10.06.22 -- New Episodes: Genetic Testing and Neurodegenerative Disorders, Planning for Manufacturing Capacity, and more!

Check out the latest episodes from Cell & Gene: The Podcast and Business of Biotech. As a member of the Life Science Connect community, you have access to content beyond our weekly newsletters, including our podcast series. Don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode!

Will Junker, Head of Manufacturing Quality at Kite Pharma, discusses the challenges associated with capacity planning, whether to partner with a CDMO, and why it's important to prioritize inventory over time-to-market. We also examine why developing a better understanding of the vector manufacturing process is critical to bringing continuous and secure supply to market. 

Novartis Gene Therapies’ president, Chris Fox, and team are hyper-focused on newborn screenings as the pathway to helping patients. The company's initial gene therapy, Zolgensma, for SMA has treated more than 2,300 patients worldwide. Fox details what’s next on the commercialization front and shares advice with listeners about what it takes to commercialize a therapy.

Jason Matuszewski and Andrew VanVurst built a company that's developed a local microenvironment activation platform drawing on a combination of small molecules, cytokines, and growth factors to promote tissue repair and regrowth using perinatal tissue. Its internal development and cGMP manufacturing facilities are changing the paradigm for wound care. 

Using computational biology to hasten the effort, Omega Therapeutics' plan is to "coopt nature's universal biological operating system for gene control and cell differentiation."  Omega is leaning heavily into computational biology along the way, having mapped what CEO Mahesh Karande characterizes as 95% of the IGD landscape.

Under the leadership of Mai-Britt Zocca, Ph.D., IO Biotech is advancing novel, immune-modulating cancer therapies targeting IDO. Zocca shares the approach, how it differs from previous attempts, and how her company is working to advance its programs in the wake of IDO's fall from grace.

With a unique multi-target approach, what it considers the world's best adjuvant, and a host of learnings from the COVID-19 vaccine efforts, Longhorn Vaccines & Diagnostics is gaining ground on a universal influenza vaccine. Cofounder and President Jeff Fischer gives a transparent look at the science and the partnerships that are giving him cause to believe his company will succeed where so many have failed.

Lisa Deschamps got her start where it begins and ends for many — "carrying the bag" in Big Pharma sales — then proceeded to crush the odds on her way to the C-suite at Novartis. Today, she's CEO at AviadoBio, a disruptive gene therapy startup prepping an intra-thalamic frontotemporal dementia candidate for the clinic with a heavy Series A in its hip pocket.