Blaine McKee is the president and CEO of Walden Biosciences, a Cambridge, Massachusetts biotech building first-in-class medicines that go after the kidney itself instead of just slowing the road to dialysis. A chemist turned dealmaker turned operator, he launched Walden with a $51 million Series A in 2020 and now steers two clinical-stage programs: WAL0921, an anti-suPAR antibody, and WAL0623, a small-molecule dynamin stabilizer. Before Walden he spent 15 years at Genzyme and held top corporate-development roles at Shire and ImmunoGen, pairing an MIT organic-chemistry PhD with an MIT Sloan finance MBA.
Walden Biosciences is a Cambridge, Massachusetts clinical-stage biotech building first-in-class, disease-modifying medicines that target the kidney directly instead of just delaying the slide toward dialysis. Founded in 2020 on the podocyte and suPAR research of renal scientist Jochen Reiser and colleagues, Walden pairs an antibody program (WAL0921, against soluble urokinase plasminogen activator receptor) with a small-molecule program (WAL0623, a dynamin stabilizer) to protect and restore the kidney's filtration cells. Backed by ARCH Venture Partners, UCB Ventures, Mass General Brigham Ventures and ATEM Capital, the company is advancing WAL0921 through a Phase 2 basket study across common and rare glomerular kidney diseases.