Belharra: The Birth of a Biotech Podcast

Episode 7: The Heart & Soul of Belharra

This episode explores how the people driving Belharra’s science, and their passion for their work and for advancing meaningful medicines, are the heart and soul of our company and the most significant reason to believe in a promising future ahead of us. We speak with Kelly Chow, our head of people and operations, about how purposeful and intentional culture-building is critical for a biotech start-up and how we approach that at Belharra. We’ll also hear from several team members who are advancing our mission on a daily basis – Tim Ngo, Jaleh Mesgarzadeh, Matteo Moretto-Zita, and Jarrett Remsberg – about what it’s really like to be part of an emerging biotech company like Belharra.

Episode 6: Women Leaders & Veteran Drug Hunters

In this episode, we hear from three of our outstanding leaders at Belharra, and veteran drug hunters, Yvonne Schmidt, our director of chemistry; Jessica Alexander, our head of program management; and Olesya Ulanovskaya, our senior director of biology. We discuss not only the critical work they each do at Belharra, but also their perspectives and experiences as women in science and biotech. For any girls or young women out there who want to be scientists or leaders in any industry, we hope you’ll find inspiring role models in Yvonne, Jessica, and Olesya.

Episode 5: The Power of Data

Hear from one of our core team members, Mike Lazear, who designs and implements the complex data infrastructure that enables our innovative chemoproteomic screening platform. This episode lets listeners get under the hood of an incredibly powerful and innovative data processing tool, explores the possibilities of integrating machine learning and artificial intelligence, and sheds light on the power of data to make a true impact in the world.

Episode 4: Teamwork – Platform, Biology, Chemistry

Our special guests on today’s episode include Sherry Niessen, Belharra’s head of platform and proteomics; Sean Buchanan, our head of biology; and Justin Ernst, our head of chemistry. We learn about the individual journeys to science careers and, ultimately to Belharra, that each of these talented scientific leaders took. We talk about how their functional teams work together to advance our mission to develop game-changing medicines for patients in need. For any budding scientists out there, or those wondering what it’s like to work at a research-stage biotech, this episode is a wealth of information and inspiration.

Episode 3: Targeting the Undruggable

In this episode, we speak with Gary O'Neill, Chief Scientific Officer at Belharra, about our next-generation chemoproteomics platform, which has the potential to open up the entire proteome – for the first time – to small molecule screening which could lead to many undruggable proteins becoming druggable. Most importantly, we talk about the immense positive impact we believe this science and our platform could have for individuals and for society as we strive to create medicines for currently intractable diseases.

Episode 2: A New Venture – Company Formation

We continue our story with a conversation with Tom Woiwode from Versant Ventures and Jeremy Caldwell from Red Tree Venture Capital and formerly of Versant Ventures and Inception Therapeutics – two of the individuals who played a key role in turning the breakthrough scientific ideas that were bubbling up from Chris Parker and John Teijaro at The Scripps Research Institute into a company. Tom is managing director of Versant Ventures and a member of Belharra’s board of directors. Until October 2023, Jeremy was a venture partner at Versant as well as CEO of Inception Therapeutics, which is Versant’s Discovery Engine.

Episode 1: Meet the Founders

In our first episode, we’ll hear from the extraordinary scientists Chris Parker and John Teijaro, who are two of the co-founders of Belharra Therapeutics. Chris and John tell the stories of their respective childhoods growing up in the Rust Belt, their unique paths to getting their Ph.D.s, their serendipitous post-doc meet-up at The Scripps Research Institute, and how their scientific curiosity and their collaboration with the other co-founders of Belharra – Ben Cravatt and Stuart Schreiber, who are legends in drug discovery and serial company founders – led to the foundational concepts that underpin Belharra. 

Trailer: The Birth of a Biotech Podcast

Ever wondered how a brilliant scientific idea is transformed from lab findings to a new biotech start-up…and eventually to new medicines that can impact millions of patients’ lives? In this podcast, we peel back the covers on the early stages of this process through telling the story of Belharra Therapeutics, a promising chemoproteomics company seeking to lead a new wave of drug discovery. Belharra launched just one year ago from an idea that germinated at The Scripps Research Institute, was incubated and supported by Versant Ventures, and its potential validated by a multi-year collaboration with a major biotech company. Hosted by Belharra CEO Jeff Jonker and featuring conversations with the company’s founders, investors, and team members, this podcast provides an inside peek at the birth and early evolution of a biotech while the story is still emerging and taking shape. Tune in!