Illumina is the world leader in next-generation sequencing. Adaptive Bio is the leader in immune-driven medicine. Mission Bio pioneered single cell multi-omics for genotype and phenotype, and Endpoint is developing precision therapies for inflammatory illness, sepsis, ARDS, and more. These 4 leaders are leveraging biology breakthroughs to save lives on a wide range of topics including translating innovation from bench to bedside, aligning incentives with the ecosystem, getting to reimbursement, exploring SPACs, and beyond.
Speakers
Ursheet Parikh — Partner, Mayfield Fund
Ursheet co-leads Mayfield’s Engineering Biology investment practice where Mayfield invests in companies transforming human and planetary health. His investments in engineering biology and healthcare include Mammoth Biosciences (CRISPR), Mission Bio (Single Cell Sequencing, Oncology), Qventus (Healthcare AI), Endpoint Health (Critical hospital care), Nēsos (Immunology, Neurology), and Mirvie (precision diagnostics for maternal and fetal health). Prior to Mayfield, Ursheet had an operating career as a proven repeat entrepreneur and executive at Cisco and Microsoft. Ursheet was co-founder & CEO of StorSimple, the leading cloud-integrated storage company that was acquired by Microsoft in 2012.
Chad Robins — Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer, Chairman, Adaptive Biotechnologies
Chad Robins is the chief executive officer and co-founder of Adaptive Biotechnologies (Nasdaq: ADPT), a commercial stage biotechnology company that aims to translate the genetics of the adaptive immune system into clinical products to diagnose and treat disease. Since its founding in 2009, Chad has led Adaptive in building a proprietary immune medicine platform that fuels businesses across life sciences research, clinical diagnostics, and drug discovery. Chad is actively engaged in the biotech and health policy communities, serving on the executive board of Life Science Washington and the steering committee of the Coalition for 21st Century Medicine. In addition to serving as Chairman of the Board for Adaptive, he also holds board positions with AltPep, AdvaMedDx, and HeadLight. Chad graduated with honors from Cornell University and obtained his MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to Adaptive, Chad held executive-level positions in real estate, investment banking, private equity, and medical technology.
Yan Zhang — CEO, Mission Bio
Yan is the Chief Executive Officer of Mission Bio. As a veteran of the genomics industry, Yan is passionate about empowering teams to deliver highly differentiated innovative solutions realizing the mission of accelerating their application to improve human health. Before Mission Bio, Yan served executive roles at Thermo Fisher Scientific, where she led commercial teams in China for rapid market success and general management roles for Reproductive Health and Microarray businesses. She also led product management and commercialization efforts for genetic analysis solutions at Affymetrix, NuGEN Technologies, and Molecular Devices. Yan holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Medical College of Wisconsin.
Diego Rey — Co-Founder & CSO, Endpoint Health
Diego is a co-founder, board member and Chief Scientific Officer of Endpoint Health, a precision immunology therapeutics company. Prior to co-founding Endpoint Health, Diego invented the core technology and led investigational efforts related to Roche’s antibiotic therapy guidance research and development program. Prior to Roche, Diego co-founded GeneWEAVE, a company that developed rapid tests to detect and guide therapy choice for serious infections, which was acquired by Roche in 2015. After Roche, Diego was a Visiting Partner at Y Combinator which has a portfolio of over 3,000 companies with a combined value of over $400B and includes over 300 life sciences and healthcare companies. Diego received a BS in Electrical Engineering from UC Santa Barbara and an MS and PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Cornell University.
Mostafa Ronaghi — Co-Founder & Board of Director, Grail
Mostafa Ronaghi is a scientist-entrepreneur, inventor, investor, company-founder, executive, and director. He is currently the chief executive officer & director of Dynamics Special Purpose Corp. Most recently, he was Chief Technology Officer, Senior Vice President and member of the Executive Leadership Team at Illumina (Nasdaq: ILMN) from 2008 to 2021. While at Illumina, in 2016, Dr. Ronaghi co-founded GRAIL, a next-gen liquid biopsy platform for cancer detection where he is a board of director. He also started Illumina’s Research & Technology Development group, and co-founded the Illumina Accelerator Program in 2014, one of the most successful accelerator programs in the industry, which coached and invested in more than 50 start-ups, achieving one of the highest success rates for securing external institutional funding. Prior to Illumina, Dr. Ronaghi was Principal Investigator at the Stanford Genome Technology Center from 1999 to 2008. Throughout his prolific career, Dr. Ronaghi co-founded several other companies, including Pyrosequencing AB (founded in 1997; IPO in 2000 in Stockholm), focused on sequencing-by-synthesis technology (which was the first next-gen sequencing technology, and laid the groundwork for the leading technology developed by Illumina). He then co-founded ParAllele Biosciences in 2001, which was acquired by Affymetrix in 2005, which developed a first-of-its-kind technology for highly multiplex genotyping (used by the international Hapmap project to identify genetic variations across different populations and diseases).