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Q&A with Sashank Reddy, JHTV Senior Medical Director
In addition to being a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, Sashank Reddy, MD, PhD, is a scientist and biomedical entrepreneur. Early in his career he worked on new company creation at Third Rock Ventures with some of the firm’s founders. More recently he co-founded the Baltimore-based companies LifeSprout, Inc. and Spacetime Therapeutics. These experiences have helped Reddy in his role as senior medical director at Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures (JHTV), a hub that facilitates the translation and commercialization of Hopkins discoveries. We asked Reddy, also an INBT associate researcher, about his views on life science technologies at Hopkins and the INBT.
down the value chain. Ultimately, we aim to unlock that value through new company creation, corporate partnerships, or other means. I also work with Hopkins and JHTV leadership on effective technology translation strategies. We develop programmatic resources and find ways to reduce the technology development friction for my faculty colleagues, including those at the INBT. Q: What are your views on the translation potential at Hopkins and the INBT? A: The opportunities are enormous. Hopkins has some of the world’s best basic scientists and medical institutions, with new discoveries happening frequently. Visionary investments by university leaders and developments in the biotechnology industry, generally, have facilitated turning those discoveries into new inventions.
Q: What is your role at JHTV? A: I have two main roles. First, I am privileged to work on translational plans for some of the most high-value biomedical discoveries across Hopkins. With my JHTV colleagues, I identify ways to push these early discoveries further
For INBT the opportunities are vast. My colleagues at the medical school where I am based, broadly think in terms of disease etiology. We regularly discover molecules that contribute to disease development but sometimes struggle to translate those biological insights into actionable therapeutics and diagnostics. These challenges are where engineers excel. For example, an engineer could create a novel protein therapeutic to intervene in pathogenesis, or as we saw during the COVID pan-