Dr. Ivan Horak is currently the CEO and founder of Tikva Allocell, a biotech company whose mission is to develop safe, effective, readily available and affordable “off-the-shelf” T cell therapies by leveraging excellent safety profile of proprietary technologies that enhance the T cell's performance to treat cancer.

In this episode, Ivan shares his journey from having an interest in becoming a medical oncologist. He also shares how his experience in working in some of the top oncology institutes in Central Europe to working in the United States helped shape his early career before moving into Singapore, where he worked with Tessa and finally set out to develop Tikva Allocell. Tikva Allocell is focused on creating therapy using proprietary IP protected platform to drive the next breakthrough in cancer therapy. In this episode, Ivan also shares about the groundbreaking work being done at Tikva, and also the typical challenges that a company would face when they are first starting up. He goes on to talk about making therapies affordable, how to manage scaling up and also the importance of collaboration. He also mentions the intricacies of VCs and also how they function.

Host: John Joson Ng Editors: Hana Maldivita Tambrin, Aakash S/O Naresh Kumar, Dillon Chew, John Joson Ng

01:37 Ivan's Background and Early Career

04:46 Founding of Tikva

11:41 Importance of Collaborations

14:26 Tikva's recent milestones

15:36 VC mindset

20:20 Advice for Aspiring Bioentrepreneurs and Final Thoughts