Axial Podcast
35 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 2 months ago - ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsConversations with great founders and inventors in life sciences.
Axial partners with great founders and inventors. We invest in early-stage life sciences companies such as Appia Bio and Seranova Bio often when they are no more than an idea. If you or someone you know has a great idea or company in life sciences, Axial would be excited to get to know you and possibly invest in your vision and company. We are excited to be in business with you - email us at [email protected]
Read our newsletter: https://axial.substack.com/
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Episodes
Transforming biomanufacturing using software with Martin Permin
March 03, 2024 22:37 - 51 minutes - 23.7 MBExcited to have a conversation with Martin Permin, Founder and CEO of Invert. The company is on a mission to transform biomanufacturing through advanced software and data analytics. We discuss the founding of Invert, what capabilities they give their customers, and the importance of biomanufacturing to grow biological products like proteins, enzymes, and specialty chemicals. Production from bioreactors allows us to produce important medicines, sustainable materials, biofuels, and other produ...
Let the Best Drug Win with Errik Anderson
January 04, 2024 14:51 - 57 minutes - 53 MBErrik Anderson is the CEO and Founder of Alloy Therapeutics. Founded in 2017, the company democratizes access to drug discovery platforms and services. In our conversation, we discuss Alloy's product offering and story. Alloy has rapidly grown into a thriving ecosystem empowering the global scientific community. The company's innovative business model is centered on 3 pillars: platforms, services, and company creation. Alloy develops technologies such as its ATX-Gx humanized transgeni...
Leadership and Bioengineering with Omar Ali
July 09, 2023 01:17 - 1 hour - 74.9 MBOmar Ali is the Senior Director of Research at Lyell Immunopharma. Omar discusses leadership lessons he's picked up across 2 decades working at the intersection of bioengineering and drug development. Starting his first company during grad school at Harvard. Afterwards spending ~7 years at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. Setting up his second startup, Immulus, focused on immune cell expansion. That was acquired by Lyell. Omar is an expert in a wide-range of fields f...
Synthetic Biology and Rapid Evolution with Chang Liu
July 09, 2023 01:13 - 1 hour - 56 MBChang Liu is a professor at UC Irvine pioneering the application of rapid evolution in synthetic biology and protein engineering. We discuss his career and what it takes to startup & lead a new academic lab. Chang's work spans the fields of genetic engineering, synthetic biology, chemical biology, cell biology, and directed evolution. Where his lab engineers specialized genetic systems that go beyond what nature’s genetic systems can do. Where they are especially interested in creating livin...
Founding Unlearn and Revolutionizing Clinical Trials with Charles Fisher
July 09, 2023 01:11 - 1 hour - 59.4 MBCharles Fisher is the Founder and CEO of Unlearn, that creates digital twins with AI to enable more efficient clinical trials. Founded in 2017, Unlearn started as a generative AI company looking for a problem, ending up on clinical trials & transforming how they are run. A digital Twin is a longitudinal/clinical record using baseline data from a patient before they receive their 1st treatment. To predict how the patient would likely progress in the trial if given a placebo. And increase stat...
Imaging Dyes and Microscopy with Luke Lavis
July 09, 2023 01:06 - 1 hour - 80.3 MBLuke Lavis is a senior group leader and head of molecular tools and imaging at HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus. Luke Lavis works at the interface of chemistry and biology, developing small-molecule fluorescent dyes to illuminate biological samples. Lavis and his team use modern organic chemistry to design and synthesize bright fluorescent labels for imaging structures inside living cells. By combining these novel compounds with advances in instrumentation, protein engineering, and genetic man...
Autonomous Microscopy with Kevin Dean
July 09, 2023 01:04 - 54 minutes - 50.3 MBKevin Dean is a professor at UT Southwestern pioneering autonomous microscopes and applying them to study rare biological events, mainly metastatic colonization. In our conversation we talk about his research and the current status of microscopy. Kevin was raised in a small town in Northern California earning his BA in Chemistry at Willamette University in Oregon, and was recognized twice as an ESPN Regional Academic All-American Running Back. He then received his PhD in Biochemistry at the ...
Biotech Company Building, Partnering, Investing Towards Better Medicines with Vikas Goyal
July 09, 2023 00:30 - 55 minutes - 51.2 MBVikas Goyal has one of the best records in biotech having spent over 8 years at SR One partnering with companies like Nimbus and Morphic Therapeutic before joining Pandion Therapeutics (acquired by Merck) full-time after investing in it as well. Now starting Trekk Venture Parners, Vikas' story uniquely blends success across investing, operations, and company building. Starting off his career at McKinsey, Vikas went on to work with dozens of start-ups and early-stage companies as a consultan...
Founding Hoxton Farms and Creating the Future of Food with Max Jamilly
July 08, 2023 23:16 - 51 minutes - 47.7 MBMax Jamilly is the Co-Founder and CEO of Hoxton Farms, a London-based startup develop cultivated fat as an ingredient for the meat alternatives industry. We discuss his journey from scientist to founder starting at Oxford where Max earned his PhD in synthetic biology. Along with his work at Microsoft Research, Gen9, and in venture capital. Leading up to founding Hoxton with his childhood friend.
Founding Y-Trap and Protein Engineering with Rishi Bedi
July 08, 2023 21:43 - 1 hour - 57.5 MBRishi Bedi is the Co-Founder and CEO of Y-Trap a biotech company developing multifunctional fusion proteins for cancer immunotherapy. We discuss the founding story of Y-Trap, the current status of protein engineering and computational biology, along with his career leading up to Y-Trap. Rishi's experience spans machine learning, immuno-oncology, and drug development. Previously, Rishi built the machine learning team at Herophilus (fka System1 Biosciences), leading the analysis of multi-omic...
Founding AgBiome with Eric Ward
July 08, 2023 21:20 - 56 minutes - 52.7 MBEric Ward is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of AgBiome, an agtech company that analyzes crop microbiomes to develop crop protection products & traits. Founded in 2012, AgBiome has no managers; rather, the company uses committees of employees to handle core functions like business development and financials. AgBiome has built a wide-ranging platform, called Genesis, integrating plant genomics with breeding and gene editing to characterize the plant microbiome to do this. On the tools side, AgBiome...
Chemistry to Build New Imaging Tools & Probe the Brain with Anand Muthusamy
July 08, 2023 20:20 - 52 minutes - 48.9 MBAnand Muthusamy is a graduate student at Caltech working in the Lester Lab at the intersection of chemistry and neuroscience. In our conversation we discuss his journey starting at Penn where he studied biochemistry with a strong grounding in philosophy. Working in the Petersson lab, focused on unnatural amino acid mutagenesis to control enzyme function and organic synthesis for the development of fluorescent probes, set up Anand to work under Luke Lavis at Janelia. While at Janelia, Anand ...
Proteomics and Deep Learning with Melih Yilmaz
July 06, 2023 23:48 - 1 hour - 63.7 MBMelih Yilmaz is a PhD student at the University of Washington. Where he focuses on computational biology and develop machine learning tools. Advised by William Noble and Sewoong Oh, Melih's current research interests are around proteomics, particularly building deep learning methods to analyze mass spectrometry data. We start off the conversation talking about his journey to biology and consequently the United States. Around 2016-2017, deep learning had began to gain pace, drawing Melih in....
How Our Microbiomes affect Nutrition & Pharmacology with Peter Turnbaugh
July 06, 2023 01:00 - 1 hour - 57.9 MBPeter Turnbaugh is a professor at UCSF studying the human microbiome’s effect on pharmacology and nutrition. In our conversation, we discuss his journey to become a scientist and help pioneer the microbiome field starting in graduate school. We talk about his research as a fellow at Harvard then professor at UCSF, and his lab’s current work. A key theme across the conversation is learning by doing. Peter’s work has been anchored around predicting and controlling the metabolism of complex mic...
Founding Infinimmune & Developing Breakthrough Tools for Antibody Discovery with Wyatt McDonnell
March 24, 2023 18:59 - 56 minutes - 52.7 MBIn our conversation with Wyatt McDonnell, the Co-Founder and CEO of Infinimmune, we discuss his journey to 10X Genomics, his work there, and the founding of Infinimmune. Wyatt is a world-class inventor & immunologist working across a wide range of projects at 10X from launching BEAM (barcode-enabled antigen mapping), working on the Immune Profiling v2 product, and developing various immune repertoire technologies. After making a significant impact on 10X, Wyatt along with 4 other colleagues ...
Becoming a World-Class Scientist & The Rules of Enzymes with Margaux Pinney
March 03, 2023 23:41 - 49 minutes - 45.7 MBMargaux Pinney is a Sandler Fellow at UCSF and in our conversation we discuss her journey to become a scientist & leader in her field and her work around enzyme evolution. The Pinney Lab studies how enzymes work, how they got there, and how they will adapt in the future. Margaux grew up in a small town outside of Seattle; Black Diamond, WA named after the high quality coal the town used to produce. As someone "obsessed with details," she thrived in chemistry while in high school. Margaux fir...
Catalyzing Drug Discovery with AI and Scaled Chemical Libraries with Devon Cayer
February 25, 2023 04:36 - 48 minutes - 44.5 MBExcited to put out a conversation with Devon Cayer, Co-Founder and CEO of 1859, a platform biotech company merging pico-scale screening and AI to scale small molecule discovery. We talk about his story that led him to founding 1859, how the company was built, and the long-term vision. Devon discusses how to set and measure core metrics for drug discovery platforms and business model design. A key theme across the conversation is "[creating] an ecosystem of solutions to problems." A framework...
Building a SaaS Company in Biotech with Abhishek Jha
February 18, 2023 04:21 - 48 minutes - 44.6 MBIn our conversation with Abhishek Jha, Co-Founder and CEO of Elucidata, we talk about what it takes to build a SaaS company in biotech, the impact of AI on life sciences, & the prerequisites to build a startup. Abhishek and I discuss his journey as an academic scientist to Agios Pharmaceuticals to founding Elucidata in 2015. From his journey, a key quote is that “life doesn’t let you do a control experiment.” While making the transition from academia to industry, Abhishek was also exploring...
Chemistry to Control Biology & Building a World-Class Lab with Bryan Dickinson
February 11, 2023 00:13 - 48 minutes - 45.2 MBIn our conversation, Bryan discusses everything from directed evolution and drugging RNA to what it takes to start a lab. The Dickinson Lab at the University of Chicago is a unique group composed of biochemists & synthetic chemists to cell biologists & synthetic biologists. The lab set up shop in 2014 to use chemistry to control biology with both evolutionary and rational methods. Bryan's research is heavily influenced by his career starting as an undergrad at Maryland with mentorship from D...
Immunometabolism, Inflammation and Chemistry Intersecting with Greg Timblin
February 03, 2023 20:31 - 50 minutes - 46.6 MBGreg is currently a postdoctoral fellow at UCSF studying macrophage immunometabolism in cancer and infection. What makes him truly unique is his ability to do groundbreaking research while training to qualify for the Olympic Trials marathon. Although Greg didn’t make it to the Trials due to injury, he did get a Nature Metabolism publication for his work connecting mitohormesis to immunity, with implications in cancer, longevity, and beyond. Greg grew up in a small Nebraska town where his mot...
Image-Activated Cell Sorting with Keisuke Goda
October 20, 2022 14:58 - 40 minutes - 37.7 MBKeisuke Goda has set the standard for sorting cells based on images. As a professor at the University of Tokyo leading a lab of 53 scientists, Keisuke is developing new tools to explore biology at different scales. During grad school at MIT, he studied gravitational waves in the LIGO group where a collaboration at Caltech led to an opportunity to move into biology at UCLA. By bringing LIGO technology, and a physicist's perspective, to cytometry, Keisuke has been able to pioneer the field of ...
NK Cells and Curing Cancer with Nina Horowitz
September 13, 2022 16:20 - 1 hour - 56.8 MBNina is one of the up-and-coming superstars in biotech. Having just earned her PhD in bioengineering at Stanford in the Sunwoo Lab this summer, she has the scientific horsepower and storytelling ability to make a large impact on drug development, business, and the lives of patients. At the age of 8, Nina was diagnosed with an ovarian teratoma. In some ways, that shifted Nina towards a career in science and a mission to cure cancer. But while she was always interested in science, growing up i...
Graph Machine Learning and Life Sciences with Hannes Stärk
September 06, 2022 16:12 - 45 minutes - 41.7 MBHannes is a graduate student at MIT working towards a PhD in computer science. Within the span of a few months, he has been able to publish two ICML papers: one focused on molecular property prediction and the other developing a model, called EquiBind, for drug binding prediction. Hannes, advised by both Regina Barzilay and Tommi Jaakkola, is doing exciting research at the intersection of graph machine learning and biology. In this conversation, we discuss his career so far starting at Munic...
A Common Language for Therapeutic Synthetic Biology with Justin Farlow
July 29, 2022 16:28 - 1 hour - 58.2 MBWe talk with Justin Farlow, Co-Founder and CTO of Serotiny about his journey from UCSF to founding a company with his brother, Colin. In this conversation, Justin discusses his initial discovery of engineer-able biology from a physics lens to earning his PhD at UCSF under Zev Gartner while being in the epicenter of both synthetic biology and software startups. Then he goes into his journey as a founder, starting Serotiny initially as a SaaS company then pivoting toward building a wet-lab pla...
Extrachromosomal DNA and Cancer Development with King Hung
July 11, 2022 02:56 - 49 minutes - 45.7 MBKing is currently a graduate student in the Howard Chang Lab at Stanford. In this conversation, we discuss everything from the beginning of his scientific career to extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) and cancer drug development. King went to college at the University of Washington where he became passionate about developmental biology. The beauty of a FISH experiment hooked King to lab work and set him on a path to become a world-class biologist. He chose to go to graduate school at Stanford and ...
High-Throughput Chemistry and Engineering with Kadi Saar
June 30, 2022 14:30 - 54 minutes - 50.1 MBReally excited to put out this conversation with Kadi Saar, an outstanding inventor and world-class computational chemist, where we discuss her career spanning childhood interests to graduate research to her work now around high-throughput structural biology and condensates. Kadi is a rising star in life sciences building out new experimental and computational tools to probe biology and advance human health. Early on in her life, it was pretty obvious that Kadi was very unique. She won Esto...
Machine Learning-Assisted Directed Evolution with Bruce Wittmann
June 16, 2022 14:13 - 56 minutes - 52.5 MBWe discuss Bruce's career from being pre-med and getting into research while at Washington University in St. Louis to working at Intrexon and going to grad school at Caltech afterwards. While at Intrexon, he saw the need for better tools to scale biology and decided to go to Caltech to pursue his ideas. At Caltech, he was advised by Prof. Frances Arnold, who pioneered the protein engineering technique "directed evolution" that eventually led to her winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 201...
New Models, Tools, and Targets for the Brain: Breakthroughs in Phosphoproteomics and Neurodegeneration with Nader Morshed from the White and Tsai Labs at MIT
January 11, 2022 18:38 - 1 hour - 58.1 MBWe discuss Nader's career from learning structural biology in the Marqusee and Alber Labs at UC Berkeley to his pioneering graduate work at MIT with Forest White and Li-Huei Tsai and now at Stevens at Harvard Medical School. The conversation is centered around the 2 groundbreaking papers he published while earning his PhD: 1. Phosphoproteomics identifies microglial Siglec-F inflammatory response during neurodegeneration 2. Quantitative phosphoproteomics uncovers dysregulated kinase networ...
Precision-First Therapeutics: Building the Next Roche with Diego Rey, Co-Founder and CSO of Endpoint Health
December 07, 2021 23:29 - 1 hour - 58 MBWe discuss Diego's career from building GeneWeave (acquired by Roche) to Endpoint Health now. Endpoint is pioneering a new business model merging diagnostics, data, and drug development to start with patient data and back into a therapy. The company is using their platform to develop first-line medicines for indications in infectious diseases with no approved therapies and beyond. Truly, Endpoint is leading a new wave of progress within critical and chronic illnesses. A favorite quote of min...
From Paint to Biotech: Turning Biology into a Predictive Science, The Story of Seven Bridges, Totient, and AbSci with James Sietstra and Deniz Kural
December 07, 2021 02:41 - 1 hour - 60.5 MBWe discuss James' and Deniz's careers from how they first met to founding Seven Bridges and Totient and now building AbSci after Totient was recently acquired. With experience leading teams in the 100s spanning genomics and SaaS to drug development and even paint from James' childhood entrepreneurial pursuits, both have an incredible amount of wisdom on scaling technology companies. We touch on AbSci's unique model of accelerating and lowering the barriers for biologics development and talk ...
Data Driving Experimentation: Merging Biology and Data Science with Jacob Oppenheim, VP of Integrative Data Sciences at EQRx
December 03, 2021 22:18 - 1 hour - 58.2 MBWe discuss Jacob's career going from physics to biology and making the transition from academia to industry. Building and leading data science teams at GNS Healthcare, Indigo, and now EQRx, Jacob is one of the best data scientists in biotech. In our conversation, we talk about ways to generate standardized data for machine learning models, building interdisciplinary teams, and implementing relevant models for drug development. Then we touch on EQRx's fast follower drug development model and...
Next-Generation Biotech Platforms: Engineering Biology with Brian Naughton, Founding Scientist at 23andMe and Co-Founder and Head of Data at Hexagon Bio
November 26, 2021 21:42 - 1 hour - 62.9 MBWe discuss Brian's career starting at Trinity in Dublin to Stanford, 23andMe, and Hexagon. In our conversation, we talk about the interplay between computation and biology, business models in biotech, and what it takes to build world-class teams. Brian really has the superpower of building and being part of talent hubs. If he ever wants to, I know he would build the best talent agency in biotech.
Cloud BIology: Automation and the Future of Biology with with DJ Kleinbaum, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Emerald Cloud Lab
November 19, 2021 00:03 - 57 minutes - 52.8 MBWe discuss the founding story of Emerald Cloud Lab, their mission to help scientists to get access to any instrument they want, the company's platform and applications, long-term vision and more. A favorite quote of mine from talking to DJ was: "understand the stories of the advice you get."
Borgs: Genome and Climate Engineering with Basem Al-Shayeb from the Banfield and Doudna Labs at UC Berkeley
November 12, 2021 22:28 - 42 minutes - 38.9 MBWe discuss Basem's recent preprint, Borgs are giant extrachromosomal elements with the potential to augment methane oxidation. In our conversation, we discuss Basem's scientific career, the story of Borgs, how they were named, and their impact on our environment. A favorite quote of mine from talking to Basem was: "the next great discovery could be right in your backyard."
Beyond Undruggable: The Future of Drug Development with Cameron Pye & Joshua Schwochert from Unnatural Products
July 18, 2021 22:46 - 41 minutes - 32.5 MBCameron Pye and Joshua Schwochert are the founders of Unnatural Products. For the first podcast, we discuss their founding story coming out of academia, the history of macrocycle natural products, and how Unnatural Products is using synthetic macrocycles to usher in the the future of drug development.