No Investor Would Touch This. So They Built It Themselves

Wesley Wierson and Alex Abel founded Leah Labs seven years ago around a pets-first model. When generative biology arrived, they designed something that no existing investor would fund. Animal investors won't back human-scale outcomes. Human investors won't back animal health companies. So VelociTx had to be built. Their CAR-T platform redesigns the transmembrane domain using a 2,000 de novo screen, finding 200 enriched candidates across 7 functional families, making CAR-T cells behave like TCR T cells to target solid tumors in ways nature never could. Wesley Wierson and Alex Abel are co-founders of VelociTx, a company using generative protein design to build the next generation of CAR-T cell therapy for solid tumors. Chapters 00:00:00 Welcome: Wesley Wierson + Alex Abel, VelociTx 00:00:58 Why VelociTx Had to Be Built 00:02:32 What If You Could Engineer a CAR Like a T Cell Receptor? 00:02:54 The Transmembrane Domain Discovery 00:06:34 The 2,000 De Novo Screen and What They Found 00:12:01 Going Into Lung Cancer First 00:15:51 How Generative Biology Changes Everything 00:27:35 What's Next in Biotech New episodes every Tuesday and Thursday at 11:00 AM 🚀