With CEO hire, this Boston biotech boasts an all-woman C-suite

Three months after publicly launching, Kojin Therapeutics has named a managing partner at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute as its first CEO.

With the addition of Luba Greenwood's, Kojin now boasts an executive team made up entirely of women — a rarity in the male-dominated field of life sciences. Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) veteran Kay Ahn is the startup's chief scientific officer, Lynn Abel is vice president of biochemistry and founder Vasanthi Viswanathan has stayed on as head of discovery biology.

"It's such a pleasure to be working in an all-female C-suite," Greenwood said. "Even though it's only been a few weeks, I'm already hearing that it's different leadership. I think, especially for some of the younger female scientists, when you have female CEOs and you have a chief scientific officer and head of science who are all female, it makes you want to come in to work."

Greenwood had previously worked on Kojin's board of directors, spearheading Dana-Farber's investment into the startup's $60 million Series A round. Over the last couple of months, she says she grew more and more impressed by the science, so when an opportunity came for her to become CEO, she leapt. Greenwood has, however, retained a part-time position at Dana-Farber while she works full-time at Kojin.

Polaris Partners' Amir Nashat, who had served as Kojin's first CEO, has stepped back from the role.

The biotechnology underpinning Kojin comes from the lab of Stuart Schreiber, a Harvard University professor and co-founder of the Broad Institute. Schreiber and Kojin's scientific co-founders believe they have found a way to trigger and then control ferroptosis, a newly discovered type of cell death during which a large amount of iron accumulation and lipid peroxidation takes place.

The science, Greenwood said, is so promising that Kojin is actually growing at a faster clip than anticipated. Initially, the startup had planned to grow to 20 full-time employees by year's end, but it's already passed that goal and is continuing to hire chemists, biologists and computational biologists in particular. The company is also in the process of building out a 15,000-square-foot facility in the Seaport District, into which it intends to move in February.

Recently, Kojin instituted an informal group through which scientists can volunteer for short-term business development roles. The goal is twofold: It allows Greenwood and the business team to get some additional help, which is sorely needed in any early-stage startup. It also allows young scientists to gain business development experience — which, Greenwood notes, is particularly crucial for women who are early in their careers.

"If any of our brilliant young scientists are interested, they can participate," Greenwood said. "So far, almost all of them have participated."