Leah Cowen - Targeting Antifungal Resistance

In this episode, Dr. Leah Cowen shares her journey as a scientist, professor, and academic department chair at the University of Toronto towards her role as an entrepreneur, Chief Scientific Officer and co-founder of Bright Angel Therapeutics, a company that develops novel therapeutics to address the growing global public health crisis of antifungal resistance.

Show Notes

Biography: Leah Cowen, PhD
Professor and Chair, Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Toronto
Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Bright Angel Therapeutics

Dr. Leah Cowen obtained her BSc in Microbiology and Immunology at the University of British Columbia and pursued doctoral research with Jim Anderson and Linda Kohn at the University of Toronto focused on the genomic architecture of adaptation to antifungal drugs. As a postdoctoral fellow with Susan Lindquist at the Whitehead Institute, Dr. Cowen investigated how the molecular chaperone Hsp90 impacts on fungal evolution and phenotypic diversity. Since 2007, Dr. Cowen has been a Canada Research Chair in Microbial Genomics and Infectious Disease in the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto. Her laboratory takes an interdisciplinary approach to understand what allows some microbes to exploit the host and cause disease, and to develop new strategies to treat life-threatening infectious disease. Dr. Cowen co-founded Bright Angel Therapeutics, a company that leverages state-of-the-art technologies for development of novel antifungal therapeutics.

About Bright Angel Therapeutics:

Bright Angel Therapeutics is a Toronto-based, pre-clinical company committed to developing new drugs to address the growing global public health crisis of antifungal resistance. The company's discovery efforts are focused on molecules that inhibit stress response pathways that are believed to be central to the emergence of fungal resistance. Bright Angel was co-founded by Schrödinger and is leveraging the Schrödinger computational platform to design potent and fungal-selective inhibitors. Other co-founders include Toronto Innovation Acceleration Partners (formerly MaRS Innovation), a nonprofit supporting the commercialization of research breakthroughs from Toronto's leading academic institutions; Dr. Leah Cowen, Professor and Chair, Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Toronto, co-Director CIFAR Fungal Kingdom: Threats & Opportunities Program, and Chief Scientific Officer, Bright Angel Therapeutics; and company consultant Dr. Luke Whitesell. 

 

Visit brightangeltherapeutics.com for more information.

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The S2BN Podcast, hosted by the S2BN's Founder and CEO, Bruce Seet, features conversations with scientists, leaders and individuals who are working at the interface of science, innovation and business. We hear their career journeys, stories, insights and advice that have enabled them to change the world through science and business.

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