Bassil Dahiyat

Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer, President & Director, Xencor

Search every verified Bassil Dahiyat interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Bassil Dahiyat, co-founder and CEO of Xencor, discussed the company's history and the field of antibody engineering in a January 2022 podcast appearance. He recounted Xencor's early struggles, including a "near-death experience" and small licensing deals made under financial pressure, such as a 2013 agreement with Alexion that contributed to the development of the drug Ultomiris. He also noted that Xencor's antibody engineering contributed to sotrovimab, a COVID-19 treatment developed by Vir Biotechnology and GSK. In the interview, Dahiyat spoke about the practical advantages of antibodies as drugs, describing them as easy to manufacture, ship, and engineer using established protein engineering tools. He also discussed the challenges of cytokine therapies, stating that cytokines are potent but toxic when used systemically, and that efforts to modify them, such as pegylation, have limitations. He expressed cautious optimism about future applications of antibodies and in vivo editing, while acknowledging uncertainty about specific use cases.