Welcome to The Biotech Voyager. It's the show that covers what's next in biotech.

Wesley Wierson and Alex Abel founded Leah Labs seven years ago around a pets-first model. When generative biology arrived, they designed something that no existing investor would fund. Animal investors won't back human-scale outcomes. Human investors won't back animal health companies. So VelociTx had to be built. Their CAR-T platform redesigns the transmembrane domain using a 2,000 de novo screen, finding 200 enriched candidates across 7 functional families, making CAR-T cells behave like TCR T cells to target solid tumors in ways nature never could.

Wesley Wierson and Alex Abel are co-founders of VelociTx, a company using generative protein design to build the next generation of CAR-T cell therapy for solid tumors.

• 00:00:00 Welcome: Wesley Wierson + Alex Abel, VelociTx
• 00:00:58 Why VelociTx Had to Be Built
• 00:02:32 What If You Could Engineer a CAR Like a T Cell Receptor?
• 00:02:54 The Transmembrane Domain Discovery
• 00:06:34 The 2,000 De Novo Screen and What They Found
• 00:12:01 Going Into Lung Cancer First
• 00:15:51 How Generative Biology Changes Everything
• 00:27:35 What's Next in Biotech

New episodes every Tuesday and Thursday at 11:00 AM 🚀

The biggest unsolved problem in cell therapy is donor variability. Why one patient's cells work and another's fail is a question the field still cannot answer. Alex Ward and Caelan Anderson, co-founders of Tolemy Bio, are building the intelligence layer that cell therapy has been missing. Their platform Orbit integrates all the process context around how cells are grown, managed, and manufactured to surface insights that nobody is currently leveraging. The goal is adaptive, patient-specific manufacturing across seventeen dimensions.

Alex Ward and Caelan Anderson are co-founders of Tolemy Bio, a company building an AI-powered control panel for cell therapy manufacturing.

• 00:00:00 Welcome: Alex Ward + Caelan Anderson, Tolemy Bio
• 00:00:46 What Is Tolemy Bio and What Are They Building?
• 00:04:25 Why Do Some Patients' Cells Fail and Others Don't?
• 00:05:46 The Data Problem in Cell Therapy
• 00:14:00 The Control Panel for the Cell
• 00:15:15 Why Tolemy's Models Are Not Black Boxes
• 00:20:30 Adaptive Manufacturing Is the Future
• 00:25:34 What's Next in Biotech

New episodes every Tuesday and Thursday at 11:00 AM 🚀

Welcome to the Biotech Voyager. It's the live show that covers what's next in biotech.

Today on the show:
- 3 brand new startups in biotech that emerged from Stealth
- 2 CEO interviews: one company is building a vaccine for tissue scarring, and the other, which just raised over $9M, turns solid tumors into therapeutic factories.

Leave a comment if you have any questions - we try to get to them all!

This week, Innovian Space printed the first kidney and liver constructs in human history on the International Space Station. Jana Studemeier, CCO at Innovian Space, joins The Biotech Voyager to explain why gravity is the single biggest obstacle to printing functional organs, why microgravity solves it, and how the cost of a space experiment is nothing compared to the cost of a failed clinical trial.

From Keytruda being reformulated using protein crystallization in space, to tumor organoids that behave more like real tumors in microgravity, to the coming explosion in regenerative medicine — this is the most unexpected biotech conversation we've had.

Jana Studemeier is CCO at Innovian Space, a company helping organizations develop profitable and sustainable uses of space for biotech, pharma, and beyond.

• 00:00:00 Welcome: Jana Studemeier, Innovian Space
• 00:01:33 Printing Kidneys on the ISS This Week
• 00:03:10 Why Microgravity Changes Everything
• 00:06:26 Why 3D Printing Fails on Earth
• 00:10:23 Drug Testing With Tumor Organoids in Space
• 00:12:25 The Cost of Space vs Failing in Trials
• 00:19:18 Keytruda Was Reformulated Using Space
• 00:28:44 Space Will Cause a Regenerative Medicine Explosion

New episodes every Tuesday and Thursday at 11:00 AM 🚀

Jay Kaplan, co-founder of Fractyl Health, joins The Biotech Voyager to explain why current GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic might have a worthy successor: a gene therapy that delivers GLP-1 directly to the pancreatic beta cells, only when you eat. Their lead program Rejuva-001 is already outperforming today's best pharmacology in animal models and has received first approval to begin clinical studies in the Netherlands.

In this conversation, Jay breaks down the science behind their meal-responsive delivery mechanism, why a one-time gene therapy could replace chronic weekly injections, and what the future of gene therapy for large diseases looks like.

Jay Kaplan is co-founder of Fractyl Health, a biotech company developing gene therapies that target the root causes of metabolic disease with the goal of curative treatments.

• 00:00:00 Welcome: Jay Kaplan, Fractyl Health
• 00:02:14 The Problem With GLP-1 Drugs
• 00:03:24 How the Gene Therapy Works
• 00:04:53 Ozempic vs. Meal-Responsive Therapy
• 00:05:35 Beating Pharmacology in Animal Models
• 00:07:39 Phase II Approved in Netherlands
• 00:07:56 One Shot. No Redosing.
• 00:10:39 Why Diabetes Needs a Cure
• 00:18:13 What's Next in Biotech

New episodes every Tuesday and Thursday at 11:00 AM 🚀

YouTube Description:
Non-viral gene delivery has always had one fatal flaw: it couldn't get DNA into the nucleus efficiently. LNPs top out at around 5% nuclear entry. SonoThera just hit 50% using ultrasound. Co-founder Ken Greenberg joins the show to break down exactly how they did it.
We also cover AstroRx's embryonic stem cell-derived astrocyte therapy for MS, ANACA's TCR-T cell approach for solid tumors, Apligon's next-gen kinase inhibitor program, and Enterome's microbiome-based cancer therapy, plus the latest from the early stage biotech leaderboard at thebiotechvoyager.com.
0:00:00 Intro

0:00:51 Early Stage Biotech Leaderboard

0:02:20 Enterome: Microbiome Cancer Therapy

0:11:35 Ken Greenberg & SonoThera Preview

0:35:19 SonoThera Raises $125 Million

0:38:18 Apligon: Solid Tumor Kinase Inhibitors

0:44:34 ANACA: TCR-T Cell Therapy for Solid Tumors

1:00:34 AstroRx: Stem Cell Therapy for MS

1:02:43 Interview: Ken Greenberg, SonoThera

1:21:07 Sound Waves Delivering Gene Therapy

1:28:48 SonoThera Pipeline and Disease Targets
New episodes every Tuesday and Thursday at 11:00 AM 🚀

Welcome to The Biotech Voyager. It's the live show that covers where the puck is going in biotech.

Welcome to The Biotech Voyager. It's the show that covers what's next in biotech.

Welcome to The Biotech Voyager - it's the show that covers what's next in biotech.