preclinical
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Jessicca Rege
Jessicca M. Rege, Ph.D. is the Chief Executive Officer of Sus Clinicals, Inc., a biotech accelerating cancer drug development through the Oncopig Cancer Model, an FDA-cleared, genetically engineered pig platform for preclinical testing. A pharmaceutical scientist with more than 15 years in oncology R&D and global medical affairs, she previously served as Chief Development Officer at Mural Oncology, where she helped lead the company's public offering, and as VP, Head of Clinical Development, Oncology at Alkermes. She holds a Ph.D. in pharmaceutical sciences with a focus on pharmacogenomics from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Andrew DeSomma
Andrew DeSomma is the Chief Business Officer of K2bio (K2 BioLabs), a Houston-based hybrid contract research organization that gives early-stage life-science companies the equipment, vivarium, and scientists they could never afford to build alone. A career investor with a 25-plus-year track record across technology, biotech, consumer, and retail, he is the founder and manager of Resolute Investments and previously analyzed companies for crossover hedge funds in the San Francisco Bay Area. A Georgetown graduate who now works from Santa Fe, he sat on K2's board at founding before stepping into the operating seat that turns the lab's science into deals.
Dee Datta
Dee Datta, Ph.D., is co-founder and CEO of Switch Therapeutics, a San Francisco-based biotechnology company pioneering conditionally activated siRNA (CASi) molecules to treat neurodegenerative diseases and other conditions with significant unmet need. With a PhD from Caltech, an MBA from Stanford, and a career spanning venture capital at The Column Group and Longitude Capital, corporate development at Forty Seven Inc., and the C-suite at XOMA, Datta brings rare scientific depth and dealmaking fluency to one of the most ambitious RNA medicine platforms in the field. Switch raised a $52 million Series A in March 2023 and in late 2024 named its first development candidate - CASi-APOE, a brain-targeted, liver-sparing RNAi therapy aimed at the 60% of Alzheimer's patients who carry the APOE4 gene variant.
Richard Yu
Richard Yu is the Co-founder and CEO of Abalone Bio, an Emeryville, California-based biotechnology company pioneering AI-guided antibody drug discovery for notoriously hard-to-drug targets. With a PhD in Molecular Biophysics from Yale and a background spanning structural biology, systems biology, and biotech entrepreneurship, Richard built Abalone Bio's FAST platform - a high-throughput yeast cell screening system capable of evaluating 100 million antibody variants simultaneously. The company has secured partnerships with Pfizer and Mount Sinai, generated $7M in non-dilutive NIH grants, and published the world's first CB2 antibody agonist data, while positioning AI and large-scale functional datasets at the core of next-generation antibody therapeutics.