oncology
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Jay Stamatis Traded the Mega-Deal Table for a Biotech With Two Shots on Goal
After more than eight years shaping AbbVie’s pipeline, the history major turned biotech dealmaker is now running MBrace Therapeutics - where the wager is on novel targets, disciplined development and knowing which risks are worth taking.
Mayank Gandhi Is Betting That Two Targets Can Make One Better Cancer Drug
A physician who learned Wall Street, oncology and company-building is testing a precise idea at NEOK Bio: give an antibody-drug conjugate two ways to find its target, then make execution as carefully engineered as the medicine.
Patrick Roberts Is Betting the Cell Cycle Has Another Door
After helping a small North Carolina biotech move a cell-cycle drug from discovery toward patients, Patrick Roberts reunited with longtime colleagues to pursue a harder target: CDK2. The wager behind Incyclix Bio is that precision, patience and the right biomarkers can reopen a route that resistant cancers have learned to use.
The Chemist Who Wants to Build a Kinder Cancer Drug
He spent 25 years learning how cancer drugs fail. Now he is running a company built on the idea that the next generation can be safer, steadier, and easier to live with.
Andreas Goutopoulos Raised $75.5M for a Company That Was, on Paper, Just Him
He led chemistry at a big pharma for a decade, then walked out to build a radiopharma startup with no executive team and a single conviction: make the molecules stick.
Larry Hsu’s second act runs on patient architecture
After building Impax from a 1995 startup into a public pharmaceutical company, Larry Hsu returned to the beginning: a small team, licensed science, and the long work of turning drug candidates into companies.
Craig Gibbs Has Spent a Career Turning Lab Logic Into Biotech Momentum
From a protein-engineering bench to the CEO seat at Vivace Therapeutics, Craig Gibbs has built a career around one stubborn question: how does promising biology become a drug program that can actually move?
Aron Knickerbocker Built a Career by Following the Data
The Aulos Bioscience CEO has spent three decades moving closer to the work - from the lab, to the deal table, to the small teams where one clear decision can redirect an entire company.
The marketer who taught Pfizer to talk like a human
She spent 23 years climbing Pfizer's ladder in five countries. Now she is trying to make one of the world's biggest drug companies sound less like a laboratory and more like a person you would actually listen to.
Tahamtan Ahmadi
Tahamtan Ahmadi built his career in the hard middle of biotechnology - where a scientific idea must survive evidence, regulation, and scale. At Genmab, his remit now stretches from discovery to medicine, and his public philosophy keeps returning to curiosity, collaboration, and patient impact.
Sabah Oney
Sabah Oney is the president and CEO of Dispatch Bio, a Philadelphia- and San Francisco-based biotech engineering a universal treatment for solid tumors using CAR-T cell therapy. Born in Cyprus and in the U.S. since age 18, he holds a genetics degree from the University of Kansas, a PhD in genetics and genomics from Duke, and an MBA from Stanford. Across nearly two decades in biotech he helped scale Ariosa Diagnostics (acquired by Roche), took Alector public as its chief business officer, co-founded Vilya, and served as a venture partner at ARCH. Dispatch launched publicly in 2025 with $216 million behind its FLARE platform and CAR-T pioneer Carl June among its founders.
Serge Messerlian
Serge Messerlian is the Chairman and CEO of Creyon Bio, a San Diego biotech using AI to design oligonucleotide medicines. A life-science operator with more than 25 years across oncology, hematology, immunology and rare disease, he has led Teon Therapeutics as CEO, run Janssen Oncology as President at Johnson & Johnson, and held senior roles at Actelion, Baxalta and Baxter International. He joined Creyon first as an investor and board member through DCVC Bio, then stepped in as Executive Chairman and Acting CEO in fall 2024 and took the full CEO title in April 2025 as the company prepares to enter the clinic in 2026.
Sofie Qiao
Sofie Qiao, Ph.D. is a chemist-turned-biotech-founder who has built a career at the intersection of hard science and dealmaking. Trained in organic chemistry at Harvard and MIT, she founded LEAD Therapeutics (acquired by BioMarin in 2010, source of the PARP inhibitor Talazoparib now sold by Pfizer), ran WuXi Ventures, and then founded and led Vivace Therapeutics from 2015 to 2026, raising more than $100 million to advance first-in-class small molecules targeting the Hippo/YAP-TEAD pathway in cancer. She now leads Virtuoso Therapeutics, another company she founded.
Steven Everett
Steven Everett is a biotechnology executive and cancer scientist who founded MaveriX Oncology in Palo Alto, California, where he serves as President and CEO. With a background rooted in more than two decades of cancer research at the University of Oxford, University of Dundee and UCSF, he has built his career around a single idea: making cancer drugs that switch on only inside tumors. At MaveriX he is developing conditionally activated small-molecule therapeutics that exploit hydroxylase biology in the tumor immune microenvironment, aiming to hit cancer hard while sparing healthy tissue.
Bryan Stuart
Bryan Stuart is the Chief Executive Officer and a director of Atavistik Bio, a Cambridge, Massachusetts biotechnology company building precision allosteric small molecule therapeutics on its Atavistik Metabolite-Protein Screening (AMPS) platform. He joined in July 2023 after more than two decades leading biopharma companies, including roles as CEO of Fulcrum Therapeutics, Yarra Therapeutics, and Kastle Therapeutics. Under his leadership Atavistik has raised a $120 million Series B in December 2025, later extended to $160 million, to advance its lead programs for hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia and myeloproliferative neoplasms toward the clinic.
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.
Dominique Verhelle
Dominique Verhelle is a French-born scientist and biotech entrepreneur who co-founded and leads NextRNA Therapeutics, a Boston company building small-molecule drugs that target long non-coding RNA to treat cancers and neurological disorders. With a PhD in life sciences and an MBA in entrepreneurship, she has spent more than two decades across big pharma, venture capital, and startups - including Celgene, Pfizer, Third Rock Ventures, and Takeda - and helped launch Fulcrum Therapeutics and Cedilla Therapeutics before starting NextRNA. She is also an outspoken advocate for women founders in biotech.
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.
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.
Iker Huerga
Iker Huerga is the CEO of Pathos AI, a New York- and Chicago-based biotech building what it calls the first true AI-enabled drug development platform for oncology. A data scientist by training with more than two decades at the intersection of machine learning and cancer research, he previously served as Chief Data Scientist for Oncology R&D at AstraZeneca and as an EVP at Tempus Labs, and founded three oncology companies with two successful exits. He took the helm at Pathos in May 2025, days before the company closed a $365 million Series D that valued it at roughly $1.6 billion, with a stated mission to get the right therapies to the right patients, sooner.
Jack Hoppin
Jack Hoppin is the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Ratio Therapeutics, a Boston-based biotech developing targeted radiopharmaceuticals for cancer. A mathematician by training with a PhD in applied mathematics, he previously co-founded the molecular imaging company Invicro and led Konica Minolta Precision Medicine. At Ratio he pairs with scientific co-founder John Babich to build fit-for-purpose radioligand therapies on the company's Trillium pharmacokinetic-modulation and Macropa chelation platforms, backed by investors including Bristol Myers Squibb and a partnership with Novartis.
Joanne Smith-Farrell
Joanne Smith-Farrell is the President and CEO of Be Biopharma, a Cambridge, Massachusetts company building a new class of medicines from engineered B cells - the body's own protein factories. A physicist by training who moved into drug development, she has spent more than 25 years leading teams tackling cancer and rare diseases, most notably building bluebird bio's 400-person oncology cell therapy business behind the CAR-T therapy Abecma. Since taking the helm at Be Bio in early 2021, she has steered the company through more than $350 million in funding as it works to turn B cells into durable, in vivo sources of therapeutic proteins.
Joe Loy
Joe Loy is the President and CEO of Zetagen Therapeutics, a Syracuse, New York clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing small-molecule therapies to treat metastatic cancer in bone and soft tissue while regenerating healthy bone. A serial entrepreneur with several successful exits, Loy has spent his career building teams around first-to-market medical technologies at companies including US Surgical, Pfizer/Leibinger, NuVasive, and Stryker. Since taking the helm in January 2019, he has guided Zetagen through two FDA Breakthrough Device Designations, multiple financing rounds, and the launch of Phase 2a clinical trials for its lead candidate ZetaMet.
Katherine Bowdish
Katherine (Kathy) Bowdish is a molecular geneticist and biopharmaceutical leader who serves as President and CEO of PIC Therapeutics, a Natick, Massachusetts biotech developing cancer drugs that work by modulating RNA translation - targeting the eIF4E 'master switch' that tumors use to overproduce oncogene proteins. Over more than two decades she has founded and led a string of early-stage life science companies including Prolifaron (acquired by Alexion), Anaphore and Permeon Biologics, and she built and ran Sanofi Sunrise, the pharma giant's early-stage venture and partnering arm. She holds a PhD in molecular genetics from Columbia and led PIC through a $35 million Series A to push its lead program toward the clinic in drug-resistant breast cancer.
Lan Huang
Lan Huang is a chemist turned biotech entrepreneur and the Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO of SEED Therapeutics, a New York clinical-stage company designing molecular glues that direct the cell's own disposal machinery to break down disease-driving proteins once considered undruggable. She earlier founded BeyondSpring Pharmaceuticals and took it public on NASDAQ. A UC Berkeley PhD who solved an early E3 ubiquitin ligase structure, she built SEED around targeted protein degradation with collaborators including Nobel laureate Avram Hershko, and secured partnerships with Eli Lilly and Eisai.
Lina Yao
Lina Yao is a pharmaceutical scientist and the founder of Teon Therapeutics, a Redwood City, California biotech developing first-in-class, orally administered small-molecule cancer drugs that target G-protein coupled receptors to reverse tumor-driven immune suppression. A molecular pharmacologist by training with an MD and PhD and more than two decades in drug discovery, she built her career at CV Therapeutics and Gilead Sciences before launching Teon in 2018. She led the company through an oversubscribed $30 million Series A in 2021 and into the clinic with two novel programs: TT-702, an adenosine A2B receptor antagonist, and TT-816, a cannabinoid CB2 receptor antagonist being studied in combination with Merck's KEYTRUDA.
Nan Ji
Nan Ji is co-founder, president and CEO of PAQ Therapeutics, a Burlington, Massachusetts clinical-stage biotech pioneering autophagosome-tethering compounds (ATTECs) to degrade KRAS and other 'undruggable' disease drivers. A Harvard-trained organic chemist with 30+ patent applications, he spent seven years at Novartis, helped build Kymera Therapeutics from seed stage as VP of Chemistry, and launched PAQ in 2020 to hijack the body's natural cellular clean-up machinery for cancer and neurodegenerative disease.
Paul Blanchfield
Paul Blanchfield is the CEO of Alpha-9 Oncology, a Boston-based clinical-stage radiopharmaceutical company developing targeted alpha and beta therapies for cancer. He took the top job in November 2025 after running Lantheus as President, following earlier operator stints at Takeda and Shire and a five-year run at McKinsey.
Phil Vickers
Phil Vickers is President and CEO of Solu Therapeutics, a Boston clinical-stage biotech building small-molecule 'chimeras' that ferry cytotoxic payloads to disease-driving cells. He arrived in September 2023 after runs at Faze Medicines and Northern Biologics, and R&D leadership at Shire, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Pfizer and Merck. In April 2025 he closed a $41M Series A with Eli Lilly, Pappas Capital and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and dosed the first patient in a Phase 1 trial of STX-0712 for CMML.
J. Robert Coleman
J. Robert Coleman, PhD, MBA, is Chairman and CEO of HERVolution Therapeutics, a Copenhagen-based biotech developing immunotherapies that target human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) - the ancient viral DNA lodged in the dark genome that reawakens in cancer, aging, and neurodegeneration. A trained virologist, he co-founded Codagenix, where he built a synthetic-biology vaccine platform into a clinical-stage pipeline and raised nearly half a billion dollars before pivoting to HERVs in late 2023.