
The physician-founder behind Allysta learned biotech from the least glamorous end: protocols, partnerships and the long distance between a promising mechanism and a credible medicine.

After two biotech exits and 15 years inside BioMarin, Joshua Grass is betting that some promising medicines stall for organizational reasons, not scientific ones. His new company, Mendra, raised $82 million to find those overlooked programs and carry them farther.

After a dozen years helping antiviral programs move through Gilead, the scientist-founder built AusperBio around one stubborn idea: make the molecule do more work. Seven years later, the company is preparing for the harder passage from clinical promise to commercial reality.

Before he became a biotech founder, Karl Beutner built a practice, ran more than 350 clinical trials and helped guide over a dozen products to approval. DermBiont is the latest chapter in a career spent turning small, testable decisions into durable progress.

After helping annotate genomes and guide five Gilead therapies to approval, the physician-scientist left the large-company machine to build OrsoBio - a small team making a careful wager on how cells spend energy.

A physician who learned Wall Street, oncology and company-building is testing a precise idea at NEOK Bio: give an antibody-drug conjugate two ways to find its target, then make execution as carefully engineered as the medicine.

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.

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.

For nearly three decades, Andrew Feinberg has worked on the same stubborn problem in two very different rooms: how to turn overwhelming complexity into a useful next move.

For more than a decade, the Orbus co-founder helped carry one drug through financing, patents and a 343-patient trial. Then a new tumor classification changed the question - and the company’s next chapter.

Before Scott Gies cofounded Zoe Biosciences, he studied genomes, octopus cognition and marine conservation. The connecting idea is simple: follow the evidence, even when it takes the scenic route.

Her career began with a Roche sales bag and came full circle in a $1.8 billion biotech exit. Now the Cincinnati operator is running the play again, with a sharper eye for overlooked science and a bigger table for the people building it.

The Resolve Therapeutics founder has spent a career moving between the lab bench and the deal table. His through-line is unusually consistent: find the signal, understand the mechanism, and build around it.

A biology student became a lawyer, a lawyer became an operator, and an operator built a biotech company around a neglected question: what changes when metabolism is treated as part of the therapeutic design?

Thomas Han spent decades learning how medicines move from a promising idea to a durable business. At Peroxitech, he is applying that education to the hardest hand-off in biotech: turning university science into a company that can keep moving.

After helping a small North Carolina biotech move a cell-cycle drug from discovery toward patients, Patrick Roberts reunited with longtime colleagues to pursue a harder target: CDK2. The wager behind Incyclix Bio is that precision, patience and the right biomarkers can reopen a route that resistant cancers have learned to use.

Before she unified a complicated research business under one name, Julie-Ann Cabana learned to sell science across cultures, continents, and conference tables. Her operating lesson is disarmingly simple: make the complex clear, and make the corporate human.

He spent 25 years learning how cancer drugs fail. Now he is running a company built on the idea that the next generation can be safer, steadier, and easier to live with.

Across 26 years at Lilly and seven as Neurocrine's chief medical officer, Eiry Roberts learned that drug development is less a straight line than a chain of judgment calls. Her next chapter puts that operating memory to work in the boardroom.

A doctor by training who now runs research, development and medical affairs at one of neuroscience's most watched biopharma companies - and keeps the patient at the center of every decision.

After building Impax from a 1995 startup into a public pharmaceutical company, Larry Hsu returned to the beginning: a small team, licensed science, and the long work of turning drug candidates into companies.

From a protein-engineering bench to the CEO seat at Vivace Therapeutics, Craig Gibbs has built a career around one stubborn question: how does promising biology become a drug program that can actually move?

The Weave Bio CEO began with Neanderthal genomes and ended up rebuilding one of drug development’s least glamorous systems. His wager is simple: let software carry the paperwork so experts can carry the judgment.

After decades moving between lab science, venture capital, public-company leadership and university innovation, Barry Selick is back inside a small biotech - carrying a career’s worth of pattern recognition into Hinge Bio’s clinical turn.

She spent nine years helping build NGM, then left for science compelling enough to begin again. At Lycia Therapeutics, Aetna Trombley has made patience, partnerships and protein clearance into an operating strategy.

Tahamtan Ahmadi built his career in the hard middle of biotechnology - where a scientific idea must survive evidence, regulation, and scale. At Genmab, his remit now stretches from discovery to medicine, and his public philosophy keeps returning to curiosity, collaboration, and patient impact.

Reinilde Heyrman has spent decades turning clinical uncertainty into decisions. Her method is neither grand nor theatrical: start with the science, plan for the detour, and make sure someone owns the next move.

After three decades turning complex science into operating companies, Alicia Secor has taken on a new translation problem: helping Paratus turn lessons from evolution into a disciplined pipeline of medicines.

He spent two decades launching other people's medicines. Now he is running a biotech built to delete the antibodies that make patients sick - and taking the top job for the first time.
Tao Fu is the founder, CEO, and president of Attovia Therapeutics, a San Carlos, California biotech developing next-generation biologics for immune-mediated diseases using its proprietary ATTOBODY platform. A biologist-turned-business-leader with more than 25 years across pharma, he built his career at McKinsey, Bristol Myers Squibb, Portola Pharmaceuticals, and Zai Lab before starting Attovia, which has raised roughly $255 million to date, including a $90 million Series C in April 2025.