From Discovery to Drugs: A Conversation with Jay Bradner
Join us at UC Berkeley for an evening with Jay Bradner, MD, Executive Vice President of Research & Development at Amgen, discussing the path from scientific discovery to real-world medicines.
Dr. Bradner leads Amgen’s global R&D organization, advancing a pipeline of first- and best-in-class therapeutics across oncology, inflammation, general medicine, and rare disease. Prior to Amgen, he served as President of the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research and has been a physician-scientist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. He has also co-founded and helped build multiple biotechnology companies, and his work has contributed to numerous drug development programs and clinical advances.
The evening will include a presentation followed by audience Q&A and a networking reception. Light food and drinks will be served.
Hosted by MCBcDNA, a UC Berkeley Molecular & Cell Biology organization connecting students with leaders in biotechnology, research, and entrepreneurship.
Event Sponsors:
Genesis Molecular AI is pioneering foundation models for molecular AI to unlock a new era of drug design and development. The company’s generative and predictive AI platform, GEMS (Genesis Exploration of Molecular Space), integrates AI and physics into industry-leading models to generate and optimize drug molecules, including the breakthrough generative diffusion model Pearl for structure prediction. Genesis has raised over $300 million from leading AI, tech and life science-focused investors, signed multiple AI-focused research collaborations with major pharma partners, and is deploying GEMS to advance an internal therapeutics pipeline for a variety of high-impact targets.
Mithrl is a Scientific Decision Engine that compresses the discovery loop for pharma R&D. With Mithrl’s enterprise-ready agentic AI systems, bench scientists and computational biologists can accelerate analyses and contextualize results with rigorous biological insights. Mithrl enables researchers to discover new biomarkers, identify new therapeutic targets, and understand mechanisms of action, moving from raw data to reproducible insights and defensible IP opportunities. Learn more at mithrl.com and follow us on LinkedIn and X.
Kopra Bio uses genetically engineered viruses to reprogram cancer cells to make cancer cures. Our first-in-class technology platform (developed at UCSF) leverages a proprietary viral vector and payload which selectively infects tumor cells, spreads throughout the tumor, and turns infected tumor cells into biofactories which produce our immunotherapy payload. The payload transforms immunologically "cold" tumors into "hot" tumors which are then killed by the immune system. Our lead product, KB-516, shows a 90% complete response rate in the most challenging brain tumor models. Kopra Bio was founded by Andrew Bartynski, a 2x YC backed biotech founder with an exit, and Dr. Alexander Haddad is a neurosurgeon at UCSF who published 70 peer-reviewed papers before the age of 30.
SCET is UC Berkeley's premier hub for innovation and entrepreneurship education. Our mission is to empower innovators to positively change the world. Established in 2005 within the College of Engineering, SCET equips students, professionals, and global partners with the essential skills and mindset needed to innovate, commercialize technology, and lead in the global economy. SCET is known for developing the Berkeley Method, an internationally recognized approach to teaching technology entrepreneurship to undergraduates, innovation to Ph.D. students, and technology firm leadership to professionals and executives. We help students develop their entrepreneurial mindset, leverage proven frameworks, and build their networks at Berkeley.
Tamarind Bio is a leading provider of molecular AI tools, such as AlphaFold, available via web interface, API, and AI agent. Today, Tamarind is used by tens of thousands of scientists from biopharma R&D organizations including 8 of the top 20 global pharma. Our 250+ models from the open-source community, 3rd party licensed protocols, fine-tuned variants, and Tamarind users' internal tools are used in applied to diverse drug discovery problems such as protein design, computational chemistry, structural biology and more.