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:
Robin Mansukhani is CEO and Co-Founder of Deciduous Therapeutics. Previously, he co-founded and served as President & CEO of Alzeca Biosciences, an Alzheimer’s/CNS diagnostic imaging company which was supported by venture investors and the NIH. He has been an invited speaker both domestically and abroad, including TEDx. Previously Robin has worked in early stage venture capital at The Maple Fund and investment banking at Axiom Capital. In the community, he co-founded BlueStamp Engineering, an intensive, project based engineering program for high school students in NYC, San Francisco, and Palo Alto. He has also served a term in AmeriCorps. Mr. Mansukhani holds a B.S. in Biochemistry from Case Western Reserve University. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, three daughters, and dog.
You’ve had a fascinating career that spans biotech entrepreneurship, venture capital, and investment banking – walk me through your career, highlighting the moves you made throughout and why:
As an entrepreneur, I’ve always devoted my full-time efforts to projects I find deeply compelling—often ideas that few others are willing to pursue, given how early the stage is. Early on, I never focused on financial upside; instead, I asked myself one question: Do I really want to do this?
I studied biochemistry at Case Western Reserve University but soon realized I didn’t want a traditional bench role. When a new venture fund was forming in Cleveland, I joined—initially unpaid—because the prospect of creating and investing in seed-stage companies out of academia fascinated me. As the fund gained traction, I was eventually brought on formally, and the experience whetted my appetite to run companies rather than just back them.
That led me to a boutique investment bank in New York that had a new interest in company formation and raising capital for these newcos. That effort created two newcos – one that developed a novel algorithm to enable more energy efficient building and the second a biotech that developed a glucose responsive insulin technology.
After a few years I left the investment bank to focus on only company building. Working with Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Texas Health Sciences center, I co-founded a neuro-imaging diagnostics company, Alzeca Bio, which focused on Alzheimer’s Disease but also had applicability to other CNS indications such as PSP, FTD, Parkinsons, Multiple Sclerosis, etc. We launched with no outside capital and struggled to secure our first dollars, but I believed strongly in the science and patient value – eventually we generated sufficient data to convince the NIH, several VC’s and key Alzheimer’s Foundations to back us. The company is now in clinical trials with positive results to date.
A few years ago, I co-founded Deciduous Therapeutics. This time, an investor committed funding on day one—enough to hire our first employee and open a lab. Leading Deciduous has been incredibly rewarding and a lot of fun.
Tell me more about what you’re working on at Deciduous – what makes immunotherapy an especially promising approach for treating aging-related diseases?
I’ll start broadly. The core premise is that our immune system is the best tool we have for managing healthspan, lifespan, and disease. It’s something we’re born with, and it’s remarkably capable of detecting, preventing, and eliminating disease. The challenge is that immune function naturally declines with age—and that decline is accelerated in the presence of disease.
Take, for example, someone who is aging and also develops type 2 diabetes. These become co-stressors on the body. Aging impairs immune function, and diabetes makes it worse. The question we’re focused on is: Can we restore immune function to what it was meant to be? That is, can we bring it back to the vitality it had during our teens and early twenties—when the immune system is most robust and active?
That’s the central premise of Deciduous Therapeutics: restoring immune function to treat diseases of aging.
Now, zooming in, one of the key problems associated with aging and disease is the accumulation of pathological senescent cells. For those unfamiliar, senescent cells are essentially irreversibly damaged cells that have stopped dividing but refuse to die. Under normal circumstances, a healthy immune system—particularly natural killer T cells—clears them out. That’s critical.
But as we age, and especially in the context of disease, those natural killer T cells lose their ability to function effectively. They no longer remove senescent cells in a timely or sufficient manner. As a result, these inflammatory, dysfunctional cells begin to build up.
From an evolutionary standpoint, senescent cells are thought to signal the immune system—essentially saying, “Hey, there’s a problem here.” But if the immune system is no longer listening or able to respond, that signal goes unanswered. The cells accumulate, inflammation increases, and disease progresses.
At Deciduous, our approach is to restore that T cell function—essentially reminding the immune system how to do its job. We’ve developed a small molecule that activates these natural killer T cells. In preclinical models, a single dose is enough to re-engage the immune response and clear out senescent cells.
The results are striking: we’ve demonstrated that this approach can reverse both fibrotic and metabolic diseases with single, intermittent treatments.
You’ve advised a few other neuroscience-focused companies like Therini Bio and Reservoir Neurosciences – what technologies or scientific insights are emerging in those fields that you’re particularly excited about?
Yes, these two companies are quite different. Reservoir Neuroscience is focused on repairing the blood-brain barrier (BBB). As we age—and particularly in the presence of disease—the integrity of the BBB declines. For anyone unfamiliar, the BBB serves as a protective barrier, maintaining the brain as an immune-privileged environment. It has tight junctions that prevent harmful substances in the periphery from entering the brain.
But with aging and disease, the BBB becomes more permeable. When that happens, toxins, inflammatory cytokines, and immune cells that shouldn’t be in the brain can cross over, accelerating neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, MS, FTD and others. Reservoir’s goal is to restore the BBB to a more youthful, functional state—essentially sealing the leak and protecting the brain. If successful, their approach could be relevant across multiple neurological indications.
Therini Bio, on the other hand, is tackling neuroinflammation differently. Their strategy is to block a specific epitope of fibrin that drives a significant amount of inflammation in the brain. Neuroinflammation is widely recognized as a key driver of progression in many neurological diseases. By targeting this fibrin epitope, they’ve shown preclinical efficacy in models of MS, Alzheimer’s, and even diabetic macular edema (DME), which involves a similar blood-retina barrier (“BRB”).
Therini has now moved into clinical studies. Last year, they dosed DME patients, and more recently, they dosed their first Alzheimer’s patient. The data so far look promising, and they appear to be on a strong trajectory.
As a repeat biotech founder and early-stage biotech advisor – what are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned about what it really takes to build from the ground up? Is there a process or framework you follow?
I think no two programs are ever the same. So I wouldn’t say you can take the exact skill set or approach from Company A and apply it directly to Company B. What’s most important is having a clear framework for identifying the key inflection points—and knowing how to get to them as quickly and efficiently as possible.
In science, especially when you’re developing new molecules, targeting novel pathways, or aiming to demonstrate a new therapeutic effect, the number of ideas you can generate is virtually infinite. So discipline becomes essential. You need to decide: What are we going to try? And if we try it, do we have a plan to translate it effectively?
For example, is the molecule you’re testing part of a translatable approach? Does the model you’re using actually recapitulate human disease in a way that gives you confidence? These are all critical considerations to address before you even begin running experiments, setting timelines, or allocating capital.
Biotech capital is always tight—this isn’t just a recent phenomenon. So understanding the most efficient path to reach value-creating milestones is crucial. That could be generating compelling preclinical data, reaching an IND, securing a partnership, or progressing into the clinic.
Ultimately, what matters is a clear focus on what could work, testing ideas quickly and rigorously, and being unafraid to kill hypotheses—even ones you were initially excited about—if the data doesn’t support them. Being decisive and unemotional about those pivots is key.
With the biotech capital markets tightening, how should founders adapt their fundraising and operational strategies?
Hopefully, they don’t have to adapt too much—because ideally, companies should always be disciplined in how they spend, regardless of market conditions. Every dollar should be purposeful, not just chasing a shiny object or a marginal edge.
That said, in this market, you really do have to find ways to do more with less. What does that mean in practice? First, as a CEO, you always need to be mindful of your bottom line. Are there areas where spending is inefficient? That could include office space, rent, or vendor costs. Now more than ever, it’s worth shopping around—many vendors are feeling the pressure of the market too and are more flexible on pricing than they were before.
So asking, “Where can we cut spending without compromising core operations?” is a crucial step.
Second, how can you tap into other sources of capital? Government grants, while inconsistent over the past nine months, remain an important option. Having a robust grant strategy—submitting multiple proposals—can be one of the most effective ways to offset the downturn in venture and pharma VC funding.
In short, cutting unnecessary spend and aggressively exploring alternative funding sources are probably the best ways to navigate the current environment.
If you had unlimited capital and talent to launch your dream biotech start-up, what would it look like and what problem would it solve?
I’m going to treat that as a bit of a trick question. I don’t actually think having unlimited capital or talent is a good thing—it can make you unfocused, and I believe you risk losing your edge when resources are too abundant.
If I had the right amount of funding and the right team—not unlimited—I’d focus 80% of our efforts on the “must-haves,” and reserve the remaining 20% for contingencies. For example, if your lead program doesn’t work out, how do you pivot into a different program? How do you take those learnings and translate them into something else that can succeed? I think it’s critical to have a Plan B that’s not just theoretical, but already in motion. That way, if Plan A fails, you still have enough time, money, and people to shift and execute.
If you rely only on Plan A, you’re putting all your chips on something that—given the complexity of biology—may not play out as expected. So I actually believe having unlimited resources could be more of a distraction than an advantage.
As far as a problem I’d like to solve: I’ve always been obsessed with identifying targets that have multi-indication potential. That’s one reason I find cellular senescence so compelling—if you can safely and effectively remove senescent cells, it could impact dozens of diseases, not just one.
I’m constantly thinking about targets like that—where modulation could affect a wide range of indications. In addition to senescence, I find mitochondria and telomeres really interesting. That’s how my brain tends to work: what targets, if successfully modulated, could treat multiple diseases?
On the other hand, if you’re working on a single target, for a single pathway, in a single indication, then you’re concentrating all your risk into one narrow idea. That can be very limiting. I’m more drawn to platforms or approaches with broad therapeutic potential.
Favorite biotech book or podcast?
I might disappoint with this one—I don’t actually spend much time listening to biotech podcasts or reading biotech books. I get plenty of that during the workday, so when I unplug, I try not to stay in the same orbit. Instead, I gravitate more toward content focused on career development, leadership, and strategy. My attention outside of work is usually on the soft skills rather than the core biotech topics.
I’ve probably read every Michael Lewis book. He’s an incredible storyteller, and there are always valuable lessons embedded in his work—even Moneyball, which is about baseball, has insights that translate across many areas of life and business. My favorite of his might be The New New Thing. It wasn’t one of his most popular, but it really resonated with me—it’s all about how innovation starts and endures in Silicon Valley. Anytime he puts out a new book, I jump on it right away.
A biotech leader you admire and why?
Similar to before, I don’t spend a lot of time following specific leaders in biotech outside of my day-to-day work. There isn’t one particular person I track closely. I also believe that every biotech company is different—what works at Company A may not apply to Company B. Leadership approaches often need to be tailored to the specific situation and team, and personal style plays a big role as well.
That said, I’m fortunate to have strong advisors and board members whom I really respect. Martin Babler, one of our advisors, has been incredibly helpful—offering quick, sharp advice, especially around framing messaging and storytelling. He’s been a great resource. Several other Deciduous board members including Helen McBride, Neal Bhadkamkar, Dylan Morris, Robert Forrester, and Tito Serafini have also been valuable mentors and sounding boards.
