Kate

Brain cancer treatments bench to bedside. Co-Founder & CEO @ DNKO 🧠
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[Kate @Kate_chain]

I had the best time in NYC recently.

I gave my first talk on our cancer treatments at Lenox Hill Hospital and shared how my father's brain cancer battle with GBM sparked my interest in the field.

How when the neurosurgeon told me my dad needed brain surgery, my first instinct was to ask him to join him in the OR.

Did I have something to offer 6 years ago when I asked to join the OR? No.

Do I have something to offer now? Yes.

Here's a brief clip of me talking about the key problem we're trying to address in this treatment paradigm- tumor infiltration. 95% of recurrence occurs within 1cm of the tumor margin left behind during resection.

Our treatments will go beyond that zone. I spoke about how we can combine thermotherapy and temperature sensitive liposomes for the treatment of malignant brain tumors. Our treatment crosses the blood brain barrier and I presented evidence proving it.

& the surgeon I asked to join in the OR 6 years ago? He flew to NYC to be there for my 15 min talk, and he guides our translational research as our scientific advisor. It's such an incredible story and it's truly an honor to share it. 🫡

[Sandeep Palakodeti, MD MPH @DrDeepMD]

Be Dr Elisabeth Potter

> Princeton molecular bio
> crush Emory med school
> match into the most competitive plastics residency at UT Southwestern
> fellowship at MD Anderson learning to rebuild breasts with a woman’s own tissue
> graduate top of the game, DIEP flap queen, 1,000+ cases deep
> join big hospital systems in Austin

> watch insurance companies nickel-and-dime cancer patients for years
> see OR fees hit $30k+ before the surgeon even picks up a scalpel
> get the infamous @UHC call *while patient is under anesthesia* asking if she really needs to stay overnight after mastectomy + reconstruction
> step out of the OR, fight on the phone, they deny her anyway

> posts the video
> it explodes
> millions of people finally see what doctors have been screaming about for a decade

> United sends the lawyers
> “delete the videos or else”
> she laughs, posts the letter instead, and goes harder

> they cut her brand-new surgery center out of network
> Redbud Surgery Center, the one she poured millions into so women wouldn’t get crushed by hospital bills
> suddenly staring at bankruptcy while still trying to operate

> double down on cash-pay transparency
> same elite surgeons, same microsurgery expertise
> do the $100k+ hospital case for a fraction of the price
> same day, same quality, zero corporate middlemen bleeding the patient dry

> keep posting, keep fighting, keep winning small battles (Aetna in-network, Cigna in-network, one patient at a time)
> turn the whole thing into a movement

> be the surgeon who said “if I want healthcare to be different, I have to practice differently”
> actually do it

> still in the arena
> still taking on the biggest insurers in America
> still rebuilding women after cancer

I’m inspired! The Elizabeth Potter arc is what I hope for all my physician colleagues

@EPotterMD @DutchRojas

[Anthony DiGiorgio, DO, MHA @DrDiGiorgio]

It’s 2026. I can stream a movie on my phone with zero lag. Cars drive themselves. AI bots argue with each other on the internet.

And yet the only way to compare a patient’s prior MRI to a new one is to send a courier two hours away to pick up a CD-ROM from another hospital.

[Kate @Kate_chain]

@Ronalfa I feel seen 😅 ty sir

[Kate @Kate_chain]

@chiefwalde @toddsaunders 💯

[Kate @Kate_chain]

"The solution is simple: fund clinical execution."

Say it louder for the people in the back!

[Mgoes (bio/acc 🤖💉) @m_goes_distance]

Biotech is fvcked.

Not because the science is dead, the business model is backwards.

Just this week:
> Lyra Therapeutics laid off all 28 employees. 7 years of work. Multiple clinical trials. Still had $22.1M left -enough runway until Q3 2026
> Lucy Therapeutics shut down after 7 years. Backed by Bill Gates and the Michael J. Fox Foundation. $42M raised. Promising animal data. Never made it to human trials

Meanwhile ~$17B has flowed into AI drug discovery since 2019, but 1000s of startups later, not a single AI‑discovered novel drug has reached approval.
That isn’t a science failure. It’s structural.

VCs like to chase AI narratives. And that's the problem.

The solution is simple: fund clinical execution.

[Kate @Kate_chain]

JPM roll call..who is in SF this week? 👀

Let's say hi!

Bonus points if you're into oncology, rare diseases and are ready to uproot a system that has failed patients and clinicians for far too long.

🫡

[Kate @Kate_chain]

@vintweeta @a16zBioHealth Congrats Vineeta! See you on the streets 🫡!

[Kate @Kate_chain]

@NoBanksNearby Rest assured I danced to this lineup continuously last night to ensure it was at the level for NYE playlists 🔥🫡

[Kate @Kate_chain]

@NoBanksNearby 💫👌

[Anthony DiGiorgio, DO, MHA @DrDiGiorgio]

This is not hyperbole. I have seen a $18,000 MRI and a $500 MRI not more than two miles from one another.

They are the same quality.

[Kate @Kate_chain]

I'll never understand people who underestimate me.

[Kate @Kate_chain]

Been training for a game nobody knew I was playing 🫡

[Kate @Kate_chain]

@gregisenberg 🤝 @NoBanksNearby can confirm this is the case!

[Patrick Malone, MD PhD @patricksmalone]

biotech needs its own david sacks

in reflecting on this past year, one thing has become increasingly obvious to me: biotech desperately needs a public champion. someone who can translate scientific progress into policy, coordinate the industry’s scattered voices into a coherent agenda, and frame biotech as a strategic national priority rather than a niche technical field. this is perhaps the biggest structural weakness facing our industry.

watching the policy momentum behind AI and crypto has been frustrating. these sectors have moved quickly not just because the technology is advancing, but because people like david sacks have created a central organizing force. they’ve built a coherent narrative, rallied founders and investors, and focused the tech industry’s efforts in washington. biotech has no equivalent.

what makes this more frustrating is that the rationale driving urgency in AI policy applies almost word-for-word to biotech: competition with china. national security. domestic manufacturing capacity. strategic dependence on foreign supply chains. you could literally replace “AI” or “rare earths” with “biotech” in many of the recent executive orders, and the logic would hold perfectly. these should be obvious, bipartisan reasons to invest in and accelerate the biotech ecosystem. yet the case isn’t being made with the same clarity or force.

part of the problem is a PR failure. most policymakers don’t understand that biotech ≠ pharma. biotech startups are the innovators; pharma is the innovation buyer. but in washington, these groups get conflated. early-stage biotech gets pulled into the same policy debates as multibillion-dollar incumbents, and the result is predictable: the people doing the actual innovation are not represented.

another issue is fragmentation. AI and crypto accelerated because the community acted like a movement. there was a center of gravity pulling together founders, operators, investors, and policymakers. biotech, by contrast, is spread across academic labs, NIH, the FDA, startups, pharma, state governments, and a long tail of investors. large pharma and small biotech don't often have the same priorities and incentives. there is no unifying node that turns these pieces into a coherent whole.

biotech doesn’t just need more innovation; it needs coordination. it needs someone who can articulate why this industry matters, make the geopolitical case, advocate for regulatory clarity, and translate between science and washington. it needs someone who can build a narrative around biotech as a strategic national asset rather than a niche technical field. biotech needs its david sacks: a movement builder, a policy champion, a narrative architect. until someone steps into that role, the industry will continue to produce world-class science while punching far below its weight in culture, policy, and national strategy.

[Kate @Kate_chain]

@ronalfa Amen 🫡

[Kate @Kate_chain]

@BTSMchat @TheLizArmy @Sabine_NJ @mcintose @StupertInTO Thank you for the update! You touched so many people during critical points in their journey. I think it's safe to say we all made a friend through this #BTSM 🙏💫

[Kate @Kate_chain]

When you have a granular view of the world it's easier to see what connections can be made, where the gaps are, and where the innovation can occur.

Inner and outer joins across ecosystems to strengthen signals. 💫

[Kate @Kate_chain]

@DrDiGiorgio RVUs probably the root of this madness

[Kate @Kate_chain]

@NoBanksNearby I know this ❤️ I love you too 🫂

[Kate @Kate_chain]

"Healthcare is failing because of regulatory capture"

This applies not just to the care you see in clinic today, but to translational medicine as well. It's a minefield for progress.

[Dutch Rojas @DutchRojas]

Mark, you’re right about the symptoms; consolidation, high prices, a few players controlling everything.

As you know, the cause isn’t the market.

It’s the laws that eliminated the market.

Congress banned physician ownership, protected facility fees, blocked new surgery centers, and wrote rules that guarantee consolidation.

Break those laws and the “few companies” disappear without federal micromanagement.

Healthcare is failing because of regulatory capture.