Synopsis:

Liang Schweizer, Ph.D. is the Founder and CEO of HiFiBiO Therapeutics, a clinical-stage global biotech company mobilizing the human immune system to combat disease. The company employs its unique Drug Intelligence Science (DIS®) platform, which combines its proprietary microfluidic single-cell platform with advanced AI/ML-based data analytics, to gain insights into human disease biology at the single-cell level allowing for precise treatment of patients based on their underlying disease mechanisms. HiFiBiO’s approach is distinguished from others in industry by applying single-cell science at every stage of drug development, including discovery of novel targets, therapeutic antibodies, and predictive biomarkers, enabling rapid advancement of new therapeutics into the clinic. Liang shares her perspective on the Chinese biotech ecosystem and how it has evolved over the last couple of years. She also discusses how approaches to drug development have changed, specifically around leveraging technology and the intersection of science and technology. She talks about being a CEO for the first time and how she approaches managing globally distributed teams.

Interested to learn more? Check out this paper mentioned in our episode: https://tinyurl.com/d3cv9vjt

Biography:

Liang Schweizer is the Founder, Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer of HiFiBiO Therapeutics. She has over 30 years of research and industry experience with numerous publications and global keynote presentations. She is the co-inventor of 12 immuno-modulatory therapeutic antibodies with over 50 patent publications. She also has contributed to 4 marketed drugs and over 20 clinical candidates.

Previously, Liang co-founded Harbour Biomed and served as its CSO, successfully transforming a technology platform company to an antibody drug discovery enterprise. Before launching her entrepreneurial career, Liang served as Head of Asian Cancer Research at Sanofi, advancing Sanofi’s Asia-Pacific oncology pipeline as well as contributing to global oncology programs from preclinical to clinical efforts. Before joining Sanofi, she was a director at Bristol-Myers Squibb Company.

Liang received a B.S. from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) and an M.S. in Microbial Engineering and Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota. She earned her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University in Zurich. Her postdoctoral training was with Dr. Harold Varmus, a Nobel Laureate, at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC).