genetics
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Helena Mancebo
Helena Mancebo is the founder and CEO of Multispan, Inc., a Hayward, California biotech she has run for more than 20 years. She built a company around G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) - still among the most prolific class of drug targets - and grew it into a maker of the industry's largest collection of highly characterized human GPCR cell lines and 1,600-plus assay tools. A Yale-trained immunologist and geneticist, she pairs hard cell biology with a service obsession: next-day assay turnaround, native receptor pharmacology, and a culture built on empathy, integrity, and productivity. In 2023 Multispan's cell engineering and assay services were folded into Avantor's catalog; in 2025 she partnered with AI-automation firm Synfini to push GPCR drug discovery forward.
Yasir Al-Wakeel
Yasir Al-Wakeel is a physician turned biotech operator who in September 2025 became CEO of Vesalius Therapeutics and a CEO-Partner at Flagship Pioneering. Trained as a doctor at Oxford with a theology degree from Cambridge, he spent a decade structuring more than $30 billion in life-science deals before running finance and strategy at companies like Merrimack, Neon Therapeutics and Kronos Bio. At Vesalius he is betting that many common diseases are actually clusters of genetically distinct conditions waiting to be redefined.
Brendan Bulik-Sullivan
Brendan Bulik-Sullivan is a General Partner at GV (Google Ventures) backing biotech and therapeutics companies from the San Francisco office. He arrived at venture capital by a back door familiar to almost no one: a Ph.D. in statistical genetics, an authorship on the LD Score Regression method that reshaped how human geneticists read GWAS data, and a stint designing the deep-learning neoantigen models at Gritstone Oncology. He now sits on the boards of Comanche Biopharma, Santa Ana Bio, Ventus Therapeutics, and Areteia Therapeutics.