Speaker Profile
Founder & CEO, Ligandal
Biography
Watsons current work focuses on AI-driven biomolecular design, creating predictive peptides and receptor-targeting ligands that are engineered to precisely deliver nanoparticles, gene-editing tools, drugs, and nucleic acids to specific cells and tissues. This approach aims to enhance therapeutic specificity, reduce toxicity, and accelerate the development of curative and preventative delivery of therapeutics. Previously, while researching at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, he developed gene-editing delivery platforms for guided nucleases like CRISPR and TALEN. Today, he applies AI and predictive physics to rapidly generate and evaluate novel targeting agents, mapping uncharted receptor-ligand relationships as an enabling technology for biopharmaceutical delivery systems. With over 80 pending global patents (22 approved, 6 allowed), Watsons work pioneered integrating cell surface transcriptomics, predictive targeting ligand design, and drug and gene delivery systems. He and his team aim to transform how we approach the worlds most challenging diseases, advancing the frontier of precision therapeutics and diagnostically-responsive medicine.
Session Abstract – PMWC 2026 Silicon Valley
Track Chairs:
Gad Getz, Broad Institute & Alex Morgan, Khosla Ventures
PMWC Award Ceremony
• Greg Brockman, President & Co-Founder, OpenAI
• Steve Wozniak, Co-Founder, Apple
Fireside Chat
• Vinod Khosla, Khosla Ventures
• Greg Brockman, President & Co-Founder, OpenAI
Target Discovery: Beyond Genomics – Revealing Hidden Layers of Biology with AI
• Keynote: Stephen Quake, CZ Biohub
• Chair: Cindy Lawley, Olink
• Aritro Nath, City of Hope
• Massa Shoura, Phinomics
• Omar Serang, DNAnexus
Foundation Models for Human Biology: Accelerating Immunotherapy Discovery Through Multimodal AI
• Ron Alfa, Noetik
Systems Integration for Drug Discovery and AI
• Hugo Lam, Genentech
Interpretable AI Models for Multi-Modal Biomarker Discovery in Drug Development
• Vitalay Fomin, Numenos
Closing the Loop: Coupling AI with In Vivo Validation
• Gabriel Musso, biosymetrics
Interpretable AI for Biomarker Discovery: Accelerating Drug Development
• Chair: Rajat Roy, PATHOMIQ INC
• Shivanni Kummar, MD, OHSU
Can AI Really Create the Next Blockbuster Drug? Closing the Loop from Discovery to Development
• Chair: Amar Das, Guardant Health
• Ari Caroline, Weave Bio
• Dina Katabi, Emerald/MIT
• Andrei Georgescu, Vivodyne
• James Zou, Stanford
Gemini Digital Twins Accelerate Precision Medicine
• Collin Hill, Aitia
Scaling Rare Disease Discovery with AI: From Genomic Data to Therapeutic Insights
• Lisa Gurry, GeneDx
Enabling Targeted Precision Drug & Gene Delivery with Predictive AI
• Andre Watson, Ligandal
Is AI the New Drug?
• Chair: Alex Morgan, Khosla Ventures
• Michael J. Kahana, Nia Therapeutics
