Welcome to Partnology’s Biotech Leader Spotlight Series, where we highlight the remarkable accomplishments and visionary leadership of biotech industry pioneers. This series is about showcasing the groundbreaking strides made by exceptional leaders who have transformed scientific possibilities into tangible realities. Through insightful interviews, we invite you to join us in following the inspiring journeys of these executives who continue to shape the landscape of the biotech industry. This week we are recognizing:
Craig Parker, Chief Executive Officer
Craig Parker is currently President & CEO of Surrozen (SRZN) , a biotechnology company pioneering the discovery and development of novel tissue specific antibodies that modulate the Wnt signaling pathway. Since 2018, he has led the company’s growth from Series A to a public company with multiple first-in class clinical development candidates, a robust research pipeline, proprietary antibody technologies and a corporate partnership. In establishing its industry leadership in the discovery of Wnt signaling therapeutics, Surrozen has filed more than 30 patent applications and published more than a dozen manuscripts in high impact journals related to its novel Wnt signaling mimetics.
Craig was previously Senior Vice President and Head of Corporate Development at Jazz Pharmaceuticals. Before joining Jazz, he was Executive Vice President, Corporate Development and Scientific Affairs at Geron Corporation. Craig’s biotechnology industry experience also includes senior management roles at Human Genome Sciences, Proteolix and Immunex Corporation all of which were ultimately acquired. Craig has been a clinical development project team member on more than ten novel molecule programs including several that were ultimately approved. Craig’s career also includes 12 years as a Wall Street research analyst where he was ranked one of the top biotechnology industry analysts by The Wall Street Journal, Institutional Investor and Reuters.
Craig attended the College at the University of Chicago, the Georgetown University School of Medicine, and the Stephen M Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. He is a member of the Board of Directors at InduPro, the Scientific Advisory Board at the Life Sciences Institute University of Michigan, and a Venture Partner at The Column Group.
You’ve moved fluidly between Wall Street, large pharma, and biotech startups. Looking back, what are the key lessons you’ve carried from each stage of your career into your role as CEO of Surrozen?
I was fortunate early in my business career to get broad exposure to drug development and the biotechnology industry. After medical school and business school, my career trajectory was still not entirely clear to me. I was lucky to find a role as a sell-side research analyst covering the biotech industry, which turned out to be an incredible training ground. It exposed me to every critical aspect of the field— commercialization, clinical development, regulatory science, manufacturing and the role of leadership. Although I was observing from the outside, it was an invaluable way to learn the full spectrum of issues impacting success in the biotech industry.
At J.P. Morgan, I especially appreciated the firm’s emphasis on high-quality research. We invested time in careful research on companies and writing detailed reports, which pushed me to think deeply about the challenges facing drug development and the industry as a whole. That experience not only sparked my interest in working within biotech but also gave me a foundation to transition into an operating role, despite having no prior company experience.
I joined Immunex in 1999, which at the time was the third-largest biotech company and had recently commercialized Enbrel. It was a pivotal experience that allowed me to see what life was really like inside a biotech company, rather than just analyzing it from afar. I was incredibly fortunate to have worked at two of the protein discovery and genomic pioneers in the early years of the industry – Immunex and Human Genome Sciences. After Immmunex, I returned to sell-side equity research, which I continued to enjoy, but my experience at Immunex reinforced how much I valued being in an operating role rather than solely analyzing the industry. I then returned to the industry in a variety of roles.
All of these experiences proved useful when I joined Surrozen. At a startup, you have to have a broad view of your responsibilities and key success factors. Every member of the management team has to serve multiple roles. As CEO, you’re not looked to typically as a technical subject-matter expert but you need to understand everything from capital raising to partnering, preclinical data, toxicology, and manufacturing. The broad perspective I gained as a research analyst prepared me for the wide range of responsibilities that come with building a biotech company.
Tell me more about Surrozen – what are you working on and what excites you most about the next phase of Surrozen’s journey?
Surrozen is unique in its focus on a single, powerful pathway in cell biology: the Wnt pathway. This pathway plays a critical role in embryonic development, stem cell renewal, and determining cell fate—essentially telling cells what their specialization will be. Later research across organisms and tissues revealed that Wnt signaling is also central to how the body responds to injury and maintains specialized functions such as intestinal epithelium renewal, bone turnover, and liver function.
Despite its fundamental importance, the Wnt pathway had never been successfully targeted with drugs. An acquaintance captured it well when I joined the company telling me: “The Wnt pathway is on the Mount Olympus of undrugged targets.” It represents a central, powerful biology that had remained inaccessible to therapeutic intervention.
One of Surrozen’s founders brought forward key insights into how Wnt ligands interact with their receptors. This led to the idea of creating bispecific antibodies that could selectively activate the pathway in specific tissues—improving function or enabling regeneration in response to injury. Surrozen was founded on this breakthrough, securing foundational intellectual property around the concept of agonizing the Wnt pathway with multivalent, multispecific antibodies.
We have chosen to apply this platform in ophthalmology. Human genetics provided strong evidence that Wnt signaling is critical in retinal vascular development. While rare congenital retinal diseases linked to this pathway may not be tractable therapeutic opportunities, they validated the biology. Building on that foundation, in 2022 we out-licensed one molecule targeting the retina and advanced additional internal programs. In 2024, our primary competitor demonstrated clinical benefit in a Phase 1 trial, further reinforcing the importance of Wnt signaling in prevalent retinal diseases such as diabetic macular edema and wet AMD.
Today, Surrozen’s pipeline is dedicated to ophthalmology, with several molecules in preclinical development. These programs not only target the Wnt pathway but also integrate complementary mechanisms, including VEGF and IL-6 inhibition. Together, they reflect our strategy of leveraging fundamental biology to address vision-threatening retinal diseases.
You’ve been in leadership roles during acquisitions and integrations (e.g., Human Genome Sciences with GSK). What do you think executives often underestimate in those moments of transition?
If someone hasn’t negotiated contracts before, the complexity of certain terms in M&A deals—despite how quickly they can close—can be surprisingly challenging. In addition, in my experience, acquirers are often less thoughtful than you might expect or hope when it comes to recognizing which individuals are critical to the program’s success or understanding the broader composition of the company.
My advice is not to assume the acquiring company fully understands what you do. Often, their focus is on a single molecule. They may be unaware that you have other programs, or that you’ve built a critical and productive research function. People often enter these transactions believing the other side is deeply informed about every aspect of the company, but in reality, that’s frequently not the case.
You’ve led corporate development at multiple companies. From a CEO perspective now, how do you think about balancing near-term financing needs with long-term strategic positioning?
This is always the balance for small companies—there’s no secret formula. Non-dilutive capital can be critical to advancing both the enterprise and the research pipeline, which makes identifying partnering opportunities essential. Investors often describe partnerships as technical validation of what you’re doing—and sometimes they are—but the real value lies in the capital itself and in understanding how strategic investors value your molecule or technology. Sometimes it’s more than you expect; sometimes less.
That said, you have to pause and think carefully before entering a partnership. While it may provide non-dilutive capital, the moment you partner you are, in effect, diluting the value of your asset. For certain therapeutic areas, a partner may be necessary—either because the capital required is beyond what you could raise alone, or because investors perceive the risk as too high until they see strategic interest. In those cases, a partnership may not be optional; it may be essential to advancing a program or molecule.
The key is to avoid giving away too much value too early. That requires a vibrant, honest discussion within the company—and, for private companies, with investors as well. Sometimes it helps to run a structured debate to rigorously evaluate the pros and cons and think through all implications, both positive and negative.
Ultimately, the biotech and pharma industries can be symbiotic, and partnerships are inescapable for certain programs at certain times in discovery and development. The key insight can then become not whether to partner, but when and on what terms, so that you capture the benefit of non-dilutive capital without sacrificing too much long-term asset value.
Looking at the current biotech funding climate, what signals do you pay attention to that guide your thinking about capital strategy?
I already mentioned one key factor: whether there is strategic interest in your area. That doesn’t mean you should build a company for an M&A exit—you need to build it to be successful on its own. But investors, whether private or public, want to understand the nature of strategic interest in your molecule or category, and how potential partners value it. Strategic alignment is an essential part of capital raising. For example, in ophthalmology right now, there’s clearly growing strategic interest in certain ocular diseases and targets, which shapes how companies can raise capital.
At the same time, what’s happening in the public equity markets is equally critical. Like it or not, you have to acknowledge what the market is signaling about your space or your molecules. That doesn’t mean you should pivot every time sentiment shifts, but you do need to understand how your program is perceived. If investors believe your approach is too risky, or if there’s no clear regulatory precedent, raising money will be far more difficult.
As with partnering, it comes down to balance. You need conviction in your team’s insights and the courage to pursue innovation and take risks—that’s essential to success. But you also need to stay grounded in the realities of how you’re going to fund that work. You can’t ignore the capital markets or strategic investors; you have to weigh their perspectives and integrate that into your planning, all while keeping your long-term vision intact.
If you were advising a first-time biotech CEO today, what’s one piece of advice you wish you’d had earlier in your career?
I think this is true for leadership at all levels, not just for CEOs. I guest lecture in a graduate school course that typically includes a mix of PhD students, MBA students, engineering students, medical students, and some public health students. Inevitably, they all ask for career advice at the end of my lecture. What I tell them—advice I would give to a CEO or someone early in their career—is to develop a personal philosophy about leadership because even early in your career you’ll have leadership opportunities.
You can adopt ideas from others—there are plenty of great ones out there—but your philosophy has to be genuine to your own values. It should resonate with you personally and guide how you approach ethical questions, managing people, instilling culture, and leading. In class, I give an example from someone else: “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” That’s obviously just one element of a larger set of values you may have but it illustrates the idea: find something authentic that can inform how you lead, whether you’re a project team leader, a research associate managing a small group, or a CEO.
One aspect of my own personal philosophy is inspired by Jonas Salk. I’m inspired by his contributions to public health and his commitment to running massive clinical trials decades ago to develop a polio vaccine. He believed that “the greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more.” To me, that means never resting on past success; your professional life should be about continually striving to achieve more. That’s one element of my personal philosophy, and my advice to others is to find a set of values that establish your North Star and that can be effectively communicated and implemented. You can draw inspiration from others’ ideas about leadership, mission, or aspiration, but it should ultimately guide your actions in a way that’s authentic to you and understandable to people you lead. I think you should be able to articulate your leadership principles when interviewing a prospective employee when they say “Tell me about your company”. You should be able to say “these are the principles that matter to me and to the company.”
