Daphne Zohar is an American entrepreneur. She is the founder and CEO [1] of Seaport Therapeutics, [2] co-founder of Karuna Therapeutics, [3] and Founding CEO of PureTech Health. [4] She sits on the board of BIO [5] and is a co-founder and host of Biotech Hangout. [6]
She was named one of the most influential people in Biopharma in 2023. [7] MIT Technology Review TR35 top innovators . [8] by BioWorld, as one of 28 leaders predicted to be the "movers and shakers" of the biotechnology industry over the next twenty years. [9] That same year, Zohar was also featured as one of “The Boston Area’s Top 15 Innovators” by The Boston Globe [10] [11] and in 2013, Scott Kirsner of The Boston Globe named Zohar one of the 10 most influential women in biotech. [12]
Tillman Gerngross is an Austro-American scientist.
Christoph Westphal is an American biomedical businessman.
Atlas Venture is an early-stage venture capital firm that creates and invests in biotechnology startup companies in the U.S. Atlas is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the majority of its investments are located. Atlas raised its thirteenth fund totaling $450 million in March 2022, after raising its Opportunity Fund II totaling $300 million in September 2021.
Jeremy Levin is a South African-born businessman, medical doctor and research scientist. In 2018, Levin was named as one of the most influential figures in the biopharmaceutical industry.
Joseph Jimenez is the former CEO of the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis.
Arie S. Belldegrun, FACS, is an Israeli-American urologic oncologist, billionaire businessman and investor.
Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is an American biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery, development and commercialization of RNA interference (RNAi) therapeutics for genetically defined diseases. The company was founded in 2002 and is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2016, Forbes included the company on its "100 Most Innovative Growth Companies" list.
Calico Life Sciences LLC is an American biotechnology company with a focus on the biology of aging, attempting to devise interventions that may enable people to lead longer and healthier lives. It is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.
Gelesis is a biotechnology company located in Boston, Massachusetts that developed the weight loss device Gelesis100 (Plenity) for use in overweight and obesity. The company produces Gelesis100, which is a superabsorbent hydrogel capsule that expands in the stomach, creating a feeling of fullness, helping people reduce the amount of food they eat. The company was founded in 2006 to develop medical devices and treatments for obesity.
Ryan Bethencourt is an American scientist, entrepreneur, and biohacker best known for his work as co-founder and CEO of Wild Earth, Partner at Babel Ventures and cofounder and former Program Director at IndieBio, a biology accelerator and early stage seed fund. Bethencourt was head of life sciences at the XPRIZE foundation, a co-founder and CEO of Berkeley Biolabs, a biotech accelerator, and Halpin Neurosciences, an ALS therapeutics-focused biotech company. Bethencourt co-founded Counter Culture Labs, a citizen science nonprofit, and Sudo Room, a hacker space based in downtown Oakland, California.
Amicus Therapeutics, Inc. is a public American biopharmaceutical company based in Philadelphia, PA. The company went public in 2007 under the NASDAQ trading symbol FOLD. This followed a 2006 planned offering and subsequent withdrawal, which would have established the trading symbol as AMTX Prior to their IPO, Amicus was funded by a variety of venture capital firms including Radius Ventures, Canaan Partners and New Enterprise Associates.
Henri A. Termeer was a Dutch biotechnology executive and entrepreneur who is considered a pioneer in corporate strategy in the biotechnology industry for his tenure as CEO at Genzyme. Termeer created a business model adopted by many others in the biotech industry by garnering steep prices— mainly from insurers and government payers— for therapies for rare genetic disorders known as orphan diseases that mainly affect children. Genzyme uses biological processes to manufacture drugs that are not easily copied by generic-drug makers. The drugs are also protected by orphan drug acts in various countries which provides extensive protection from competition and ensures coverage by publicly funded insurers. As CEO of Genzyme from 1981 to 2011, he developed corporate strategies for growth including optimizing institutional embeddedness nurturing vast networks of influential groups and clusters: doctors, private equity, patient-groups, insurance, healthcare umbrella organizations, state and local government, and alumni. Termeer was "connected to 311 board members in 17 different organizations across 20 different industries" He has the legacy of being the "longest-serving CEO in the biotechnology industry.
The Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) is the largest advocacy association in the world representing the biotechnology industry. It was founded in 1993 as the Biotechnology Industry Organization from a merger of the Industrial Biotechnology Association (IBA) and the Association of Biotechnology Companies (ABC), and changed its name to the Biotechnology Innovation Organization on January 4, 2016. Biotechnology Innovation Organization serves more than 1,100 biotechnology firms, research schools, state biotechnology centers and related associations in the United States and in more than 30 other countries.
Adverum Biotechnologies, Inc., formerly known as Avalanche Biotechnologies, is a publicly traded clinical stage gene therapy company located in Redwood City, California. The company is targeting unmet medical needs for serious ocular and rare diseases, including wet age-related macular degeneration.
Roivant Sciences Ltd. is a healthcare company focused on applying technology to drug development and building subsidiary biotech and healthcare technology companies. It was founded in 2014 by Vivek Ramaswamy
David L. Lucchino is co-founder and chief executive officer of Frequency Therapeutics, a biotechnology company based in Lexington, MA.
Jeffrey Leiden is an American physician, scientist and businessman who is the executive chairman of Vertex Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology company based in Boston, Massachusetts. He was initially appointed to the board of directors of the company in 2009 and was CEO and president from February 2012 to March 2020.
ProQR Therapeutics NV is a Dutch biotechnology company based in Leiden, the Netherlands, with a presence in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US. The company was funded in 2012 by chief executive officer (CEO) Daniel A. de Boer. It specializes in the development of RNA therapeutics using its RNA editing platform technology called Axiomer.
PureTech Health is a biotechnology company which develops medicines to combat serious diseases. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.
Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical Inc. is an American biopharmaceutical company involved in the research and development of novel products for treatment of rare and ultra-rare genetic diseases for which there are typically no approved treatments and high unmet medical need. The company works with multiple drug modalities including biologics, small molecule, gene therapies, and ASO and mRNAs in the disease categories of bone, endocrine, metabolic, muscle and CNS diseases.
Big biotech names roll out Seaport Therapeutics, as interest in neuropsychiatric drugs swells https://www.statnews.com/2024/04/09/seaport-therapeutics-neuroscience-puretech/