Mo Rahman
I live and play in the city of San Francisco. Love artsy/off-kilter girls, and have been seen taking tumbles on my bike around Hayes Valley & the Lower Haight after a beer or two.
Recently, I’ve been helping companies like Novartis. Where as a process development consultant, at their San Carlos campus ,our team focused on liposome based pulmonary delivery systems. The site began as the startup Inhale, which was bought by Nektar Therapeutics leading to the first inhalable insulin to market with Exubera, after which it was sold to Novartis. Incredible people, great culture and having every step of the development process from device design to drug formulation in-house has made this an incredibly humbling and productive experience.
My first real taste of research came after hearing about a new lab on campus with a big electron gun. They were modeling membrane-bound receptors in the human retina & nervous system using X-ray crystallography. I joined up. The coolest part? The receptor is found in the Pineal gland, the “third-eye” as some say. Sample research poster.
Next I found myself with a research position investigating the regulation of the enzyme Neuropathy target esterase, which is implicated in neurodegeneration and lipid metabolism. Why is this awesome? Because our neurons are constantly “pruning” their connections and such, maybe using this.
My introduction to the biotech industry came from Impax Laboratories, I curse on their houses. Here I worked on drugs of the central nervous system, i.e. Carbidopa (Parkinson’s disease), Divalproex (bi-polar disorder, depression). Seriously, it’s straight out of American Gangster, Larry Hsu is a bad person.
There is also a super-secret, keep it on the down-low, genomics startup my free time goes to. At the moment going by the moniker GeneDrop, wish us luck!
