immunology
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Daniel Getts
Daniel Getts, PhD, is the co-founder and CEO of CREATE Medicines (formerly Myeloid Therapeutics), a Cambridge, Massachusetts biotech building RNA-based in vivo immune programming therapies that reprogram T cells, NK cells and myeloid cells directly inside the body. An immunologist trained at the University of Sydney with an MBA from Western Michigan, he previously founded Cour Pharmaceuticals and served as VP of Research at TCR2 Therapeutics. He has more than 45 peer-reviewed publications, multiple issued patents, and a track record of large pharma partnerships, including Takeda's $420M licensing deal for TIMP-GLIA. In May 2026 CREATE closed a $122 million Series B to advance its in vivo CAR pipeline across autoimmune disease and oncology.
Eddine Saiah
Eddine Saiah, Ph.D., is the CEO and President of Stablix, a preclinical biotechnology company pioneering targeted protein stabilization (TPS) as a new class of small-molecule medicines. A medicinal chemist and drug hunter with more than 25 years of experience, he joined Stablix as Chief Scientific Officer in 2022 and moved into the chief executive role in 2025. His career spans big pharma research leadership at Pfizer and Wyeth, an entrepreneur-in-residence stint at Atlas Venture, and CSO duties at Navitor Pharmaceuticals. He is a co-inventor and author on more than 120 patents and publications, and has helped advance more than a dozen small-molecule candidates into clinical trials.
Tony Kingsley
Tony Kingsley is a biopharmaceutical executive who runs Stablix, Inc., a New York biotech betting that you can treat disease by protecting proteins instead of destroying them. He took the CEO seat in February 2022 after a career of running one drug company after another - Scholar Rock, TARIS Bio, The Medicines Company - and heading global commercial at Biogen, with a McKinsey partnership and a stint in medical devices before that. In July 2025 he joined the board of Indivior. He holds a Dartmouth degree and a Harvard MBA.
Allison Luo
Allison Luo, MD is the Chief Medical Officer of Mirador Therapeutics, a San Diego precision-medicine company that launched in 2024 with more than $400 million to attack immuno-fibrotic diseases using its Mirador360 development engine. A physician scientist with more than two decades in clinical development, she was CMO of Prometheus Biosciences before Merck bought it for $10.8 billion, and has since reassembled with that team to build Mirador. She sits on the board of Triveni Bio and has held medical-leadership roles across Ventyx, Biora, Iveric Bio and Bristol Myers Squibb.
Emily Stein
Emily Stein is a microbiologist turned founder and CEO of Primal Health, the Minneapolis life-sciences company behind Daily Dental Care for people and TEEF for Life for pets. Trained at UC Berkeley and Stanford, she spent more than a decade building SMMRT (Selective Microbial Metabolism Regulation Technology), a 'carrot and stick' approach that starves harmful mouth bacteria and feeds the helpful ones instead of nuking everything. Holder of 18 patents and a five-time startup founder, Stein pivoted from humans to dogs when dentists balked, a move she says saved the company. Her stated goal: to be in every mouth at least once a day.
Aditya Venugopal
Aditya Venugopal is the Chief Business Officer of Alentis Therapeutics, a clinical-stage Swiss biotech chasing first-in-class therapies aimed at claudin-1 for fibrosis and cancer. An immunologist turned dealmaker, he spent 15-plus years moving between the lab bench and the negotiating table: a Ph.D. in immunology from Weill Cornell, seven years in strategic life-science consulting, then senior roles at Intercept, VectivBio and Versanis Bio. He has a habit of being in the room when companies get acquired - VectivBio went to Ironwood, Versanis went to Eli Lilly - and he reunited with CEO Mark Pruzanski at Alentis after first partnering with him at Intercept.
Alexey Lugovskoy
Alexey 'Alex' Lugovskoy is the co-founder and CEO of Diagonal Therapeutics, a Watertown/Cambridge, Massachusetts biotech building 'clustering' antibodies that switch cellular signaling back on rather than block it. A Harvard-trained biophysicist who left physics after deciding green leaves were more interesting than tau neutrinos, he spent two decades in antibody R&D at Biogen, Merrimack, Morphic, and Dragonfly before launching Diagonal in 2022. He has co-invented an FDA-approved cancer drug, authored more than 100 patents and papers, and edits the antibody journal mAbs. In January 2026 Diagonal closed an oversubscribed $125M Series B co-led by Sanofi Ventures and Janus Henderson to push its lead program, DIAG723, into human trials for hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia.
Andy Kidd
Andy Kidd is the chief executive officer of Tentarix Biotherapeutics, a San Diego company building conditionally active multispecific biologics for oncology and autoimmune disease through its Tentacles platform. A physician turned operator, he carries an unusual pairing of credentials - an M.D. from Oxford and a CFA - and spent over two decades crossing from the consulting room into the boardroom, from Boston Consulting Group to Baxter International to the helm of Nasdaq-listed Aptinyx, which he took public. He stepped into the Tentarix CEO seat in April 2024 to scale a science-heavy startup backed by partnerships with Gilead and AbbVie.
Andy Walker
Andy Walker is a chemical engineer turned biotech operator who co-founded GentiBio, a Cambridge-based company engineering regulatory T cells (EngTregs) to functionally cure autoimmune and autoinflammatory diseases. He started as the company's CTO, moved through President and COO, and became President and CEO in 2024. Before GentiBio he ran manufacturing for cell and protein therapeutics at Juno Therapeutics and led Jewel Biotherapeutics. He holds a PhD in chemical engineering from UC Berkeley and a BS from the University of Washington.
Catherine Sabatos-Peyton
Catherine Sabatos-Peyton is a cancer immunologist turned biotech CEO who runs Larkspur Biosciences, a Cambridge, Massachusetts company building small-molecule drugs that attack cancer's ability to hide from the immune system. As a Harvard PhD student she helped first describe TIM-3, now a major checkpoint protein; she later led discovery of the anti-TIM-3 antibody sabatolimab at CoStim and Novartis. In 2021 she stepped from the lab bench to the corner office, and now leads an all-female executive team whose lead drug, the PIP4K2C degrader LRK-4189, entered human trials in late 2025.
Dan Baker
Dan Baker is a physician-scientist turned biotech founder who spent two decades at Johnson & Johnson's Janssen division helping bring immunology blockbusters Remicade, Simponi and Stelara to patients, before launching Brisbane-based Kira Biotech in 2019 as its founding CEO. Kira is developing KB312, a first-in-class antibody designed to selectively retrain the immune system rather than broadly suppress it, aimed at autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and type 1 diabetes. A rheumatologist who taught at the University of Pennsylvania for 18 years, Baker also advises drug-development organisations and serves as a healthcare venture partner.
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.
Han Lim
Han Lim is the Chief Business Officer of DeepCure, a Boston-based company building an end-to-end automated platform for small molecule drug discovery that pairs AI with a virtual library of a quintillion synthesizable compounds, robotic synthesis, and automated assays. A physician-scientist by training, he holds a medical degree from the University of Queensland, a PhD from the University of Cambridge, and did postdoctoral physics research at MIT before spending roughly a decade on the UC Berkeley faculty running a lab in systems biology and bioengineering. He helped build the first generation of AI drug discovery companies as Chief Business Officer at Atomwise, where he launched the internal pipeline, raised $168M across two rounds, and signed partners including Eli Lilly and Charles River Laboratories. He now leads business development, portfolio planning, and corporate strategy at DeepCure.
Kim Seth
Kim Seth, Ph.D., is the founding President & CEO of Nilo Therapeutics, a New York biotech that launched in October 2025 with a $101 million Series A to build medicines that talk to the immune system through the brain. A Harvard-trained neurobiologist turned dealmaker, he spent 25-plus years moving between Goldman Sachs, Pfizer, and Repare Therapeutics - where he helped take a precision-oncology startup from pre-Series A to IPO - before betting his own career on the strange idea that the vagus nerve might be the most underused drug target in autoimmune disease.
Lisa Olson
Lisa M. Olson, Ph.D., is a biopharmaceutical research leader who became CEO of Milan-based clinical-stage biotech Enthera Pharmaceuticals in January 2024, after years on its board and as chair of its Scientific Advisory Board. Across two decades in immunology drug discovery - 15 years at AbbVie/Abbott where she helped advance 15 molecules into the clinic including Rinvoq, plus roles at Pfizer and as Chief Scientific Officer of Magenta Therapeutics - she has built a career turning biology into medicine. At Enthera she is steering the clinical development of Ent001, a first-in-class antibody targeting the IGFBP3/TMEM219 pathway for inflammatory bowel disease and type 1 diabetes.
Mike Nohaile
Mike Nohaile is the CEO of Prellis Biologics, a Berkeley biotech using two-photon holographic 3D bioprinting to grow lymph node organoids and pull antibody candidates straight from the human immune repertoire. A molecular biologist by training (PhD from UC Berkeley, postdoc at MIT), he spent decades operating at the top of the pharma industry - partner at McKinsey, Global Head of Molecular Diagnostics at Novartis, Senior VP of Strategy, Commercialization & Innovation at Amgen, and Chief Scientific Officer at Generate Biomedicines - before taking the helm at Prellis in 2022 alongside a $35M Series C. He is a vocal skeptic of AI drug-discovery hype, insisting AI optimizes proteins but does not yet invent medicines.
Vishal Patel
Vishal Patel is the co-founder and CEO of Triveni Bio, a Watertown, Massachusetts biotech betting that genetics, not trial-and-error, should decide which antibodies reach patients with immune and inflammatory diseases. He stitched the company together from a two-startup merger, raised more than $200 million across Series A and B rounds, and pointed its lead programs at the skin enzymes behind atopic dermatitis. A Harvard PhD and MIT MBA who once helped draft healthcare legislation on Capitol Hill and still serves as a US Navy reservist, Patel runs a lab while keeping a foot in venture as an Atlas advisor.
Yang Liu
Yang Liu is a cancer immunologist turned serial biotech founder who chairs and runs OncoC4, the Rockville, Maryland company developing next-generation immune checkpoint antibodies. After decades as an endowed professor at NYU, Ohio State, Michigan, and beyond, he co-founded OncoImmune (acquired by Merck for $425M) and then OncoC4, whose lead anti-CTLA-4 antibody gotistobart is in late-stage development with BioNTech. He left full-time academia to take his own discoveries from the bench into patients.
Jennifer Cygan
Jennifer Cygan is a seasoned biotech executive and Chief Business Officer at EpiBiologics, where she helps advance a pipeline of novel bispecific antibodies designed to selectively degrade extracellular protein targets in oncology and immunology. With a Ph.D. from Harvard and over two decades of business leadership in biotechnology, she has been a pivotal force at Genentech, Calico Life Sciences (managing a $2.5B AbbVie alliance), and has co-founded and served as CBO for multiple emerging biotech companies including Broadwing Bio, Eikon Therapeutics, GenEdit, and Plexium. Her career sits at the intersection of science and strategy - translating cutting-edge biology into deals, partnerships, and companies that matter.
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.
Adam Rosenthal
Adam Rosenthal is the CEO and Founder of Star Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotech he launched in 2018 with a mission to develop life-changing therapies for rare diseases. An MIT and Harvard-trained biomedical engineer, Rosenthal built Star around the insight that shared biology across multiple rare diseases can yield single therapies addressing many conditions at once. His lead asset VGA039 - a first-in-class monoclonal antibody targeting Protein S - entered Phase 3 trials in 2025 for von Willebrand disease, the most common inherited bleeding disorder. Star has raised over $315 million from top-tier life sciences investors including Sanofi Ventures and Viking Global Investors.
Sandra Pérez Baos
Sandra Pérez Baos, Ph.D. is a Senior Associate at 2048 Ventures, a NYC- and Boston-based thesis-driven early-stage VC firm that closed an oversubscribed $82M Fund III in January 2026. A scientist turned investor, she brings a decade of hands-on experience in translational immunology and molecular biology research - first as a postdoctoral researcher at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, then as a founding leader at Nucleate New York, and later as a fellow with NYU's technology commercialization office. At 2048 Ventures she leads biotech and health investments at pre-seed and seed stages, writing checks from $500K to $3M into companies building the next generation of platform biology, drug delivery, diagnostics, and digital health.
Katherine Wu
Katherine J. Wu, Ph.D. is a staff science writer at The Atlantic and one of the most respected science journalists working today. A former Harvard bacteriologist turned acclaimed writer, she translates complex biology - from pandemic viruses to the sex lives of deep-sea creatures - into stories that are simultaneously rigorous and riveting. Winner of the 2024 Kovler Prize and the 2022 Schmidt Award for Science Communication, she has reported for The New York Times, National Geographic, and Smithsonian, and holds a PhD in Microbiology and Immunobiology from Harvard. She writes the newsletter The Pivot, covering science and health.