Don Drakeman

Don Drakeman was the founding CEO of the biotech company that created the cancer immunotherapy treatments recognized in the 2018 Nobel Prize for Medicine. He is currently a Venture Partner at Advent Life Sciences, a Fellow and Co-Lead of the Biopharmaceutical Initiative at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School, and Distinguished Research Professor in the Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government at the University of Notre Dame. He is a co-author of From Breakthrough to Blockbuster: The Business of Biotechnology, published in 2022 by Oxford University Press, which has been named a Financial Times “Top Business Title.” His publications have been cited in numerous patents and by the Supreme Court of the United States. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Columbia Law School, he received a Ph.D. from Princeton University. He has been a founder, adviser or board member of biotechnology firms in nine different countries in North America and Europe.