protein-degradation
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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.
Joel Barrish
Joel Barrish is the President and CEO of Avilar Therapeutics, a Waltham, Massachusetts-based biotechnology company pioneering extracellular protein degradation. A medicinal chemist by training with a Ph.D. from Columbia University, Barrish spent 28 years at Bristol Myers Squibb rising to VP and Global Head of Discovery Chemistry, co-inventing blockbuster drugs including SPRYCEL (dasatinib) for leukemia. After stints as CSO at Achillion Pharmaceuticals and co-founder/President at Jnana Therapeutics, he founded Avilar in 2019 to build the ATAC and MTAC platforms - bifunctional molecules that hijack the body's own cellular recycling machinery to degrade disease-causing proteins outside the cell, a class of targets previously undruggable. Avilar has raised $75 million in total seed financing.
Phil Chamberlain
Phil Chamberlain is the co-founder, president and CEO of Neomorph, a San Diego biotech building molecular glue degraders to drug proteins long written off as untouchable. An Oxford-trained structural biologist, he spent a decade at Celgene and Bristol Myers Squibb decoding how thalidomide works at the atomic level, then turned that science into a company that has signed partnerships with AbbVie, Biogen and Novo Nordisk worth billions and pushed its lead degrader into the clinic.
Arthur T. Sands
Arthur T. Sands, M.D., Ph.D., is the President and CEO of Nurix Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company pioneering targeted protein degradation medicines. A co-founder of Lexicon Pharmaceuticals in 1995, he spent 19 years transforming that company from a research startup into a drug-development enterprise generating over $450 million in revenue. At Nurix, he leads efforts to deploy a proprietary DEL-AI platform - combining DNA-encoded libraries with machine learning - to discover and develop small-molecule degraders and degrader-antibody conjugates for cancer and inflammatory diseases. The company's lead asset, bexobrutideg (a BTK degrader), entered pivotal Phase 2 development in 2025 with an 83% objective response rate in relapsed CLL patients.
Jorge Dimartino
Jorge F. DiMartino, M.D., Ph.D., is Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President of Clinical and Translational Development at Plexium, a San Diego-based biotech pioneering targeted protein degradation. A physician-scientist trained in genetics, immunology, and pediatric oncology across UC Berkeley, Cornell, UC San Diego, and Stanford, DiMartino has spent over two decades advancing cancer drugs from bench to bedside. His fingerprints are on three now-marketed therapies: vismodegib, venetoclax, and enasidenib - each a breakthrough in its own right. At Plexium, he oversees clinical programs targeting SMARCA2, IKZF2, CDK2, and CRAF using the company's DELTA Discovery platform, a novel approach to degrading proteins previously considered undruggable.
Sofia Touami
Sofia Touami, Ph.D., is the Chief Business Officer of Lycia Therapeutics, a South San Francisco biotech pioneering lysosomal targeting chimeras (LYTACs) - a platform invented by Nobel laureate Carolyn Bertozzi to degrade disease-causing extracellular proteins. A trained organic chemist who earned her Ph.D. at Stanford and did postdoctoral work at The Scripps Research Institute, Touami has built a career as one of biotech's sharpest dealmakers, having orchestrated major transactions including Frontier Medicines' landmark global collaboration with AbbVie before joining Lycia in July 2023. She helped close Lycia's oversubscribed $106.6 million Series C in May 2024, positioning the company to bring its LYTAC-based autoimmune therapies into clinical trials.