Alice Zhang
CEO & Founder, Verge Genomics
Verge Genomics is a therapeutics company that uses patient genomics to develop effective drugs for diseases with large unmet needs, starting with CNS disorders. The vision is to be the first to deliver effective treatments for multiple complex diseases, including Alzheimer’s Disease, Parkinson’s Disease and ALS, by using an “all-in- human” therapeutics engine that begins and ends with human data. They are a team of 22 combining experienced drug hunters with machine learning experts. Since raising $32MM last year, they have progressed their first program based on a novel target from target ID to lead optimization in 18 months, built a robust product pipeline in multiple diseases, and has built a repository of genomic information from CNS patients, creating one of the largest databases of this kind in the field.
Alice Zhang is the CEO and Co-founder of Verge Genomics. Alice has been named a Forbes 30 Under 30 Featured Honoree, MIT Technology Review’s Innovator Under 35, and SF Business Times’ 40 Under 40. Prior to Verge, she spent seven years at the forefront of systems biology research at the National Cancer Institute, the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University, and UCLA. She spent five years in the UCLA-Caltech MD/PhD program, where she helped author several papers on gene networks involved in neuroregeneration. Alice received her bachelor’s degree from Princeton University in Molecular Biology and was a recipient of the prestigious Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. In her spare time, Alice also is an angel investor and advisor for startups at the intersection of technology and biology.