Drugging the Undruggable with Gregory Verdine, Co-Founder, President & CEO, Lifemine Tx & FogPharma
Synopsis:
Gregory Verdine, Ph.D., is the Co-Founder, President and CEO of LifeMine Therapeutics and FogPharma. LifeMine Therapeutics is reinventing drug discovery by mining genetically-encoded small molecules (GEMs) from the biosphere. FogPharma is developing a new class of drugs to address the limitations of today’s precision medicines and achieve universal druggability. In this episode, Greg discusses his unique journey from starting as an academic scientist to transitioning to an investor, and how that exposure to the venture world rounds out his approach to how he now runs biotechs. He talks about what it’s been like running two companies for six years and how he structures his time so he can successfully operate between the two. He also discusses fundraising in a challenging environment and the importance of being part of a team in biotech.
Biography:
Greg Verdine is a leader in the discovery, development and commercialization of new drug modalities. A passionate and accomplished inventor of novel approaches and drug classes to engage targets widely believed intractable, Greg coined the phrase “drugging the undruggable” to describe his life’s mission. Greg is the co-founder of FogPharma, which has its roots in the scientific work of Greg and his academic team at Harvard University and Harvard Medical School, a hotbed of innovation and invention in the new modality therapeutics space. Greg is also the co-founder and CEO of LifeMine Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company refashioning drug discovery by mining genetically-encoded small molecules from the biosphere. Together with co-founder WeiQing Zhou, he developed the scientific and business concept for FogPharma and LifeMine and co-led the companys’ initial capitalization and operationalization in mid-2016 and 2017, respectively.
Greg is highly regarded for having moved seamlessly between roles as an academic scientist, biotech entrepreneur, investor and company executive. As Erving Professor at Harvard University and Harvard Medical School, he founded the burgeoning field of hyperstabilized alpha-helical peptides, starting with the first-generation all-hydrocarbon stapled peptide technology, and invented not only the modality but also the direct precursor to the Phase 2 stapled peptide ALRN 6924. The greatly improved second-generation Helicon technology was developed in the Verdine Lab at Harvard and licensed exclusively to FogPharma, and subsequently developed by FogPharma into the third-generation approach that is so impactful today. The Verdine Lab at Harvard also made seminal contributions to understanding fundamental mechanisms of DNA repair and epigenetic DNA methylation. As an entrepreneur, Dr. Verdine has founded multiple public biotech companies including Variagenics, Enanta Pharmaceuticals, Eleven Bio, Tokai Pharmaceuticals, Wave Life Sciences and Aileron Therapeutics, and a private company, Gloucester Pharmaceuticals, which was acquired by Celgene. These companies have succeeded in achieving FDA approval for three marketed drugs.
Greg has served on the board of directors of Enanta Pharmaceuticals, Wave Life Sciences, Warp Drive Bio and LifeMine Therapeutics. Having led the formation and financing of Wave Life Sciences, Warp Drive Bio and LifeMine Therapeutics, Greg took a role in managing these companies as their president, chief executive officer and chief scientific officer. Greg also conceived of, co-founded and served as the founding president and chairman of the tandem non-profits Gloucester Biotechnology Academy, which trains high school graduates for technical careers in biotech, and Gloucester Marine Genomics Institute, which is supporting fisheries science and economic development on Cape Ann.
Greg earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from Columbia University and served as an NIH postdoctoral fellow in molecular biology at MIT and Harvard Medical School. He also holds an honorary Ph.D. degree from Clarkson University.