GSK plc, formerly GlaxoSmithKline plc, is a British multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company with global headquarters in London, England. Established in 2000 by a merger of Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham. GSK is the tenth largest pharmaceutical company and #294 on the 2022 Fortune Global 500, ranked behind other pharmaceutical companies China Resources, Sinopharm, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Roche, AbbVie, Novartis, Bayer, and Merck.
Genmab A/S is a Danish biotechnology company, founded in February 1999 by Florian Schönharting, at the time managing director of BankInvest Biomedical venture fund. The company is based in Copenhagen, Denmark - internationally, it operates through the subsidiaries Genmab B.V. in Utrecht, The Netherlands, Genmab U.S., Inc. in Princeton, USA, and Genmab K.K. in Tokyo, Japan. It's a dual listed company with shares traded on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange in Denmark, and on NASDAQ Global Select Market in the US.
Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, Inc. was a biotechnology company based in Cambridge, MA that developed therapies for type 2 diabetes, cancer, and other diseases. Conceived in 2004 by Harvard University biologist David Sinclair and serial entrepreneur Andrew Perlman, and founded that year by Sinclair and Perlman, along with Christoph Westphal, Richard Aldrich, Richard Pops, and Paul Schimmel, the company was focused on developing Sinclair's research into activators of sirtuins, work that began in the laboratory of Leonard P. Guarente where Sinclair worked as a post-doc before starting his own lab.
Christoph Westphal, M.D., Ph.D., is a biomedical entrepreneur.
Michelle Dipp is an American scientist, businesswoman, and investor. She is the co-founder and a managing partner at Biospring Partners and serves on the board of Abzena and Kiniciti.
The pharmaceutical industry in the United Kingdom directly employs around 73,000 people and in 2007 contributed £8.4 billion to the UK's GDP and invested a total of £3.9 billion in research and development. In 2007 exports of pharmaceutical products from the UK totalled £14.6 billion, creating a trade surplus in pharmaceutical products of £4.3 billion.
Kevin Johnson is a partner at medicxi, a venture capital firm focused on life sciences investments based on the asset-centric approach to investing. He was formerly with Index Ventures, having joined the venture capital firm in 2010.
Atlas Venture is an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in life sciences startup companies in the U.S. Atlas is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the majority of its investments are located. Atlas rolled out its eleventh biotech fund totaling $350 million in June 2017, after closing its tenth fund in April 2015, with $280 million in commitments.
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.
David Grainger is a partner at medicxi, a European life sciences-oriented venture capital firm and chief executive officer of Methuselah Health Ltd., a drug development company doing proteomics research in the longevity space.
BioMotiv is an accelerator company associated with The Harrington Project, a $340 million initiative centered at University Hospitals of Cleveland. Therapeutic opportunities are identified through relationships with The Harrington Discovery Institute, university and research institutions, disease foundations, and industry sources. Once opportunities are identified, BioMotiv oversees the development, funding, active management, and partnering of the therapeutic products.
Verily Life Sciences, also known as Verily, is Alphabet Inc.'s research organization devoted to the study of life sciences. The organization was formerly a division of Google X, until August 10, 2015, when Sergey Brin announced that the organization would become an independent subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. This restructuring process was completed on October 2, 2015. On December 7, 2015, Google Life Sciences was renamed Verily.
Amicus Therapeutics 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.
Asset-centricity is an approach to investing in the life sciences field with a focus on key assets, such as a pharmaceutical molecule that could form the basis for a novel new drug which has already been identified, rather than on discovering such assets through basic research & development.
Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. is an American real estate investment trust that invests in office buildings and laboratories leased to tenants in the life science and technology industries.
Paul-Peter Tak is an immunologist and academic specialising in the fields of rheumatology and immunology. In addition to academic research, he served as an executive of several pharmaceutical companies.
Moncef Mohamed Slaoui is a Moroccan-born Belgian-American researcher who served as the Head of Operation Warp Speed (OPWASP) under President Donald Trump from 2020 to 2021.
