microbiome
(12)
Stewart Campbell
A. Stewart Campbell, PhD, is the CEO of Vertero Therapeutics, the Woburn, Massachusetts biotech formerly known as Axial Therapeutics. A medicinal chemist by training with more than 30 years in drug discovery, he runs a company built on an unusual bet: that the road to treating Parkinson's disease starts in the gut, not the brain. Campbell joined in 2017, took the top job in February 2021, engineered the 2025 rebrand from Axial to Vertero, and is steering the lead candidate VT-5006, a gut-selective small molecule, into its first clinical trials. He is a co-inventor on more than 20 patent families, including the foundational patents behind the approved graft-versus-host disease drug Rezurock.
Geoffrey von Maltzahn
Geoffrey von Maltzahn is the co-founder and CEO of Lila Sciences, a Cambridge company building what it calls scientific superintelligence: AI plus robotic labs that run the scientific method autonomously. A general partner at Flagship Pioneering, he has founded or co-founded a string of companies including Generate:Biomedicines, Tessera Therapeutics, Indigo Agriculture, Sana Biotechnology, Seres Therapeutics and Quotient Therapeutics, which together carry more than $10 billion in market value. He holds a PhD from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and is named on more than 200 patents.
Louis Licamele
Louis Licamele, PhD is a computer scientist turned drug developer who serves as Chief Development Officer and EVP of Clinical and Data Science at Bloom Science, a San Diego biotech building microbiome-based, ketogenic-mimicking live biotherapeutics for obesity and neurological disease. A founding team member, he oversees biostatistics, clinical data management, and data-driven trial design for the company's lead candidate BL-001. He built his career at the intersection of data and medicine - a BS in biology and computer science from Georgetown, a PhD in computer science from the University of Maryland, and senior informatics and biometrics roles at Vanda Pharmaceuticals and REGENXBIO. He also runs The Licamele Group, advising healthcare companies on data science, AI, and regulatory strategy.
Matt Barnard
Matt Barnard is the cofounder and CEO of one.bio, a Sacramento biotechnology company turning plant fiber into odorless, tasteless nutrients that can be dosed into everyday food to reshape the gut microbiome. A seventh-generation Wisconsin farmer turned technology operator, he first became known as the cofounder and CEO of Plenty, the SoftBank-backed indoor vertical farming unicorn. He now applies the same obsession - control what people eat, control their health - to fiber science spun out of UC Davis.
Cheri Ackerman Araromi
Cheri Ackerman Araromi is the cofounder and CEO of Concerto Biosciences, a Cambridge, Massachusetts biotech that reads the social lives of microbes the way a producer reads a band. Using kChip, a droplet screening platform she helped build during her postdoc at the Broad Institute, Concerto tests how thousands of microbial combinations interact and assembles the winning ensembles into products for skin health, agriculture, and beyond. A Hertz Fellow with a Berkeley PhD in chemical biology, she frames the future of medicine as building healthy ecosystems rather than killing bad cells with toxins.
Cheryl Sew Hoy
Cheryl Sew Hoy is a serial entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Tiny Health, an Austin-based microbiome science company that raised an $8.5M Series A in 2024. Born in Malaysia and trained as an engineer at Cornell, she sold her startup Reclip.It to Walmart Labs in 2013, then was recruited to run MaGIC, Malaysia's national innovation agency. She co-founded the #MovingForward campaign for diversity in venture capital and was named one of Time's 2017 Silence Breakers, the magazine's Person of the Year.
Christopher Reyes
Christopher Reyes is a biophysicist turned serial biotech entrepreneur and the CEO, co-founder, and director of Bloom Science, a San Diego company developing living medicines that harness the gut-brain axis. Bloom's lead program, BL-001, is a first-in-class oral live biotherapeutic designed to replicate the anti-seizure effects of the ketogenic diet, built on technology licensed from UCLA. With a PhD in biophysics from UCSF and a track record that includes a fast-acquired cancer startup, Reyes is betting that genetically optimized gut bacteria can treat pharmacoresistant neurological diseases.
Vivek Lal
Dr. C. Vivek Lal is a physician-scientist turned founder who runs resbiotic, a Birmingham-based wellness company building clinically tested probiotic and prebiotic supplements on a 'Gut-X Axis' platform. A double board-certified neonatologist who directs the Pulmonary Microbiome Lab at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Lal turned more than 100 peer-reviewed papers and NIH-funded lab work into a string of companies, including the drug-development firm Alveolus Bio and the pediatric chain Urgent Care for Children. In September 2025, resbiotic closed an $8 million Series A, bringing its total funding to $14.5 million.
Sam Schatz
Sam Schatz is the CEO and co-founder of Biohm Technologies, a Cleveland-based microbiome company betting that the future of gut health lives in fungi, not just bacteria. After spending a decade as AeroFarms' first employee scaling vertical farming from a startup into a global leader, he pivoted to the gut, turning a direct-to-consumer wellness brand into a B2B ingredients and data company built on a proprietary dataset of bacterial and fungal gut populations. He pairs data science with biology, raised a $4.52M Series B in 2025, and shipped Mycohsa, a probiotic blend clinically shown to break down digestive biofilms. Off the clock he is an Adirondack 46er and open-water swimmer.
Chris Abbott
Chris Abbott is the Chief Executive Officer of Pivot Bio, a Berkeley-based agricultural biotechnology company pioneering microbial nitrogen solutions that replace synthetic fertilizers. A Minnesota native and University of Minnesota graduate, Abbott built his career at the intersection of agriculture finance and agtech investing - from Wall Street sell-side research at Piper Jaffray to co-leading Continental Grain's Conti Ventures. He joined Pivot Bio's board in 2018, and in August 2023 stepped up as CEO, guiding the company past $100 million in annual revenue while scaling its gene-edited microbes to over 5 million acres. Under his leadership, Pivot Bio achieved 60% year-over-year revenue growth and has helped farmers reduce synthetic nitrogen use by over 129,000 metric tons.
Mohan Iyer
Mohan Iyer is a General Partner at SOSV's IndieBio SF, the world's leading biotech accelerator. With 25+ years operating life science startups across Genentech, Tethys Bioscience, Second Genome, and Pendulum Therapeutics, he brings rare bench-to-boardroom experience to pre-seed biotech founders. Trained as a chemical and biomedical engineer before earning his MBA from Yale, Iyer has spent his career translating disruptive biology into products the world actually needs — and now bets on founders doing the same.
Stuart Peterson
Stuart Peterson is the Founder and Managing General Partner of ARTIS Ventures, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm he launched in 2001 that coined and trademarked the term 'TechBio.' A 2017 Forbes Midas List honoree, Peterson led early-stage investments in YouTube (acquired by Google) and StemCentrx (acquired by AbbVie for $10.2 billion - the largest-ever venture-backed life sciences acquisition), and has since focused ARTIS at the convergence of computer science and life science, closing a $200 million TechBio II Fund in December 2023 to back next-generation health and medicine companies deploying AI, machine learning, and deep learning to transform human health.