Tagged: novartis
10 results
Antares Therapeutics
Antares Therapeutics is a Boston-based biotechnology company that discovers small-molecule precision medicines against historically 'undruggable' targets in cancer and other serious diseases. Spun out of Scorpion Therapeutics in June 2025 with $177 million in Series A financing, Antares combines proprietary compound libraries, next-generation mass spectrometry, chemical proteomics, and machine-learning-driven computational chemistry to find new binding pockets on proteins - such as transcription factors - that were long considered impossible to drug. Its lead program is slated to enter the clinic in 2026, and the company signed a collaboration worth up to $1.9 billion with Novartis in mid-2026.
Ho-Juhn Song
Ho-Juhn Song is the co-founder and CEO of PineTree Therapeutics, a Cambridge, Massachusetts biotech building next-generation targeted protein degraders to overcome drug resistance in cancer. A geneticist by training with a Ph.D. from Oregon State University and a former project team leader at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, Song founded PineTree in 2019 around the AbReptor platform, which degrades membrane-bound and extracellular proteins that conventional drugs struggle to reach. Under his leadership the company licensed its lead EGFR degrader to AstraZeneca in a deal worth more than $500 million in potential milestones and closed an oversubscribed $47 million Series B in October 2025.
Bozidar Jovicevic
Bozidar Jovicevic is the CEO and co-founder of Evermed, a New York startup that lets medical societies and healthcare organizations launch a Netflix-style, on-demand video library in about 90 days. A medical doctor and FIDE chess master who spent 17 years running global digital initiatives at Novartis and Sanofi, he now builds technology that turns conference recordings and expert lectures into searchable, monetizable continuing-education libraries for physicians. He also hosts the Pharma Launch Secrets and Digital Innovators Circle podcasts.
Hiranjith H
Hiranjith H (also Hiranjith GH) is the Chief Business Officer of Algorithmic Biologics, a Bengaluru-founded deeptech startup that embeds algorithms inside test tubes to make molecular testing dramatically cheaper and faster. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, he leads the company's commercial operations and US expansion. He spent more than a decade scaling MedGenome's research-services business in the US and earlier built commercialization and analytics strategy for life-sciences clients at Novartis, ZS Associates, and Accenture Management Consulting.
Alex Martin
Alex Martin is the Chief Executive Officer of Abcuro, a clinical-stage biotech in Newton, Massachusetts working on selectively depleting highly cytotoxic T cells in autoimmune disease and cancer. A biopharma operator with more than 30 years of company-building and deal-making, he has run Palladio Biosciences and Realm Therapeutics (both acquired), served as COO of Intercept Pharmaceuticals and CFO of BioXell, and held business-development leadership at Novartis. In February 2025 he steered Abcuro to a $200 million Series C led by New Enterprise Associates. He also chairs the board of Veralox Therapeutics, sits on the board of ESSA Pharma, coaches senior executives, and lectures at Wharton and Columbia Business School.
Light Horse Therapeutics
Light Horse Therapeutics is a San Diego biotech founded in 2023 that flips traditional drug discovery on its head. Using a proprietary 'function-first' platform that pairs systematic CRISPR-based gene editing with chemical biology, the company first pinpoints which exact regions of a disease-driving protein are functionally critical, then hunts for small molecules that hit those precise sites. Launched out of Versant Ventures' Inception Discovery Engine with a $62M Series A and a Novartis collaboration worth up to $1 billion in milestones, Light Horse is targeting some of oncology's toughest, historically 'undruggable' proteins.
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.
Jeff Elton
Jeff Elton, Ph.D., is the founding CEO and now Vice Chairman of ConcertAI, a Cambridge-based company building generative and predictive AI on the world's largest multi-modal oncology dataset. He grew the company from a 2017 startup into a roughly $1.9 billion business with about 1,300 employees, acquiring TeraRecon's imaging technology and ASCO's CancerLinQ network along the way. A former Accenture managing director, Novartis research COO, and McKinsey partner, he co-authored the widely cited book Healthcare Disrupted and chairs the MassBio board.
Kevin Marks
Kevin Marks is the co-founder, President and CEO of Delphia Therapeutics, a Cambridge, Massachusetts biotech pioneering 'activation lethality' - a contrarian approach that kills cancer by overdriving the very oncogenes other drugs try to switch off. A two-decade cancer drug hunter who helped advance three FDA-approved medicines at Agios and led oncology drug discovery at Novartis, Marks built Delphia as an entrepreneur-in-residence at GV (Google Ventures), launching it in 2024 with a $67 million Series A.
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.