Dr. Ashley Zehnder — Founder and CEO, Fauna Bio

Dr. Ashley Zehnder is the co-founder and CEO of Fauna Bio, a San Francisco, Bay Area-based company founded in 2018. Fauna Bio has adopted a fascinating strategy for drug development, studying animal genomics to cure human diseases. They use unique and varied proprietary data sources to identify novel drug targets across a range of clinical applications, beginning with cardiovascular protection. Dr. Zehnder is a veterinarian-scientist at the intersection of animal biology and human health. Today she joins the show to discuss her background in Cancer Biology, her specialty training in exotic/non-traditional species, and the experience of launching Fauna Bio with co-founders, Dr. Linda Goodman and Dr. Katie Grabek in 2018. Dr. Zehnder explains how genomes from non-model systems and animals can inform our thinking about human disease, why her background in veterinary medicine gives her an advantage in studying comparative physiology, and what her team has learned about neurodegeneration from the hibernation process of the thirteen-lined ground squirrel. She talks about studying highly conserved disease traits across species and whether we can reactivate certain genetic pathways to reverse those diseases. You’ll hear about Fauna Bio’s work with RNA Seq. data, their focus on cardiovascular research and other indications they are now expanding into, as well as the company’s relationship with Novo Nordisk as they explore the connection between hibernation, metabolic changes, and obesity. Dr. Zehnder offers her perspective on the University of Washington’s Dog Aging Project, and talks about the current drug discovery pipeline at Fauna Bio. She addresses how Fauna Bio fits in with other aging research and concludes with her thoughts on how the field of comparative genomics will evolve over the next five to ten years. Episode Highlights: Dr. Ashley Zehnder is a veterinarian with a background in companion exotics (birds, mammals, reptiles) She completed a Ph.D. in Oncology and Cancer Biology at Stanford University Co-fo