Gene Circuits for Smarter Medicine, Tim Lu, Co-Founder & CEO, & Kanya Rajangam, CMDO, Senti Bio
Synopsis:
This episode is co-hosted by Chris Ghadban at BIOS Builders. Guests Tim Lu and Kanya Rajangam are the Co-Founder & CEO and Chief Medical and Development Officer, respectively, of Senti Bio, a company that develops and manufactures intelligent gene circuits for use in next-generation cell and gene therapies across therapeutic areas and modalities. They join Chris and Alok for a conversation about how Senti Bio uses its gene circuit technologies to increase the efficacy of cancer treatments. They also discuss their path to an IND from the FDA, some of the challenges they still have to overcome, and the potential their platform has for enabling future cell therapies.
Biography:
Tim Lu has served as Senti Bio’s CEO since he co-founded the company in 2016. Since 2010, Dr. Lu has been an MIT faculty member in the departments of Biological Engineering and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. In addition, Dr. Lu has been a co-founder and a Scientific Advisory Board member to a number of biotechnology and biopharmaceutical companies, including BiomX, Corvium, Eligo Bioscience, Engine Biosciences, Synlogic and Tango Therapeutics.
Dr. Lu earned his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and his Ph.D. in Electrical and Biomedical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology as part of the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Medical Engineering and Medical Physics Program. Dr. Lu has extensive experience in the field of synthetic biology and has received numerous awards: NIH New Innovator Award, US President Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, MIT Technology Review’s TR35, Navy and Army Young Investigator Prizes and others.
Kanya Rajangam is responsible for leading the development and regulatory strategy to rapidly advance Senti Bio's off-the-shelf CAR-NK cell oncology programs into and through clinical development. Dr. Rajangam served in leadership roles at various biotech companies, most recently Nkarta Therapeutics where, as chief medical officer, she was responsible for clinical development of CAR-NK cell therapies for oncology. Prior to Nkarta, she was chief medical officer at Atara Biotherapeutics where she led the development of T-cell therapies for oncology, neurology and infectious diseases. Prior to that, Dr. Rajangam was chief medical officer of Cleave Biosciences, where she led oncology clinical development programs. Prior to becoming a chief medical officer, Dr. Rajangam gained relevant senior leadership experience at Onyx and Exelixis, while contributing to the clinical development and global approval of several marketed oncology products including Kyprolis®, Cotellic® and Cometriq®/Cabometyx®. Dr. Rajangam currently serves on the board of directors of Turnstone Biologics, a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing next-generation tumor infiltrating lymphocyte cell therapies and oncolytic virus cancer immunotherapies.
Dr. Rajangam received a medical degree from St. Johns’ Medical College and completed her surgical residency with a focus on oncology at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), both in India. She received a Ph.D. in biomedical cell and tissue engineering from Northwestern University.