Amir Moarefi

Biography
Broad experience working in Pharma and Biotech both as a team lead and in Strategy and BD. Amir previously lead discovery teams at two Flagship Pioneering companies Repertoire Immune Medicine and Sail Therapeutics. He has also held positions at Ceptur Therapeutics leading their corporate development efforts as well as working to build Ginkgo Bioworks first product in Antibodies. He recently joined Therna Biosciences to lead their BD efforts around partnering for AIML powered RNA Medicine.

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Talk
RNA Design by Intelligent Design.
Using a biology-guided, AI-powered platform, Therna ispioneering programmable RNA therapeutics. Thernas technology is engineered to enhance translation, durability, and precise tissue targeting, which unlocks new levels of safety and efficacy in RNA medicines.

AI for Emerging Therapeutics Showcase:
Therna Biosciences
AI/ML Powered RNA Medicines Therapeutics Company.

Wassana Yantasee

Biography
Dr. Wassana Yantasee received her PhD in Chemical Engineering and MBA from Oregon State University in 2001. She has served as a principal investigator on numerous NIH-SBIR projects focusing on nano-based combination therapy and immunotherapy by applying her versatile delivery platform, Pdx-NP, to develop various cancer therapeutics and vaccines. Dr. Yantasee has received multiple honors, including the Ronald L. Brodzinski Early Career Scientific Achievement Award, the Council of Outstanding Early Career Engineer Award, and corporate philanthropy awards. She was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors and is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. She has published more than 70 peer-reviewed papers, is an inventor on over 50 patent applications, and has served on more than 40 scientific review panels for federal grant programs.

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Talk
Nano-delivery platform for rapid drug development
AI is transforming drug discovery by rapidly identifying promising targets. However, many targets are not druggable, and multiple pathways often need to be targeted simultaneously for a lasting response. The Pdx-NP platform is capable of delivering multiple types of drugs to both cancer cells and immune cells, helping to realize the promise of AI.

AI for Emerging Therapeutics Showcase:
OHSU/PDX Pharmaceuticals
PDX Pharmaceuticals, in collaboration with Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), has received multiple NCI awards and investments to advance five cancer drug candidates based on its Pdx-NP platform for delivering synergistic drug cargos. This work has led to numerous high-impact publications, more than 40 patent applications, and the training of many next-generation cancer researchers.

David Longo

Biography
David Longo is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Ordaōs. As CEO of Ordaōs, Longo leads a strong scientific team to design novel mini-proteins that help drug hunters deliver safer and more effective treatments. Longo brings to Ordaōs, broad experience in innovation and technology, that compel him to approach protein design in a unique way. His expertise in AI and machine learning is incorporated into Ordaōs Design Engine, driving the rapid creation of never-before-seen mini-proteins with improved probability of more therapeutically effective candidates. Prior to Ordaōs, this entrepreneur led a series of companies which he grew into successful entities. Longo has a Master's in Biotechnology from Harvard University, graduate certificates in AI, Machine Learning, Innovation and Technology from Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a masters Certificate in Music Production from Berklee College of Music.

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Talk
Adversarial Harmony: The Skeptical Symphony of Biologics Design
This talk explores the Ordaos Design Engine's "skeptical symphony." By orchestrating hundreds of adversarial AI models grounded in diverse physical principles, we ruthlessly challenge every design assumption. This rigorous internal conflict forces consensus across varied datasets, ensuring generalizability and delivering robust, developable biologics that survive the skepticism of nature.

AI for Emerging Therapeutics Showcase:
Ordaos
Ordaos Bio is a techbio company that reimagines drug discovery as drug design by using a proprietary lab-in-the-loop generative AI engine to design novel mini-proteins and single-domain antibodies from scratch. Integrating diverse adversarial AI models with an ultra-rapid 5-day wet-lab validation cycle, the company engineers "true de novo" therapeutics that are optimized for function and developability against challenging, high-value targets.

Harry Kabodha

Biography
Harry Kabodha cofounded Varosync to bring physics-informed machine learning to the hardest problems in drug discovery. His work focuses on conformational dynamics, functional selectivity, and isoform-aware molecular design domains where subtle structural differences determine therapeutic success or catastrophic failure. Prior to Varosync, Harry conducted computational research at Columbia's Irving Institute for Cancer Dynamics, applying deep learning to protein dynamics and single-cell morphological analysis.

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Talk
AI Reading GPCR Shapes to Design Safer Drugs
GPCR drugs often fail because they cannot distinguish subtle onoff shapes of the same receptor. Hyaline is a geometric deep learning system that reads 3D protein structures to tell which states are active or inactive, helping teams design GPCR medicines with cleaner signalling, fewer sideeffects, and higher clinical confidence.

AI for Emerging Therapeutics Showcase:
Varosync
Varosync builds AI models that help drug teams design molecules and nanoparticle formulations that hit the right target without harming healthy tissue. By reading 3D protein shapes and linking them to real clinical and delivery data, we improve target selectivity, dosing, and safety from discovery through translation.

Dan Turner

Biography
Dan has over 20 years of senior leadership experience within the fields of genetics, molecular biology and genomics research. He was previously Senior Vice President of Applications at Oxford Nanopore Technologies. During his time at Oxford Nanopore, he led the Applications function, which was responsible for developing the companys library preparation kits, protocols and analytical workflows, building collaborations with leading researchers, and enabling the commercial teams to bring the technology successfully to market. Dan also held the role of Head of Sequencing Technology Development at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. He holds a degree in biochemistry from the University of Oxford and completed an MSc and PhD in genetics at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology.

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Talk
Illuminating the Dark Genome to Identify New Therapeutic Targets
Our proprietary 3D multiomics technology maps all disease-associated variants to genes, revealing 50% more potential drug targets for complex diseases. This gives us more targets to choose from and adds greater genetic validation to the targets we identify, reducing risk. We identify high confidence target genes 10x faster than traditional approaches.

AI for Emerging Therapeutics Showcase:
Enhanced Genomics
Enhanced Genomics is redefining drug target discovery by converting vast disease-associated genetic variant datasets into causal biology, delivering high-confidence, genetically validated drug targets for common diseases using a proprietary, cell-type-specific 3D multi-omics platform

Harshawardhan Bal

Biography
Harsh Bal brings cross value chain experience in the pharma, biotech, health and tech industry. He has held lead positions at Astellas Pharma, Takeda Oncology, Dana-FarberHarvard Cancer Center and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he trained in and applied high-throughput informatics, machine learning and functional genomics technologies for discovery RD across the immuno-oncology, infectious disease, cardiovascular and metabolic TAs. As a management consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton, Harsh played key roles in US National Cancer Institutes integrative cancer informatics program. He previously headed global strategy and business for Piramal Pharma Solutions and Syngene International to advance small and large molecule programs from IND to NDA to commercial for global biotech and pharma clients. Harsh has authored several peer-reviewed articles as well as books on biomedical informatics by Tata McGraw-Hill and Springer. He currently leads Shilpa Pharma's CDMO operations as President North America based out of the US.

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Talk
NLP-Driven Automated Knowledge Generation and Marketplace Platform
The talk will provide a demo of an AI platform based on use cases from the industry in areas such as early-stage discovery, novel biomarker identification, protein-protein interaction, pathway analysis, pipeline gaps, and KOL identification.

AI for Emerging Therapeutics Showcase:
Shilpa Pharma, Inc.
The AI platform offers automated knowledge discovery, NLP driven insights, full translational views of drug R&D, deep mapping of knowledge assets to assist with early drug discovery.

Evgeny Kiner

Biography
Evgeny Kiner is the founder of NeoSplice Therapeutics, an AI-driven platform company unlocking disease-specific therapeutic targets that are inaccessible to traditional genomics. He was trained in RNA biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology under Phillip Sharp, and later in systems immunology at Harvard University with Diane Mathis and Christophe Benoist, where he helped bring single-cell RNA sequencing into large-scale immune profiling efforts as part of the Immgen consortium. He is the author of a highly cited Nature Immunology study that reshaped understanding of CD4 T-cell states. Prior to NeoSplice, he was a founding scientist at Immunai, where he helped build AI-driven platforms for biological discovery. Evgeny is passionate about expanding the druggable target space and accelerating the path from data to medicines using AI.

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Talk
The Gene-Level Ceiling in AI Drug Discovery
NeoSplice applies AI, isoform-resolved sequencing, single-cell resolution, and proteogenomics to uncover and validate disease-specific proteoforms as novel therapeutic targets. By integrating patient-scale validation, cell-type specificity, protein evidence, and structural modeling, we enable discovery of actionable targets for next-generation antibody and T-cellbased therapies.

AI for Emerging Therapeutics Showcase:
NeoSplice Therapeutics
NeoSplice expands the universe of druggable targets by using AI, transcriptomics, and proteomics to uncover disease-specific proteoforms inaccessible to conventional genomics, thus enabling precision therapeutics.