obesity
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Sandy Mou
Sandy Mou, MD, is the Chief Executive Officer and Board Executive Director of CORXEL Pharmaceuticals, a New Jersey- and Shanghai-linked biotech developing an oral small molecule GLP-1 receptor agonist for obesity and diabetes. A Fudan-trained clinician turned pharma executive with nearly three decades at GSK, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and MSD, she led MSD China's oncology unit into the country's top three within three years and later took Shanghai Allist public on the STAR Market before joining JIXING - now CORXEL - in early 2023.
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.
Peter DiLaura
Peter DiLaura is the CEO and Board Director of Helicore Biopharma, a San Mateo biotech building long-acting antibody-peptide conjugates that go after obesity by neutralizing the GIP hormone in the bloodstream rather than blocking its receptor. With nearly three decades of company-building behind him - CEO roles at Initial Therapeutics and Second Genome, business and strategy chief at Sonoma Biotherapeutics, and time as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Third Rock Ventures - he is the operator brought in to turn a $65M Series A and a clinic-ready antibody into medicines that aim for quarterly dosing and better-quality weight loss.
Russell Beckerman
Russell Beckerman is a biotech entrepreneur and Co-Founder & CEO of Overture Therapeutics, a Cambridge-based company engineering precision antibody medicines targeting obesity and metabolic dysfunction. He previously co-founded 82VS, a venture studio embedded within Alloy Therapeutics that has launched nine drug companies since 2020. His work sits at the intersection of cutting-edge antibody biology, company creation, and the conviction that the next generation of obesity drugs will be antibodies - not peptides.
Elaine Cheung
Elaine Cheung is Chief Business Officer at Moonwalk Biosciences, a South San Francisco biotech backed by $57 million in funding and co-founded by CRISPR pioneer Feng Zhang and former Illumina CTO Alex Aravanis. With 20+ years navigating the inflection points of genomic medicine - from spinning GRAIL out of Illumina, helping architect its $900M+ Series B, and steering Lyell Immunopharma through its IPO - Cheung brings a rare combination of scientific literacy and deal-making precision. At Moonwalk, she is helping build the business infrastructure for a company that has pivoted from epigenetic editing to siRNA-based therapeutics targeting adipose biology and obesity.