carolyn-bertozzi
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Matt Wilsey
Matt Wilsey is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur turned biotech founder and CEO of Grace Science, a company building gene therapy and small-molecule programs for NGLY1 deficiency, an ultra-rare genetic condition that his daughter Grace was diagnosed with in 2013. A Stanford BA and MBA who started his career at the White House and the Department of Defense before co-founding Zazzle and CardSpring (acquired by Twitter), Wilsey applied a startup operator's playbook to drug discovery, funding roughly 75 scientists across 20 medical centers in five countries and partnering with Nobel laureate Carolyn Bertozzi to turn a tiny patient community into a research enterprise.
Sofia Touami
Sofia Touami, Ph.D., is the Chief Business Officer of Lycia Therapeutics, a South San Francisco biotech pioneering lysosomal targeting chimeras (LYTACs) - a platform invented by Nobel laureate Carolyn Bertozzi to degrade disease-causing extracellular proteins. A trained organic chemist who earned her Ph.D. at Stanford and did postdoctoral work at The Scripps Research Institute, Touami has built a career as one of biotech's sharpest dealmakers, having orchestrated major transactions including Frontier Medicines' landmark global collaboration with AbbVie before joining Lycia in July 2023. She helped close Lycia's oversubscribed $106.6 million Series C in May 2024, positioning the company to bring its LYTAC-based autoimmune therapies into clinical trials.