Portrait No. 001
Judee Sharon
CEO & Co-founder
KuriBio, Inc.
I was 12 when I realized I wanted to be a scientist. I had just been nominated for a scholarship and asked to describe my dream job. I remembered a thriller I had watched where researchers in hazmat suits raced to save the world, and I realized then that science wasn't just a subject. It was a tool to create tangible, positive change. Since then, I’ve worked at the forefront of technology, from sustainable agriculture to biological computing. My career has shown me that while brilliant science happens every day, something critical keeps getting lost in translation. I started KuriBio to solve a critical miss: many cutting-edge cancer therapies make patients as sick as the disease. We already have the tools to fix this. To live up to the promise of science that I believed in as a child, I am building therapies that actually make patients feel better.
In her words
“As an immigrant and first-generation American, I had no blueprint for what success looked like in this country.”
Chapter I
The toughest challenges you've faced as a founder.
As an immigrant and first-generation American, I had no blueprint for what success looked like in this country. In some ways, this became my strength because my parents always encouraged me to try everything. In other ways, I had to work harder, study harder, try harder to achieve the same things that looked effortless for others. By the time I started at UC Berkeley as an undergraduate, I thought I was already a brilliant academic. It turned to be the most challenging four years of my life, where I questioned whether I belonged, whether I was capable enough to succeed. Through a fog of defeat, I discovered my determination to push through. Through the many jobs, failures, and rejections that followed – at startups, graduate school, and entrepreneurship – I find myself reaching for that grit every day. Each failure paved the way to a new success. I helped create a product that is now used on thousands of acres; I created a brand new platform for biological computing; I am an ARCS Scholar and an IGI Entrepreneurial Fellow; and I am a co-founder of a nanotechnology that will make cancer treatment for patients safer and more effective.
Chapter II
Your vision.
Imagine a world where a patient is simply treated and cured, no side effects, no arduous on-off cycles. Many of the therapies to eradicate cancer already exist, but we are horrible at only targeting the cancer cells in a patient. Today’s therapies are often untargeted, so lots of healthy cells are also killed and patients experience life-threatening side effects or even treatment-related secondary cancers. KuriBio is building a first-in-class targeting nanotechnology to deliver therapies only to cancer cells, while avoiding healthy cells. We encapsulate small molecules, nucleic acids, or enzyme therapies inside liposomes specially formulated to target multiple biomarkers on cancer cells. Our platform is 5x better at binding only target cells in comparison to untargeted therapies. Our first product will be for patients with CD7+ Acute Myeloid Leukemia, which is a cancer that is especially difficult to treat without killing healthy cells.
Chapter III
The impact you want to leave behind — for your industry, your community, and the women who come next.
I want to have created enough opportunities for women scientists, entrepreneurs, and innovators that they never have to question if they weren’t “chosen” because of their gender. The most disappointing aspect of our experience today is that we keep hearing how funders want to support women founders, and yet, in 2024, we still only made up 2.3% of all VC-backed founders. Within 30 years, I will re-invest my time, money, and energy into funding other women founders at the seed stage, the most vulnerable time for any business, so that they can prove that success and innovation aren’t dependent on gender.