Red Tree Venture

Co-founder and Chief Scientific Advisor of Red Tree and a Stanford bioengineering professor who chaired the department from 2017-2022. A serial entrepreneur who founded companies including xCella Biosciences and Combangio, she holds a Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry from MIT. Also serves as Scientific Advisory Board Chair (Oncology).

General Partner at Forbion, holds a PhD.

Managing Director at Red Tree with deep drug discovery and company-formation experience. Previously CEO of Inception Therapeutics and a venture partner at Versant Ventures, and an EIR at Third Rock Ventures. Holds a Ph.D. in molecular pharmacology from Stanford.

Adam Silverman has nearly two decades of experience in the discovery and preclinical development of biotherapeutics. He began his industry career at Takeda working on antibody discovery and drug target identification in oncology, autoimmunity, and metabolic disorders, then joined Denali Therapeutics where he contributed to its blood-brain barrier Transport Vehicle platform and AVLAYAH, an enzyme replacement therapy for Hunter's Syndrome. He later led research teams at Codexis, advancing enzyme therapies for metabolic disorders, and at Spotlight Therapeutics, building a cell-targeted gene editing platform, and holds a B.S. from MIT and a Ph.D. in chemistry from Stanford University.

Ariell Ortega serves as Executive Assistant to the Red Tree team in San Diego, with three years of experience in executive support. Before that, she spent six years in talent acquisition within the biotech industry. She is a San Diego native and holds a B.A. in Hospitality and Tourism Management from San Diego State University.

Dr. Robinson is the James Raitt Professor and Chief of the Division of Immunology and Rheumatology at Stanford University, where his laboratory studies the role of EBV and other microbes in autoimmune diseases including lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis. He has been elected to the Association of American Physicians and the American Society of Clinical Investigation and is an inventor on twenty-one patent applications. He co-founded EBVio and earned his BS, MD, and PhD from Stanford University, completing internal medicine training at UCSF.

Brian A. Stearns is a life science executive with over 26 years of experience building and operating companies in San Diego. He began his career at Merck Research Laboratories, became a founding member of Amira Pharmaceuticals (acquired by BMS in 2011), helped found the Versant Ventures-backed incubator Inception Sciences, co-founded Pipeline Therapeutics as President and COO, and served as Chief Scientific Officer at Autobahn Therapeutics. Through his consulting firm Aalchemia he advises on new company creation and holds a PhD in Chemistry from UC Irvine and a BS from Ohio State University.

Cassie Lue is VP of Investor Relations at Red Tree Venture Capital, with experience across venture, private equity, and hedge funds. Before Red Tree, she held investor relations roles at Pantera Capital, Asia Alternatives, and Pantheon Ventures, and earlier worked as an analyst at Callan Associates and in trading operations at Algert Global LLC. She holds a B.A. from the University of California, Davis.

Crystal L. Mackall, MD, is the Ernest and Amelia Gallo Family Professor and Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at Stanford University, where she is Founding Director of the Stanford Center for Cancer Cell Therapy, Associate Director of the Stanford Cancer Institute, and Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at Stanford. Her translational research in immuno-oncology has advanced CAR T-cell therapy, including early demonstrations of CD19 CAR T efficacy in pediatric leukemia and work on T cell exhaustion. She has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine and other bodies, and has co-founded three cell therapy biotechnology companies.

Deborah Nguyen earned her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and spent a decade at GNF/Novartis leading preclinical drug discovery programs in infectious diseases, autoimmunity/inflammation, and metabolic disease. She later held research leadership roles as Senior Director of R&D at Organovo, VP of Research at COI Pharmaceuticals, and Head of GI Inflammation and San Diego site head at Takeda Pharmaceuticals. She now serves as Operating Partner with Red Tree Venture Labs, focusing on venture-backed company creation.

Frank Longo earned his M.D. and Ph.D. in neuroscience from UC San Diego and completed his neurology residency and fellowship at UC San Francisco, where he later became professor and vice chair of the Department of Neurology. He chaired the Department of Neurology at UNC–Chapel Hill (2001-2005) and at Stanford University (2006-2023), where his laboratory studies mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases and related translational research. He founded and serves as board chair of PharmatrophiX, a clinical-stage company developing small molecule therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases, and sits on the NIH National Advisory Council on Aging.

Gene Yeo is the Sanford Stem Cell Institute Endowed Chair and Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at UC San Diego, where he directs the Center for RNA Technologies and Therapeutics and the Sanford Stem Cell Institute's Innovation Center, and serves as Chief Scientist for Sanford Laboratories for Innovative Medicine. Trained as a computational biologist in machine learning during his PhD at MIT and in stem cell biology as a Crick-Jacobs fellow at the Salk Institute, his lab develops molecular and computational technologies to study RNA processing and RNA binding proteins in development and disease. He has founded several biotech companies and serves as a scientific advisor to Red Tree.

Hugh Rosen is Pearson Family Professor and Chair of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Scripps Research Institute, where his work focuses on the chemical biology of immune regulation by signaling lipids and receptor therapeutics. Working with Edward Roberts, his lab invented ozanimod (marketed by Bristol-Myers Squibb as Zeposia for MS and ulcerative colitis) and additional clinical-stage compounds. He earned his MB.ChB. from the University of Cape Town and a D.Phil. in Physiological Sciences from Oxford, and previously held leadership roles at Merck Research Laboratories.

Jim Wells holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Washington State University and completed postdoctoral work at Stanford University School of Medicine. He began his research career in 1982 as a co-founding member of the Protein Engineering Department at Genentech, later co-founded Sunesis Pharmaceuticals as CSO and president, and in 2005 joined the UCSF faculty in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Cellular & Molecular Pharmacology, where he founded the Small Molecule Discovery Center and chaired the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry. His lab studies how cell surface proteomes change in health and disease, and he has co-founded several companies, most recently EpiBiologics.

Kari Nadeau is a physician-scientist who chairs the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and holds the John Rock Professorship of Climate and Population Studies. She earned her MD/PhD from Harvard Medical School and trained in pediatrics at Boston Children's Hospital before a Stanford-UCSF allergy and immunology fellowship and a faculty career at Stanford. Her research addresses how environmental and genetic factors, including wildfire-related air pollution, affect allergy and asthma risk, and she is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Karl Deisseroth is the D.H. Chen Professor of Bioengineering and Psychiatry at Stanford and an HHMI Investigator. He holds an undergraduate degree from Harvard and both a PhD and MD from Stanford, is board-certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, and founded and directs the Stanford Human Neural Circuitry program. His work spans natural light-gated ion channels and how brain properties emerge from cellular activity, and he authored the nonfiction book Projections. He serves on Red Tree Venture Capital's Scientific Advisory Board.

Mark M. Davis directs the Stanford Center for Human Systems Immunology and is the Avery Family Professor of Immunology. He earned a B.A. from Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology under Leroy Hood, followed by a postdoctoral and staff fellowship with William Paul at the NIH Laboratory of Immunology before joining Stanford. His research covers T-cell receptor genetics, peptide-MHC tetramer labeling, and systems-level study of human immune responses, and his group has developed human immune organoids from tonsil and spleen cells.

CFO of Red Tree, providing expertise in investment reporting, legal, compliance, and administration. Managing member of venture CFO firm Lomond Hill and former CFO and partner of Delphi Ventures; a certified public accountant.

Scientific advisory board member focused on oncology; Stanford professor whose research on kinase inhibitors and degraders has influenced numerous clinical-stage cancer therapeutics.

Scott Delp is the James H. Clark Professor of Bioengineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Orthopaedic Surgery at Stanford University, where he founded and chaired the Department of Bioengineering. He directs the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance and leads a laboratory that develops movement-science technologies, including software tools such as OpenSim, OpenCap, AddBiomechanics, and Simtk.org. He has published over 300 research articles, authored a book on the biomechanics of movement, co-founded six health technology companies, and is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.

Yoko Sugimoto is the Executive Assistant to the Red Tree team, with 25 years of administrative experience. Before joining Red Tree in 2022, she worked as an Executive Assistant at Homestead Capital USA and previously served as Executive Assistant to the President & CEO of Takeda Ventures, Inc. Originally from Japan, she holds a B.A. in Business Administration and Information Science from Hamamatsu University and later studied English and attended a secretarial college in England.