June 10, 2025 | In this bonus episode of The Chain, Daniel Chen, MD, PhD, founder and CEO of Synthetic Design Lab, returns for the Science Commune segment and speaks with Keith Flaherty, MD, FAACR, professor of Medicine of Harvard Medical School and president-elect of AACR. They discuss Flaherty’s prolific career; how his background led him to pursue a career in medicine; how public and private sectors are coming together in oncology around collaborations; reflections on targeted therapies and technologies; optimism around how AI will impact society and the future of medicine positively; and how we need to detect and treat disease early.

Links from this episode:

PEGS Boston Conference & Expo

Engineering Bispecific Antibodies

Synthetic Design Lab

Harvard Medical School

AACR

June 10, 2025 | This episode of The Chain features a panel discussion from May’s PEGS Boston. Moderated by Peter Tessier, Albert M. Mattocks professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Chemical Engineering at the University of Michigan, the panelists include Sarel Fleishman, professor of Biomolecular Sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science; Kadina Johnston, senior specialist of Discovery Biologics at Merck & Co.; Vincent Ling, chief business officer of Morphocell Technologies; Arvind Rajpal, SVP of Xaira; and Max Vasquez, chief computing officer of Adimab. Together they discuss benchmarking AI/ML methods compared to traditional approaches, development of human-relevant training data, identifying and addressing core challenges in de novo designs, and more.

Links from this episode:

PEGS Boston Conference & Expo

Engineering Bispecific Antibodies

University of Michigan

University of Michigan Chemical Engineering

Weizmann Institute of Science

Scala Biodesign

Merck & Co., Inc.

Morphocell Technologies

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Xaira

Adimab LLC

In this episode of The Chain, host Tariq Ghayur, PhD, Tariq Ghayur Consulting, LLC, talks with Pamela Barney, former associate director of HR, AbbVie, about her career within biotech/pharma organizations and some key lessons learned, such as taking advantage of your contacts and network, managing diverse workforces, and HR’s role in creating an engaged team. Barney also discusses why she entered the HR field and the challenges of culture changes when transitioning from a small organization to a large company.

AbbVie: https://www.abbvie.com/

In this episode of The Chain, host Brandon DeKosky, associate professor, speaks with MIT colleague Jessica Stark, Underwood-Prescott career development professor, about glycans and why they are important in cancer research. Stark discusses how she became interested in immunology, what her PhD and post-doctoral training was like, her thoughts on singlets operating as part of a network of checkpoint molecules, and what’s currently going on in glycobiology. She also talks about her keynote presentation at PEGS 2025 and what her new lab is working on.

LINKS:
MIT Department of Chemical Engineering
MIT Department of Biological Engineering
MIT

March 11, 2025 | In this episode of The Chain, host Andrew Buchanan, principal scientist at AstraZeneca, and Andreas Plückthun, professor and head of biochemistry at the University of Zurich, discuss AI/ML technologies in the antibody and protein engineering space. Plückthun shares his perspectives on what technologies show promise and success, why the definition of epitope is important when developing a drug, and what aspects he expects to improve in the ML field in the future.

February 21, 2025 | This episode marks the 50th anniversary of one of the most influential papers in biomedical science—the 1975 Milstein and Köhler paper on hybridoma technology, which paved the way for monoclonal antibodies. Ralph Minter, Biotech CSO/CTO, discusses this important milestone with a true pioneer in the field, Sir Greg Winter, Nobel Laureate and one of the key figures in the development of therapeutic antibodies.

In this episode of The Chain, host Andrew Bradbury, CSO of Specifica, an IQVIA business, speaks with Randolph Lopez, CTO and co-founder of A-Alpha Bio, about how A-Alpha Bio is changing the game of protein-protein interactions with their platform AlphaSeq. Lopez delves into the origins, the process, the successes, and the possibilities of the company’s platform and how it can help with epitope mapping, affinity predictions, and off-target binding. With the data the platform generates, Lopez also discusses how this affects the potential of AI and ML.

LINKS:
Bionavigen
A-Alpha Bio
Specifica

November 12, 2024 | In this episode of The Chain, host Rakesh Dixit, PhD, DABT, president and founder of Bionavigen Oncology and Regio Biosciences, speaks with Anthony Tolcher, M.D., FRCPC, cofounder of NEXT Oncology, about antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) including the role of the bystander effect, approaching targets in oncology, dual-payload technologies, the potency of new payloads, and bispecific targeting. Tolcher also shares what inspired him to pursue oncology, how he came across ADCs, and where he sees ADCs heading in the future.

LINKS:
Bionavigen
NEXT Oncology