Our values

We are a team of scientists and dreamers who share a set of values to promote an enabling, transparent, team oriented, mission driven culture. We all want to change the world for the benefit of patients. If we succeed, our culture will be our secret sauce.

Our Team

Uri Lopatin, MD
Interim CEO
close
Uri Lopatin, MD
Interim CEO
Uri is NextVivo’s Interim CEO and an Operating Partner at Khosla Ventures, where he focuses on biotech and life sciences. Before Khosla Ventures, Uri was the founding CEO of Pardes Biosciences, leading it from inception through its phase 1 trials and public listing. He also served as a visiting group partner at Y Combinator, focusing on biotech portfolio companies, and was the founder and Chief Medical Officer at Assembly Biosciences. Prior to his entrepreneurial endeavors, Uri ran clinical and translational programs at Schering-Plough, Roche, and Gilead Sciences. He holds a bachelor's degree cum laude in biology from Cornell University, an MD from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of NJ; completed his internal medicine training at the University of Washington and NYU Medical Center; and is board certified in Infectious Diseases from the NIH, where his research focus was on viral mucosal immunology.
Cécile Chartier, Ph.D.
Chief Scientific Officer
close
Cécile Chartier, Ph.D.
Chief Scientific Officer
Cécile is NextVivo’s CSO. She was previously VP of Research at Iovance Biotherapeutics, where she led the development of Next Generation TIL therapies through Research to early-stage clinical trials. While at Iovance, Cécile oversaw the Translational Research activities supporting lifileucel registrational trials. Prior to this, she spent 12 years at OncoMed Pharmaceuticals, where she served as Senior Director of Target Validation and led multiple antibody therapeutics project teams through Research and Development to IND filing. Cécile brings tremendous leadership experience to NextVivo’s cell and antibody therapeutics programs. Cécile performed her postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School and received her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Louis Pasteur University in France.
Katie Ching, Ph.D.
Associate Director
close
Katie Ching, Ph.D.
Associate Director
Katie brings to NextVivo 13 years of experience in development of antibody therapeutics. She got her start in the antibody field at the NIH, developing high throughput immunoassays for autoimmune and infectious disease.  Before joining NextVivo, Katie worked at Ligand Pharmaceuticals for 8 years where she was a senior scientist focused on developing a transgenic chicken to expresses fully human sequence antibodies. She was very excited to learn how much more easily and effectively human antibodies could potentially be made by using NextVivo’s human models. Katie performed her postdoctoral research at NIH and received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Georgetown University.
Jihang Ju, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist
close
Jihang Ju, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist
Jihang Ju brings tremendous expertise to development NextVivo’s organoid platform based on his previous 5 years of experience as a research Scientist in Calvin Kuo’s lab at Stanford University. In this capacity, Jihang served as a leading expert in development many of the technologies that NextVivo will build on, and was the key person in large-scale NIH funded national programs for organoid development, including the NIH Human Cancer Models Initiative (HCMI).
Jihang received his Ph.D. in Cell Biology from Shanghai Institute for Biological Sciences, which is the top research institute in China.
Marc Leushacke, Ph.D.
Principal Scientist
close
Marc Leushacke, Ph.D.
Principal Scientist
Marc brings to NextVivo substantial experience in cutting edge organoid technology development which he gained through his successful 10 year career in academic research. He previously led the Organoid Models of Disease Lab as a Principal Investigator at the A*STAR Institute in Singapore. Marc has published influential award-winning research using organoid models to discover novel molecular mechanisms underlying stem cell differentiation, tissue regeneration, and cancer. Marc received his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the Max Planck Institute in Germany.
Po-Yu (Steve) Lin, Ph.D.
Scientist II
close
Po-Yu (Steve) Lin, Ph.D.
Scientist II
Steve joined NextVivo after performing his postdoctoral research at Stanford University, where he gained 5 years of experience in tissue engineering and developing organoid models, including using ALI technology. Steve received his Ph.D. in bioengineering from UCLA.
Bhawana (Suruchi) Shrestha, Ph.D.
Scientist II
close
Bhawana (Suruchi) Shrestha, Ph.D.
Scientist II
Suruchi is a Scientist II at NextVivo, with a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She specializes in tumor immunology and antibody engineering, particularly in developing Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes (TILs). Her work has earned her several prestigious awards, including the Sharp Graduate Innovator Award and the PhRMA Foundation Pre-Doctoral Fellowship. Suruchi also holds a patent for synthetic binding agents and has published extensively in high-impact journals on her research in non-hormonal contraceptives.
Sneha Stalin
Research Associate
close
Sneha Stalin
Research Associate
Diana Symmes
Senior Operations Manager
close
Diana Symmes
Senior Operations Manager
Jenny Yuan
Scientist
close
Jenny Yuan
Scientist

Co-Founders

Adam Margolin, Ph.D.
Co-Founder
close
Adam Margolin, Ph.D.
Co-Founder
Adam Margolin is a co-founder of NextVivo. He was so excited by the potential of NextVivo that he gave up his meteoric ascension in academic research in which he served as Senior Associate Dean, Professor, and Chair of Genetics and Genomic Science at Mount Sinai, where he led a 700 person organization that rose to become the #3 ranked genetics department in the country. Concurrently, Dr. Margolin served as Chief of Data Science of Sema4, and contributed to the company achieving two successful funding rounds yielding a valuation over $2B. Adam is an internationally recognized researcher in the fields of data science and cancer research, as evidenced by 28 funded projects, an active publication record, and development of widely used methods that have been ranked among the most influential algorithms in the field of computational biology. He performed his postdoctoral research at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and obtained his Ph.D. in Biomedical Informatics from Columbia University. He also holds a master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor’s degree from the Wharton School of Business.
Calvin Kuo
Co-Founder
close
Calvin Kuo
Co-Founder
Mark Davis
Co-Founder
close
Mark Davis
Co-Founder

News

BUSINESSWIRE / DECEMBER 9, 2021

NextVivo Launches from Khosla Ventures to Transform Drug Development Using Next-Generation Organoid Platform

WALL STREET JOURNAL / DECEMBER 9, 2021

Khosla Ventures Leads Seed Financing for Biotech Startup NextVivo

ENDPOINTS NEWS / DECEMBER 9, 2021

Fledgling Stanford spinout promising 3D models of fully human tissue wins the backing of some big-time investors

Publications

DECEMBER 7, 2023

ESMO IO 2023, Geneva

SCIENCE IMMUNOLOGY / JULY 29, 2021

CD8+ T cells specific for conserved coronavirus epitopes correlate with milder disease in patients with COVID-19

Mallajosyula V, Ganjavi C, Chakraborty S, McSween AM, Pavlovitch-Bedzyk AJ, Wilhelmy J, Nau A, Manohar M, Nadeau KC, Davis MM.

NATURE MEDICINE / JANUARY 11, 2021

Modeling human adaptive immune responses with tonsil organoids.

Wagar LE, Salahudeen A, Constantz CM, Wendel BS, Lyons MM, Mallajosyula V, Jatt LP, Adamska JZ, Blum LK, Gupta N, Jackson KJ, Yang F, Röltgen K, Roskin KM, Blaine KM, Meister KD, Ahmad IN, Cortese M, Dora EG, Tucker SN, Sperling AI, Jain A, Davies DH, Felgner PL, Hammer GB, Kim PS, Robinson WH, Boyd SD, Kuo, CJ, Davis, MM.

NATURE / NOVEMBER 25, 2020

Progenitor identification and SARS-CoV-2 infection in human distal lung organoids.

Salahudeen AA, Choi SS, Rustagi A, Zhu J, van Unen V, de la O SM, Flynn RA, Margalef-Català M, Santos AJM, Ju J, Batish A, Usui T, Zheng GXY, Edwards CE, Wagar LE, Luca V, Anchang B, Nagendran M, Nguyen K, Hart DJ, Terry JM, Belgrader P, Ziraldo SB, Mikkelsen TS,  Harbury PB, Glenn JS, Garcia KC, Davis MM, Baric RS, Sabatti C, Amieva MR, Blish CA, Desai TJ, Kuo CJ.

CELL / DECEMBER 13, 2018

Organoid Modeling of the Tumor Immune Microenvironment

Neal JT, Li X, Zhu J, Giangarra V, Liu IH, Chiou SH, Salahudeen AA, Smith AR, Deutsch BC, Ju J, Liao L, Zemek AJ, Zhao F, Karlsson K, Shultz LM, Metzner TJ, Nadauld LD, Tseng Y-Y, Alkhairy S, Oh C, Keskula P, Mendoza-Villanueva D, De La Vega FM, Kunz PL, Leppert J, Sunwoo JB, Sabatti S, Boehm JS, Hahn WC, Zheng GXY, Davis MM, Kuo CJ.

NATURE MEDICINE / MAY 25, 2014

Oncogenic transformation of diverse gastrointestinal tissues in primary organoid culture

Li X, Nadauld L, Ootani A, Corney DC, Pai RK, Gevaert O, Cantrell MA, Rack PG, Neal JT, Chan CW, Yeung T, Gong X, Yuan J, Wilhelmy J, Robine S, Attardi LD, Plevritis SK, Hung KE, Chen CZ, Ji HP, Kuo CJ.

NATURE MEDICINE / JUNE 15, 2009

Sustained in vitro intestinal epithelial culture within a Wnt-dependent stem cell niche.

Ootani A, Li X, Ueno H, Sangiorgi E, Ho QT, Toda S, Sugihara H, Fujimoto K, Weissman IL, Capecchi MR, Kuo CJ.

Investors