🧬 Resilience, Reinvention & Next-Gen Antibody Discovery | Martin Brenner Rerelease (3/3)
May 14, 2026
Martin Brenner, CEO & CSO of iBio, closes out his three-part conversation with Jon Chee by tracing the arc from Stoke Therapeutics to Recursion to Phenex — and into the reinvented iBio. Martin unpacks the resilience required when nothing works, the line-of-sight portfolio system he built to run 100 programs with 20 biologists, and how a team of opposites at Phenex became the most effective R&D unit of his career. He then dives deep into iBio's current antibody discovery platform — epitope steering, masked antibodies, and StableCube — and shares an unfiltered look at what it's really like to run a NYSE-listed micro-cap biotech.
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"If you don't solve a problem, don't even think about talking about it."
Martin Brenner, CEO & CSO of iBio, closes out his three-part conversation with Jon Chee by tracing the arc from Stoke Therapeutics to Recursion to Phenex — and into the reinvented iBio. Martin unpacks the resilience required when nothing works, the line-of-sight portfolio system he built to run 100 programs with 20 biologists, and how a team of opposites at Phenex became the most effective R&D unit of his career. He then dives deep into iBio's current antibody discovery platform — epitope steering, masked antibodies, and StableCube — and shares an unfiltered look at what it's really like to run a NYSE-listed micro-cap biotech.
Key Topics Covered:
- Resilience at Stoke: Staying the course when every program fails and finding the breakthrough that triggers a Series A.
- The Recursion Identity Shift: How challenging 15 years of pharma truths made Martin a "real biotech guy."
- The Orchestra Principle at Phenex: Letting a team of opposites each play to their strengths to create something greater than the sum of its parts.
- iBio's Pivot: Acquiring Rubric's ML tech, divesting the Texas CDMO, and relaunching as a next-gen antibody company.
- Life After IPO: The real costs, back-office burdens, and why "build to flip" always goes wrong.
- Communicating Science with Integrity: Why being honest about what you can't do yet builds more credibility than hype.
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Subscribe to the Podcast:
Find our guest, Martin Brenner at these links:
Website: https://ibioinc.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/
Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin, Owned by Excedr:
Website: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:
The In Silico Human Surfaceome (Bausch-Fluck et al., PNAS): https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1808790115
AlphaFold2 Applications in Biology (Nature): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-023-01381-z
Mammalian Display for Antibody Discovery (PMC): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11459229/
Stoke SCN1A/Dravet Syndrome Study (PubMed): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32848094/
Nucleate: https://nucleate.org
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:
iBio: https://ibioinc.com/
Stoke Therapeutics: https://www.stoketherapeutics.com/
Recursion Pharmaceuticals: https://www.recursion.com/
Phenex Pharmaceuticals (now OmniAb / Pyrus): https://www.omniab.com/
Ligand Pharmaceuticals: https://www.ligand.com/
OmniAb: https://www.omniab.com/
Enveda Biosciences: https://enveda.com/
Apple Tree Partners: https://www.appletreepartners.com/
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory: https://www.cshl.edu/
Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/
Adrian Krainer: https://www.cshl.edu/research/faculty-staff/adrian-r-krainer/
Isabel Aznarez: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isabel-aznarez-aaa21417/
Vishwa Gulati: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vishwas-gulati-a4474338/
Thomas (Gus) Gustafson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-gus-gustafson-96210a14/
Matt Greving: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewgreving/
Felipe Duran: https://www.bioxconomy.com/finance-and-accounting/cfo-felipe-duran-leads-ibio-s-financial-strategy-with-agility-and-vision/
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:50 Choosing Your First Startup — Team, Runway, and Technology
02:24 Stoke Therapeutics: Resilience When Nothing Works
05:30 Learning to Run Lean — Art Levin's IND Lesson
07:13 The Mental Shift from Big Pharma to Biotech Accountability
09:41 Building a Peer Network When You're the Last Expert in the Room
11:36 What Recursion Taught Martin About Challenging Every Assumption
15:31 Running 100 Programs with 20 Biologists: The Line-of-Sight System
18:31 Deconstructing Drug Discovery Truths After Recursion
20:08 Vishwa Gulati, Enveda, and the No-Plan-B Entrepreneur
24:02 Phenex: The Magic of a Team of Opposites
30:54 The Ligand Acquisition — M&A, Due Diligence, and the Cooling-Off Period
35:57 Why Martin Joined iBio and What the Plant Technology Promise Looked Like
41:03 The Pivot: Acquiring Rubric's ML Technology and Laying Off 70 People in Texas
41:40 iBio's Current Platform — Epitope Steering, Masked Antibodies, and StableCube
51:54 iBio's Layered Business Model and the Pursuit of Validating Deals
55:04 Cultivating Innovation Culture — Free-Flowing Conversation Over Structured Meetings
01:00:44 Running a Public Biotech — What They Don't Tell You After the IPO
01:06:34 Communicating Science to Investors with Integrity
01:10:24 iBio's Horizon: Survival Mode, Data Flywheel, and the Dream Sequence
01:15:02 Shout-Outs: Manuela, Dodd Michael, Gus, Isabel, and the iBio Team
01:17:41 Advice to 21-Year-Old Martin: Get Into Biotech Faster
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.