DojoExplore at Macalester | Week 2: Spinout Founders
Nucleate Dojo is Nucleate’s undergraduate subdivision, empowering college students to become the next biotech leaders through open-access education, capital, and community.
DojoExplore is a 5-week, introductory in-person seminar series designed to expose undergraduate students to the field of biotech, its basic functions, and its multitude of opportunities. The program is executed in collaboration with Innovation Scholars. Guests ranging from biotech VC to early-stage biotech founders to industry and academia leaders will be carrying out 1-1.5 hour seminars throughout the Spring term.
About Dr. Deepta Battacharya
Dr. Deepta Battacharya received a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and conducted postdoctoral research at Stanford University. In 2008 he formed his own lab at Washington University in St. Louis, and in 2017 returned to Tucson, AZ to establish a lab in his hometown. Soon after, in 2019, he co-founded Clade Therapeutics, a biotech startup with the goal of discovering and delivering next generation cell medicines, including the use of induced pluripotent stem cells for cancer therapy. In 2024, Clade Therapeutics was acquired by Century Therapeutics. Dr. Bhattacharya is currently a scientific co-founder of Aleutian Therapeutics.
About Dr. David Largaespada
Dr. David Largaespada is a co-founder of four companies, NeoClone Biotechnologies International, Discovery Genomics, B-MoGen Biotechnologies and Luminary Therapeutics. He currently works locally at the University of Minnesota, where he returned after obtaining a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and completing a fellowship at the National Cancer Institute. Three of his biotech companies were founded in the Twin Cities. B-MoGen Biotechnologies, acquired by BioTechne in 2019, is focused on advancing non-viral gene-delivery to lymphohematopoietic cells, and Luminary Therapeutics aims to improve treatment in underserved patient populations using adoptive cell therapies.