Last spring he joined Fountain Therapeutics as CEO, a company that merges artificial intelligence (AI) with machine learning (ML) to develop therapeutics for degenerative diseases.
Fountain Therapeutics CEO Dr. William Greene/Courtesy of Fountain Therapeutics.
What it means to age is changing, and William Greene, M.D., CEO of Fountain Therapeutics, is one of those driving the change. Rather than focusing primarily on lifespan, he and his company are focusing on healthspan, and in particular, the impact of chronic degenerative diseases. The goal is to restore cellular resilience.
“Lifespan has increased dramatically in the past 100 years, yet one of the consequences for each of us is the risk of developing a debilitating disease. My goal, and that of Fountain Therapeutics, is to extend the healthy portion of individuals’ lives, so the vibrant years extend further into older age. One of the ways is to attack, in a productive way, the classic, chronic diseases of aging, including immune senescence,” he told BioSpace.
“The field of aging has advanced considerably in terms of our understanding of the biology and in people’s experiences and expectations of aging. The key is to use that knowledge to shift from a needle-in-a-haystack approach to look at the consequences of aging,” Greene said.
This supports the development of more sensitive biomarkers, diagnostics and prognostics that have the potential to forestall or reverse the course of the disease. That, Greene shared, is what Fountain is working toward.
Throughout his career, Greene has approached the challenges posed by serious diseases from multiple perspectives – physician, researcher, entrepreneur, venture investor and operating executive. “I’ve been motivated and focused to use the tools of technology to improve patients’ health and lives. Everything I’ve done has been from the perspective of a physician and epidemiologist.
“I’m interested in using science as a way to help people,” he continued. The desire to use science to create better therapies led him into the biotech industry, where at Genentech he participated in the development of breakthrough therapies. The experience was deeply meaningful, and one, he discovered, that he wanted to share.
“I wanted to help other innovators have a greater impact, which led me to venture investing where I took what I’d learned to help bring best practices to startup companies so they could better develop important therapies.” To do that, Greene joined MPM Capital, which focuses on companies working on breakthrough therapies.
“That was an incredible experience,” he recalled. “But much as I like coaching, I found I missed playing. That led me back to the entrepreneurial world, with MPM’s backing, to my first startup company.” Last spring he joined Fountain Therapeutics as CEO, a company that merges artificial intelligence (AI) with machine learning (ML) to develop therapeutics for degenerative diseases.
“We use AI and ML to find patterns in complex data – specifically, patterns and features that change as the result of aging,” he said. Fountain does this based on its comprehensive database of cells and cellular aging. This helps therapies to be developed that are tightly targeted and more cost-effective, and thus more broadly available to patients in need.
As CEO, Greene is leveraging his experience in drug development and financing, with the goal of growing the internal pipeline and partnering with larger companies to advance candidates that are best developed in the pharma setting.
Personally, Greene said his goal is and has always been, to focus on great unmet needs. Becoming the CEO of Fountain is an opportunity to do so. Beyond that, “building a team is thrilling. I learn something new every week!”
For example, he pointed out, “our computation and biology teams aren’t siloed. Each week we sit together and teach each other about what we’re doing and how it fits with what our colleagues are doing. Therefore, I learned how computational biology is working on the ground – not just how AI applies to data sets, but how and why we had to develop a novel approach to analyzing data so we could understand the deep content imaging coming from our cellular database.
“Being on the cutting edge of this is tremendously exciting and really fun, and I’ve learned a lot about how teams can work together despite coming from different schools of thought and points of view,” Greene said. “How we merge our individual perspectives is an experiment unto itself, and to see the light bulb go on in colleagues’ eyes is extremely satisfying.”
To continue learning is not only personally enriching, but it’s also a way to increase one’s health span. Therefore, his mind is engaged outside the biotech world, too.
“I want to make sure I never stop learning. Being curious keeps you open to life’s opportunities,” Greene said. Since the pandemic, “I’ve been leveling up my culinary skills. It’s fun and productive.” Specifically, he’s perfecting the making of soufflés, thanks to Julia Child’s famous cookbooks. “They look fancy, but once you get the steps down, they’re not hard to make.”
Getting the steps down and then executing to create something extraordinary sounds a lot like biotech. Although Fountain is early in its development cycle, Greene has broad experience. He took Iconic Therapeutics, which he continues to lead as CEO and Board chair, from virtual start-up into the clinic, through multiple financing rounds, and now through its strategic development. Iconic Therapeutics is a privately held biotechnology company for which Greene has provided leadership and strategic guidance since its first venture round in 2014.
Succeeding, he said, takes “smart, dedicated teams that work well together. They’re the single greatest asset any company can have, especially young entrepreneurial ones.” The challenge is pulling together the right, passionate team.
“Biotechs are always working with imperfect knowledge,” Greene pointed out. “There’s a lot of uncertainty, so people here must be simultaneously curious, nimble, humble and audacious. Experiments don’t always work, and time is the enemy. You need money to buy time to make the programs work.”
Building a company in the COVID-19 environment has even more challenges. “Nothing can take the place of being in the lab, performing experiments, with a group of people feeding off each other’s intellect and energy to discover or create something new. We – as a society – are missing that during the pandemic.”
Succeeding individually and as a company “…really does take a village,” he stressed. “I’ve had incredible mentors and role models.” They not only have addressed the science, but how to apply it in the real world. “Keeping the experience of the patient central, and being intellectually honest with ourselves and the data, to let the data teach us, is my north star. It keeps me on track.”
