery company that launched in January 2025 with a $62 million Series A and a Novartis deal worth up to $1 billion. He spent 25 years moving cancer drugs from the lab bench to the pharmacy counter, helped register blockbuster therapies in breast, lung and pancreatic cancer at Celgene and Pharmion, and previously took Cyteir Therapeutics from a discovery-stage startup to a publicly traded company. He trained at Princeton and Stanford and once built patient-specific lymphoma vaccines in Ron Levy's lab.
Mika Newton
Mika Newton is the CEO of xCures Inc., an Oakland-based AI company transforming how cancer patients and oncologists navigate clinical data. With over two decades in life sciences and health technology, she leads a platform that automatically retrieves, structures, and surfaces medical records to support real-world evidence generation and precision oncology - helping patients find clinical trials and helping researchers capture regulatory-grade data at scale.
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.
Terry Rosen
Terry Rosen is the CEO and co-founder of Arcus Biosciences, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing combination cancer immunotherapies. A medicinal chemist by training with a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, Rosen has spent over 30 years at the intersection of chemistry and oncology - from Abbott Laboratories and Pfizer to Amgen, and then co-founding Flexus Biosciences which sold to Bristol-Myers Squibb for $1.25 billion in 2015. He immediately used that platform to launch Arcus, which has since secured a landmark 10-year partnership with Gilead Sciences and advanced multiple molecules into pivotal clinical studies, including casdatifan, a best-in-class HIF-2α inhibitor showing strong results in kidney cancer.
Andrew Quong
Andrew Quong is President and CEO of InterVenn Biosciences, a South San Francisco-based precision diagnostics company unlocking the human glycoproteome through AI-powered platforms. With a PhD in Physics and over 30 years spanning national laboratories, academia, and biotech, Quong bridges the physical and computational sciences with clinical medicine. He led InterVenn's development of GlycoKnow Ovarian, a non-invasive blood-based liquid biopsy test for distinguishing ovarian cancer from benign masses, and has steered the company through key commercialization milestones including a $201M Series C raise in 2021.
Jorge Dimartino
Jorge F. DiMartino, M.D., Ph.D., is Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President of Clinical and Translational Development at Plexium, a San Diego-based biotech pioneering targeted protein degradation. A physician-scientist trained in genetics, immunology, and pediatric oncology across UC Berkeley, Cornell, UC San Diego, and Stanford, DiMartino has spent over two decades advancing cancer drugs from bench to bedside. His fingerprints are on three now-marketed therapies: vismodegib, venetoclax, and enasidenib - each a breakthrough in its own right. At Plexium, he oversees clinical programs targeting SMARCA2, IKZF2, CDK2, and CRAF using the company's DELTA Discovery platform, a novel approach to degrading proteins previously considered undruggable.
Mark Lee
Mark Lee, MD, PhD is the CEO and Co-Founder of N-Power Medicine, a Redwood City-based company reinventing how oncology clinical trials reach patients. A medical oncologist and scientist trained at Stanford and Harvard, Lee has spent his career at the frontier of personalized medicine - from developing Oncotype DX diagnostics at Genomic Health, to helping build early cancer detection at GRAIL, to leading personalized healthcare at Genentech/Roche. In 2021, he co-founded N-Power Medicine to embed research infrastructure directly into community oncology clinics, combining AI, embedded staff, and real-time registries to dramatically expand clinical trial access. After raising a $72M Series B led by Merck's Global Health Innovation Fund, N-Power acquired Syapse in late 2024 to build the largest community-based prospective clinical research network in oncology.
Lilly Iskold
Lilly Iskold is an Analyst at 2048 Ventures, a New York and Boston-based early-stage venture capital firm focused on Vertical AI, Deep Tech, Healthcare, and Biotech. With a B.A. in Biology (minor in Chemistry) from Brandeis University, she brings a rare bench-to-boardroom perspective shaped by hands-on research at the New York Genome Center and Humane Genomics, where she studied RNA's role in cancer development and CAR-T cell therapies. Raised in Livingston, NJ, Lilly fuses scientific rigor with entrepreneurial instinct - she co-founded Crafty Hour, a handmade jewelry business that donated proceeds to the NAACP.