California Biotech Insights

Dr. Keting Chu is the Founder, CEO, and Chairman of Bluejay Therapeutics. Prior to founding Bluejay, Keting was a Venture Partner and Partner at Apple Tree Partners and LYFE Capital briefly. Before joining Apple Tree Partners, Keting spent five years as VP, Research TAP at The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS). Prior to LLS, Keting was the CEO of Mission Therapeutics and the Co-Founder, President and CEO of DigitAB, Inc. and BioCubed Corporation. For her first startup company, Five Prime Therapeutics, Keting was Vice President of Biology and Head of R&D where she built the R&D strategy and team, established the technology platform and generated a product pipeline. Prior to Five Prime, Keting was the Head of Immunotherapy and Antibody Therapeutics Division at Chiron Corporation, where she engaged in preclinical and clinical developments of protein, DNA-based, and small molecule therapeutics for cancer and inflammatory diseases. Keting received her MD in Sun Yat-Sen Medical University where she specialized in infectious diseases in China, and PhD in Microbiology and Immunology at University of California at San Francisco (UCSF). She also conducted her postdoctoral training at Cardiovascular Research Institute at UCSF.

Courtney Young is the CEO and Co-founder of MyoGene Bio, a biotech company developing a gene editing therapy, MyoDys45-55, for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a devastating muscle wasting disease. Dr. Young developed the gene editing approach that is the basis of MyoDys45-55 during her Ph.D. and postdoc in the Spencer and Pyle labs at UCLA. Her experience in muscle biology and diseases has spanned both academia and industry across the world. She has worked extensively in muscular dystrophy, stem cell therapy, and gene editing. Dr. Young graduated with a B.S. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from Johns Hopkins University, a Master of Research in Biomedicine from University College London, and a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from UCLA.

Dr. Andrew Rudd is the Cofounder and CEO of Palm Therapeutics. His career has centered around developing chemical tools to interrogate biological lipids and their roles in health and disease. He received his Ph.D. in chemistry from UC San Diego where he authored eight high-impact papers and was the recipient of several awards, including the Inamori Fellowship, which recognizes one chemistry Ph.D. student each year based on outstanding research performance. During his Ph.D. work, he developed the first small molecule probes for directly inhibiting protein palmitoylation in cells. In January 2021, he launched Palm Therapeutics at JLABS San Diego with the mission of developing the first palmitoylation-targeted therapies. He has secured over one million dollars in non-dilutive funding from the NIH and serves as the lead PI on two active SBIR grants at Palm. He is also the recent recipient of the 2023 Servier FAST Discovery Award from Servier Laboratories and California Life Sciences.