Early stage biotech VC. Recovering scientist. Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of Atlas Venture.

Cambridge, MA
Joined December 2010
Great to see our Vigil Therapeutics TREM2 agonist in Science Translational Medicine! Preclinical and first-in-human evaluation of VG-3927/SAR448851, an oral small-molecule TREM2 agonist for Alzheimer’s disease science.org/doi/10.1126/scit…
1
3
41
4,291
Very apt metaphor from Gline: "Biotech is a wood chipper that is built to ingest souls and shred them..."
If you care about biotech and drug development watch this interview with Matt Gline, the CEO of Roivant, a biotech firm that is now worth $24 billion. He talks about why he thinks predictions about AI from people like Anthropic’s Dario Amodei are overly optimistic. “If Dario is right and I'm wrong, and he cures every disease in five years, man, are we all the winners from that outcome,” Gline said. “I think if you work in this industry, it is very hard not to be skeptical of any of those claims. Because, and I've said this in other settings recently too, biotech is a wood chipper that like is built to like ingest souls and shred them. It's just like such a hard business that like someone comes and they're like, oh, but I've built a computer and I'm going to push a button and all of that goes away and it just works. Like that is probably not the way that's going to go.”
8
15
3
202
27,237
We’re happy to announce John O’Malley, M.D., Ph.D., as CMO. John’s deep immunology expertise spans academic research, clinical practice, and leadership roles at CRISPR Therapeutics, Sanofi, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Welcome to the team, John! bit.ly/4s3R6D6
1
1
1
1,373
Fun bit of biotech history. BMS acquired Amira in 2011 for $325M upfront for it's lead program against LPA1 for fibrosis. Amira was a "smart chemistry" play founded in 2005, backed by Versant with former Merck founders, including Peppi Prasit. That drug (BMS-986020/AM152) ended up seeing efficacy in Phase 2, but was terminated for hepatobiliary toxicity in 2018. BMS scientists went back to discovery, armed with SAR from the first gen, and retooled to make admilparant... and here we are nearly a decade later with Phase 3 data. LPA1 has been a well-credentialed fibrosis target for ages, and today's topline Ph 3 hit is the culmination of a continuous discovery and development campaign against LPA1 spanning over 20 years. Drug R&D requires playing a very long game.
12
16
197
21,956
Another fantastic Atlas Hike in the Whites in the books, up at the Zealand Falls Hut of the Appalachian Mtn Club. Great group of ~25 biotech folks!
1
48
5,623
If exercise were a branded drug for post-adjuvant chemo maintenance therapy in cancer, it would be a blockbuster
Exercise and remission from cancer: A randomized trial found 37% improved survival, 28% disease-free survival. But little is being done to incorporate in practice except @UPMC 1st health system covering "exercise oncology" program. gift link, by @AgrawalNina nytimes.com/2026/10/06/well/…
8
32
4
184
14,265
What will China do in the next five years for the biopharmaceutical industry? More drugs, more clinical trials, and more partnerships. Great post from my @atlasventure colleague Julia Pian - examining the 2026 "Five Year Plan" from China affirming biopharmaceutical industry as a top priority lifescivc.com/2026/10/chines…
9
20
4
95
14,336
Legendary. “…We’re seeing some shit we’ve never seen before, kid…”.
11 years ago this month, one of the most legendary Boston viral videos was born. Mikey Bergin and Jay Foster spotted a massive sunfish while fishing in Boston Harbor and delivered the unforgettable line: “IT’S A BABY F@#$% WHALE!” youtu.be/IYUgduOeXuA?si=r0WD…
22
16,541
Bruce Booth retweeted
Reach The Beach 2026 got cancelled….  Ragnar didn’t pay its bills and NH refused the permits… but our team, Runners Drugs & Money, was ready to go.  We trained over 7000 miles since June.  We raised $128K for charity.  We were ready with plenty of booyah and cowbell.  And we did a fun run & breakfast together yesterday anyway. It just was not to be for 2026. Bummed, as it’s the best running event of the year. We’ll be ready for 2027! #RTB2026 #RunningAtlas
5
3
55
9,876
Reach The Beach 2026 got cancelled….  Ragnar didn’t pay its bills and NH refused the permits… but our team, Runners Drugs & Money, was ready to go.  We trained over 7000 miles since June.  We raised $128K for charity.  We were ready with plenty of booyah and cowbell.  And we did a fun run & breakfast together yesterday anyway. It just was not to be for 2026. Bummed, as it’s the best running event of the year. We’ll be ready for 2027! #RTB2026 #RunningAtlas
5
3
55
9,876
💯- “Intelligence distribution over intelligence centralization”
Wild 24 hours for AI and lots of different proposals have been made. TLDR; the only *tangible* new fact is that OpenAI and Anthropic are going to have embedded 3rd party evaluators from unknown organizations with Dario floating METR as a possibility. Having 3rd party evaluators is smart as there is no Section 230 style liability shield for model outputs and showing a “duty of care” will be important in future litigation. Several internet companies might have gone bankrupt without Section 230 so limiting liability really matters. There are minimal investment implications from this single new fact, but I do think that for anyone who wants a “smoother for longer” cycle then most constraints are good: wafers, watts, real rates and spreads. Excessive regulation is a different matter but I don’t think we are anywhere close to this even if the vector changed over the last 24 hours. To summarize the events: Dario made the most maximalist proposal of the weekend: embedded 3rd party evaluators, a national regulatory regime for models beyond a certain capability/ingredient threshold, a broad international regulatory pact between democracies, stricter limits on compute/distillation for China and then a different international regulatory regime that encompasses China. Before there is a national regulatory regime, he wants a Sherman act waiver so that Anthropic can safely coordinate with OpenAI and other frontier labs without antitrust fears. TBF, this latest proposal is much less maximalist than some of his prior proposals like “Policy on the AI Exponential,” where he advocated for an FAA for AI. I believe he is sincere in his beliefs. And despite all the protestations, all of this would also probably be good for his business over the long-term. Sam agreed that embedded 3rd party evaluators were a good idea and stated they would implement them. Again, this is smart as should help limit future liability. Elon said “Dario is right” and later specified that “Dario is right that there should be some oversight. Peer review of AI by competitors is the right way to start this off.” This would be a MPAA like self-regulatory structure for AI with regular calls between the labs plus a process where each new model is evaluated for safety by competitors for a 1-2 week period before being released. That is *wildly* different from Dario’s proposal and in-line with what David Sacks has been proposing. Elon also stated that nothing was going to slow down open-weight models. Demis said that Dario’s essay was a “step in the right direction.” Dario also said that he was also open to Demis’ idea of a FINRA like self-regulatory structure as part of his proposal. David Sacks had a thoughtful post where he said that Dario and Sam should pace unilaterally, called the antitrust waiver a cartel request and denied that METR was truly independent given their ties to Anthropic. Sriram Krishnan, former White House AI advisor, noted that it would be important to have the 3rd party evaluators come from independent organizations that are not affiliated with any lab, which is basically an indirect statement about the relationship between METR and Anthropic which Sacks was explicit about. Clem from Hugging Face said they were open to being a neutral 3rd party evaluator, which is interesting especially if Jensen was consulted before that post. Alexander Wang from Meta noted that alignment would be an increasing focus going forward. An executive order seems likely after all this and the language in this EO is going to be really important. It is possible to democratize and distribute AI broadly and safely without centralizing it in the hands of a few corporations who might each become more powerful than any single government. I do not want a few humans in control of intelligence. I want us all to have our own intelligences that reflect our own values and human variation in all of its richness. Intelligence distribution over intelligence centralization FTW.
13
7,815
Biotech is booming... $XBI closed at ~$170 With today's surge, we're within striking distance of the $XBI All Time High of $174.79, reached in Feb 2021 during the pandemic-era biotech bubble. Funnily enough, $MRNA was trading at ~$175/share back then (Feb 2021) and popped back into that range with today's mRNA cancer vaccine news.
13
12
1
121
18,651
Great discussion with @NelloMainolfi about the early days of @KymeraTx !
It was great to sit down with @KymeraTx co-founder @LifeSciVC and revisit our early days, from the science that brought us together to the early decisions that still shape how we are building the company today. Ten years later, I’m proud of how far we’ve come and even more focused on what lies ahead as we continue working to deliver a new generation of medicines to patients around the world. linkedin.com/pulse/earning-r…
1
1
20
7,565
Make US INDs Great Again - What will and will not work to regain US strength in phase 1 clinical trials Great new blog post from @AlexHarding7 exploring the right solutions for US regulatory approaches to early clinical development lifescivc.com/2026/08/make-u…
7
5
1
78
9,604
New blog: "Evolving Drug Discovery: AI, Infrastructure, and the Speed of Learning" Great perspective from @AbbasRKazimi, CEO of Nimbus Therapeutics - a company that's been at the forefront of deploying computational technologies to discover and develop new medicines for almost two decades (founded in 2009!)... lifescivc.com/2026/07/evolvi…
5
10
3
104
14,088