Pavan Cheruvu

CEO @ Bitterroot Bio, cardiologist, husband and dad

[Brad Gerstner @altcap]

3 M kids in 34 days have claimed their Invest America | @TrumpAccounts. Don’t let your kid be left behind. Have a child under 18? Sign up now. Free investment account for life. Every kid born forevermore. $1000 at birth. Direct compounding 🇺🇸🇺🇸.
https://t.co/eRYUlDnhgX

[Pavan Cheruvu @PavanCheruvuMD]

@BlackChallk A sees

[Pavan Cheruvu @PavanCheruvuMD]

@StanfordVasc @NickLeeper78 @StanfordCancer Congrats Nick!

[Nick Leeper @NickLeeper78]

They say it’s about the journey, not the destination, and I couldn’t imagine a more talented and dedicated team to be on this journey with. Amazing to think about all we have achieved and how much lies ahead. Onward!

[Robert Nelsen @rtnarch]

Starlink Mini is one of the coolest inventions ever. Everyone should have, with a solar battery for emergencies. It goes where I go.

[Bitterroot Bio @BitterrootBio]

On Global Running Day, we showed our unsinkable spirit! Every mile we ran turned into a donation to the American Heart Association, directly supporting ASCVD patients. Even small steps can lead to big changes in cardiovascular health! #ASCVD #Cardioimmunology #AHA

[Bitterroot Bio @BitterrootBio]

Read the full press release: https://t.co/YRYYAYZIxP

[Pavan Cheruvu @PavanCheruvuMD]

@ethanjweiss Congrats Ethan! Terrific summary of your team's groundbreaking work at @Marea_tx !

[Bitterroot Bio @BitterrootBio]

Today, we presented foundational data from our Phase 1 study of BRB-002, a novel protein therapy in development for the treatment of ASCVD, demonstrating encouraging safety at all tested doses, with robust target engagement. #ACC25

View our poster: https://t.co/BC8JsMfZmK

[Nick Leeper @NickLeeper78]

Thanks for the invitation to present Joe. Excited to give this talk on the intersection between cancer and cardiovascular disease. Hope the group enjoys it.

[Bruce Booth @LifeSciVC]

Its a long journey to deliver novel classes of drugs. And new medicine "innovation cycles" always go through waves of initial exuberance, challenging disillusionment, and, if lucky, eventual delivery of value to patients. It's the very nature of innovating new things in biomedicine!

[Pavan Cheruvu @PavanCheruvuMD]

And a phenomenal leadership team

[Pavan Cheruvu @PavanCheruvuMD]

@BiotechTVHQ @gline What a cool idea. I will definitely tune in, @gline!

[Pavan Cheruvu @PavanCheruvuMD]

Onwards! With positive data from Phase 1, our team is now focused on initiating a Phase 2 PoC study in patients with atherosclerosis. We're one step closer to our goal of improving the lives of patients with heart disease.

[Bitterroot Bio @BitterrootBio]

Bitterroot Bio Reports Data on Safety and Target Engagement from Phase 1 First-in-Human Study of BRB-002 in Healthy Volunteers. Read the full Press Release here: https://t.co/cBbvc3ZinG

[Bitterroot Bio @BitterrootBio]

Bitterroot Bio Reports Data on Safety and Target Engagement from Phase 1 First-in-Human Study of BRB-002 in Healthy Volunteers. Read the full Press Release here: https://t.co/cBbvc3ZinG

[David Li @davidycli]

My prior post below re China x US biotech has caught the attention of a few of you

Why am I well positioned to comment on the situation?

A short backstory:

In 2021 I co-founded precision oncology biotech, @melioratx, based in Boston and SF. We work on covalent allosteric small molecule drugs for breast cancer and other solid tumors

Over the last 12-18 months, we started noticing that there seemed to be a Chinese competitor asset for every target we were exploring. M&A in the industry began slowing noticeably as Pharma buyers opted to license drug assets from China en masse. Slowly at first, but then very quickly, the market was changing underneath us

To learn more about what was actually happening, this past December I spent time on the ground in China in Shanghai and Suzhou, meeting many of the leaders in local biotech ecosystem across small mlc, ADCs, and more. I toured their facilities and had the chance to see their capabilities up close

What I saw would cause any biotech leader to sit up and take notice. Science parks that were many multiples larger than Kendall Square or South SF, filled with life science startups. Integrated biology / chemistry / biochem / vivarium labs that were processing 10s of thousands of in vivo mouse experiments monthly. Numerous programs which went from standing start to registering for human clinical trials within 18 months (!)

IMHO direct competition on the basis of R&D execution alone is no longer an option. It’s a no contest.

Make no mistake, my lens for observing these developments are definitively American. I grew up in the heartland of America. My youth consists of 10 years in Louisville Kentucky and 8 more in Chicago (reasons why am I a huge Kentucky Wildcats and Chicago Bulls fan). I received a world class education at Penn’s Life Science and Management program, founded by long time Merck CEO Roy Vagelos. I started my career in biotech investment banking in Goldman’s New York office, and have now spent a decade in the US life sciences industry, culminating with co-founding Meliora. Through lots of hard work and (more than) a few lucky breaks, our small but impactful team at Meliora has been able to gain funding, generate compelling data for our lead molecule, and attract stellar luminaries in the industry to our cause (ex CEOs of Bayer and Biomarin are on the Board).

I am living out my American Dream, with emphasis on *American* - as it’s no exaggeration to say that America, a country that has provided so many opportunities for which I owe an eternal debt of gratitude, is truly the only country where my story could have happened.

My family and I hail from a tiny Tier 3 city in Hunan province in China, one of the country’s poorest (I had never even seen a flush toilet until I landed in California 30+ years ago). Being from Hunan, my parents, despite their best efforts to study whenever the electricity was still on, were only able to attend a small local college and did not attend a top college in China like Peking University or Tsinghua. In China meant they would have been stuck in whatever small town they were born in, with a real cap on opportunity — no matter how much grit, or talent, or drive they (or later their children - me) had

The only reason I am able to be a biotech founder and pursue my dream of creating drugs for patients is because my parents immigrated to the US; I don’t speak lightly when I say it is our duty to protect and grow the American Dream.

That is also exactly why we must confront the truth of the current moment. Drastic change has come to the drug discovery industry. America has led, and can continue to lead, the biopharma market - but in order to do so, it must evolve to meet the changing global reality —>

Based on what I have seen first hand (and the data results over the last 1-2 years), Chinese biotechs will not be beat in a game of execution. They will “out engineer” any solvable pharmacology problem you place before them [similar story to Chinese firms leading the way in electric cars, home devices, robotics]

However - all is not lost for the US biotech industry, far from it. Fortunately for the US, biology is messier and harder than straight industrial or electrical engineering. That means that true innovative, novel biology is (and likely will be, for a long, long time) at a premium in our industry - and that is where the US market shines

Exploring novel modalities of therapeutics to expand our drug toolkit, elucidating new underlying biological mechanisms to open up new therapeutic lines of attack against disease, and setting the global standard for converting translational / clinical trial insights into world class clinical patient care - these are the strengths US biotech must double down on

In a world where R&D execution becomes ever more commoditized, novel scientific innovation is where the vast majority of the value creation in the therapeutics universe will accrue, and where American innovation should not, and cannot, cede its pole position

*A new path forward*

So where to from here?

With all the talk about the rise of China biotech, the core truth does not change - making medicines still revolves around the same fundamental equation: [quality / novelty of the biological hypothesis] x [quantity / speed of R&D execution experiments]. Whomever is best at achieving this equation repeatedly will inevitably create the most clinically impactful medicines over time.

We are in early stages, however it is becoming clear that those who can figure out how to capitalize on the US’ strengths in novel biology while leveraging Chinese R&D execution capabilities will be highly formidable. This new model may in fact enable US biopharma to even surpass previous heights in developing new medicines.

Perhaps most importantly, there is a path forward where American biotechs continue to be the intellectual powerhouse of the industry, capturing the IP generated by leveraging the best R&D execution abilities globally, while also still breaking ground scientifically and clinically.

We owe it to American innovation to figure out what is that path. Patients, here - and across the world, are waiting.

Investors, scientists, entrepreneurs, and policy makers interested in taking action on the significant opportunities ahead, feel free to DM. I will also be at JPM conference in a couple weeks. Catch you on the other side.

[Bitterroot Bio @BitterrootBio]

Thank you for the dedication of our talented Team and Partners. We look forward to a joyful season and a 2025 filled with heart, and transformative progress for cardiovascular patients everywhere. Cheers! #Bitterrootforward

[Daphne Zohar @daphnezohar]

Congrats to Neil Kumar and the $BBIO team. I have a close family member with ATTR cardiomyopathy and I’m grateful that there are now a few options for patients including $ALNY and $PFE
Biotech is hard and the journey to an approved new medicine is indeed a decades long odyssey

[Pavan Cheruvu @PavanCheruvuMD]

@VivekGRamaswamy Well said, @VivekGRamaswamy ! The deck is stacked against small biotech. To maintain America’s leadership in medical innovation, FDA needs a dual mandate to accelerate drug development, alongside its mandate to protect human health and safety. These goals are in fact related.

[Pradeep Natarajan @pnatarajanmd]

CLEAR: Among 7062 with MI followed for ~3y, colchicine v placebo did not improve risk for major CV outcomes but there were more adverse events. While cheaper, colchicine has many effects. Need more specific targeting of inflammation for CV benefit https://t.co/umf9C2waAp #AHA24