Recommencing Season 3
Dr Zandy Forbes, CEO of Meira GTX on Nasdaq listing, understanding investors and moving from academia to fund manager to company CEO
What compels a scientist to leave academia for the high-stakes world of finance and then become the CEO of a publicly-traded biotech company?
In this episode of Oxford+, host Susannah de Jager sits down with Zandy Forbes, the CEO and co-founder of MeiraGTx. Zandy shares her fascinating career journey, explaining how her experience as a hedge fund analyst shaped her unique approach to building a resilient, multi-asset genetic medicine company.
They discuss MeiraGTx's pioneering work, from developing a mind-blowing technology that turns the body into a drug manufacturing facility to their successful clinical trials that are changing the lives of patients with inherited blindness, Parkinson’s, and other diseases.
Listen to hear Zandy's insights on risk mitigation in biotech, the realities of the NASDAQ market, and the future of genetic medicine.
"It is mind blowing and the most mind blowing thing, by the way, this being able to take any gene for any drug you like, put it into the body so it's a little manufacturing facility and switch it on with a pill." - Zandy Forbes
What you’ll learn:
Strategic insights on how to build a resilient, multi-asset company in biotech.
A unique perspective on the NASDAQ and why the UK capital markets can't compete.
The inside story of MeiraGTx's innovative technology that turns the human body into a drug factory.
Actionable lessons on risk mitigation from a CEO with a financial background.
Zandy Forbes: The CEO and co-founder of MeiraGTx, a NASDAQ-listed clinical-stage genetic medicine company. She holds a double first in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University and a PhD in Molecular Genetics from the University of Oxford. Before co-founding MeiraGTx in 2015, she spent over a decade as an analyst and portfolio manager at a healthcare-focused hedge fund.
This discussion was a masterclass is cross-career skill building and how switching from academia to the business world can create unparalleled experience and insight. Zandy is that unusual Biotech CEO who is as comfortable discussing the market fluctuations as the clinical implications and science of her companies discoveries with the FDA. Well worth listening for investors and founders alike.
Next Episode will be released on the 22nd of September with Professor Robin Dunbar - professor Emeritus of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford - where we discuss the implications of human limits on scaling companies and how to main culture, conviction and community in your company as you do.
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With thanks,
Susannah and the Oxford+ team
