clinical-stage
(15)
Joe Loy
Joe Loy is the President and CEO of Zetagen Therapeutics, a Syracuse, New York clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing small-molecule therapies to treat metastatic cancer in bone and soft tissue while regenerating healthy bone. A serial entrepreneur with several successful exits, Loy has spent his career building teams around first-to-market medical technologies at companies including US Surgical, Pfizer/Leibinger, NuVasive, and Stryker. Since taking the helm in January 2019, he has guided Zetagen through two FDA Breakthrough Device Designations, multiple financing rounds, and the launch of Phase 2a clinical trials for its lead candidate ZetaMet.
Phil Vickers
Phil Vickers is President and CEO of Solu Therapeutics, a Boston clinical-stage biotech building small-molecule 'chimeras' that ferry cytotoxic payloads to disease-driving cells. He arrived in September 2023 after runs at Faze Medicines and Northern Biologics, and R&D leadership at Shire, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Pfizer and Merck. In April 2025 he closed a $41M Series A with Eli Lilly, Pappas Capital and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and dosed the first patient in a Phase 1 trial of STX-0712 for CMML.
Stan Abel
Stan Abel is President and CEO of ProJenX, a clinical-stage biotech spun out of Columbia University research and Project ALS, racing to get its lead drug prosetin - an oral MAP4K inhibitor - into ALS patients after two decades of laboratory work and a $15 million Series A.
Zoar Engelman
Zoar Engelman is the co-founder and CEO of Axon Therapies, a clinical-stage medical device company chasing a stubborn problem: heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, a condition that has resisted nearly every drug thrown at it. A biomedical engineer with a PhD from the University of Auckland, Engelman spent two decades turning lab ideas into implantable and catheter-based devices, co-founding roughly nine ventures and helping raise more than $150 million along the way. In September 2025 he stepped up from Chief Scientific Officer to CEO as Axon closed an oversubscribed $32 million Series A to advance SAVM, an implant-free procedure that quiets an overactive sympathetic nervous system to rebalance the body's blood volume.
John Ramunas
John Ramunas, PhD, is the Co-Founder and CEO of Rejuvenation Technologies Inc., a Mountain View, CA biotechnology company pioneering mRNA-based telomere extension therapy to reverse cellular aging. A serial entrepreneur turned neuroscientist, Ramunas spent his PhD at Stanford's Baxter Laboratory for Stem Cell Biology inventing the first safe, nonimmunogenic TERT mRNA drug - a technology now protected by 50+ patents. His company, backed by Khosla Ventures and Y Combinator, is advancing a pipeline targeting fatal orphan diseases including idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and liver cirrhosis, with the long-term vision of a single therapy taken every few years to prevent age-related disease.
Eric Delbridge
Eric Delbridge, MD is a General Partner at Sofinnova Investments in Menlo Park, California, where he architects the firm's BioEquities strategy - a $1.5B public equity fund focused on global therapeutics companies. An unusual combination of physician, Wharton MBA (Palmer Scholar), and Yale Classics graduate, Delbridge brings over a decade of hedge fund investing experience from Balyasny Asset Management and Spring Point Capital, plus prior investment banking work at Lazard and Credit Suisse. He joined Sofinnova in 2016 and was elevated to General Partner in 2019, helping steward a firm with $3.7B under management, 118 companies funded, 55 IPOs, and 30 acquisitions.
Dinesh V. Patel
Dinesh V. Patel, Ph.D. is the President and CEO of Protagonist Therapeutics (NASDAQ: PTGX), a Newark, California-based biopharmaceutical company he has led since December 2008. With over 38 years spanning medicinal chemistry, drug discovery, venture capital co-founding, and three CEO stints, Patel has guided Protagonist from a peptide-platform startup to a company with its first FDA-approved drug - ICOTYDE (icotrokinra), approved March 2026 as the world's first targeted oral peptide for moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis, partnered with Johnson & Johnson.
Arthur T. Sands
Arthur T. Sands, M.D., Ph.D., is the President and CEO of Nurix Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company pioneering targeted protein degradation medicines. A co-founder of Lexicon Pharmaceuticals in 1995, he spent 19 years transforming that company from a research startup into a drug-development enterprise generating over $450 million in revenue. At Nurix, he leads efforts to deploy a proprietary DEL-AI platform - combining DNA-encoded libraries with machine learning - to discover and develop small-molecule degraders and degrader-antibody conjugates for cancer and inflammatory diseases. The company's lead asset, bexobrutideg (a BTK degrader), entered pivotal Phase 2 development in 2025 with an 83% objective response rate in relapsed CLL patients.
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.
Rachel Haurwitz
Rachel Haurwitz is the President and CEO of Caribou Biosciences, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company she co-founded in 2011 with Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna and colleagues Martin Jinek and James Berger. A pioneer in CRISPR commercialization, Haurwitz earned her PhD from UC Berkeley under Doudna's mentorship — she was the first student in the lab to work on CRISPR — and pivoted from academia to industry to bring genome-editing technology to patients. Under her leadership, Caribou has developed a proprietary Cas12a-based platform (chRDNA technology) enabling precise, multiplex genome editing for off-the-shelf allogeneic CAR-T and CAR-NK cell therapies targeting blood cancers and autoimmune diseases. She also co-founded Intellia Therapeutics in 2014 and has been recognized on Forbes 30 Under 30, Fortune 40 Under 40, and featured in Walter Isaacson's bestseller 'The Code Breaker.'
Judy Chou
Dr. Judy Chou is the President, CEO, and Board Member of AltruBio Inc., a clinical-stage biotech company in San Francisco pioneering a first-in-class immune checkpoint enhancer platform targeting PSGL-1/CD162 to treat autoimmune diseases. With over 25 years of experience spanning Bayer Pharmaceuticals, Pfizer, Genentech, and Wyeth, she led AltruBio through a landmark $225M Series B financing in 2024 and is advancing lead candidate ALTB-268 through Phase 2 trials for ulcerative colitis. Recognized as one of Endpoints News' Top 20 Women in Biopharma (2025) and a Most Influential Women in Business honoree (San Francisco Business Times, 2018), she holds a Ph.D. from Yale University and conducted post-doctoral training at the Max-Planck Institute in Germany.
Jung Choi
Jung Choi is the President and CEO of Alterome Therapeutics, a clinical-stage precision oncology company pioneering mutation-specific cancer drugs. With over 20 years in biopharmaceutical leadership - spanning Gilead Sciences, InterMune, Chimerix, and Global Blood Therapeutics where he led a $5.4B Pfizer acquisition - Choi brought deal-making, strategy, and operational depth to Alterome when he was appointed CEO in April 2025. Under his leadership, Alterome has advanced two first-in-class inhibitors into Phase 1/1b trials targeting KRAS and AKT1 E17K oncogenic drivers, backed by $231M in total funding including a $132M Series B.
Robert Chang
Robert Chang is the President and CEO of Myra Vision, a Campbell, California medtech company developing the Calibreye Titratable Glaucoma Therapy (TGT) Surgical System - an adjustable aqueous shunt designed to give glaucoma surgeons real-time, non-invasive control over intraocular pressure. With over 30 years of medical device executive experience spanning co-founding Ample Medical, leading MVRx, and serving as CTO at Sadra Medical (acquired by Boston Scientific), Chang brings a rare combination of hands-on engineering depth and serial CEO-level leadership to one of ophthalmology's most intractable surgical challenges. Myra Vision has raised $50M+ across seed, Series A, and a $25M Series B in 2023, and in early 2026 enrolled its first patient in the FDA-approved ADAPT pivotal study.
Roy Maute
Roy Maute is co-founder and CEO of Pheast Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotech in Redwood City, CA, developing macrophage-targeted cancer immunotherapies. Trained at UC Berkeley, Columbia (PhD, Genetics), and Stanford (postdoc under Irving Weissman), Maute has built a career at the intersection of innate immunology and drug development. Before Pheast, he co-founded Ab Initio Biotherapeutics (acquired by Ligand in 2019) and led translational research at Forty Seven Inc. ahead of its $4.9B acquisition by Gilead in 2020. At Pheast, he is advancing PHST001, a novel anti-CD24 antibody that teaches macrophages to eat cancer cells, currently in Phase 1 clinical trials with FDA Fast Track Designation for ovarian cancer.
Chris Varma
Chris Varma, Ph.D., is Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Frontier Medicines, a clinical-stage biotech attacking cancer's 'undruggable' proteins using chemoproteomics, covalent chemistry, and machine learning. A serial biotech founder with 20+ years in life sciences, he previously co-founded Blueprint Medicines (acquired by Sanofi for $9B+ in 2025) and Warp Drive Bio (acquired by Revolution Medicines in 2018), and held investor roles at Third Rock Ventures, Flagship Pioneering, and MPM Capital. His career spans the FDA, Novartis, and three successful company builds - with Frontier Medicines now advancing FMC-376, a first-in-class dual KRAS G12C inhibitor, through Phase 1/2 clinical trials.