SynBioBeta Speaker
Laura Glickman
Adjuvia
Co-Founder & CEO
Dr. Laura Hix Glickman, PhD, Co-Founder and CEO for Adjuvia Therapeutics, has over 30 years ofacademic and biotech experience developing vaccines, small molecules, enzyme-based therapeutics and nucleic acid delivery platforms to treat cancer, infectious disease, autoimmunity, mitochondrial dysfunction, and hemophilia.She has previously served as Founder, Executive, Board Member, Advisor and Scientific Lead for multiple public and private biotech companies: Actym Therapeutics (BIVF, Panacea Ventures, Illumina Ventures, JLO Ventures), Aduro Biotech (NASDAQ: ADRO), Catalyst Biosciences (NASDAQ: CBIO), Hawaii Biotech,Cardax Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:CDXI), Selva Therapeutics, Allos, OptiGenix, Immunitas Consulting, and is a Berkeley SkyDeck Key Advisor and Member of the Bio Selection Committee.In 2020, Dr. Glickman was named the #5 top-ranked female Series A Founder in the U.S. across all industries by Female Founders Fund, with an oversubscribed Series A of $34MM for Actym. She was also named the 2022 California Top 101 Presidents in the Biotechnology Space by Best Startup US.Dr. Glickman has 20 issued patents and multiple pending applications, over 20 research publications, and has successfully filed multiple IND applications to the FDA. As an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, she double majored in Molecular & Cell Biology and Psychology and is a proud contributor to Berkeley’s global status as #1 institution worldwide for venture-backed startups founded by undergraduate alumni. She earned her PhD in Cancer Immunology from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, where she was a Department of Defense Predoctoral Fellow studying “Mechanisms of Immune Suppression during Breast Cancer Metastasis.” She was among the 30 top Northwestern graduate students selected to participate in the Kellogg Business School’s Management for Scientists and Engineers Program, where she earned a certificate MBA.
SynBioBeta 2026 Tickets are Live
Confirmed Speakers
Sessions Featuring
Laura
This Year
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Longevity
Mitochondrial transplantation and genome editing: engineering the metabolic engine of complex life
Mitochondria are often pigeon-holed as the "powerhouse of the cell", giving the false impression that their primary role is as an ATP generator passively responding to the energetic demands of their environment. This is far from the truth. The mitochondria exist as a dynamic network that senses, integrates, and transduces biochemical, energetic, and physical signals, and these signals shape cell fate, lifespan, cancer risk, and more. This session explores emerging tools and methods to edit the small, maternally-inherited, circular mitochondrial genome present in dozens-to-hundreds of copies per cell as a means to prevent mitochondrial disease and optimize metabolic fitness. Additionally, we will discuss the promise of mitochondrial transplantation methodologies as a therapeutic intervention and to discuss the possible routes for mitochondrial metabolic engineering and a range of synthetic developments.
Get a Ticket
Featuring
Gordon Freedman
MitoWorld
Publisher
Mitochondrial-medicine ecosystem builder
Mariëlle van Kooten
Powerhouse Bio
CEO
Mitochondrial bioengineer
Colwyn Headley
Stanford University
Instructor
Mitochondrial-transplantation researcher targetting aging-immune heart disease
Ryan Olf
ARIA
Programme Director
Physicist chasing moonshots from quantum gases to biotech.
Laura Glickman
Adjuvia
Co-Founder & CEO
•
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Longevity
Mitochondrial transplantation and genome editing: engineering the metabolic engine of complex life
Mitochondria are often pigeon-holed as the "powerhouse of the cell", giving the false impression that their primary role is as an ATP generator passively responding to the energetic demands of their environment. This is far from the truth. The mitochondria exist as a dynamic network that senses, integrates, and transduces biochemical, energetic, and physical signals, and these signals shape cell fate, lifespan, cancer risk, and more. This session explores emerging tools and methods to edit the small, maternally-inherited, circular mitochondrial genome present in dozens-to-hundreds of copies per cell as a means to prevent mitochondrial disease and optimize metabolic fitness. Additionally, we will discuss the promise of mitochondrial transplantation methodologies as a therapeutic intervention and to discuss the possible routes for mitochondrial metabolic engineering and a range of synthetic developments.
Get a Ticket
Featuring
Gordon Freedman
MitoWorld
Publisher
Mitochondrial-medicine ecosystem builder
Mariëlle van Kooten
Powerhouse Bio
CEO
Mitochondrial bioengineer
Colwyn Headley
Stanford University
Instructor
Mitochondrial-transplantation researcher targetting aging-immune heart disease
Ryan Olf
ARIA
Programme Director
Physicist chasing moonshots from quantum gases to biotech.
Laura Glickman
Adjuvia
Co-Founder & CEO
Session lineup still growing
Get a Ticket
Featuring
Speaker Coming Soon
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Human Health
From Cells to Patients: Solving the Scale Mismatch in Virtual Biology
Drug discovery often measures biology at the cell level while interventions work at the tissue, organ, or whole-patient scale. This mismatch can make accurate cell-level predictions irrelevant in the clinic. This session dives into strategies to bridge that gap: multiscale modeling that nests single-cell dynamics within organ-level simulations, spatial transcriptomics that preserve context, and surrogate models that translate cell-level outputs into clinical biomarkers. Speakers will ask: how do we ensure virtual biology reflects not just what cells do in isolation, but how biology behaves in the real complexity of patients?
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Featuring
Speaker Coming Soon
