Jedrzej (Jed) Litwiniuk is the co-founder and CEO of Auxilius Pharma, a Boston- and New York-based pharmaceutical company built on the idea that the next breakthrough heart drug might already exist - it just needs to be reformulated. A corporate-finance and investment hand who crossed from PZU and LUX MED deal tables into the lab, he is steering AUX-001, a once-daily reformulation of nicorandil aimed at becoming the first new oral therapy for chronic stable angina in the US since 2006. In December 2025 the company closed a $4 million Series A to push the candidate through pharmaceutical optimization and a Phase Ib trial.
TraceLink runs the largest digital network for the pharmaceutical supply chain, connecting roughly 280,000 companies so drugs can be tracked from factory to pharmacy shelf. Born to fight counterfeit medicines, the Massachusetts company became the backbone for global serialization and DSCSA compliance, and is now pushing into no-code and agentic AI tools that let trading partners resolve shortages, recalls, and exceptions across the network.
Bobn L is the Chief Executive Officer of GoodRx, the Santa Monica-based digital health company that has become America's most-used prescription savings platform. GoodRx tracks drug prices across 75,000+ pharmacies nationwide, delivering coupons and transparency to millions of Americans navigating the opaque world of prescription pricing. Under executive leadership, GoodRx has grown to nearly $800 million in annual revenue, gone public on Nasdaq (GDRX), and expanded into telemedicine - all in service of a single idea: that patients deserve to know what their medications actually cost.
Aumet is a Saudi-headquartered healthtech building an AI-first procurement operating system for pharmacies, hospitals and pharmaceutical suppliers across the Middle East. The platform connects more than 12,000 pharmacies with 1,000+ suppliers and processes roughly $1B in annual gross merchandise value.
Bask Gill is the Co-Founder of Power (withpower.com), a San Francisco-based clinical trial platform that uses AI to match patients with clinical trials. After watching his father struggle to navigate a broken clinical trial discovery system following a multiple myeloma diagnosis, Bask co-founded Power in May 2021 alongside Brandon Li. The platform has connected over 600,000 patients to trials across 10,000+ medical conditions, with 40% being non-white patients - a deliberate focus on diversity and access. Power has raised $19M in funding including a $12M Series A in early 2024, and grown to 230 employees.
Dr. Mohamed Mazen Batterjee is the Co-Founder, CCO, and investor behind Aumet, an AI-first procurement operating system reshaping pharmaceutical supply chains across the Middle East. A scion of one of Saudi Arabia's oldest pharma dynasties, he parlayed a DBA from IE Business School and 15+ years running Batterjee Pharmaceuticals into co-founding a platform that now connects 12,000+ pharmacies, 1,000+ suppliers, and has processed over $1 billion in GMV. Aumet closed a $12M Series A in May 2026, bringing total funding to $21.84M.
Yuyo Llamazares Vegh is the CEO and Co-Founder of Stämm, a San Francisco-based biotech company reinventing biomanufacturing through miniaturized 3D-printed microfluidic bioreactors. A native of Argentina with a background in agricultural engineering and bioprocesses from the University of Buenos Aires, Yuyo co-founded Stämm in 2016 alongside his cousin Federico D'Alvia Vegh after spotting a fundamental gap between biology's potential and the outdated tools available to harness it. Stämm's platform - desktop-sized, modular, and scalable - is designed to make the production of biologics, cell therapies, and gene therapies accessible and repeatable at any scale. The company has raised over $17 million including a Series A led by Varana Capital with participation from Draper Associates and SOSV's IndieBio, and has attracted former Merck KGaA CEO Stefan Oschmann to its board. Yuyo was selected as an Endeavor Entrepreneur in 2023.
Antheia is a Menlo Park biotech using engineered yeast to brew the active ingredients behind essential medicines - replacing slow, weather-dependent poppy farming with industrial-scale fermentation. Founded out of Stanford's Smolke Lab, the company aims to end pharmaceutical shortages by turning sugar into complex molecules like thebaine in weeks instead of years.
Dinesh V. Patel, Ph.D. is the President and CEO of Protagonist Therapeutics (NASDAQ: PTGX), a Newark, California-based biopharmaceutical company he has led since December 2008. With over 38 years spanning medicinal chemistry, drug discovery, venture capital co-founding, and three CEO stints, Patel has guided Protagonist from a peptide-platform startup to a company with its first FDA-approved drug - ICOTYDE (icotrokinra), approved March 2026 as the world's first targeted oral peptide for moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis, partnered with Johnson & Johnson.
John Vitalie is the CEO of Aktana, a San Francisco-based AI platform company that helps global life sciences organizations optimize commercial engagement with healthcare providers. A three-time software CEO with leadership stints at Salesforce, Oracle, and Siebel Systems, Vitalie brings a decade of pioneering AI in life sciences to a company building what it calls a Contextual Intelligence Engine - blending AI, human insight, and omnichannel orchestration to make every pharma sales interaction more timely and personalized. Recognized as one of the Top 25 Biotech CEOs of 2022 by the Healthcare Technology Report, he champions a philosophy that AI should augment human judgment, not replace it.
Pat Cotroneo is a seasoned life sciences financial executive who spent over two decades at FibroGen, Inc. (now Kyntra Bio), serving as Chief Financial Officer from 2008 to 2021. During his tenure, he guided FibroGen through two defining transformations: its landmark 2014 IPO - the largest biotech public offering in 12 years - and its evolution into a commercial-stage company with the launch of roxadustat in China in 2019. With 25+ years of senior financial leadership in life sciences, Cotroneo built his career at Deloitte & Touche, SyStemix (a Novartis subsidiary), and ultimately FibroGen, where he oversaw finance, accounting, human resources, and information technology before transitioning to Executive Advisor to the CEO.
Paul Gatti is co-founder and CEO of CompareNetworks, a South San Francisco-based B2B media and technology company he built from a postdoc's side project into a 12-brand portfolio serving 8 million science and engineering professionals. Trained as a microbiologist at Tulane and UCSF, Gatti pivoted from the bench to the boardroom around 2000, assembling a media empire that connects buyers and sellers across life sciences, pharma, engineering, and industrial sectors. Under his leadership, CompareNetworks has grown via strategic acquisitions — GlobalSpec in 2020, Gulf Energy Information in 2025 — backed by Main Street Capital since 2019.
Rick Winningham is the CEO of Theravance Biopharma, a biopharmaceutical company focused on organ-selective medicines for serious diseases including COPD, rare neurological conditions, and inflammatory diseases. With over 40 years in the pharmaceutical industry - including 13 years as CEO of Innoviva and 15 years at Bristol-Myers Squibb - Winningham has built a career defined by transformative drug development, strategic company leadership, and a widely recognized commitment to mentoring the next generation of biopharma executives, particularly women in leadership. He was named the 2026 HBA Honorable Mentor by the Healthcare Businesswomen's Association.
Dr. Siva Samy is the founder, CEO, and Chief Product Strategist of ValGenesis, the global leader in digital validation lifecycle management for the life sciences industry. He built the first platform to fully digitize and automate the pharmaceutical validation process - the compliance-critical system that ensures every drug, device, and biotech product is manufactured correctly. Under his leadership, ValGenesis has become trusted by 30 of the top 50 global life sciences companies and has raised over $40 million in funding, including a $24M investment from Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital and a $16M debt financing in 2025.
Terry Rosen is the CEO and co-founder of Arcus Biosciences, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing combination cancer immunotherapies. A medicinal chemist by training with a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, Rosen has spent over 30 years at the intersection of chemistry and oncology - from Abbott Laboratories and Pfizer to Amgen, and then co-founding Flexus Biosciences which sold to Bristol-Myers Squibb for $1.25 billion in 2015. He immediately used that platform to launch Arcus, which has since secured a landmark 10-year partnership with Gilead Sciences and advanced multiple molecules into pivotal clinical studies, including casdatifan, a best-in-class HIF-2α inhibitor showing strong results in kidney cancer.
Jacob Borrajo is the Founder and CEO of Amber Bio, a Cambridge-based biotech company pioneering a first-of-its-kind RNA writing platform capable of multi-kilobase edits. With a PhD in Biological Engineering from MIT and research training at the Broad Institute, Borrajo has spent his career building at the intersection of CRISPR, machine learning, and synthetic biology. Amber Bio launched in August 2023 with a $26 million seed round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Playground Global, with strategic participation from Eli Lilly and the Retinal Degeneration Fund. His platform's key innovation: treating diseases with high allelic diversity using a single therapeutic product, by editing RNA rather than DNA - making gene therapy safer, reversible, and dramatically more scalable.
Christina Smolke is the CEO and Co-Founder of Antheia, Inc., a Menlo Park-based synthetic biology company programming yeast to manufacture complex pharmaceutical ingredients — including the active ingredient in Narcan — in days rather than the years required by traditional plant cultivation. A Stanford professor turned biotech entrepreneur, she pioneered the engineering of baker's yeast to produce opioids and other plant-derived medicines, raising over $175 million to bring her lab breakthroughs to global pharmaceutical supply chains.
Tassos Gianakakos is a Greek-American biotech entrepreneur and the co-founder, CEO, and Chair of Kardigan, a cardiovascular drug discovery company he built from the ashes of MyoKardia — the precision-medicine heart company he led to a $13.1 billion acquisition by Bristol Myers Squibb in 2020. At Kardigan, he is applying the same playbook: marrying real-world clinical data, AI tools, and deep cardiovascular biology to deliver personalized medicines for heart disease — a field he believes is where oncology was 20 years ago. With $554 million raised and three late-stage clinical programs underway, Gianakakos is on a mission to make cardiovascular disease preventable and curable.
Tero-Pekka Alastalo is a Finnish-born physician-scientist turned serial entrepreneur who trained as a pediatric cardiologist, completed his postdoctoral work at Stanford University School of Medicine, and has spent the last 15 years building life science companies in Silicon Valley. He co-founded Blueprint Genetics in 2012 - a clinical genetic testing company later acquired by Quest Diagnostics in 2020 - before launching Avenue Biosciences in 2023, a transatlantic AI-powered protein engineering company that uses signal peptide libraries and machine learning to unlock the secretory pathway and dramatically boost therapeutic protein yields. Based in Menlo Park, California, Alastalo is turning a fundamental cellular mechanism overlooked by the industry into a platform that could accelerate every class of next-generation biologic.
Mark Cuban is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and media personality who turned a $6 million software company sale into a dot-com-era $5.7 billion windfall, bought the Dallas Mavericks for $285 million and won an NBA championship, became a household name on Shark Tank, and now wages a one-man war on America's pharmaceutical industrial complex through his Cost Plus Drugs company.