The First Rounders podcast with John Maraganore can be found here. If you’d like more background on John, read this profile in Xconomy from 2014. Here’s John being interviewed at BIO after being elected chairman of the lobby group. And here’s the Nature paper on RNAi in 2001 that helped crack the field open.
Podcast is sponsored by the Master’s in Biotechnology Enterprise and Entrepreneurship program at Johns Hopkins University.
The First Rounders podcast with Jeff can be found here. A Boston Globe article on Leiden taking the CEO position at Vertex is here and one from Xconomy is here. Read the Forbes piece on Vertex’s success in cystic fibrosis. A profile on Jeff in STAT can be found here. Click here for a video on Vertex’s learning lab.
The First Rounders podcast with Susan Windham-Bannister can be found here. This podcast episode accompanies Biotech’s Pale Shadow, our feature on racial diversity in the biotech sector, which can be found here.
In this podcast, Windham-Bannister discusses the troubling racial incidents in Boston’s past, and in mid-December The Boston Globe’s Spotlight investigative team published a series on racism in Boston, focused on the black experience. That can be found here. She also mentions the book Hillbilly Elegy, and this The New Yorker article examining the book can be found here. Here is an article gauging the success of Governor Deval Patrick’s $1 billion initiative to grow the life sciences sector in Massachusetts. Here is a radio segment with Windham-Bannister looking at her tenure at the head of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center.
Podcast is sponsored by the Master of Biotechnology Enterprise and Entrepreneurship program at Johns Hopkins University.
The First Rounders podcast with Stelios Papadopoulos can be found here. Here is his bio page as chairman of the board for Biogen. He is still the record holder for most goals in a game at Bethany college. A video of Stelios being interviewed by BioBusiness TV is here. And here is the “godfather of biotech” on CNBC discussing biotech stocks.
The First Rounders podcast with Greg Winter can be found here. Here is a profile of him in The Lancet, and an interview about his work and startups can be found here. Interested in more information on Trinity College Cambridge? Here’s a page on its history. And here is the Wikipedia page for the very long list of the Masters of Trinity. There are a few photos of Trinity and the Master’s Lodge below.
The Jan Vilcek podcast can be found here. Here is a link to the Vilcek Foundation, and Jan’s research page at NYU. Here’s a NY Times article on his huge donation to NYU. His memoir, Love and Science, can be bought several ways, and the Goodreads page is here. The National Czech & Slovak Museum and Library have an exhibit on Jan, and it’s displayed here, with a collection of clips from a video interview.
To find our First Rounders podcast with Rachel Haurwitz, go here. The Caribou website is here, if you do not feel like googling. A nice profile from Stat can be found here, and this is the press release on the founding of Intellia. Here is a guest blog post from Scientific American on the patent fight over CRISPR technology, and below is a link to a PDF on the patent finding.
A friend asked me recently: If Gates, Jobs, Bezos and Zuckerberg are among the heroes of the IT revolution, who are the heroes of biotech?
And I responded:
Bob Swanson, who taught us how to dream and how to turn the dream into reality.
George Rathmann, who showed us what it is to have character, how to inspire and empower individuals and how to develop products with a meaningful impact on human health.
Hubert Schoemaker, who never gave up and showed us how to keep overcoming obstacles until we succeed.
Henri Termeer, who showed us how to build a business by treating rare diseases, in the process creating a new pricing paradigm but making sure no patient was left untreated because of financial hardship.
Stan Crooke, who, in creating a new therapeutic modality with antisense oligonucleotides, showed us that great accomplishments require defiance and life-long commitment.
Bill Rastetter, who gave us the first meaningful therapeutic antibody, but after his success, instead of resting on his laurels, kept on creating and contributing.
Art Levinson and Sue Desmond-Hellmann, who showed how scientific leadership can make a difference and built Genentech into the greatest biotech company in the history of the industry.
Fred Frank and Mary Tanner, who taught us how large pharma thought and brought Wall Street legitimacy to the sector by committing the might of legendary Lehman Brothers behind the young companies.
Peter Drake, Linda Miller, Teena Lerner, Denise Gilbert, Monte Pitt and Stu Weisbrod, who taught us how to think about biotech stocks.
Roy Vagelos, who laid the foundations of how an ethical pharmaceutical company should behave and inspired all of us in biotech.
Max Link, the first pharma CEO with a genuine appreciation of biotech, who reached out and sought to access innovation among the young companies in the sector.
Dan Vasella, who took Max’s vision a step further and, in setting up the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, catalyzed the transformation of the Boston area from a biotech hub to the global leader in biopharma research.
Len Schleifer and George Yancopoulos, who showed us how to lead with science and built a great company in their unique and uncompromising way.
Craig Venter, who almost singlehandedly laid the foundation of genomics-based drug discovery by being the driving force behind the sequencing of the human genome.
Marc Levin, who legitimized genomics-based research initiatives by building Millennium into a great biopharma company.
Noubar Afeyan, who has been driving relentlessly the formation of science-driven companies in spite of ever shifting moods and paradigms in the financial community.
John Martin, who showed how scientific judgment and clinical development acumen can create great drugs. He helped turn AIDS into a manageable chronic condition and offered cures for Hep C infection.
Joshua Lederberg, Phil Sharp, Bob Langer, George Church and David Baltimore, who, with their exquisite scientific insights, have founded several outstanding companies and have offered unparalleled wisdom as scientific advisors and board members to small and large companies alike.
Marc Tessier-Lavigne, who crossed the industry-academia divide better than anyone by focusing on the best parts of each world, all with the common aim of improving the human condition.
Some have been my friends. All are my heroes.
Ravi, thanks for asking.
Our First Rounders podcast with Steve Quake can be found here. This is his lab at Stanford, and this is Fluidigm, a micro-fluidics company he co-founded. The Nature Biotechnology paper on the sequencing of his genome can be found here, with some news coverage of the event here, and Quake’s own account in the NY Times. For more on his position with the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, go here. The Biohub has named its first recipients of funding. And here is Biohub co-head Joe DeRisi discussing the initiative.
The First Rounders discussion with Jeremy Levin can be found here. His family background includes a rather horrific chapter in Lithuania: The Guardian has an informative article discussing this event here. The press release announcing Levin’s hiring at Bristol-Myers Squibb can be found here, and an article on BMS’s changes can be found here. A Forbes article on Teva’s hiring of Levin is at this link, and here’s an interview he did at The Jewish Chronicle after he’d taken the job.
And of course here is Ovid, where Levin is currently CEO. The company closed a $75 million B round in 2015.
Brady Huggett