Carolyn Bertozzi

Baker Family Director of Sarafan ChEM-H at Stanford. Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2022 — for the development of bioorthogonal chemistry. Panelist at Session IV.

Current Research

• The glycocalyx as a transport problem — stumbled on a new blood-brain barrier shuttle from glycoscience; could matter to every CNS program
• Pipeline spanning immuno-oncology, autoimmunity, and neuroscience

Key Arguments

• The single most common failure mode: the biology doesn’t translate — the translation cliff is brutal
• Solutions: better organoids, humanized transgenics (a “big white space” in glycoscience), lower regulatory barriers for Phase 0 human studies
• PD biomarkers (pharmacodynamic readouts) are the rate limiter for trial speed and scale — statins won partly because a finger-prick reads out cholesterol

On Starting Companies

• Start as SAB/consultant → find unmet need intersecting your science → spin out only with a technical co-founder from your own bench (a student or postdoc)
• Named Egan, a former PhD student, as an example

Personal

• Turned down Tom Morello’s invitation to join Rage Against the Machine

“For me, translation to humans is the breaking point.”